REAL-LIFE DISCIPLESHIP

Introduction

-There is a story of a woman who went to a diet center to lose weight. The director took her to a full-length mirror. On the mirror he outlined a slim figure with a marker and told her, “This is what I want you to be like at the end of the program.”

Days of intense dieting and exercise followed, and every week the woman would stand in front of the mirror, discouraged because her bulging outline didn’t fit the director’s ideal. But with his training and encouragement she kept at it, and finally one day she conformed to the longed-for image.

-In a somewhat similar way, this is what discipleship about to a point—and let me explain a bit what I mean.

~We put before new Christians the image of Christ and say: “This is what I want you to be like at the end of your life.” And discipleship is training someone to be more like Christ, teaching them how to do so in the power of the Holy Spirit. Of course, that is the ideal.

~Unfortunately, what we have done as modern churches in America is to leave people to do it on their own.

-So then what happens is that we have put before people this impossible ideal of being just like the perfect Christ, but have left them to fend for themselves in making it possible, which in turn really makes it impossible.

-And then we have this mindset that the training and discipleship that people need will magically happen while people sit in the sterile environment of a church building. Sit in a service, take in a sermon (and maybe a Bible study), and by golly you’re on your way to Christ-likeness.

-Yes, church services and sermons and bible studies are needed for encouragement and growth, but if we really want people to look and act like Christ in the real world, then training and discipleship have to happen out there in the real world in the midst of real-life situations.

-Dallas Willard in his book "Divine Conspiracy" states: "....discipleship is real-life apprenticeship to Jesus."

-And what we see in the passage we are looking at today is that Jesus used a real-life situation as a time to teach, train, and equip His disciples for ministry. And that means for us in the 21st century that the best discipleship opportunities occur during real-life situations where a mentor is able to teach, train, and equip disciples for ministry out there in the real world.

-Jesus did His work and ministry out in the world, not in a pristine church building or synagogue. So, it is out there in real-life where we will be able to train and encourage people to truly match the image that we make them look at. So today, I want us to change our thoughts a bit about discipleship.

-We are looking at a passage that is one of the few historical narratives that is in all four Gospels. It is best known as the feeding of the 5000. And I know you would expect a sermon from this passage to be about Jesus being able to provide for your every need, and do so over-abundantly, and that Jesus can perform the miraculous. All of that is true.

-But I want to come to the passage from a different angle, because we notice that Jesus uses this real-life situation to not only minister to the needs of the people, He uses it as a teaching time for His followers. May it encourage us to disciple and be discipled—training to the form of Christ—in those circumstances as well.

John 6:1–15 ESV

1 After this Jesus went away to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias. 2 And a large crowd was following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing on the sick. 3 Jesus went up on the mountain, and there he sat down with his disciples. 4 Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand. 5 Lifting up his eyes, then, and seeing that a large crowd was coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?” 6 He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he would do. 7 Philip answered him, “Two hundred denarii worth of bread would not be enough for each of them to get a little.” 8 One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, 9 “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are they for so many?” 10 Jesus said, “Have the people sit down.” Now there was much grass in the place. So the men sat down, about five thousand in number. 11 Jesus then took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated. So also the fish, as much as they wanted. 12 And when they had eaten their fill, he told his disciples, “Gather up the leftover fragments, that nothing may be lost.” 13 So they gathered them up and filled twelve baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves left by those who had eaten. 14 When the people saw the sign that he had done, they said, “This is indeed the Prophet who is to come into the world!” 15 Perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself.

-I want to consider four aspects of what real-life discipleship really involves, and I hope it encourages us to invest ourselves in being disciples and disciple-makers in this way.

I) Real-life discipleship involves an investment of time and relationship

-When you look at what Jesus did with the 12 apostles, He would have times of teaching to give them the principles of what it meant to be a follower of His, and He then would have them follow Him to see Him put those principles to action.

-This took time and energy in teaching and investing His life into these men. For Jesus, this was Plan A, and there was no Plan B. In a limited amount of time He had to prepare these men to continue the work and ministry of bringing others to Jesus and forming them into His likeness so that they too would in turn do the same thing with others, and this would then continue until Christ’s return.

