A Community of Disciples | Acts 11:19-30, 12:24-13:3
Brian Hedges | December 4, 2016
Jesus, you said that where two or three are gathered in your name, you’re there in the midst of them. We pray that you would be here, right now, by your Spirit. That you would minister to us through your word, that you would use the word to shape us, to change us, to motivate and inspire us, to work in us that which is pleasing in your sight. We want to love you with all of our hearts. So work in us today. We pray in your name, Amen.
So, for the last ten weeks we’ve been working through this series on discipleship together, and I have to say here at the beginning, this series has taken a very different shape than I intended, and so now we’re at the tenth week, and it’s officially the conclusion of the series, but there’s still so much that we could say about discipleship. So it’s not exactly the end of the series, because we’re going to have to come back to this. There are more things that need to be said, and especially about what we’re going to talk about this morning, which are the corporate aspects of discipleship, the church as a community of disciples.
In this series we’ve tried to zoom in on what it means to be a disciples of Jesus, and essentially we’ve said that a disciple is an apprentice to Jesus. A disciple is someone who’s learning from Jesus how to live like Jesus by being with Jesus, and by engaging in the kinds of practices that get us into Jesus’ presence and before Jesus’ word, so that Jesus’ spirit is working in us and changing us.
We’ve looked at this from lots of different angles. We’ve talked about spiritual growth and how we grow, and some of the obstacles and hindrances to growth. We’ve talked about the importance of being grounded in our identity in Christ, our union with Christ, and how grace is really the wellspring of gratitude, which is the basic motivation in discipleship. We’ve talked about the importance of the body, the role of the body—that is, our physical bodies—and how it is only as we bring our bodies into obedience to Jesus that we can really be disciples. We’ve talked about the process of change and how the Holy Spirit is the one who motivates and empowers change, but that he does that as we cooperate with him through spiritual practices, what we think of as the spiritual disciplines.
We’ve talked about all of these things and more, and this morning we’re going to talk about a crucial aspect to this that I’ve only touched on in past weeks, but this morning we’re going to spend a whole message on it, and that is the role of the church in discipleship, the role of the church in discipleship.
I want to ground our thoughts this morning in the story of the Antioch church. I think this is my favorite church in Scripture; the church of Antioch. It’s been called the church that changed the world. Antioch was the first predominantly Gentile church, and it was also the first church, even ahead of the Jerusalem church, that aggressively sent missionaries out into the world.
Now, we know that the heart of the mission, the Great Commission of Christ, is to go and make disciples. So when we’re talking mission we’re essentially talking about making disciples. Well, this is the first church that strategically and aggressively sought to do that.
Up until this point, the church was evangelizing mostly as a response to persecution. They would be persecuted, and so they would scatter, and as they were scattered they would do evangelism. You see this happening, for example, in Acts 8. Persecution begins in Jerusalem, the saints begin to scatter, they go into Samaria, and they start doing evangelism. Or the church would evangelize as a result of direct, divine intervention. That’s what it took to get Peter off of the rooftop into the household of Cornelius, where we he was evangelizing to him.
But in Acts 11, and then again in Acts 13, we see a church that is formed through something like spontaneous evangelism from unknown evangelists. We don’t even know the names of the people who founded this church, but then we see Paul and Barnabas become key members of this church, and the church begin to think very strategically about replicating, duplicating, and multiplying as they take the Gospel outward into the world. So the first missionary journey of Paul is a deliberate, intentional growth strategy, coming out of the church of Antioch.
As we look at Luke’s record of this church, in Acts 11 and the end of chapter 12, and early chapter 13, as we look at that, we’re going to identify several ingredients of a disciple-making church. Here’s what I’m after this morning: I want Fulkerson to be a church with a disciple-making culture. Discipleship is not something that we just do in one or two programs, it’s not something that just the leaders of the church do; discipleship and disciple-making is something that every single one of us needs to be engaged in and involved in, and we need to see this through in every area of church life.
