Make Disciples!

Transcript

If you have a Bible, would you please go with me to Matthew chapter 28? We’ll spend most of our time in verses 18 and following today. But if you go with me, if you don’t have a Bible, by the way, there should be one in the seat in front of you. If you don’t own a Bible, we would like nothing more than to give you one. So please feel free to take that one. We will be in Matthew 28, verse 18. This is God’s word to us. Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him, they worshipped 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 the 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. This is the word of the Lord. Please pray with me. King Jesus, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to you. You are the king. You are the king of Portland. You are the king of Oregon. You are the king of the United States. You are the king of planet earth. And you have sent us on a mission. You’ve given us, your people, a job to do. A job that on our own we are not nearly up to. So please send us your Holy Spirit. Help us to hear these parting words from Matthew’s gospel and light our hearts up for the things that you are doing, for the way you’ve sent us to make disciples, the way that you’re with us in the act of doing it.

And I pray that as we come to this text, though maybe even familiar for some of us, you give us fresh eyes for your love, for your love for us, that you haven’t left us alone or given us an impossible task, but also your love for Portland, your love for the metro area, your love for the world. And I pray we’d be blown away once again that you would use such frail creatures to do your work. I pray as we look to the Great Commission, we’d remember it’s no longer I who lives, but Christ who lives through me. We’d remember how much we’ve been saved from and what we’ve been saved to. And though we’re awake and aware of the fact that this is a bit of a battlefield, it’s one that we can come to with a strange joy and kindness and humility and love.

The Great Commission

And though it’s contradictory to say that we can come to this battlefield with gentleness, but also courage. So, Lord Jesus, I pray, Lord, whatever’s just of me would be forgotten, but the things that are you, may they light up our hearts. Holy Spirit, please guide and lead our time together. And, Lord, bring people into our lives and into our community you’re going to save. Jesus, we love you and pray these things for your glory and for our joy. In your name, Jesus Christ, amen. Today we turn to the Great Commission, and while as a church and as Christian people, we have a deep conviction that all Scripture is breathed out by God, that the whole of the Bible is God’s word and is useful for us and a gift to us and worthy for our study and for our attention. But there are some parts of the Scripture

that are so magisterial and so wonderful they get a modifier like great in front of it. The greatest commandment, to love the Lord God with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul and your strength and your neighbor as yourself. The center of a Christian ethic. Love God and love people. And, by the way, that’s not just the people you like. It’s all people. Jesus says, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. That also means the people that kind of annoy you, maybe not your favorite people, maybe the people who aren’t into your hobbies or whatever. We love all people. But today we turn to Matthew 28 and 18 and following and see what has been called the Great Commission. And I think this is so valuable for us, especially for us who come out of an American context,

because often we ask big questions like, what should I do with my life? What is the purpose of my life? What should my goals in life be? And so often we mean that to really mean our vocation. What should I do for a living? Or maybe where should I live? And those are good questions and valuable questions. Should I go into finance? Should I go into the trades? What should I do with this time Jesus has given me? Great question. Fantastic question. Or even deeper yet, what is the point of life? These are worthy of our attention. We live in a society that’s sort of so busy sometimes we don’t stop to just stare out the window for a minute and think deep thoughts as we ought to, as we’re, I would argue, even built to. But I think because we have something sort of baked

into our society and our system, we tend to do things like find meaning out of the job I do or what I can accomplish. And sometimes we forget to take a step back and say, what does God want for my life? And again, we often say, God, do you want me to go into the trades or do you want me to go to college or what do you want me to do? God cares about those things. God cares about the job you work and the way you spend your time. But I would argue there’s something below the surface there that even can help inform how we make those decisions and inform what we do. And that’s right here in the Great Commission. Because here today, as we turn to Matthew 28, we will see the mission of the people of God to transmit the good news of the gospel on planet Earth.

