Being Disciples, Making Disciples

Introduction

There is a tendency for every great institution, organization, and movement to drift from the mission over time. Very often, the more time that passes the more watered down the mission becomes. I remember in college working at Winn Dixie in the meat market. One day, I came to work, and there was a stack of 32” TV’s for sale behind the meat counter. And, I remember thinking, “One of these things is not like the other.” The mission of our store to be famous for quality meat that we sold and for that meat to be the draw had been watered down if not lost completely. Now, we were hoping that we might use gimmicks and bait-n-switch tactics to manipulate people into either purchasing beef while buying a TV or buying a TV while shopping for beef. Shortly thereafter, our company filed for bankruptcy.

The church today appears to have an identity crisis that has led the mission drift. We’re trying to modernize Christianity for the post-modern, post-Christian age. But, Christianity isn’t open for re-definition. The teachings which define our faith aren’t open for re-interpretation. In making disciples, we are to make a particular type of disciples, the type of disciples that Jesus made, in a particular way, in the way that Jesus made them. This is the essence of the Christian mission that has been handed down to us over 2000 years. This morning, I want to look at the nature of our mission and how we are to accomplish it so that we might avoid mission drift and correct where we find ourselves drifting.

God’s Word

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How Make Disciples, How to Be Disciples

v. 18 “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore…make disciples.” In our passage there are two simultaneous realities: how to make disciples and how to be disciples. By seeing the type of disciples that we are supposed to make, we see the type of disciples that we are to be.

Jesus is defining the process of making disciples so that we might understand not only what we are supposed to do but also how we are to do it. If you’ll remember back to last week, I pointed out briefly that there’s one command in Jesus’ commission, ‘make disciples’, and there’s three participles that are given that describe the nature of making disciples, ‘going’, ‘baptizing’, and ‘teaching’. And, that’s what I really want us to focus on this morning -- the how. Last week, we saw the what ‘make disciples’, and this week, I want us to see the how of making disciples (headline), ‘going’, ‘baptizing’, and ‘teaching.’

Jesus is defining the process of making disciples so that we might understand not only what we are supposed to do but also how we are to do it. If you’ll remember back to last week, I pointed out briefly that there’s one command in Jesus’ commission, ‘make disciples’, and there’s three participles that are given that describe the nature of making disciples, ‘going’, ‘baptizing’, and ‘teaching’. And, that’s what I really want us to focus on this morning -- the how. Last week, we saw the what ‘make disciples’, and this week, I want us to see the how of making disciples (headline), ‘going’, ‘baptizing’, and ‘teaching.’

“Go” to All Nations.

v. 19 “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” The first how of disciple-making is to “go” to all nations. Now, I’ve pointed out to you that ‘go’ could be translated as ‘going.’ So that leaves us the questions as to why did they translate it as ‘go’ then? In Greek, by placing ‘go’ in the sentence before ‘make disciples’, Jesus is giving it greater force than the other two. It is almost as strong as his command to ‘make disciples.’ ‘Going’ is the most central part of how we make disciples. I hope it’s obvious to you that this is far more than merely traveling to people or living among people or even meeting the needs of people. “Going” always leads to “telling”. Paul interpreted this the exact same way in . He says, ‘13 For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” 14 How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? 15 And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” So, follow Paul’s school of thought: Anyone who offers their life to Jesus will be saved. But, they can’t call on him if they haven’t heard of him and what He’s done. And, they have no chance of hearing of him if no one tells them. So, we must go, and we must tell, and our going and telling is beautiful in the sight of God. Going always leads to telling, and telling leads to the pleasure of God. It’s beautiful to him.

