Please stand for the reading of God's word. We're going to be reading John chapter 1, 35 through 51. He said to them, Come and you will see. So they came and saw where he was staying and they stayed with him that day, for it was about the tenth hour. One of the two heard John speak and followed Jesus was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. He first found his own brother, Simon, and said to him, We have found the Messiah, which means Christ. He brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, You are Simon, the son of John.
You shall be called Cephas, which means Peter. The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, Follow me.
Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathaniel and said to him, We have found him of whom Jesus, Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. Nathaniel said to him, Can anything good come out of Nazareth? Philip said to him, Come and see. Jesus saw Nathaniel coming toward him and said of him, Behold, in Israel I indeed, in whom there is no deceit. Nathaniel said to him, How do you know me? Jesus answered him before Philip called you when you were under the fig tree. I saw you. Nathaniel answered him, Rabbi, you are the son of God.
You are the king of Israel. Jesus answered him, Because I said to you, I saw you under the fig tree. Do you believe? You will see greater things than these. And he said to him, Truly, truly I say to you, You will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.
You may be seated. All right. Hey, we are talking about discipleship this month. Last week, Travis talked about the seven, were there seven of those little bubbles? I should know this. Were there eight? Oh gosh, okay. Why eight? That's not a biblical number.
That's terrible. Should be seven. So eight, I guess. Eight of these little bubbles of discipleship. And that's kind of our theme for the month is discipleship.
And so this week, I'm going to take a crack at the subject. And actually what I want to do is I want to look at a picture from Jesus's life of him discipling. And that's what that passage was that we just read. There are some cool examples just in that short little passage of Jesus discipling other people and then those same people turning around and discipling others.
And so we're going to pick that passage apart and just pull some really powerful principles from it. Let me just pray real quick. Father, I asked that you would just help us in this time that you would bring your word to life, that it would make sense that you would come and just speak to us in a real personal way this morning. In your name, Jesus.
Amen. Okay, so I'm going to start with a definition of discipleship. There's a lot of them going around and Travis defined it in a couple different ways last week. This is one I found in a commentary and I just like it because it gets into the actual the Greek word. Matt, I don't know how to pronounce it. Mathay Teas is the Greek word for disciple.
So I think we have a slide for it. A disciple is one who learns from another. Such learning was not limited to the acquisition of knowledge about the Torah but involved an overall worldview and the practical interpretation of such knowledge in everyday life. So just simply speaking a disciple is a learner.
Okay, that's just an easy way to remember it. It's somebody who learns but what I like about this definition is that it clarifies this is not just mental ascent, you know, this is not just gathering more knowledge. That's not all discipleship is. Okay, we have we really focus on that in the western world just gaining more and more knowledge but discipleship is deeper than that.
It's learning and it's watching somebody else so you can then apply what you've learned. Okay, that's the definition of discipleship. Everyone is being discipled whether you realize it or not. So it's not like and we've talked about this with worship a lot. You know, everybody's worshiping something. It's not like I am a worshiper or not. It the question is what are you worshiping and the same is true of discipleship that it's not are you a disciple? It's who are you learning from?
Who are you looking to? So this last weekend I went on a friend trip with my friends from high school and it was super epic. The five of us had not been in the same room for 20 years much less had three full days to hang out. I was actually really nervous about it because of that but we ended up having a blast and as part of our time together we were showing each other pictures of our wives and kids and also want somebody brought pictures from high school and college and so we're looking all these pictures of ourselves and I saw this one picture right after I graduated high school is actually from the Savior's Community Beach Camp that year if any of you guys are old school and went there but in this picture I had bleached hair that was sticking up like about eight inches and I had a lip ring that was the size of like my wedding ring. I don't know why it was so big and people asked me that time they're like oh that's cool why is it so big?
I'm like I don't know it's like sticking out my lip but I was I was looking at this picture I was thinking why did I and the answer I think is because people that I thought were cool had lip rings and bleached hair probably the lead singer of Psalm 41 had bleached hair that was sticking out and that's why I had it probably Tom DeLong had a lip ring and that's why I got a lip ring so they were discipling me that they were the ones that I was learning from at the time so I also this this is a little bit of a tangent I'll make this short but I also got real curious I thought okay who's discipling the most people and I just thought I'm gonna look up who what YouTube account has the most subscribers does anybody know just off the top of their head? somebody said it yeah I wish I had a prize to give out but somebody named Mr. Beast and I know half of you are wondering who that is but Mr. Beast has over 300 million subscribers the most subscribers in the entire world and so I was like how is Mr. Beast discipling the world and so I so for sermon research I went and watched several Mr.
