Discipleship (31.7.1985) — Nigel Lee

I think Dale Roton has been setting the pattern so far this week with stories about George so it's my turn. I remember we were in a prayer meeting together in Nepal in Kathmandu and it was one of those prayer meetings that didn't just stop at one because the transport was leaving for the Catholic Institute.

It went right through the night.

And we were tired and George was very tired. And we were praying from east to west. We prayed for Bangladesh, we prayed for India, Nepal, Pakistan, Afghanistan. And then George went to sleep sitting in the chair, mouth open, nose pointed up fast asleep.

We were really feeling, you know, we're disciples, this chap. So we carried on praying, you see, we prayed our way across Iran and into Turkey coming up through Greece into Bulgaria. George woke up Oh God, we pray for Afghanistan.

We all just fell about laughing and he said, what are you laughing at? We said, you, we've reached Bulgaria already. Oh, he said, take a break, let's take a break now. Go outside for some fresh air. He went upstairs to the room in the house that we were living in and said he was going to pray with his wife.

And he knelt down on the bed fully clothed shoes on got down like this. And he was still there when I woke him, 6 .30 next morning. My mind is full of junk like that. I've been involved with OM now, the first time I came was 1967 and I have enjoyed myself enormously.

And I sometimes sit and think I must be the happiest man even in OM. So many amusing, great things have happened over the years but I'm not going to talk about many more of them. I want to talk tonight about how a summer work day in Turkey can lead to a lifetime of service for God.

A Summer Campaign and the Call to Lifelong Discipleship

And I don't just mean staying on and on and on and never leaving OM. But how, as a result of a summer like this, do we become a world Christian a real disciple of Jesus Christ. He called us to take up the cross and to follow him not just carry it for a few meters and then put it down and go away but to keep going through life because the Lord is most interested this summer.

Not so much in what you do, but in who you are and who you are becoming. We've got so many gifts here amongst us. Musical gifts, administrative gifts, speaking gifts even footballing gifts. But whatever your gifts are and you're going to find some tremendously gifted people perhaps on your team.

God is far more interested in your character than in your gifts. Gifts are temporary. You may have great gifts in speaking or in counseling great gifts of faith, but they're all temporary. They last until the Lord comes back.

You won't do any evangelism in heaven. There won't be any bible teaching to be done in heaven but your character, who you really are, that continues on into eternity. Your gifts have been given to you so that your character can develop.

Because with every gift that you have built into it are the strains and the disciplines which will produce Christ-like character.

Because with every gift that you have received, you have also received the difficulties and all that you need so that Christ can win over you.

Jesus Sends Disciples Into Rejection, Mission, and Joy

I would like to read a passage from Luke. We'll begin in chapter 51.

It's a passage which begins with the bad Samaritans.

We won't read all those verses, but we will read many. Please, you follow in your own language version as I read in English to start with Luke 9, 51. As the time approached for him, that's Jesus, to be taken up to heaven.

Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem and he sent messengers on ahead. They went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him but the people there did not welcome him because he was heading for Jerusalem.

When the disciples, James and John, saw this, they asked Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them? But Jesus turned and rebuked them, and they went to another village as they were walking along the road, a man said to him I will follow you, wherever you go.

Jesus replied foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests. But the son of man has no place to lay his head. He said to another man follow me. But the man replied, Lord, first let me go and bury my father.

Jesus said to him, let the dead bury their own dead. But you go and proclaim the kingdom of God. Still another said, I will follow you, Lord. But first, let me go back and say goodbye to my family. Jesus replied no one who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.

After this the Lord appointed seventy, or as some versions have it, seventy-two others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go. He told them, the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.

Ask the Lord of the harvest therefore to send out workers into his harvest field. Go, I'm sending you out like lambs among wolves. Do not take a purse or bag or sandals and do not greet anyone on the road.

When you enter a house, first say, peace to this house. If a man of peace is there, your peace will rest on him. If not, it will return to you stay in that house eating and drinking, whatever they give for you for the worker deserves his wages.