There’s two different ways in view in the way that Jesus words it that we should consider because both ways are part of the Great Commission. First of all, we should understand it: “As you go, make disciples.” That is, as you live your life, as you go home, as you go to work, as you go to church, make disciples wherever you are and among whomever you’re with. Very often, when we think of the Great Commission, when we think of making disciples, we think of out there somewhere, don’t we? We might be tempted to think of Salt Lake City where the Mormon population is so dense or New England where the culture is so secular. Most of the time, we just think of Africa when we read this. And, the danger of this is that it makes missions and disciple-making something that you can hold at arm’s length without it ever being a part of your daily life. In fact, you can go on a mission trip one week every year, and you’d feel as though you were way above average. So long as disciple-making is something that is out there somewhere, so long as it’s in a land far, far away, we are easily lulled into believing that there’s no urgent responsibility for us in the here and now. But, this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the Great Commission. The call of the Great Commission is to multiply yourself as a disciple of Jesus wherever you go, and the places which you have the most area of influence are the areas in which you are most likely to be effective at the mission. It is as Dallas Willard has said, “If you are a doctor, your responsibility as a disciple is to be the kind of doctor that Jesus would be.” If you are a salesmen or a mechanic or a teacher, it is the call of the Great Commission for you to be the type of salesmen or mechanic or teacher that Jesus would be. The Great Commission calls you to live your life on purpose and with purpose that more people might be able to find their hope in him. And, for most people most of the time, it is to use the opportunities around them where they live an ordinary and obscure life to make an eternal difference in the lives of others. The greater your influence, the greater your responsibility to make disciples in that area. We have a world-wide responsibility, but we are most accountable for what we do with where God has placed us. Husbands, you are answerable to God for the godliness of wife. You are answerable to God for preparing your wife to meet face-to-face with Jesus. Paul says that as Jesus purifies his church you are to be used to sanctify your wife for the Day of his return. Are you discipling your wife? Parents, you are answerable to God for the discipleship of your children. It is your responsibility before it is anyone else’s to ensure they are men and women of God. Are you discipling your children? Elders in the church, we are responsible to God for the godliness of this body. The people that you work beside every day are not an accident. The people that you sit with at the ball field are not an accident. What a privilege it is that God has given you access to their life for his glory! What are you doing with it? Those faithful in “obscurity” are used to impact “eternity”. God uses obscure lives to make an eternal difference. Who outside of 30 minutes from here knows who Bobby Wilkins was? Yet, some of us, including yours truly, will be in heaven with God forever because of his life. Who outside of 30 minutes from here knows who Gary Cockrell was? Yet, many of you made it through your early parenting years because of his encouragement and his wisdom. Who outside of 30 minutes of here knows who Edwin Lester was? Yet, there were men and women waiting on him at the threshold of glory when he arrived. Some of you are here, and you don’t know a single name that I just mentioned, and that only serves to drive home my point: To be an unknown nobody with the mission to make Jesus known to somebody is to change a life, change a family, change a marriage, change a generation. The names I mentioned are names of people that impacted me and changed me. They paid it forward through people like me to this generation, and I am resolved before God to pay it forward to the next. As you go home, make disciples. As you go to work, make disciples. As you go to church, make disciples.

As You Go, Make Disciples

There’s two different ways in view in the way that Jesus words it that we should consider because both ways are part of the Great Commission. First of all, we should understand it: As you go, make disciples. That is, as you live your life, as you go home, as you go to work, as you go to church, make disciples wherever you are and among whomever you’re with. Very often, when we think of the Great Commission, when we think of making disciples, we think of out there somewhere, don’t we? We might be tempted to think of Salt Lake City where the Mormon population is so dense or New England where the culture is so secular. Most of the time, we just think of Africa when we read this. And, the danger of this is that it makes missions and disciple-making something that you can hold at arm’s length without it ever being a part of your daily life. But, this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the Great Commission. The call of the Great Commission is to multiply yourself as a disciple of Jesus wherever you go, and the places which you have the most area of influence are the areas in which you are most likely to be effective at the mission. It is as Dallas Willard has said, “If you are a doctor, your responsibility as a disciple is to be the kind of doctor that Jesus would be.” If you are a salesmen or a mechanic or a teacher, it is the call of the Great Commission for you to be the type of salesmen or mechanic or teacher that Jesus would be. The Great Commission calls you to live your life on purpose and with purpose that more people might be able to find their hope in him. And, for most people most of the time, it is to use the opportunities around them where they live an ordinary and obscure life to make an eternal difference in the lives of others.

The greater your influence, the greater your responsibility to make disciples in that area. We have a world-wide responsibility, but we are most accountable for what we do with where God has placed us. Husbands, you are answerable to God for the godliness of wife. You are answerable to God for preparing your wife to meet face-to-face with Jesus. Paul says that as Jesus purifies his church you are to be used to sanctify your wife for the Day of his return. Are you discipling your wife? Parents, you are answerable to God for the discipleship of your children. It is your responsibility before it is anyone else’s to ensure they are men and women of God. Are you discipling your children? Elders in the church, we are responsible to God for the godliness of this body. The people that you work beside every day are not an accident. The people that you sit with at the ball field are not an accident. What a privilege it is that God has given you access to their life for his glory! What are you doing with it?

APPLICATION: Those faithful in “obscurity” are used to impact “eternity”. God uses obscure lives to make an eternal difference. Who outside of 30 minutes from here knows who Bobby Wilkins was? Yet, some of us, including yours truly, will be in heaven with God forever because of his life. Who outside of 30 minutes from here knows who Gary Cockrell was? Yet, many of you made it through your early parenting years because of his encouragement and his wisdom. Who outside of 30 minutes of here knows who Edwin Lester was? Yet, there were men and women waiting on him at the threshold of glory when he arrived. Some of you are here, and you don’t know a single name that I just mentioned, and that only serves to drive home my point: To be an unknown nobody with the mission to make Jesus known to somebody is to change a life, change a family, change a marriage, change a generation. The names I mentioned are names of people that impacted me and changed me. They paid it forward through people like me to this generation, and I am resolved before God to pay it forward to the next generation. As you go home, make disciples. As you go to work, make disciples. As you go to church, make disciples.

