Mark 8:34-38
Discipleship / To Be or Not to Be
As I began to prepare for chapter 9 this week, I felt like the Lord was speaking to my heart to come back to the end of chapter 8 and speak to you this morning God’s heart about a particular subject that He has burned into my heart for the past several months.
As we get closer and closer to the coming of Jesus, it should be no surprise that the devil has been, and will continue to attempt to distract the body of Christ away from things that are basic to our faith. These tactics are not new as we see Satan using them throughout history for the very same purpose he uses them today, he just seems to package these things differently for the times they are intended for. He makes them trendy, fashionable, even seemingly spiritual in order to gain a foothold in people’s lives to get their attention off of the things that matter to God and upon themselves and the worldly goals they have spent their lives pursuing.
Today even the church itself has been caught up in, distracted by, has accepted, and by and large sold out to the methods of secular personal and corporate growth, substituting the written Word of God for books authored by men whose mentors and closest confidants are, not men of God, but the growth gurus of corporate America. There are countless so called biblical teachings out there today that proclaim the worlds message of tolerance and inclusion for the sake of getting people inside the doors of the church. “If we can just get them to come” we say. “If we can just get them into the seats, then we’ve got em.”
Actually some of what those people write and teach can found within the oracles of orthodox Christianity. They dress the message up with bits and pieces of scripture, using only the context of those scriptures that fit their motive, even using paraphrase versions of the Bible that have been widely rejected by the respected leaders of the church today.
The problem, you see with these things, is not so much what they do teach, but what they don’t teach and what is left out. They say “the most effective way to minister to the homosexual, the fornicator, the idol worshipper, is to just get them into the church building and make them comfortable”, “to break down the walls that separate us” even using the small group settings like kinships as the floodgate by which sin is allowed to flow freely and openly, right into the mainstream of the church. “Let them feel the love of God’s people and hear our really stylish music and our trendy messages and they will change.” “Let them rub elbows with the Christian and that will win them over.”
Where in God’s word did we ever see Him allow that kind of activity within the community of his people? Has it ever been acceptable by God for the people of the world to continue practicing their sin while they made up their minds whether or not they wanted to be part of His body. You won’t find it. The Bible says today is the day of your salvation. To allow unregenerate people to sit and enjoy the benefits and blessings of the Lord’s body without pointing out to them that they are in a desperate situation because of their sin, is an injustice to the Word of God and His Holy Spirit. In fact the better part of the Old Testament was spent describing the absolute disgust it brought the Lord when His people mingled and mixed with the people of the world and participated in the sins they committed. He never allowed Israel to mingle or allowed them to have within their walls the peoples of the world. He knew Israel would never withstand that kind of contact and would fall prey to the tactics of Satan and his people every time, and they did.
Have we honestly lost our minds to think that we are any stronger today? The book of Judges is packed full of the trendy and fashionable temptations of those days that Israel fell prey to. The end result was the same in each case, “And AGAIN, the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord.” And the same can be said of the trendy, fashionable, post-modern church of today that allows the people’s of the world to come in and comfortably practice their sin inside the church all in the name of tolerance, inclusion, for the purpose of filling up a building.
Is it any wonder we see homosexuality at the extreme levels of leadership in the organized church today. Is it any wonder we have divorce among Christians surpassing that of the world, albeit because the world has all but ceased to make the commitment of marriage in the first place. Is it any wonder we have people today in the church who come, sit and listen to the Word of God taught in all of its power, only to return home to continue living in fornication by cohabitating with a partner they aren’t even married to? Last time I checked the Bible says that isn’t suppose to happen, “But fornication and all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not even be named among you, as is fitting for saints; For this you know, that no fornicator, unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.” Galatians 5.
Folks, the condition of the church of Jesus Christ is slipping into a slumber that it may never shake itself out of. Why? Because it has allowed itself to become tolerant and accepting of behavior and lifestyles that are offensive to God, void of the practice of accountability, void of the practice of repentance, void of any sorrow over sin, void of any self discipline, and has adopted the worldly philosophy of “DON’T ASK DON’T TELL”.
