REVOLUTIONARY SIMPLICITY AND PERSONAL DISCIPLESHIP

REVOLUTIONARY SIMPLICITY AND PERSONAL DISCIPLESHIP Matthew 6:33; Colossians 1:28 July 27, 2008 Given by: Pastor Rich Bersett [Index of Past Messages] Introduction We all long for simplicity, and it has become a very cool topic. Real Simple magazine, for example, will tell you how to organize your closets, unclutter your garage, and even how to leave your high-pressure job in the city and move to Montana to start a lavender farm, which then finds amazing success and eventually goes public, requiring another downsizing. The popular message is this: embracing simplicity will make your life more manageable and more enjoyable. Raise the idea of simplicity and some people get a faraway look in their eyes and start dreaming of an uncomplicated existence of relaxation, and problem-free living—HAKUNA-MATADA! At the mere mention of the word, some people’s shoulders drop and their facial features soften, like an exhausted athlete who finally sits on the bench to rest. Sometimes they start making plans to slash the schedule, quit the committees, and exit the stress. Others react in the opposite way. They get defensive. They start rationalizing their crazy schedules and their busy lives and all the important things they do. They’ll tell you that the simple life is unrealistic, irresponsible. Without the chaos they seem to think their lives would have no meaning. But simplicity, from a biblical perspective, is not about making our lives more manageable, easier or escapist. Did Moses' life become less complex after the burning bush? Did Esther's decision to follow God make her life easier? Consider Joseph and Mary. Did submitting to God make their young lives more manageable? Hardly. And don’t forget the apostle Paul. The endured was a manageable lifestyle.   For God's grace-enamored, kingdom-committed, Lord-loving, others-oriented people, the opposite of simplicity is not complexity. It's duplicity. The simplicity of our faith is not a call to opt out, walk out or cop out, it is a call to single-minded devotion to the one thing we are sure is the most important thing of all: Seeking first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. Those who have truly been captured by the love of God, I think, realize they have found the supreme treasure, and they are ready to sell everything else to have it and hold it. Often younger believers get caught up in feverish service, so intent to show their love for Christ that they run off in a well-intentioned but thoughtless pursuit of doing anything that has ever looked like God’s will to anyone they ever heard speak. After a few seasons of go-go-go, serve-serve-serve, they fall exhausted into a kind of purgatory of burn-out. And they say, Where has the joy gone? Where is the fulfillment that God owes me? Why am I so tired of doing good? And if they don’t get so discouraged that they run off into betrayal or backsliding or bitterness, they finally quiet down and catch their breath. Somewhere, under a vine whimpering or a fig tree waiting, in a distant cave hiding, or in even in a whale’s belly running, they finally slow down long enough to hear the soft voice of the Holy Spirit again. He reassures them of the Father’s love, breathes healing and life into them and then He teaches them that it isn’t a fast pace or type-A craziness that pleases God. It is drawing near enough to Him to learn who they are and waiting on Him to lead them to places where harvests are ready. It’s taking the time to know Him, to love Him more deeply and let His life fill them that’s the important thing. He says, Be still, and know that I am God. [webmasters note: Psalm 46:10] These are the things that glorify God. In that place we learn what genuine and radical simplicity is. From there we may go and serve Him well. From there we may go into His service, hard missions, satisfying ministry or even martyrdom. Simplicity is knowing you can do all things through Him who gives you strength. Radical simplicity is doing God’s stuff God’s way. Catching Up We’ve taken time in the Word to learn about kingdom simplicity in the matter of our time. We have been reminded that time is a gracious, temporary and revocable gift from God and how we use it will be a matter of reckoning before Him. If we would glorify God and enjoy Him forever it will demand of us that we steward our time in wise spiritual fashion. Then we visited the topic of Radical Simplicity and Your Wallet. We reviewed the massively important truths that what we have in terms of money and wardrobe and groceries is not really ours at all, but our use of it is a test. It is a well-designed program for us to discover whether our devotion will be toward God or things. Being wise stewards of what we have, holding it all loosely and handling it all generously, reveals whether we have riches or riches have us. God calls us to the simplicity of kingdom living. Then last week we made application of kingdom-minded simplicity to the church, asking some very hard, but important questions. Will we be simple disciples or self-serving consumers? Will we be devoted to serving God or busy ourselves with empty worldly pursuits? Will our focus be on His mission or on ours? Will we allow our commitment to Him to stagnate or will we repent and renew ourselves in His Radical Simplicity? In the process we touched on the subject of discipleship. It is this, after all, that is at the core of our calling in Christ. For this we were saved—to disciple others through the process of learning about Christ, turning to Him in faith for salvation, and continuing to grow into His image—the process the Bible calls sanctification. It is to that subject we turn today: discipleship. If this is truly the gist of His calling for us, we ought to understand it well enough that we can obey it. I want us to approach the topic personally, leading to the question of what exactly would it please God that I would do? Stay with me as we look at the subject of personal discipleship. Personal Discipleship: Giving and Receiving When we take the Great Commission seriously we simply must focus on the