1 - The Importance of Discipleship

The Great Commission Is to Make Disciples

Well, welcome to what is the first class in the School of Discipleship. This is the first of what hopefully will be many classes, but it is the first class where we will be discussing today in this lesson the importance of discipleship.

So we welcome you to this. We're going to be discussing why it's important to disciple. We're going to be discussing, going through a book that we have for you, which is called Growing in Grace. It is a product that we have here at Striving for Eternity.

You can order them if you don't have one. If you're an enrolled member of the academy, you can enroll at the website down there. You will have one already if you have paid for the year. If not, you can always go to the store and purchase one at the store.

They're only a couple of dollars with shipping. I think maybe seven or eight, maybe nine dollars with shipping and we can get one out to you. These are going to be helpful for you to go and teach others.

What we're going to try to do is this. We're going to today talk about the importance of discipleship and why you as a Christian should be making disciples. Then we're going to take several classes and we're going to go through the book Growing in Grace.

What we're going to do is actually I'm going to teach you how to use this book while teaching how to disciple. The reason is because we want you to order some of these books for your church, your small group, your children, your home school, whatever it is, and disciple people.

Start making it a habit of discipling others. That's what our goal is going to be. That's what we're going to look to do in the next several weeks. This class will probably take about maybe I think 10 to 12 weeks, about three months which is about what it takes to go through.

We're going to hopefully encourage you to be a disciple maker. In this school of discipleship, we're going to start with an overview of discipleship. What I want to do to start is to ask you guys this.

We're going to look into several passages of scripture and I want to ask you to think about this. What is the Great Commission? I'm asking you to think about that because of this. Do you realize that the majority of people that are on the radio or preach in churches get this one wrong?

It's sort of like a trick question, shall we say, because people have heard what the Great Commission is so often that they take it for granted what the Great Commission is. When I often ask people, in one word or two words, what would you say the Great Commission is?

People will say that the Great Commission is to go or to go everywhere or to evangelize. Most often the answer is to go. If I say, what is the Great Commission? People say to go, to go into all the world.

That is what is often stated is the Great Commission. Why do they say that? They base it on a text. What text? Let's look at that. Matthew 28 verses 19 and 20. Let's see what it says here. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.

And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age. Now this is the Great Commission. This is the last words of Jesus Christ just before He leaves the earth. Last words are important. I was explaining the importance of last words to a small group just like last weekend.

And what we had talked about was the fact that it reminds me when I think about last words. There are people that talk about last words of famous people. But I'm always thinking of the last words of the poor man in the hospital when the pastor came to visit him.

See, there's a pastor comes in to visit this man and he was on a respirator and pastor comes in and kind of leans in and says, you know, Tom, is there anything that I could do for you? And Tom's like suddenly gasping for air and he makes the signs for pen and paper.

And so, you know, quickly his wife hands him a pen and paper and he scribbles a note to the pastor and he hands it to the pastor and all of a sudden, you know, he goes limp and the machines just go and they, you know, give the signs that he's dead and nurses come rushing in.

They push the pastor away and they start trying to revive the man. They can't revive the man. Pastor in all the commotion takes the note and sticks in his pocket and, you know, is all concerned about this man.

He just watched the man die in front of him. He's at the funeral and he was recounting that and he said, you know, I actually, he thought about it and he says, you know, I actually saw him write his last words.

I just realized I have the same jacket. I didn't realize. He pulls the paper out of his jacket and says, I actually have Tom's last words right here in my hand. I didn't even look at them. I forgot about them until just now.

I'm going to read to you what Tom's last words were. He opens up the note and says, get off the oxygen tube. Last words can be really important and they're also important to read. And what we just read is the last words of Jesus Christ in a sense while he was on the earth.

Now, they weren't really his last words because, well, he's the word of God. He kept writing and he wrote all the way until the book of Revelation. But when he was in the presence of his disciples, these were his last words to them that they could see him in physical form.

And so they see him and these are, this is his parting words to them. Now, why is that important? Because this is something he wanted to leave for us. This is what we call the Great Commission. This is what we as Christians are to be about the business of doing.

