What Marks a Disciple of Jesus?
Various Scriptures
January 2, 2011
Introduction
This is one of those messages that would make my preaching teachers shiver in their boots and deny they had anything to do with me.
Why?
Well, because it won’t have the correct “form” that they all say I’m supposed to have.
Because of the storm, I took my laptop home, hoping that I could do my work from there instead of risking getting snowed in here at the church.
However, having 7 kids, my mother-in-law, and a sick wife at home prevented me from getting much actual work done until last night about 6:00 PM.
However, about 7:15, I ended up taking Debra to the emergency room for dehydration due to some other things.
I took my laptop there and worked while they added fluids to Debra through an IV, but still wasn’t able to get everything done.
So this message won’t have much of an “introduction” or “conclusion,” and I’m going to pretty much dive right into the outline in your note-taking guide, okay?
By the way, Debra is feeling much better. She’s at home getting rest and drinking lots of fluids, but she would appreciate your prayers.
Dani is also sick, and would appreciate your prayers.
God: Of all the note-taking guides you will get this year, this may be the most important one.
Take this note-taking guide and keep it in your Bible (because you’re going to be reading it throughout the year, RIGHT?) where you can see it and pray through it on a regular basis.
We’re going to look at five marks of a disciple. Five ways that we can live in such a way that others will be able to tell that we are followers of Jesus.
Five ways that will show that we have something to live for that the world can’t offer.
Five ways that will, in a sense, tattoo us as people who put Jesus and living for Him above all else.
The first mark is that a disciple…
Listens to Jesus.
John 10:27 –
“My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.”
Matthew 17:5 –
"This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!"
How do we listen to Jesus?
- The Scriptures.
If you’re not used to hearing me say that by now, you’d better get to hearing it.
The Scriptures are where we get the information we need about who Jesus is, what He said and did, and what He continues to do while seated at the right hand of the Father until He returns.
It’s so important that we go to the Scriptures, because there is plenty of mis-information out there about Jesus.
Next week I’ll show you a short video that illustrates this a bit.
When we’re reading the Scriptures, and particularly the gospels – those eyewitness accounts of Jesus’ life – we see what Jesus said, and we can take that into our lives.
That’s listening to Him. Taking what He said and applying it.
The other way to listen to Jesus is through…
- Prayer.
This another way in which Jesus can speak to us.
Now I gotta tell you I’m a bit of a skeptic when someone says, “Jesus spoke to me,” because often when someone says that it doesn’t line up with the Scriptures.
And I’ve never heard the audible voice of Jesus that some seem to hear.
But Jesus has spoken to me and to some of you here by impressing something on their spirit in a way that lets them know Jesus is trying to get their attention about something.
Usually this happens when we are in prayer, and oftentimes it happens when we are praying about something entirely different than what He speaks to us about.
Why? It could be that we’re finally in a position spiritually where we’re willing to listen to what He has to say to us.
In any case, this is a reminder that prayer is not always a one-way communication where you say stuff and God listens.
Sometimes it’s the other way around. And the more time we spend with Him in prayer, the more likely we’ll hear Him speak to us.
One thing to keep in mind: He will only speak to you in ways that line up with His Word. He will never contradict Himself.
So if you feel like Jesus is telling you to say, cheat on your wife or sleep with your girlfriend, you can be dead sure that it’s not Jesus talking to you.
In the gospel of John, He said that He only speaks what the Father tells Him to speak. And the Father has some specific things to say about stuff like that.
So a disciple listens to Jesus.
Second, a second mark of a disciple is that he or she…
Obeys Jesus.
Okay, I’ve pounded on this a lot, and it really hits on what we’ve printed on the front of the bulletin regarding moving from lip-service to life-service for Jesus.
But a person cannot say they love Jesus and yet refuse to obey Him. It simply doesn’t work.
How do I know that? Only because Jesus says so:
John 14:21, 23-24 –
“Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him."
"If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. 24 He who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.”
That pretty well says it, doesn’t it?
If you claim to love Jesus, you’ll obey Him. And you’ll constantly be working with the Holy Spirit in getting better at obedience as you mature in your relationship with Him.
It’s not enough to have warm-fuzzies for Jesus. You need to obey Him.
All the emotion in the world doesn’t do it when it comes to loving Jesus.
Obedience is how we demonstrate our love for Him.
And as I mentioned a week or two ago, obeying Jesus and living for Him is not putting on a pair of handcuffs so God can take away all your fun and joy, but rather a freeing from the bondage that keeps you from enjoying all that God has for you.
It is not taking on a new burden of stuff to do to earn God’s favor, because the Bible is very clear that we can’t earn His favor.
But let me share another Scripture that might help you in deciding that obeying Jesus is the right thing to do:
1 John 5:3-4 –
This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, for everyone born of God overcomes the world.
So obedience to God doesn’t have to be burdensome. In fact, in most cases, it’s downright enjoyable, because I’ve just mentioned, we open ourselves up to everything good that God has for those who love and obey Him.
A disciple listens to Jesus, a disciple obeys Jesus, and thirdly, a disciple…
Adopts Jesus’ priorities.
This third mark of a disciple says that what was important to Jesus is important to the follower of Jesus.
From what I can tell by reading the gospels, Jesus had three main priorities:
- Doing the Father’s will.
John 17:4 –
“I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do.”
Jesus made it very clear that He wasn’t on earth do make a name for Himself but to glorify the Father by doing the work He gave Jesus.
