For years, they say there was a Divinity School that would invite people to pack a sack lunch and join them on a grassy picnic area where they’d have a prominent theologian give a lecture about God. One year they invited a liberal scholar to come speak and he spoke for 2 ½ hours telling the audience that the resurrection of Jesus was false. He quoted scholar after scholar and book after book, and he concluded that there was no such thing as the physical, historical resurrection. Then the speaker asked if there were any questions.
After about 30 seconds, an old white-haired, black preacher who stood up and said: “I got a question”, and he reached into his lunch sack – pulled out an apple (and he took a bite of the apple). “My question is a simple one.” (He took another bite) “Now, I ain’t never read them books you read...” (another bite) and I can’t recite the Scriptures in the original Greek” (and then he took another bite) “I don’t know nothin’ about Niebuhr and Heidegger” (and he took another bite… and dropped the apple back into his sack). “All I wanna know is this: This apple I just ate - was it bitter or was it sweet?” The speaker paused for a moment: “I cannot possibly answer that question, for I haven’t tasted your apple.”
The old preacher smiled and said: “Neither have you tasted my Jesus.”
This morning we’re going to talk about importance of telling people how our Jesus tastes. In Matthew 28… we are told about some of the last instructions Jesus gave His disciples: "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age." Matthew 28:18-20
In other words: Go Tell People How Your Jesus Tastes.
Last week, we talked about the fact that Jesus expects us to storm the gates of Hell. Essentially, once we’ve been saved Jesus wants us to attack Satan’s kingdom, and to put Satan on the defensive. We’ve been called to go to war… and Matthew 28 is our battle-cry. 1. Go and make Disciples! 2. Baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit! 3. And teach them to observe all I’ve commanded you! And you won’t have to do this alone because (Jesus said) “I’m going to be with you always.”
So, let’s look closely at that command of Jesus. First Jesus says: "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations." (Matthew 28:1) WHO does Jesus want to have make these disciples? Well… that would be YOU and ME. If you’ve tasted of Jesus, and He tastes good to you, and you love Jesus, Jesus wants you to do something about it. He wants you to tell others about Him.
You see, as far as God is concerned, there’s only 2 Kingdoms in the world - one is the Kingdom of Christ, and the other is the Kingdom of Satan. Colossians 1:13 tells us that once we became Christians “(The Father) delivered us from the domain of darkness (Satan’s Kingdom) and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son.”
You either belong to Jesus… or Satan! There’s no in between.
When Paul witnessed King Agrippa he said that Jesus had commissioned him to: “to open (the eyes of the Gentiles), so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.’ Acts 26:18
So remember – we are at war with Satan. And we are in this war to WIN! By turning people away from darkness and turning them to the light and from the power of Satan to God we take the fight to SATAN! (pause)
Now when we think about war, we think about conflict – right? A lot of Christians will try to argue people into becoming Christians. But God says - don’t do that.
“Don’t have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels. And the Lord’s servant must not quarrel; instead, he must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. Those who oppose him he must gently instruct, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will.” II Timothy 2:23-26
So, how do WE storm the gates of Hell? How do we turn people from being Satan’s disciples to being JESUS’ disciples? We don’t quarrel, and we don’t argue. We focus on being kind and being gentle. And we trust God for the victory (God will grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth).
ILLUS: At the first church I served there was a wonderful couple named Marvin and Lela. Lela was faithful at church, but Marvin never darkened the door. I was told that one preacher went out to visit with them and asked Marvin: "You've got good enough clothes to go to church don't you?" To which Marvin replied "Yep... just not there." Well, I went out to visit and things were going along smoothly until their daughter showed up. She belonged to different church in the area and she wanted to get me into an argument about baptism. But I wasn't there to argue about theology - I was there to visit with Marvin and Lela. I tried to gently answer the girl's objections but it was obvious the discussion was going downhill in a big way. Eventually I got back in my car and started driving home, thinking I'd failed and we'd never see Marvin in church. But we did. Marvin showed up a couple of weeks later and was faithfully attending for a couple of months. Then he asked me to come out and visit with him again. We talked out in his woodshop and he eventually told me he wanted to get baptized... which we did later that day (we had to warmup the baptistry). From that day on he was a faithful member of that congregation. What made it so that he decided to become a Christian? I think it was this: everybody else wanted to argue and quarrel. By contrast, I tried (however miserably) to be gentle and kind to his daughter. That mattered to him.
As I was preparing for this sermon I got to thinking about how Jesus made disciples. Do you know how Jesus made disciples? We're told "(Jesus) saw Simon and Andrew casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, 'FOLLOW ME, and I will make you become fishers of men.' And immediately they left their nets and followed him." Mark 1:16-18
And in the Gospel of Matthew we're told "(Jesus) saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. 'FOLLOW ME,' he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him." Matthew 9:9
In fact, Jesus said "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and FOLLOW ME.” Luke 9:23
Are you sensing a pattern here? Jesus simply said FOLLOW ME! Jesus didn’t set down with them and give a 20-minute dissertation about what that meant. He just simply said: “FOLLOW ME!” (PAUSE)
Now, here’s a question: what would Jesus have done if Matthew said “NO! I don’t want to follow you!” What would Jesus have done then? (There were people who did that, you know. They turned Jesus down).
