Manuscript: Why do YOU go to church? Reason #2: Discipleship

For those of you who were not with us last week, we were going through “The Life of Christ” and we had our course corrected by God. We started looking through this idea of “Why do YOU go to church?” What is it that brings you to church service on Sunday morning? We went through some various reasons why, but we came to the conclusion that we are supposed to be here first and foremost to Worship God only. That’s why we’re here. Today we are looking at the 2nd reason why. This week was my final week of Intro to the Pauline Epistles. I had to do a research paper on a certain passage from one of the letters of Paul. As I started to dig into the passage, 1 Timothy 3, which is the leadership passages, I discovered that Timothy was located in the church at Ephesus. We also have Paul’s letter to the Ephesian church in our Bible as well. The Ephesian church was being warned by Paul to repent otherwise there will be some dire consequences from their actions. This Ephesian church was extremely divisive, argued, fought, and very dysfunctional. They were not doing God’s work or doing anything along the lines of what God wanted. Paul is telling Timothy that they need to prep for battle because trouble is coming. They needed to restore themselves to the proper service that God bestowed upon them in the beginning. They were in crisis mode and in need of help. Does that sound familiar? The church here in Lima has that same reputation of being dysfunctional; in the past at least. Here recently it has gotten better. But still, it’s the reputation we’ve received…we have sort of become the Ephesian church.

Last week I suggested in the tail end of that sermon that we need to get right before God. I want to explain a little more about that. I believe, and this is only my perception, but I’ve heard multiple sides of the argument is that we aren’t doing the basics of Christianity right. We have worship down pat…we aren’t perfect, but still we do well. But as I go on, we are going to figure out that deeper into the basic Christianity things, we are going to discover that it isn’t just a Lima church problem, it is an American church problem. It is an entire problem that runs rampant across our country because we battle certain things in our culture.

First, I want to define what a Disciple is. We are looking at Active Discipleship this week. A disciple is someone that follows Christ and strives to learn and embody his teaching. This is a combination definition from a few different places. Before I go to our main Scripture for today, I want to remind you of our focus Scriptures for this Sermon Series. Proverbs 3:5-6:

5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart,
and do not rely on your own understanding;
6 think about Him in all your ways,
and He will guide you on the right paths.

If you would, turn with me to Luke 14:25-35.

25 Now great crowds were traveling with Him. So He turned and said to them: 26 “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his own father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, and even his own life—he cannot be My disciple. 27 Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.

28 “For which of you, wanting to build a tower, doesn’t first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it? 29 Otherwise, after he has laid the foundation and cannot finish it, all the onlookers will begin to make fun of him, 30 saying, ‘This man started to build and wasn’t able to finish.’


31 “Or what king, going to war against another king, will not first sit down and decide if he is able with 10,000 to oppose the one who comes against him with 20,000? 32 If not, while the other is still far off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. 33 In the same way, therefore, every one of you who does not say good-bye to all his possessions cannot be My disciple.

34 “Now, salt is good, but if salt should lose its taste, how will it be made salty? 35 It isn’t fit for the soil or for the manure pile; they throw it out. Anyone who has ears to hear should listen!”

Christ rounds this out by talking about salt. A month or two ago, we discussed salt. Salt is a preservative and a thirst creator. We preserve the culture with the help of the Holy Spirit. Salt also creates a thirst for the Word. If you eat a salty snack, immediately we want a drink because we are thirsty. We are to preserve and create thirst for Christ. Now let’s jump back to the beginning here.

We are going to have 3 sets of 3 here; we are going to start with Christ’s requirements for being a disciple in Luke 14. First of all, He says that if you don’t hate your parents, siblings and yourself, you can’t be His disciple. That’s kind of contradictory to what He teaches right? I mean in His Great Commandments He says that we are to Love God and Love others, so what’s this deal with hate? Are we really supposed to hate everyone? Oh no. There is context there. You notice when he gave the Great Commandments it wasn’t Love others and then Love God? It is Love God and then Love others. Our love for God is supposed to be so intense for God that our love for others is supposed to look like hate. That is how intense our Love for God should be. We won’t ever be perfect, but nonetheless, our love for God should be far above our love for others. Don’t forget that we should be loving other as well, but our love for God is to be that intense.

Next, he moves on to bearing your own cross. Let’s explore that a little. What happened at the cross? He was persecuted, suffered, beaten, tortured, maimed, disfigured…if you are not willing to put Christ 1st, if you aren’t willing to be persecuted or suffered or take on troubles, because it isn’t an if…it’s a WHEN. Trouble, suffering and persecution will find you. Guaranteed. You must be willing to put Christ 1st and lay yourself on the line.

The third step here, he goes through a story of counting the cost of building a tower or going to war. Simply put, he is talking about sacrifice. Have you counted the cost of what is going to cost you to follow Christ? Have you counted the costs? Are you willing to give up everything you have for Him? Are you willing to give up your wants, your needs, your desires in order to follow Him?

