The Church’s Core Mission

He wanted them to understand his readers. He wanted them to understand. This is what Jesus left the church with. This was the final charge Jesus wanted you to hear. Go and make disciples.

And it’s so easy for good things to become the enemy of the best things. It’s so easy for other things to overshadow or distract or to get in the way of what Jesus said should be the main thing. He said, this is what you’re to be about. Go and make disciples. This isn’t just one ministry among many others.

This is the ministry of the church. Everything else we do as a body connects back to this great commission. And as his body, we can be confident that the mission will succeed. See, we don’t have to wonder. That’s why Jesus began by saying all authority in all the universe belongs to me.

He was saying, you can be confident. This will succeed. But you have to make this central, making disciples. When we see Jesus face to face, you have that first time when you look into his eyes, you’re not going to hear him say, well done. You had good intentions.

Are well done. You had some great ideas. Now he’s going to say, this is what we want to hear. Well done, good and faithful servant. It’s faithfulness.

Faithfulness to what he’s charged us to do with the time that’s given to us, which is very limited in the scheme of things. It’s very limited how much time we have. In his book, “Wickie Church,” Steve Morrell tells a fascinating story about a 10-year-old boy who was a Judo student. He was seriously injured in a car accident. And left arm was so badly damaged that the doctors were left with no choice.

They had to amputate. Now everyone was sure that the boy’s Judo career was all over. From 10 years old, they said, OK, there’s no way this kid’s bouncing back from this. And yet he refused to quit. And he had a coach that said, you know what?

I will take you under my wing. I will teach you one move and one move only. And you’re going to master that. That move. And the student sometimes questioned that idea and he said, you know what?

I should be learning other moves. And the coach said, you just need to trust me. This is the move you need to learn. And so as time went on eventually against all odds or expectations, he made it to the tournament and he won match after match. This one armed boy, he got to the point where he was in the championship.

And he was going up against this guy that was the easy favorite. He was a seasoned veteran, had been in Judo a very long time. Everybody knew this guy who’s clearly has all his limbs. He is going to win. And there was one moment.

They were locked in stalemate, one moment where the veteran lost focus. And this one armed boy did this move that he had mastered. He had trained for it over and over. And he won the match. It was an incredible story.

And Steve says the reason this one armed boy won this match are for two simple reasons. First of all, this one move was one of the hardest Judo moves to master. And he mastered it because he was so focused on that one move. And the second reason is that the only defense against that move was to grab your opponent’s left arm. Now that story is incredible and it’s true.

But it teaches us something that’s important too. It reminds us how important it is to keep the main thing, the main thing. So many things could vie for attention and seem like really important, really good things to do. But if we lose focus on that main thing, just like that boy had to learn this one move, we could get distracted. We could lose the focus.

Jesus called us to be disciple makers. And in his great commission, he said this is what you’re to be doing. It’s not one ministry among many. Like I said, it’s the ministry of the church. And when he says go, he’s saying this is what you are to do actively.

Go and make disciples. Go out and make disciples wherever you are. Discipleship, according to Jesus in your notes, discipleship is a call to full surrender to Jesus Christ. Now it’s important to know Jesus gave us this charge of going and making disciples. And I would argue it’s equally important to see that Jesus modeled this for us for the last three years, for the last three years of his life.

You think about this. Many people would say, Jesus’ sole reason for coming was to die. And I would say that obviously was the chief reason. He was coming to die for our sins. He was coming to atone for our sins on the cross and rise again.

But if it was only to die, if that was the only reason, then why didn’t he go to the cross right after his baptism? Right after everyone witnessed God the Father say, He needed those three years to teach, to train, to equip and to model for these disciples who he was going to hand pick what discipleship looks like. He wanted them to know, this is what it means to follow me. And this is the amazing thing about Jesus. He will never call us to something that he doesn’t that he isn’t willing to do himself.

Think about all the things that Jesus taught his followers. He said, turn the other cheek. Well, none of us wants to do that naturally. But look at what Jesus did. When he was slapped, when he was beaten and punched at the end, he didn’t retaliate.

