This is Connect with Skip Heitzig Weekend Edition. We're glad you've joined us for today's program. Connect with Skip Heitzig exists to connect you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times through verse by verse teaching of His Word. That's why we make messages like this one today available to you and others on air and online. Before we kick off today's teaching, we want to let you know that you can stay in the know about what's happening at Connect with Skip Heitzig when you sign up for email updates. When you do, you'll also receive Skip's weekly devotional email to inspire you with God's Word each week. So sign up today at connectwithskip.com.
That's connectwithskip.com. Now let's get into today's teaching from Pastor Skip Heitzig. If you want to keep up with what people are saying, you become their followers.
That's what they're called. You sign up and you have so many followers. And I've always been intrigued by that. I decided to find out who's the most successful at Twitter and who has the most followers in Twitter world. Lady Gaga is number one. She has 14 million followers. Justin Bieber is second. He has 13 plus million followers.
And they have the top 50, top 100, top 1,000. It was interesting that Jesus Christ has a presence on Twitter. He has a page. I don't know who it is, but somebody took that handle, Jesus Christ. And you can follow Jesus on Twitter. He has 363,000 followers and not quite as many as the top 10. Of course, it's not Jesus who's doing the tweeting.
It's somebody who's giving out messages in His name on His behalf. But when I say I'm a follower of Jesus Christ, I mean that I am a disciple of His. I remember when I chose to become one. I remember when I received the Lord into my life.
I remember where I was. And I knew that when I was choosing that path, that it was not the most popular path, that I would be a minority, not a majority. You probably know that the famous American poet Robert Frost did a little poem called The Road Not Taken. In that poem, he talks about being in a forest, and there's two paths that split off, and he has to choose which road he's going to walk down. And he knows that he can only invest himself in one path, though he tells himself that he'll be back eventually one day to look at the other path, though in all honesty, he knows that will never work. And so he writes, I shall be telling this with a sigh somewhere ages and ages hence. Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference. By the end of the poem, you realize that Frost isn't really talking about two paths in a forest as much as choices made on life's road.
We make very important decisions of where we're going to go. And when I chose to follow Christ, I knew I was choosing the road less traveled by, and that made all the difference. I know that I'm also addressing fellow followers. I don't know that everyone in this room is a follower of Christ.
I would never dare to say that. I suspect that there are a lot of you who are truly following Christ, and if you were able to share your story now, you would have your own testimony. How at a certain time, in a certain place, maybe by the influence of a certain person, you came to realize how important that choice was. And so you made a decision to follow Christ.
It might be I was lonely, or I was searching, or I was this, or I was that, or it was after a divorce, or after a difficult time in my life. Whatever the circumstances, you would say, I remember choosing to follow Jesus. That's true, but it's only partly true.
There's another side of the coin. We have seen it a few times in the Gospel of John already. Now Jesus is reiterating it in prayer form to His Father. What you have here, beginning in verse 6, and we're going to go from verse 6 to verse 10, that's our paragraph this morning.
We have God the Son talking to God the Father about how followers are formed, how disciples are made. And this prayer lifts us above just the human choice to the divine choice, or divine election. Notice the wording as Jesus prays to His Father in verse 6, saying, They were yours, and you gave them to Me, and they have kept your word. And now they have known that all things which you have given Me are from you, for I have given to them the words which you have given Me. And they have received them, and have known surely that I came forth from you, and they have believed that you sent Me. I pray for them.
I do not pray for the world, but for those whom you have given Me, for they are yours. And all Mine are yours, and yours are Mine, and I am glorified in them. When it comes to the formation of the followers of Jesus, there's three components in this paragraph that I want you and I to see together.
First of all, the Father reserves them. Jesus says, They were yours, and you gave them to Me. He says that in verse 6, You gave them out of the world to Me.
That's repeated in so many words in verse 9 and in verse 10. So to sum it up, the Father, at some point, before the world ever came to be the world, we understand from the Bible, God had you in mind. God chose you. He reserved you. And He then gave you as a gift to His Son.
We covered that a little bit last week. So you and I become part of a whole new company of people called the church. Jesus said, Upon this rock I will build My church. But what we see is, in listening to this prayer, in eavesdropping on Jesus talking to His Father, we're dealing with these holy mysteries of election and predestination.
Some pretty heady theological stuff. Before we even dip our toe into those waters, however, let me just give you the definition of a disciple. Now you know that term from the Bible, disciple.
But what you may not know is the term was common in usage a couple thousand years ago. The philosophers, the great mentors of the mind in the ancient world had many disciples. The term in Greek is mafetes.
Mafetes. It means a pupil, a learner, a student. We get the word mathematics from the word disciple, mafetes.
You wonder, well, I don't see the connection. Until you realize ancient philosophers took large sums of money from their students, from their disciples. See, in those days, disciples were the ones that pursued the mentors, pursued the masters, would ask to be mentored or discipled by some great teacher or philosopher.
