The Demands of Discipleship

Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Monday, September 11. Today we try to define what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. It might require more than we realize. Be challenged as you listen to part one of Called to Be a Disciple. We have embodied the concept in the idea of a person. So we think of discipleship as Peter, the apostle, or as James, or John. That is our idea of a disciple. And somehow because we have embodied that concept in a person, we've been able to escape what God intended for us to understand when he spoke to Jesus. When he spoke of discipleship. All the way through the New Testament, you'll find that word.

You'll find the word disciple and discipleship. When you come to the Great Commission, you and I read it in the King James Version that says this, Go ye therefore and teach all nations. We can just quote that off just like that.

We learned that in the first grade or while we were beginners. We could quote that in Sunday School. But it would be better had we learned that the way Jesus said it in the original, which says, Go ye therefore, make disciples of all nations. But you see, we have read it as it has been translated. Go ye therefore and teach all nations.

And so we've sort of relegated that to missionaries and preachers and and teachers and all kinds of church workers. But somehow we've not understood what Jesus meant. He said, As you go, as you go where? As you go everywhere you go.

As you who? Apostles, preachers? No, every disciple. As ye go, therefore, make disciples of all nations. When I read the New Testament, what God is saying concerning discipleship, I realize today why the church is collapsing all of others.

While it is growing in areas, it is absolutely collapsing in other areas. While there are some that are on the cutting edge and the fire and the power of God is so evident, there are those that are drying up and withering like dead stalks, withering. How can the power of God wither? How can the presence of God in the presence of people? How can they wither spiritually?

But it's happening everywhere. And I believe there's a principle I've discovered as I read that book of Acts over and over and over again, and that is without discipleship, it is disaster for the Church of God. If the concept of discipleship is not preached and taught and lived, it means ultimate disaster for the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we look about us to see what's happening, and we wonder why.

I believe the reason is evident in the Word of God. Now listen carefully. Some of you are just sitting on ready, and you're going to get it, and you're going to say, God, that's exactly what I want. That's what I want you to do in my life.

That's what I've been hungering and thirsting for. Any hungry believer will take what God has to offer. But do you know the group of people here this morning who will have the most difficulty with the concept of true discipleship? It is all of us who have been a Christian for 20, 30, 40, and 50 years. We will have the greatest difficulty with accepting and absorbing, and listen, applying the concept of New Testament discipleship. We will have the most difficult time.

Now watch this. Because we have grown up in churches where you go to church, you give your heart to Jesus, you just do some mechanical things like give, and you go to Sunday school class, and you read the Bible, and you pray, and you serve on a committee, you serve as a deacon, you teach a Sunday school class. And we have a generation after generation after generation of the product of breeding and growing and producing churchmen who know everything about the facilities of a church, everything about how a church operates, all about programs, all about the system, but little or nothing about Jesus Christ, and almost zero when it comes to what he meant about discipleship.

Amen? Now that is the condition of the church. We have churchmen by the millions. We have few disciples, and I go right back again to the pulpit. I believe the responsibility primarily rests upon the pulpit.

It is not all there, but primarily that's where it rests. I want us to talk about this matter of discipleship, and this is just a beginning this morning of what it's all about. Now listen, listen carefully. It will be very, very easy for you to say to me, or in your own mind, watch this, the devil do everything in his power to keep this from your mind. It will be easy for you to say, well, I've heard that definition before. Well, I've been knowing that's what a disciple is all of my life.

Now watch this. The devil, if he can get you to think just for a moment, well, I know what a disciple is, he'll have you exactly where he wants you because you'll miss the whole point of the message. I want you to listen as if you had never known what a disciple is, because more than likely, I doubt if many people here really do.