My friends, there are things in my life that I have battled; one of them is video games. It started innocently in 1985 when I was six. The Nintendo came out and I had no idea what that was. My parents bought us one for Christmas and we all played it as a family. It always involved getting new games, blowing in the end of the game to get the thing to work…but then they came out with the Super Nintendo…then the N64, Playstation, XBOX, and so on. Before long, I was doing nothing but golfing, working and playing video games. That’s all. It consumed my life, money and everything I had. In my mid 20’s, I realized it was an addiction. However, I said the statement given by every addict everywhere. “I can put it down anytime I want, I am not addicted!!” Wrong. Very wrong. There was a 4 year period where we had no video games in our house whatsoever. We have a Wii now, but if we play it once a month, we’re lucky. Just because we’re too busy. What are you willing to lay aside for Jesus? I wasn’t willing to lay my video games aside for Christ. I wasn’t willing to put my career behind Christ. I worked 80 hours a week. My family suffered, my faith suffered…what are you willing to give up and lay aside for Jesus Christ? According to this passage here, you must be willing to give up everything you have for Him. That means every acre of land, every house, car, TV, everything. I have heard stories of people who live out of cars so they can do more for God. If God is laying something on your heart, let it go. Video games were one of my demons. I had to struggle very hard to let it go.

One more thing, for a long time, I did not want to become a minister. I didn’t want to be here behind that pulpit. If you follow God long enough, the things He wants become the things you want. I’m here now aren’t I? I am here in a pulpit, preaching and I wouldn’t rather be doing anything else. God has gotten a hold of me long enough that the things He wants become what I want. So, when we lay our wants and desires down, we conform to His wants and desires anyway. You’re going to want the things He wants for you, sometimes that hard, sometimes it’s easy.

Now let’s look at Christ and his disciples. There are 3 things here that talk about these 3 requirements in Luke 14. What is the process they underwent in order to follow Jesus? 1st, they had to decide to follow Him. 2nd they learned from Him. 3rd, they started teaching. It is a process, they were rebuked, corrected, worshipped, obeyed, gave their testimonies, they practiced the disciplines. All of these things is a process that they went through. All of these demonstrate their intense love for God. Some of these people dropped everything, career, possessions, family…they dropped everything in order to follow Christ across the Israeli countryside and put Christ 1st. Which speaks to what are you willing to sacrifice for Jesus Christ?

So, what did they teach? They equipped, exhorted, and encouraged. Have you heard the saying that, “God doesn’t call the equipped, He equips the called?” When he called me at 12 to be a minister, I had no idea how to be a minister. Over the years, he equipped me with the knowledge and experience necessary to do the job. So, when he calls you, if you don’t know what to do, trust him. You’ll gain the knowledge you need when the time is right. You will be exhorted; rebuked, corrected and taught how to do it right. That is a process in learning to become a disciple of Jesus. We need to encourage one another, not tear each other down; build each other up. I want to go through some Scriptures that speak to this; Galatians 6:1-18; 1 Thessalonians 5:11-22; 2 Timothy 4:1-2; Hebrews 3:13-15; 10:19-25. Carefully read these and notice the following, learning, teaching, equipping, exhorting, encouraging in all of these passages.

For the sermon today, I looked up some statistics. I want to throw a few of these out there. Most come from Wikipedia. The population of the U.S. as of 2012 is 313,025,000. I wanted to know what percentage of Americans are Christian? 83% actually claim Christianity.; about 259 million..that’s not too bad. However, the stats get worse. 40% attend a weekly service. Only 40%...that’s down to 125 million. Those who fulfill the discipleship requirements of putting God first is only 9%. That’s 25 million out of 313 million. That is a startlingly horrible stat. The U.S. is by far the most populous Christian nation. If only 25 million are actually serious, then we have gone wrong somewhere. The path is indeed narrow and few are finding it. We have failed, in my opinion, in discipleship. We have failed to follow, learn, teach, equip, exhort, and encourage. I said last week there are so many different reasons we go to church. When we come to church we need to focus on Christ alone and the message He brings. Part of the discipleship is being and giving ourselves opportunities to learn. I am going to pick on our Sunday School class, but there are only a handful of us there. That is one of those discipleship opportunities that we fail to meet. We just don’t make the time or whatever the case may be. I was guilty of that too once upon a time. But we need to make use of every opportunity we have to learn and teach others. We have to be ready to be equipped because next week we are going to talk about evangelism. The reason we don’t evangelize is because we aren’t properly equipped. We will discuss that more next week.

Remember the church in Ephesus? Paul warned that if they don’t repent, there will be dire consequences. You know what those consequences were? Well, first you must know that Ephesus is now in the modern day Turkey. If you know anything about geography, you know that Turkey is a Muslim nation. Generations of people have been lost because they failed to heed the word of God. And if we do not act now in our country, that is where we will eventually be. It is not an if, but a when. We have to get serious about our faith. We have to love God above everything else, we must put Christ 1st and be willing to sacrifice everything for Him.

This week as I was preparing this sermon, Friday morning I opened a devotion of mine by Greg Laurie, titled “Harvest”. Usually it is evangelistic in nature. He gave these first two sentences in the devotion: “Just because you are a Christian doesn’t necessarily mean you are a disciple. Every disciple is a believer, but not every believer is a disciple. Whoa. That hit right between the eyes. Not every believer is a disciple. Just because you go to church doesn’t make you a disciple. It’s your actions that make you a disciple. Last week the big idea was “if you aren’t willing to put the work behind your faith, then your faith is dead.” This week, it is the fact that just because you go to church doesn’t mean you are a disciple of Jesus. As you leave the church this morning, I want you to evaluate your walk; everything in your walk from letting the things challenge you that need challenging and the encouraging things be encouraging. If you have any questions, my door is open. Let’s come together and talk about your walk, your faith, all of the things in your life. Let’s find some ways to improve. Let me encourage you on what you’re doing right. We all do things right and we all do things wrong. Let’s encourage each other so we can share that Gospel. This week, evaluate yourself. Don’t automatically get down on yourself, but let the Spirit guide.