Dynamic Discipleship VII, the Last Word On Discipleship

2 Timothy is the scripture for tonight, and the title of tonight's message is The Last Word on Discipling. It's not that I know what it is, but it's going to be mine for this series, I can tell you that. 2 Timothy, chapter 2. Are we ready? And you then, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses, and trust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others. Endure hardship with us like a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No one serving as a soldier gets involved in civilian affairs. He wants to please his commanding officer. Similarly, if anyone competes as an athlete, he does not receive the victor's crown unless he competes according to the rules. The hard-working farmer should be the first to receive a share of the crops. Reflect on what I'm saying, for the Lord will give you insight into all this. Father, I pray now for us to receive by your Holy Spirit tonight just exactly what each one of us need to take that next step in our journey of faith. And I pray, Lord, that you'd meet us tonight and further galvanize us in the vision of building disciples as you've commanded us. In Jesus' name. I hope tonight to be able to kind of wrap up our thoughts of the last seven weeks on discipleship. And I happen to know that because of Praise Night and the night before, the week before that was our baptism, and so we've gotten kind of interrupted here. And I'm praying that we'll be able to tie this together and leave you with some very specific, poignant challenges and opportunities that you can further study and pursue following tonight's message. I hope we've made clear, discipling isn't something that's just for an elite few in the body of Christ. When I first started this series, I started thinking about some analogies. To me, being a disciple is a whole other degree of walking after Jesus Christ. I kind of analogized it to what I think is a fair simile about the difference between a citizen and a patriot. Let's put that up. A citizen and a patriot. Let's show the whole thing. An American is a citizen of the United States of America, rather, and a patriot is a person who loves, supports, and defends his country and its interests with devotion. That's out of the dictionary. See the difference? Now, how many of us are citizens? All of us who were born and so on, or naturalized? How many of us are patriots? Probably not all of us, and certainly not all of us in our culture, right? Now, let's take a look at what it means to be the difference between a disciple and just a believer. All right? Let's put that one up. A believer is a citizen of the kingdom of God, but a disciple is a person who loves, supports, serves, and shares his Lord and his interests with devotion. Now, if you're a believer in Jesus, you're a member of the kingdom of God, if you're trusting in Christ for your personal salvation. How many of you by that definition, and don't put your hand up, know that there's something that maybe needs to be tuned up in your life? How many of you are disciples by that definition? Are you a person who loves, serves, and shares your Lord and his interests with devotion? That means to be disciplined and passionate about the things that matter to him. There's a difference, folks. There's lots of people, I think, floating around in churches today who are believers, but not disciples in the true sense of the word. How many believe that? And I think that that's a danger that we all face, and as our church grows, it's going to be an increasing challenge for us. Now, discipling, I want to kind of take the mythology out of it. I want to make it a little easier to understand. We have another overhead that talks about different parallels. In sports, who do we have that help athletes become better? Coaches, all right? Do we have that? Who do we have in education to help students learn? Teachers or mentors. In business, we have apprentices. In medicine, we have interns. And in the church, we have believers who are disciples. It's the same idea, people helping others to go on and become all they could be. An interesting statistic, the word Christian appears three times in the New Testament. The word for disciple appears 200 and, what is it, 69 times. Where do you think the emphasis was if the Holy Spirit was inspiring it? Okay, it's okay to say something back to me. I'm a little hard of hearing that. Thank you. Disciple. The New Testament is clearly saying, disciple, disciple, disciple. Not just believe, believe, believe, but become a disciple, grow as a disciple. And the problem, I think, is that so many people have gotten afraid because of abuses of other decades, or they just don't understand it, or they figure, well, no one else really knows what... And Jesus said one thing when he left this earth. He said, go and make Christians. No, he didn't. What did he say? Disciples out of all the nations. And that's what our vision is as a church. Our vision, let me read it to you, is to raise up a local body of disciples of Jesus Christ who