Tag: discipleship

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Letz Go!!! – Mark 1:16-20

Previously on “Mark”: After hundreds of years of silence God spoke to the people of Israel through John the Baptist, proclaiming the coming of the Messiah. Many people come to the desert to repent. In the midst of this surge of changing hearts, Jesus comes to be baptized and begins His ministry, with a stopover in the wilderness. He opens His ministry with a call to trust Him and believe His words.

Where we pick up the story, Jesus is calling His first disciples. But what does that word, which we throw around a lot, really mean? The concept is more like an apprentice than like a student in a classroom. This is someone learning alongside a master craftsman or a rabbi as they lived and worked together.

Where Jesus diverged from your typical rabbi is that typically disciples were recruited by “inbound” methods, attracting followers on the strength of their skill with their craft or words or theology. Jesus, though, is all about “outbound marketing.” He came directly to those he wanted to call and gave the invitation – “Follow me.”

And the disciples did – they left behind their old lives, their families, their homes, their businesses. They let go of livelihood & security and & a normal daily life to follow Jesus. Now, it’s important to note that this is a unique context – very few of us are specifically called into itinerant preaching ministries. But we are all called to something. And we don’t need to wait for us to hit rock bottom. God is always working, even when we are doing well enough to, say, have hired workers in our fishing business.

But we should consider what we are clinging to and what we are putting ahead of our identity in Christ. Often we put our secular roles first. But first of all, we are followers of Jesus, and we take that identity into our workplaces, our families, our relationships, our hobbies. Mark calls out the specific things that the disciples left, and we have specific things in our lives that we must also subordinate to our own call to be disciples.

Even though we are not called to be wandering preachers, we are called to find our identity in Jesus. Like the disciples, we are called to be followers of Jesus first, and everything else comes second. We should resist the temptation to make our work and our activities the main element of who we are.

Jesus is asking us not to hold anything back. We tend to hold things back and negotiate with God. “Right now, I want to do this thing, and later on I’ll do what I want.” But we should know that God is seeking our good in addition to His glory. We are not on opposing sides here. Jesus did not tell his disciples to drop their nets – He said “follow” and they did a cost-benefit analysis and determined that what He was offering was better than what they had.

Discipleship is a relationship and a journey. Discipleship means turning to Jesus to find our direction and our identity. When we let go of whatever we are clinging to – cynicism, resentment, idols of all kinds – Jesus offers abundance and changed lives.

This is the Kingdom of God, this is what Jesus was proclaiming – and still does, through His body. This is why we are here, this is why we worship and this is why we do what we do.

— Sermon Notes, Dave Sim, Renew Church Lynnwood WA, September 24, 2023

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Your Mission Profile – Matthew 28:16-20

Matthew’s account of the resurrection & Jesus’ ministry afterwards is very terse and brief, only a few verses. He zeroes directly into the question “what is our mission in the light of the resurrection?”

In the last few verses of his gospel, Matthew tells us a few things. The disciples meet Jesus and worship him – but some doubted. This was not a purely emotional reaction of a bunch of credulous rubes, but an interaction with a true thing that took time to process and understand – and God has patience with us as we do that.

Then the story moves immediately to the Great Commission – but we should carefully consider the premise that Jesus begins with before we come to the instructions themselves. “All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth.” What is there in existence that Jesus does not rule? Nothing. As Americans, we have difficulty with the concept of authority, but Jesus is clear about the situation here. And this authority is the context of the Great Commission – it’s not merely an idea or a suggestion, it is a command. It is a job description for the job of “Christian.”

But there is context at the end of the command as well – “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” He is with us in this process.

Something to note, though, is the nature of this command. The instruction here is not to be a disciple, but to make disciples – the instructions here are being given to those who are disciples. We are disciples, and our task is to make more disciples. Too often, we see our purpose as Christians to be about our internal spiritual life or Bible reading our personal morality or our systematic belief structure. All of these things are good and important. But Jesus is clear here that the purpose of all of it is to make disciples.

Within that, there are three subordinate commands – go, baptize, teach. We are to “go.” We are not to live in a “holy huddle” but to live outward focused. We are to baptize – to preach the gospel and usher others into the saving relationship with Christ. And we are to teach the instruction of Christ to those who have been saved.

We can study the Bible all we want – we can even train others to study the Bible. But unless that study is turning us into people who represent Christ well, we are not doing what Christ instructs.

Studies show that all of us have 8-15 people in our lives we are uniquely qualified to minister to, some Christians and some not, but we all have someone.

We live in the era of the Resurrection, and in this era we have a mission to fulfill. How is your life designed to make disciples?

– Sermon Notes, Jeff Sickles, Snohomish Evangelical Free Church, Snohomish, WA, April 24, 2022

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Make it Count – Luke 6:12-19

Luke here identifies a period of time when the conflict and tension between Jesus and the religious elite of his day was growing. In verse 11 he notes that the religious leaders were grisly more angry, and “in those days,” describes that Jesus is doing these next things in that context. As the early signs of the end of Jesus’ earthly life are seen, Jesus begins laying the foundation to entrust his ultimate mission to twelve men.

