Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / October 24, 2021 | Church Words - Discipleship

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October 24, 2021 | Church Words - Discipleship · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning, everybody.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: How are we doing this morning?
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Good.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Good.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: My name's Connor.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Happy to be with you this morning, and I'm really excited because we are wrapping up our series that we started a couple weeks ago called Church Words.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Church Words has been this series where we have been looking at these words in the Bible that are pretty long, have lots of syllables, and we might not always understand them when we read them.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of these words that are in the Bible, it's important for us to understand them because they are central and core to our faith.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so rather than just skipping over those parts of the Bible, we want to engage with them and understand them more deeply.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so the first week we looked at depravity and said that, you know, humanity as we are, we are sinful.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: We have messed up.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: We are rebels in God's kingdom.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: And because of that, we need a Savior.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: Without God, we really can't do much by ourselves.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: After that, we said, Well, Jesus loves us so much that he came and died on the cross for us.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: He was a substitutionary atonement.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: He took the punishment that we deserved when he was on that cross so that we could be made right with God.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: The next week we said that being made right with God, sort of in a legal sense, and how God views through his justice our standing before him, is that we are now justified before him in front of his throne, that we can have peace with God.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Something that a lot of people are seeking for, but don't always find, and they can't find it without Jesus.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: And then last week we said that, well, we have been made right in the sight of God, and we have also through the cross been declared as holy.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: We are sanctified.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: But that process of sanctification, though we are called holy by God, it is not something that we have truly achieved in our lives yet.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: We love to rebel against our king still.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: And that process of sanctification, of looking more and more like Jesus every day, is something that we are still trying to work towards as Christians.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: By the grace of God, He's given us the power, everything we could need to do it, but it's still a journey.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this morning, we're going to be talking about our final church word or church words, and our focus is going to be on discipleship.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: And discipleship is one of, I don't know if you want to say last stages, because it's this ongoing thing, but discipleship, true discipleship, which will be the focus, is sort of this state that all Christians should want to find themselves in.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: That there is, um, once we have been brought into the party, right, there is the after party, the one that's actually more fun, which is the fact that we get to then tell other people about Jesus and walk with God more closely.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: That there's a distinction to be made between those who just trust in Christ and those who are his true disciples.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um if you can think of it this way, a simple definition is disciples are those who have made God their number one priority.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: And when we look at when I was a kid, um, I used to love to read the Guinness Book of World Records.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: I got one of those books every single year, though they like basically just changed the cover on it, even though there wasn't much different.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but there's a guy named Steve out in California who has uh lives at a location called Rancho Obi-Wan and has collected over 500,000 pieces of Star Wars memorabilia.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: 500,000.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: He has got uh it's sitting in these old uh refurbished chicken houses at a ranch that he had bought.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: And now it is a nonprofit.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: If you would like to pay$200, you can get a tour through his 500,000-piece collection of Star Wars memorabilia, everything from bootleg action figures to macaroni salad with Chewbacca on the front of it to real props, you can go there.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that was so interesting to me when I was going through the Guinness Book of World Records, when we see something like this, is you have sort of an admiration, right, for people.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe admiration isn't the right word, but they a um a begrudging respect to the dedication of those who are entirely sold out for, in this case, you know, their love for Star Wars or something like that.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um but when it when it comes to Christianity, we we actually tend to shy back and draw back from this idea that we should be sold out for our faith in Christ, that God should be our number one priority.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: And really what I mean is not that we say that God is our number one priority, but that we act like it.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: And even within sort of the this Christian bubble that some of that a lot of us live in, um, where we feel comfortable, those who are dedicated specifically to sharing the Word of God with others and living out their faith in a public fashion, making Him their first priority, and also willingly sacrificing themselves.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: When we're around people like that, sometimes we can say, whoa, okay, that's a little intense for me.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: I I like my read, my daily devotional, my Jesus calling book.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: I love talking with people, you know, about the fact that I go to a church, maybe, I've got a scripture verse above my kitchen table.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like I am, Jesus and I are on good terms.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: But discipleship runs a lot deeper than that.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: And it runs counter-culture because in our culture today, it is built around the idea of finding an area where we can fit in and feel comfortable, be unique enough that we have our own identity, but not stand out so much that we are ostracized for what we stand for and for our faith.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: And if you've known Jesus for really any length of time and have felt that Holy Spirit urging to live that out in your daily life, you know that that is a huge challenge.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's a challenge to live for Jesus in a culture that says you shouldn't be, that everything that Jesus stands for is not okay, only certain parts that sound really nice and fit into the sort of cultural milieu that we're in.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so this is our rub this morning, is that we've been called to be true disciples of Christ.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: It is more than just believing in Jesus as your Savior, though that is the ultimate goal for all of humanity is that we would trust in him as our Savior.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: But then there's sort of this next level that we're going to, which is that God has called us to not be rebels in his kingdom any longer, to live holy lives.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: And then you ask the question, what are we supposed to do with those holy lives?