We will see the way in which we, not just the pastors, not just missionaries in countries other than your own, but we as God’s people have been given a job to do to transmit this good news. That Jesus came and lived and died and rose again to cross the gap that I’ve made between myself and God, the separation that I’ve made between God and Him and that He in the person of Jesus has come to save me from myself and from my sin and to life in Him. And there’s nothing I can do to earn it, but that He has done that to make us His children. And we’ve got a job to do to get the word out. We’ve got a job to do to transmit this gospel. So here’s our roadmap for today. We’re going to quickly dig into and kind of take apart

What Is a Disciple?

this section of the text. And from there, we’re going to see what is the big idea here? What is the point of this particular text? And then how do we live that out as the people of God? So it’ll be a big idea with three points and a fourth, but we’ll get there in just a second. Verse 16. Now, the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. Context, Jesus has risen from the dead. It’s the Sunday after Easter, right? It’s an appropriate time to be reminded of these things. Jesus, as we hear this in Matthew, Jesus is alive. He’s risen from the dead. They’ve seen Him crucified. He’s been walking around. He’s been hanging out. And for lack of a better word, it’s probably been kind of a weird few days hanging out with the resurrected Christ. Weird and glorious and wonderful and all of those things.

But certainly a different than average kind of couple of weeks. So here the eleven disciples are. Now remember, these are the cats who have been walking around with Jesus for three years, who have been doing all kinds of miracles and teaching in His name. They go to the place He told them that they would need to meet up with Him, and when they saw Him, they worshipped Him. This is why we read our Bibles slowly. But some doubted, or and some doubted, depending if you want to be half glass full, full or empty on that one. So there they are. They’re with Jesus. They’re with the risen Christ, and they’re worshipping and doubting. Again, because it’s kind of a weird day. Now the thing we know about these eleven dudes is these eleven dudes live the rest of their lives faithfully and even give their lives faithfully for this gospel.

So we know how it turns out for them, but we have to remember in this moment, because these are the words that Jesus gives some cats who are both stoked and pumped that they’re here with Jesus who’s risen from the dead. And still there’s some doubt in the room. What’s interesting to me is He gives them the same information. I think this is true of a lot of things in the Christian faith. What do saints who are encouraged in the gospel need to hear? He is risen. He is risen indeed. And what do the faint hearted need to hear? Not buck up and try harder, and you just got to have more faith than you hear. He is risen. He is risen indeed. Jesus is God, and He’s good, and He saved you, and He’s forgiven you. We all need Romans 8 chapter 1. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

So here we are, and He tells them this. And again, for context, you have to remember, Matthew is writing this gospel not on a word processor. He’s not given the opportunity to backspace and think and ruminate and craft his words and go back and say, you know, actually chapter 3 should have said this instead of that. He’s writing it on a vellum or a papyrus scroll. So it’s one big scroll, which means if you screw the scroll up, and they actually used to do this, the scribes would screw up scriptural text. They were dictating if they screwed up, they’d just burn them, because it’s serious. You don’t want to screw up the text. Now he’s writing this under the guidance and power of the Holy Spirit. We’re coming to the very end of the scroll he’s written. The chapters and the numbers aren’t there, so he’s just writing, writing, writing, and we get to the very end,

and he’s trying to get across the finish line. And these are the words that he concludes this gospel with. These are the things that you need to hear if you’ve read Matthew, or perhaps if you’ve spent three years with Mark. If you’ve read Matthew and you hear about the life and the death and the good news and the gospel of Jesus, you say, now what do I do? Now what? Well, here’s now what. Verse 18, And Jesus came and said to them, All, by the way, the Greek word there is all, means all, all authority, all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age.

Now what’s important about this is sometimes, some of us as individuals and sometimes some ministries, do this as kind of a ministry Rorschach test, where those who really love to contextualize ministries and are doing the good work, and here these all as good things, by the way, the good work of saying, how do we reach the next generation of the gospel can focus on the going, right? The going and even missions and what we would call foreign missions. And we need to be careful. We can’t think wrongly that Portland is the center of the universe and we have to send out missionaries from Portland as if this is Jerusalem. We need to remember if unless you are a Jewish background believer, you are the nations that are being talked about and the going and that we have been sent to Portland. And we also need to get behind the work of those going to other places.