Now, I believe that discipleship is happening at Fulkerson Park, but I also believe that we have a lot of work to do. We are not operating on all cylinders. We’re not up to full steam. We’re not doing all that we can do and should do, empowered by God’s Spirit, to the glory of God, to make disciples in this congregation.
One of the things that’s on my heart is to see us, in the next 18 months to 24 months, to really ramp things up in discipleship, in thinking through discipleship, across every area of church life. Our church leaders, our elder team, has been talking about this discipleship off and on pretty regularly now for a couple of years, and there’s much work for us to do.
So, in some ways I want this to be something like a vision-casting sermon, and something that we will revisit in various ways in the months to come. We’re going to take our cues from this church, the Antioch church. We want to be a church like this. As we read about this church, as we dig into what this church was like, view this as transferrable DNA. We want the DNA of the Antioch church to be the DNA of Fulkerson Park. Okay? So that’s where we’re headed.
Let’s read the passage; we’re looking at Acts 11:19-30, and then Acts 12:24-13:3. Let’s read God’s word.
“Now those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except Jews. But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who on coming to Antioch spoke to the Hellenists also, preaching the Lord Jesus. And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number who believed turned to the Lord. The report of this came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. When he came and saw the grace of God, he was glad, and he exhorted them all to remain faithful to the Lord, with steadfast purpose, for he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. And a great many people were added to the Lord. So Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul—” (this is Saul of Tarsus) “—and when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. For a whole year they met with the church and taught a great many people. And in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians.
“Now in these days prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. And one of them named Agabus stood up and foretold by the Spirit that there would be a great famine over all the world (this took place in the days of Claudius). So the disciples determined, everyone according to his ability, to send relief to the brothers living in Judea. And they did so, sending it to the elders by the hand of Barnabas and Saul.”
Acts 12:24:“But the word of God increased and multiplied. “And Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem when they had completed their service, bringing with them John, whose other name was Mark. Now there were in the church at Antioch prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen a lifelong friend of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. While they were worshipping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, ‘Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.’ Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off.”
And the first missionary journey begins!
This is God’s word.
Now, there are three ingredients in a church with a disciple-making culture, and I want you to see these three ingredients in this text. These are the three ingredients we want to cultivate here at Fulkerson Park.
Three ingredients in a church with a disciple-making culture:
I. People are moving towards Jesus;
II. They’re doing this through the means of the word;
III. So that ministry expands outward toward outsiders.
So really that’s a sentence I’m going to break down into three parts. In a disciple-making culture, people are moving towards Jesus, through means of the word, so that ministry expands outward toward outsiders. Three components to this, and I want to show you this in the text, and then be thinking and praying, and I hope even as I talk that you’ll be thinking and praying, “Lord, how do you want to do this in me? How do you want to do this in us?”
Let’s look at each one of these.
I. The first thing to notice here is that the people are moving toward Jesus.
People are moving toward Jesus. Here’s another way to define discipleship. We’ve tossed out lots of different ways of thinking about this, but here’s a way to think about discipleship. This is another definition, if you will, of discipleship. Disciples are people who are moving towards Jesus. They’re moving towards him; closer and closer. You see this in the text. You see it in the initial conversion of these folks in Antioch as they come to the Lord. Look at it in verse 21 (Acts 11:21) “And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number who believed turned to the Lord.”
Now that’s what conversion is! Conversion is turning to the Lord! It’s moving towards the Lord. There was a time in your life and mine when we were moving the other direction, where you were not moving towards the Lord; you were moving away from the Lord. But when you’re saved, when you are born again, when the word of God by the power of God’s Spirit comes home to your heart and you believe the Gospel, something changes in your heart, and you start moving towards Jesus.
That’s what it means to be a disciple. A disciple is a follower of Jesus; he’s moving towards Jesus. That’s what it means to be saved.
One of the points I tried to make early on in the series is that to be a Christian is to be a disciple. A disciple is not some superior category of Christian. There’s not two categories of Christians, disciples and non-disciples. To be a Christian is to be a disciple.
