Living with a Common Purpose: Making Disciples
Pastor Jim Luthy
Last week we talked about the awakening in America to the problem of individualism. Rising from our slumber after the terrorist attacks, the people of our nation are giving blood, giving money, giving thanks, and giving in to longer lines and greater security checks at the airport. Over it all we see people offering prayers like never in my lifetime.
The church, we discovered, exists to be a counter-culture to the "me" culture we have been awakened to. Now that people are feeling vulnerable, they are looking for something or someone greater than themselves for blessing. For hope. For serenity. For protection. The church has the answer, and his name is Jesus. We ought to be a refreshing stream to those feeling the heat of their mortality. And we ought to be a lighthouse for those who are adrift at sea, being tossed back and forth by the waves of self-sufficiency.
Many of you responded to last week’s message to flee individualism by writing on your response cards, "Not I, but Christ." In making that commitment, you are expressing a desire to flee from self-serving and self-preserving and let Jesus alone be sufficient for your hope and joy.
The place to develop and nurture our escape from individualism is genuine Christian community. With a small group of people, such as our TLC Groups, we find the encouragement and the opportunities to serve others instead of ourselves. As we serve one another, we distance ourselves from our natural inclination to be self-motivated, self-seeking, and even self-absorbed. As we live together, we learn how to take ourselves off the throne and love God with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength and love our neighbor as ourselves. That is triumphant living that doesn’t leave us staggering when tragedy strikes.
I want to further clarify the picture of living in community. With a sharper focus, we will be enticed into coming away from our self-absorbed world and into the fellowship of one another. If we are to come together in such a way, we must cast aside all our personal motives and live together with a common purpose. That purpose must be defined by God and not by ourselves. It’s not a good idea to get together in your small groups and ask "What do you think the point of this group should be?" If you do, you’ll end up with as many answers as you have people. Then what will you do? Vote on it? The person or people whose ideas were discarded will fall back into "me-ward" thinking as they fret over their rejection. The winning vote would most likely go to the idea that best supported the selfish desires of the majority of the group. We cannot look inside of ourselves for our common purpose. Instead, we must find the authority outside of ourselves, with whom all authority belongs.
Matthew 28:18-20. "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."
The Father has given the Son all authority to determine our common purpose. By that authority, or as Jesus said, "Therefore," he gave us this purpose that we refer to as the Great Commission: "Go and make disciples." When we come together, what makes us "Christian" community is the shedding of our own agendas to become "Christ-ones," taking up the agenda Jesus has left for us. That agenda, he said, was to go and make disciples.
The interaction of the people within our church community ought to always have as its base purpose to make disciples. He taught us there are two parts to making disciples, and both of those parts are based on trust in Jesus. First, he said that making disciples means to baptize, which is bringing people to realize they need a Savior for forgiveness of sins and eternal life. When we baptized a few of you last month, we asked you two questions: "Do you realize you are a sinner in need of a Savior?" and "Have you put your trust completely in Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins and the promise of everlasting life?" An affirmative answer to those questions is the confession of a disciple. And bringing them to that confession is part of the process we call "discipleship." It begins by bringing people to trust in Christ for their forgiveness and salvation.
Jesus pointed out, though, that making disciples also requires teaching one another to obey everything he has commanded us. Again, the issue is trust. Obeying Jesus requires trusting him for our quality of life. Making disciples, then, is helping people put their trust in Christ for hope, joy, love, and so on.
Let me give some examples of how teaching one another to obey requires teaching them to trust God. The Bible says, "God hates divorce." He doesn’t say this to set a precedence for who he will love and who he won’t. He says this because he loves everyone. I spoke with a man this week who was lamenting the difficulties that continue between he and his ex-wife—issues related to unresolved bitterness—and the children had become a pawn between them. Does God decry divorce because he hates divorcees? Of course not! He hates divorce because he loves them. He doesn’t want to see this man and woman in the bondage of their bitterness. Nor does he want to see the children caught between them. In that case, there is no winners. That breaks God’s heart.
So he tells us to teach people to obey everything he has commanded. In making disciples, we teach married men and women to trust God by putting God’s will first. In making disciples, we teach people to trust God by submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. In making disciples, we teach men to love their wives the way Christ loves the church. In making disciples, we teach women to submit to their husbands as to the Lord. These are not teachings that appeal to our sense of individualism. They require commitment and sacrifice. But if we teach one another to obey these commands, our marriages succeed and we avoid the pain of divorce.
In making disciples, we teach one another to forgive as Christ forgave us, for there is nothing triumphant about harboring a grudge. In making disciples, we teach one another to meet together regularly to encourage one another, because there is nothing triumphant about living unsupported and unloved and without giving to others. In making disciples, we teach one another to meditate on God’s word, because as Joshua noted, then we will be prosperous and successful.