Make Disciples of All Nations

But, there is another dimension to going. Jesus is sure to clarify the scope of our mission so that we won’t be satisfied with our isolated lives. He says that we are to make disciples of all nations. What I’m wanting you to feel is the tension that’s found in Jesus’ commission to his disciples. You are responsible for your home, your family, and your friends, and you’re responsible for the world. You’re to make disciples where you are, and you’re to make disciples to the ends of the earth. You’re to love your neighbors in Grandview, and you’re to love your neighbors in Sri Lanka. Disciples hold in tension the responsibility of “home” with the urgency to “go”. The Joshua Project counts more than 17,000 different people groups or nations across the world with more than 7000 of them being less than 2 percent Christian. And, God loves every, single one. And, Jesus died for every, single one. Every child who will never hear the name of Jesus, every man that bows to a false god, every wife that is oppressed by her culture, God knows them, and Jesus died for them. And, because of that reality, because they are hopeless, because God is good, and because Christ is risen, the providence of God has a plan to raise up a church from all 17,000 people groups of the world. And, his plan is you. Oh, how good is God that He loves all nations, and how good is God that He loves us enough to let us be the ones to tell them?

Live as Missionaries Here or There

APPLICATION: With a mission so overwhelming, we better be strategic. We must ask ourselves, what can we do here to reach the world there? Some of you should move there. Some of you are being called by God, I’ve heard from you, I’ve heard the thoughts that you’re having, and it is the highest calling that God can place on your life to abandon the roots that you love for the peoples that God loves. And, some of you, by God’s grace, must answer that call on your life without condition and without comprehension, you should surrender your life to go. Oh how I pray that our church would shrink so that we might send some to ends of the earth that the global Church might expand. For the rest of us, we should live like missionaries here. We should live in houses that are cheaper than we can afford, drive cars that are cheaper than we can afford, wear clothes that are cheaper than we can afford so that we can support the work there! We should live like missionaries here so that we can support missionaries there! We should go on short-term trips, weeks, days at a time so that we can encourage and strengthen and understand the work. We should plan and strategize on how we can get the word of God and the gospel of hope to every continent so that disciples can be made and churches can be begun that every nation might be reached. Either way, whether the call on your life is to go or to stay, they responsibility that we have is to live like missionaries that the Kingdom might spread.

“Baptize” in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

v. 19 “baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” The second how of disciple-making is to “baptize” in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. It’s important for us to remember these come together to form the singular command of Jesus to make disciples. So, the picture is that once you have went to someone, proclaimed the gospel to them, and they are respond in faith and repentance they are to demonstrate their faith and repentance by being publicly baptized into the church. Baptism is the “gateway” into the “membership” of the church. Paul speaks of this in when he says that ‘we were all baptized into one body.’ That is, our baptism is the public identification with Christ that brings us into communion with Christ’s church.

Baptism is the public declaration of “allegiance” to Christ. In your baptism and in every baptism you’ve ever witnessed, the purpose was to demonstrate that a sinner had died to himself. It’s to identify with Jesus in his death by being buried as Jesus was buried. It is to mark yourself as crucified with Christ so that the old you, the you that was enslaved to sin and condemned to die might be put to death. But, baptism is not only about identifying with Jesus in his death, but in his resurrection. You aren’t held under! You’re raised to say that as Jesus was raised so will I be! And so, Jesus has commanded baptism as the public marker of repentance and faith. Baptism is not just a symbol that we can pick and choose whether or not it is important to us. Baptism is us publicly declaring that we are committed to live in the way of the cross now that we might be raised with Christ later. This is why the order is so significant. It’s not a baptism if you haven’t truly begun following Jesus. Baptism is to be the first step of a lifetime of steps in the way of Christ. So, if you were baptized as a baby or baptized because of an emotional decision before fully surrendering your life to Jesus, then you have not really been baptized. You’ve gone through religious motions, but you haven’t publicly declared your new life and new allegiance to Jesus. Baptism is the unavoidable marker of new life in Christ, not signing a card or raising a hand or telling a friend. Jesus has made it so, and it’s not our to change.

And so, having pledged your allegiance to Christ, baptism is the public declaration of “acceptance” of the “mission”. By taking the first step that is commanded by Christ, you are declaring that you will take every step that He calls you to going forward. You are identifying with your church that you can be counted on by them to join them in the mission enterprise of making disciples of all nations. Notice that you are baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. That is, you are baptized acknowledging that it was the will of the Father, the work of the Son, and the regeneration of the Holy Spirit that has saved you and made you new, and so now, you are going to live according to the Father through the work of the Son by the power of the Holy Spirit. It’s living resolved to live a life impossible by your own power and foolish if Christ isn’t raised. You are saved because of Christ’s mission, and now you will go so that others might be saved too, so that Christ might be further glorified.

