MAKE

Joel Hayworth

Evangelism Series • Sermon • Submitted 5 years ago

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Introduction

“Follow Me and I will make you fishers of men” The first words from Jesus as He called His disciples indicate something that we see time and time again throughout the New Testament: we are called to make disciples. As we have been talking about the last couple of weeks, we see that Jesus’ call for these men is to leave their past behind. To follow Him. To know Him. To do life with Him. To listen and obey Him. To be His disciples. Today we see that the purpose of doing these things as we see in is to become fishers of men, or to make disciples. We are called to know Christ and to make Him known. If we look in the Gospel of Mark chapter 3, we see that Jesus calls the 12 apostles so that “they might be with him and He might send them out to preach.” That is the purpose of following Jesus, to make other people follow Him too!

In the words of Dawson Trotman, “If you are not fishing, you are not following” I’ve been here just a couple of months and I have already heard how some of you like to fish and I’ve heard of several fisher-mans tales about giant catfish in the ponds and creeks in the area! Fishing is one of those activities that you have to be passionate about because you can be fishing for hours upon hours without a single “bite” or you can drop a bare hook in the water and be swarmed with dozens of fish for hours on end! The same exists in our Christian lives. The above quote might sound harsh to our ears, however I believe it to be true! We must “fish” in order to follow the instructions Jesus laid out for us in the Great Commission. There will be some times in which that process is very strenuous and we might feel like giving up, however what we must remember in these moments is that we are called to do this by the Creator of the Universe. We are not guaranteed thousands of “fish”, however we are commanded to present the Gospel and make disciples. With that in mind, please turn back to as we will conclude our study on Evangelism by seeing our call to MAKE disciples.

Matthew 28:16–20 RSV

16 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 lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.”

Why should I make disciples?

A couple of weeks ago, I asked the question of how people know that I love my wife. I could tell you that I love my wife, however those are simply words until you see with your own eyes that my actions reflect my love for her. Likewise for the church, if we say that we love those around us (as Jesus calls us to love our neighbor as ourself) yet our actions do not match up with that description, how can we say that we are obeying Christ? If we are going to obey the “Great Commandment” we must love others as we love ourselves. That requires us to share the gospel with all people, yes, but it also means that our actions reflect our faith. We cannot simply lead someone in the Lord’s prayer and call it good when it comes to Evangelism! It must be deeper than that. We must teach them and instruct them in the things of the Lord.

As a student, do you remember having to give a public speech or presentation in front of the class? To many people this brings about a tremendous amount of fear and anticipation. Because of this, you spend hours on end trying to rehearse and memorize what you are about to present so that you will be prepared whenever you are up on front of everyone. After your speech or presentation, you get your grade and as the days and weeks go by, you forget what you had said in front of everyone. As months turn into years, you probably forget 99% of that speech that you had spent dozens of hours researching and preparing for! In the same manner, if we boil salvation down to simply repeating a couple of words on a gospel tract or a piece of paper, how long until a person will completely forget what they had said or prayed? If we focus on “conversion” instead of “discipleship” then we run the risk of people saying a prayer and falling away from the faith in a matter of weeks or months.

Discipleship is messy and time consuming, however it is worth it 100% of the time. How can we claim to love others and love Jesus if we are not willing to help share the gospel and make disciples? We make disciples because it is the method in which God has illustrated we are to live our lives. Think about how news spreads today with the help of social media and television. One event can be spread worldwide in a matter of minutes and billions of people can be informed of something that took place on the other side of the planet! In the same manner, whenever we go about sharing our faith and making disciples, we are called to tell all people and disciple those who come to know Christ as their Savior! We must realize that our goal and calling as Christians cannot simply be to act like a Christian in the walls of the church. We are called to represent Christ on the earth and to point people to Him in the way that we live our lives.

Why should you make disciples? Because Christ commands us to do so! To make converts is not what we find in scripture. Nominal Christianity (people who claim to be Christians but do not live for Christ) is a cancer to the church and we must weed it out by making disciples who make other disciples!

How can I make disciples?