You see the constant barrage of compromising substitutes for holy and righteous living, substitutes for the standard and truth of the Word of God has brought the church to the place of compromise and complacency and it doesn’t even realize it. We follow after movies and books of fantasy, fiction, and myth and justify our curiosity by saying to ourselves “What if Jesus had come to earth as a lion.” “Couldn’t you see the forces of good and evil at work in that movie?” And we exalt these fairy tales to be coequal with, and in the minds of our children because of the power of their imaginations to have even greater authority than God’s word, as if Gandolf was Jesus Christ raised from the dead.
According to Christianity Today, "not only was C.S. Lewis hesitant to call his books Christian allegory, but admitted the stories borrow just as much from pagan mythology as they do the Bible." And we stand in two hour lines and give 10 dollars a head to watch these ridiculous things that do nothing but attempt to turn the reality of the person of Jesus Christ into mythical imagery that has absolutely nothing to do with Christian values, belief, or biblical truth.
The desire for these types of compromising substitutes is growing ever so rapidly and the world is standing back and while they count their money, laugh at the Christian community because of how gullible and easily led astray it has become. If you don’t believe me answer this question. Why is it that in almost every state you now have to sue in order to publicly display a nativity scene and yet there is never one word from any civil rights groups about movies that Hollywood itself bills as Christian parallels, and are then strategically debuted around the Christian holidays of Christmas and Easter? You can believe the world is laughing at us as it makes it’s half truth and deceiving movies and devises marketing schemes that target one of the largest, and richest people groups in American….the Christian Community.
I realize I’ve hit a few specific things this morning, but the point of all this thus far is bring to our attention how easy it is to come to the place of compromise and not even realize it if we are not actively pursuing a biblical model for our life. All of what I’ve said so far points to the reality of one thing. The compromise and immaturity of the popular church, and all the things that feed that process can be summed up in the complete ignorance and lack in one area of the Christian Walk. That is Spiritual Discipleship. The church has lost touch with the value and the essentials of the ministry of Personal Spiritual Discipleship. We could continue to talk about all the tactics, and compromising elements that are out there this morning that feed this growing neglect of discipleship, and in doing so I’d probably find a subject to offend most all of you, but that is not my desire. My desire this morning is to bring us to a place in which we understand and then begin to place into our lives the foundations of this thing called discipleship. A few of you already have these things operating in your life, so you’ll know what I’m talking about. But the responsibility doesn’t stop there….you’ll see what I mean in just a moment.
Discipleship is the process that the Lord gave us first by His example, He spent 3 years with 12 men. And then through His teaching, “Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Him”. It is through the process of discipleship that we are made into His image. The intent of discipleship is to bring us to a place where the focus of our life becomes His purposes, His will, His Word, His plans.
I. What is the purpose of our life? To bring pleasure and glory to the God that loves us and died for us. “The Lord takes pleasure in those who fear Him, In those who hope in His mercy.” Ps. 147. And again in Ps. 149 “For the Lord takes pleasure in His people; He will beautify the humble with salvation.” So that is our purpose, to bring pleasure and glory to the One who created us
II. What is the will of God? Romans 12:2 “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” That verse describes the very basic ideas of discipleship. Non-conformity to the lifestyles and philosophies of the world, through a mind that has been transformed by the Word and Spirit of God, living a life that reveals that transformation as being genuine and supernatural because it’s origin is from God.
III. The intent of discipleship is to focus on the Word of God. What is the Word of God? Let’s just keep it simple here. It is this book right here. It’s not the Word of God as improved by the program of the #1 bestselling Christian book. It’s not the Word of God as improved by #1 box office hit of the season. It is simply the Word of God taught simply, applied daily, and lived out consistently over the span of a person’s life! The Lord says “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” Many Christians are not disciplined in the study of God’s Word, and therefore susceptible to sickness of Spirit and numb to its effect on their life.
When a person is diagnosed with a terminal disease like lung cancer, that person begins an immediate search for all the information and knowledge they can get on the causes and treatments of lung cancer. When they realize smoking causes lung cancer, they generally stop smoking. If it was discovered that lung cancer was caused by eating candy they would stop eating candy immediately.