Beast videos and it could be worse it could be worse like it's just a lot of creative ways to give money away and silly games and so anyway I think Coco Mellon was the number three on there so Jesus wants us to be discipled by him he wants us to watch him to learn from him to look like him so not just in superficial ways like I mean we don't even know what Jesus looked like exactly but he wants us to learn from him and look like him spiritually in our character so I want to pick apart this passage that we read and just pull out some principles of discipleship okay so the first one is have limited space up here on this podium Jesus teaches us to see him rightly okay that's the first one I'm going to read the verse that goes with it Jesus turned and saw them following which is funny because there's a couple of disciples of John the Baptist and they just left him and went to Jesus and it almost feels like this awkward scenario of like Jesus is walking and suddenly he realizes there's people behind him and he's like hey what are you what are you doing they said to him rabbi which means teacher where are you staying he said to them come and you will see so they came and saw where he was staying and they stayed with him that day for it was about the tenth hour and I love this the gospel of John is famous for this these just short verses that are simple enough for anyone to understand but deep enough for anyone to just go deep for years and decades and decades and this is one of those examples where Jesus just says probably with a smile on his face come and see yeah come along why don't you why don't you find out where I'm staying why don't you find out what I'm like why don't you find out what I'm doing and that line has just become iconic come and see and it's even like a mantra for discipleship I think this is the first phase of discipleship is that Jesus invites us to come and get to know him before some of the things we'll talk about in a minute before we sacrifice for him before we're sent out as missionaries to do his work he says come and get to know me come and see what I'm like just this simple invitation when I that I grew up in church I grew up as a Christian but I didn't really know God I knew and then this is not on any of my you know youth pastors or or parents really it just none of it seemed to sink in what I do remember are the two commandments of church which are say the salvation prayer and go to church every Sunday like that's what I remember like these are the things that I need to do as long as I pray the salvation prayer I'm in as long as I go to church a lot I'm in nothing to do with a deep relationship with Jesus you know and I also remember the two commandments of youth group which were don't do drugs and don't have sex before marriage like that was my Christian upbringing but Jesus invites us to go deeper than that like I didn't know that that God was a God that was full of joy and that we could actually enjoy him in an intimate level I didn't know that Jesus had a kingdom that was coming in power here and now it wasn't just something that we would see one day the God actually wanted to break in and transform us from the inside out deliver us set us free from things I didn't know that about God and I know that he was a God that valued honesty and transparency more than just doing a checklist getting things right but when we come and see we get to know a God like that and that's the first part of discipleship okay the second thing Jesus teaches us to be self-aware all right this is really about identity okay you'll notice that I tried to make each one and start with an s and so some of them are more of a stretch than others okay so really I'm talking about identity self-awareness so this is the passage for that one of the two who heard John speak and followed Jesus was Andrew Simon Peter's brother he first found his other brother Simon and said to him we have found the Messiah which means Christ he brought him to Jesus I love this Jesus looked at him and said you are Simon the son of John you shall be called Cephas which means Peter so the first thing that that Peter heard when he when he did the when he began to come and see and get to know Jesus a little bit more the first thing that Jesus did was he renamed him he gave him a new name and it was probably shocking Peter probably we have to read between the lines a little bit here and maybe look at you know later parts of Peter's life but Peter was probably a flake we know for sure that he didn't he didn't graduate with high enough honors to go on to become a Pharisee or a scribe because those were the top of the class in first century Israel the people who are fishermen or had blue-collar work they didn't get good enough grades you know to put in our language and so we know that Peter was not super educated and from later parts of his life we find out that he's pretty flaky and he waivers a lot so it's this person that Jesus looked and said no you are actually the rock and I'm going to build my church on you Jesus gives us a new name and it's and it's based on what he does in us it's based on the new nature that he gives us that he gives to us and that's a really powerful part of discipleship is not just learning that name and hearing it one time like oh I'm the rock or you know I'm some other cool thing that Jesus says about me I'm a saint I'm a son of God you know all these truths that God says it's about learning to live out of that identity that's part of discipleship the order of this matters because in our culture today we want to know our identity we want to be secure I mean does anyone you know want to be insecure I mean we want to be secure instead fast like everyone wants to be strong in their identity but we have to know God first and then he's the one who tells us our new identity and then we can begin to live out of that and it's not just like you're enough girl or like you're the man like you know that's like the identities that the culture gives us but it always falls short because it's not from the lips of Jesus he's the one who renames us this is this is real old school this is from the middle ages st. Catherine of