Seeing Jesus: The Priority of Discipleship

Well, good morning. Really good to see you guys. Glad to hear you guys talking and connecting.

And we'll have more chance to do that afterwards at the after party, which I'm excited about. But in the interim, you can open up your Bibles to Matthew chapter 12. We've been going through Matthew, finishing up chapter 12 this morning, and then we're going to put a pause on this series. I kind of like wanted to keep going, but I think it's time to take a break. But going into Matthew 13, we'll be getting into the parables.

And so if you think it's been weird up to this point, just you wait, it's going to get even weirder in a great way. I mean, Jesus has like so much wisdom in these parables. So I'm looking forward to that. We'll probably get to that later in the summer. But yeah, we're going to go into another series coming up here next week, but we're going to finish out Matthew 12 this morning.

And if you've been following along through this chapter, you know that, I mean, the theme, the major focus of chapter 12 has been Jesus just wrangling with the Pharisees. The Pharisees are giving him all kinds of trouble. And I mean, Jesus is not a pushover, right? He doesn't argue and he doesn't fight, but he's not a pushover. He takes a firm stance and he keeps asserting over and over again.

I mean, in chapter 12 and beyond, the same thing he says in verse 28, which is that the kingdom of God has come among you. The kingdom of God has come upon you. He's arguing this, I mean, he is, it's evidenced by his life and his ministry that God's kingdom, the thing that the Pharisees were anticipating and hoping for throughout their history, that it's happening now. God is here among them. But the Pharisees just don't want to see it. And I think in the end, it's a want.

It's not that they can't. They just don't want to see it. They are just dead set against Jesus. And maybe at this point, coming along in this series, you're sort of like sick of the Pharisees. And maybe you think that, maybe because you think they aren't really that relevant to us because it's like an ancient religious political party and like, come on. But I really think that the Pharisees, their problem is our problem.

Many of their problems are our problems. And not just because it's easy for us to slip into the kind of self-important and judgmental attitudes that they're kind of known for. I mean, we even use that phrase now, Pharisaical, outside of religious context to talk about somebody who's judgmental and somebody who's like, looks down on other people, right? Somebody who's self-righteous.

So not merely because of that, but also like, I think they're relevant because all of us, even those who couldn't hang out with the Pharisees and who would be judged by them, we can all miss Jesus, even as we're looking for him. We all have the capacity to not really perceive that the kingdom of God has come among us, even as we really intend to find that. We can miss Jesus's kingdom invitation, even though it's staring us in the face. It's been a little while.

Again, I appreciate those of you who have checked in with me, but I haven't quoted Dallas Willard for a while. But Dallas Willard talks about this. This is what he calls the divine conspiracy in his book, The Divine Conspiracy.

Here's a little quote. He says, In the gloom, a light glimmers and glows. We've received an invitation, a pilgrimage into the life and the heart of God. A door of welcome seems to open to everyone without exception. No person or circumstance other than our own decision can keep us away. Whoever so will may come. The major problem with the invitation now is precisely over-familiarity. Familiarity brings unfamiliarity, unsuspected unfamiliarity, and then contempt.

People think they've heard the invitation, and they think that they've accepted it or rejected it, but they've not. The difficulty today is to hear it at all. I mean, the fact that the message of Jesus comes to us in the way that it does. I mean, it's so clear. It's so open. Jesus saying, the kingdom is coming upon you. And we think, oh, okay, so I'm going to respond to the kingdom and I'm going to accept it. I'm going to enter into the kingdom, right?

And when we think that we know that we've done these things, but I think a lot of this, there's a lot of, it's easy for us to miss it. It's easy for us to miss what Jesus is really saying. and to think he's saying something else entirely. The Pharisees just couldn't do it. They couldn't accept what Jesus was saying. They couldn't turn to King Jesus, like the king that they had anticipated through the line of David, through the line of Judah.

They couldn't turn to him as the Messiah because they couldn't see how this man could possibly measure up to their expectation. So their expectations of what the Messiah was going to be like, what was keeping them out of seeing him right in front of them. And it was those expectations that kept them from seeing who Jesus was. They couldn't accept that Jesus, that in Jesus, the kingdom had come among them. And I think many of us also don't realize what we've been invited into in Jesus.

And so we don't enter in. We don't enter in.

