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WE FACE difficult
times. But don’t fear, because we are on the winning
side. Our weapons in battle are the blood of Jesus and
the word of testimony. But how do we consolidate the
gains?
I mentioned 8 July 1962 last week when I was talking
about how sometimes all we need is shorthand to get
people to think about the circumstances of Jesus’s work.
Many of you know that that is a significant date for
me because it was the day when I surrendered to Jesus
as Lord and Saviour at a street preaching station in
Goulburn Street in the city. In the same way, Peter
didn’t have to go into a lot of detail when he reminded
all his hearers about how the Lord had spoken both to
him and to Cornelius several days before. They all already
knew the basic facts.
I am glad that I made that decision at that time.
I had left it too long already. What I am not glad about
is that I was not adequately discipled, I was not adequately
consolidated into the church as the Body of Christ.
That is a great failing, because Jesus clearly taught
discipling, as we read in,
MT 28:16 Then the eleven
disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus
had told them to go. 17 When they saw him, they worshiped
him; but some doubted. 18 Then Jesus came to them and
said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been
given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all
nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and
of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them
to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely
I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
Part of the problem was faulty interpretation of that
verse. In the church I attended, they told us over and
over that we had to go.
In the end all the young people went, and I am
sad to report that not too many of them stayed in Christian
fellowship at all. I decided I wouldn’t tell anyone
to go unless I wanted him or her to go!
Even as in your English Bible, it strongly emphasises
making disciples. But the Greek is even stronger. In
the Greek, there is only one active verb, which is,
“make disciples”.
Literally, it says, “As you go, make disciples
of all people groups, baptising them and teaching them...”
well, that’s the bones of it. You fill in the details.
With the best will in the world, sometimes a translation
is not very accurate. That’s why we need new translations
every now and then.
The job of every Christian is to make disciples.
If that sounds like too great a task, just remember
what Jesus himself said,
“...surely I am with you always,
to the very end of the age.”
But what is
a disciple?
In the ancient Greek world, there were philosophers,
who went around teaching their point of view and gathering
apprentice philosophers. These apprentices lived with
their teacher, followed their teacher around as he taught,
discussed philosophical issues with their teacher, and
so on, until they learned to teach and to work just
like their teacher. The word mathitis (disciple) was
used to describe such apprentice philosophers.
Also, various teachers and Rabbis within Judaism
took on disciples in a very similar way. They adopted
the name used for the philosopher’s students when they
wanted a Greek word to describe their followers.
So a disciple is essentially someone who lives
so closely with his master that he learns to be just
like his master.
What Jesus teaches, then, is that each disciple
who walks closely with him, discovering him as Lord
and Master and Teacher, must take on board more disciples
who learn the same thing from the first disciples and
so on right throughout history.
So the pattern is that Jesus walked alongside
his heavenly Father, learning from him. The twelve walked
alongside Jesus, learning from him. In turn, they had
to take on disciples to walk alongside them and learn
from them and so, ad infinitum.
Jesus said, “Make disciples.”
I guess you have heard the story about the signals
that passed between a battalion of soldiers and their
headquarters.
The battalion had been pinned down for several
days, and they decided the only way out was to go forwards,
to launch a head–on attack on the enemy.
The Commanding Officer was pretty sure he could
do it, but he needed some more men to make up the rear
guard.
“Take a message!” he told a subordinate. “It’s
to Field Headquarters. Say, “Send reinforcements: we’re
going to advance!”
The corporal ran off to the communications section
and passed on his message. It was difficult because
of the shelling and rifle fire, but he shouted the message
out while the field telephone officer wrote it down
and sent it off.
But they were very mystified at Field Headquarters
when the message came through. It said, “Send three
and fourpence: we’re going to a dance!”
Of course, the telephone officer had been quite
sure he was sending a very important coded message!
We all know how easily a message gets distorted.
How do we make sure that the message doesn’t get distorted
as we pass on the life and ministry of Jesus?
Well, let’s see how the early Christians coped
with the problem.
In Acts 1, we read what happened just before
the Day of Pentecost:
In those days, Peter stood
up among the believers (a group numbering about a hundred
and twenty)...
Have you got that fixed in your mind? At the Day of
Pentecost, there were about 120 Christians in the world.
When we read about how Peter proclaimed Jesus
on the Day of Pentecost, we read,
41 Those who accepted his message
were baptized, and about three thousand were added to
their number that day.
So the church went in one day from 120 believers to
over 3100 believers.
Now do the maths. 120 established believers to
disciple 3 000 new disciples. That works out at around
25 new believers per church member — 25 who had believed,
25 who had been baptised, 25 who needed discipling.
So far this month we have averaged 19 attendees
each Sunday morning. Imagine if we had 475 new converts
to disciple — 25 each. How could we do it? How could
we ensure that each one got reasonable quality?
In small group work, they say that 8 – 10 participants
is quite enough. Twenty five would be undoable!
Yet they did it.
Luke, writing in Acts, reports,
AC 2:42 They devoted themselves
to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to
the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43 Everyone was filled with awe,
and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the
apostles. 44
All the believers were together and had everything in
common. 45
Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone
as he had need. 46
Every day they continued to meet together in the temple
courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together
with glad and sincere hearts, 47
praising God and enjoying the favour of all the people.
