Sermon Tone Analysis

Good morning and welcome to Dishman Baptist Church.

Whether you are joining us online or if you are here with us we appreciate you and are thankful that you have chosen to join us as we seek to glorify and worship our sovereign God together.

If you have your Bibles please turn in them with me to Deuteronomy 6, Deuteronomy 6.

This morning is going to be a little bit different than our norm here at Dishman.

And for that you can blame Kyle Harrison.

He did a terrific job last week challenging us to imitate God - interestingly the only time in all of Scripture that we are told to imitate God is in Ephesians 5:1 and as a part of his sermon he discussed a church evaluation that had taken place here in the past.

He said that over there on the wall there were several issues or areas of the church that were going to be evaluated and then at the bottom of the sheet there was an evaluation with how the church was doing.

One thing that was there and that Kyle mentioned specifically last week was discipleship.

And it was found then that we didn’t have a process for discipleship here.

The humbling part of that is that I have to ask the question - do we have a process for discipleship here now?

On a micro level I would say the answer is yes - on a macro - or church-wide level - I would have to answer no.

Even more convicting this week was a sermon that I listened to from a pastor named Josh Buice in which he related the story of an 88 year old lady from his congregation whose funeral he had the privilege of conducting.

As he related the funeral he told his listeners of a question that came to his mind as he eulogized this dear lady - “Did I do every thing I could do to prepare this lady to stand before Jesus?”

Some of you are probably wondering what does this have to do with Ephesians and why is it important enough to stop what we’re doing, to stop the flow of Paul’s letter to examine this now?

Well if Ephesians is a book specifically about the church - the fundamental doctrines of the church, the founding of the church, the formation of the church and the function of the church - then the primary function of the church is discipleship.

Paul has even told us that in a round about way earlier in our study as we saw him write

At its most fundamental sense the practice of discipleship is to equip the body for the work of the ministry.

Christ spent three years teaching and equipping his disciples to carry on His work after His crucifixion, resurrection and ascension and so I think now is an apropos time to stop, take a breath and examine this crucial aspect of church ministry.

The next few chapters are going to be very practical demonstrations of this principle at work - but I think it is good at this moment to take a look and evaluate where we are as a church not only in our desire to disciple but also in our position of discipleship.

I’m reluctant to use the word process because I don’t believe that discipleship can be programmatic.

In fact that is one of the issues we have within the church today when we seek to define discipleship.

What exactly is it?

It’s why we get various discipleship plans and books like Gospel-centered Discipleship, Action based discipleship, Real life Discipleship, Transformational Discipleship, Emotionally Healthy Discipleship among others.

A search on Amazon will reveal more than 20,000 book titles devoted in some way to the concept of Discipleship.

Yet determining what discipleship looks like in the modern church is often like nailing jello to the wall.

At its core discipleship is the process by which our hearts become more like Christ’s.

How do you quantify that?

How do you evaluate that?

And so we as church leadership and pastors will get together and ask each other what discipleship looks like.

The truth is that discipleship isn’t really that hard - which is also why there’s a book called Discipleship Uncomplicated - the hard part is our commitment to the process.

This morning we’re going to look at a couple of Biblical passages that I think detail what discipleship is for us and then ask ourselves where are we at Dishman and how are we doing?

Before we get in to the passage in Deuteronomy I think it is important to define our terms.

We all need to be on the same page of what exactly we are talking about when it comes to discipleship.

Often when seeking to get on the same page it is helpful to dispel some of the misconceptions before we can have a fruitful discussion of what discipleship is.

What Discipleship Is Not

Discipleship is not fellowship.

Many of you know of churches that have this mindset - let’s get some people together who have an affinity for a certain activity and call it ministry.

So you will have hiking ministries, fishing ministry, motorcycle ministry, hunting ministry, quilting ministry or others.

Or there is ministry surrounding a sport - softball, flag football, frisbee golf.

Or there is this opportunity - two believers sit down over a cup of coffee or a meal.

All of these activities are well and good and some of you may disagree with me that in some instances these distractions are acceptable - but we shouldn’t call them discipleship.

These fellowship activities are a viable and necessary part of experiencing life together and building relationships with one another.

But if the only thing that happens when we get together is the peripheral activity and we never discuss spiritual issues, challenges or Christ then we cannot call them discipleship.

Discipleship is not gift driven.

No where in all of the lists of spiritual gifts is the gift of discipling ever mentioned.

Nor is it a role reserved for the “professionals”.