-For this to work it meant expending a lot of time and energy into building a relationship with this small group of men so that they would trust Him and follow Him and obey Him so that work would continue.

-As Steven Lambert and Randy Helms explain in their book Connecting Points:

Jesus was intentional about building relationships with His followers. These relationships were essential in establishing influence. This influence allowed Jesus to develop those who followed Him into productive disciples who could, in return, spend their lives mentoring others. The progression from relationship through influence to spiritual formation points to a principle concerning the premise of discipleship. This premise is this: There can be no discipleship without relationship.

-We see this here in our passage. These apostles have followed Jesus, seen His miracles, and have seen the way that He handled those who would question His ministry.

-After a time of ministry, He lead the apostles to a mountain for Him to invest some time into building that relationship and teaching them about Himself, His Kingdom, and the work they would need to continue in His absence.

-But then an opportunity presented itself for living out the ministry and living out what it was that Jesus had modeled and taught all this time. The apostles willingly did what they did in imitating Christ because Jesus had invested time and energy into building that relationship with them.

-I believe that is where the difference between church-going and discipleship really lies. You can come to a church building and sit in a pew one day a week for an hour and fifteen minutes and learn some facts and be blessed and be encouraged, but you are not being discipled. Why?

~Because there is no time and energy being expended in building relationship which leads to discipleship.

~I may know you, and you may know me, but that is not relationship. Jesus invested time to invest in relationship to invest in the life of His followers out in the real world.

-And the dying American church needs more mature Christians who are willing to invest significant time in building the relationships needed to create disciples who themselves would become disciplemakers.

II) Real-life discipleship involves a recognition of others’ needs

-Discipleship is not merely filling our heads with facts and theories and principles. It is being trained by a mentor to then DO ministry, not just talk about ministry.

-And in order to DO ministry, you need to have open ears and eyes and minds to be aware of what is going on around you. To have such ears and eyes and minds takes discipleship to develop, and I see Jesus developing that in His followers in this passage.

-Jesus sat down with His followers to have some time of teaching—investing in the relationship. According to the Mark version of the story, the disciples had been doing some work and Jesus invited them to find a desolate place to rest and get both physically and spiritually replenished. According to all the versions the general population saw where Jesus and the apostles were going and followed Him.

-Our passage says the people had seen Jesus’ ministry and miracles—they saw the blind have sight, they saw the lame walk, they saw that the deaf got their hearing—and so they wanted to see Jesus do more of that for themselves.

-Now, the disciples may have been a little annoyed that their rest time and their special time with Jesus was being interrupted, but Jesus found it to be a time to put into practice what He had just been teaching.

-According to the Matthew version of the story Jesus had compassion on the crowds and healed their sick. And then according to the Luke version, Jesus taught them about the Kingdom of God and cured their sick.

-This shows us that Jesus saw that these people had both spiritual and physical needs, so Jesus took time to minister to the crowds as an example to His disciples of the tireless call of discipleship—you see needs and in Jesus’ name you do what you can for those needs.

- Discipleship doesn’t just happen at convenient times. Discipleship doesn’t just happen at scheduled times. Discipleship doesn’t just happen on Sundays and Wednesdays. Ministry opportunities are around the clock, therefore discipleship happens around the clock.

-And to follow in the footsteps of Jesus, the needs of the world do not stop, so the ministry opportunities are constant. Just sitting in the church building, we are immune to the needs of the world. But out there—in the real world—people are spiritually and physically needy.

-As disciples, we see the need, we minister to the need, and then we mentor others to do the same.

III) Real-life discipleship involves a reliance on Jesus’ power, not self

-According to the other gospels it was the apostles that told Jesus it was getting late so the crowds needed to be dismissed to go find food and shelter. Jesus told His apostles to do something about it.

-It gets a little more specific in our passage. Here, Jesus asked Phillip where he was going to get bread to feed the people. It says Jesus did that to test Phillip. It wasn’t that Jesus was trying to trick Phillip, but He was setting His apostles up for a great lesson.