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: And we are supposed to create disciples.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: The best example that we have for this is the twelve apostles in the Bible.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: Apostle is a word in the Greek, it simply means the one who is being sent.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: And it has the same actually as the word disciple, it has both a broad and a narrow meaning.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: In the broadest sense, apostle, just like I said, is somebody who is sent.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus himself in the book of Hebrews is referred to as an apostle, and the fact that he was sent from the Father to humanity as sort of this connection between the two.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: But in the truest sense, or in the most uh what I want to say, uh uh applicable fashion, the way that we use the word apostle is to refer to also the twelve disciples.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: The twelve disciples are the twelve apostles, represented here most famously in the Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci, though they weren't white, I promise you.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't wear Renaissance clothing, they weren't all sitting on the same side of the table, they probably would have just drunk from one cup instead of a lot of them, they wouldn't have had silver or glassware, it would have been wood and clay, it wasn't during the daytime, it was at nighttime, it was probably a lot smaller room, and it was probably and it was on the second level, and a guest how so.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: But it's the most famous.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um but the twelve apostles, um, right, then at the very end, minus Judas in the book of Acts, then Matthias comes along.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: He is brought on as the twelfth apostle.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: And these individuals, all of them except for John, church history tells us, were ultimately killed for their faith.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: That they went out, they were ones who were sent, and they shared the faith.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: They sort of scattered into all different directions, and they shared that faith to the point of, in some cases, crucifixion, uh, like Jesus, or stoning, or as uh Thomas supposedly died in India by being run through with four wooden spears.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: However, you want to look at it, these apostles were living out their faith.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: And you might say correctly, hey, dying for your faith, that is an extreme stance to take.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that is not what everybody is called to do, but what you have to say about these apostles is that they set the example for the disciples of Christ, that they made Jesus their number one priority, and they dedicated their lives to the idea that God was more important than whatever was going on in their own life.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: That living out their faith for Jesus in this sort of temporary sense that we are all living was worth the eternal reward that they now have.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: What's the eternal reward?
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Revelation 21 says that the twelve apostles, the names of the twelve apostles are actually written on the foundations of the twelve foundations of the walls in the new Jerusalem.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: At the very end, when we have a new heavens and a new earth, Jesus has come back and it comes out of heaven over, and uh we have God's kingdom renewed.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: The walls of his kingdom have the names of these twelve apostles written on them.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: They were the foundation of his kingdom going out into the entire world.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: And the apostles, they had some specific criteria, right, that they had to meet.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: So in Acts, after Judas betrayed Jesus and then killed himself, they had eleven apostles and they needed twelve.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: So in Acts 121, um they're they're deciding sort of what's the criteria that should make up an apostle.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: They say, Therefore, from among the men who have accompanied us during the whole time the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John, like John the Baptist, until the day he was taken up from us.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: From among these it is necessary that one become a witness with us of his resurrection.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: There were three things that an apostle had to have done.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: They had to have been with Jesus from the very beginning.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: They had to have witnessed his earthly ministry, and so Matthias, the one who is ultimately selected, was there from the beginning, even though he's not really mentioned.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and apparently there were others too.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: Second, they had to have witnessed the resurrected Christ, had to have spent time with him.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: We know that Jesus had a lot of different people that he met with and talked to, up to 500 in different accounts of those he appeared to post-resurrection in the 40 days he was on earth afterwards.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: They had to have experienced that.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then third and finally, it's not here, but in 2 Corinthians, it says that the apostles also needed to be able to identify themselves by performing signs and miracles, namely, you know, healing people, perhaps speaking in tongues, um, prophecy, things of that sort.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so Matthias is chosen.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: They are the example for us.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: But there are no apostles today.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: The apostles, uh, we we might refer to it as the apostolic age, right?