Why is it that our spiritual sicknesses aren’t treated with the same urgency, and with the same immediacy? Because we lack the sufficient knowledge of God’s word and what it has to say about issues in our lives that are far graver than any physical sickness in the here and now, because spiritual sickness directly effects our eternity. We lack the discipline to obey what we know to be right.
IV. The intent of discipleship is to focus on the plan of God. What is the plan of God for our lives? “that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ— from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.” It’s really at twofold answer. The plan of God for your life if you are claiming Christ as your Lord is that you grow up in the teachings and lifestyle of Jesus Christ, and then to give your life in service to His causes for the sake of His body. A lack of service within the body of Christ is a lack of maturity that only the process of discipleship can grow you out of. When you learn to serve the body of Christ to His glory you are revealing a certain level of maturity.
His purposes, His will, His Word, His plans.
Now, the Lord gave three commands that every believer will evidence in their life if truly their heart has desired to follow him. In Mark 8:34 Jesus said “Whoever desires to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.”
So the first question we must answer is whether or not it is in our heart to follow after Jesus Christ. The answer to that question must be settled in the heart of the person before any of the rest of this can or could be lived out. If the answer is no, I could care less about Jesus, and won’t submit to His claims or His will for my life, or if the answer is simply that you can take or leave Jesus, then we can’t expect that person to live the kind of life that is described in what I just read. That person cannot deny himself because his life is all about him, his desires, his goals, his achievements, his possessions. If he cannot live without any of those things then the message of the cross is foolishness to him and therefore would never be caught carrying one. Of course if he has no interest in laying aside his own life, or carrying a cross then he certainly isn’t going to follow the path that Jesus walked because that path led to death on a cross, and that’s just simply impossible for the unbeliever or even the so called nominal believer.
From that perspective it’s easy to see that the life of the disciple of Jesus Christ is not for the faint of heart. Throughout history the true Christian life has been looked upon as weak, the blind leading the blind, the gospel meant only for the extremely needy and desperate people of the world. That is until you attempt to deny yourself, to take up a cross, and follow in the footsteps of Jesus. It then becomes impossible, from the world’s point of view, to do those things and to live that life and that is why we see watered down versions of the gospel that never address the habitual sin in people’s lives. We lower the standard in our attempts to obtain what we can never obtain on our own, the ability to save our own souls.
That kind of life is a dead end. A dead end because as Jesus said in v.35“Whoever desires to save his life will lose it.” He even tries to reason with that kind of heart in explaining that “What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul?” He’s saying that there is nothing in this world worth having if it will cause you to lose your soul.
The soul is that part of you that will live out eternity. It’s the only carry on baggage you get to take with you, nothing else. Your soul is that part of you that’s really you. This body, this rag is not you. If some people spent as much time preparing, nurturing, strengthening and dressing up their souls as they did their bodies we’d see whole lot more strength and numbers in the body of Christ today. We would certainly see a much more beautiful church today.
Jesus then asks the dagger of a question that really puts it all in perspective, v.37 “what will a man give in exchange for his soul?” Would you trade eternal life in Christ for….. the power to get anything you want in this world? Would you trade it for enough money that you’ll never need another thing as long as you live? Would you trade eternal life for success, or for popularity among your peers? Think of all the things that people crowd their lives with that quite possibly will cost them their soul.
But…..if you can answer that your heart truly desires to seek after Jesus Christ….to be a disciple of Jesus……then He says there will certain qualities about your life. First, “Let him deny himself”. Now this isn’t a kind of self-denial, self-abasement, as if living like a hermit or a monk makes you holy or more worthy. It’s the life that gives up on selfishness and pride and humbles itself before Jesus and other people. Paul described the mind that Jesus had when in Philippians 2 He said “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus”, and went on to describe how Jesus “made Himself of no reputation”, which literally means that He emptied Himself. What we see in that scripture is God in the flesh empting Himself of any worldly ambition and filling Himself with God’s. “Not my will but thine be done” He said. How can we fool ourselves to thing that anything less would be expected of us?
