Disciples and The World

Disciples and the World

Intro: What would you do if you wanted to Climb Mount Everest. Would you just buy a backpack with climbing gear, book a plane ticket and fly to Nepal and start walking toward the giant mountain?

Probably not. You would go through an agency or connections to guide you and teach you through the process of getting up to the highest point on Earth. If you are a new climber, Everest may be a far off goal and you start somewhere smaller to learn the skills, build stamina and fitness, and know how to climb. You still employ someone to help take you up the best possible route for the given time taking weather, land and skill level into account.

But what does a Sherpa do that is so important? “British mountaineer Kenton Cool, who's climbed Everest 11 times, explains: "The Sherpas are so important. For one, they're the local people, so they know the culture, they know the area, they know the people.”

Likewise, those of us in the church are the locals. We know the culture of Christianty and also Red Oaks church. When new people come in we can help guide them and teach them on how the church operates. If they are new Christians we have the utmost responsibility to teach them what it means to actually be a Christian.

Read Verses:

Main Idea: Disciples are called to Show Others the way to God.

We are the sherpas for those people who have been called to the mountain of God. We have two jobs to Guide and to teach them.

I. Disciples are to Guide the Way to God

Verse 12 is sort for a transition for verse 13 when Jesus says to “Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

And the Jesus tells the Disciples “You are the salt of the Earth and then they are the light of the world.

What we are going to look at is two principles of guiding people.

You have to keep the people alive and you have to get them down or up the path to the destination.

Preserving the world and preserving people

Salt has any uses but the major use of saltin the ancient world and our present day is to preserve food, particularly meat. The salt helps keep the meat a little longer without any or little refrigeration.

“Meat spoils because it is a good place for bacteria to thrive in. Bacteria need water, and there is a lot of water content in the meat, especially the muscle fibers. This is solved by introducing salt. It will expel a lot of the water from the meat, and creates an environment where bacteria cannot develop and multiply.” Without the salt or controlled environments, the meat will spoil.

In Jesus’ analogy, the world is the meat and Chistians are the salt. We are here to preserve the world a little longer. Martin Lloyd Jones says “The world left to itself is something that tends to fester. There are germs of evil, these microbes, these infective agents and organisms in the very body of humanity and unless checked, they cause disease.”

As generations go by, salt is continually introduced to keep the world from completely spoiling.

The salt does not become the meat, but it saves the meat, The world is preserved until God returns.

The Christians act as a guide, showing how to have eternal life by following the one true God and the truth of who made the world and who controls it, but if we lose our way and are not effective guides and do not possess the ability to get the people up the mountain then we have lost our saltiness

“ (Matthew (NAC)): “To be thrown out and trampled by men” neither affirms nor denies anything about “eternal security.” Rather, as makes even clearer, this phrase refers to the world’s response to Christians if they do not function as they should. Believers who fail to arrest corruption become worthless as agents of change and redemption. Christianity may make its peace with the world and avoid persecution, but it is thereby rendered impotent to fulfill its divinely ordained role. It will thus ultimately be rejected even by those with whom it has sought compromise.

So we have to not lose our saltiness and then Jesus puts one job another way that we are to guide the way to God by being the light for the world.

In verse 15 Jesus says You are the Light of the World. The word “you” is in the emphatic. No one else but a disciple will be able to really tell a person about who Jesus is an what he has done in that individual’s life. The people who do not believe in or on Jesus will that be the ones to go door to door to tell the Story of Redemption on a cross.

Here is what one article says about the importance of Sherpas. “Without Sherpas, most climbers would not be able to get up the mountain. “

Moses was kind of the earthly Sherpa or the Israelites in the Exodus. They were following the light of the fire and cloud, but Moses was urging them on

“Jesus obviously has in mind the bringing of illumination through the revelation of God’s will for his people. Since Jesus is the Light of the world (; ), so also his followers should reflect that light. Like lights from a city illuminating the dark countryside or a lamp inside a house providing light for all within it, Christians must let their good works shine before the rest of the world so that others may praise God.

TS: Disciples are called to guide the world but we also have a second job, to teach new converts about God.