one imperative in that sentence around which everything else revolves: MAKE DISCIPLES. The total message of the New Testament accords with this commandment. Very simply, we are called in Christ to give and receive discipleship ministry. From our first Bible lessons in kindergarten Sunday School, to the day we stepped forward to commit our lives to Christ in faith, to our ongoing career of becoming mature members of the body of Christ, we have received discipleship. That is, other persons, presumably who were more advanced in faith than we, taught us, encouraged us, scolded us and modeled for us the Christian faith. Inasmuch as they faithfully taught the truth of God’s Word and did their best to live in the fullness of the Spirit, they helped us. Each of you this morning can recall instantly some of the key players in your career of being discipled: parents and pastors, friends, evangelists, teachers, and a few others whose mistakes showed you how NOT to live. In 2 Timothy 2:2, Paul said to his young prot?? “the things you’ve heard me say, you entrust to other reliable men, who will then also be qualified to teach others.” There is a succession of faith, one person to another, one generation to the next, that relies on faithful Christians teaching others. When you are discipled by others, you are handed the baton to do your part in discipling others. We give and receive discipling in the kingdom. We are reminded and exhorted every time we turn a page in the New Testament of our obligation to receive and to give ministry from and to others. We are called to grow and we are called to help grow others. “Teach and admonish one another with all wisdom.”  [webmasters note: Colossians 3:16] “Encourage one another daily.”  [webmasters note: Hebrews 3:13]  Paul said, “our prayer is for your perfection.”  [webmasters note: 2 Corinthians 13:9]  And in Colossians 1:28 he shared his personal mission statement with us, saying all the work that he as a Christian servant did, was with one goal in mind: “so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ.” Very quickly, look back with me at our definition of what a disciple is. The definition I presented last week runs like this: a disciple is anyone who is learning to appreciate who Jesus is. That could be a pagan who has never heard that Jesus is the Son of God, or it could be a decades deep Christian who is first learning that Jesus gave His authority to the church to judge and deal with sin. A disciple is one who is learning to trust more deeply in the saving sacrifice Jesus made for Him at the cross. New and seasoned saints alike are continually advancing in our appreciation of the breadth of our salvation in Christ. Learning to love Christ more is another natural aspect of the maturing process of disciples. Whether studying the height, depth, width and breadth of His love in Ephesians 3 or encountering His forgiveness of a penitent believer we Christians are continually amazed at ever-new levels at the love of Christ. And we grow in kind in our love for Him. Disciples at all stages do this. I’ve watched a young hungry seeker fight back tears just reading the story of Jesus forgiving the adulterous woman in John 7, and I’ve heard touching testimonies from 80-year old believers who confess that the more they learn to love Christ, the more love they receive from Him. Disciples of all degrees are constantly growing into deeper levels of Christ likeness. The Bible describes the process as moving from one glory to another. And they are also learning to serve Him better. At every level, it takes a Christian believer faithfully discipling other people so they can come to faith or grow in their faith. Now, as I have already indicated, disciples come in all forms. They can be Christian disciples who have already committed their lives to Christ and are in the ongoing process of growing mature in their faith. Their growth depends in part on others discipling them through teaching, modeling, answering their questions, mentoring them through different stages and encouraging and correcting them along the way. At this level we usually speak of discipling as nurturing. It is the second half of the great commission: “…teaching them to observe all that I commanded you.”  [webmasters note: Matthew 28:20] But the other category of disciples is what I call the Pre-Christian disciple. That is, he is a learner, and in a limited sense, a follower, of Jesus, but hasn’t yet come to the place of committing his life to Christ through faith. This could be a little 5-year old girl who has just been invited to church by a friend and hears for the first time that Jesus died for her sins. I could be a man who has gone forward in revival meetings several times, but has not really been converted yet. Whereas the Christian disciple has the huge advantage of having the Holy Spirit in his life, the pre-Christian disciple still has the Holy Spirit on the “outside,” if you will, working on him, bringing him to conviction. In this sense he is being drawn to faith in Christ. I can remember that season in my life like it was yesterday. Small stirrings of faith, lots of questions, deep conviction. What an important time to have a discipler around! At this level, the process of discipleship is called evangelism. How important it is that the believing community of Christians be busy in the work of discipleship, not only on the receiving end so that they can go on growing, but also on the giving end so others can grow in their process of faith. May I remind you that God has chosen this method? He has sovereignly decided that Christians will be His ambassadors, His witnesses and His disciplers of others. That’s you and me, brothers and sisters! What I am Called to Do There will be more to say about these things in the rest of this series, but as I draw to a close this morning, I have a specific word of exhortation for you. It is perfectly natural for each of us to wonder what exactly does this discipleship teaching have to do with me? This is where discipleship meets radical simplicity. My exhortation can be reduced to two words: FIND THREE. To meet your