The Life of a Disciple-Maker

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The Life of a Disciple-Maker

All right, we’re going to go ahead and dive in. If you have a Bible, and I hope you do or somebody around you does, you can look on with. Let me invite you to open with me to Matthew chapter four, Matthew chapter four, and if you want to go ahead and also well, we’ll turn to Matthew chapter 28 pretty soon after we read in Matthew chapter four.

I want to start by telling you a little story about my family. Some of you may have heard a little background but’s. The reason why I want to tell a little story about my family from the start that you’ll see in a minute.

So my wife and I, her name’s Heather. We longed for many years to have children, but God was not blessing in the way we were hoping for and longing for just year after year after year, we’re praying for kids and God was not answering our prayers the way we were hoping.

And so we ended up leading us down a path of adoption, which at the time I would’ve probably told you was kind of second best since we couldn’t have children biologically, we decided to adopt, but we learned pretty quick that adoption was just as best. And we adopted our first son from Kazakhstan.

His name is Caleb, and we got home from Kazakhstan two weeks later. I came home late one night from a meeting at church and Heather was still awake. She was usually in bed by that time and I could tell something was going on.

She said you need to sit down. I said, okay. So I sat down next to her on the couch and I said, what’s going on? She said you’re not going to believe this. I said, what? She said I’m pregnant. I was like, how’d that happen? Well, I mean, I know how it happened, but that could be another session at this 18 to 25-year-old conference.

But apparently what happens in Kazakhstan doesn’t stay in Kazakhstan. So anyway, sorry. So moving on. So we were both shocked and so we’d been told at every step of this adoption journey, not to get your hopes up.

You never know when it’s going to. Things might fall through. And so we just decided, okay, we’re not going to get our hopes up. We don’t know if this is going to go full term. So for the next month, we didn’t get our hopes up.

Next, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 months later, hopes still not up, but Heather’s still pregnant. And so I came home again late one night after meeting at church, she’s awake. She said I’m not feeling very good. So we go to sleep.

She wakes me up in the middle of the night and she said, don’t get your hopes up. It’s like hope’s not up. She said, I think it’s probably a false alarm, but we at least I think should go to the hospital.

So we get up, we go to the hospital and this cold night, and I emphasize cold December night because when we got to the hospital, we go to check in and they said they didn’t have enough room for us. You got any stables outside the manger?

So they put us in a closet, like a closet. They hook Heather up to a bunch of machines and we’re just sitting there groggy for the next few hours. Finally, this nurse comes in and checks the machines, and was like, we need to get you in a room.

You’re about to have a baby. And at that moment, Heather and I, our eyes locked and we decided it was time to get our hopes up. And so they start moving us into this room just a little bit about me, and this is not good for me as a pastor, but I don’t do well in hospitals.

I ate queasy, just the smell right now I am kind of feeling a little sick just thinking about the hospital. And so my wife knew this and so she told me a few weeks before this that she was praying for me and how I was going to do in this process, which was kind of a shot in my pride that my wife was not praying for her health or our child’s health, but my health in this process.

And so that’s a little background. So I’m standing in there and the nurse is talking to Heather and she starts talking about how the doctor who’s going to deliver our baby actually lets the husband help deliver the baby if he wants to.

Which Heather just laughed. My husband would never do that again. Shot number two at the pride. And I decided this was my moment. It’s one of those times words start coming out of your mouth when you’re not even thinking.

And so I just blurted out, well, I’ll help deliver the baby. Heather looked over me like you will. I said, well, of course, who wouldn’t want to deliver a baby? And the nurse was like, I’ll get things ready. And I turn around and think, what have I done?

I’m sick standing in this room. Now I’m about to deliver a child. So I decided I needed to come up with a game plan and here’s the game plan I came up with. I decided I was going to look at this. It was a mission trip. Alright, so follow with me here. True story.

This is what was going on in my mind. I thought when you go to a mission trip, you do things you don’t normally do. You go to another country, you eat things you don’t normally eat, you drink things you don’t normally drink.

So when you’re in Rome, you do what the Romans do. When you’re in a hospital, you do what the doctors do and then deliver babies in this country. So that’s what we’re going to do. Besides, I have a doctorate,

It’s in theology and preaching, but what does it matter in the end, we’re all the same. So I’m nervously pacing. It comes time, the doctor comes in the room and comes over. He straps a gown on me, some gloves on me, a mask on my face, and he says, all right, here’s what we’re going to do.