Do not move around from house to house by the way, that's not a verse against door-to-door evangelism. Let's make that plain before we go on. And then from verse seventeen down to.

Down to twenty-four, we read in German but they came back full of joy and said to him Lord, even the evil spirits are subjugated in your name. But it came to them I saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning.

See, I have given you power to tread on snakes and scorpions and power over all the forces of the enemy and nothing will harm you. But do not rejoice that the spirits are subjugated to you. Rejoice, however, that your names are written in heaven.

At that time Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said I praise you, Father, Lord of Heaven and Earth because you have hidden the deepest and wisest of the wise and have revealed it to the unfaithful.

Yes, Father, so you will please all are handed over to me by my Father. And no one knows who the Son is but the Father. Nor who the Father is but the Son and who the Son wants to reveal. And he turned to his disciples and said to them alone Blessed are the eyes that see what you see.

For I tell you, many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see and have not seen. And hear what you hear and have not heard.

And then the passage continues with the good Samaritan we know the story very well.

Let us go through it very quickly.

First of all the disciples face rejection verses 51 to 56 and the Lord is going to teach us the right attitude to when we get rejected.

And the Lord wants to teach us what attitude we should have when we are not accepted, when we are rejected.

Then in verse 57 to 62 the Lord speaks to three men and he tells them what the costs of Christian discipleship actually are and then on the way he sends 70 or as some Bibles have it 72 of them out on a mission of mercy they are to go out preaching the gospel of peace to whoever they meet.

They are to go out preaching the gospel of peace to whoever they meet.

And then they discover that they are actually very successful.

They experience no rejection and are actually very successful and they do not see any Samaritans coming after them. They are really successful.

And then he begins to teach them the right attitude to rejection. Now he begins to teach them the right attitude to success. And as they continue to travel the Lord then breaks into prayer and praise.

And we see now not the cost of discipleship so much as the joys of discipleship that is from verse 21 down to 24. And then we meet the good Samaritan on his mission of mercy. Now put all those experiences together.

They make quite a summer campaign. Don't they. You get rejected from some of the places you go to you are successful in others. Sometimes you personally face the cost in your own emotions of discipleship the problems of where to sleep and what to eat and the homesickness that grows up inside you.

And then there are other times when your soul is just filled with a sense of the joy and the liberty of traveling with Christ.

And then there are other times when the soul is full of thanks and praise for all that the Lord has done for us.

Quite a summer campaign we want to draw out from this passage now lessons that are going to help us and help to commission us for the weeks ahead. Because these disciples don't just have the transforming experiences they also have the teaching of the Lord's word because just experience alone you can misunderstand without God's word.

But if you only have teaching and many of you have had years of teaching without practical experience then that's equally imbalanced isn't it.

And if they only have teachers and many of you have had years of teaching and have no practical experience then that's also not in balance.

And the result of all this is a deeper understanding of the Lord and a deeper walk with him now. That is what the Lord cares about most deeply in these coming weeks. And I want to ask you at the start are you really open to all that the Lord wants to do in you and for you during these days.

I'm going to ask by the end of this meeting for a very clear response to the Lord. I remember my own very first summer campaign. In some ways it was a bad time it wasn't as bad as my second summer but there are some things I can still remember that weren't so good.

But you know the end of it all was simply this that the Lord that summer way years back in the 60s he simply asked me a question.

But all of that led to the fact that in the end God asked me a question.

What are you going to do with the rest of your life. I can't remember very much about it but I can remember that question coming home to me very deeply. Nigel what are you going to do with the rest of your life now.

I believe the Lord will ask you the same question. All the plans that you have for the future do they come from him. Have you asked his permission for all the things that you want to do in the future that which you are going back to at the end of this summer campaign.

Let's hear from the Lord himself tonight. Go back to chapter 9 verse 51. They find as they come into this village there is no hospitality. Samaria is so different from Galilee.