When it comes to salvation, we know that we might be the messenger that God uses to present the gospel, however at the end of the day we must recognize that it is the work of God that “saves” the person. When it comes to discipleship, though, we must realize that we play a role in training a person in the things of the Lord and giving them the tools to dive deeper into Scripture on their own. They say that it takes between 10,000 and 25,000 hours to become a “master” at something. Think of the time that we spend in church each week. 1 or 2 hours on Sunday morning, 1 hour on Sunday night and maybe 1 hour on Wednesday. That is 4 hours a week where we spend time examining scripture and fellowshipping with one another. Now suppose that you had to get 10,000 hours in to be a disciple (you don’t, but for arguments sake lets say you must), that would require you to attend church for 2500 weeks. That is 48 years of attending church! If we tell people that all you must do is attend church in order to be a Christian, we miss the boat. People can attend church for their entire lives and fail to live for Christ outside these 4 walls. We must teach new believers that their faith is something that requires daily nourishment! Take the above 10,000 hour example. Now instead of someone only counting the 4 hours that they are physically in the building, now they count their personal Bible study that they do at home for 30 minutes each day and an hour on Saturday. That’s another 4 hours in addition to the time that we gather corporately at church. Do you see that this process cannot be something simply done inside the church? If it was, we wouldn’t be able to get anything accomplished because we would only be doing maintenance instead of ministry. We must make sure that young believers recognize the importance of having a personal Bible study on their own outside of Sunday and Wednesday.

If we look throughout the New Testament, Paul gives us a 3 step disciple-making formula as we see that we are to, first, be dependent upon the grace of Christ. If we tried to go about making disciples on our own knowledge or merit, we would fail miserably. None of us are smart enough to answer all the questions that a new believer might ask us! That is ok, though! We must be dependent upon the grace of Christ and instill in our new brothers and sisters that same dependency. We see in

Isaiah 40:31 NASB95

31 Yet those who wait for the Lord Will gain new strength; They will mount up with wings like eagles, They will run and not get tired, They will walk and not become weary.

Our supply is the spirit of God. It is His strength that enables us to proclaim the truth of the Gospel. Whether it be as a teacher or as a friend, we can help our brothers and sisters in Christ grow in the disciple-making process whenever we rely on the grace of Christ instead of our own knowledge or strength. Second, we are to invest in the people of God. Whenever a child is growing up, what are some ways that his parents invest in him? Obviously they do this financially as they provide for his needs and future, however one of the greatest ways that a parents invests in a child is by spending time with them and nurturing their relationship. Similarly, one of the best ways that we can go about making disciples is by spending time and investing our time with others. As someone who loves to watch sports, I can talk with my friends about baseball, basketball, football or golf for hours on end. We can have great discussion and debate between ourselves and laugh the entire time. At the end of our discussion, though, I might walk away with some new knowledge and a good time with my friends but that is the extent of the benefit from this discussion. Whenever it comes to disciple-making, though, everything changes. Whenever we spend hours on end talking about the things of God, we are changed to our core because we begin to prioritize and put our eyes on the things of God rather than the things of the world. I think that we can all relate to this fact as we have had conversations with fellow believers that cause us to think about something differently or maybe someone says something that convicts our hearts and forces us to repent before God. The point here is that without investing time with fellow believers, we are not able to make disciples. If all we do is gather on a Sunday or Wednesday to do “church” then we are missing the boat. As Paul writes in ,

1 Corinthians 2:14 NASB95

14 But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.

1 Corinthians 2:14

We see that this process does not make sense to the sinner because he cannot understand the things of God. Discipleship is not the end goal of the church. The end goal is to be like Christ. Discipleship is the method of transportation that we use to get there! This brings us to our third point, repeat the pattern of Christ. We see that Jesus did life with the disciples on an all day, everyday basis. We, unfortunately, do not do that and in many respects we cannot do that due to schedules, jobs and families. This is why gathering corporately is vitally important in the disciple-making process! Without gathering, we would not have a time of encouragement, accountability, transparency and edification. With that said, though, we must also study the Word outside of church. If our textbook is the bible, our teacher is the spirit, and our example is Jesus, how can we disciple someone into the image of Christ without them first being a disciple? We must make it an effort to study our textbook so that we can go out each and everyday to ace the “test”. Does that mean that we will live a perfect life? No. Does it mean that we will never have opposition? No. What it does mean is that we strive to live as Christ did among the lost. We point people towards Him in the manner in which we live our lives. We also encourage our fellow Christians to live a Godly life and to grow in their knowledge and fear of the Lord. In Southern Baptist life one of the greatest strengths of most SBC churches is the “Sunday school” hour. Praise God that that is the case here at Morgan Baptist Church! The distinction between Sunday school and discipleship though is that in Sunday school there is one “leader” while in discipleship, the mentee must eventually become a mentor.

We can spend thousands of hours looking at various discipleship materials in order to find out the “magic” formula for making disciples, however the most important things for us to do are to prioritize the Word in our own lives and to study it. After we do that, we are called to encourage others to do the same. We invest in their lives and we point them towards Christ. In all things, Christ must be at the center as we aim to train believers in the things of the Lord.