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: The time in the early church when all these people were going out and sharing their faith and planting churches and rebuking churches and discipling other people.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: And while there are many disciples today, there are no apostles.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: Really, the last apostle that was ever granted that title was Paul himself, who sort of had a unique circumstance because Jesus appeared to him after his resurrection on the road to Damascus.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: Paul even calls himself the least of the apostles, because he knew that he was not worthy of that full title.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: But then where do we get the word disciple from?
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's obviously the root of discipleship.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: Where do we get this word from?
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, in the Greek, simply it means follower, one who is sort of a student of the teacher.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: And the word disciple is not unique to Christianity.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, in the Greco-Roman world that Jesus was living in, you might, as you've read through the Gospels, have seen how Jesus says, you know, come follow me, join me, um, you know, basically set aside your life and walk with me as I do all of these things.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, the apostles were doing the same.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: They had left behind like Peter their fishing uh jobs and gone to be with Jesus.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: But Jesus was not the only one who had disciples.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: There were lots of teachers around the world at that time and through that point in history that would ask people to come along with them and to walk with them and to be students of their teaching.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: What was unique about Jesus, there are many things that are unique about Jesus, but what was unique in this sense is that not only was he the Son of God, but his crowds were absolutely massive.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he was offering free miracles and free food to the people who were following him, right?
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so he had every all these people who were walking after him, who were, who were seeking what he was providing, or what they thought he was providing, which was comfort.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus has all of these disciples, but that's a wider term than even Christians, which wasn't even a term that they used back then.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: It was a derogatory term given from the Roman Empire to those who were believers of the faith early on.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: But Jesus had these disciples, and periodically he would do this really interesting thing, where you might expect him to continue to desire stronger and larger crowds.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: He would say things to them at different times to cut the numbers.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: He would say things to them that were hard teachings, to make distinctions between them, to let those who were following him know, those who were his, said they were his disciples, that the true cost of discipleship was much higher than what they were thinking it was.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: Being a disciple of Jesus was not actually about eating the bread and the fish that he miraculously multiplied.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: It was not about seeing him heal the paralytic and hoping that you yourself could be healed.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: No, actually there was a cost that was associated with that.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus makes this distinction in John 8 31.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, If you continue in my word, you really are my disciples.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: We're really familiar with that last sentence there, but it is in the context of being a disciple of Christ.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: And this is not about salvation per se, because we're saying that the Jews had believed in him.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: So those who have trusted in Christ, though, there is, as we see, this distinction between just believing in Jesus, receiving the gift of salvation, and also those who have then carried it on to become his true disciples.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: Continuing in his word, John later in his letters, 1 and 2 John and 3 John, he loves using this phrase about continuing and being with God.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: Another way it is translated as abiding with the Father and the Son.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: That we are supposed to be walking in lockstep with Christ.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: John says this is the distinction that Jesus was making here, that if you continue to be in his word, you really are my disciples.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so the ones who were following him, they were sort of confused by this because they're saying, Well, we are your disciples, we're following you.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: But it wasn't until later Peter would be a great example of this, where they recognized that the cost of discipleship was going to be higher than they thought it was.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: Peter, who said, You know, Lord, I will never ever deny you, not even unto death.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says, Actually, Peter, you're going to do it three times tonight.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: And then he did.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: The cost of discipleship was very high.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so what was the hard teaching that Jesus was giving them?
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: He was about to lead them into a territory where he says, I'm going to give you some things, and some of you are not going to like what I have to say.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to make you uncomfortable because it's going to force you to make hard decisions and sort of align your priorities in a specific way.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: And some of you aren't going to like the fact that I'm asking you to keep me as your number one priority.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: And Luke 14, verses 25 through 27.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now great crowds were traveling with him.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: He turned and said to them, If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: Man, can't be his disciple?
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't this sort of run counter to the idea that like everything about church is supposed to be getting more people in the doors and more people sitting in the seats.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that what it's all supposed to be about?
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: That we're trying to make Christianity as palatable as possible so that as many people hear about him?