And they would pay the money. They would choose where they would want to be mentored, what the master, who the master was. And so we see there's a difference between that kind of follower, that kind of disciple, and these disciples.
First and foremost, who chose whom? Well, it was Jesus who was walking by the Sea of Galilee one day and saw Peter and Andrew. They were casting a net. Jesus walked up to them and said, follow me and I will make you become fishers of men.
He walked a little further. He saw out in a boat two other brothers, James and John, mending their nets with their dad, Zebedee, in the boat. And Jesus said, hey, you guys, follow me. It says immediately they left their nets and followed him. Later on in the same town was Matthew.
He was an IRS agent, tax collector. Jesus walked into his office and said, buddy boy, it's quitting time in so many words. Leave all this. Follow me.
Immediately it says he left everything and he followed Jesus. Sometime later, our Lord will remind those disciples of that truth when he says to them, you did not choose me. I chose you.
I appointed you that you should bear fruit. Now, in one sense, Jesus did choose them, but in another sense, they had to make the choice to cooperate, to follow. Their own volition was involved in the choice. There's always been this tug of war, this angst between two great biblical truths, God's election and man's volition, man's choice. See, on one side, you have all these texts in the Bible that talk about us making a decision to cooperate with God. Remember in the book of Joshua when he said to the nation of Israel, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve. He appeals to their decision making processes. The first message of John the Baptist and Jesus was repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Again, appealing to them to make a choice. In Matthew chapter 11, Jesus said, come unto me, all you who labor and are heavy laden.
I will give you rest. To the leaders, Jesus will say, but you are not willing to come to me that you may have life. You're listening to Connect the Skip Heitzig Weekend Edition. Before we return to Skip's teaching, start 2025 off right, exploring the richness of God's word with Pastor Skip's book, The Bible from 30,000 Feet and accompanying workbook. These resources offer an aerial view of scripture covering all 66 books of the Bible with a unique flight plan, facts, landmarks, itinerary, gospel, history and travel tips. You'll explore every book of the Bible with Pastor Skip's insightful flight plan, while the workbook provides exercises and questions to guide your reflection. We'll send you the Bible from 30,000 Feet book and workbook as our thanks for your gift of $50 or more to reach more people with God's love through Connect with Skip Heitzig.
Go to connectwithskip.com slash offer or call 800-922-1888 and request your copy when you give. Now let's get back to Skip for more of today's teaching. Again, in John, Chapter seven, Jesus says, If anyone thirsts, let him come unto me and drink. All of these appeals for the exercise of human will. All the way to the last book of the Bible, the last chapter of the last book of the Bible, in Revelation 22, we read, The Spirit and the bride say, Come, and let him who hears say, Come.
Let him who thirsts come, and whoever desires, let him take of the water of life freely. But on the other hand, you have all of these other texts in the Bible that speak about God doing the reserving and the electing and the calling and the predestining, et cetera. For example, in John, Chapter six, Jesus says, No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. That's a sovereign work. That's a divine work. In Ephesians, Chapter one, Verse four, Just as he chose us in him before the creation of the world, you might say, God had you in mind before the world began. And even here in John, Chapter 17, in the prayer that Jesus is formulating to his Father, there's those same truths. They were yours.
You gave them to me. Now, for the life of me, I don't understand the fight that has gone on and continues to rage. And boy, in some church circles, it's quite a fight between those who adhere to Calvinism, and they want to emphasize divine election over human choice versus the other side who wants to emphasize human choice over divine election.
Here's the deal. Both of these things are true. And Jesus felt the freedom to include both of these truths in the same paragraph.
In fact, in fact, sometimes in the same sentence, the same sentence. I remind you of this verse. This is John, Chapter six, Verse 37.
We already covered it. Listen to this. Jesus said, all that the Father gives me will come to me. And he who comes to me, I will by no means cast out. Now there's the combination of God choosing and electing and man cooperating and choosing from an earthly perspective. So here's the deal. Please, what Jesus has sought to harmonize, let's not polarize on.
He brings them together in one. You can marvel at it. You can wonder at it. You can scratch your head and go, hmm, interesting. Wow. But at the end of the day, you know what you ought to do? Enjoy it. Because you know what it means?
It means he picked you. I remember what it was like when I was in grade school and high school. And you remember when they used to divvy up teams and they would have team leaders and they would pick different students to be on their team? I was always one of the last kids picked. I love sports. I used to have a lot of fun. I was never really good at one or the other team sport. So I knew whenever I said, OK, here goes, we're going to pick teams.
I'm going to be sitting here twiddling my thumbs. And finally somebody go, OK, I'll take Skip because there's only two left. I remember what that felt like. But I also remember what it felt like years later when I enrolled for a medical program with UCLA in San Bernardino, California, and they selected out of thousands of students in California just 13 to be part of this program. And I was picked. I remember what that felt like. This is what it feels like to be picked. To be picked first. Wow.