Sienna once said be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire here's another quote from a book by Marcus Warner he says based on both scripture and neuroscience jim wilder has concluded that maturity is the ability to remain relational act like yourself and return to joy despite upsetting emotions people who can do these things even when enduring hardship are truly mature so maybe just take a little a little evaluation of yourself when you're going through a hard time are you able to remain relational be open with people stay in the conversation are you able to act like yourself that's the identity part and you are you able to return to joy again and again even in the midst of hardship that's the sign of maturity one last thing I'll say on this tim keller amazing bible teacher and preacher from the last few decades a year before he died somebody was interviewing him and they asked him if you could do it all different if you could start over what's one thing that you would change and tim keller said i would focus on people's identity in Christ more he said for the up and coming generation their identity is the pivotal issue of their lives and i would have used the bible to speak into that more okay next thing that Jesus does when Jesus disciples us is Jesus teaches us to sacrifice john 143 says the next day jesus decided to go to galilee he found Philip and said to him follow me now this is another iconic Jesus line and we see this in the other gospels as well we see this in Matthew Mark and Luke that Jesus when he calls but when he says follow me it's a little different than come and see come and see is to the curious it's hey get to know me more spend a day with me see what I'm really like when Jesus said follow me in the other gospels it meant leave everything behind and follow me and become my disciple and that's the third phase of discipleship is Jesus teaches us to sacrifice that he is not just our savior he's not just our friend but he is lord of our entire lives and that includes every section of our life Luke 957 through 62 it's a little bit lengthy but I love this picture of discipleship As they were going along the road, somebody said to him, I will follow you wherever you go. And I love this because, I mean, if people are coming to church on Sunday morning or, you know, our young adults group or whatever, like, I just want them to come. Like I want as many people to come as possible. You know, I'm wanting like bigger numbers, like, come on, like, just invite everyone, let's come and see. But this guy goes, hey, I'm in. I want to be part of this thing. I want to follow you. And Jesus goes, no, no, no.
Are you ready to go all the way? He says, foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head. Basically, okay, you want to follow me, but are you willing to be homeless? Are you willing to go wherever that I go?
How much are you willing to follow me? We don't know what the man's response was. It just leaves it there. But the next person, to another, he said, follow me. But he said, Lord, let me first go and bury my father.
And Jesus said to him, leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God. Yet another said, I will follow you, Lord. But let me first say farewell to those in my home. Jesus said to him, no one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God. The point is not that everyone who follows Jesus has to be homeless or has to get up and move or is not allowed to say bye to their family. I mean, that one seems especially harsh. You can't even say bye.
Just come on. But what I think Jesus is doing here is he's looking into the heart of each person and he's seeing the one thing that prevents them from fully being a disciple. For the first person, I think it was an attachment to comfort and to their location.
And he says, OK, great. Are you willing to move? And so for the next two people, it's this undue priority of family. Now, of course, we love and honor family, but Jesus comes before family. And Jesus draws a line in the sand with these two people and he says, hey, for you, if family is on the verge of becoming an idol, then you don't even get to say goodbye. You need to come right now. And that's how he calls his disciples.
OK, next one. So far we have Jesus teaches us to see. He invites us to get to know him. Jesus makes us self-aware. He gives us our new identity. And then Jesus teaches us to sacrifice. So we learn to suffer for him as disciples. This is the fourth and last one, kind of. Jesus gives us signs of a glorious future.
I love this one. Philip found Nathaniel and said to him, and you can see even as we read this that Jesus is making disciples and they're already making other disciples. They're already going out and finding more people.
And that's the way it's supposed to work. He said, we have found him of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. Nathaniel said to him, can anything good come out of Nazareth?
Dang, it's like a dig on Nazareth. Has anybody ever said that about Visalia? The valley.
Can anything good come out of the valley? Philip said to him, come and see. I love he uses the same line, come and see. Jesus saw Nathaniel coming toward him and said of him, behold, an Israelite indeed in whom there is no deceit. Do you see the identity piece? He calls him out.
I don't know what Nathaniel struggled with or who he was before this point, but Jesus tells him who he really is. No, you're somebody who's without deceit. You're a man of integrity.
You're a man of honesty. And that struck him. Nathaniel said, how do you know me? And Jesus answered him, before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.
And then Nathaniel explodes. He says, Rabbi, you are the Son of God. You are the King of Israel, which there must have been a backstory behind the fig tree thing, because otherwise that makes no sense. You know, like, hey, I saw you under the fig tree.
Oh my gosh, you're the Messiah. Like there must have been some backstory there. The way I picture it, Nathaniel was under a fig tree. No one was around.
He's completely secluded and he's praying secret prayers. God, I want to know you. Show me more of yourself.