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: The idea that Jesus was getting at here is that true discipleship was his goal.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: True discipleship was the method that he was going to be using to send the gospel into the entire world.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this wasn't the first time Jesus gave really hard teachings to his disciples.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: Shortly after the feeding of the five thousand.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: If you were here a couple months ago, we talked about this when we were learning about the importance of communion.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: But shortly after the feeding of the 5,000, Jesus goes to all of these followers, far more than 5,000, because that was just counting the men.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: So some people put it up above 10, 20,000, kind of depends how you count that.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: But the huge crowd.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus is talking with them and says, Hey, eat my flesh and drink my blood.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: And they're like, What?
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know about that.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: And he goes, No, seriously, eat my flesh and drink my blood.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: And it says a lot of disciples deserted him at that point.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: He said, they said, This is too hard of a teaching even for us.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: And we know, or and we talked about this a couple months ago, that Jesus was speaking figuratively, that ultimately at the Last Supper, Leonardo da Vinci painted it, right, that Jesus was going to be giving figuratively his blood and his body to the world as this sacrifice, and he knew that people who were going to be following him needed to be his true disciples, and this was another one of his hard teachings that he was giving to them.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: He explained it, but they didn't understand it.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: So, I've had this on the on the TV for a while here.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: What does it mean when Jesus said that we are supposed to hate father and mother, family, even our own lives?
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: You can't get away from the passage by saying that it doesn't really mean hate or that it doesn't translate as hate, because it definitely does.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: The word means hate.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's take a step back and say, did Jesus act in a hateful way towards his family and his mother?
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: Certainly not.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: When Jesus is being crucified, in fact, being the oldest son in that culture, he was the one who was supposed to be a caretaker for his mother and uh for his father, though some people think that his father was dead by that time.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: But Mary is at the foot of the cross, and John is there too, and Jesus says, Mother, this is your son.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: Son, this is your mother.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: John, you are now the one who's going to be caring for Mary.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: He made sure that after he was gone, that his mother was being tended after.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: When he is in the home of Peter, and Peter was married and had his mother-in-law, and she was fixing food but had a fever, and Jesus goes over and heals Peter's mother-in-law.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: Was that hateful?
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: If Peter was supposed to really hate his mother-in-law, do you think Jesus would have gone over and healed her?
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: There was no way in which Jesus acted that was hateful towards others.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: So what do we make of this?
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: This is one of the hard teachings that Jesus gave to show the disparity between how much we should love God and how much we should love our life and the world around us.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus acted in a loving way towards everybody that he met.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: Though he rebuked the Pharisees, he still died for their sins as well.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus is walking forward as the embodiment of truth and love and justice, and he is saying, you need to feel so much dedication to God.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: You need to be so focused on Him as your number one priority that it feels as if you hate everything else.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: This is, like I said, a hard teaching.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: God has called us to keep Him.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Number one.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: And there are great examples of this throughout the world.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: There's a story of a woman who's just referred to as E in her account because of the danger of identifying her.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: And she tells of her conversion experience.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: She says, My cousin began telling me about Jesus, and I went to her with all of my questions.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: She then gave me a Bible and I hid it under my mattress.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: I would rip two pages out each day, lock myself in the bathroom to read them, memorizing as much as I could.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: I would then rip up those pages and flush them down the toilet so nobody would find them.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: Then one day I said prayers to accept Jesus with my cousin in the marketplace.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: I had never felt so much joy, love, and peace in my life.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't say a word to my parents, but my mother saw a difference in me.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: She was concerned and curious, so she took me to a witch doctor for some answers.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: Similar to reading tea leaves, this doctor made coffee, drank it, overturned the leftover coffee grounds on the table, and pronounced, Your daughter's a Christian.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: When she asked me if it was true, I didn't answer her.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's when the horror began.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: My mother found out first, and with blood curdling screams, she said, Infidel, infidel, infidel.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: She slapped me and sent me to my room.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: When my father got home, I was again slapped and he also spit on me.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: He shouted, You are no longer my daughter, go to your room.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: That is where I stayed for three years.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: I was locked in my room, so I could not share the gospel with anyone else, especially my three sisters and one brother.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: I could not go to work, visit friends, or have any relationship with my family.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: I was totally alone, and no one spoke to me.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: No one ate with me, talked to me, or touched my things because according to Islam, I was unclean.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: Thankfully, I discovered a radio station that taught the Bible, and I secretly listened.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: I continued to read those Bible pages and memorize God's word.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: My body was in a prison, but my spirit was free.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: Ultimately, I cut out quite a bit of the story actually, but ultimately E was sent away by her parents trying to get rid of her to marry a man who they thought was also part of the Islamic faith, and turned out he was a Christian.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: And the two of them were able then to raise a family of sweet kids, and E then went back into the hostile environment of her family and shared her faith, and ultimately brought two of her sisters and her mother to faith in Christ.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: So let's talk for a second about what it means to hate your family.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: Did E value Jesus more than she valued her relationships with everybody that she knew and everything that her life was up to that point?