Samaria is so different from Galilee.

And these Samaritans they moved them on they set the dogs on them and James and John were hurt and angry. The Lord had always been very kind to Samaritans. Why should they treat him like this. They were sensitive and they were cross they were disappointed.

And they were sons of thunder and they turned to the Lord and said shall we call down fire from heaven to burn this lot up. They had just been on the top of the mountain of transfiguration and seen Moses and Elijah.

And in those two men's experience fire had come down and burnt things up and they thought wouldn't it be good if we could just vaporize this lot with heavenly lasers. They shouldn't treat you like this Lord.

We don't like being rejected like this. We're hungry, we're fed up, we're tired and we don't like it. Now what happens if things don't work out as you expect. Do you remember that the Lord has brought you here all kinds of things may happen this summer that you didn't plan.

We used to have a leader in O .M. known as Greg Livingston and way back in the early days the international headquarters of O .M. was in a small grotty town in the north of England and Greg had arrived at Manchester airport and he made his way to this dingy house.

George was in his little room with his wife. Very small room and his son and George was sitting with all his papers spread out on the window ledge and there was a fan going in the room stirring up the hot air in there and the sun had just performed mightily in the potty and Greg Livingston came rushing up the stairs, a fresh arrival over from America and he pushed open the door of this room.

At that moment the little boy Benjamin had stood up. George's wife stepped back and caught the edge of the potty and the content shot up into the fan and the fan then sprayed everything all over George and all his papers on the window sill.

And it was one of those moments when Greg Livingston felt rejected. You think that's funny don't you. You've laughed at the poor misfortune of George and Drina and Benjamin not to say Greg Livingston.

Nice and safe laughing in this tent. Isn't it you've got to go out on the team on Friday. Far worse things can happen than be sprayed with the contents of poor Benjamin's potty. I've had three kids, I mean that's nothing.

Far worse things can happen. Excuse my brother Ray Anderson at the front. I just put this on the tape for posterity. You're going to have to leave the room Ray in a minute. What happens to your emotions when things do go suddenly, surprisingly wrong.

The Mind of Christ in Rejection and Conflict

One of the things God wants to do this summer is to change the way we think about ourselves and about life and about all that we do. Turn over to Philippians chapter 2. See something there from verse 5 of the mind of Christ.

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus. Your mind is to be trained to think like his. He was in the very nature of God. He did not consider equality with God something to be grasped or hung onto.

But he made himself nothing. He took the very nature of a servant being made in human likeness and being found in appearance as a man. He humbled himself and became obedient to death, even the death of the cross.

Do you see what Paul is saying. Because of Christ's mind he was willing to submit and to serve and to suffer. It's a human truth. Isn't it that we usually learn more from conflicts and from difficulty than we do from other times.

We learn more about our own nature and our own reactions. If there are difficulties on the team, if there are conflicts boiling up inside your own mind and heart it may well be because God wants to teach you something much more deeply at this time.

And so the Lord leads these disciples into a village where he knows full well they will be rejected. It wasn't a mistake, the Lord hadn't got his geography wrong. The Lord knew exactly what was going to happen.

Because in years to come these disciples are going to have to go and preach and minister lovingly in Samaria. And so we accept what comes, seeking to learn to think with the mind of Christ. And then from verse 57 to 62 the Lord goes on to talk about the cost of discipleship.

The Cost of Discipleship and Surrendering Personal Plans

Three men faced with a different aspect of discipleship. In verse 58 he talks about insecurity.

There are times when the Lord says to the disciples there are times when the Son of Man has less than foxes and the birds of the air.

In verse 59 he says. Your religious traditions they must change. You must be willing to be flexible. Some of the results of your background and your upbringing may have to change because loyalty to Jesus himself takes priority over everything else.

Some of your family ties are going to have to go. I can remember when I came out of college in England with a degree I was challenged by the Lord just to give it all back to him. You see the normal way to think.

