How God made Disciples!

As we gather this morning, it is imperative that we understand why we gather. We gather to worship and exalt the name of the one who has become our salvation. The right hand of the Father, our Lord Jesus Christ!

If you are visiting with us this morning, we want you to who we are...

We are all one family of faith: “giving our all to love God, love people, proclaim Jesus, and make disciples in our generation.”

That is our mission, our purpose, why we exist as a church.

We have a connect card in the pew in front of you. I invite you to take one and fill it out! If you have prayer needs, you can let us know about those as well.

I promise, our prayer team will lift you up soon. You can place those cards in the offering plate when it comes around.

Who’s Your One?

Scripture Memory

Romans 8:31–34 ESV

31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? 33 Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.

Romans 8:35 ESV

35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?

Opening Scripture Reading

Ephesians 4:7–16 ESV

7 But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. 8 Therefore it says, “When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.” 9 (In saying, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth? 10 He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.) 11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, 14 so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. 15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16 from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

Introduction:

Are you the Jordan River or the Dead Sea?.....

The Jordan River is an active body of water, flowing from north to south. It has an inlet that lets water flow into it. And guess what else it has......That’s right, it has an outlet that allows living water teeming with life to flow out of it!

The Dead Sea, on the other hand, has no outlets. Water comes in from the north to the lowest point in the world, and it doesn’t flow back out. So the water is stagnant; it just sits there. It does not allow life to flow out of it.

Every Christian could be compared to one of two bodies of water: the Jordan River, or the Dead Sea.

So which one are you? Are you the Jordan River or the Dead Sea?

Robby Gallaty rightly argues

“...that every Christian is like one of these bodies of water. You are either flowing as God uses you to impact the lives of other people, or you are stagnant and lifeless, like the Dead Sea.”

Gallaty, Robby. Growing Up (p. 36). B&H Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Today, we are beginning a five-week sermon series entitled, “ENTRUSTED: Reclaiming Discipleship!”

It is my belief that the church at large has missed the central process of God’s command to the church to make disciples?

Oh, we know all about the Great Commission.

Matthew 28:18–20 ESV

18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

I am going to get a little snarky for a minute, bear with me.

We know we are to live on mission.

We know we are to pass out tracts and try to share our faith.

We know we are to go on missions.

We know we are to give to missions.

We know we are a people on mission.

No one would argue that these are all good things.

But I am afraid we center our effectiveness on mission on three criteria that are not found in Scripture.

The Three B’s:

Butts

Budgets

Buildings

We are happy when these three B’s are all increasing, but is that criteria God used in the Old Testament as He discipled and grew a nation of people who would be used to fulfill His redemptive plans and thereby bring Him glory?

Are the three B’s the criteria Jesus used when He selected twelve young men who weren’t good enough to be selected as disciples by the other Jewish rabbis?

Were the three B’s central to Jesus’ goals as He called these young men to follow him and be His disciples.... get this..... he called them, “My Disciples” for a reason.

Jesus wanted to model for them what He wanted them to become, “like Him.”

Luke 6:40 ESV

40 A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher.

I’m sorry, maybe I am missing something, but I don’t see the three B’s as a major part of God’s plan. Are they outgrowths of a successful fulfilling of the great commission, perhaps, but perhaps they aren’t.

One thing is for sure, they were not the major focus of God’s plan to accomplish the mission. Something else was at the core of that plan. There is an element that means much more to the mission being successful than how many people we can fit into a building, or how much money we can reap from those people, or how many big and beautiful building we can build.

Paul knew what that something was. He spent his life pursuing that something. He wrote extensively on that something, but one of his epistles really brings that something into focus.

In Second Timothy 2:2 we find a scripture that is the heartbeat of our five week sermon series. It reads...

2 Timothy 2:2 ESV

2 and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.

Here in one verse we have the heartbeat of the Great Commission fleshed out in human experience the way God intended. One word drives this passage and reminds us of our rightful calling as followers of the greatest Rabbi who ever walked the face of the earth.

That word is “ENTRUST!”

The Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (Eleventh Edition) defines entrust as “to commit to another with confidence,” or “to deliver something in trust to.”