-So Phillip says that over half-a-year’s wages couldn’t buy enough food to feed them all—so Phillip’s answer was to throw money at it.

-Andrew took a little more initiative and went to see how much food he could gather, but only could come up with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish. That wasn’t going to feed 5000 men (and then along with women and children there were probably about 20,000 people there). So Andrew had a defeatist spirit.

-Both Phillip and Andrew were thinking too humanly. They tried to find the quick, easy answer, and in doing so they discounted any supernatural means.

-I see in these disciples the modern church’s answers to things. Instead of the hard work of being discipled and discipling others out there in real life, it’s a whole lot easier to just throw money at the problem or it’s a whole lot easier to complain about how impossible is the task and just give up in defeat.

-But then Jesus does His thing—He takes the little they have and supernaturally makes much of it. Not only does it feed those thousands of people to the point where everyone got full, there was leftover to spare.

-If we think there is too little of me, too little time, too little resources, too little money, to do the ministry of Christ it’s because we are trying to do it in the power of self. What we need to be discipled in, and then disciples others in, is a complete reliance on the power of Jesus.

-I cannot do the work of a disciple, I cannot teach others the work of discipleship, in my own power. You and I are weak. No, we must rely on the power of Jesus.

-What we are reminded off in this passage about discipleship rings through an old gospel song: LITTLE IS MUCH WHEN GOD IS IN IT—we are too weak to minister, to disciple, and to be discipled in ourselves—but in the power of the supernatural Savior, He can take our little and make much of it

IV) Real-life discipleship involves a modeled ministry with an invitation to join

-So, Jesus had modeled the ministry, and it was in His power that this miracle was going to occur, but Jesus handed it off to his disciples. Jesus didn’t go hand out the food to the people, and Jesus didn’t go pick up the left-over pieces. Jesus turned the ministry over to the 12 apostles.

-Jesus did not think that it would just be easier for Him to do it Himself—the teacher had taught the students, now it was time for the students to put it to practice.

-Discipleship is not merely a teaching time and an example time, there is a time when the learner has to get his or her hands dirty and do the ministry themselves----you could say that the disciple needs to be let loose to do what they have been taught.

-As disciple-makers, we can teach and demonstrate what Christian life is about and how it looks to be like Christ, but then we must give people the opportunity to put that into practice for themselves.

-Discipling doesn’t mean the teacher does all the work, but with the proper training gives the growing disciple the chance to live out Christ in them. And what a privilege it is.

-The 12 apostles handed out food, they gathered up the excess, and they were witness to what Jesus could do when they would just trust His power to work around them. That’s what we seek in discipling others.

Conclusion

-Yes, the church body is the means by which discipleship happens, but the church building is not the only place for discipleship to happen. Discipleship happens outside these walls—out in the real-world in real-life situations.

- Ruth Bell Graham wrote of an encounter she had with a young Indian student named Pashi. She spoke with Pashi about Christ, to which he replied, "I would like to believe in Christ, and many in India would like to believe; but we never have seen a Christian who was like Christ."

-To me that means that discipleship has never happened. They have not had an encounter with people who have been taught and trained to become the image of the Christ they proclaim.

-Jesus made and modeled a way: real-life discipleship. If we have disciples who have actually been discipled, then the world will see Christians who are like the Christ they proclaim----and the world definitely needs that

-But what does that mean for us: that means we need to be willing to take the time to build the relationships necessary for discipleship to occur, to get outside ourselves to see the needs of others, rely on the supernatural power of Christ, and then go and do what is modeled for us.

-It starts with me—for weeks I have been thinking about and praying about a way of discipleship to begin in this church, and I ask you to join me in prayer.

-But then it means you need to pray about being discipled and then discipling others—you know, God is not going to ask you how many games you played, how much TV you watched; but He will ask you if you’ve allowed yourself to be trained to be more like Christ, and then done the same for others.

-Christian, come and pray for the opportunity to be mentored and then to mentor

-But before you become a disciple, you first need Christ…