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: Did she genuinely hate her family?
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, she would have not gone back and faced certain public ridicule and persecution by sharing her faith.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: But she did it because her number one priority was Christ.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: Her foremost thought was not, what is my comfort?
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: Where is my security?
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: How can my husband and I live the easiest life possible?
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: But what is going to make the greatest eternal impact?
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: And is my life worth potentially sharing that truth with other people?
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: And she said yes.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: She said it was.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, E's a great example of being a true disciple.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: God has not called us, every single one of us, to take the apostle's path and die for our faith.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: But he has asked us to die to ourselves.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: He has said that we must set aside sort of who we think we are so that we can find our identity in Christ and make him our number one priority.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: So let's say that you are committed to this idea of being a true disciple of Jesus, not just a follower of his, but one who actually counts the cost.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: That was another passage that Jesus gets into right after saying we should hate our family.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: He says, I challenge you, count the cost.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: Think about it before you embark on this journey, because salvation is free, but true discipleship is costly.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so I want you to actually think for a second about what it's going to be like, to live your life dedicated to me, because it's not going to be easy.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's not going to be comfortable all the time, but it is going to be worth it.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: So what is our mission as true disciples?
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: We get where our priorities are supposed to be, the idea that we're supposed to have about God, our dedication to him, but what are we supposed to do with that?
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this is actually our last church word for the series, and it is the Great Commission.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: The Great Commission is our mission.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: It was given to the apostles as they saw Jesus ascend into heaven.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: It was the last message that they received, and it was the sort of their rallying cry that they would go on and carry his message into the whole world.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's in a couple locations, but I've taken it from Matthew 28 here.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: It says, All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth, Jesus is speaking.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: 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 everything I commanded you.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: And remember, I am with you always to the end of the age.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: Very popular.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: But the focus is on discipleship.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, a uh the word that is used here for disciples, it not that this matters a whole lot, but if you conjugate it, it is an aorist, active imperative, and all that you need to know for that is that it means that it is an action that is flowing from something that has happened in the past.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so, a honestly, a true translation of this passage is having gone then, disciple all the nations.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: When Jesus is speaking to the apostles here, right, to the eleven at this time, because Matthias hadn't been selected yet, when he is speaking to them, the word that he uses, and I have I have given messages before on the Great Commission, where the focus was on go, go into the world, go, and don't stay here, but go into somewhere else, go into the place that you don't know, go into the place that makes you uncomfortable, into the workplace, into the family, whatever it is.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: But the thrust of this passage is not actually on the word go.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: It is a foregone conclusion when he is talking to the apostles, that they, because they are ones who have been sent, that they are already going to head into the nations.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, what he is saying here is that not, hey, go, but when you're there, make sure that you're discipling people.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure that you are teaching and raising up others who are going to teach and raise up others about Jesus.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: That is the mission of a true disciple.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: It does not stop at just being somebody who lives a holy life, but that we are multiplying ourselves all the time.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: Discipleship oftentimes is sort of used interchangeably with the word mentorship.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: And though we might be discipling people for a period of time, the goal is that we are moving on and creating more disciples.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: And as soon as somebody is ready to then go on and make more disciples, which is a much lower bar than we often think it is.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: Do you know the gospel?