The Concise Oxford English Dictionary defines this verb as to “assign a responsibility to,” or to “put into someone’s care.”

Entrust is a verb! It is something we do!

Paul was telling Timothy that he had to take the lessons he had learned from Paul as a disciple of Paul and put them into someone else’s care. To entrust the life of Christ to others who would deliver it to still others.

Paul relays to us, at the very least, FOUR Generations of disciples, although it could be argued that the number mentioned here is exponential because it will go on indefinitely until Christ returns. As it should!

Paul had been discipled by Jesus, the Apostles, and others in the church.

Paul then discipled Timothy.

Timothy was to disciple faithful men.

Those faithful men were to disciple other faithful men and on and on and on.

Where would any of us be today if those who came before us had not entrusted the Gospel to others who would be faithful in entrusting it to others?

Christian, do you realize that the gospel came to you because it was heading to someone else.

God never intended for your salvation to be an end, but rather He intended it to be a beginning.

God saved you to be a conduit through whom His glorious, life-changing gospel would flow to others. You are a link in the chain of 2 Timothy 2:2.

Gallaty, Robby. Growing Up . B&H Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

What is Discipleship? Well, while there are many definitions, I believe a definition by pastor and author Robby Gallaty best relays to us what discipleship is.

He says,

So what is disciple-making? We could say that it is intentionally equipping believers with the Word of God through accountable relationships empowered by the Holy Spirit in order to replicate faithful followers of Christ. When people become disciples, they learn what Jesus said and live out what Jesus did.

Gallaty, Robby. Growing Up (p. 19). B&H Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

So, are you the Jordan River or the Dead Sea?

Are we raising our families to be life giving rivers or inlets of stagnation?

Are our churches places where people go to await death and go to Jesus, or are they living rivers that keep and outlet of living water rapidly flowing out into world that needs living water desperately?

It is my prayer that this series of sermons will help you answer those questions truthfully.

Today, I want to highlight a few principles that will help us to see that discipleship is not some new fad or preference. Today and over the next few weeks we will see that God has been intentional about this thing we call discipleship from the beginning.

Today, we are going to examine “How God made Disciples” in the Old Testament.

1. Disciple-Making has always been relational in nature.

First, we are going to look at how we were made?

Genesis 1:27–28 ESV

27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

Two things we need to highlight here:

God is a relational God and made us in that mold, after His own likeness (Gen. 1:26).

God commanded us to be relational beings.

We are to live in relation to God.

We are to live in relation with each other.

The command to “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” is a command to be relational.

God even said in

Genesis 2:18 ESV

18 Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”

So we have a vertical relationship with God being made in His image, and a horizontal relationship with each other that we must utilize if we are going to be obedient in fulfilling God’s command to us.

2. Throughout the Old Testament, Discipleship was seen through the window of modeling relationships.

While the word, “discipleship,” is not found in the Old Testament, the concept is embedded from the very beginning. God’s people understood that they were to pass on a legacy of faith to generations that followed them.

Most of this was done in the form of mentoring or modeling relationships. Kind of like the more recent idea of being an apprentice.

Think about the following relationships.

Moses and Caleb

Moses and Joshua

Naomi and Ruth

Eli and Samuel

Samuel and David

Nathan and David

David and the Mighty Men

David and Solomon

Elijah and Elisha

Each of these men and women entrusted a lifestyle of faith and values into the lives of those around them with the hope that they would pass the information down through the generations.

As they modeled their lives to their apprentices, they give us a window into the heart of Old Testament Discipleship.

This continued down from generation to generation until Jesus’ day.

Jesus was called a rabbi, because this form of passing down the faith had continued and developed for centuries.

Rabbinic Discipleship

Jewish people have long been called a “people of the book.” This is evident in how they taught and raised people from childhood to mature adult.

The object and aim of the Hebrew system was to gain knowledge of God. Even to this day, Jews in Brooklyn, New York attend school from around 6 a.m. until evening, then after supper they attend a nightly study session at the synagogue. Their sole focus at this early age is to study the Torah, the first five books of the Bible.

In Jesus’ day, schooling consisted of three stages.

At the age of five, boys and girls would enter the Bet Sefer (the House of the Book), where reading and writing were taught using the Torah.