So what is it that we've been invited into? As I think Jesus makes clear in the rest of chapter 12, we've been invited to be his disciples. The life of faith, the life of entering into the kingdom, the life of enjoying this fullness, like comes through receiving the call to be his disciples. Okay, so let's get in there into chapter 12, okay? Picking up in verse 38. Then some of the scribes and the Pharisees said to him, teacher,

we want to see a sign from you. And he answered them, an evil and adulterous generation demands a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was in the belly of a huge fish three days and three nights, so the son of man will be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights. The men of Nineveh will stand up against, at the judgment with this generation to condemn it because they repented at Jonah's preaching.

And look, something greater than Jonah is here. The queen of the south will rise up in judgment at the judgment with this generation and condemn it because she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon. And look, something greater than Solomon is here. So a group of Pharisees have come to Jesus. They are still skeptical. That's just kind of the way they are. But they think, this smaller group thinks, well, if only we had a sign, then maybe we'd believe.

Which is just kind of hilarious because literally Jesus is, throughout this narrative, constantly healing people, constantly casting out demons, constantly doing really miraculous stuff. And they say, well, but we need a sign. And it's like, well, but isn't this enough?

They come to him and they think maybe if he does something even greater, like we can't even imagine what the sign would be, but something even bigger than all the stuff you've already been doing, Jesus, then maybe we would believe. But Jesus sees right through it. And he tells them flat out, again, this is Jesus, like not harsh, not argumentative, but very firm. I mean, just saying, no, no, this is what it's going to be. He says, no sign will be given to you except the sign of the prophet Jonah.

Who was in the belly of a fish three days. So Jesus is making a really direct and obvious reference to Jonah, the prophet. There's a book in the Old Testament called the Book of Jonah. It's his story. And Jonah is fascinating because God told Jonah to go to Nineveh. Nineveh was a major city in the Assyrian Empire. The Assyrian Empire was just like the historic enemy of Israel.

They did not get along. And so, but God tells Jonah to go to Nineveh and to preach to them, to preach and offer repentance to them. And Jonah, sorry, Jonah didn't want to go. The story's kind of crazy. The first couple of chapters kind of recounted, but eventually Jonah does end up in Nineveh, despite the fact that he doesn't want to go and to preach repentance to these people. But he does get to Nineveh. He gets thrown into the sea, and a giant fish swallows

him up. It's not a whale. It's a fish. I don't know the difference between those, but something swimming in the ocean swallows him up. Brings him to Nineveh, spits him out on the shores of Nineveh. And Jonah kind of half-heartedly, I mean, it's really in the story. He really is just kind of like doing it really formulaically. He walks through this city of Nineveh. It takes him three days. And he says, unless you repent in 40 days, God's going to destroy the city.

Like really not putting his back into it. And then what happens is that the people are like, oh, my gosh, that sounds terrible. And they repent in sackcloth and ashes. This wave of repentance sweeps through Nineveh, and God ends up relenting against destroying the city. But if you think about the sign of Jonah, which Jesus says is that he was in the fish for three days, it's an interesting sign. It's actually, it's kind of a lame sign, to be honest, which is sort of the point.

In fact, if you read Jonah, as he goes in and preaches, it's not clear that anyone in Nineveh actually saw him come out of the fish. I mean, sure, he probably smelled pretty bad, but it's not clear that they saw him come out and that that was not in any way contributing to their responsiveness to his message. So yeah, I mean, there was a sign, the sign of Jonah, he got spit up in the fish, but that really didn't contribute to the repentance.

So Jesus says he's going to likewise give the sign of Jonah where he's going to be underground for three days. I mean, it's a clear reference to his death and resurrection. But the point that Jesus is making is that all the miracles and all the signs in the world won't mean anything to these people. Miraculous signs or subtle signs. Why? Because the response is never going to happen because they are unwilling to hear his simple message.

Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near. That's the thing that Jesus has been preaching throughout his entire ministry. He's saying, I'm here. And the response, the proper response to these miraculous things happening, to the mercy of God being flowing through Jesus Christ is to repent. And if you're so closed off from repentance, you could have all the signs in the world.

You're closed off to welcoming the kingdom of God. If your heart is so against Jesus as these Pharisees are, they're so at the outset just against him, then any kind of sign won't make a difference. And honestly, I think this is right at the heart of the Pharisees' problems. They were just proud. They were just too proud. Their pride was going to get them in their way. Didn't even matter like any number of signs or all the evidence in the world.