The Great Commission is a worldwide phenomenon and there is going to be done. But sometimes we can focus so much on contextualization that we miss the thing that we’re trying to contextualize and that’s the gospel. Likewise, there are those who want to focus on this idea of making disciples, right? And we’ll come back to that in just a second. That’s a hint, by the way. Likewise, we can focus on this idea of baptizing. And often this translates to putting up numbers of people we put in the water and say the focus is if I can just get as many people as possible to pray the sinner’s prayer and maybe baptize as many people as possible, we’ll let the Holy Spirit sort everything else out. And then that unfortunately gets people to say, well, you know, I prayed this prayer in 1977. I’ve pretty much lied and cheated and stolen,

but I prayed a prayer so I’m covered, right? Here in 2022. And then there’s teaching. There’s both an information part of teaching and sort of like an application part of teaching. And here we hear, teaching them all that I have commanded you. So there’s practical outworking, but there’s also a doctrinal drive here. And some people just want to focus on how do we make Christianity helpful to people? The problem is, though I would argue Christianity is helpful for people, the driving point is not its helpfulness, but its truthfulness. Because if Jesus didn’t raise from the dead, it’s kind of a cruddy program. However, Jesus is one who helps us. The Holy Spirit is called the helper. So it’s not that God doesn’t want to help us, but it’s not like a therapy situation, per se. And that’s not me dogging out on therapy, by the way.

But sometimes we can focus on these things, but the grammar of the text actually tells us what we should focus on. I don’t know if we have any grammar nerds. I used to not be a grammar nerd, but now I am a grammar nerd. So if you’re a grammar nerd, prepare to have your grammar nerd itch scratched. And for the rest of you, I’ll talk the way that I did before I knew what a participle was. It’s an ing word, because it turns out it’s hard to learn languages if you don’t know what those mean. So in this text, what we have, what Matthew has written, he’s actually given us some really helpful guide points. The word make disciples, it’s what’s called an imperative. I was going to say shut the door, and Miguel just walked through the door, and it would have not been funny had I done that.

An imperative, shut the door. An imperative, drink that water. An imperative, you’ve got to go see Star Wars, right? You’re telling people what they ought to do. Participles are these ing words. I’m swimming, I’m running, I’m texting, I’m Googling. Somehow that’s a word, right? And in the Greek language, what’s happening in the language Matthew’s writing, those imperatives are the thing that come front and center. The imperative here is make disciples. And all those ing words around it, those participles, and now you can forget if you just want to like shove participle out of your brain, that’s fine. But those participles are there to say this is the manner in which you do it. So arguably what Matthew is saying, our job, friends, and again, not just the job of the pastors of the church, or maybe your small group leader, but every last one of us,

our job is to make disciples. The way we do that is by going, by baptizing, and by teaching, because those are all the ing words. So here’s our outline for the rest of our time together. Our big idea is that we are to make disciples. And our three points of how we do that, to make disciples of Jesus we go, to make disciples of Jesus we baptize, to make disciples of Jesus we teach. Now, I also said there would be a fourth point if you caught that earlier. Where’s my fourth point, if you’re a note taker? The fourth point is we’ll talk about the context that frames out those, the going, and the baptizing, and the teaching. Okay, so we make disciples. Great question that you may have, which I had for a long time. What’s a disciple, right? What does it mean to be a disciple?

There are some that have kind of tried to parse this out in the Christian tradition along the way, as if there’s like junior varsity and varsity Christians. There’s carnal Christians and not carnal Christians. There are people who are sort of in and sort of doing whatever, and sort of those who are really dedicated to Jesus. The Bible knows no such thing as a Christian who’s sort of dedicated to Jesus. A Christian is one who has given their allegiance to the King. And that’s a disciple. A disciple is a follower of Jesus. A disciple is a Christian. That’s what we are. And yet, as disciples of Jesus, we live on planet Earth in this process of discipleship. Discipleship is where one or, you know, really two or more people are doing different things to help each other grow in the gospel of Jesus Christ. That’s what discipleship is.

But here’s what that looks like. One, it’s a lifestyle. It’s not a program. This is not me subtly saying that we shouldn’t do Jan’s Old Testament class Sunday morning. In fact, I would urge you, if you can make it to Jan’s Old Testament class, you should. I walked through to get coffee, and I was blown away at how awesome that thing was. But then I had to get the sermon ready, so I couldn’t stay. But you should do that. You should be in Jan’s class. It’s really, really dope. Really awesome. Really great. Trying to be less colloquial, but you should go to that. So it’s not that the church shouldn’t have programs that undergird discipleship. It’s not even wrong to have things like one-on-one discipleship. That’s great. These are the programs and the infrastructures that help this thing. But at the end of the day, discipleship itself is a lifestyle.