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: You are ready to make disciples.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: Umce we are ready, somebody is ready to make disciples, then we are sort of setting them free to then go on and disciple somebody else.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we are moving on to the next person.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: You think of somebody like Paul who wrote so much of the New Testament and all of his letters to the churches, and he was a discipler of the Gentiles.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: He was an evangelist too, he was a missionary, but you think about the way that he speaks to those that he had raised up in, like, for instance, the church in Corinth.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: And he's able to come to them and say, I haven't been with you for years, but hey, you are not fulfilling the mission that you were given, and you need to focus on what's most important.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: Paul was a great example of a true disciple, though he calls himself the least of the apostles.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: He was a fantastic example for all of us.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: There's uh an interesting story about an engineering class in Georgia Tech, where a professor for this engineering college class uh told his classroom that they were going to have a competition.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: And this competition was that they were gonna they were all going to get a sack of marbles, different colors, different sizes, and they were supposed to sort all of these marbles as fast as possible.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so he gave them a couple weeks to sort of prepare for this competition.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: And uh the day of the competition, everybody walks in and they've, you know, they're engineering students, right?
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: They've over-engineered everything, and they've got chutes and ladders and brackets and these magnificent contraptions that are all going to be using the force of gravity to sort all these marbles.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then one student comes in and he has got a tube with a divider in the middle of it.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so it comes time for the competition, and all the students take their spots, and the professor starts the clock, and the student with the tube dumps all of his marbles into this one tube, removes the divider, they all drop down into the hopper below.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: All of his marbles are, you know, through.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: He says he's finished within one second, and everybody's kind of looking at him and laughing at him as their machines, you know, seemingly fulfill the assignment.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it comes time to reveal who the winner was.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: And the professor begrudgingly, and to the astonishment of the class, announced that the student with this simple tube was actually the winner of the competition.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: The reason why was because the student had thought to look at the rubric and realized that in the metrics for grading this competition, the thing that mattered more than anything else was speed.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: Speed was more important than actually whether or not the marbles got sorted, and so he created the quickest contraption possible.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: When we imagine our lives, we have to ask ourselves the same question.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: Are we spending our time on what is most important in life?
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: Have we created these massive contraptions that we feel like are doing the job that God has called us to do, or are we focused on what's most important?
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the hard part.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: We talked about at the beginning is that if we are living out the calling that God has called us to, to be true disciples, our life is not going to look like the lives of those around us.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: It is going to look different.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: The tube did not look like everybody else's assignment.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_00: God has called us to be true disciples.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so what does that mean?
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, in summary of this morning, there are three things that I think we can sort of fall back on as what it means to be a true disciple.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: E exemplified all of these in her story.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: Is that we would have new priorities, we would have a public faith, and we would make a willful sacrifice.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: When we talk about priorities, we have to establish a truth that is true across everybody everywhere.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone has something as their number one priority.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: It is influences how they spend their time, how they spend their money, how they spend their lives, and what they are dedicated to.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's what their thoughts are focused on, the way they speak and the way they act.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: Some people's number one priority is pleasure, some people's success, fame.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: For some it's comfort, for some it's just fitting in.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: But everybody has a number one priority.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: Being a true disciple means that God is our number one priority.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: That everything flows through what it looks like to be a true disciple.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: And that is what defines the rest of our lives.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: It is not that some of those things can't be also held in healthy proportions, but when we put them to the top, we get to the one that Jesus talked about most clearly.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: He said, you cannot love both God and money at the same time.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: You cannot serve two masters.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: When we talk about being a follower of Christ, a true disciple, it means that Jesus is our number one priority and it affects everything else in our lives.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: Second, it's that we would have a public faith.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: A public faith is the greatest counter to my life is the only Bible that some people will ever read, so I don't need to say anything about it.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: Being an apostle, being a true disciple of Christ, living out the Great Commission means that people should know that you are a Christian both because of the way you act and because they've heard you talk about Jesus at some point.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: Living out a public faith is necessary for us saying that we are dedicated to God's kingdom.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: And it is the one that I think actually more than one and three runs against our comfort most of the time because it often represents discomfort.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: The fact that we might feel like we're going to push people away, or that, you know, some people aren't going to want to be our friends any longer.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: It might cost us a promotion because somebody above us doesn't appreciate the fact that we are living our lives for Christ.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: But think about E for a second and our story about her in that Islamic nation.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_00: Man, what kind of public faith was that?