That makes it something important. And I'm going to deliver for you in explaining the importance of discipleship a message that I did many years ago at a missions conference. And I didn't realize that it was one of these missions conferences where there was a pastor that had been retired in the area and he started off the missions conference on one Sunday and it was my job to end the missions conference the following Sunday.

And they had, you know, different speakers all week long. The one pastor preached out of, well, this text. I preached out of, well, this text. And what this pastor did was he focused on the going, that we as part of the Great Commission is to go into all the world.

We're supposed to send missionaries. If we're not going to be a missionary, we should pay for missionaries. And so that's what ended up happening in that message. And I got up and I said, let's look at the text.

Now I'm going to, let's put the text back up if we can. And if we look at this, I want to go through a little bit of a Greek lesson for you here. Because the word to go that you see there is actually in the Greek is what's called an aris passive tense.

In other words, passive means that it's done to the individual. The aris tense means that this should be more of an adverb. So this would be something that properly translated should say going. Not go therefore, but going.

Therefore, this is really not emphasizing the word go. Because the go is not the actual command. Now, in the Greek, we have different types of verbs. We have arists and we have imperatives. An imperative is a command.

Well, do we have a command in this passage? Well, actually we happen to have a command. And it is the word make. That in the Greek, the word make is a active imperative. It too is arist, but it is active and it is the imperative.

In other words, what that is saying is that you and I should be about the business of making. And if you know how to break down a good sentence, you know that there's two things to do. You want to get to breaking down a sentence.

You want to have your noun, your verb, and your complete thought. Well, we now have the verb. It's to make. What is the subject? Well, let's put it up again then and see. The subject is make who? Disciples.

Make disciples. So the subject is disciples. So we should be about the business of doing. If make is the imperative in this, and that's the command, then we should be going make disciples. That's actually how to properly translate that.

I think a better translation would be going make disciples or as you go make disciples. Therefore, when people argue that the Great Commission is to go, as happened to me at this missions conference, we're not interpreting the passage properly because that's not the command.

So what we end up with is this. We end up realizing that unfortunately many people teach this incorrectly. And this pastor, after I got done at the missions conference, this retired pastor came up to me and says, you know what, I preached that same message, that same text last Sunday to start the conference.

And he said, my whole focus was on world missions. My topic was local missions. His was world missions. And he said, I was focusing on the going into all the world. And he said, you know what, after 30 years of pastoring, do you know I never once looked at the Greek to see what the verbs were in that passage, to realize that the go is not an imperative?

He said, you just taught me something. Now when he first told me that he preached the same text, I got really nervous, especially when he told me, because I knew his topic was world missions. So I got really nervous having not heard his sermon, which is probably a good thing because if I heard his sermon, I might have been a little bit more intimidated in preaching that message because I looked up to this man.

But he had humility. And he ended up saying, you know what? He just took it for granted, as he told me, because so many people just take that passage and they assume, because so many people say that the Great Commission is to go, or some people look at Matthew 16, 15 and say it's to evangelize or to preach the gospel.

And they focus on that as the Great Commission. And yet that's not the Great Commission. Now in this passage, it's not the Great Commission because the Great Commission is to make disciples from this passage.

It's not into going into the world. What about Mark 16? Well, Mark 16 we don't find in some of the earliest manuscripts. So there's very good evidence to say that most of Mark 16 was not in the original Bible.

The idea being is that it was something that was added in later by later writers, by people that were making copies. And so we wouldn't want to build a doctrine on something that, though it may be true, it's not, it probably wasn't in the original.

In other words, it is true that we should be going into all the world and preaching the gospel. But we're not really sure that that, the preaching of the gospel, is the Great Commission. In fact, if we look at this verse, and we're going to break this verse down, let's put it up again.

We are to be going, or as we go. Now the as we go, or going, talks about how we carry out our day. So we should be going and carrying out this making of disciples. And he gives us a couple of other verbs here to tell us how to do that.

Now look at verse 20, it says teaching, that's one verb, and the other verbs in 19 is baptizing. So what we see here is to make disciples we should be baptizing them and teaching them. Now this may rub the feathers maybe of your pastor, especially if you're Presbyterian, they're probably really going to ruffle their feathers.