That as we look to Jesus, the great disciple maker, we see two things. We see sort of organic, life-on-life. Hey, I’ve got to drive somewhere because I have to bring something to someone. Do you want to get in my car and go with me to that place we are going in? We can chat while we go. And that’s discipleship, right? That’s part of it. It’s the life-on-life organic stuff. It’s the stuff that just happens when you bump into someone on Sunday morning. And why it’s really good to not come in 15 minutes late. When you come early, and you’re present, and you’re here, and you bump into that brother or sister in Christ, and they tell you about their week, and you have an opportunity to point them to Jesus. It’s organic. You didn’t put that on the clock, but you’ve made time and space in your life to point them to Jesus and help them grow.

So Jesus does this. He shows up, and there’s a gal in John 4. He says, hey, I’m thirsty. And they have a deep theological conversation. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you should check out John 4. It’s really awesome. But there are also times when there’s actual teaching. Matthew 5, verse 3. And they sat down, and he taught them. It’s the best theology lecture of all time, by the way, when Jesus gives them the Sermon on the Mount. There’s the formal piece and the informal piece. They’re both necessary for this life that we have as we’re formed in the gospel. And I think we see this, right? We see 1 Timothy 4, verse 16. Paul says this. It doesn’t say Timothy, but he says he’s writing to Timothy, so that’s the beginning of the letter. But watch your life and your doctrine. And in so doing, you’ll save both yourself and your hearers.

I love that. I love that his message to this pastor is keep an eye on the things you believe and the way that belief works out in your life. The two most key passages, in my opinion, on discipleship are easy to remember because all their numbers are the same, and that’s 1 Corinthians 11 and 1 and 2 Timothy 2, verse 2. 1 Corinthians 11

, Paul says, Imitate me as I imitate Christ. The truth of the gospel has worked its way into Paul’s life, and then he is living it out, and he’s saying, Hey, get in my life and see how I live, and when I’m doing the Jesus stuff, those are the things you should do. Should you have esoteric taste in West German circuit-bending, I was going to say techno, but it’s not techno, craftworky kind of weird electronic music? You’re free in Christ to do that, but you don’t have to.

Doing things where you’re seeing someone give of themselves to help other people follow Jesus, sacrificial humility that comes only from the spirit of God and the life of a person. We see those things and we say, Yeah, that’s what I’m after, but the reality is, is the only way we can get after that stuff is if we’re doing life together. We can’t actually do most of the stuff that the Bible actually tells us to do unless we’re doing life together. You can’t one another, one another, unless you’re spending time with one another. That’s part of the deal. At the same time, 2 Timothy 2

says, Timothy, take what I entrusted to you and entrusted to faithful men who will entrust it to others also. Take this package that is biblical new covenant truth about Jesus, the gospel of God as we really, as the people of Trinity Church in 2022

get in the New Testament, and of course, we also, and that’s how we read the Old Testament, the Bible, take this biblical truth, understand it, take it, and take it and give it to somebody else, and give it to somebody else, and give it to somebody else. Because at the end of the day, it’s not just about action. Someone might see you being kind and say, I should be more kind. But what they actually need is to be saved by Jesus. The way we’re saved by Jesus is the good news of the gospel. And it’s the gospel. There’s one gospel. There’s one God. There’s one Jesus. There’s one Trinitarian God. And there’s one way to God, the way, the truth, and life, Jesus Christ, the second member of the Trinity. So in its core, discipleship is both life on life, but it’s also the transference of the transcendent truth of God’s word.

Three Ways We Go

That’s the big idea. We’re making disciples. Now, we’re going to do this three ways. To make disciples of Jesus, we go. To make disciples of Jesus, we baptize. And to make disciples of Jesus, we teach. First of all, you have to go spend time with people to tell those people the good news about Jesus. There is a going to it. We have to remember, again, Portland is not the center of the universe, believe it or not. And in fact, we see in the book of Acts, we have everybody’s kind of cloistered up in Jerusalem, and it actually takes persecution to spread the church out of Jerusalem and into Judea and out to Samaria and then to the ends of the earth. By the way, that’s where we’re at, the ends of the earth. So we are at, in some respects, at the ends of the earth,

but our mission doesn’t stop here. Arguably, we need to care for the world. And specifically because you and I live in the United States, you and I have more access to resources, to theology, to study. And not all of us are going to go, but we need to come alongside those who do. We do everything we can. And I also would say there’s a really beautiful thing when you can partner with nationals in foreign countries and come alongside them and let them do the stuff of the going on the ground where they’re at. Both are beautiful. Both are wonderful. And at the same time, we need to go here, too, as Americans, if you’re an American. We love to be particular. As Portlanders, we love to be really particular. So sometimes you might be hanging out with your friends. Maybe this is something I would do, by the way.