Jesus goes on to instruct those who desire to follow after Him and have denied or emptied themselves to then “take up your cross”. First to empty your life of your own ambitions, your own desires, and your own goals, and then fill yourself with His ambitions, His desires, and his goals for your life. “Whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it.” The disciple of Christ must lose his life and the life of Christ then must be lived through him.
Galatians 2:20 should be named the “Disciples Creed”. “I have been crucified in Christ” there’s the first step in losing your life. If it had still been all about Paul, that verse would read “I have been crucified.” But that’s not what it says. “I have been crucified in Christ”. It’s no longer about the person, it’s about Jesus Christ.
“it is no longer I that lives, but Christ who lives in me.” The life of Christ is now being lived through you. It’s now about His desires, His dreams, His goals. “And the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God.” Faith being the key element to living a life in Christ,
“who loved me and gave Himself for me”. There’s the reason and motive for doing all this. It’s not so that I CAN be saved that I live this life (that’s legalism….but BECAUSE I am saved that I allow His life to be lived through me.
How do we get from where we are today to the place that we are living that kind of life? The answer is found in one word…… discipleship. Let me say that the life of a disciple doesn’t need to be complicated. The Lord works in our lives much like the seasons of the year. There are spring times for the birth of new things, summer in which those things flourish and grow, fall in which there can be complacency and winter times things in our life must die and go away. In each of those seasons we find ourselves always learning something new about God.
It all begins with new relationships, beginning with the most important of all our relationships, between us and Jesus. It is a time of new beginnings in the life of a man or woman when all things become new and we find ourselves as new creations in Him. He then blesses us as His new creations with the relationships of others who are of the same mind and spirit, our Christian brothers and sisters.
Many people are under the false impression that our relationships with other Christians are never to be negative or awkward, or uncomfortable, but should always be this kind of touchy feely euphoric plastic kind of love. And within that disillusion there are more than a few who are defeated the first time one of those relationships goes bad and their feelings get hurt. Robert Hall taught us a couple weeks ago using Paul and Barnabas as examples that there is going to be disagreement and that God will use those disagreements for His purpose, but they don’t have to destroy our faith in Him or our relationship with each other.
Another element of the Christian relationship, one of the most valuable elements, is that of accountability. That word scares us because in the minds of a lot of people it means exposure. But it should never offend us when another brother or sister comes to us, and because they love us calls us into accountability in a certain area of our life. God’s word is packed with this theme of His people being accountable to one another.
“Whoever loves instruction loves knowledge, But he who hates correction is stupid”
“The way of the fool is right in his own eyes, but he who heeds counsel is wise.”
“He who heeds the word wisely will find good, and whoever trusts in the Lord, happy is he.”
“Confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. James 5
That verse is accountability in action. When we have someone in our life that we can confidentially share our gravest failures and deepest disappointments with and know that they will pray with us, encourage us, and be there to help us to overcome those weak areas of our life, then we have found one of the greatest treasures in all of Christianity, that of a mentor whom we can trust to keep us accountable. It is a myth that is taught in the church that a Christian is never to feel sorrow, or shame over their sin. I can tell you that the times I felt the greatest shame and the greatest sorrow over my sin were the times I had it brought to my attention and then went to confess my sin to another brother or sister. I can also tell you that those were the sins in my life that I rarely repeated, which indicates maturity and restoration. I cannot remember a time in which I confessed my sin to another person that that relationship wasn’t completely restored and I felt like I was renewed again in Christ.
This is something we need to reinstitute back into the charter of the church in order to help us reach the goal of maturity in Christ. If we have no accountability in our life we are doomed to the constant defeat of repeated sin. Allow the Lord to bring someone to you that you can trust with sensitive information and allow yourself to be accountable to that person. Men with the men, ladies with the ladies, or it may be your spouse, but each of us needs that kind of relationship.
Jesus ministered to the masses and the multitudes, but He mentored only 12 men. He did so by loving them, teaching them, praying with and for them. He lived his life open before them, and when they went astray He brought them into accountability. He was trustworthy of their lives and treated them with the utmost respect, even when they messed up so bad and didn’t deserve it. We all know the story of Peter’s denial and Jesus’ conversation with Peter about the matter. Do you love me he asked three times, and in the end this man was restored and his relationship with His mentor, His Teacher, His Savior was better than it had ever been. Had Jesus walked away from Peter and never called him into accountability we would read a much different story about Peter’s life. Jesus loved his disciples enough to call them into accountability for the sake of their forgiveness and restoration.