Nothing was going to penetrate their hearts and get through their pride. And the idea that they might have to repent or to reorient themselves or to rethink their lives to them was just like a non-starter because they just thought that they were the people who knew the right way to do things. They were so proud of themselves. They thought they had it all figured out. And they thought, surely when the Messiah comes, he would recognize that they were really doing the best.

They were really trying really hard and really accomplishing things. But Jesus knows that they aren't all right and that they aren't doing well and they aren't doing the things that God calls them to. And he goes on to kind of elaborate this story in a funny way. It's interesting. Sometimes we go through the gospels. I think it's particularly in Matthew. And we have these kind of stories and things that Jesus says and they don't feel connected.

And I think from this passage to the next one, which we're going to read in just a minute, feels like one of those things. But what I think he's doing is, I think he's expanding on his point, his broader point that he's trying to make about their own pride. Because Jesus knows that they're not all right. But in a pointed way, he's showing them how deeply wrong they are and why their plan of non-repentance, of pride, it's just not going to work. And so he goes on, picking up here.

It says, when an unclean spirit comes out of a person, It roams through waterless places looking for rest, but it doesn't find any. And then it says, well, I'll go back to my house that I came from. And returning, it finds the house vacant, swept, and put in order. Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and settle down there. And as a result, that person's last condition is worse than the first.

That's how it will also be with this evil generation. See, the Pharisees are coming. They want a sign. They think, well, if only we see one really amazing sign, then that's what we'll need to be pushed over the edge.

And we'll finally be convinced that Jesus is who he says he is. But Jesus knows that a sign won't help. In fact, he knows that giving them a sign will actually make them in the end worse off. Because he knows that they might, for a moment, if they have this miraculous sign, they might say, you know what? We have to believe. I mean, it's clear. He did this amazing thing. we have to believe who he says he is.

But he also understands that being momentarily impressed by Jesus does not change a person. Sure, Jesus could cast out the demon of unbelief, right? He could cast it out by some miraculous sign and they could suddenly say, oh, this Jesus, how great is he? But that demon will just leave and he'll go grab some more friends and he'll come back to a nice orderly house and say, hey, thanks for cleaning it up in here. We're gonna come back into this place.

See, what Jesus is saying is he's illustrating a spiritual reality that if you believe Jesus is God and you remove the unbelief, which is, I mean, part of the way towards faith, there's more to the process. Someone else needs to move in and occupy that place. You can't just have an empty heart. You can't come and be impressed by Jesus and think, oh, that's all it is. He needs to come in and dwell, move into the house, make it his, lock the door.

Because if not, unbelief, discouragement, it'll all just keep coming back. And I'm not saying we never have that in the Christian life. I'm not saying that. But what Jesus is, I think he's making very clear is that someone needs to occupy the place. Someone needs to come in and take the place as Lord of your life. And if you don't do that, I mean, you're just waiting for disorder to come back. At the most basic levels, the Pharisees don't have an evidence problem.

They think they have an evidence problem. They have had so many signs. What they have is a pride problem. They want to see Jesus. They want to turn to him. But they don't want him to be lord of their lives. They could not bring themselves to the point of surrender to him. That wasn't going to happen. And Jesus understood that. That they're deeply prideful. They wanted to be in charge. So that's the Pharisees. The question is like, what about, okay?

As Protestants, right? Part of this historical movement, reorienting away from the Catholic church, the medieval Catholic way of thinking about being saved. And we have this contribution of saying, no, like we need to recenter faith and personal response. It's important. Faith is everything. And I totally agree. I think we read the Bible. Faith is so central. I have to know by faith that Jesus has set me free by his love and by his sacrifice

of himself on the cross. This is essential to me turning to him as Messiah and as Lord. I have to know, no, like, no. I have to have confident faith, faith founded in a confidence in who he is, that the knowledge will become more full over time. But I have to start with this response, this turning to Jesus. I have to know that my life is now hidden in him and that I've done nothing to earn this, right? Right.