will be loved, nurtured, and equipped to minister to God, to one another, and to the last of the world, and the power of the Holy Spirit. That's our vision statement. There it is. Isn't that a good vision statement? I think it says what we really believe in our church, and that's what we're all about doing. Even though we don't do it perfectly, that's what we're here to do. Now, folks, the reason why we launched into this series eight weeks ago was very apparent to me, but maybe it wasn't to you. And right now, I want to demonstrate to you why it's so important that we get a hold of this before we go on any further this summer. God is doing what he said. He is sending us people. Now, get ready. I love to do this. I've been waiting to do this. God, I'm sorry you're not here to see it. I want all of you people in this section now to put your Bibles down, put your books off your lap, and I want all of you people in this section only to get up out of your chairs. You don't have to if you're in a bad mood, but I'd like you all to come up here on the platform, please, all of you. Everyone in just this section. Okay? Thank you very much. And find somewhere on the steps is okay if you can't all fit in the platform. And I need the first two rows right here as well to cooperate with a smile. All right? Now, come forward a little bit. There's enough room. All right, come. Move forward. Tim, move forward, please, so there's not... You don't have to be jammed in the back. Slide all the way out here. Let me have a few of you on the steps now. Come on down the steps, please. Just a few of you. That's good right there. Let's give them a hand for their cooperative spirit. All right? There might be another... I think we're one more row short. This row right here. Quickly, just come up on the steps. All right? Do you feel safe in the back and the sides? Do you feel safe? I want the two brothers right back here. No, I'm just kidding. Thank you so much for cooperating. Now, folks, why am I doing this? Because I want you to know something. On this platform right now are the number of people who have graduated from our Discovering the Way class in June and are signed up or signed up to start in July. All right? We had 110 people graduate from Discovering the Way or sign up for this July class. So in these two months, we've added 110 people to the life of our church. Now, let's give the Lord a hand for that. All right? We praise you, Father. Thank you, Lord. And understand, it's not just attenders. These are people who've gone through Discovering the Way and gotten that instruction. And I just look at those... These aren't the people, you understand. We don't have a new... But I wanted you to see. I didn't know any other way to tell you. Brother, you feel strange, right? By himself. But go surround this man right now. You're free. Go ahead and down. Thanks so much for cooperating. Go ahead. 110 people, folks. Isn't that amazing? Now, what's going to happen to them? They're going to need disciples. They're going to need care for, and they're going to need love. And I don't know any better way to demonstrate that visibly than to just help you to see it like that. Some of them represent mature believers who can disciple others. Some of them are brand new Christians that need disciples. Now, I don't know about you, but I take that so seriously. I consider it a charge from God. I do. To care for the ones the Lord is sending us. And I've come up with a way of helping you to remember what discipling is all about. It's a little acronym. You may want to write it down in the back of something or in your Bible fly page or something, OK? I don't have a handout. I just have to make something up. Here it is. Take one of the gray sheets, if you'd like. What does it mean to disciple someone? Well, it simply has to do with growing. What does it mean to disciple? It means that you grow in Jesus Christ or help someone to grow. And by the way, how many people would say when you help someone to grow, you grow? I've discovered that's the truth. If I help someone, I benefit. Number one, to disciple means to grow. And the first letter is G for grace, 2 Timothy 2.2. You then, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Jesus Christ. Dear ones, first of all, discipling means grace. It means grace being released in your life. And can I say to you, count yourself happy tonight that you've been chosen amidst all the people on the face of the earth. You've been chosen to be a disciple of Jesus. You've been chosen. Out of all the stuff that's happening in the remotest parts of the earth, God put his hand out and said, I want you to be a disciple. I want you to follow after me. And the grace of God, dear ones, here is talking. Paul writes to Timothy, who is his disciple, and he says, be strong in the grace. Literally, in the original language, it means keep on being empowered. Keep on being strengthened is what that means. In the grace of Jesus Christ, and it is best translated, keep on being clothed. As Romans 13, 14 says, put on Jesus Christ. Keep on