This is something I would do, and I’m confessing now. This is how we do the real corporate confession, when I just stand up and confess to you my problems. When your friend’s like, hey, let’s go here for Thai food, and you’re like, oh, but their Thai food sucks. Let’s go here for Thai food. That’s a better place to go for Thai food. Oh, I’m not going to shop at that grocery store because I really like my, I specifically like almond milk, not coconut milk, Ben and Jerry’s, and they have it at Fred Meyer but not at Natural Grocers. Let’s go there. All of a sudden, the things I’m doing are really centered on this guy right here, and they’re really particular to me, rather than saying, what is the restaurant I’m going to go to? As an ambassador for Jesus, day in, day out, and by the way,

if you go out to eat, you need to tip, and you need to tip well, especially if you pray for your food when it hits the table. I was taught this by the elders of the last church where I was a pastor, and every morning, every elders’ meeting happened at 6 a.m. at this particular diner in town off the Guide Meridian. It is notoriously, perhaps, I shouldn’t say this in case they ever hear this. Let’s put it this way. The food’s not necessarily the best food in town. But why were we there? Because there were people those elders had spent a decade pouring into, spending time with, tipping well, and telling about Jesus. Our preference was not whether or not they put mascarpone in the pancakes, but that there were people we were going to use God’s money to spend time with to tell about Jesus.

We must go. And if you live here, that means he sent you here at least for the moment. And I know, real talk, the Portland metro area has had some frustration for us all in the last couple of, you know, 24 months. But Jesus sent you here. If you don’t love these folks, pray that God will break your heart for them. If you’re not ready to go to people in Portland, it’s, oh, those people over there. Pray that the good Lord would give you a heart for them. In fact, pray that he would give you his heart for them, because they need Jesus and so do you. So we go. And I would also say the going, just as Jesus did, there’s actually some discipleship in the going. It’s life on the way. Not only that, we make disciples of Jesus when we baptize. To make disciples of Jesus, we baptize.

Now, we have to be careful with this meaning here because we can import meaning to this to say, oh, you mean I need to go put some people in, like, a bathtub? Like, what are we talking about here when we say baptize? He says baptize here. I think he has something particular in mind. There are actually accounts of after Christianity becomes legal in Rome, there are some folks in Rome who do things like send Latin-speaking soldiers into Africa where they don’t speak Latin with spears and stuff, and some kind of religious cat, you know, a pastor, priest, guy, whatever, and then because they had this sense of what’s called baptismal regeneration, meaning baptism’s the thing that does the actual justifying and saving, they’d show up in the village and they’d line everybody up at the river and then they’d baptize them and then they’d move on and they’d say,

we’ve covered our bases. By the way, this is a scary day when some dudes with spears show up and try and drown you for just a second and then let you go. By the way, that did not make disciples of Jesus. What I think he has in mind here is both evangelism, but also evangelism that leads to church membership. You can’t baptize people unless you tell them, Jesus saved sinners from death to life. But not only that, you can’t really baptize someone until they fully understand, as much as we can here on earth in that sense, fully understand what that actually means and then they believe in their heart and confess with their lips and then we baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. We have to go to those people to do that, but that core there then is the transference of the faith.

Take what I gave to you, give it to somebody else, give it to somebody else, give it to somebody else. They confess with their lips, they believe with their heart because the Bible doesn’t really have this sense and certainly we see this as it’s lived out in the earliest church. There’s no sense of just showing up, getting spontaneously baptized and moving on with the rest of your life apart from Christian community. Baptism always accompanies community. So confessing people, get baptized into something. They don’t get baptized into thin air, they get baptized into the church. Even when, by the way, in Acts these churches are teeny tiny. There’s one exception where the Ethiopian eunuch is baptized and Philip gets transported away and then he goes on his way and according to church history, by the way, he goes and plants churches in Ethiopia. And by the way, we shouldn’t use the time that Philip gets transported

as our normative model for what happens in baptism. But every other time, even though they’re small communities, people are baptized into these communities together and baptism is this entry point into the Christian community. So you have people who are both, they hear the good news of the gospel, you can’t have baptism without evangelism, but then also communities form because you can’t have communities without baptism. And it’s a beautiful thing. Number three, to make disciples, we teach. So all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations. So going, baptizing, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, by the way. Teaching them what? Teaching them to observe all that I’ve commanded. So there’s two parts to that. Again, there’s two pedals on this bike. There’s the truth of Christian teaching and then the living out of it.