Now, we’re all at various levels of growth; we’re all at various levels of Christ-likeness. We’re all at various places in the journey. But to be a Christian is by definition to be someone who has turned to Jesus and is following Jesus.
Now, can you turn away from Jesus as a Christian? You can, temporarily; you can for a little while. He won’t let you stay there very long. I don’t know how long; sometimes it could be longer than you might think, but I think we can be sure of this, based on the promises of Scripture and what we sang this morning: if you’re a Christian, if you belong to Jesus, he will hold you fast. He’s going to bring you back; he’s going to keep turning you back towards him.
If you’re not turned towards Jesus right now, either you’re not a Christian or you’re a backslidden Christian, but to be a Christian is to be someone whose life as a whole is oriented to Jesus. This is true in the initial conversion, and it’s also true in ongoing growth and discipleship. I think that’s implicit in verse 23: “When Barnabas came and saw the grace of God, he was glad,” and notice what he does. He exhorts them all “to remain faithful to the Lord with a steadfast purpose.”
You see what he’s doing? He’s exhorting them to keep on, to persevere, to remain faithful to the Lord, to remain turned towards the Lord, to cling to the Lord! To remain faithful to the Lord with a steadfast purpose.
So you put those two verses together, I think this is pretty clear. To be a disciple is to be someone who is turned towards Jesus, is moving towards Jesus. You might think of it this way: our goal in disciple-making is only simply this: to move people just one step further towards Jesus. That’s also our goal in evangelism. So when we’re doing evangelism, you take someone who’s in the kingdom of darkness, and what do you want to see? You want to see them moving into the kingdom of the Son, so that they’re moving towards Jesus.
That goal doesn’t fundamentally change when someone becomes a Christian. When someone becomes a Christian, you still want to see them taking steps towards Jesus, to becoming more like him. So that’s what discipleship is: it’s just this moving towards Jesus wherever you are, from whatever point you find yourself at, moving closer to Jesus in personal relationship with him, in imitation of his character, in obedience to his commands, and in adopting his purposes, his mission, his glory, and the fame of his name as your highest calling and your highest priority in life.
Now, as illustrations you might think of some of those great heroes of the faith and the pithy ways they put this. Jim Elliot: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” Living his life to the hilt for the glory of God.
Or William Borden, that missionary born into the wealthy Borden family, Borden milk and dairy products. William Borden was born into this wealthy family, and he gave away his fortune to follow Christ. He said, “No reserve, no retreat, no regret.” Just moving towards Jesus!
That’s the kind of heart we want. However it works itself out specifically in our lives, the orientation is an orientation towards Jesus. A disciple-making community and church is where that’s happening to a lot of people at the same time; a lot of people at the same time are moving towards Jesus and helping each other to do that.
Just pause for application. Are you moving towards Jesus this week? You look at the last seven days: have you been moving towards Jesus? Have you been orienting towards Jesus? I’m not asking whether you made a profession of faith 20 years ago or not. I’m not asking that. If you did, that’s great! That’s wonderful! But right now, what direction are you headed? Are you moving towards Jesus; are you becoming more like him? Are you spending time with him? Are you seeking his face? Are you seeking his will? Are you reading his word?
But not only that; are you helping other people to move towards Jesus? Think about your family. How are you helping your spouse move towards Christ? Mom or dad, how are you helping your children move towards Jesus? Think about your main circle of friends. Are you doing anything, deliberately and intentionally, prayerfully, to help others turn towards Jesus? That’s what it means to be a disciple and a disciple-maker. That’s our goal.
Now the question is, now, how does this happen? How do we move towards Jesus? This whole series, of course, has been an attempt to answer that from various angles. Here’s another angle I want to give you this morning.
II. People move towards Jesus through means of the word.
They move towards Jesus through means of the word. Now this is such an important emphasis in the book of Acts. A scholar named Brian Rosner—and many commentators—have called attention to the progress reports in the book of Acts. Kind of punctuated in the narrative of Acts are these statements about how the word of God increased and multiplied, and people were added to the church. Four, five, six times...I don’t remember how many...five or six times in the book of Acts you have these progress reports that are emphasizing how the word is at work. Really, it’s the Lord at work through the means of the word and through his people to bring about conversions and increasing depth and growth in the church, and strengthening the church, and adding to the church. And it’s all happening through the word.