Show me. And that was just between him and God. And then hours later, maybe days later, Jesus goes, I saw you under the fig tree. And he's like, how did you know about that? How did you know about that moment I had with God? Jesus, his response, and I think Jesus is laughing here. I think he just loves Nathaniel. He loves his easy faith.
And he says, because I said to you, I saw you under the fig tree. Do you believe? Oh, just a simple word of knowledge. Just oh, just a little bit of the prophetic and you're in like, come on, that was too easy.
And this is the part. You will see greater things than these. And he said to him, truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man. So the message version of verse 50 says, you haven't seen anything yet. This is how Jesus disciples us. And I think this is one of the most least touched upon, underrated aspects of Jesus' discipleship is that he disciples us into hope and a vision for the future. And not just a general vision like, oh, it's going to be awesome. It's going to be great. Trust me.
Yeah. Like he gives us a specific promise of greatness, of things that he wants to do through our lives. What's the what's a promise that God has given you? What's a vision that he's given you for the future? Is it for revival? That's something that God's put on my heart for 20 years now. I saw a little taste of revival in a youth group I went to in my 20s.
A taste of people getting set free, being physically healed, and encountering God in supernatural ways. And it ruined me. And I thought, I want this. I want to sign up for the kingdom of God where this kind of thing happens. I want to see revival. And that became God's promise to me is, Glenn, you will see greater things than these.
Yeah, keep on going. I know times is going to be boring. Times is going to be hard.
There's going to be sacrifice. But you're going to see great things if you keep on going. Romans 8 24 says, for in this hope we were saved.
That's really what we're talking about. We're talking about hope, a hope that Jesus gives us for greater things. A hope that's not based on temporal things like, oh, it's like you're going to have a huge house or like everyone's going to like you. You know, like those are those are worldly hopes, right? Jesus gives us kingdom hopes to set our sights upon.
Okay, the last thing is number five. Jesus sends us out to disciple others. So now we're resetting to the very beginning of the passage we started with. The next day again, John was standing with two of his disciples and he looked at Jesus as he walked by and he said, behold the Lamb of God, the two disciples heard him say this and they followed Jesus. I love the simplicity of John the Baptist because if you if you read his life, he was this fiery preacher in the wilderness, but he always just pointed people to Jesus.
It actually was real simple. Go to Jesus, follow Jesus. There's even this scene in John three where the Pharisees come to him and they say, hey, everyone's leaving you and they're going to this new guy, this new Messiah guy. And John's like, exactly praise God, my ministry is getting smaller and smaller.
I love it. Like that's the whole point is that people wouldn't be dependent on me, but they'd be dependent on the Messiah. And that is such a good discipleship model right there. Are they dependent on you, the Discipler, the great teacher, or are they dependent on Jesus, the Messiah? If they're dependent on Jesus, you're discipling them well. Okay, so in our last few minutes here, let's get practical because I I want us to do this. I want us to be discipled by Jesus first and foremost, but then to start discipling other people.
So what does that look like practically? The phrase that I stole from another book. It's this book called Discipleshift. They use the phrase intentional relational discipleship. And I like this because discipleship can happen in a ton of different ways. Hopefully a little bit of discipleship is happening here this morning through the worship and the teaching. Discipleship can happen in the classroom. Discipleship can happen online even to an extent, you know, Mr. Beast, you know, discipling a generation. But that's not the bullseye of discipleship.
That's not where the, it's not most effective. Again, a little bit will happen here on a Sunday morning, but my opinion is that the most happens on life on life relationships. Two people meeting and going deep, or maybe a few people, but I don't think more than 12. I think there is a cutoff, and I don't know exactly what the number is. I choose 12 because Jesus chose 12 and he seemed to be able to disciple them really deeply. But there is a cutoff point where when it's just a crowd, it minimizes discipleship. And Jesus did crowds too, and those are awesome. But intentional relational discipleship is the way to go.
I think it's the bullseye. So, and again, it's just, you know, there's some things that just can't happen. Like on a Sunday morning, the preacher can't look at you and ask how your marriage is.
Just can't happen. The podcast host that you're listening to, he can't reach through the podcast and ask if you've been looking at pornography that week. You know, if you're reading a book, the author can't reach through the book and ask you about your parents of origin and ask, and see if you're struggling with the same things that your family line has and if there needs to be some kind of like generational healing.
I mean, that kind of stuff only happens in life on life relationship. So here's the challenge this morning. When I was at a Christian university, a chapel service, somebody issued this challenge and it just stuck with me. They said, and I'll change the language a little bit, but they said to find one person to learn from and then one person to pray for. Now, I changed it. They actually said, find a mentor and find one other person to mentor. But I'll tell you, this is why I don't like that language. Because over the last couple of decades, I've found that the whole mentor thing becomes a huge hurt and a huge wound in people's lives.