They go together. It’s life and doctrine. Because here’s the deal. How can we celebrate these beautiful truths like, you have been more forgiven than you can possibly imagine, and then say, well, I couldn’t forgive that person. They’re horrible and I could never forgive them. You mean, wait, wait, wait, wait. Jesus Christ came into history, died on the cross, bled for you, and called you clean, and you didn’t do anything to earn it. And you won’t forgive that cat? Well, you’re not forgiving them because forgiveness is the thing that nice Christians do. You’re forgiving them because you have been forgiven. Now, does that mean that everything has to go back to normal, if it’s like an abusive person or something? I’m not saying any of those things, just to be overly clear. I’m not saying this sometimes. Someone’s going to sin against you in ways that you will never be able to hang out with them again

because they’re a dangerous person. And I get it. I get it. So don’t hear me conflating everything’s going to be totally cool with that person. However, we can even honestly look at that person and say, God? Jesus? Vengeance belongs to you. I can turn the other cheek. I can pray for my enemies. I can forgive people who persecute me because I know what happened to Jesus. Father, forgive them. They know not what they do. But the reality is the doctrine, the teaching of Scripture demands a response. In fact, it comes from a response. I don’t do the things I do so that Jesus will love me. Because it’s for freedom that Christ has set me free. I live in the freedom he has built for me by his grace and mercy because he died on the cross, rose from the dead, and set me free.

Christ’s Authority and Presence

Ephesians 2, verse 8 and following. And this is about grace and faith. It’s not my own doing. Now, of course, the thing he set me free for was good works. And so we make disciples as we go, we tell them the truth about Jesus, and we fortify them in the truth. Our fourth and minor point here is this. Not a minor point. It’s not a minor point. I just can’t put, to make disciples, we with this one. I suppose I could have if I spent more time thinking about it, but then it would have just been shoehorned and we don’t want that. What I think is amazing about this great commission to make disciples by going, teaching, and baptizing are these bookends. All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. That’s one bookend. And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age.

He’s present with us as we go. I mean, we can all look at this and say, I don’t know, that doesn’t sound like something I would be very good at. I mean, sometimes we’re just being real, right? Like, I don’t, going is uncomfortable, or I don’t know my Bible well enough to teach somebody something. I don’t know. I don’t know. But we start with the fact that you don’t go alone. It’s no longer I who lives, but Christ who lives through me. We’re the people of the Spirit of God. Again, our American impulse is to sort of like white-knuckle it and figure it out on our own and be tougher and run faster or whatever. And actually when you say this, Jesus, I don’t feel like I got what I need to give to people about the truth about you. Can you help me? This is what a church is here for.

Your pastors are here to help you. Your fellow church members are here to help you. Say things like, that stuff you’re talking about, like teaching someone or discipling someone or whatever, I don’t know. I don’t know how I would do that. Real talk. As I was trying to figure this out, I spent a lot of time years ago as I was trying to figure this out, I realized that a lot of people I knew, even people I knew who were in ministry, didn’t really have a strong grasp of what they would do to help someone go from being, you know, pagan Portlandite, Seattleite at the time, to hear the truth of the gospel and then help get them fortified in the faith. And I just started chasing after that. Say, how do we really do this? How do we teach other people to do this?

Because if Jesus has told us to do this, he’s going to help us do it. Jesus doesn’t tell us to do stuff he’s not here to help us do. So there’s my starting point. Jesus says we need to do it. He’s not going to leave us alone. There’s a simplicity to studying the Bible together, not just for information, but for transformation. It’s about life and doctrine, right? There’s ways to do this. There’s ways to be fortified. There’s ways to spend time together with people in this. And if you need help there, sometimes you have to say, I need a little help here. And that’s okay. It’s really hard. I mean, this might be just the Pacific Northwest, but we’re the people who are trying to pull shingles up on your roof by yourself, and 10 people show up, we’re here to help you. No, no, I’m cool. You’re not cool.