How can I carry out the Great Commission?

The purpose of discipleship is to “pay it forward”. If someone has invested in you, the greatest gift you can give that person is to share the gospel with as many people as you come into contact with. One of my pastoral mentors growing up, Troy Rhoden, used to say that the most important thing that you can do is make sure that you are going to heaven. The second most important thing for you to do is to bring as many people with you as you can! If we look in Scripture, we see examples of Biblical figures investing their lives into other people. Moses invested into Joshua who God would use to lead the Israelites into the promised land. Elijah was used by God in might ways and he invested in Elisha who “performed twice as many miracles as him”. Jesus invested in the 12 disciples who would eventually help take the gospel to the ends of the World! For all of these figures, they invested in other people and the people that followed them multiplied the ministry after they left.

If you look on the screen, you will see the difference in addition compared to multiplication when it comes to ministry and evangelism. Imagine that you are an evangelist and your goal is to witness to as many people each day until one of them prays to receive Christ as their Lord and Savior. You would end up with 365 new believers each year. Contrast that with a “Discipler” who instead tries to pour and invest into 2 people during that first year. This person equips these 2 individuals with the Word and tells them the importance of sharing our faith. At the end of the first year, there are only 2 new believers in this model. To the worlds standards, this would look like a much worse model because there are not as many new followers compared to the evangelist model. With that said, as we look at the graph as the years go by, eventually the discipler model far exceeds the evangelist model. If you pour into 2 people who become disciples themselves and go out and make 2 more disciples who then go out and make 2 more disciples each then you have impacted 14 people simply by training 2 people to share their faith and be disciples.

The goal must be multiplication, not addition. If we carry these numbers out to 33 years, we see that the evangelist model would end up with 12,045 new believers (a tremendous amount!) but the discipler model would end up with over 8.5 billion new believers! The population of the world as of March 20th, 2019 was 7.7 billion people. If we could adopt this approach as Christians and make disciples who in turn, made other disciples, then we would have the opportunity to reach the entire world by the year 2052.

As we have looked at during this study of , we see that we are tasked with going into the world to preach the Gospel. We saw that in order to do this though, we must first be a disciple. In the words of the great Christian scholar A.W. Tozer, “Only a disciple can make disciples.” If we are commanded by Jesus Christ to make disciples, it follows that we ourselves must be disciples as well! In order to carry out the Great Commission, we must put aside our pride and our ego. We must pick up the gifts that Christ has given to us and we must disciple those who we come into contact with. We cannot make converts in order to achieve multiplication. We must make disciple-making-disciples.

Conclusion

The reality of disciple-making is that you might not see the fruits of your labor until you have gone home to Heaven. If we look at the examples in scripture, Moses was not permitted to enter into the promised land, Elisha’s ministry was more active than that of Elijah and the disciples shared the gospel with more people than Jesus did during His earthly ministry. A couple of weeks ago, we looked at William Carey and saw that he helped found the Baptist Missionary Society and went to India to proclaim the Gospel to people who had never heard the name of Jesus. In his life in India, Carey was able to lead a couple hundred people to Jesus, however in the years after his death, his ministry has exploded! Mission sending agencies such as the International Mission Board trace their history back to the work of Carey and the people who followed him such as Hudson Taylor and Adoniram Judson. Carey never would have imagined that millions of people in India would now be Christians, but because of the work that he did, he helped pave the way for people to continue to share the gospel with that nation for years to come.

Where does this leave us? We need to be a disciple-making church. We cannot simply come to church to be served but to worship and grow in our faith and to be better disciples. We must train those around us in the ways of the faith and encourage them to study God’s Word and in turn, disciple others.

In the words of SBC President, JD Grear, “Who is your 1?” Who is the one person that you know does not know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior? How can you minister to that person? Who is the 1 person you know that is a new believer that you could spend some extra time with each week to invest and disciple? Who is the 1 person you have a relationship with that needs to start coming back to church? These are tough questions, however as a Christian we are called to “Go” and “Make” not to sit and make excuses. The manner in which we proceed with the task of making disciples will define our legacy as a church. We can either rely on the Spirit of God and go forth with boldness, or we can sit in our pews and be comfortable while the rest of the world is left without hope. Those are our options. How will we respond? I pray that our response to these messages will be to “GO”, “BE” and “MAKE”.

“Who is your 1?” J.D. Grear

“Jesus said to Go and make disciples, but we often sit and make excuses” Francis Chan

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