Jesus said to fully surrender ourselves to God’s will. And you look at his life. He was in full submission to his Father from beginning to end. He said, I only say, what my Father tells me to say. What about love of enemies?

Do you think that still applies in our polarized world where there’s increasing violence and all these things happening? Love for enemies that goes against the grain. We want to hit back at our enemies. We want to retaliate. We want the vengeance on our enemies.

But Jesus said this, but to you who are willing to listen, not everyone is. I say, love your enemies. Do good. And to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who hurt you. See, Jesus went to the cross.

And even on the cross, as he’s nailed hands and feet, nailed to this cross, he’s praying for the forgiveness of these very people doing this to him. That is love, radical love. And so Jesus, when he calls us to walk down that narrow road and says, follow me. He was willing to walk down that narrow road for us first. This is what it means to be a disciple.

Now in the Jewish mindset, if you are a disciple and you have a rabbi, you are with your rabbi all the time. Your goal is to become like your rabbi. That was that relationship in that first century context. You wait, whatever your rabbi is eating. You sleep in the same house.

If you’ve ever watched the show “The Chosen,” it’s really well portrayed. And so they could be with him, hearing all his teachings. They could understand it. They could bring it into their thinking and their heart and life. They could write it down.

That was the whole idea. There was even a phrase used, “The dust of the rabbi,” meaning the disciple would follow so closely that even the dust kicked up by God. His rabbi would get on him. This helps us understand those times when Jesus said, follow after me. He said, come, follow me.

And he said, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. And that’s where Jesus always called his people to come after him. And this tells us that Jesus never calls us to anywhere he wasn’t willing to go, and wherever we go, following him, is gone before us, following him. It means we’re always with him. And we can’t forget that Jesus has every right to call people to follow him.

He alone defeated death as the risen Lord of the universe. He has all rights over the entire world. And so if anybody has the right to have followers, it is Jesus. That’s why he so freely calls everyone to himself. Jesus did not speak like other rabbis, though.

He was called a rabbi, people called him teacher or rabbi, but they noticed this Jesus, he doesn’t speak like the other guys. He speaks with such authority. He speaks with unquestioned reliance on what he is saying is true and that he has these claims on our lives. Nobody else spoke like that. And so when we’re called to go and make disciples, what we’re doing is we’re calling people to him, not to follow us, but to follow him.

And we help them in that path. And Jesus called us to baptism. We see this in the passage. Immersion in Christ is immersion in his body. And your notes, discipleship to Jesus is best done in the context of the church and relationships.

So you think about this, when Jesus calls people to be baptized, he’s calling them to be immersed, to go down into the waters, which is a way of saying, identify fully with Jesus. I’m his. But it’s also a way of identifying yourself with his church, with his body. You’re saying, when you get baptized, you’re saying, I’m with Team Jesus. I am formerly, I am a member of Christ’s body now.

I belong to him, I belong to the church. We are members of one another, the Bible says, and we get to be his hands and feet. That’s the whole idea of being his body. He’s the head. And so now, if you were to ask the question, where is Jesus most fully alive and present on earth right now?

It’s in you and me, in his church, in his body. Jesus even said that, or the revelation talks about how Jesus walks among the lampstands, which are the local churches. Jesus is present in a unique and special way with his body, empowering us to follow him. He’s intended that we would each have a role in that body. That’s the whole point of those passages that talk about the different members of the body.

Everybody has a role. Every Christian has a role in that body. There’s nobody that’s expendable. There’s nobody that doesn’t have something to contribute, something to participate in, something to be involved in. We all have that.

So again, discipleship to Jesus is applying the Word of God to all of life in the context of spirit-empowered relationships. And so the moment you trusted in Christ for salvation, you were immersed into his body. You became a member of his body. I’m going to take the gift of eternal life and do my own thing. You enter into his life.

His life enters into you. And now, because of that, you can be faithful and follow after him. And in the past week that as we gather regularly, we are to stir up one another to love and good works. And we talked about how this is not good works to earn salvation. We could never earn salvation.

