DISCIPLESHIP 101
“Learning to Renew your Mind”
Romans 12:1-2
We continue today in our series titled discipleship 101. Four weeks ago when we started this series I read a verse from Luke chapter 9 Jesus was speaking to anyone who might choose to follow him and these are the words that he spoke... If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it but whoever loses his life for me will save it.
This cross, especially in the day of Jesus, stood for persecution; it stood for suffering; it stood for death. So anyone who elected to follow Christ-they knew what they were getting into. If anyone would come after me you must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.
Please look at this slide with me. Right in the center of the cross we see the words to deny self. Those two words must always be at the center of our lives as a disciple. Last week my message was titled Learning to live in the Word. And I encouraged all of you to reach deep into God’s word every day, to get in a group and begin to study God’s Word as never before. There is a powerful passage of Scripture that Paul wrote to the church in Corinth that simply says this... We take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. When Paul wrote these words, he was writing to a church that was dealing with temptation (or attempting to) but they were not succeeding. They faced a great deal of temptation that we deal with today as well. Paul tells them especially that they should avoid sin in these areas:
• Sexual sin. Do not associate with sexually immoral people.
• Greed.
• Those who worship idols.
• Those who give in to drunkenness.
Now while this was written 2000 years ago these are still huge areas where many struggle today. So Paul was making a very important point when he wrote this down. These temptations start in the same place all temptation starts. It is in how we think. It is in our thought process. Where does sexual sin get started? It gets started in the same place every sin starts. In the heart. We look at things we shouldn’t look at, we read books or magazines we shouldn’t see and these things get into our thought process and they work their way into our actions. So Paul is saying that in order to prevent these things from happening that we must learn to take captive every thought and make that thought obedient to Christ.
Now the psalmist David certainly knew this. And as we have stated before the OT and NT believers did not have the privilege of holding all of God’s Word in their hands as we do. Most of us have access to multiple copies of God’s word. We have the word available on radio, TV, Internet. They of course had none of these things.
So David and many others found the solution to this problem and David tells us in Psalm 119:11 what the answer is. David said I have hidden/stored your word in my heart that I might not sin against thee. As unbelievable as it sounds, Orthodox Jews committed the entire Talmud to memory. 5422 pages. It was divided into 63 sections and they could recite every word on every page. They did this for several reasons. First of all it was necessary. They didn’t have any computers, tapes, devices to record on and even writing was difficult so the only way to store the information was by committing it to memory. Today if you ask a young person their phone number they have to look it up. ?
But not only was it necessary, it was helpful. It had great benefits. And it still does because as a disciple your goal is not merely to get into the word but the goal also is to get the word into you. It is not how many times you have been through the Bible but rather how many times it has been through you. Think of it this way. Think of it as a cup of hot tea. Only you are the cup of hot water and the Scripture is the teabag. Hearing God’s word is like one dip of the teabag into the cup. It absorbs some of the flavor but not all of it. As you read it again and again it absorbs even more. The more times the teabag enters the water, the stronger the effect. And you continue to absorb it into your life until you are completely saturated with God’s word.
Now the Scripture says out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks or as the Chinese would say, “what’s down in the well comes up in the bucket.” Whatever you put into your life; that is exactly what you will produce. And as we fill our lives with Scripture we will begin to look less like the world and more like Jesus himself.
Let me give you 5 benefits of doing this:
1. Memorization of Scripture will help keep you from sin. When Satan came to Jesus in the wilderness in Matthew four, he had been fasting for 40 days. Jesus was no doubt hungry. Satan said to him, “why don’t you take the stones that are on the ground and turn them in a hot bread?” Jesus had the power to do exactly that. He knew how to multiply bread. But Jesus instead said man does not live by bread alone. He lives by the word of God. Jesus quoted Scripture. Scripture he had committed to memory. In fact with each temptation that was thrown at him that day, he did the same thing each time-he quoted Scripture. Memorization of Scripture will help keep you from sin.
2. Memorization of Scripture will transform your thinking. Romans 12:2. There are a variety of terms we used to describe the Bible. We call it:
• the gospel
• the good book
• Paul calls it a sword
• the living word
• holy Scriptures
• Jesus used a simple term to describe it. He said it is truth.
As you know truth is in short supply. But I would suggest that there has never been a time when it was more needed than now. You don’t believe me, turn on the news, pick up a newspaper; listen to the presidential debate if necessary. We face the most difficult election our country has ever faced-less 23 days away and many Americans still are undecided as to how they will vote. Why? Because they don’t know who is telling the truth. We now have a thing called fact checking-the Tampa Tribune uses it, TV stations use it and you have to go there to see who is telling the truth. The problem is we don’t know from the people who are telling us who is telling the truth-we don’t know if they are telling the truth or not.
So David said hide some of it in your heart. Get it into your heart and mind. Let God’s word change the way you think.
3. Memorizing God’s word will equip you to share your faith. Peter said we should always be prepared to defend our faith if anyone asks us to do so. If someone says what makes you any different from anyone else? Or where do you get your hope from? Let me ask you what would you say? If someone were to ask you how they could place their faith in Jesus Christ, would you know what verses to share? And if you didn’t have your Bible with you would you would be able to share anything? Memorizing God’s word will equip you to share your faith.
4. Memorizing God’s word will provide direction for your life. Again David, the psalmist said “your word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.” The message says it this way, “by your words I can see where I’m going; they throw a beam of light on my dark path.”
In those days a tiny lamp made of clay was often fastened to the strap of a sandal so that the light would be cast on the ground. The individual wearing it could not see that far but could see enough to be able to take the next step. Not a lot of steps but the next one for sure. Memorizing God’s word will provide direction for your life.
5. Memorizing God’s word will produce spiritual growth in your life. The psalmist asked this question. How can a young man keep his way pure? The answer: by guarding your heart according to God’s word. Paul said let the word of God live in you. What better way is there to saturate yourself of God’s word than to memorize it? As a disciple your goal is not merely to get into the word-your goal is to get the word into you.
Michael Billester once gave the Bible to a man who lived in Poland with these instructions: commit the Bible to memory. When he returned a few years later, he learned that 200 people had become believers in the little village were the man lived. When the group gathered to hear Michael preach, he suggested that before he spoke he would like each person to quote some verses of Scripture. One man rose and said perhaps we have misunderstood you. Did you mean verses or chapters? Michael said are you saying that there are people here who can recite entire chapters of the Bible? And that was precisely the case. In fact 13 of them knew half of the book of Genesis and all the books of Matthew and Luke. Another man had committed the entire book of Psalms to memory. Combined, the 200 believers new by memory almost the entire Bible.
If we were asked today to do the same how much of God’s word could we speak today? I am challenging you to begin memorizing scripture. And as you do your mind will be transformed. The way you think will be changed. And the Word will come alive in you as never before.