In Mark 10:21 Jesus is talking to a rich young man who loved his money more than God, “Jesus looked at him and loved him "One thing you lack," he said. "Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me." And do you remember what that young man did? “At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth.” (Mark 10:22)
Did Jesus chase after this man? Did He try to engage this fellow in a discussion? No… He just let him go. So, here’s the deal – when you tell people about Jesus a lot of them are going to walk away. And that’s not your fault. If it happened to Jesus… it’ll happen to you. Jesus wasn’t worried about it back THEN. And He’s not worried about it happening to you NOW. He just wants you to go fishing with Him. Jesus told Peter and Andrew “Follow me and I’ll make you fishers of men.”
Have you ever been fishing? I don’t like to fish. Do you know why? I never catch anything. I’m just NOT a Good Fisherman, and I don’t care! But now if you have a GOOD fisherman, a dedicated fisherman, a fisherman who cares, IF he ain’t catching anything what does he do? He goes to a different spot. He tries different bait, or he comes back a different time. He’ll do whatever he’s got to do to catch fish because he KNOWS there’s fish in there somewhere. And he intends to catch them.
Jesus loves to fish, and He wants YOU to go fishing with Him. Now, I hate fishing but I’d go fishing with Jesus ANYTIME!
ILLUS: Years ago, I went fishing with Jesus. I was interning at a church in northern Michigan and as I was driving there I saw a hitchhiker by the side of the road. And I thought, “I’m going to pick this guy up and tell him about Jesus.” But before I picked him up I prayed and I told God: “I’ll pick him up and I’ll talk to him about YOU. But here’s the deal… I’m not going to force this. If it doesn’t seem natural to talk about You… I’m not going to bother. I want you to help me start to start the conversation, and if You open the door… I’ll step right in.” I did this several times going to and from that church, and every time I did it, the subject of God always came up and I told them about Jesus and what He meant to me. It would have been cool if one of them would have seen a lake off to the side of the road and said “Hey, here’s water – what prohibits me from getting baptized?” but that never happened. I was just putting bait in the water and I figured God would catch that guy later.
Now, I’m not saying you need to pick up hitchhikers. What I AM saying is that you need to pray for God to open conversations for you and then see what happens! And that is how you’ll make disciples. That is how you’ll get people to follow Jesus.
And here’s the cool part if you help people become disciples of Jesus - you get to baptize them! “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19) You don’t have to be a preacher or an Elder, or an important leader to do the baptizing - that is never taught in scripture. So - if you win em… you dunk em.
ILLUS: I got a call from a father of a young girl a few years ago. The girl had been talking to her cousin about becoming a Christian and she wanted to know what to say when she baptized them. I simply explained that the important thing was to make sure the cousin knew she was doing it to belong to Jesus.
That’s what this part of the Great Commission is all about. We don’t baptize people into the CHURCH here, and we don’t baptize them into the name of a camp or a religious organization. Converts are baptized IN THE NAME OF the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit – because that’s who they’ll belong to now.
But once you baptize someone… you have to take responsibility for them. Matthew 28:20 tells us we should TEACH our new friends “to observe all that I have commanded you.” This doesn’t take a PH.D. or Bible College education. It just takes the desire to keep an eye on them. Take them to church. Take them to Bible study. Take them to Sunday School. Invest your life in this person.
ILLUS: In the first church I served, we had a 16-year-old boy named Frank Jr. who invited his fried Richard to church. Richard started coming regularly and then wanted to become a Christian and Frank baptized him into Christ. BUT… a few weeks later, Richard stopped coming – and Frank was upset. He came to me and said “This isn’t right. I worked so hard to get him into church and I baptized him into Christ, and now he’s stopped coming.” I smiled at Frank and said “That’s right. You baptized him into Christ, it’s your job to go talk to him and get him back into church.”
CLOSE: The thing to remember is that this is all about your Jesus. It’s not about you, and it’s not about me. We love Jesus and we want others to know him like we do. If we love Jesus, then we have a Savior you can share with others. A few years ago, there was a popular Christian song by Ann Wilson called “My Jesus” and the words speak about making disciples for Jesus.
“Are you past the point of weary - is your burden weighing heavy, Is it all too much to carry? Let me tell you ‘bout my Jesus.Do you feel that empty feeling ‘cause shame’s done all its stealing, And you’re desperate for some healing? Let me tell you ‘bout my Jesus. He makes a way where there ain’t no way, rises up from an empty grave.
Ain’t no sinner that He can’t save. Let me tell you ‘bout my Jesus. His love is strong and His grace is free and the good news is I know that He can do for you what He’s done for me. Let me tell you ‘bout my Jesus. And let my Jesus change your life! "
INVITATION
