The gospel of the kingdom / makes disciples who hear God’s word and obey it / and they preach the gospel of the kingdom-multiply disciples in their domains of society and from there Jesus builds his church.
KDSC
D: Discipleship: Hear and Obey
Discipleship has a tendency to be a most elusive “thing”. Why?
- Because nowhere does the Bible crystallize discipleship as a “however many step” process.
Discipleship is multifaceted because the gospel that makes disciples is multifaceted.
- As the gospel of the kingdom is deep and wide, discipleship is deep and wide.
- Thus, we say the essence of discipleship is hearing God’ word and obeying him.
Discipleship is a never ending life of wanting to know more of Jesus and make more of him known.
- There is a “born on” date, but there is no arriving at completion date apart of either death or the sudden return of Jesus.
- What does discipleship look like biblically?
- Matthew 28:16-20 is where it has to begin.
- Matthew 28:16-20 (ESV) Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. 17 And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. 18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 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, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
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- People have been made a disciple through the gospel being proclaimed and their response of repentance and faith.
- Baptized into the Trinitarian name of God.
- Taught/fathered/mothered how to observe everything Jesus commands.
- We have to be taught.
- We have to know what Jesus has said.
- Centrality of Scripture for Christians.
- We have to observe/obey what Jesus has said.
- Live in the power of Jesus authority over all things via living in the power of the Holy Spirit moment by moment.
- What does Matthew 28:16-20 look like crystalized into something we can get our hands on?
It looks like what we have termed the “Radical life” taken from John 15 as a life we see lived out in Acts. (John 15 abiding lived out in Acts): UP/IN/OUT
Up: Love God (Transformed by the gospel, baptized, and trained into disciples who love God, hear his word and obey what he says.)
Matthew 7:24-27
Matthew 5-7
Matthew 13 Kingdom Parables…these are about the kingdom…so kingdom people look like this too.
- Multiplying soil – 13:8
- Embracing God’s pattern of small yet powerful – 13:31-32
- Virally infecting everyone around with the kingdom – 13:33
- Willing to give up everything for the greater worth of Jesus rule – 13:44-46
- Catching all kinds of people from all backgrounds and nations up into Jesus’ rule– 13:47-50
In: Love each other (Church is the community of the kingdom, and it’s in this covenant community that we begin to live in the power of Jesus’ present reality and learn how to hear and obey the Lord Jesus’ word.)
Ephesians 2:19-22
“So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.”
Out: Love our neighbors (Impact your domain by healing what’s broken and making disciples…that means actually sharing the gospel and inviting people to repent and believe.)
2 Corinthians 5:17-21
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
- What kills discipleship?
- Seeing salvation as an escape from wrath alone, and failing to see it as a transformation to something completely holy.
- Seeing discipleship as a transfer of information rather than transformation to a
disciple who hears and obeys Jesus in everything in every area of life.
- Thinking the kingdom advances through training and mobilizing ministry professionals rather than every disciple everywhere all the time.
- Thinking discipleship is complicated, academic and for the spiritually elite.
- Thinking discipleship can happen without consistent and disciplined Bible reading and study.
- When we treat biblical commands and spiritual disciplines as spiritual options that are more spiritual if done randomly and spontaneous because it’s not “legalistic”.
- Example: “If I read the bible every day on a plan, it may become rote/mechanical and habit only.” OR “Bible reading is often boring.”
- We don’t say foolish things like this about: sleep/food/breathing/
- John 6:51 (ESV) I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
- There is more to life than actual food/water/sustaining things: John 4:34 (ESV) Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.
- Thinking discipleship can be done outside of covenant church fellowship either alone or disconnected from missional covenant accountability.
- Thinking discipleship can be done without the influence of the Great
Commission…local and global disciple making or at least the attempt at it.
- We don’t really know something until we can replicate it, explain it and do it simply.
- We have to make sense of the command to make disciples.
- Evangelism is gospel communication with an invitation to repent and believe…AND if everything is evangelism, then nothing is evangelism.
- Our good works in Jesus name is NOT disciple making.
- What advances discipleship?
- Commitment to relentless growth in Christ.
- We can be relentless about things we really want.
- We can be a little passive about eternal things.
- Jeremiah 29:13 (ESV) You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.
- I cannot say definitively from the authority of Scripture that the Lord is allows himself to be found in half-hearted effort.
- Ridiculous life giving routines.
- Nothing ever happens without some effort at employing a solid and disciplined plan to execute a task.
- Discipline is not legalism.
- Spontaneity is not spiritual.
- Spontaneity grows in the garden of discipline.
- Every action or inaction has consequences.
- Bible reading come what may.
- Prayer routine and throughout the day.
- Fasting to kill sin, know the Lord as true bread, freedom from food. (Isaiah 58).
- Nothing ever happens without some effort at employing a solid and disciplined plan to execute a task.
Theology in the Dirt 