Discipleship for the Many, the Mature, and the Minister
Deep Discipleship • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Discipleship is for everyone!
As a new believer/ young believer what ‘discipleship content’ contributed most to your growth as a believer?
Mind: What do I need to understand?
Body: What do I need to do?
Heart/ Character: What should I love/ What should I want?
Discipling the Many
Discipling the Many
The Disciplee: Bio
1 And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual men, but as to men of flesh, as to infants in Christ. 2 I gave you milk to drink, not solid food; for you were not yet able to receive it. Indeed, even now you are not yet able, 3 for you are still fleshly. For since there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not fleshly, and are you not walking like mere men?
6 Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough? 7 Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed.
9 But take care that this liberty of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak.
Jealousy and strife.
Pride. Remaining attachments to the world.
A disregard for the well-being of others.
A Call to Unity
A Call to put away the world
A Call to love the church
The Content
What do you need to understand?
The Gospel:
1 Corinthians 1:
18 Flee immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body. 19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? 20 For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.
What do you need to do?
Flee Immorality:
14 Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry.
Serve one another:
19 For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I may win more.
What does growth in character look like?
Love one another:
31 But earnestly desire the greater gifts. And I show you a still more excellent way. 1 If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
Summary:
As New Believers we’re all fresh out of the world and a part of the body. That’s Paul’s emphasis.
The gospel sets you apart from the world, we need to understand that.
Therefore we need to stop serving the world and start serving the church.
As time goes on, we need to be praying for our own love for the church.
Discipling the Mature
Discipling the Mature
Bio:
Philippians 1:3–7 (NASB95)
3I thank my God in all my remembrance of you,
4always offering prayer with joy in my every prayer for you all,
5in view of your participation in the gospel from the first day until now.
6For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.
7For it is only right for me to feel this way about you all, because I have you in my heart, since both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel, you all are partakers of grace with me.
What do you need to understand?
13 Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
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Christ is more valuable than anything this world has to give! He is our greatest hope. The hope which has brought you into the kingdom is the hope which we cling to to persevere in the faith. We no longer serve the world and it’s worldly pleasures, but even more so, we have a prize and a reward awaiting in heaven which should free us to let go of this world.
20 For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; 21 who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself.
Fundamental understanding for the maturing believer: Where is your hope? A good question for a discipleship relationship. Where is your hope? Is it still clinging to Christ or has it diverted to other things?
Are we investing in heavenly things or earthly things?
Are we pursuing God-honoring things or man-made glories?
Are we pursuing a prize on this earth or the next?
Growing in spiritual-mindedness is important for the maturing believer.
What do you need to do?
1 Therefore if there is any encouragement in Christ, if there is any consolation of love, if there is any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and compassion, 2 make my joy complete by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose. 3 Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; 4 do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. 5 Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men.
Keep serving the church!
What gifts have you been given? Gifts don’t set us apart from the church or the body for a different status. Love and unity is still the calling. Christ being God Himself with all the entitlements of deity, became a bond-servant. As maturity in faith grows activity and service in the church should grow as well! The call to action for the maturing believer is still church oriented.
What does growth in character look like?
4 although I myself might have confidence even in the flesh. If anyone else has a mind to put confidence in the flesh, I far more: 5 circumcised the eighth day, of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the Law, a Pharisee; 6 as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to the righteousness which is in the Law, found blameless. 7 But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, 9 and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith,
Where is our confidence? Paul is looking at a generous, mature, godly church. And where does he put their confidence? He doesn’t point them to their own maturity, their own understanding. Paul considers his own heritage and all that he might appeal to in himself. He counts it all as rubbish knowing Christ alone is enough. Even suffering is worth the glory of Christ.
Summary of the Maturing Disciple:
What do you need to understand: The gospel gives us a future hope.
What do you need to do: Serve the church with your gifts like Christ.
What does growth look like? Where is your confidence?
Q: Things you might add? What circumstances in the life of a young believer demand particular things that are important to understand, important to do, or important to grow in regarding character.
Discipling the Minister
Discipling the Minister
Bio:
5 For I am mindful of the sincere faith within you, which first dwelt in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, and I am sure that it is in you as well. 6 For this reason I remind you to kindle afresh the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands.
What do you need to know?
7 For God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power and love and discipline. 8 Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord or of me His prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel according to the power of God, 9 who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was granted us in Christ Jesus from all eternity, 10 but now has been revealed by the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel, 11 for which I was appointed a preacher and an apostle and a teacher.
Timothy, don’t forget the gospel! It’s the means of your confidence and strength and ministry and it’s the very reason I (Paul) was appointed a preacher, and apostle and a teacher.
We never graduate from the gospel. We never move on from depending on the gospel. There’s not a point where we realize, I’ve mastered it, now I can teach it. No. As preachers and teachers deliver the gospel to fellow saints, they are actively depending on it in repentance. Depending on it for fruitfulness in their own lives as well as those they minister to. At the heart of all sound doctrine that preachers and teachers should know the gospel remains at the heart. I might argue that all sound doctrine serves to defend the gospel.
What do you need to do?
2 The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. 3 Suffer hardship with me, as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. 4 No soldier in active service entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life, so that he may please the one who enlisted him as a soldier.
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Teach others, suffer hardship, remove entanglements.
This command remains true for every believer no matter how mature or gifted. Serve the body. It probably looks different as we mature, but it never stops being the calling to every believer. Timothy’s service to the body is to equip them. Give them all the means to do the work of ministry that they are called to do. Identify faithful men and train them.
This isn’t an easy calling. “Suffer with me.” Our calling as Christians is to be joined with Christ in picking up our cross and this is especially true of the shepherd. We are called to lay down our lives for the sheep. And if we’re to do that well, we need to be aware of entanglements. Everything from sin, naturally, but also the affairs of everyday life. The worldly things that distract from this work of service.
15 Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth. 16 But avoid worldly and empty chatter, for it will lead to further ungodliness,
1 I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom: 2 preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction.
The ministry of the preacher ceases when we stop delivering the Word of God.
If I were to lay out four questions for a brother to ask me over coffee?
Who are you equipping and how is that going?
Is ministry a pursuit of other’s good or your own glory? Cross or glory?
What’s distracting you?
What are you teaching and preaching?
I’d like everyone to know these are questions they generally don’t ask you in seminary. Seminary is largely focused on that singular question: What do you need to know? There’s more to the Christian than our understanding and there’s more to the pastor than what he knows.
Seminaries don’t make pastors. The church by the work of the Holy Spirit and the Word makes pastors because the church is uniquely equipped to address the whole person, the whole Christian and ask some hard questions along the way because the church knows us.
What does growth in character look like?
5 But you, be sober in all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. 6 For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. 7 I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith; 8 in the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day; and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing.
Throughout the book of 2 Timothy the continued call of Paul is to suffer and endure with Him. He gives this picture of emptying Himself out as a drink offering to the last drop before he dies. This is particularly appropriate for pastors and elders, but it’s true for all of us. Endure to the end. When death comes or Christ returns might we be found empty having given all for the cause of Christ and His church. That’s the only glory that will endure.
Summary of the minister:
Understand the gospel:
What do I need to do: Equip others, pick up your cross, remove distractions, and preach the word.
Growth in character: Sound mind and endurance.