Most sermons I have heard about this passage
kind of peter out after verse 42. Mountains of words
have been heaped up about how the early Christians
...devoted themselves to the
apostles’ teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking
of bread and to prayer.
That’s good as far as it goes, but Luke only intended
this as a framework for us to hang our wider understanding
on.
WHEN YOU DON’T HAVE ALPHA VIDEOS
The first thing I want
us to see is that, if you don’t have the Alpha course videos, if you haven’t
trained in MasterLife or Christianity Explained, you can still do effective
discipling. In fact, the best place for discipling to
take place is in church.
But there is a big caveat, a big warning notice,
on that statement.
Be warned: most churches do not do their discipling
well, and that is because they are not geared to a discipling
lifestyle.
The Baptists at Fairfield did disciple me; it
was just erratic and inconsistent. That was partly because
of the struggles the church was going through at that
time.
For a long time, I felt let down, because they
didn’t have a course for me to do, or a special class
for new converts. And that means that I have also let
people down because I don’t really know much about this
discipling stuff. When I have looked at courses that
might have helped here, half have been for Castle Hill
Yuppies and half have been for beginning readers, but
no one had anything for people like us. Sometimes I
began trying to write a course for us, but I was never
really sure where to begin or what to put in it.
I didn’t think of this church as being a discipling
group in itself.
Two former attenders, Chris Akratos and Lee Reid,
have helped me see it more clearly.
Chris Akratos once passed on how she had helped
a workmate by following exactly the same process that
I had once followed with her. I can also vouch for the
fact that she had learned her lesson well, because,
when I was in a crisis, she did much the same for me,
when Chris Green had received the really threatening
diagnosis about her heart.
Lee phones every now and then, and tells me about
how much she values what we did when she was here, and
how much that helped her towards faith. She specially
talks about our sharing time. I don’t think she ever
mentions any of my sermons, though! She keeps talking
about how they need something like that in Mudgee, and
how she talks to the pastor about it regularly.
Any church that half tries will do some discipling
just by being there and doing what it needs to do.
The Jerusalem church had four basic regular activities.
It learnt from the apostles, it lived in fellowship,
it celebrated the Lord’s supper, and it prayed. Those
four are features of a healthy church. And a healthy
church will reproduce, and a reproducing church will
also disciple its children.
A woman at work recently stated that men are
attracted to a woman’s looks.
I added that a woman is more attracted to a man
by how she feels about him, and she agreed. But studies
also show that women do take a man’s looks into consideration,
but in a different way from how a man thinks about a
woman’s looks. For a woman, symmetry and balance is
vital, because such a man probably doesn’t have genetic
faults to pass on to children.
It’s like a church: if it is symmetrical, if
it has all four main factors in balance, it is likely
to have healthy children. Teaching, fellowship, worship
and prayer. In themselves, they build healthy members
.
DOING IT THOROUGHLY
In the latter verses of our passage, we read how thoroughly
the first Christians did their Christianity, and it
was their thoroughness, their commitment, which created
strong disciples among the new converts.
44 All the believers were together
and had everything in common. 45
Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone
as he had need. 46
Every day they continued to meet together in the temple
courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together
with glad and sincere hearts, 47
praising God and enjoying the favour of all the people.
We
share with one another — though we could be more consistent
about it. But we are not good at being together, we
don’t often push ourselves to the limits to serve our
brothers and sisters, and one of the greatest failings
of our church has been how we do not really spend a
lot of time together.
My father had only one sister, and they never
got on all that well. We saw my aunt and uncle occasionally,
but quite infrequently after I was in my teens.
On the other hand, my mother had four sisters
and a brother, and we saw quite a lot of them, particularly
my aunty Gwen, who lived at Fairfield at first, and
then moved to Baulkham Hills. But, as often as possible,
everyone came to family gatherings at my grandparents’
place.
That coming together built some pretty strong
bonds. There was no formal agenda when everyone met
— other than to have a meal together and talk — but
an awful lot was done there. It was at family gatherings
that we met new cousins, it was at family gatherings
that we learnt about what was happening to, say, Uncle
Lance’s brother’s family or Uncle Vincent’s ulcer. It
was all done there, when we came together. In that context
of fellowship, the life of the wider family took a life
of its own.
The more consistently we learn, the more compassionately
we fellowship, the more devotedly we worship, the more
fervently we pray, then the more we will all learn to
be like Jesus and the more readily we will pass that
on to others as they come in.
And it will be like in the glory days of the
first Pentecostal ingathering again. We will see
the words of scripture come true for us, too,
And the Lord added to their
number daily those who were being saved.
He will add to our number those who are being saved,
too.
THE RIGHT PIECE OF PAPER
There are some good discipling helps out there, and
it’s worth using them; but never let pieces of paper
displace the core values: learning, worship, fellowship
and prayer. There are many good pieces of paper, good
pieces containing valuable lesson or training materials.
But never forget the right piece of paper, which is
any page of your Bible.
SUMMARY
We may face troubles ahead of us, but Jesus knows and
has it under control. We may feel inadequate, but never
forget that we are on the winning side! We may be tongue-tied,
but it is the shed blood of Jesus and our testimony
to him which enable us to overcome the evil one.
God will bring others to us, and we will have
to disciple them. But he will equip and lead us, if
we are committed to it and do it thoroughly.
May he bless us all greatly,
AMEN |