putting him on the grace of Jesus Christ. Be very careful here. Discipling is not becoming like another person. Discipling is becoming, being discipled is becoming like Jesus Christ. Do you all see that? The error, really, of most discipling efforts is that I find someone I really like, and I try to be like them. And that's not what God says. He's saying here, look at it. Be strong in the grace that's in Christ Jesus. That's an important point. If you lose that, you're vulnerable, susceptible to being misled, to becoming like another person. God never intended for you to be a clone. All right? Are we all square on that? Grace of Jesus Christ is what this is about. Then secondly, discipleship is about relationship, our relationship. You then, my son. Discipling is nothing more or less than a relationship. Being a friend, being so close that you literally feel sometimes like a son or a daughter, a brother or sister to another person. Dear ones, this isn't any big mystery. It's not. It is not a mystery. It's very clear in the Bible what God was talking about when he said to be discipled. I think too often we kind of try to make this complicated. For me, it was as simple as a young man who was my age, wasn't older. He came to me and he said, he noticed that I had a desire to understand more about God. And he came to me one day and he said, if you like, I'll spend time with you in the Bible. That's what he said. And we built a friendship not around common interest really, not around having the same other friends, not being in the same fraternity. We've developed a friendship just around the fact that he was going to help me know more about Jesus Christ. I just want to suggest to you, if you don't know where to start, start right where you are. Find someone that you can look to and say, help me to grow. And I'm going to get real specific about that in a moment. Notice here that Paul says, Timothy, my son. Now, I want you to turn your Bibles, flip back to Acts chapter 16. I just discovered this when I was studying today and I hadn't seen it before. I think it's worth noting. If you don't have a Bible, we have the overhead for that, I think. Isn't it Acts 16? You may have thought that Paul led Timothy to the Lord, but he didn't. Look at this. Acts 16, are you there? Paul came to Derbe and then to Lystra where a disciple named Timothy lived. Look at that. He was already a disciple, whose mother was a Jewess and a believer, but whose father was a Greek. That's a whole sermon right there. The brothers of Lystra and Iconium spoke well of him. Paul wanted to take him along on the journey, so he circumcised him because of the Jews who lived in that area, for they all knew that his father was a Greek. And there's a case, that's another whole sermon about where tradition entered in and being sensitive to what people thought. Do you think that, look at that, let me just stop there. Do you see what happened there? Paul literally made Timothy go through the rite of circumcision so as to not confuse and offend other believers. We talk about being all things to all men. We talk about being sensitive to those who don't understand us. That's exactly what was happening here. And as they traveled from town to town, they delivered the decisions reached by the apostles and elders in Jerusalem for the people to obey. Notice, folks, Paul took Timothy on. Paul saw this man and said, I want to pour my life into you. Come along with me. Travel with me. Now, I could ask these people to come back up again, but I don't think I'm going to do that. So I might ask this group over here to come up. No, I won't. But look around you. There may be someone seated next to you right now who's longing for someone to say, come and travel with me. Come and discover how I walk with Christ. Can I assure you that in our church right now, there's a lot of people who are new in the Lord. Will we disciple them, or will we kind of like hope that maybe they get along OK? And in the end of tonight's message, I'm going to tell you exactly how you can get connected with someone. Paul loved him so much. He just, he was attracted to Timothy. And later on in Philippians, if you were reading in our victory plan this week, Paul says about Timothy, he says these words. I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon. I have no one else like him who takes a genuine interest in your welfare. Verse 22, but you know that Timothy has proved himself because as a son with his father, he has served with me in the work of the gospel. Do you see that Timothy and Paul were bonded so closely that he felt father-son-ish with that man? Now, how many home group leaders here tonight feel that way about some of your people? Brother to brother, literally, not just the word, or father to son. How many of you women here tonight feel like you have a daughter in the Lord, or a mother in the Lord? What a powerful state. Just a while back, it's been a year now that I had a group of men that I was meeting with in kind of a discipling way, and we were growing together and appreciating each