Let’s get to our passage. Turn over to Matthew 28. This passage might be pretty familiar to you, but that’s ok. When you get to Matthew 28, we’ll read verses 19-20. Pay attention to this passage…as it lays the foundation for what we’re studying today. Let’s read our passage for today…again, it’s Matthew 28:19-20.
It says: 19Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
So far in this series, we’ve looked at the description of a disciple… and the requirements of a disciple…so that we can work on being true disciples of Jesus ourselves before we take on Jesus’ commission for his followers. Then last week we focused on what disciple-making looked like back in scripture…and how it differs now. We need to get back to some of the principles of disciple-making that worked back then.
Now today, we’re going to take an inward look. We’re going to ask ourselves why we want to make disciples. What is our motivation? Now, for some…and this might even apply to you here this morning… you have no desire to make disciples. But if that’s the case, then that basically means you have no desire to be a Christian as Jesus has called you to be.
Then there are others…and maybe this better describes you here today…you know you need to make disciples but you’ve not been very productive. You have the wrong attitude or you barely try because you’re mostly doing it out of “obligation.” You’re the person who half-heartedly makes disciples because it’s what Jesus has told you to do. For you…as we’ll see this morning…going about disciple making with the wrong motives or the wrong reasons isn’t going to be very productive.
*In fact…you might do harm. Others are going to get the wrong idea of what it means to live for Jesus. If the disciples we make start out behind the eight-ball because we’ve not had the right motivation…then we’ve done them a disservice. Disciple-making with the right heart is vital to living out the commission that Jesus gave in our opening passage this morning.
**One of the biggest issues we run into when it comes to making disciples…as we’ve started to say this morning…is having the wrong heart. Meaning…our heart isn’t involved in it at all. It’s just about doing things for others to see. It’s disciple-making at its shallowest.
And even though the people we’re discipling to might not know that… the one who told us to make disciples does. We know that based on what God says to the prophet Samuel in the second half of 1 Samuel 16:7 which says: “The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” Sometimes our motivation in disciple-making is the outer actions.
But you might think…aren’t we supposed to show people how to live as a follower of Jesus? Faith without works is dead, isn’t it? They need to see the difference, right? Well…yes. All of those things are true. But for some people…some Christians…disciple-making has become mostly about what others see on the outside. And that’s not enough.
How do we know? Because of something that Jesus stressed time and time again throughout his ministry. One occasion comes from Matthew 15. Here, the Pharisees approach Jesus and ask him why his disciples break the traditions of the elders and exclaim that they don’t wash their hands before they eat.
So how does Jesus respond? He turns the tables on them, asking why they break the command of God for the sake of their own, human, manmade traditions. Then he says in verse 7: “You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you: ‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.’”
The Pharisees and other teachers of the law were reeeeeally good at acting religious. But that’s all it was. It was just a bunch of lip service…a whole lotta action…but their hearts were far from the one who they were supposed to be living for.
So what the rest of the people thought was how they should live… they were being deceived. There were generations upon generations of people who had the wrong idea of what it meant to live for God. All because the ones who were showing them…were showing them nothing but a bunch of outer actions.
*And that’s what a lot of Christians are doing today. If they’re going to attempt to make disciples, they tell people what to do and they show them what to do. But all that comes across is the shell. And the result is an emptiness that never satisfies the disciple being made… and it definitely doesn’t satisfy God.
So you need to ask yourself this morning…is that what your Christian life looks like? It’s turned into a bunch of outward actions, and not a whole lot more? If so…then the disciples you’re going to make will have a shallow faith. They won’t have the solid foundation they need to live a Christian life that will lead them to eternal life. Their lips will be moving…but their hearts will be far from God. Does that sound like the kind of disciple you want to make?
I sure hope it doesn’t. That’s why it’s so important that…as we go about our disciple-making…it’s more than just outward actions. It needs to be like what we read in 1 Peter 5:2. There, he’s speaking of the leadership role of elders, but what he writes there applies to making disciples…and really anything else we do as Christians as well. He writes: “Be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care, serving as overseers – not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be…”
*We need to be willing disciple-makers. It’s not an obligation which results in empty actions and a heart that is far from God. It is something that we should desire to do because it’s been instructed to us as followers of God…as disciples ourselves.