So another thing you have in the book of Acts are sermons. This narrative of early church history is punctuated with sermons in key, critical points. Key junctures in the unfolding history of the church, where the word is proclaimed and preached, and people are saved, and a new beachhead is established for the kingdom of God.
So I want us to think about this for a few minutes now. How does this work? How is it that God, through his word, moves us towards Christ and establishes his kingdom?
I want to give you a quote, and then a four point model. This comes from a couple of Australian authors. They’ve written a wonderful book called The Vine Project. These authors are Colin Marshall and Tony Payne. I’ve been reading this book this week, and I tell you: this book has just captured my heart like few things have in recent months. This is the best thing that I’ve read so far on a church becoming a disciple-making church. So I’m excited about this. I want to read a quote to you and then kind of work through and just show you in the book of Acts, and in this our passage this morning, how these things are at work.
Here’s what they say: “Disciples are made by the persevering proclamation of the word of God by the people of God in prayerful dependence on the Spirit of God.” Now notice all the P’s. These are great communicators, and they’re using alliteration here to help us remember four aspects, or four parts, to the disciple-making process. So think of these here as the four P’s of discipleship. These are the four things that have to be happening for the word to be doing its work in our hearts and lives so that we are moving towards Jesus. Let’s look at them.
(1) The proclamation of the word of God. This is the first P. I want you to see it here in the text. The church in Antioch began because of the proclamation of the word.
Look at Acts 11:19-20. “Now those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except Jews.” So, initially there’s a very limited range of evangelism going on. They’re only talking to other Jews. But then look at verse 20: “But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who on coming to Antioch spoke to the Hellenists—” (those are Greek speakers) “—they spoke to the Hellenists also, preaching the Lord Jesus.”
There’s a parallel there between these two phrases, “speaking the word,” and, “preaching the Lord Jesus.” Here you have these unnamed evangelists, the unnamed heroes! They’re instrumental in founding this great missionary-sending church. I think about all of the evangelists who have brought people into the faith, or God has used them to bring people into the faith, and we don’t even know their names.
We don’t know the name of the preacher who was preaching when young Charles Haddon Spurgeon, as a teenager, wandered into a primitive Methodist chapel somewhere in London and heard a lay preacher preach, and he was saved as he heard this lay preacher saying (he was preaching on that text from Isaiah), “Look unto me, all ye ends of the earth.”
He looked at this teenage Spurgeon, who’s miserable in the guilt of his sin, sitting there in the back, and said, “Young man, you look miserable. Turn to Christ; look to Christ. Look, look, look, look!” Spurgeon said the guy didn’t have a very good education and about all that he said was, “Look to Christ,” but Spurgeon looked to Christ, and he was saved. And we don’t even know the guy’s name.
There are so many stories like that. I’m saying that because I want to emphasize for you that the ordinary, evangelistic witness of ordinary, lay Christians is powerful. God uses it! He uses it to advance his purposes in the world, and we see that happening here.
You see another aspect of proclamation of the word in verses 25 through 26: “But Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul. And when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch, and for a whole year they met with the church and taught a great many people.”
This is really interesting: Saul was a persecutor of the church who was converted. That’s reported for us in Acts 9. And he’s kind of been off the radar for years now. Now Barnabas goes to the Antioch church, and he sees what’s happening there. He’s glad, he’s exhorting the congregation, he’s excited about what’s happening; but when he sees what’s happening, something goes off in Barnabas’s mind, and he thinks something like this. He thinks, “Saul of Tarsus has been advancing in his understanding of the gospel. He has a gift for teaching, and here’s a new church, and they need teaching. I’m going to go all the way to Tarsus to get Saul; I’m going to bring him back to Antioch so that he can teach and train this church.”