Well because I've got a particular qualification therefore I must go on to use it. And for many people the Lord does lead them that way. But for me the Lord said no. You give it all back to me. I gave it to you in the first place.

All your plans you give them back to me. Let me rewrite them for you. Will you let the Lord decide your future. For some the risk of surrendering their whole life to Christ lies perhaps wrapped up with marriage afraid that they might not get the husband or the wife of their choosing.

So many people have come to OM conferences like this year after year with that same worry hidden away inside their hearts. The Lord's will you know is the best for you. Do you really doubt that. Do you doubt it.

Do you think it's the best for you. If God has his way with your life then somehow what happens to you will be second best. Is there one of you. One of you here that's going to stand up and say yes. I'm afraid I believe that God's will for my life will prove to be a shabby second best.

Cannot be cannot be. Some of you are clinging on to a career that you want and the Lord says you follow me. He said to these men here you follow me. You go proclaim the kingdom. You put your hand to the plow and then look back.

You're not fit for service in the kingdom of God. Now these three men they had parents they had family members too who put pressure on them. They had friends who went off and got jobs and became wealthy.

They could look at their friends apparently doing better in life than they were doing. Don't think that they faced in any way different pressures from what you faced. But what a joy it is just to give the whole of your life over to the Lord.

Let him write the script as he chooses. Let me say a word to the teens all still at school. What are you going to do with your life. Let me ask that same question to you. You're going to grow up. Perhaps maybe I don't know.

Perhaps work hard at school. Do so that you can have the joy of giving your best back to the Lord. Don't play around with the Christian life live for Christ 100 all that you can no matter how people may laugh at you at school no matter if serving Christ sometimes may even surprise or disappoint your parents who are on OM the Lord said you follow me.

You give yourself to proclaiming the kingdom. You follow me.

You give yourself to proclaiming the kingdom don't look back.

Trusting God in Practical Evangelism

So these disciples they set off in chapter 10 they go out on the campaign they learn all kinds of lessons. They're sent out in pairs for a start. There used to be days in OM conferences in the summer where we used to move the whole conference out for an afternoon's evangelism.

We all used to go down to downtown Brussels and get involved in doing something that we could evangelistically all divided up into pairs like the Lord sent them out here. That first conference I was telling you about.

I can remember getting up early one morning walking out with my bible outside the old factory that we were sleeping in and I was walking past a great big bush just quietly meditating on the scriptures.

And suddenly from out of the middle of this bush.

A northern Irish vicar came and said hallelujah.

I looked up and there deep inside this deadly nightshade bush was some fanatical little fella from Belfast. I thought he was a total nutcase you could hardly understand his English. And he got up even earlier than me.

And he got deep into this bush and he was singing and muttering and mumbling and reading verses and hallelujahing. He was having a sort of Irish quiet time. You know when the entire conference got divided up into pairs to go downtown Brussels I got him.

So we went to this street with our arm full of books. I don't know whether it was a Flemish speaking area or a French speaking area it didn't make any difference to him. I had a bit of schoolboy French and I went carefully down my side of the street and I didn't manage to sell one single book.

He went down the other side of the street and he got rid of everything. Yeah you're a surprise too. I was just by sort of smiling at the people and getting excited and talking in English. And I don't know they bought something to send him away.

Yeah I think I did. Well he became a real friend of mine in years to come. He's gone home to be with the Lord now. He died of cancer a couple of years ago. You know being sent out in pairs it binds you together even though at first you might be a long way apart.

And the Lord says as you go you pray that there may be more labourers. Leave more labourers behind you wherever you go. You know some of you have come from Christian homes. You've grown up with Christian parents.

You've heard the gospel ever since you were in the cradle and this kind of Luke 10 experience is vital for you to begin to take all the things that you know that you've got stored up in your mind in your memory and begin to put it into practice into reality to allow the Lord to begin to use you even though your knees may be knocking.