His goal was to make sure that the Father’s will was paramount in everything He said and did.
And if Christians would put this ahead of their own convenience, what a difference we would make in our culture and around the world.
A second priority of Jesus was…
- Spending time with the Father.
Luke 5:16 –
But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.
Notice the word, “often,” here. Obviously Jesus got away from the pressures around Him and even His ministry responsibilities on a regular and frequent basis to spend time with the Father.
I would hope the implication for us would be pretty clear: if Jesus needed time with the Father, we obviously need it all the more – Him being the Son of God and all, and us NOT being the Son of God…
We need time with the Father – in the Scriptures and prayer.
And we need it for the same reasons Jesus did – direction and refreshment of the soul.
Here’s a third priority of Jesus:
- Helping the “lost” get “found.”
Luke 19:10 –
“For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.”
This was the mission the Father sent Jesus on.
He came so that everyone would have the chance to know forgiveness and heaven – the chance to spend eternity with God instead of eternity separated from Him in hell.
All his conversations with those who were “lost” were geared to helping them become “found” – helping them realize their need for a Savior and that He was the Savior they needed.
For us, this means that we point people to Jesus and what He did on the cross for their sake and ours.
A disciple listens to Jesus, obeys Jesus, and adopts Jesus’ priorities. A fourth thing that marks a disciple is that he or she…
Imitates Jesus.
In other words, a disciple does what Jesus would do and says what Jesus would say.
Romans 13:14 –
Clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature.
“Clothes make the man,” right?
People do judge you on what you wear, very often – for right or wrong.
People will make judgments on the kind of person you are based on what you are wearing.
And let’s just be honest – we all do it, don’t we? And truth be told, we’ve often judged incorrectly.
It says here we should clothe ourselves with Jesus. How do we do that?
By imitating Him.
Listen to this same verse from the God’s Word translation:
Live like the Lord Jesus Christ did, and forget about satisfying the desires of your sinful nature.
How do we know how Jesus lived? Any guesses?
That’s right – the Scriptures, particularly the gospels – the biographies of Jesus, written by His friends and those who interviewed His friends.
This goes back to the question I suggested we start asking again: “What would Jesus do?”
And that can only be answered by studying the gospels to learn the character of Jesus so you can best apply that in your situation and circumstance.
Then people can judge you based on what they see of Jesus in you instead of what they see of the world in you.
Imitate Jesus accurately, and people will see Him for themselves, and want Him for themselves, because they see that Jesus isn’t just a fairy tale, but truth lived out for real in the lives of real people in the real world.
So far we’ve talked about four marks of a disciple:
A disciple listens to Jesus.
A disciple obeys Jesus.
A disciple adopts Jesus’ priorities.
A disciple imitates Jesus.
Here’s the fifth mark of a disciple I want to mention today:
A disciple…
Loves Jesus’ family.
John 13:34-35 –
"A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."
Notice Jesus doesn’t say, “A new suggestion I give you…”
We are to intentionally act in ways that demonstrate love to our fellow believers, because they are brothers and sisters in Christ.
And remember, love is not primarily an emotion, it’s an action.
How many of you always had warm-fuzzy love feelings toward your brothers and sisters growing up?
No, you didn’t, did you?
We’ve all had times, especially when we were little kids, when we wish our brother or sister hadn’t been born, or that our parents would have either left them at the hospital or switched them out with another baby.
You read how Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery and you thought, “I wonder how I could arrange for that to happen to my sister?”
You know, God’s pretty smart about that kind of stuff, and He knew that if we defined “love” strictly by our feelings and emotions, we’d never get it right.
So God defines love as actually acting in a loving manner – which can be done in spite of our feelings.
A disciple listens to Jesus.
A disciple obeys Jesus.
A disciple adopts Jesus’ priorities.
A disciple imitates Jesus.
A disciple loves Jesus’ family.
How do we know how we do these things? We get into the Bible. The Bible is the foundation for what it means to follow Jesus.
The next four weeks we’re going to get into how we can get such a handle on Scripture that everyone here will be able to be equipped to be a godly disciple of Jesus, no matter how long you’ve been a Christian.
You: What should you do with this information?
Commit today to being a person who is “marked” as a disciple of Jesus.
Take some time this week to look through this list of things and ask God to help you want to have all of these marks be evident in your life.
One of the first things you can do is to be baptized if you haven’t been already.
The first thing a new believer did after putting their faith in Jesus was to declare their faith and intention to live for Him by being baptized.
If you are a Christian and haven’t been baptized following putting your faith in Him, you need to do that.
Jesus commands it.
“What if I was baptized as a baby?”
I’d love to tell you that the Bible says that’s good enough. Unfortunately, I can’t find that in Scripture.
Every instance of baptism in Scripture comes after a person becomes a Christian by putting their personal faith in Jesus for forgiveness and heaven.
Baptism is the first step of discipleship after coming to faith in Christ.
If you’ve already been baptized, then spend the rest of this week committing yourself to this list of marks of a disciple, taking advantage of the opportunities and tools we’ll be offering you throughout this year, and taking the initiative to develop these on your own as you spend time with Christ in the Scriptures.
We: It’s my hope that all of us will take this whole thing seriously, and that none of us will take the attitude of being lukewarm toward Jesus.
The greatest fulfillment in life comes from a life lived for Jesus.
Please allow Him to prove it to you.
Let’s pray.