So the ongoing growth of the church is happening through teaching the word; proclamation of the word. So for a whole year they met with the people and taught a great many people.
What do you do to make disciples? You meet and teach; that’s what you do. You meet and teach. They met with the people and they taught.
Now, I should say at this point, that doesn’t necessarily mean always a formal gathering like this. When we think “proclamation” you think the preacher on Sunday. But in the book of Acts, the spreading of the word and the teaching of the word—the proclamation of the word—takes many different forms. This is good. This is good; this is the way to cast vision and to teach the word for the whole people of God to come together around the word, and we need this.
But we also need what Dave Enders is doing in that Sunday school class in the conference room, where they’re digging—you guys are digging into the word. Right? And you’re back and forth, and question and answer, and talking it out. We need that! We need that.
And we need what some of you are doing and all of us need to be doing, where you’re sitting down together over lunch and you’re sharing; you know, “This is what I’m learning from the Bible this week.” We need as families to be reading Scripture together around our tables. We need one-on-one ministry. We need what’s happening Wednesday nights, where in AWANA the children are being taught Scripture; they’re memorizing Scripture by leaps and bounds.
All of this is part of the ministry of the word. We need that private kind of training and instruction, like you see later on in Acts 19, where there’s Apollos. And here’s a man who’s mighty in the Scriptures. He has great gifts, he has great talents, but he needs help. So a couple, a man and a woman, Aquila and Priscilla, they see this need, and they bring him into their home. And together Aquila and Priscilla are training Apollos.
We need all of that. That needs to be happening everywhere; in every nook and cranny of our church, in every class, in every group, in every program, in every ministry. We need to be using the word to help shape us, move us, exhort us, teach us, train us, across the board. Evangelism, backyard Bible clubs, explaining the gospel over barbecue with your neighbors, all of these aspects of proclamation of the word.
So here it is: you see this first thing, the proclamation of the word. And then there’s one of these summary statements in Acts 12:24. This takes place, of course, after the event in Acts 12, where the scene has been in Jerusalem. But there’s the summary statement, “But the word of God increased and multiplied.”
Folks, isn’t that what you want? That’s what I want to see. I want to see the word of God increasing, multiplying, and that happening all over the place at Fulkerson Park. So that’s the first thing.
(2) Here’s the second P. Prayerful dependence on the Spirit. In the Bible, the word and the Spirit always go together. Word and Spirit. Paul says, “Our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in the Spirit,” 1 Thes. 1. The word and the Spirit go together. You see the Spirit several times in this passage. You see it in Barnabas; the Holy Spirit, in Acts 11:24. “Barnabas was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith.”
You see it in chapter 13, where the Spirit is intimately involved in sending out Saul and Barnabas on this missionary journey. They’re worshipping the Lord, they’re fasting together, and the Holy Spirit says, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” Fast and pray and lay hands on them, and they send them out. The Holy Spirit is the one who’s directing that.
So the Spirit is the one who directs the ministry of the word, the Spirit is the one who fills us so that we can do the ministry of the word, and the Spirit, of course, is the one who makes the word itself effective. We need to pray for this. Okay; prayerful dependence on the Spirit. The way we express our dependence on the Spirit is through prayer. To the degree that we are prayerless, to that degree we think we can do this on our own.
We see this vital importance of prayer all over the place in scripture. You could go to Paul’s letters, where he reports how he prays, and in most of his letters he ends the letter by saying, “Guys, pray for me. Pray for me! Pray that the word will run in triumph,” 2 Thessalonians. “Pray that the Lord will give me clarity; that I’ll speak with clarity and with boldness as I ought to speak.” He’s asking for prayer.
And yet we know that across the board, our church not excepted. The prayer meeting is the least attended meeting of the church.
Now listen: I don’t want to put a guilt trip on you. I know that many of you are praying more than I am. I know that many of you are praying at other times and other places; you’re praying in your homes, you’re praying in little gatherings, in your neighborhood or with your friends. You’re praying in your small groups. So I believe prayer is going on, and yet there were two people and me at prayer meeting last month—three people.