If we are to escape individualism, our communities must come together under a common purpose: to make disciples. To be disciples. That purpose did not come from any of us—it came from the authority of Jesus, our Messiah. The issue is trust in him. Do we trust him enough to be baptized? Do we believe that others need to trust him, too, for their own forgiveness and salvation? Do we trust him enough to obey everything he commanded? Do we believe that others need to trust in Christ through obedience to find a true quality of living?
I would like to demonstrate the importance of trust. I will invite the members of my small group community to join me in front and become a net for me as I fall backwards from this table. This is commonly referred to as a trust fall. It is called a trust fall because if I don’t trust them, I don’t fall.
Instructions for "Net"
Divide up evenly and face one another in two lines extending from the edge of the table. Extend your arms toward each other alternately, with the arm of someone from the other side between your own arms. I will stand on the table. When you are ready, have one person say, "Trust us, one…two…three…" I will say, "Falling" and drop backwards toward your arm. I am trusting you to catch me.
If you believe what I’ve been saying this evening, then you’ll understand that the trust fall is both a picture of a disciple and of discipleship. Every person involved is the picture of a disciple, not because of the work that they do, but because of the trust involved. The people catching trust one another to share the load. And the person falling, of course, trusts in the people to catch him. Ultimately, a disciple is a person who demonstrates trust in Jesus by being baptized and by obeying everything he has commanded. Disciples in community, then, become the hands of God to support and encourage others to trust in him for their salvation and for their triumphant life.
In community, we find others who will tell us how to obey. In community, we find others who encourage us to obey. In community, we find others who have fallen in trust before us, and can relate God’s glorious and loving response. In community, we can also find others who refused to trust in similar circumstances who can tell us of the consequences of their lack of trust.
(Make the fall, then allow for a volunteer who has never done it before to do the same)
Our common purpose in community is to help people trust in Christ for their forgiveness and salvation and freedom for living abundantly. Of course that means that we must first trust him in the same way. I want to invite you to respond to God’s Great Commission in one or both of two ways.
1) Put your trust in Christ for forgiveness of sin and salvation. If you have never acknowledged to God that you are a sinner who needs a Savior and that you believe that Christ is the only way you could ever be forgiven and accepted into God’s family, tonight is your night to fall in his arms. The faith that saves us and allows us to receive his forgiveness is the faith that depends completely on the fact that Jesus died on the cross to be punished for our sins and rose again to show God accepted his sacrifice on our behalf. Put your trust in what he has already done, and you can be free from jumping off cliff after cliff hoping to pay enough penance to make God happy.
Dr. Suess has a story of a character named Zoad, who struggled to make a decision at a moment like this—
Did I ever tell you about the young Zoad, who came to a sign at the fork of the road
The Zoad had to make up his mind what to do.
Well, the Zoad scratched his head, and his chin, and his pants—and he said to himself "I’ll be taking a chance."
If I go to place One, that place may be hot, so how will I know if I like it or not
If I go to Place Two and find it’s too cool, in that case I may catch a chill and turn blue
So Place One may be best and not Place Two. "Play safe!" cried the Zoad
"I’ll play safe, I’m no dunce. I’ll simply start off to both places at once."
And that’s how the Zoad who would not take a chance went no place at all with a split in his pants.
Let me assure you that I’ve made the fall and that trusting in Jesus is not taking a chance. You cannot go both places at once. You will leave here today trusting Jesus as your Savior or not. Which will it be?
2) Put your trust in Christ for the triumphant life by becoming a real disciple. We do this by declaring to God and to one another that we purpose to obey everything he has commanded us. Obedience requires trust. Do you trust him? Tell him so now and then join together with a group of people who have the same passion to demonstrate their trust as disciples. In that group, the most important way you can obey is to purpose together to make disciples, baptizing and teaching as Jesus commissioned us.
Of course, this response should go hand in hand with the first response. You would think that those who have put their eternity in God’s hands would put their today in his hands as well. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people roaming around these days who claim Jesus as their Savior but put little value on obedience. Many people have trusted in Christ for their soul, but cannot trust him with their wallet, or their time, or their relationships, or their sexual desires, or their purpose. Let me assure you, that if Jesus bought you with a price, the price of his own blood, he has a purpose for you that is centered on being his disciple and making more disciples.
William Barclay once wrote, "It’s possible to be a follower of Jesus without being a disciple; to be a camp-follower without being a soldier of the King; to be a hanger-on n some great work without pulling one’s weight. Once someone was talking to a great scholar about a younger man. He said, "So and so tells me that he was one of your students." The teacher answered devastatingly, "He may have attended my lectures, but he was not one of my students." There is a world of difference between attending lectures and being a student. It is one of the supreme handicaps of the church that in the church there are so many distant followers of Jesus and so few real disciples."
How will you put your trust in Christ today? Let it be declared and demonstrated in the way we live in community, sharing a common purpose. The truest community is found in a gathering of people who are learning to become Jesus-trusting disciples and are committed to making Jesus-trusting disciples.