Because they think that having a mentor means that they just got a new set of parents, somebody who checks in on them every week and who cares for them like a child and the relationship lasts for 50 years. If that happens, awesome, praise God, that often doesn't happen. And so I want to lower the bar a little bit and I want to say, find, this is my phrase here because I think this is more doable. And usually when I talk to people who are like, I don't have a mentor, I need a mentor, I'm like, okay, do you have one person that's one step ahead of you in one area? And they go, oh yeah, I mean, yeah, there's this one person that, you know, they know the Bible better than me or this one person has a really awesome marriage.
Like, there you go, learn from that person. So ask him out on an awkward date, you know, like, hey, can we have coffee and can I ask you questions? So this is really where it starts, like, not hyper spiritual language of, will you be my spiritual father forever? You know, like, you will scare the person away, okay?
You just say, hey, I've noticed that your marriage just seems really stable. Can we get coffee sometime? That's it, just that normal. And then maybe it will develop into something more regular and again, that's awesome. But you just start very simple and very not weird and something really beautiful could happen. Jess is a great example of this. She's not here so I can talk freely.
Just kidding. She, Connie Armarding, she had a friend, Connie Armarding, she didn't know her that well, but she saw something in Connie that she really wanted to learn from. And so actually what she did, and this is really smart, this could be a tip for some of you, because Connie had small kids, she offered to help out with the kids around the house and she offered to help making dinner. And who's going to refuse that? Who's going to say no to that? And so that was her way of learning from Connie was, hey, could I help you around the house?
You know, could I help watch the kids while you're making dinner? And then she's there, she has an in, and then that led to a bunch of conversations between her and Connie. And in that case, it led to a really deep friendship and Jess has learned a ton from Connie over the years. Okay, so the next one is, again, not like find a disciple, like find someone to pray for. And the reason I say it that way is because I think the onus should always be on the person who wants to learn. Because it gets weird if the the discipler like goes around like, could I disciple you? Like, it's like, they don't even want to be discipled by you.
So it could get really weird. But what you can do is you can find someone to pray for. If there's someone on your heart, you can just start praying for them.
And maybe that will lead to a friendship and maybe you'll be able to influence that person. Better yet, if you have kids, they are your disciples. So be intentional and relational with your kids because they are your number one disciples. And if you don't have a plan for discipling your children, then get a plan. That's your number one responsibility. So my prayer would be that this just becomes, it's already happening a ton in our church.
I see it all the time. But my prayer was that this just this increases even more, that there's just a discipleship culture at our church that we're constantly learning from one another. That we're constantly pursuing one another in different areas.
You know, maybe there's somebody at the church that you want to learn from their prayer life. Maybe there's somebody else that their work ethic, like they have a job that you want to get a job. And that same vocation. And they're loving the Lord at that job.
And so you could connect with that person and learn from them. How do I love Jesus while being an architect? You know, how do I love Jesus while being a lawyer? You know, you just find one person, it's one step ahead in one area. And I think a ton of this relational discipleship will happen. And of course, in small groups, that's such a perfect opportunity already.
And for leaders and people who are in a pack or a small group, just be intentional and be relational. And I think a lot of this will happen. Okay, I'm going to pray and end this worship team. You could come on up. After I pray, we're going to go into communion. And there's going to be some worship. And again, as Eric said, the prayer teams will be up here as well. Feel free to get prayer for anything. It might be on this subject. It might be, I need somebody to learn from or I have it on my heart to pray for somebody else.
Or it could be something totally different. You know, you might just want prayer for yourself or your marriage. Feel free to come up here.
Let's stand and I'll pray to close. We thank you, Jesus, that you're the master, a discipler. We thank you for all the ways that you're discipling us right now. That you're inviting us to come and see. That you're giving us a new name. You're calling us to deeper sacrifice. And you're giving us hope for our future, Jesus. We, I just pray that that would be real to us this morning.
It wouldn't just be words. And I pray for just deeper relationships at this church. I pray for more learning, for more discipleship to happen with one another. I thank you for just the hidden treasures in this church.
People have been walking with you for decades. I pray that people would learn from them and find them more and more. Would you come and just take us deeper today? Would you give us a hunger to go deeper today? Yeah, and as we take communion, we thank you for your body that was broken for us. We thank you for the blood that was shed for us, Lord. That gives us a way in. Amen.
We receive it from you this morning. Amen.
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