Now I’m not saying you’re more spiritual if you come or less spiritual if you don’t, okay? I’m not. This is hard to do. I want to push the prayer meeting, because I think we need prayer, and I don’t want you to come because you feel guilty. But how do I do that? I’m trying. No judgment of any individual here if you don’t show up tomorrow night, okay? I promise; I’m not going to judge anybody. But as a church, is it wrong to think that the level of our commitment to prayer is somehow reflected in the importance we give to corporate prayer?
You know, Spurgeon had such an effective ministry. I mean, sometimes he was preaching to 10,000 people. And he said not a week went by that somebody wasn’t converted. Spurgeon wasn’t just counting hands. I mean, these were real conversions. They were real conversions! And he says not a week goes by!
Now in some ways this is just revival. It was God in a special moment in history using this man, who was the greatest preacher of the nineteenth century, in remarkable ways. You can’t read about it without saying, “Lord, do that again! Do that somewhere.” You know? “Give us a little piece of that. I’m no Spurgeon—never will be—but give us some piece of that.”
But listen: when people came to Spurgeon and asked him, “What’s going on here? What’s the effectiveness of your ministry?” He said, “It’s all in the boiler room.” “The boiler room?!” “Yes, it’s in the boiler room.”
He would take people down into the basement of the Metropolitan Tabernacle on Sunday morning before church, and there were hundreds of people praying. Hundreds. He said, “Brethren, we shall never see much change for the better in our churches in general till the prayer meeting occupies a higher place in the esteem of Christians.”
So that’s my pitch. We need to be praying. And you know what? If you can’t make it to the Monday night prayer meeting, that’s fine. Start your own. You don’t even have to tell me about it; just start. Just pray. Please, just pray! Pray for me, pray for these services on Saturday night and on Sunday morning. Pray for your group, pray for your friends, pray for your family. Pray. You will never regret time in prayer. You won’t. I’m sure that none of us are praying as much as we could and should.
That’s the second: proclamation, and then prayer.
(3) People as God’s fellow workers. People as God’s fellow workers. Now again, you see this in the text. You see it in verses 20 and 21, where these people come preaching the Lord Jesus, and it says in verse 21, “And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number who believed turned to the Lord.” They’re preaching, and the hand of the Lord is with them. That’s the combination. They’re doing something, but they’re doing it in partnership with God.
You see it in verses 22 and 23, where the report of this, these conversions in Antioch, come to the ears of the church in Jerusalem, and they send Barnabas, and he comes. Notice what he says here, verse 23: “When he came, he saw the grace of God.”
How do you see the grace of God? What does the grace of God look like? “He saw the grace of God.” Well, what he saw was the effect of the word of God from these unnamed evangelists who’ve been preaching Jesus, and what had happened in Antioch as a result. He calls that the grace of God, because the hand of the Lord was with him. You see the partnership there? You see they’re doing something, but God was doing something.
The same thing in Acts 13. The Holy Spirit says, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work which I have called them.”
Now just pause for a minute on that. Barnabas and Saul? I mean, these are probably the two most gifted guys in the church. And the Holy Spirit says, “Take your two best people and send them out.”
I know that if you people were kind of freaking out three years ago when we started talking about doing a church plant, I know some of us were freaking out. I was a little freaked out. But—I mean, we’re 200 people; we’re going to send away 30 people! We’re going to send away people who are generous in giving, who are generous in service; that’s going to leave all kinds of gaps. Sending away our associate pastor, we’re sending away talented worship leaders. We’re sending away some of our very best people. It’s crazy! And a Presbyterian church to boot. It’s just kind of weird!
And you know what? Raise your hand if you have shown up in this church in the last two years. You’ve been here two years or less. Let me see your hands. That’s quite a few hands. You don’t see as many as I do, but there are quite a few hands. God’s replacing, I mean, he’s filling the gaps. He’s filling the gaps! We have people filling all of these gaps that are lost. We send out some of our best people, and God fills the gaps.