II. Disciples are to Teach the Way to God

In verse 17, Jesus says “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18 For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. 19 Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

What we teach others about Jesus is important. Who he is, his purpose in coming to Earth, his factual death, burial and resurrection.

One one hand, we are playing the longest game of Telephone in existence. What we have in the Bible is handed down from the people before us. The apostles are the originators of the message and then the apostolic fathers, for the first few centuries, and then it works out from there.

What do we teach?

As Jesus Says he came to fulfill the law and not replace it. The Old Testament predicts and prepares the world for the Messiah. “Every Old Testament text must be viewed in light of Jesus’ person and ministry and the changes introduced by the new covenant he inaugurated.”

He is God, He is the savior of the world.

He is the second person of the trinity. His death and resurrection reconciled the world and bought God’s People for Himself. He bought the out of the bondage of slavery from sin caused by the fall. But that different aspects of teaching have been twisted though time.

Paul says this to the Colossians in 1:13-22 13 He has rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son he loves. 14 In him we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

The Centrality of Christ

15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For everything was created by him, in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities— all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and by him all things hold together. 18 He is also the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. 19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20 and through him to reconcile everything to himself, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.[b]

21 Once you were alienated and hostile in your minds expressed in your evil actions. 22 But now he has reconciled you by his physical body through his death, to present you holy, faultless, and blameless before him (Col 1:21-22)

“ (Matthew (NAC): Jesus next introduces a new category of individuals, those who are not currently in the kingdom at all. He mentions the Pharisees and scribes precisely because they were the standard for righteousness within Judaism. Here he does not challenge their scrupulous attention to the law; but as the subsequent antitheses will illustrate, he simply observes that now, with the coming of a new age, more is required to be in fellowship with God and in conformity to his will. People must follow Jesus in discipleship, which for the most part these Jewish leaders refuse to do. Harking back to vv. 6 and 10, Jesus thus introduces the thesis statement that unifies his entire sermon. Christian discipleship requires a greater righteousness.”

You see it has never been really about plowing the law,it has always been about following God. We supplant God with the law and we tend to forget about God. Why? Probably because the Law is a list that can be followed and checked and compared and judged to see measure your progress.

It is the markings on the doorway to see how big your getting in Jesus.

But growth is not that easy and so we need guides to measure our progress in Jesus.

Becoming a disciple is not easy and making other disciples is also a long, nonstop process.

And it is more than following a rule set, it is about giving your life over and loving God with all of your soul, your strength and your mind.

Conclusion

There is an organization called Climbing for Christ and the founder, Garry Fallesen kept a journal and on their website. Here is the journal entry from Sunday, Sept. 21 2014

Time for Dave and me to fly. An evening flight out of Kathmandu to Doha, Qatar, and then overseas to Philadelphia and finally back to Rochester, NY, on Monday morning. About 23 hours of scheduled flying.

Before leaving, however, Megh and I began planning for Mission: Nepal 2015, which will occur in March and mark our return to Humla in the Far West. We identified villages we will revisit and those we will enter for the first time. We prayed thanks for all God accomplished through us on this Evangelic Expedition and lifted preparations for the next trip.

In the meantime, the mission goes on - through C4C members like Megh and Pastor Tej, in churches we have helped build and support, in Tej's orphanage, and in the church (the body of Christ) throughout Nepal. We have been blessed over the years to encourage countless believers, which is part of the reason why we GO to places like Nepal. “We continue to pray for our brothers and sisters as they boldly expand God's kingdom and push back the darkness.”

"For at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light..." - (ESV)

Our Job as Christians is to preserve the world, we are not saving the world, we are acting as the salt crystals. We are the ones showing lighting the way. But we are not the ones who actually save anyone and we are not the actual light, we are more like the flashlight projecting God’s light down the road. We are projecting the Light into the darkness. And like Moths, people will be drawn and called to the Light of God.

Our job is to go to those places in that are dark and shine God’s light to expose sin and more importantly to show what Holy looks like.

We are not called to shrink away and hide, but to go and get into the middle of what is going on.