APPLICATION: In , Jesus said, “So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.” You can’t “sneak” your way into the Kingdom of God. The idea that we can have a privatized faith that’s personal to us and hidden from everyone else is an American ideal, not a biblical reality. Have you publicly declared your allegiance to Jesus? Have you publicly accepted his mission? Have you declared your new faith in Christ? It’s very likely that many of you have come to believe over the past few months or years. You may not be able to pinpoint the exact second or day of your belief, but what you know is that you believe now with all of your heart and you want to bring God glory with all of your life. Maybe you keep looking to a time when you were younger that you were ‘baptized’, but you look back and you know that it wasn’t real. You know that your faith wasn’t genuine then. You know that you weren’t sincere in repentance then. You know that you weren’t serious about following Jesus then. But, you’ve been using it as a justification to avoid being baptized now in adulthood. Come, and declare your allegiance to Christ publicly! Come today in acceptance of his mission that your life might be used for many others to follow you in baptism.

“Teach” Obedience to Jesus’ Commandments.

The final how of disciple-making is to “teach” obedience to Jesus’ commandments. That is, they are to teach potential disciples all of what He has taught them about being disciples. Now, remember that Jesus has been teaching them for over three years, and now, He is instructing his disciples to take on disciples for themselves. To make disciples like Jesus is to commit your “time” and your “energy” like Jesus. This is not ABC’s to Jesus and this is not three easy step evangelism. This is a life commitment. When we think of the Great Commission, very often, I think we’ve been conditioned to think in events and in huge crusade altar calls, and perhaps, those can play a role. But, they may be a step toward the Great Commission, not the Great Commission itself. The Great Commission requires a life commitment from his disciples for the purpose of instructing others in the way of living Jesus’ way. Disciple-making is a “lifestyle”, not an event or a class. Put simply: Disciples of Jesus are made by the method of Jesus. It’s a design that is brilliant and effective for the expansion of his Kingdom. He trained twelve, then trained hundreds, and they trained thousands. And now, our generation must take up his mantle, not by having events that we can put on and then get over, but by spending our lives for the salvation and development of others the way that Jesus spent his for us.

APPLICATION: You see, making disciples is about being disciples. Making disciples of Jesus happens when we live our lives the same way that Jesus did. Jesus took personal responsibility for the godliness of others. Jesus took personal responsibility to teach the truth and to teach what it meant to walk as a man of God in a godless world. And, we must do the same. We must take personal responsibility for those around us that they would walk in the ways of Jesus.v. 20 “teach them to observe all that I have commanded you” There are two words from verse 20 that I especially want you to take note of. These two words are essential in our disciple-making, and these two words are essential in our being a disciple. I want you to notice the words ‘observe’ and ‘all’. Jesus is commanding his disciples not only to teach “information” but also “transformation”. He’s teaching his disciples to live out, not some, not most, not the easiest, but ALL of what He has taught them. Disciples of Jesus “know” what Jesus said and “do” what Jesus did. This is the essence of what a disciple is. To become a disciple is to accept the teachings of Jesus and to willingly apply them to your life. If you are unwilling to submit to his teachings, then you have rejected his invitation to discipleship. So, if we are going to make disciples the same way that Jesus made them, we must teach them the same way that Jesus taught them. That is, to make disciples of Jesus we must teach what Jesus said, model how Jesus lived, and call others to imitate us.

This is the essence of the Christian life summed up. This is how we are to lead our families and raise our kids and serve our church and win our neighbors. We are to teach what Jesus said, model how Jesus lived, and bring others down this path with us. Discipleship and disciple-making are not an aspect of the Christian life or a program of the church; they are the whole Christian life, the singular mission of the church. Will you take on this mission? Will you take on this mission to change the world? We can change our community, but it starts with you changing the life of a single person -- by Christ’s power and for Christ’s glory. It starts with you learning the ways of Jesus, living the ways of Jesus, and then teaching the ways of Jesus to your wife or husband, your children, your friends, your family, and ultimately the nations. Will you take up the mission of Jesus? Will you be a disciple of Jesus? Will you live as though Jesus is actually alive and you actually love him more than anything else?

Will you take on this mission? Will you take on this mission to change the world? We can change our community, but it starts with you changing the life of a single person -- by Christ’s power and for Christ’s glory. It starts with you learning the ways of Jesus, living the ways of Jesus, and then teaching the ways of Jesus to your wife or husband, your children, your friends, your family, and ultimately the nations. Will you take up the mission of Jesus? Will you be a disciple of Jesus? Will you live as though Jesus is actually alive and you actually love him more than anything else?