other. I was not surprised when I got a letter from one of the men who said this. He said, this is simply to say thanks for initiating and leading our Saturday morning group. It came just prior to a period when I was making some critical decisions about career and lifestyle, and the input provided will help me make better decisions for my life. Of all the things I've been involved in, this has done the most to change the course of my life. We had gone on a retreat at the end of our time. He said, I felt that the retreat we went on was really productive. Men seem to have a tough time making friends, and I'm no exception. Since coming to Pittsburgh, I haven't really developed any meaningful friendships with any men. Most of our couples' friends are linked by the wives' relationship. That may be changing for me based on some relationships begun in this Saturday morning group. See, discipling is just building relationships in Christ with the focus of growing in him. Powerful stuff. Number three, to be discipled, to grow, is first of all in the grace of Jesus, second, in a relationship, and thirdly, in an expression of outreach. Most discipling relationships begin to fumble or get complicated or get into trouble because they're not looking outward. Dear ones, listen carefully. Jesus very clearly took the disciples to him and very clearly rolled them over and rolled them out. Matthew chapter 10, very clearly, wasn't long into his ministry that Jesus encountered those disciples and said, hey, it's time for you men to get out there and experience what we've been talking about. I'll just read it for you. It says, then Jesus sent the 12 out with the following instructions. And then he just led them forth. I have to say to you, Paul discipled Timothy by going out. One of the things you need to realize as a disciple is that God's not called you just to get more mature. He's called you for a mission. And in a discipling relationship, even if the mission is simply to multiply the group, you understand what I'm saying? Even if the mission is that I disciple you, Rich, so you can disciple someone else, that outward focus is absolutely essential to keep the group from eating itself up. What does that mean? Well, I mean, just home group leaders, it means that there needs to be one in your group that you're pouring into and shaping so that he can do the same to another. It means ministry leaders, that we don't just go do it ourselves. We take someone with them. We train them up, raise them up so that they can do the same. Folks, please hear me. We can keep filling up this platform with people. But until some of us out here get a hold of the vision of training others up, raising them up, we're not going to make this up. You know what I feel like? Let me tell you what I'm feeling like right now. I'm feeling like you're hearing me, but you're not really hearing me. I feel like I'm like trying my best to get through the maze, the grid of confusion and frustration and misunderstanding, and it's not making it. Somehow, I don't know how to impart it any other way. The word of God is so full in this thing, church. And I'll tell you, I told the elders last night, God has decided that this church is placed here to help people to grow and keep on impacting the North Hills. And the only way it's going to happen is grassroots. And you can do it. It's not that complicated, but you have to hear what I'm saying. You have to realize that the key is getting very specific. Just look at the person next to you or behind you. They might be the very person that God would use in your life, or he would use you in their life to shape them up, disciple them to grow them up. The last thing that discipling involves, it's the grace of God. It's a relationship. It's an outreach. And number four, it's the word. Be very careful when discipling in any fashion starts talking about a particular emphasis. I think a key is staying in the word, staying in the word of God. Notice what he says in 2 Timothy 2.2. Things you heard me say, my teaching. Paul didn't have a Bible. We have his word. And I have to say, every discipling relationship I've been involved in, the word has been central. Sometimes we'll use a book to bring a focus to a specific part of it, but it's always supplemented by the word of God. How many believe the word will change people when other stuff just won't? I mean, the word will do it. The word needs to get in there and stir things up. And I want to suggest to you that it's very achievable for us to do a book study, to find a guidebook to help us through. And I've suggested some different books before. Hebrews 4.12 says that the word of God is sharp like a two-edged sword, and it cuts through. Where the disciplines of a beautiful woman won't, the word of God will. Or when the secret kingdom won't, the word of God will. And so what does it mean to disciple? It means that you put on the grace of Jesus. You build a relationship. You have an expression of outreach involved in that, even if it's just to multiply the group, multiply that discipling