It’s far too costly. We could never pay off all our sin. Jesus alone could do that. But we’re called to good works. It’s the life of Christ in us, in his body, that enables us for these good works.

And in this sense, then there would be no change of character. No transformation would take place. It’s because he is at work and he’s alive in his body that we have these good works. And here’s why Jesus’ model is so important for us. Look at what Jesus did.

Now, we think often of Jesus preaching to the crowds. And he did do that. But how often does he preach to the crowds? And then he takes aside those select few. And so what Jesus was modeling for us in that, by having these 12 select people with him all the time, is he was showing us what it means to be a disciple and to have a discipleship group.

And in a discipleship group that can’t happen when you’re by yourself. And it’s a very important thing to have that quiet time with the Lord one on one, just you and God studying his word. And it’s important to come together like this as an assembly, as a church. But there are unique things that can only happen in a small group. And that’s why Jesus did this strategy.

And within that group of 12, he had three that he had even more time with. That was just the four of them, Peter, James, and John. And Jesus had special life on life relationship. See, it’s in that relational context, a smaller group that you can get to know people in a level you couldn’t in just a huge group. You’re able to encourage one another and apply the word of God to one another, encouraging one another, admonishing one another, sometimes challenging one another, because you know one another.

There’s that relationship that’s there. If you don’t have that relationship where you know one another in that context of a small group, then it’s very hard to share the truth, to encourage, to follow Jesus. Now, I want to be careful and not say that discipleship groups must be a certain size, right? That’s not in the Bible. But I would say it’s a good principle.

It’s a good idea to look at what Jesus did as our model. He had three people that he especially invested in. He gave the most time to those three. Beyond them, there was the 12 that he gave a lot of time to, and then there was the other disciples that came around him, he poured into those people, and then he preached to the crowds. And so it’s not as though he was neglecting others by being with these few, but he concentrated his discipleship with a select few.

Discipleship is about multiplication, too. And that’s another reason that a small group, a discipleship group that’s not huge is a great thing to have because it can be replicated. See, one on one tends to be more of a mentor-mentee relationship, and that’s a great thing for that context. But in a discipleship group where it’s something like three to six, sometimes up to 12 people, what you have is you don’t have to have one person who’s the leader and leading all the discussions and giving counsel to everyone else. Instead, everybody has something to contribute, and you’re gathering around the word where everyone can learn together and grow together.

And that’s the idea. It’s multiplication because now you’re learning how to be a disciple and a disciple-maker in the context of a group. Jesus said to those first fishermen, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” So follow me, that’s the first thing. You have to become a disciple first.

You have to trust in Christ for salvation. You have to begin following him, commit your life to him. But then I will make you fishers of men. And as you spend time with Jesus and Jesus as people, and I would argue, especially in the context of those small discipleship groups, you will learn how to encourage others, build up others in following Jesus. So after those three years, they were ready.

When Jesus ascended into heaven, those men that he had poured into were ready. They had been primed and taught the kingdom principles. They were ready to multiply, and they did just that. So a good question for each of us to consider is, who am I investing in? Now I think a parent, it’s easy for us to say, “Our children,” and that’s the right answer.

You are discipling your kids. But another answer is, who else am I investing in? Who outside of my family am I pouring into? Can I think of as that could be someone I can help disciple, someone I can encourage to follow Jesus? Jesus goes on to say, So often we think of teaching as strictly passing on knowledge or information.

And that’s certainly an important part of it. You can’t teach if you’re not sharing knowledge. But notice what Jesus says, is to observe, or obey, to observe is to carry it out, to follow through everything I have commanded you. So let me just state the obvious here. Jesus has some commands for us that we’re called to obey.

And when we’re not obeying the commands of Jesus, we aren’t living as disciples of Jesus. We’re not being faithful to what he’s called us to be. That’s why we need to be in the Word of God. And remember, when Jesus said things like, a true disciple will abide in my Word. And to abide is this idea of living or dwelling, making your home in the Word of God.

