As We Move: Week 1

Introduction

What comes to mind when you think of the word discipleship?

Discipleship: the condition or situation of being a disciple, a follower, or a student of some philosophy.

Philosophy is interesting. At its core, philosophy is meant to introduce you to a number of different viewpoints on any given topic and help you determine based on your worldview what it is that you believe or where you stand on something.

Philosophy is informed by 3 main factors.

The first one is what is referred to as the “uncontrollables”

This takes into account things that inform who you are without any influence from the outside world

What you look like

What you sound like

Some personality traits

Secondly there are the nurtured attributes

This looks at how you were influenced

The way you were raised

Socioeconomic status

School you go to

Where you live

Spiritual upbringing

Basically all of the decisions your parents made for you before you even had a chance to speak into this.

The third (and perhaps the hardest one to understand) is influenced experience.

When your parents were making decisions for places you would live and what you would eat and what not, what was your experience?

In terms of spiritual life, you have to look at all three as determining factors in helping shape what you believe and how you understand and experience what you believe.

If I asked you assess your relationship with church and you were to answer honestly what would the answer be?

Throughout history, the teachings in the Bible have never changed.

In Hebrews we are warned about false teachers and reminded that God never changes.

Hebrews 13:7–9 ESV

Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. Do not be led away by diverse and strange teachings, for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods, which have not benefited those devoted to them.

So God doesn’t change. He never has and never will. What does change is the last part of the philosophical triangle which is how we experience what it is that is influencing us.

Lets pray

Section 1: The nature of God

If you have your Bibles turn to Matthew chapter 28

As you turn there, its important to establish where we are at in the story. Jesus has died and resurrected from the dead. He has spent 40 days on earth post resurrection teaching and training the disciples on how to build churches and what the message of the gospel is and how it is meant to be presented to others.

Right before Jesus ascends to Heaven, he leaves the disciples with one final task.

Matthew 28:16–20 ESV

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 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, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

So Jesus gives a command which is what?

“go and make disciples”

And he tells him to do this with the power that was given to them by means of the Holy Spirit.

The interesting thing though is that the only form of instruction on how to do this is Jesus telling them to baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

So how are they supposed to know what to do?

Let’s look back in the story a bit…

At this point, the disciples have seen how Jesus lived his entire ministry. When he called him and they followed they began a journey that would lead them to be witnesses to miracles, sermons, parables, etc. and they would get to see first hand the very nature of God.

1 John 4:16 ESV

So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.

God is Love. It is not a past of who he is or one of his many characteristics, it is how he is defined.

So if God is love and Jesus is God, then Jesus is love. And he operated as such.

Jesus was the person who stopped and healed a leaper who had been cast out of a city. He was the one who went to eat with Zaccheus who was an outcast. When a women touched his robe, she was healed because she simply had faith. He went out of his way to elevate women and children, who historically were on the bottom of the totem pole in society.

Jesus operated in love and the disciples got to witness this.

You would think that their experienced made them better equipped to carry out their task right? They had the benefit of seeing it happen. Their philosophy should be pretty solid by now. But they even failed to understand the nature of Jesus. So much so that he is referred to as a prophet over and over again before his death. They still failed to see the Son of God.

See the disciples are operated with a worldview that is formed by Jewish tradition and Law. They were so caught up in the fact that Jesus wasn’t following the Jewish law that they neglected the love aspect of what he was doing.

Jesus even tells the disciples that he came to fulfill the law and that they missed the point of the law because they missed the love element that came alongside it. Paul says this when writing to the corinthians. He tells them in chapter 13 that without love he is like an instrument that only makes noise and does not produce music.