All I ask you to do is to give me your heart for a little while and ask God to speak to you and help you get in your heart, in your mind, so you can apply what I'm going to say. First thing I want to do is to define what a disciple is. Now, the word disciple in the Greek is mathetes, which simply means a learner. That is, a disciple, according to the New Testament, is a person, first of all, who learns the doctrine of his teacher, and secondly, equally important, who makes application of that doctrine in his life whereby the doctrine of the teacher becomes a way of life for the one who's listening. Therefore, a disciple is one who is learning from his teacher, making application in his life and thereby whose life is continuously growing and growing and growing. Now, which says it is a contradiction in terms to talk about being a disciple and being spiritually stagnant, a backsliding in your spiritual life. A disciple is one who is continuously learning, continuously making application. A disciple is one who is hungry and thirsty after the things of God. I simply ask you, do you have a hunger for God? Do you have a thirst for him?

Do you want him to carry you as deeply as he intends to carry you? Now, discipleship, listen, a genuine New Testament disciple, let me give you a simple definition of it. That's the word in the New Testament. That's the implication there. But a New Testament disciple is one who has accepted Jesus Christ as Savior, who has yielded to Jesus Christ as Lord, and who, listen, accepted Jesus Christ as Savior, you've done that, yielded to Jesus Christ as Lord, I certainly hope you've done that, and through whom Jesus Christ is reproducing his life in the life of another. A New Testament disciple is one who has accepted Jesus Christ as Savior, you've done that, yielded to him as Lord, he is king in your life, and through whom he is reproducing himself in the life of another. That's the key.

And this is where we have fallen short and hit zero in our score. He said, as you go to work, as you go home, as you go in your community, as you go to church, we are those who have accepted Christ as Savior, yielded to him as Lord, and through us, he is reproducing his life through us in the life of someone else. That is the simple way Jesus intended to evangelize the whole known world.

You know how we can do that? Simply putting into practice the definition I just gave you. Having accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior, having yielded to him as my Lord, I will allow him to reproduce his life through me in the life of someone else. And when that someone else understands what it means to be saved, to have him as Lord, and that reproduction of another believer is his command from Jesus, that's how Jesus intended that the gospel reach the world. Isn't that simple? It is just that simple. Having accepted him as my Savior, having yielded to him as my Lord, and allowing him to reproduce through me his life in the life of someone else, that is the God-given command to every single believer, period.

There is no exception to that. And when I think of how far short we've fallen from that, I could weep on the inside. Just refreshing my own mind and heart of what the Lord wanted to say through me today. God working in my own heart, speaking to my own life. And I had to confess to him, Dear God, how could I have been so blind so long when I began to realize the sudden picture of this thing?

I have known it for a long time, but all of a sudden it hit me just like a ton of steel. This is the way he intends to evangelize the world in a simple formula available to every believer. And there's not a soul in this place this morning who is saved who cannot do what I'm talking about. Amen? Not a one of us.

Every single one of us can do it. That's what a disciple is. But now let's talk about this matter of the drift of the New Testament Church for a moment. That's the definition.

What about the drift? All the way back in the New Testament day, when Jesus talked about discipleship, he talked to a group of people who followed him. Now, he was not nearly as interested in people's response in some way as oftentimes we are, because when he talked about discipleship, he didn't have the same response that we do when we talk about other things.

Now watch this. Today we talk about membership. We talk about salvation.

We talk about all kinds of things. When Jesus got through, the scripture says, Therefore I said unto you that no man can come unto me except that were given to him of my Father. From that time, many of his disciples went back and walked no more with him.

And I believe that in many churches in America, before they'll ever grow and get fired up for God, there's got to be a purging and a pruning and a cleansing and the doctrine of obedience to God. That is the heart and the core of discipleship. When they saw what he was saying, having healed, having fed them and all the rest, when he got down to obeying him, the scripture says that the vast majority of them turned and walked away, and he said to his apostles, Will you also turn and walk away? Discipleship is more than believing in Jesus Christ.

So then, Jesus with his disciples, he taught them in order to reproduce his life through them to others. Then you come to the early New Testament church, and if you'll turn that to Acts chapter 11 for a moment, I want you to notice something. The scripture says that Antioch was a great center of the Christian faith. And verse 25 says, Then departed Barnabas to Tarsus to seek Paul.

And when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. And it came to pass that a whole year they assembled themselves with the church and taught many people, and the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch. Now listen, those who had believed in Jesus Christ were called disciples.