But I actually believe, according to that text, that we should be about the business of making disciples. Those disciples we make, we should be baptizing them and teaching them. Not our pastor. Alright, so basically what that means is this.

The first step of making a disciple is what? If I'm talking to someone that does not know Christ, what is the first thing I need to do before I can baptize them and teach them everything that Christ has taught me?

That's right, I need to share the gospel. So I actually believe that the gospel is part of making a disciple. It's actually the first part. Because you can't truly disciple someone until they're first a believer.

Now the word disciple is, in our day and age, in our vernacular, it would be like making a Xerox copy. It's to replicate yourself in someone else. And so what they would do typically at that time is, if you remember the disciples of Jesus Christ, they went around and with Jesus, they lived with Him.

And you learn a lot when you live with somebody. Many of you know in your own families, you've lived with your family, you've lived with people and you know those people really well. Sometimes you wish you didn't know them so well, but you know them well when you live with them.

You're doing everything together. And that is what discipling was. When you became someone's disciple, you lived with them, you did everything with them, you basically ate with them and slept together and walked together and went from town to town together.

Everything. It wasn't just you came for classes. The importance of that there is that is to show that when we see this, we're seeing that Christ tried to reproduce Himself, which was the common pattern in the Greek culture of that time.

That is how a Greek teacher would do things. And so we are to be replicating ourselves in other people. We are to find other people who know less information than we know, and we are to be reproducing ourselves in them.

And so the way to do that is to basically try to spend a lot of time with somebody and explain to them everything Christ is teaching you. Now if they don't know Christ, the first step is the Gospel. I think that's why it starts by saying make disciples baptizing.

See baptism in the first century has a different connotation than it does in America today. Actually it has a similar connotation that it does in maybe the Middle East, where when someone gets baptized, it's basically kind of threatening them.

And so what you have is you have a case where you would have someone that gets baptized say in the Middle East right now, if they're a Muslim, and they get baptized publicly. Anyone who publicly sees that baptism, in a Muslim country it's illegal to convert from Islam to anything else.

And it's punishable by death. So a public baptism is like basically saying you can kill me now. In the first century what they'd have as Jewish funerals, they'd actually bury an empty box. And what they would do in that is bury a casket and say you are dead to the family.

Now why is that important? Well you lived with the family. You ate with the family. You worked with the family. You got your livelihood through the family. If the family is no longer talking to you, and you're talking in a time when people never traveled more than like a mile from their home.

So everybody in the village knew one another. If they went out and had a funeral for you, nobody was going to talk to you. They ignored you. Nobody paid you. No one gave you food. You were dead to the family, to the village, to everyone.

That's what they would do. That's a different connotation of baptism than we have today. And it's because of that that baptism was not something people did lightly. People didn't get baptized unless they were really willing to follow after Christ.

And that's why baptism had such a major importance in that time. So I think the idea of Christ saying to them, baptize them. It's basically saying, lead them to Christ. Lead them through the gospel. You then baptize them.

That's the first step of obedience. Once they're baptized, start the teaching process. Reproduce yourself in others. That is what discipleship is all about. So we should be going. As we live our life, when you go to the store, make disciples.

If you're with a believer, it's an opportunity to share and to teach. I used to disciple one young man lifting weights. He would come over to the house three days a week. We would lift weights together.

And in lifting weights, we would start to talk about the things of God in between sets. And it was a time of discipling. We would talk about the sermon that was preached that past Sunday. Or what was discussed at Wednesday night prayer meeting.

And we would discuss those things. And it was a time of discipleship, not just weight lifting. You're in the car with your children. Maybe turn the radio off. Use it as a time of discipling. God left you, if you're a believer in Christ, here on earth to make disciples.

He has His word of God. He's got His word. He doesn't really need us. He could write the gospel in the sky for all to see, if He so chose to. Why did God leave us here? The worship is going to be much better in heaven than on earth.

The praising God is going to be better in heaven than on earth. The fellowship is going to be better in heaven than on earth. Learning. We're going to learn directly from Christ. It's going to be much better in heaven than on earth.

Prayer. We're going to be talking directly face to face with Jesus. What is going to be better on earth than heaven? Well, nothing really. Heaven is going to be so much better. In every aspect of Christian life except one.