This is a misconception in the modern church that discipleship is the role of the pastoral staff because we are the trained professionals.

This couldn’t be further from the truth and it couldn’t be further from the Biblical picture that we’re going to get to in just a few moments.

In an article entitled “The Biblical View of Discipleship” James G. Samra closes with these words “All Christians are disciples and are called to participate in the discipleship process, both by receiving instruction and living our their faith for others to see and imitate.

Those who are mature in the faith have the responsibility on the one hand to participate in educating and modeling other believers, and on the other hand to ensure that their Christlike character is being passed on to a select few individuals whom God has entrusted to them.”

This is not discipleship.

The Sunday service is a critical factor in the life of a believer and a church but this is not discipleship.

In a sermon on Discipleship Dr. Josh Buice, who I’ve already quoted, said “You can attend church week after week and not be discipled.”

You can come here week after week and not really be engaged in Life Group.

You can come here week after week and not really be engaged in the singing of great theologically rich songs of worship to our King.

You can come here week after week and not really be engaged in the sermons.

You may hear them but as the great theologian Sidney Deane from the movie “White Men Can’t Jump” said “Look man, you can listen to Jimi but you can't hear him.

There's a difference man.

Just because you're listening to him doesn't mean you're hearing him.”

Just because you show up every Sunday and you may even be listening to the sermon but are you really hearing it?

If you come here for an hour or two every Sunday but leave and go through the rest of your week in a different frame of mind then you are not being discipled.

Discipleship is not going through the motions.

When I was in the Navy there was this hated inspection that came up at least twice a year called Division in the Spotlight.

During this inspection the different program managers of your command would look through your programs to see how you were doing.

There was safety and maintenance.

Education and training.

How were your Sailors personnel records.

And there was the mentorship program.

Every sailor was supposed to have a mentor identified and to regularly meet with that mentor to talk about their career and aspirations.

In reality this program became nothing more than a paper drill as about a week before the inspection came up sailors would be scurrying all about the ship trying to meet with their mentors so that the program would look good.

Productivity was overlooked in the interest of checking the box.

Sometimes discipleship can take that same feel within the church - we know that it is supposed to happen and so we default to calling everything discipleship.

When I was a kid in the church tradition I grew up in we were supposed to go door to door ministry or visitations.

The running joke every time we pulled into a driveway for a U-turn was to chock it up as a visitation.

Discipleship cannot be treated this way.

Discipleship is not inherently behavior modification.

While behavior will change as discipleship takes place, the core goal of discipleship is not to get a person to act in a certain way.

The core goal is to have a spiritual or heart transformation that brings the person closer to Christ - as Paul told the Galatians that his desire was to see Christ formed in them.

Finally discipleship is not formulaic.

There is a great temptation - especially for those in church leadership - to say that what worked in one place can work in mine.

We look at churches like Grace Community Church or Parkside Church or St. Andrew’s Chapel and think that as long as we do things the way they do them, as long as our small groups and our discipleship program is modeled after what they do then we’ll succeed.

Or more locally we could look at New Hope Bible Church, Faith Bible Church or Valley Bible Church and think that if we could just be more like them we would be successful.

But their dynamic is not our dynamic and we must find a way to disciple the people that God has given us here in this church.

But what is discipleship?

The interesting thing is that discipleship is not really a key term used after Christ’s ascension into Heaven.

We are challenged by Christ in Matthew 28 to disciple

but after this the language of disciple changes from discipleship to imitation.

So are we now back to simply what Kyle taught last week - to imitate God? Well yes and no.

The Dictionary of Biblical Themes defines discipleship as “The process of becoming a committed follower of Jesus Christ, with all the spiritual discipline and benefits which this brings.”

The goal of discipleship is to become like the Master - and our goal as Christians is to be discipled into the image of Christ.

So where does this leave us?

If discipleship is not formulaic and it is not all of the things I mentioned above what is it?

I’m glad you asked - look with me at Deuteronomy 6 for the first thing that discipleship is - discipleship is intentional.

This passage is known as the Shema - it is the Jewish prayer and it is a great testimony to the unique nature of God.

It is also pointed to by Christ as encompassing the greatest commandment.

When challenged by a Jewish teacher regarding the greatest commandment this is the passage that Christ points to - that we should Love the Lord your God with all you heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.

The key to intentional discipleship comes in the ensuing verses.

Moses writes that these words that I’m giving you today are to be in your heart.

The first principle of discipleship that this passage teaches is that you can’t teach what you don’t know.

You can’t teach what you don’t know.