And before we all went out the Lord said now line up chaps get your money out, get your purses, your wallets out put them all on the table here before you go. I told you this was like OM so they all had to take their money out and pile the whole lot up on the table before they went out so they went with nothing.

Why did the Lord do that? I mean they went out without without a brass frank on them. They were going to have to trust God. Weren't they you see if you're going to go out and talk to other people about putting your faith in God then God maybe wants you to put your faith in Him as well so many times God brings afresh into our experience the reality of the gospel.

We are going out to preach. You're going to tell people about repentance this summer. Maybe the Lord is first going to speak to you about your repentance. Maybe you're going to have to say sorry to somebody on your team and get reconciled with them.

Are you going to tell people that God can be trusted? He is the saviour of our souls? And yet in the areas where it really counts, you're not trusting Him? How can you be like this? God wants reality in our lives.

If you talk to other people about giving their lives to Christ, remember that the Lord is standing beside you on that doorstep. He hears every word you say. Have you given Him your life? He wants these disciples to go out and talk about faith and about believing God in reality.

Different Forms of Faith and the Return of the Seventy-Two

You'll learn about different kinds of faith this summer. Turn over to chapter 11 of Hebrews. We read of those many characters, friends of God, who believed God. In verse 4 we meet Abel. We see an example of worshipping faith.

He was going to worship God in the way God wanted, by faith. And then in verse 7 we see Noah. Who by faith built an ark to save his family. We may call that exploit faith. By faith he actually accomplished something.

He did something that had not been done before. And then from verse 33 onwards. We read about deliverance faith. People who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, they shut the mouths of lions, they quenched the fury of the flames and escaped the edge of the sword, and so on.

People who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, they shut the mouths of lions, they quenched the fury of the flames and escaped the edge of the sword, and so on.

Women received their dead through resurrection.

Others, however, were martyred and did not accept deliverance,.

So that they could receive resurrection, which is better. People who escape the most incredible disasters by faith. Deliverance faith. And then from verse 36 we see something of suffering faith. Others faced jeers and flogging, others were chained and put in prison, they were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were put to death by the sword by faith.

Others faced jeers and flogging, others were chained and put in prison, they were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were put to death by the sword by faith. In chapter 10, Luke says, The Lord has said this to us in order to gather many practical experiences.

God's people, as they have obeyed his word, have learnt these same things in the centuries ever since. And then when we come to Luke chapter 10, verse 17. The seventy-two come back from the campaign.

It's great fun when you see people coming back after their summer months. Some are thinner, some are fatter. Most look tired. A lot of them are sunburned. And I just stand quietly off to one side, and I watch people who haven't seen each other, you know, for a whole three weeks, meeting each other.

Oh, that's great! These disciples, they came back thrilled with what God had done. God has done for us on our little team just exactly what he was doing for everybody in the big conference. He's answered prayer.

We've seen breakthrough after breakthrough in the villages.

He's answered prayer. We've seen breakthrough after breakthrough in the villages.

How did the Lord react? He listened to all their stories. He nodded. There was a sparkle in his eye. And then he stopped them with a devastating sentence. All this glow of victory was met by a simple, quiet warning from Christ.

Rejoicing in Heaven Rather Than in Ministry Success

You know, I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Satan, who had become exalted in his own pride, was eventually cast out of heaven. Satan, who began to think of his own power and his own glory and his own accomplishments.

You and I face colossal spiritual enemies.

You and I face colossal spiritual enemies.

Far more clever than all of us put together. And we are to rejoice, not in our power and our accomplishments, but in the Lord Jesus Christ. Don't rejoice that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.

How long did it take to write your name? I bet most of you could write your name, probably, apart from the Finns, in under two seconds. And the Lord has written your name down in heaven. He does it very quickly.

We need to distinguish in the Christian life between those things the Lord does quickly and those things that he takes a long time to do. He wants to deal with our conscience quickly. He wants to forgive sin quickly.