Because there's one thing that's commanded to us to do on earth. And it's impossible in heaven. And that's to make disciples. Someone's asking, is sharing with unbelieving co-workers making a disciple?

I would say yes. I actually, as a practice, when I would work in the engineering field. I remember many years ago when I worked at Lucent Technologies. I used to work for Bell Laboratories that became Lucent Technologies.

And what ended up happening was we had a new guy that came in right out of college. And I was, they called him mentor. But it was a discipling relationship. I was teaching him. And in that teaching, what I was doing was teaching him all the parts of the project that I knew.

Now he had the mindset of, oh job security. I have to know one thing. And I have to be the only one that knows one thing. So he kind of learned one aspect of the project. And thought if he was the only one that knew it, they would never fire him.

And I kept trying to teach him, no. If you teach everyone else to do what you know. When there's new work that comes in. Hey, guess who gets to do it? You're the one that's free. And we ended up getting new work that he really wanted to do.

It was given to me. Why? Because I already taught him how to do all the stuff that I did. Along with other people. And so there were other people. Because they were the only ones that knew how to do some parts.

I got the new work. When they actually had to lay some people off. This new hire was actually one of the first ones to go. Because he knew one piece of the project. And he was the only one. But the rationale that the supervisor explained to him is.

That I would only need to learn that one piece of the project. Where letting me go and having him. He'd have to learn 90 of the rest of the project. And so the boss just figured. You know what? It's easier to let one person go.

And have one person learn a small piece. Than let another person go. And have them learn a bigger piece. And that's the thing. I even discipled when I was at a secular work. Now I also was seeking to disciple them with the gospel.

That was what I would do. I'd take people out to lunch. And I'd share the gospel with them. I actually met my wife. Because I started a discipling relationship with her at work. I was a contractor back then for AT &T.

And I had met her. And she was a believer. So what did I do? At lunch time we would sit down and study the Bible together. In fact the book that we're going to go through. The growing grace book. That is right there.

That's what I started going through with my wife. And we started to look at that. And then what I started going through. Is the lessons in our school of systematic theology. I started discipling her during lunch.

Because she was a believer. I started teaching her everything that Christ had taught me. And in doing so. She started to learn. Now maybe that's not the best way. Dating discipleship. I don't know. But that's what ended up happening.

Out of that I came to love her maturity. And her desire for God's word. And a relationship beyond the discipling one did form in that. And that's much better than the way many people try to do relationships.

But that aside. That wasn't my intent. My intent was to disciple her. So we should be about the business of discipling. Alright. We are to be baptizing. And then teaching what? Teaching them to observe all things that Christ has taught us.

Alright. So we are to be going about our day. Evangelizing to new people. And how do we make the disciples? We evangelize unbelievers. When they become believers. Baptize. And then start teaching. That's the process.

Discipleship in Deuteronomy 6 and the Shema

Alright. And so in doing that. What we want to do. Is we want to look at how this is done. And there is a great passage of scripture. In the Old Testament that talks about this. And that's in Deuteronomy 6.

This is called the Shema. This is if you ever see you enter a Jewish home. And on the side of the door post. There will be a little gold or silver emblem. And inside is this text. That we are going to look at.

And it's Deuteronomy 6. 4 to 9. It's called the Shema. Because that's the first word. The Hebrew word for hear is Shema. And so the text is called the Shema. And it references this passage of scripture right here.

So it says. Hear oh Israel. The Lord our God. The Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God. With all your heart. With all your soul. With all your might. And these words that I have commanded you today.

Shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children. You shall walk. You shall. Sorry. You will teach them diligently to your children. And you shall talk of them. When you sit down in your house.

When you walk by the way. When you lie down. When you rise up. You will bind them. As a sign on your hands. You shall. They shall be on the front lid of your eyes. You will write them on the door posts of your houses.

And on your gates. Now what the Jewish people did unfortunately. Is. They took the wrong part of that. They took it quite literally. Now I think. Let's put it up again for a moment. You see here the importance I think of this.

Is. You know that you shall love. Verse 5. You shall love the Lord your God. With all your mind. Heart. Soul. And strength. And it says. And these words I command you today. Shall be on your heart. And you shall teach them diligently to your children.