Like when we talk about faith, particularly in a Protestant way by faith, Jesus came to save you. You're saved by faith, faith in him and what he's done, not in anything that I can do. And that's 100% accurate. I mean, look at Ephesians 2, 8 through 9 says this, you're saved by grace through faith, not from yourselves. It's a gift from God, not from works so that no one can boast.

And so when we come to think about being a disciple, It has some initial conflict with our ideas about faith because, I mean, aren't disciples people who are doing things, right? Aren't disciples people who are performing certain tasks? And how does that line up with being just a person who has faith in Jesus? And in the day we live in, I mean, we need to lean into the reality that salvation is by faith alone.

But we have to also recognize that that can become, I think, an excuse to get us off the hook from living as disciples. And you might say, well, I mean, doesn't it? Doesn't it? Here's the thing is, I don't think Jesus thought it would. I don't think Paul thinks it would. I don't think James thinks it would.

I don't think anyone who, or these apostles, New Testament writers, saw any daylight between coming to faith in Jesus and being a disciple. I mean, look what Jesus says. He goes on here. While he was still speaking with the crowds, his mother and brothers were standing outside wanting to speak to him. And someone told him, look, your mothers and your brothers are standing outside wanting to speak to you. And he replied to the one who was speaking to him, who is my mother and who are my brothers?

Stretching out his hands towards his disciples, he said, here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother. So Jesus had this strong sense, I mean, this really kind of scandalous sense in his culture where family tithes are so important. He has the sense that the people who are closest to him, the ones who are really called his family, his brothers, sisters, mothers, that those are his disciples.

Those are the people who are caught up in his life and in his saving work. It's his disciples who are doing, as he says, the will of my father in heaven. It's his disciples who are the ones who are putting their faith in him. There's no daylight. And I think the biblical understanding, certainly in the Gospels, between believing, trusting, saving faith in Jesus and being a disciple, it's the same thing for all intents and purposes.

And I really believe that there is just no biblical category for faith that doesn't accompany becoming a disciple. Now, I mean, look, being a disciple is a terribly imprecise thing. We'll talk about that in a second. But I do think that being a disciple just goes with the category of coming to faith in Jesus. Another Dallas Willard quote, because I know you haven't had enough. Don't worry, there will be one more after this.

He says this, Isaac Watts, referring to the hymn writer, Isaac Watts gets it. Contemplating Jesus' death on our behalf, he cried out, Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all. His work for us then becomes his work in us. The goal is that we will be just like him. As his disciples, Jesus teaches you to live your life as he would live your life. That leads to inner transformation and the transformation of character resulting in godly service in the kingdom of God.

Transformation moves from the inside out. You take on his thoughts, his beliefs, and his judgments, and they become yours. And you feel as he did, and your body acts as he did, and your social relationships bear the imprint of his character and the depths of your soul are renewed in a likeness to his. I mean, when we think about the expansive and joyful proclamation of the life of faith, we see that like Paul and other New Testament writers have when they think about what Jesus does.

I mean, it's this whole life transformation kind of thing. It's not just faith that's merely an intellectual kind of thing. It's a realization of who Jesus is, which totally changes who I am in the world and what I am becoming. It reorients everything about my life. It leads me on to the path of discipleship quite naturally because Jesus has just blown my mind and redetermined what it means for me to be a person.

So now I'm someone who has fellowship with God by the mercy and grace of Jesus Christ. And if we look at like 1 Corinthians 5, and it's like we are with unveiled faces beholding the glory of God, and his glory is just shining upon us in the person of Christ, and it's transforming the inner man. And so the idea that faith is just this mere intellectual exercise that doesn't lead on to anything practical is silly.

No, I don't perform the practical works to earn the faith and to earn the salvation, but faith always leads me to a life of responsiveness and discipleship to Jesus. And sure, like the man hanging next to Jesus on the cross didn't have a chance to really be a disciple. He got saved that day. He's in heaven eternally. Great. But if he had lived tomorrow or the next day, he would have been a disciple then. And he is seeing the beauty and glory and love of Jesus Christ.

Like it would have led him into this relation of discipleship. So I'm not saying salvation and discipleship are the same thing. You don't earn it by any means. But of course, a saved person, somebody who comes into a relationship with Jesus will be on the path to discipleship in perfectly wobbly. Saw some baby goats a couple of weeks ago, and they're just kind of, maybe that's how you are, you know, and that's okay. You're walking along, you're doing your best. It's fine, but you're on the path.