**So then the question comes up…alright…how can I make disciples in a way that’s more than surface deep? Well, I’m glad you asked. If you want to make disciples the right way…you need the right foundation. Which brings us to our second point for this morning. Your motivation for making disciples needs a foundation of love.
This goes back to something that we talked about a little while back…about how we interact with a world that is lost and blind in the darkness that surrounds it. And just as love…God’s love, his agape love…needs to be at the root of how we treat people in this world, love…God’s love, his agape love…needs to be the foundation of our disciple making.
After all, it was because God so loved us that he sent his one and only Son, right? It was out of love that Jesus selected twelve men to be his disciples. Everything he said to them, everything he did with them was out of love. God’s love…his agape love.
It was because of love that Jesus died on the cross for our sins and rose from the grave three days later. Love is who God is. Love was the foundation of Jesus’ ministry. Love…love for God and love for the people around them…is what drove the disciples to carry on the work of disciple-making that Jesus had started. If it was all a bunch of outward actions, it would have flamed up real quickly…and then faded. But it didn’t. Because it had a foundation of love…God’s love. …
*And love needs to be the foundation of how we make disciples today. Why? Because of something that Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13:1-3. Before he tells them that “love is patient and kind…” he says: “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.”
It doesn’t matter how many “Christiany” things you do. It doesn’t matter how “good” you appear to be on the outside. It doesn’t matter if you tell people about Jesus and show them what it means to follow him…if love isn’t the foundation. Love has to be the basis for everything you say and do in making disciples. If it isn’t…then those disciples won’t make disciples with love as their foundation. And within a couple of generations…the church will be obsolete. That’s how important love is to this whole process. …
*In 1 John 3:14 it says: “We know that we have passed from death to life…because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death.” When we love…we make disciples out of love and when we make disciples out of love we will live forever in heaven someday. But if we don’t love…well, then it’s like we never came to life in the first place. … So we need to live our lives with a foundation of God’s love.
**Then…then we’ll be motivated to make disciples the right way. And this brings us to our last point for this morning. When our motivation isn’t outer actions but a foundation of love…we will set a good example.
As we talked about already, it can be pretty easy for us to set a bad example…like the Pharisees and other teachers of the law. In fact, they were so bad that he told the people in Matthew 23:3-5: “You must obey them and do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy loads and put them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them. Everything they do is done for men to see.” Again...they were incorrectly motivated. It was outward actions and nothing else. Nothing deeper. No heart…no love. So their example was leading others away from God, not toward him.
That’s why it’s important that we set a good example. That’s why we need to heed the words that come from James 1:22-25. Turn over that way. He writes: “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it – he will be blessed in what he does.”
There are a whole lot of Christians today that hear the word. They hear lots of it. They hear to not murder and to not commit adultery and not have other gods before the Lord God. They hear where the word says to serve others. They even hear where it says to go and make disciples and baptize them and teach them. But they don’t do those things! Or they do them…but they are missing the key component that we’ve just talked about…love! And so they’re deceiving themselves!
Does that sound like you? Are you deceiving yourself? Maybe because you know you’re supposed to make disciples, but you aren’t doing it because you just aren’t motivated to do it or you think it’s not your calling and that it’s up to someone else to make disciples. Or you’re trying but you have the wrong motivation…you’re missing the foundation of love. If that’s the case…then you’re deceiving yourself. You’re deceiving yourself by thinking you’re a disciple…a Christian…but you’re falling short.
*But if we can have the right heart about making disciples…the proper motivation…going about it not just with outward actions but a foundation of love…then perhaps what’s written in Hebrews 13:7 will apply to us someday. There, it says: “Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.” We need to live a Christian life that is worth imitating. That’s what it means to make disciples for Jesus. That others imitate us…as we imitate Christ. …
****But that’s not going to happen if we aren’t properly motivated. Imitating somebody that imitates Jesus? That’s someone worth imitating. We need to imitate the example that Jesus set for us. And that’s what others are going to do if we’re making disciples.
But if we aren’t motivated…if we are all action and no heart…no love…then they won’t be imitating Christ. They won’t be his disciples. And if they aren’t his disciples…then we won’t have made more disciples. And if we aren’t making more disciples…then we aren’t the Christians we’re called to be. That’s why we’ve asked this morning what our motivation is. What is yours?
Invitation