His first response, seeing time is short, is not what most of us would instinctively do. He turns to the Father and prays. Many of us give too little priority to prayer, perhaps because we don’t really believe it impacts us or our world. But throughout Luke, we see Jesus in prayer, especially during times of hardship – here, ahead of his temptation in the wilderness, and before the crucifixion.

So, like Jesus, before we take on the pressures of the world, let’s talk to the Father. We should not be tackling the difficulties of our day before solidifying our relationship with God. Prayer keeps us anchored and tethered to the creator of the world. Prayer should be what we resort to when the pressure is on.

After he prays through the night, Jesus has clarity, and establishes the Twelve Apostles, mirroring the Twelve Tribes. He is establishing a New Israel, what would become the Church. (Paul would eventually be added to this number.)

Notably, none of these men were rabbis, scribes, Pharisees or priests. Instead, they were common men – the most wealthy or “white collar” of them all seems to be Matthew, who was a tax collector and outcast. Possibly they had even been rejected by traditional rabbis as disciples and so had fallen back to the family trades, like fishing. But these are the men Jesus chooses, after prayer, to lead his church.

After making this selection and appointing, Jesus demonstrates for them what His mission is all about. He goes down to a level place, amidst a great crowd, and preaches and heals. But Jesus strategy was to focus on a few people around him, investing in them so that they could invest in others. Within those twelve, the trio of Peter, James & John were even the inner circle, closer to Jesus and brought in deeper.

Jesus would supply these men with everything they needed for this mission – teaching, power, wisdom and much more.

The presence of Judas Iscariot on this list is an interesting conundrum. Did Jesus make a mistake here? No – he trusted the Father’s plan, of which Judas and even his betrayal was a part.

The last thing we can learn from both Jesus and that apostles is that we should turn ourselves toward the father even at death – as Jesus said, “into your hands I commit my spirit.” And of these 12, ten of them would go to a martyr’s death like Jesus would. Andrew was crucified, Peter was a well, upside down. Matthew was assassinated in Ethiopia. James was betrayed by a fellow Christian. Bartholomew was beheaded in India, where Thomas was killed by a spear.

The only disciple to die naturally was John, who lived to as much as 100, but also scarred by persecution and trial.

They all, barring Judas, made their lives count, and in the end turned to the Father. We ourselves won’t likely face martyrdom, but we will all face death, and on that day let’s do as Jesus and His apostles did.

Before you face the world, go to the Father. As you face the world, trust the Father. When you leave the world, turn to the Father.

– Sermon Notes, Andrew Arthur, Hallows Church, Edmonds, WA, March 27, 2022

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Meet the Church – Philippians 2:1-11

It is easy for us to take the opportunity provided by church for granted. It is easy to treat our church as a social function, when in reality we are called to a radically relational community in which we are called to make our attitude that of Christ Jesus.

It may seem strange to have an attitude commanded – we see commands as being about outside actions. In reality, God tells us that what he cares most about is in fact the inward parts, the attitude, the thoughts.

Paul wrote this to a group of people he knew well, whose faces he could picture in his mind. He opens with rhetorical questions, each of which he knew his readers could answer strongly in the affirmative.

He then, again appealing to their personal relationship, tells them how to bring him joy – by being unified in their community and ministry.

Paul warns then against rivalry and competition. Those do not build up the body of Christ any more than they can build up a marriage. We are to focus on the needs of others, not ourselves alone. The Christian life is not a solitary mission. We cannot do discipleship alone. We cannot love without involvement with another. Discipleship is built into all our relationships, especially within our families but also in our church body.

It will cost you time, and that’s something we have a hard time giving up. But we are called to be involved in the spiritual needs of others – in fact, it is simply assumed throughout the New Testament.

Paul gives us the model we are to use, though – that of Christ. Despite being equal to the Father, despite being far greater than all of humanity, Jesus submitted to the will of the Father and to the degradations of humanity and a criminal’s death. This is the model we are given for our relationships with others in the church.

We can’t arrive at these concepts truth reason and philosophy, but rather depend upon the revelation of God through Paul, and the life of Christ on earth. This Christological statement walks us through the incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, glorification and return of Jesus Christ. These concepts can’t be derived from general revelation, but rather they are the work of the Holy Spirit through the words of Paul as he sought to disciple the church at Philippi.Consider what the Holy Spirit can do through you as you share your own life with the body of Christ!

Look to Christ as the model for fruitful discipleship in the church. Look to the inspired scriptures to continually refresh our theology and our directive to represent Him in our relationships with others.

– Sermon Notes, Steve Morgan, Snohomish Evangelical Free Church, Snohomish, WA, November 14, 2021