He does not want you lingering on with any sense of guilt, with an unclean conscience, while you try to do the work of the Lord. When the old Jew brought his sacrifice to the altar at the temple or the tabernacle, blood was shed, and immediately, without waiting, that priest then carried the blood right inside the tabernacle, in, in, in, as far as he could go towards the presence of God.

The person did not have to wait around outside with a smudgy sort of conscience for a couple of weeks. Because the blood has been shed, your conscience may be clean. You are declared forgiven. But in, in your character, God will take a long time to forgive you.

But in your character, God will take time.

Your character will not change. But you can be secure in your relationship to him. We can start and end every day as clean as it is possible for a Christian to be. You may still be battling with things in your character.

You may still be suffering you through periods of immaturity. But you, you can be accepted and embraced in the family of God, made clean by the blood of the Lamb at a stroke, at a moment. The attitude to success.

The Lord says, you, you hang on to those. Anchor things that your names are written by grace, by the God's mercy, by faith, in his book in heaven. And then from verse 21 we see something of the Lord rejoicing in the joys of discipleship.

Christ’s Joy, God’s Sovereignty, and Evangelistic Dependence

The Lord is on his way to the cross. Going up to Jerusalem. There to be nailed with those Roman spikes to a splintery bit of wood. He's been rejected from a village. He's going to, going to his death.

And he's rejoicing and praising God as he goes. Now what is he rejoicing about? He says first of all that the Father is the Lord of heaven and earth. Even the temporary hardships that you go through, they are all, every single one of them, under the control of God.

You will see your team tomorrow. What a, what an interesting experience that will be. Finally look at the people that you're going to spend the next few weeks with. I mean for one or two of you, you may actually finish up spending the rest of your life with them.

But I don't want to go on about that too much. We believe God is in control of putting these teams together. We don't go around the back of the building and take all the names and throw them up into the air and let them flutter down into different boxes.

We have asked God to be in charge of every team. And we may want to really tonight take hold by faith of the fact that God is in control. Even temporary hardships to do with the weather, to do with the vehicle where you stay, the rejection that you may meet, it's all under the control of God.

Jesus was rejoicing that his Father was Lord of heaven and earth. And we can rejoice too in the Son's right to introduce people to the Father. No one knows who the Son is except the Father. And no one knows who the Father is except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him.

You cannot convict anyone of sin. You never will. I worked during the winter months a great deal as an evangelist. I have never ever in my entire life convicted anyone personally of sin. If I had the power to convict people of sin, I would be a terrible man to live with.

Can you imagine if I go... The conviction of sin would come all over them. My wife would have a miserable time. God doesn't give me that right. He convicts of sin. When the time is right. Because He knows both sides of the story.

He convicts of sin gently. Wisely. He knows all the case that can be made for the defense. You would be impatient, unkind and cruel. So our evangelism is a cooperative effort with God. Your job is to preach, to pray, to proclaim, to witness, to distribute literature and His job is to convict of sin.

Your job is to preach, to pray, to proclaim, to witness, to distribute literature and His job is to convict of sin. And then when you turn to a young man and say, only in the eyes to see what you see.

Prophets and kings would give their right arm for the things you take so lightly.

King David and the prophet Isaiah. They would give a lot for the things you take so lightly. Don't sing these songs lightly.

Don't read of the glory of the Lord in scripture lightly.

Don't read of the glory of the Lord in scripture lightly.

When God trains you during these next months,.

He wants you to have a heavenly perspective.

He wants you to learn to feed on these things. Jesus himself, traveling to Jerusalem, was rejoicing in these eternal truths. Then you come to the parable of the Good Samaritan, which we didn't read. You've launched out in the same way.

The Good Samaritan’s Risks, Barriers, and Costly Compassion

This Good Samaritan, he took risks, didn't he? The robbers could still be around. The priest and the Levite, they hurried on by. But the Samaritan was willing to take a risk. Are you? Will you take risks this summer to reach people for Christ?