That's how they knew each other. They were disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ. When the pagans in Antioch, as they watched the influence and the witness and the testimony, and the way of life of these who were disciples, they are the ones, the scripture says, who tagged them Christianos, that is followers of Jesus.

Those whom they saw who were attempting to interpret the life of Christ. Now, a disciple is one who has received Jesus Christ as Savior, yielded to him as Lord, and is available for the Holy Spirit to reproduce the life of Christ through him in the life of someone else. Discipleship is not optional, it is mandatory upon every believer. And I suppose you could place a discipleship in three stages. That is believing in the Lord Jesus Christ first of all, learning of him, and then having his life reproduced through your life in the life of someone else. But that New Testament church, discipleship to them was very, very simple.

They knew exactly what was involved. When I turn to the fifth and sixth chapters of Acts, the last verse, the 42nd verse of the fifth chapter of Acts says, And daily in the temple, and in every house, they cease not to teach and preach Jesus Christ. And chapter 6 verse 1 says, And in those days, when the number of the disciples was multiplied, verse 7 says, and the word of God increased, and the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly. What were they doing?

Here's what they were doing. They had accepted Jesus Christ as Savior. They had yielded to him as the resurrected Lord, and they were preaching in the church house, and they were going from house to house, and they were doing what? They were allowing Jesus Christ to reproduce himself in the lives of people all over Jerusalem, and the Bible says that disciples were being multiplied everywhere.

Why? They understood the true meaning of discipleship. That when you give your heart to Jesus, you are saved to lordship for reproduction. It is not optional.

It is mandatory. The reproducing through us of the life of Jesus Christ in the life of someone else. And that is not only sharing my faith with them, but building that person up in the faith.

Instructing them how to do the same thing for someone else. What have we done? We've said come forward, sign a card, be baptized. And my friend, the churches today that are dying are the churches that are doing nothing but getting members. And listen, that is a disaster to tell a man come give your heart to Jesus and sit and listen to me preach. That is disastrous because Jesus saved that man to reproduce himself through him. And what I'm asking you today is this.

When and how and to whom and in whom has Christ been able to reproduce his life because of the life you've lived? That's what it's all about. He says make disciples of all nations not optional command mandatory upon every single believer. But the church today has watered it down. And what do we have? We have a watered down church that's lost its power. It is no longer exercising and experiencing the supernatural work of God.

And there are bright flames here and there all over the world. But for the most part, the church has lost the understanding of discipleship. And because it has, we have scores of millions of people in Christendom who are ignorant of the word of God. And that's why they're willing to do anything and choose any kind of liberal theology because they're not disciples. They're just believers.

My friend, you can be a believer. But if you're not doing what 2 Timothy chapter 2 verse 2 says, my friend, you're not a disciple of Jesus. And that is not optional. It is mandatory.

It is a command. Follow me. Be my disciple.

Listen to what he says. 2 Timothy chapter 2. Let's begin in verse 1. Now, therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.

Listen. And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men who shall be able to teach others also. That is discipleship. And did you know that all the coming to church in the world is no substitute for that? All the worship in the world is no substitute for that. There is no substitute for reproducing the life of Christ in the life of someone else.

Now, listen. Jesus offers men a way of life. That is, that a man's walk, the way he walks, where he goes, what he says, that his walk is a way of life that is characterized by the reproduction of the life of Jesus. Now, friend, he is saying that a disciple is one whose way of life is characterized by reproduction of the life of Jesus in the life of the man to whom he speaks. And I want to ask you this morning, do you want to be a disciple or do you just want to sit and take it easy and miss the best God's got? I believe there are enough people who mean business for God, who will take what has been said today, ponder it, think over it, look at what they've said they are, what they know they are, what they ought to be doing, what they've chosen as options, what they know now to be mandatory in their life, and that there is no substitute. I believe God will do something in your life, my friend, if you will allow him the privilege of reproduction of his Spirit through you. Thank you for listening to The Demands of Discipleship. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.