Contend For The Faith

What we see Jesus doing here with his disciples is what we can do when we talk with people. "Who do you think Jesus is?" And, as we saw in our text, people will give different answers. Today you might hear, 'he was a teacher', or, 'he was a good man' or maybe even, 'he was a liar, a deceiver and a great magician'. So, depending on their answer to that question, you can ask other questions about how they came to believe what they do about Jesus and in the end, what you hope to accomplish is to have them believe that Jesus is the Christ-the Savior-the Son of God.

But it might just take a little while to get to that point. And sometimes we don't get to that point. Therefore, contending for the faith also involves being discerning. When we disciple people we're investing in them. We are training them to become more mature in the faith or take on some form of ministry work or even a leadership role. It doesn't always work out but typically, when you've decided to disciple someone you've determined that this person is discipleship material; they have shown the desire to be discipled and the potential to achieve success in Christ.

But when it comes to evangelizing, you don't have that. Therefore we are not investing our time so much as we are gifting our time. Technically we are doing both but discipling is more of an investment with a higher probable outcome. There is no probable outcome with evangelizing,. We are spending time with someone who may or may not ever come to Christ.

With discipling you are meeting with someone who has made the commitment to follow Christ and therefore has communicated that their focus is to grow in Christ. You have no such commitment from those in the world. Therefore, our investment of time is more like a gift because we have no idea how it will turn out.

But that doesn't mean we can't gauge how it's going. Most of the time you can determine who's genuinely interested and who isn't. And we're not meant to spend a lot of time with someone who doesn't show any interest. When Jesus sent out his disciples, he told them in Matt. 10:14, "If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake the dust off your feet when you leave that home or town."

"Shake the dust off your feet". John Wesley's commentary, "The Jews thought the land of Israel so peculiarly holy, that when they came home from any heathen country, they stopped at the borders and shook or wiped off the dust of it from their feet, that the holy land might not be polluted with it. Therefore the action here enjoined was a lively intimation, that those Jews who had rejected the Gospel were holy no longer, but were on a level with heathens and idolaters."

This happened when Paul and Barnabas were in Antioch preaching the gospel. The Jews stirred up trouble for them and got them kicked out of the region. Acts 13:51, "So they shook the dust from their feet in protest against them and went to Iconium." We need to respect when someone is not open to the gospel. I'm not proposing that we brush the dust off our sneakers and quote Acts 13:51 to them in protest. We can leave by expressing our disappointment and tell them we are open to getting together if they change their mind.