Disciples Make Disciples

Gandalf: I am looking for someone to share in an adventure that I am arranging, and it’s very difficult to find anyone.

Bilbo: I should think so—in these parts! We are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner! I can’t think what anybody sees in them …

Gandalf:  You’ll have a tale or two to tell when you come back

Bilbo:  You can promise that I’ll come back?”

Gandalf:  No. And if you do, you will not be the same

Today Jesus is inviting you to leave your home, your comfort, and join him on the great adventure, the true adventure!

Be with Jesus. Become Like Jesus. Do as he did.

Today we are hitting this last point, and we’re going to look at the very last instructions, the last command Jesus gives, this final directive to the disciples, the mission that will become the mission of the Church, what we call the Great Commission. And here’s what’s so simple about it, and yet so simple we sometimes miss it: he is saying to the disciples, these men that he has spent three years turning into his disciples, that they are to go out into the world and do for the nations as he did to them. Go and make disciples.

The call to go and make disciples is a RESPONSE to the AUTHORITY of the risen Christ

We talked last week about how Authority is the power you have because of your position…and now Jesus, having endured the cross, and now raised into resurrection life, has been given ALL AUTHORITY in heaven and on earth, all to him! (talk about Gandalf coming back to life…)

Imagine if you’d seen what the disciples saw with your own eyes…what would you do? How would you respond to his presence? How would you respond to his command?

Worship is always central, everything is for the purpose of worshipping the one true God—the disciples, in turning to Jesus, in giving themselves over to him, are finally able to worship God rightly, and this is what we’re created for, to worship God in Spirit and in truth!

Some doubt or hesitate…even here, some hold back a part of themselves…even here, in the gathering of the risen Christ, there is room for doubt…that should haunt us…

Matthew 28:18–20 NIV

Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Make disciples is the main verb, the other three are passive participles, meaning they are modifying the main verb. How do we do it?

1) Go. (To make disciples, we must leave “home.”)

(stretching at camp loucon…prepare to be made uncomfortable!)

Matthew 16:24–26 NIV

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?

Hebrews 13:14 NIV

For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.

Christians cannot be homebodies. We may not be called by God to physically move, but we WILL be called out of our comfort zone. You WILL be called to stretch beyond where you can relax!

You are bilbo bagging, Jesus is Gandalf, and you have to take that first step out the door. “The world is not in your books and maps, it’s out there!” Begin the adventure. 

2) Baptize. (Call people to die to self and to rise in Christ)

Romans 6:3–4 NIV

Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

This looks like confronting the false gods of our culture, the lies of the culture, and witness to your neighbors about the good news of Jesus, and call people to repentance. This is the work of proclamation, witness, leading people to make a decision for Jesus, inviting them into the church, incorporating them into the body of Christ through the sacrament of baptism.

3) Teach. (By example and by instruction, lead people into a holy life in Christ)

by intentional relationships, model, teach, and invite people into an apprenticeship under Jesus—a life of holiness of heart and life. The great model of doing this is the apostle Paul…he never just converted people, let them say a prayer, and then left them alone to figure it out on their own! Read the New Testament. He NEVER gave up on these people. He knew that that was only the beginning, only the start of living in a whole new world, the new creation.

Col 3:12-14

Colossians 3:12–14 NIV

Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.

Why don’t we do this?

IGNORANCE: No one ever discipled us. 

This is probably the majority of us!

LACK OF CONFIDENCE: We are too used to outsourcing discipleship. 

Model of event-based discipleship, where you try to get someone into a room, and hope that the person via that room, through a preacher, can be discipled

COLD HEARTS: We haven’t really spent time in the presence of God.

No awe, no fear, no overwhelming sense of Gods love for us.

PRIDE: We haven’t recognized or submitted to the lordship of Jesus. 

FEAR: we are afraid to at we aren’t good enough to do it. 

Are you a disciple?

The question for you and for me today, as we look to the great commission, the most important thing, the firs thing, is are we disciples? Are you a disciple? What does that mean, are you someone who has fully submitted the lordship and authority of Jesus in every part of your life, you are spending your time with Jesus, you are becoming like Jesus, and you are doing what Jesus did, what Jesus is actually commanding you to do? Have you encountered the risen Christ, and have you recognized his authority, have you fallen to your knees in his presence, have you given yourself over to him?

Some of the disciples worshipped on the mountain, but some doubted, some hesitated. I think what that means is that some held back a part of themselves from the experience of worship, because they were afraid. What about you?

Who are you discipling? (Who is your three?)

-children are a priority if you’re a parent

Set up some kind of recurring get together, where you read the Bible, pray, and talk about life

God’s math, God doesn’t like addition, doesn’t like division, God likes multiplication

MULTIPLICATION

go forth and multiply, Jesus feeding the five thousand, the mustard seed, and the church: it always looks small on the ground, on the surface, but it’s gone from 3 to 12 to 72 to 120 to Judea to Samaria to now like 2 billion people on every continent in every tongue!

“The Great Commission is not merely to go to the ends of the earth preaching the gospel, nor to baptize a lot of converts, nor to teach them the precepts of Christ, but to ‘make disciples’—to build men like themselves who were so constrained by the commission of Christ that they not only followed Jesus themselves, but (and this is key) led others to follow him, too. ...

The criteria upon which any church should measure its success is not how many new names are added to the roll nor how much the budget is increased, but rather how many Christians are actively winning souls and training them to win the multitudes.” -Robert Coleman, The Master Plan for Evangelism

Friends, I want us to be a multiplying church. I want us to be a church that plants churches, to be church of disciples who make disciples…to be a church who raises up leaders, and raises up evangelists, and raises up preachers...not so we can build a big kingdom for ourselves, but so that we can send them out into the world…

Jesus is inviting you into an adventurous life. Will you answer his call? Will you go? If you don’t who will? My friends, let’s not fail to heed the calling of our king. We will fail, but he will not. We will be weak, but he will be strong. The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Will you be one of the few? Will you commit, for the rest of your life, to making disciples, one, by one, by one…imagine the people in heaven, who will be there because of you. Let us pray…