So what are we to teach our children? What we should teach our children diligently. Is to love the Lord your God. With all your heart. Mind. Soul. Might. With everything you got. Love the Lord. That's what you should be teaching your children.

What they ended up doing. Is taking the other side of it. And they said. Oh what do we do? Well when we sit down. We got to do a prayer. When we stand up. We got to say a prayer. When we lie down in bed.

We have to say a prayer. When we get up in bed. We have to say a prayer. We have to. There's things called phylacteries. That have this text in them. The Shema. And they put it a box. On their hand. And they wrap it on their forearms.

So it's on their hands. They wrap it between their eyes. The front lid of their eyes. They stick what's called a mezuzah. That thing on the door post. And they stick it on their doors. That's exactly what the text says to do.

And so they focus on the other part of it. Which is to do these legalistic type things. Where you go about doing this ritual. But what we really need to be doing. Is teaching our children. To love the Lord our God.

With all our mind, heart, soul and strength. You see that's the. How to teach people. To observe all things that Christ taught you. The idea of that passage. Is in every part of your day. If you're lying down or standing up.

You're sitting. You're walking. When you're sitting at the table and relaxing. Or you're walking to work. You should be about the business of making disciples. In every aspect. When you go to the store.

Look to make disciples. I had a friend of mine. Who I got to meet. He got to pick up on my personality. And knew me well. Kind of quickly. I was staying at his home. And we were having Sunday brunch. Or Sunday breakfast.

Before church. And he realized. His wife realized. Or I think he realized. That they were out of certain things. They had to go to the store. And he says hey you want to take a ride. I said sure. Hop in the car and we take a ride.

And as we're trying to rush through the store. I'm doing what I do. Which is I went to the store for a reason. To make disciples. There's unbelievers there. That I'm going to start sharing the gospel with.

So I hand a guy a gospel track. And as my friend is looking to pick something up. I start having a conversation with a gentleman. A really good conversation actually. And so my friend takes off. I figure okay he's going to grab me before he leaves.

Well I'm waiting for him to come back. But he never comes back. And I'm starting to get concerned. I'm like okay he's probably waiting for me. And I really should go now. So I ended the conversation with this gentleman.

I got to share the gospel with him. Got to start the discipling process. Gave him my email address. And I go to the cashier. And I don't see my friend. Maybe he's sitting in the car. And I go over where I thought the car was.

But the car's not there. Now I'm kind of wondering where is he? And I go and I look. And I go maybe I got the wrong aisle. And I look around the different aisles. And I realize no. The car's not here.

He actually left me. That's right. He left me. And then the next thing I see is his wife. Pull up to the store. And say hey want a ride? She picked me up. Brought me back to the house. Basically he wanted to make sure breakfast was served.

And knew that I was going to be more concerned with sharing the gospel. And making a disciple than breakfast. And so he chose to go home and make breakfast. And send his wife to pick me up. So he got to know me very well.

But the reality is that as we go to the store we should be making disciples. If Christ is going to think that this is that important. That he is going to tell us we should be about the business of making disciples.

This is his last words. Then that's what we should be doing. We should be seeking to fulfill the great commission. And we do that by loving God. And by loving our neighbor. That's what Christ said. That's the two commands he said to do.

And you say but I'm not a teacher. I'm not good. Well that's okay because God actually made it easy for us. Paul told us that there's only two times that you ever have to worry about teaching people. In season and out of season.

In other words all the time. That's right sorry you're not off the hook. I mean there's some people who are gifted to teach and they can teach well. And we love to sit under the teaching of those people.

But you know simple reality. That person doesn't know your neighbor, your co-worker, your family member. You do. That's why God has gifted you to be one. We are all commanded to teach. Like it or not that's what we have to do.

God has commanded each one of us to teach. Even though some of us are more gifted to teach. It's something that we're all commanded to do. Actually all the gifts of the Spirit we're commanded to do. Each one of them.

The ones that aren't used today. And we're commanded to do those things. But some of those things come natural. We're all commanded to show mercy but for some it'll be natural. We're all commanded to give but for some it'll be more natural.