Next, students would graduate to the Bet Talmud (the House of Learning), where they would study the rest of the Old Testament.

The brightest students would then graduate to the Bet Midrash (the House of Study). At around the age of 14 or 15 all students were given a series of oral test by the head rabbi. If the rabbi thought the student could make the cut, the student was extended an invitation to follow him until the age of thirty, when they could begin their own public ministry.

If they couldn’t make the cut they would go into working in the family business and become a carpenter, a fishermen, etc.

When Jesus became a rabbi, He didn’t wait for students to come to Him. He went and found them. Who did He allow to follow Him? Those who weren’t able to graduate to the Bet Midrash.

The point of all of this survey is to show us that discipleship was ingrained into the Hebrew mind as it should be in ours as well, but is it?

3. God discipled Israel.

The best evidence for how God made disciples is in how He Himself modeled and mentored and discipled Israel as a nation.

1. Abram who would become Abraham

Mark 1:17 ESV

17 And Jesus said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men.”

Abram is going to become something new as well.

Genesis 12:1–2 ESV

1 Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2 And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.

God tells Abram to “Follow Me!”

Go from your country and your family to the land I will show you! Then you will be like me, a blessing to the nations.

God was relationally involved with Abram

Genesis 12:7 ESV

7 Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him.

Abram made a mistake when he went down to Egypt. He told the pharaoh that Sarai was his sister because he was afraid they would kill him if they knew she was his wife because of her beauty.

Pharaoh poured out all kinds of material wealth on Abram because he wanted Sarai as his wife. God comes along to protect Abram and Sarai. After afflicting Pharaoh with many plaques, They were sent away from Egypt with much more wealth than when they first entered Egypt. Does that sound familiar, it should.

It happened again with Moses and Israel. They went in, were mistreated, and left with provisions to sustain them and develop them into a powerful nation for God’s glory.

But, I love the fact that when baby Jesus went to Egypt, they came back without any problems and without any extra wealth. Why? Because Jesus will be no one’s slave and He needs no nation’s wealth. He is the Prince of Peace and the King of kings.

God would continue to develop his relationship with Abram over the next few chapters of Genesis. Reiterating His promised word in chapters 13 and 15.

God taught Abram who He was to Abram

Genesis 15:1 ESV

1 After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision: “Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.”

Genesis 15:5 ESV

5 And he brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”

God revealed to Abram who his offspring were going to be.

Genesis 15:13–16 ESV

13 Then the Lord said to Abram, “Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. 14 But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. 15 As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age. 16 And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”

Many more visits were made to Abram and Sarai including their graduation to new names under God’s covenant with them.

Genesis 17:1–7 ESV

1 When Abram was ninety-nine years old the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless, 2 that I may make my covenant between me and you, and may multiply you greatly.” 3 Then Abram fell on his face. And God said to him, 4 “Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. 5 No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations. 6 I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you. 7 And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you.

Genesis 17:15–16 ESV

15 And God said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. 16 I will bless her, and moreover, I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall become nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.”

Amid the conflicts with Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot, and Abimelech, God fulfilled His promise for a child to be born Abraham and Sarah in Chapter 21.

Then in Chapter 22, God’s final test on Abraham’s faithfulness occurs when He tells Abraham to sacrifice his only son Isaac.

Genesis 22:1–4 ESV

1 After these things God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” 2 He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.” 3 So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac. And he cut the wood for the burnt offering and arose and went to the place of which God had told him. 4 On the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar.

Summarize the story

Genesis 22:14 ESV

14 So Abraham called the name of that place, “The Lord will provide”; as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.”

God provided. That is the essence of Discipleship.

One entrusts or provides a way of life, a faith that changes everything, a gospel of good news that transforms and redeems our souls in order that we will pass it down through the generation in essence being a blessing to the nations just like our father was to Abraham and the nations before him.

This could be said of how God ministered through Moses, Joshua, David, through Elijah and Elisha, through Jeremiah and the prophets, through Israel as a nation more times than we can count.

God modeled a pattern of relational discipleship to the nations that Jesus would continue and expand upon.

There is no other way to truly grow in our faith.

So are you the Jordan River or the Dead Sea?

Invitation:

I Surrender All

Hymn 275

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