needs as one who needs discipling at the level of maturity where you are, and to bring you effectively into the ministry of discipleship of others, I want to recommend three people to you. Three People You Need To help you as a disciple and a discipler, you will need a Paul in your life. Paul, of course, was history’s greatest Christian missionary, one who grew rapidly in his faith, who endured much in his ministry, and the one whom the Lord called to write fully one-third of the New Testament scriptures. In one sense you can’t have Paul because he is 2,000 years dead. But in another sense, you do have Paul through the books he authored in the Bible. But that’s not what I’m talking about. You need someone who is considerably more mature in the faith in your life—someone like Paul. To help in your ongoing personal discipleship, you need a Paul. We all have things we should be learning, ways we should be growing. We need someone who’s been there and can help us learn more perfectly God’s Word, and live more perfectly the life God has called us to. You need someone you can turn to for solid Christian advise and counsel. I have talked with literally hundreds of people in the throes of making major decisions in their lives that will affect them enormously. I often ask them, Are you drawing on the wisdom of anyone who is more advanced than you in faith? Have you asked for counsel or direction from any kind of spiritual mentor? The vast majority have admitted they didn’t! How many people do you know who have a spiritual director—a reliable, solid, trustworthy mature Christian—they turn to regularly for direction? Not many, right? Maybe not any, right? Friends in Christ, you need a Paul. I don’t care if you don’t know anyone who could fill that place for you right now. Get on your knees and ask God for Him to lead you to a Paul. If you are going to get radically committed to the purposes of God in your life, you will need a Paul. Maybe it’s because you don’t have a Paul that you’re feeling somewhat at a loss in your Christian walk now. Find a Paul, develop a trusted relationship with that person, open your life to him or her and get moving in your faith. You also need a Barnabas. Who’s Barnabas? You know him from the pages of the book of Acts. He’s one of the early leaders in the Jerusalem church. His name was actually Joseph, but the apostles nicknamed him Barnabas which means Son of Encouragement, which speaks volumes about the kind of man he was. He’s the one who came alongside Paul in his early years when no one trusted him, and helped this great man of God grow in His service for Christ. He stood by Paul, he ministered with Paul, he traveled with Paul, he co-pastored the Antioch church for a while with Paul. He was Paul’s faith companion—a fellow-leader, a fellow-disciple. Many of the things Paul learned in his years of challenging ministry Barnabas learned right alongside him. You need someone like Barnabas in your life. Someone who’s pretty much at the same stage of Christian growth as you, perhaps even around the same age as you; someone who shares many of the same interests with you, especially concerning the kingdom. I have a couple of “Barnabi” in my life, and I am blessed—not only to have them alongside me, but also that I can walk alongside them. What a wonderful privilege to stand shoulder to shoulder in kingdom work with people you love and respect, who you can rely on, share your deepest thoughts with. The Bible says Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another.  [webmasters note: Proverbs 27:17] You need an “iron man” with you to be with you through the triathlons of challenges and difficulties you will face. Someone to rejoice with, to weep with, to grow with. There are trials ahead of you that God never intended for you to go through alone. Get a close friend in Christ. Get a Barnabas. Well, those are two from whom you mostly receive discipleship. A Paul to lead you, a Barnabas to be with you and have you with him. But as we noted before, every discipled person is called to be a discipler of others. You’ve got to give back. So, you need a Timothy. The biblical character, Timothy, as I’m sure you will recall, was a young man Paul met, along with his family, during his missionary travels. Quickly a relationship forged, one I’m sure Timothy sought out as he watched Paul in ministry. Impressed by his zeal and feeling called to the same ministry, Timothy wasted no time getting himself positioned under Paul as a trainee. He served Paul faithfully and eventually Paul invited him to travel with him, to serve with him and then to minister alongside him. His letters to Timothy tell us much about their close relationship and how much Paul had taught the young pastor. They both benefited from the relationship: Timothy obviously received awesome first-hand apostolic mentoring, and Paul, when he needed a reliable leader to leave in Ephesus, had Timothy ready at his side. Who is it that should benefit from your personal growth and experience in Christ? Don’t be so humble or retiring as to say you don’t have much to offer—you have much to offer someone who is many steps behind you in Christian maturity. And if you feel you don’t, then go out and serve a few unbelievers—at least you have faith in Christ, and they don’t yet! We honor Christ, and glorify Him, when we readily respond to being the older brother or sister in the faith for those behind us. Someone rightly said that the church is really only one generation from extinction. If there would be a time when no one was coming to faith in Christ, nor any one growing in Him, where will the Paul’s and Barnabas’ be for the future church? But don’t be a Paul to some Timothy just because you have to. Be available because you love Christ and want to serve Him. If you don’t have a Timothy, pray for one. Ask God to clearly lead you to an unbeliever who is seeking, or a young believer who needs the benefit of your wisdom and faith experience. Take him under wing, teach him, model your faith for him, and serve him. In that you will glorify the God who made sure you had a discipler.       [Back to Top]