You’re pulling shingles on your roof on a ladder. You need help, and people are here to help. And we’re like, no, no, no, I’m cool. Part of being a member of Trinity Church is saying, these are the people I belong to. And these are the people that I’m here to help follow Jesus, and these are the people that are here to help me follow Jesus, too. That, friends, is discipleship. We’re here to help. But in all this, we can’t forget the context of our going. I mean, we can look at Portland, and again, sometimes we can look at Portland, if we’re being honest, some of us, and we say, Portland’s lost. I don’t even know what that means, by the way. Portland’s made up of people, and it’s a geographical area. And we look around and say, it’s impossible. That guy at the food cart, my friend who works here with me,

whatever, whatever, they’re never. It’s impossible. So is your salvation. So we go with the authority of the king, trusting him, but also knowing he goes with us in his presence. And by the way, there’s power in prayer. There’s power in walking through this. Every time, I have this little thing I walk through before I get up to preach. I start by admitting there’s nothing I can do. I stole this from somebody else, by the way. He’s much better at preaching than me, but this is helpful. I admit there’s nothing I can do. I pray, and I ask for his help. I trust him, and I get up here, and then I act. I open the book, and I try my darndest under the power of the Spirit to say that this is what the word of God says. So you got that coffee thing with that dude from church.

You’re like, I’m going to tell him about Jesus, and it’s really hard. I don’t know how to do it. I can’t do this on my own. That’s a great place to start. Admit, Jesus, I can’t save Jimmy John. I can’t do it. Jesus, please help me as I open my mouth to tell this guy the truth. And then you’re there with the coffee, and just like, honestly, with preaching, I’m never quite sure the plane’s going to land. That’s what I tell anybody I’m helping learn to preach. You got to start by talking. If you can get the first sentence out, then you can get the flywheel moving. So I’m a Christian. I love Jesus. I want you to love Jesus. We’re all still here. Okay. Because here’s the thing as we engage in this thing, and especially if you’re in here and you’re not a Christian,

Living as Disciples

we need you to know this. This truth compels us. It’s the love of God that compels us. And our faith is amazing this way because there’s one of two things happening here. Either the loving action for me to do, because realistically I think there are massive consequences to rejecting Jesus. I think there’s a massive sadness living a life apart from God, and I believe there’s a way out. His name is Jesus. So the loving act I have to do is to tell you that Jesus saved sinners like me and like you from death to life, and he has good things for you. Repent and believe. Okay. Now, if you’re a doubter or a seeker or your friend dragged you here and you just want to go to lunch, we are so pumped you are here. We will clear our schedules to spend time with you, to talk to you about Jesus.

I will be at the back of the room when I am done, when we are done here. I will answer your questions. I will walk with you. I will talk with you about Jesus. It is my favorite thing to talk about. Love Jesus. But here’s the amazing thing, and if you hear all this stuff and you say, yeah, no, I’m good, thanks. The amazing thing about Christianity is that we’re told to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. Well, if you’re in here, I’m presuming, unless you start throwing rocks at me, which happens, I guess, you’re just our neighbor here that we’re trying to tell you about Jesus. You’re not our enemy. If we’re people who love our enemies, how much more are we to love you? So our loving thing is to tell you about the gospel. And if you say, no, thanks, this thing you think is dumb, the gospel, the truth,

that I’m misguided and, you know, there is no heaven, there is no hell, there is no Jesus reigning and ruling. I’m that guy. Okay. Paul says, of course, if those aren’t true, we’re to be pitied amongst all people so you can pity me, but my delusional belief means I still need to love you. So the result is I tell you about Jesus. I love you. I try and point you to him. And even if I’m wrong, my silly religion still compels me to love you, regardless of how different we are, regardless of how different we see the world. And this is the core of Christianity. This is the core of our going, of course. So if you’re in here today and you don’t know him, today is the day. Repent and believe. He has risen from the dead and he will make you alive right now.

For the rest of us, there’s a life and a doctrine piece. How are they doing? Are you more firm in Jesus today and the teaching about Jesus than you were yesterday? How’s your time in his word? How’s your time with other Christians pointing each other to Jesus? And does your life reflect? Does your life echo out the truth of his scripture? Are you living out the disciple that you already are? Are you living as a formed disciple? And if not, what needs to change? And if you’re in here today and you’re a Christian, especially if you’re a member of Trinity Church, who is in your life that you are helping to grow in the gospel? Who are you giving of yourself to help grow in this faith? And if you don’t have someone, you don’t have people like that in your life, how do we need to reposition?

How do you need to reposition your life to get after that? Let’s pray.