And so this will mean things like meditating on Scripture, letting the truth of Scripture just work through your mind, turning it over, trying to understand, how does this apply to my life? What does this say to me? And then it’s not only that, but memorizing Scripture. As you memorize Scripture, it’s like you’re imprinting on your mind, and I would say your soul, the truths of God, and that transforms your life. Now, it’s a little bit like what Jesus said about planting seeds.

The Word is compared to seed often. And you know how this works? When a seed is planted, it first needs to germinate and take root. And eventually, you’re gonna see a crop. That you’re looking for, that harvest.

You long to see that. And every time you take the Word of God and you apply it to your heart and life, you can expect to bear spiritual fruit. That’s the idea. So when we talk about discipleship, we’re talking about how deeply the teachings of Jesus have penetrated our life and heart. Jesus doesn’t want us to compartmentalize our life.

He doesn’t want us to think, this is the time when I’m as a Christian, when I’m living as a disciple, and this is the time when I’m, my me time, this is when I’m living for me. No, your faith should connect to every area of the world you live in. That’s why he said to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself. He wanted the Word to apply to everything. That’s because Jesus has an opinion about every area of your life.

There’s nothing that’s immune to what Jesus might have to say to it. Every aspect of your life, how you use your smartphone, your habits, your hobbies, the things that you put in your body, the food you eat, Jesus has thoughts on all of these things. His Word speaks to all these things, how we navigate our relationships, family, how we deal with suffering, how we encourage others, how we think about politics, sexuality, our needs, our desires, all of life, all of life needs to come under the head of discipleship, discipleship to Jesus, because as Lord, he has something to say about everything in your life. This happens in the context of relationship. I think that there’s many good formats for studying the Word of God, but there is something special, something unique about following Jesus’ pattern and committing to a small group.

Committing, sometimes there isn’t a small group available and you have to start one. When I worked at the hospital in Salem, I was having lunch, with a Christian buddy of mine, and we realized we’re not a part of anything like this here at work, and so we prayed about it and talked about, hey, why don’t we just start a group where we study Scripture together and pray together, and who knows how many will come? And we did that. We started asking people and we said, hey, would you be interested in something like this? It’s gonna be pretty simple format, nothing special.

We’re gonna meet at 6 a.m. At a nearby coffee shop. Are you wanting to join us? We’re gonna meet people from that, too, in a very short amount of time.

And it simply started with, all we wanna do is help one another, follow Jesus. It’s pretty simple, and we encourage one another, we got to know each other’s families, we got to know each other’s needs and what kind of things we were going through and how to pray for one another. There’s a powerful dynamic that happens in a small group like that. I believe that’s what Jesus was calling us to when he modeled this discipleship. By the way, I didn’t even call that a discipleship group at the time, but that’s exactly what it was.

Again, discipleship to Jesus is applying the word of God to all of life in the context of spirit-empowered relationships, accountability, and mutual edification. And this is where I just wanna remind people that there’s so much joy in following Jesus. There’s so much joy. Jesus promised this, his joy would be in us if we live out what he calls us to. It’s not something where you do this in a drudgery kind of way.

I gotta do this out of grit determination. It’s something I have to do. I have to be a disciple of Jesus. No, you get to be a disciple of Jesus. Jesus brings life and light to all that you go through.

When you incorporate him into your life, the more you do that, the more you will see the fruit and experience the joy. It’s what it means to live out your God-given purpose. In light of what happened this last week, I found this quote in a 2024 interview with Russell Brand, Charlie Kirk said this, “I am nothing without Jesus. “I’m a sinner. “I fall incredibly short of the glory of God.

“We all do. “I gave my life to the Lord in fifth grade, “and it’s the most important decision I’ve ever made. “And everything I do incorporates Jesus Christ.” Charlie is now in heaven. Not because he’s so great, but because Jesus died and rose for Charlie.

And that’s the hope we have. That’s the hope we all have. We can know for sure where we’re going to be when we take that final breath if we are committed to Jesus. And we can know this and experience this joy of Jesus as we follow him in discipleship. Matthew 7 says this, this was after Jesus finished his sermon on the Mount.