We're all commanded to teach but for some it'll be more natural. And so we have to be about the business of making disciples and teaching them all the things that you have learned. Now let me explain something to you because many people think that well you have to be really educated.

I really learned a valuable lesson of making disciples by a young girl. Actually she was only a year younger than me. Or two years. I was 23 at the time and she was about 21. But she had cerebral palsy.

And because she had cerebral palsy she had the mind of a six year old and was never going to get beyond that. So she ended up not being able to read. In a wheelchair. She couldn't walk. She was completely dependent on her mother and her mother was a single mom.

Worked many jobs. I actually got to meet her mom before I knew her mom was a believer. Her mom and I went to church together. And this girl Felicia and I went to church together because her mom would bring her.

But I met her mom when I was at university. Her mother used to work at the university that I went to. And I met her mother and Felicia. And I decided one time that I was out of work and I wanted to kind of give her mom a break.

And I said you know what? I'm going to come by the house for at least an hour each week. So you can kind of just get out of the house. Go food shopping. Relax. Food shopping is really difficult when you have to push a wheelchair and a cart.

And so you know I said I'm going to give you a break. I'm going to just read the scriptures with Felicia. And let you relax. And a lot of times her mother would just kind of sit in the other room and just be like oh I can relax.

And I thought I would be the discipler and I was going to teach Felicia something. And I thought that I would go in and do this. And what I ended up discovering and I was out of work at that time. And I didn't have prospects of work coming in.

And I was concerned rightly so. And what ended up happening was that she ended up teaching me about what faith is. Because she really lived by faith. I remember I would come in and she'd just say how's the job?

Did you find any jobs? You know Felicia I haven't been able to find anything. And she just had complete trust in God. She said I mean this is at a time where I was too proud to let anyone know that I had no money.

I eventually got kicked out of my apartment. I was actually paying a woman $50 a week to sleep on her couch with her family. And I wasn't eating. I didn't have food. God kept providing throughout that.

And Felicia kept saying to me that's okay Andrew. God's going to provide for you. You're going to see. And I didn't even tell her that I didn't have food. But she seemed to know. And she seemed to just always be like God's going to take care of you.

Now Felicia taught me where I thought I was teaching her. The reality of a discipling relationship is you learn as well. Now let me tell you something about Felicia. Felicia had a cousin. A very well known cousin.

Now I don't know some of these people. I don't know people that play in like you know the NFL and you know football and basketball. I don't know those players. I actually sat with my brother once at a place where I sat with some really well known quarterback.

And I had no clue. I'm sitting next to the guy. My brother and I. My brother knew who he was and they knew each other. But I had no idea who the guy is other than the fact that everyone wanted his autograph.

But I'm sitting with Felicia and I saw her cousin see Felicia. And there was a family gathering. And her cousin comes in. And here this guy comes in. It wasn't really that cold but he had a fur coat on.

He's got two girls on either side. And everyone's like, Oh! Oh Dion! I have no idea who the guy is. I'm sitting next to Felicia in a wheelchair. And this guy walks over and sits down and turns to her and just puts the girls aside.

Gets down on a knee and says, How you doing cousin Felicia? And Felicia just turns to him and says, Cousin Dion, when are you going to repent of your sinful ways? I see you on TV and what you're doing is not right before God.

I saw this guy that I don't think anyone's ever talked to this guy like this before. And he just melted in front of his cousin who had the mind of a six year old. Now I have heard rumor. I don't know him personally.

I've never heard his testimony. But the gentleman that was there is a man by the name of Dion Sanders. And from what I understand, he is a believer in Christ. I believe he's a believer in the Christ because of a young girl with the mind of a six year old who had the faith that can move mountains.

And that's the thing you're going to learn in a discipling relationship. Even if you think you're the discipler, there's going to be times that you're also the disciple-ee. You might learn things. And that's the thing.

Never think you have to be some teacher. Only your pastor can disciple. No. God has uniquely gifted each one of us so that we can be the ones to make disciples of the people that we come in contact with.

Don't ever be afraid. And the reality is, if you're discipling someone and you're teaching someone and they ask you a question and you don't know the answer to, do what I do. Say, I don't know. But I'm going to get back to you with an answer.