relationship. And number four, the word is in there. Now, how many of you have done what I'm talking about? Let me see your hand. You've done it. How many have not yet done this? You're either new or you've never heard about it before. How many have not yet done this? Let me see your hand. All right, quite a few of you. Now, I didn't ask how many are doing it now. I said have done it, because how many of you who did it are not doing it now? All right, that's the issue. That's the issue. I need the ones who've done it and aren't doing it now to help the ones who aren't or haven't done it. And we can talk about revival. We can talk about bringing Reiner Bonnke or anybody else in to bring revival. Revival is gonna come when Christians learn how to turn and face another Christian or another non-Christian. It's gonna come from the grassroots. It always does, folks. What can we do? Let me end with this quickly. What can we do? Very simple. You say, well, what should I do? If I really wanna do this here, number one, starting a process of discipling. That's this overhead, all right? All right, number one, there's four or five ways. Number one, you can start by the Growing in Christ class. And there you will get some discipling from an upfront. But listen, folks, I have them right here in my hand somewhere, I have the names of 65 individuals, many of whom are here tonight who would say to you, if you wanna be discipled, go to Growing in Christ and I'll be there to help you to grow. I'll make a contact with you. I'll help you to grow. Another place you can enter is Discovering the Way. I'd like all of our Discovering the Way teachers who are here tonight to stand. If you've taught Discovering the Way, Chris, I see, and Dave Lloyd is here. Anyone, other teachers, Mack? All right, I want Jim and Nancy Franks to stand. They've been a pastoral couple. Any other pastoral couples that have been in Discovering the Way? Jack and Kathy Hall are here. Come on, stand up. See? Okay, Dolph Marche, Joan. These people are there to help plug into you. And what I'm gonna tell you on that same score is we've got people who are gonna come alongside of them. Thank you, you can be seated. And they're gonna say to you, I'm available to help to build a relationship in the word of God. Number three, the third entry point is home group involvement. Your home group leader is trained to help you to grow in Christ. And we are working diligently right now to try to build that multiplying discipling network. It's not easy because folks were pulled in so many directions. Do you ever feel like, you know, if you get yanked one more direction, you're just gonna separate at the seams? But we are more purposeful about this because we know the only way to grow in the future meaningfully is for one home group leader to disciple a person in his group who will then do it again to another and so on and so on. And a fourth way is just through personal invitation. In other words, you invite someone or someone invites you. Those are four ways to do it. Once you've made that entry point, number two, sit down and talk about a prescribed time. I've already told you three months is about the right period of time to make a commitment to be discipled. Three to six months. That's all the longer I, first time, that's all the longer I would say. I'm not saying give me 10 years, brother, and I'll really make a job on it. Three to six months. And once you've made a time commitment, you have a relationship, it can be you and three or four guys. It can be one, it can be three, whatever, five. Once you've done that, and finally, identify what you're gonna study together and start doing it. You say, well, I wanna wait till the fall. Why? Well, because I'm going on vacation. I just wanna say to you, the devil loves that word, doesn't he? What's his favorite word? Wait, wait. That's what he's telling every unsafe person in the world right now. Wait. But I'm ready to say tonight that the future of our church, ladies, please hear me, ladies, some of you are the best at this discipline. You women are the best at it because you build relationships and you start things going. We need to have scores and scores of women's group discipline. One and one and one and small group. And one of the things, men, I'm gonna tell you right now that I'm praying about and will pray fervently about this next month is some more men's discipline groups in the fall because I see the need for it. We have more men now who are saying, I wanna grow than we've ever had before. And I wanna see that, and I believe you wanna too. Let's stand together, shall we? Lord, it's a challenge to all of us tonight to recognize that we're leaving this subject, but that we'll never leave this summons. It's always gonna be there, Lord. And Father, we can talk and read and think and know the words, but Lord, it's a matter of doing it. And I pray right now just for the grace, just for the grace, Lord, be a discipling church where men and women are growing in the image of Jesus Christ and his likeness and his power and his gifts.