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_00: That was somebody who said everything, everything that I could lose is worth being able to tell other people about Jesus.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_00: And there's balance to all this.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: The sermon this morning is not about how to share our faith per se.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: It is just that we need to be sharing it.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_00: You don't, everybody doesn't need to go home to whatever social media they have and say, I'm a Christian, in case anybody didn't know about it.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: But it does mean that our lives, being true disciples, needs to reflect this.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: And that if there are people who are really close to us who don't know that we're a Christian, that probably does need to change.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: Not probably, it does need to change.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: Third and finally, is willful sacrifice.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_00: Sacrifice.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: This was the hard teaching that Jesus gave.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_00: This was the hard one.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_00: When he restores Peter to uh to sort of his apostleship after Peter had rejected him three times, and Jesus goes to him and asks him three times, Peter, do you love me?
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_00: And then Peter is restored there in that wonderful reconciling moment between the two.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus also tells Peter, he says, Hey Peter, um people are going to lead you where you don't want to go.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: And ultimately he's talking about the fact that Peter was going to be crucified for his faith in Christ.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: He said, You will pay the penalty, not the penalty, the cost, the true cost, of following me.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_00: There will be an earthly penalty because they don't love me.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: And then he tells John something different, and Peter goes, What about John?
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: Is John not going to also have to deal with this?
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says, That's not for you to worry about.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_00: My will for you is that this is the way that you will serve my kingdom.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_00: If you're a true disciple of Jesus, it means different things for different people.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: But it probably means that you aren't going to be as wealthy, you aren't going to be as successful, you aren't going to be as well known as you would be if you didn't follow Jesus and make him your number one priority.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_00: It means that you are giving of yourself in as many ways as we can and conceive of to further God's kingdom because that is the most important thing that could ever happen in this world.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_00: We are all perishing, every single one of us.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: In a hundred years, none of us are in this room.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: And what we've done for God's kingdom is going to be the thing that does endure beyond that time.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: This is what the apostles understood.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_00: And while I I think it's frankly safe to say that for the vast majority of us, we are not going to ultimately be killed for our faith in Jesus.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: The question is, would you be willing to do it because it's your number one priority?
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: Or is something else more important?
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's something for us to wrestle with.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, I would say this that Jesus said to those who are following him, Count the cost.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_00: Count the cost of being a true disciple.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because he knew, because he is God, that he could look into the hearts of thousands of people at a time and see who was going to betray him, who was going to reject him, who was going to ultimately fall away.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, I want you to count the cost because for some of you, it is going to be that the sacrifice in this life is not going to be worth what it means to live for Jesus.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's not going to be worth it.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_00: We love the world too much.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_00: We love the fame, success, and money that it provides too much.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, though you might be saved in having trusted in Christ, you are not a true disciple.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_00: And when you get to heaven, you will rec you will be aware of that.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: But he said, For those who have counted the cost and have made themselves the least of these in the world today, two things that will happen.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: One, they will be rewarded here in this life by inexpressible joy, not necessarily happiness, but joy knowing that they are fulfilling the will of their father.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_00: It is a joy that can persist through the lowest of times.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_00: It is the joy that sustained E when she was locked in her parents' bedroom for three years.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you picked up in the story, but her greatest complaint was that she couldn't share the gospel with other people.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_00: But second is that when God ultimately does call us home, or Jesus returns, whichever one happens first, that those who have been a true disciple of Christ are going to hear those words that I think everybody will long for.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well done, good and faithful servant.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_00: That is what we're working towards here.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_00: That is our reward, and it is a mighty reward indeed.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_00: All right, let's pray.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we thank you for today.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_00: God, we praise you.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_00: As we wrap up this series, we are thankful for the depth of what Jesus has done for us.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_00: We are thankful for all of the things that means to our lives.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_00: And we ask, God, Lord, I pray for myself and for everybody who's listening that we would count that cost and determine that it is far more worthy to serve you than to serve ourselves.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, we know that this is hard.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_00: Satan loves to run this world.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: He loves to tear down Christians and to make them feel like they aren't worth anything and that running after you isn't actually worth it.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_00: But God, it is.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_00: I pray that by the power of your spirit, you would help us to become true disciples of your word, to abide in that which you have taught us, and to be those who are then discipling other people to spread your kingdom into all nations.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_00: God, we love you and we thank you.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_00: And it's in Jesus' name we pray.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_00: Have a great week.