Listen: this is how mission works. It’s how it works. We make sacrifices, we’re generous with time and and with people and with money, and we give, and God will fill those gaps. So that’s what the Antioch church was doing.
Last time I preached in this passage, by the way, was trying to cast vision for the church plant. You don’t remember that, because I know you don’t remember sermons two years later, maybe not even two weeks later. Sometimes I don’t remember it, and I’ll have to go back and read the notes. But that was the last time I preached on this, and I just think we should say, “Thank you, God. You got us through. We planted a church. Okay, what’s next? What’s next?”
Alright, so people as God’s fellow workers—I’m getting way off script today.
(4) Perseverance, step by step. Here’s the last P: perseverance step by step.
“When Barnabas came and saw the grace of God, he was glad and he exhorted them to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose.” Perseverance. Just keep on keeping on. That’s was perseverance is. In other words, they start doing this, and then you just keep doing it. Keep doing it.
Now, let me give you this—let me show you this in a chart that comes out of this book, The Vine Project. I’m sorry this isn’t more clear; it was the clearest I could find.
You see here a movement in the chart, from the left side to the right side. You have people. What are they doing? They are moving towards Jesus. They’re moving towards this redeemed people, gathered around the risen Christ. That’s the movement. Moving from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of the Son. The L stands for a learner or a disciple.
So here’s a group of people, a community of people, and here’s the goal: that the church is being equipped by the leaders of the church to help every Christian. To help every Christian, help those around them take steps towards Jesus. That’s what they mean, a step to the right. Take steps toward Jesus as we are proclaiming and praying as people in partnership with God, and we just keep on doing it. Perseverance.
Now that’s a really simple model of discipleship. One thing that’s so attractive to me about this book is it’s very simple. It’s not easy to do. It takes hard work, it takes real intentionality, and it will take the Spirit of God empowering us every step of the way, but that’s what has to happen. That’s what has to happen.
What I’m saying is that I believe we’re at a point in our church life together where we need to see this happening more and more. We need to see it happening more and more, where we are taking these steps together, where we are moving collectively towards Jesus, and we are helping each other move towards Jesus, and we’re doing it with the word, teaching it in a dozen different kinds of ways and contexts, two dozen more; where we are doing it with earnest prayer that the Spirit will work, and we do that knowing that we are in partnership with God, and we just keep doing it.
When that happens, then here’s the third ingredient of a disciple-making culture:
III. People moving towards Jesus through means of the word so that ministry expands outward toward others.
That’s what you see happening throughout the book of Acts. We see it happening in Antioch. You see ministry expanding outward through the word. Again, in Acts 13:3. I don’t need to read it again, but they’re sending out their best, and they’re sending them out to do missions. They’re sending them out as evangelists, as missionaries, to take the word to an unreached place.
So ministry expanding outward in the word, and then you also see it at the end of Acts 11. I haven’t said much about this. There’s this prophecy about a famine, and the saints there in Antioch respond by meeting the need. They see a very practical need, now. They see a practical need; the need for resources, so that people in famine can buy the food. The text says, “The disciples determined, everyone according to his ability, to send relief to the brothers living in Judea, and they did so, sending it to the elders by the hand of Barnabas and Saul.”
I just want you to see the basic pattern there. They are expanding ministry outward in word and deed. In word and deed. And again, I think this would be true for us, that as we grow together in moving towards Jesus and becoming this disciple-making community; as we do that, the fruit of that is going to be an outward focus, where we are increasingly thinking not so much about ourselves, but we’re thinking about the neighborhood, we’re thinking about unbelievers, we’re thinking about other churches that have needs.
I want to tell you—this is also off-script—but I sat down with a fellow pastor here a couple of months ago, and it was just so encouraging to me, because here’s a fellow pastor; if I named him you would know him, if I named the church you would know the church. He’s thinking strategically about how he and his people can partner with other churches to just see ministry happening in strategic locations around our community. They’re not trying to expand the reach of their church, the name of their church; thinking strategically about partnership with other churches. That’s part of it. That’s part of what we need to be doing; we need to think that way so we’re expanding outward in word and deed.