If you are a person who has served the Lord for awhile and have weathered the storms of life, and have instituted much of what I’ve talked about today into your life, then you as a mature man or woman in Christ have something to offer those who are just getting started or maybe today realize for the first time that they need a mentor. You need to allow the Lord to bring some people into your life that you can teach, that you can love, and pray with. You need to have the heart and the courage to bring accountability to that person when they stray from the Word, being careful to weigh your heart before you do, and always with the motive of forgiveness and restoration as the priority. Paul wrote scathing letters to the Corinthians not once but twice because of their unchrist like behavior bringing them into accountability. It takes courage to do that sort of thing and love to want to do it right. “I write to those who have sinned before, and to all the rest, that if I come again I will not spare.” he says in 2 Cor. 13. His encouragement at the end of that chapter may have not been exactly what they wanted to hear, but it was what the Lord wanted for them. “Become complete. Be of good comfort, be of one mind, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you.” Mentoring another person is not always comfortable and is many times awkward. But when we speak the truth in love and have at the core of our heart the best interest of the other person then we acted with the mind of Christ proving that we truly love that person enough to want better for them. That is another one of those special blessings that is hidden inside of the Christian relationship, knowing we have obeyed the example of Jesus.
It would take us many weeks to cover all the benefits of the kind of lifestyle I have described to you this morning. Although the message of discipleship and accountability is a subject that is not communicated in churches often enough today, as well one that is not received very well either, it is necessary if the body of Christ is to ever function as it was intended by its maker and Savior, Jesus.
The very first question we must answer is as an individual “Do I truly want to come after Jesus Christ?” Will I lay down my life and allow his life to be lived through me? Will I set aside my ambitions for this world and allow His desires for my life to replace them? If the answer to those questions this morning is NO, we will continue to minister to you, love you, and pray that the Holy Spirit continues to draw you to him, and that some day you will understand your need to sell out to God and love only Him.
For those of you that say Yes, I will follow after Jesus Christ, we have another decision to make this morning. I believe this decision will determine the direction of the Jerusalem ministry in this church. In other words this decision will determine how effective we will be in ministering to our community. What we decide this morning, together as a body, will determine in large part how this church will eventually be evaluated by our Lord. Will we remain as a status quo church that smiles every Sunday, pretending things are always just great when deep down in our hearts we know there are habitual sins in our lives that are ripping us away from the fellowship of Jesus Christ and His church? Will we continue in our attempt to hide those things behind a mask, or will we open up to the Holy Spirit and allow those sins to be dealt with by the power of his love, his grace and his mercy? Will we continue to attempt to deal with these sins according to our own deceitful hearts that will do nothing but lie and make excuses, or will we allow ourselves to enter into accountability and face the sorrow and the shame of our sin, accept forgiveness and allow the restoration process to its work? If so, we then we are guaranteed to receive the greatest of God’s gift in fellowship and clear conscience.
I’m not going to ask you to publicly answer these questions this morning because these are issues that won’t be settled today or even tomorrow for most of you. It will take some time. And if we have answered in favor of discipleship I expect that over the course of the next few months we will see these kinds of relationships begin to develop. We will hear of people being delivered from deep seeded sins that had plagued them for years and years. We will see the young in the Lord begin to enjoy the meat of the word and their lives be transformed into the image of Christ. We will see love throughout this fellowship that we have never seen before, because it will have originated from the courage of obedience to the Word of God. We’ll see more people come to Christ than we could ever have imagined as a result of His Spirit bringing them here and His life being lived through us. You see the evidence of the kind of church the Lord is asking us to become won’t be seen today, tomorrow, or next week, but will become vividly evident over the course of years and years of God’s people being willing to first be discipled, and then disciple another brother or sister.
I have given you the word of the Lord for this church today.
What is your answer?