He closed it off saying, “Everyone then who hears these words of mine “and does them will be like a wise man “who built his house on the rock. “And the rain fell and the floods came “and the winds blew and beat on that house, “but it did not fall because it had been founded on the rock. “And everyone who hears these words of mine “and does not do them will be like a foolish man “who built his house on the sand. “And the rain fell “and the floods came and the winds blew “and beat against that house. “And it fell and great was the fall of it.”

And it was Jesus is addressing everyone. He says, this is for everyone. Everyone needs to know this. If you will build your life on my teachings, Jesus says, if you will build your life on that solid rock, you will have a life on a firm foundation. It won’t be washed away.

And he offers salvation to us. Jesus said, there’s more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents. Been over 99 righteous persons who need no repentance. Think about that. Think about every time that you get to participate in this and help lead someone to the Lord or just tell them for this first time about Jesus or invite them to a discipleship group, you get to be in on the joy of heaven.

There’s like an anthem that plays. There’s a party every time somebody comes to the Lord. That’s a gift. This is why discipleship matters so much because you get to impact lives. Jesus didn’t just say, this is for the professional ministers out there.

For only pastors, this is for everybody in the body. Every one of us are called to be disciples who make disciples. And this is a great honor. This is something that we should treasure that we’re called to do this. So here’s the next question for you.

In your notes, what’s your next step? As a disciple of Jesus, you can make disciples by the power of Jesus. See, the importance of understanding that language of following Jesus is that you can’t follow anyone without taking the next step. You always have to be taking those steps. And this is what Jesus does because he knows that we can get comfortable and kind of like where we’re at and we don’t sometimes want to be pushed outside our comfort zone.

Jesus is always calling you to the next step. What’s the next thing that Jesus is calling you to? Maybe you’re here and you have not yet given your life to Jesus. And that next step is clearly you need to give your life to Jesus. You need to ask him to come into your life and give you that gift of eternal life, which is available to anyone.

It doesn’t matter if you’ve had a Christian background. It does not matter how you have lived your life. Jesus calls everyone to follow him. Or could be that you’re being called to a life group or something, a small group that’s meeting here at GracePoint already. It could be that God is calling you to take that bold step of starting a discipleship group, maybe at work, maybe in a different context that fits your schedule.

But this is something that we can’t neglect. It’s the relationships. That’s where the transformation and the truth is applied in the context of relationships. This is how Jesus designed it. And so that’s the question I’m gonna leave you with is what’s your next step?

Now, if you are thinking over this and you’re saying, okay, I see the idea. I see the importance of making disciples. I don’t really know how to do that. Then I would encourage you in this way. If you are even interested, even interested in discipleship and you wanna learn more or you want to start a discipleship group or you’d like to join a discipleship group, that’s what the church is for.

We’re here to help you out. And so I would encourage you on that connection card, make a note of that. Make a note, I wanna be a part of something. I don’t know where to connect. I don’t know what to do next.

I’m not even sure exactly what discipleship means still, but I’m wanting to know more. If you put that on the card and just express that interest and then put it in the donation box, we will help you out. We’ll help you get involved. Let’s pray together. Gracious Father, we thank you for being a God.

Who loves relationships. You are a relational God. You design us in your image and we grow and become more like Jesus in the context of relationships. We aren’t called to do this thing alone, Lord. We understand that.

We understand that you called us not only to be a disciple, but to go and make disciples. And Father, I guess my one concern is that we would over-complicate this. Make this something other than what it is, which is helping others faithfully follow Jesus as we seek to faithfully follow Jesus. And Lord, I pray that we would be humble and admit our need, admit our desire to connect with other people who are like-minded or maybe not yet like-minded, but also wanna follow Jesus. And that would

be the core focus of our ministry and the church that we would be on the lookout, that we would be hungry for this, that you would, just as Jesus said, my food is to do the will of Him who sent me, that that would be our food, to seek out those who are far from you, to love them, to invite them into this relationship with you, and to encourage those who already know you to follow you faithfully.

We pray all this in the mighty name of Jesus, our Savior. Amen.

Transcript machine-generated from the sermon audio, so it may contain errors. 4,928 words.