To whatever degree we are ingrown as a church, to that degree we are unhealthy and out of sync with the purposes of God. To whatever degree we are so comfortable with our sect, with our group, with our clique, with the people who are already our friends, that we’re not willing to step outside of that comfort zone and make an adjustment or make a change, and I mean, this is the kind of change I have in mind: be willing to leave your small group and start a new small group, because we need more. Or be willing to divide a class so that we multiply options for classes. Or be willing to jump into a new ministry which is something, maybe, you’ve never done before, but you jump into a new ministry, a new area of outreach, because you care about the mission.
That kind of mentality, to the degree we don’t have that kind of mentality, we’re not healthy. Now I’m not advocating—don’t misunderstand me!—I’m not advocating for any particular change right now. I’m advocating for a mindset, and the mindset is we’re willing to make personal sacrifices and adjustments for the sake of the mission, so that the word goes out. That’s what Antioch did, and I think that’s what we’re called to do as well.
Now, let me end this way: this has been kind of a “do” sermon, right, where I’m trying to cast vision for disciple-making as a culture, and I haven’t said a lot about the gospel itself as motivating power. But listen: the reason why we should think this way and we should gladly think this way is because God is the greatest missionary. He sent his Son. He sent his Son! His Son made himself of no reputation, humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Now why did he do that? Why did he do that? He did that to save you. He did that out of love for you. He did that to redeem you for the glory of his Father. That’s the mindset. It’s the gospel mindset.
If you find yourself struggling, and I understand this, I’m a comfort-zone kind of guy; I’m not a pioneer by temperament. Give me a job and keep me in the same place and don’t change a lot of things; that’s who I am by temperament. So I understand this. But what we need is to be so grasped by the wonder of the gospel, that God loves us so much he sent his Son, he made the sacrifice; we’re so deeply transformed by that that we’re glad and willing to make changes and make sacrifices for the sake of others. That’s a gospel-transformed heart, and that’s how we get this mindset.
So, that’s the end of the sermon. We’re going to transition to communion here in just a moment, but I want us just to take a minute for prayer. I know the tone of this has been a little different today, but I hope you’re with me and that you’ll pray that in the months to come God will do something here and turn us into a disciple-making community. So, bow with me and let’s pray.
Father, the first thing we want to do is say thank you that you gave your Son, and you sent your Son into the world for our sins; sent him to live, to die, to rise again. Thank you for your love which is so great and so deep; in Paul’s words so deep and long and wide and high. I pray, Father, that we would be grasped by that love, and our hearts be transformed by the experience of that grace.
Father, I want to pray right now that you would give us as a congregation the vision for disciple-making as a whole body, as we see the word increasing and growing and multiplying and abounding in every context, every home, family, group, classroom, meeting, program of our church. I pray that you’d give us the mindset, give us the motivation, give us the heart. I pray that you would unite us as a church around this vision. I pray that you’d shake us out of any lethargy that we have. I pray that you’d give us right kinds of motivations for prayer, that we would not be motivated out of a sense of guilt or failure, but that we would be motivated with an excitement and an anticipation of the possibilities of what you can do when your people pray. I pray that as we enter into 2017 we would enter into this year with high hopes, with our eyes fixed on Jesus, with knees bent in prayer, with our sleeves rolled up, ready to work.
I pray that you would equip our leadership team, our elders, as well as deacons and small group leaders and teachers and everyone who’s taking a leadership role. Would you equip us with the wisdom, the resources, the skills, the knowledge, the passion, to see this vision to fruition? I pray that you’d begin it in my heart and in my family, and the hearts of our community.
Lord, we look forward to seeing what you can do and what you will do. Show yourself strong in our behalf. Lord, draw near to us now as we come to the table. It is a means of grace; it is a place where we draw strength from our risen and ascended Christ, strength to fight sin, strength to be steadfast in hope and in faith, and so we pray that you would do that for us as we come to the table this morning. We pray it in Jesus’ name and for his sake, amen.
Brian G. Hedges