And I get that same feeling when I read text in the Bible like this one in our prayer today or other ones that I mentioned. God picked me. I'm on his team. OK, I can I can read the books and and I can muse over the literature and I can hmm and marvel at it. But at the end of the day, enjoy it, man. I read the end of the book. We're on the winning team.
They just go, Yeah, I'm on the team. The father reserves. The second component in formulating and forming disciples, followers, is not only the father reserving, but the son revealing. Look at verse six.
Jesus speaking. I have I have manifested your name to the men whom you have given me out of the world. And let me explain what that means. That's a it's an old way of saying that I have manifested your name. That's an old way of saying I have revealed your nature to them. That's what it means.
I've revealed your nature. One translation says, I spelled out your character in detail to the men that you have given me. In other words, Jesus shows us what God is like. Paul calls Jesus the visible image of the invisible God.
If you want to know what God is like, you look at Jesus. So in the Old Testament, the name of God, Yahweh, means I am that I am. And every Jew knew he was the great, mighty, powerful. I am that I am.
But Jesus took that name and made it more approachable, more understandable, more manageable. He said things like, I am the bread of life. I am the living water. I am the good shepherd. I am the door to the sheepfold.
In other words, he brought God down to the level where we can understand him. And God becomes to us whatever we need. If you're thirsty, I'm the living water. If you have spiritual hunger, I'm the bread of life.
So you might say, Jesus Christ is God spelling himself in a language that we can understand. So Jesus said this, if you have seen me, you what? You've seen the Father. Philip, have I been with you so long? Don't you know if you've seen me, you've seen the Father?
What could he mean by that? Well, when you see Jesus, for example, teaching the multitude, in effect you're seeing God who cares that we know certain truths about him and about us. That's God. When you see Jesus healing people who are sick, in effect you are seeing a God who cares about human suffering.
When you see Jesus weeping over Jerusalem, in effect you're seeing a God who is brokenhearted over the rejection he has received from his very own people. If you've seen me, you've seen the Father. So the Father reserves, the Son, Jesus, reveals the nature and character of God. You want to know what God is like?
You look at Jesus. And it's more than just the nature and character of God. It's the truth about life.
It's the truth about us. It's the truth about God. He gives us not just the nature of God, but the truth in his words. Look at verse 8. For I have given to them the words. Notice that, the words that you have given me. Go down to verse 14.
Skip ahead. I have given them your word. And the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Observe verse 17.
Sanctify them by your truth. Your word is truth. Not only is Jesus the living Word, going back to John 1, 1, In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh. But more than that, Jesus also authenticated the written Word. If you've read through the Gospels, you know that Jesus on many occasions referred back to the older testament and saw that as the very Word of God. He said the Scripture cannot be broken, and he would often quote it, but he'd always speak of it as being the true, inspired Word of God.
That's how he saw it. He said don't think that I have come to destroy the law or the prophets. I came to fulfill, not destroy. And then he also anticipates the writing of the new covenant, the new testament.
I want you to look at that. Go back a couple chapters. Go back to chapter 14 in John. I know we've covered it, but it's a good time to remind ourselves because John 14 was probably a year ago. John 14, look at verse 26. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all things I said to you.
That's a very helpful verse. It's helpful because we sit here today and wonder how could those disciples or fishermen, how are they going to remember all the things Jesus said and did and do it so it's like accurate? How are they going to do that?
I forget what happened yesterday. How are they months later going to write these things down and have it corroborated with other sources? Not without the Holy Spirit. It's a supernatural work Jesus anticipates. The Holy Spirit is going to assist you and help you and cause you to remember all things so that the gospels that were written were thus written.
Now look at chapter 16 for a moment on your way back to chapter 17. Stop up verse 12 of John 16. Jesus speaking, I still have many things to say to you but you cannot bear them now. Interesting. A lot of truth I want to give you guys.
You guys can't handle it. However, when He, the Spirit of truth has come, He will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on His own authority but whatever He hears, He will speak and He will tell you things to come. I believe Jesus is suggesting the writing of the epistles that Peter and John will write.
We're glad you joined us today. Before you go, remember that when you give $50 or more to help reach more people with the gospel through Connect with Skip Heitzig, we'll send you Pastor Skip's book, The Bible from 30,000 Feet, and companion workbook to help you dive into scripture in the coming year. This sweeping aerial view of God's word will help you understand the big picture with greater clarity and gain a deeper appreciation for God's timeless truths. To request your copy, call 800-922-1888.
That's 800-922-1888. Or visit connectwithskip.com slash donate. For more from Skip, be sure to check out the many resources available at connectwithskip.com slash store.
We'll see you next time for more verse-by-verse teaching of God's word here on Connect with Skip Heitzig Weekend Edition. Make a connection. Make a connection at the foot of the crossing. Cast your burdens on His word. Make a connection. Connection. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.