And friends, I, to have faith in Jesus, I really do think implies becoming a disciple.

But our issue, the issue that the Pharisees have, our issue today, it's really a basic one, is that we just don't like those terms that much. We don't always like those terms. And the reality is this, and this is my favorite zinger I've had for a little while, A disciple is an entry-level position, but a lot of us think we're management material. That's our problem. We think we have it figured out. The Pharisees were like, no, we'll take it from here.

If you're the Messiah, we've been waiting for you. We've got a whole plan worked up. You know, you just go back to the green room. We'll take front stage here. But the fact is that I think the hard part about discipleship is that we are just like, you gotta knock yourself down so many rungs. Because Jesus literally tells you, you come as a disciple, like you're coming with the understanding of you don't know how to live your life. You can't become a disciple unless you fess up to that.

Even if you're doing a pretty good job by the standards of the world. Like some of you guys are doing great. You're competent. You're kind. You're great people. Jesus says, start with some data entry. You know, why don't you mop the floors a little bit? You know, we just come to this place where we just start at square one. And a lot of us just don't like to be there in that place.

The Stoic philosopher Epictetus, I don't know how to say that, says, it's impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows. And that's the problem. The Pharisees thought they already knew what it was to honor God and to listen to Him. They didn't. They were not aware. They did not know. And this is our issue. To be a disciple means to relearn what it is to live our own lives. And being unwilling to learn that will keep us from what God has for us.

Again, this is not the question of salvation. This is just a question of maturing into faith. So let me ask you this question. In what ways are you living as a disciple today? In what ways are you living as a disciple today? Like specifically, what things are you doing out of a commitment to be a disciple to Jesus today or this week? In what ways are you meaningfully and intentionally? Are you inviting a God to disciple you and to transform you from the inside out?

We have this, you know, this BECOME acronym, you know, that I challenge you guys to partake in. And these are just discipleship habits. I'm not saying you have to do these things, but I'm just saying I think you need to have an intentional plan. You need something to challenge yourself. You need some way to say, okay, to identify really specifically, what is Jesus calling me to do that is not natural to me? And how am I leaning into his call to become a disciple?

And so I want you to think about that. And that's just kind of the takeaway question I want you to be thinking about. But I'll tell you this. Can I tell you one thing that I think is not the way that you should be doing that? Don't read a book. Other than the Bible. You can read the Bible if that's one thing you need to do. I need to be in the Word more often. That's a great response to being a disciple. You don't need to read a book about being a disciple.

In fact, I think most of us just actually need to do something. I think most of us just need to get practical and to get obedient.

Because in the end, that's the humbling and the pride-destroying part of being a disciple is you say, oh, I'm under obedience to Jesus now. And so I don't get to be making the management level decisions about what my life is going to be like. That is a difficult thing. Alice Willard says this, I really like this quote, the organ of spiritual knowledge is obedience.

Just as you open your eyes and you see colors and you know the presence of the kingdom of God by obeying, you act on the knowledge that you have and in acting, you encounter the reality of the kingdom. So, as you're going out and you're considering, a worship team can come up here now, as you're going out and considering, okay, how am I living out as a disciple today? Like, what am I doing to take steps of obedience and to live as a disciple today?

Can I just say that there's got to be something specific that you're saying, okay, Jesus, I'm going to do this thing, whatever it is, I'm going to do it for you. I'm going to do it because I have the sense that you're asking me to do it. And I'm saying like, you want to have greater confidence. Like the Pharisees were looking for a sign to have greater confidence and they were like pursuing that thing.

Yeah, like, but they were doing it in the wrong way because they were trying to pursue confidence and faith without any obedience, without any humbling of themselves, without any making them into disciples. So here's what I'm saying is, yeah, what's going to be the thing? And what is Jesus asking you to do? Every day, I think that if you sit and you pray and you take five minutes with the Lord and say, okay, what's one thing on my heart, like Jesus, that you're asking me to do today?

I think you will have something by the end of the day. And I'm saying like something so simple, that kind of attitude of, okay, I'm gonna take one step. I'm gonna do one thing is a very good start on the way towards discipleship. You can keep growing from there. You can obviously build it out more, but what is the one thing you are going to obey in? So I want you to consider that this week. and let's go right into worship.