He uses about 60 seconds of medical jargon that I don’t understand. He’s like, do you understand? I said, yes, sir. She says, be ready. And so I’m standing behind him, he’s like, all right, it’s time.

Put your right hand on top of your left hand. It was like Tom Brady, I got two nurses flanking me. You right here, you right here. And all of a sudden, how comes this little head? And time stands still as this baby we’ve prayed for years.

I pull out and place on my wife’s lap with our son from Kazakhstan in the waiting room beside. So that was son number two. We obviously knew at this point we were able to have children biologically, but we also knew we wanted to adopt again for the next three years.

We walked through an adoption process that led us to a little girl in China and we adopted her. And then after we got back from her, three months later, you’ll never guess what Heather told me one night when I came home, she said she’s pregnant.

Her doctor was like, so if you adopt four, you’ll have eight. Not Kevin de Young. So I share that story because of the longing in my heart, in our hearts for children that I think God has wired every one of us to have spiritually as Christians, as followers of Jesus.

I remember in college walking into a Christian bookstore and a guy I’d never met comes over to me, hands me a little booklet by a guy named Dawson Trotman, the founder of the Navigators. And he said you need to read this.

And he walks away. I didn’t know who he was, still don’t know who he is. The title of the booklet was Born to Reproduce. So it’s not what you might think it is, but it is a little booklet that basically says every follower of Jesus is filled with the spirit of God for the purpose of reproducing the gospel of God, for seeing disciples made through your life.

And so that’s what I want to show you in God’s word and not just show you, but help you think through how does this happen? How does spiritual reproduction happen? So look with me at Matthew chapter four, verse 18.

This is the calling of the first disciples in the gospel of Matthew while walking by the sea of Galilee, he being, Jesus saw two brothers, Simon who’s called Peter, and Andrew, his brother, casting a net into the sea for they were fishermen. And he said to them, follow me and I will make you fishers of men.

And immediately they left their nets and followed him. And going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James, the son of Zebedee, and John, his brother in the boat with Zebedee, their father mending their nets and he called them immediately.

They left the boat and their father and followed him. Do you see this? I mean, there’s so much in this passage, but you see a very basic truth. It just shouts from verse 19, following Jesus leads to fishing for men. You follow me? I will make you.

This is something I’m going to supernaturally do in and through your life. I’m going to make you a fisher of men. Following means fishing. He uses this analogy from their life, their work to say instead of fishing for, searching for, fish all over a lake, you’re going to work for souls all over the world.

Which is exactly so. Think bookends. This is the initial words from Jesus to his disciples in the book of Matthew. So then what are the last words from Jesus to his disciples In the book of Matthew, it’s a passage that I trust is familiar to many of us.

Verse 16 of Matthew chapter 28, the 11 disciples went to Galilee to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him. But some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, all authority and heaven and on earth has been given to me.

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 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age.

Again, there’s so much in this passage, we’re going to dive into a lot of it here. But see one truth just clearly screaming off the pages To be a disciple is to make disciples. Every disciple of Jesus is called commanded to make disciples of Jesus.

So this is where I’ve prayed that during this breakout, this basic truth might sink in maybe for the first time in your heart and mind or maybe in a deeper way than it has before, that God has called you commanded. You created your life to reproduce. Reproduce.

This gospel that you have is not just for you, it’s not intended to stop with you. It is intended to spread through you. I think about it, I was preaching one Sunday and the church I pastor and we do fill in the blank notes and at the very end of the notes I had that question, will the gospel stop with you or spread through you?

And the next week, this guy probably 1819, comes up to me, he says, pastor, that question just so stuck with me and he starts rolling up his sleeve. Dude had tattooed that phrase on his arm, that weak, that’ll make you think twice about what you put in the sermon notes.

So I’m not saying that you should. In fact, I would say you should probably not tattoo that on your arm. I don’t think it’s a sin to. So I’m not definitely not saying but imprint it on your heart. This gospel is too good.

That’s the thrust of this conference, right? That this gospel is too good. It’s what Zain is saying today, our God is too great to keep this good news to ourselves. We have news that saves people for all of eternity.

We have a God who will satisfy people for all of eternity. Of course, we want to give our lives to seeing this good news and the glory of this God spread. This is what disciple-making is at its core. It’s reproducing the life of Jesus in you. And think about it. It makes sense.

So we’re talking, so don’t take this out of the ambiguous. You are created for the glory of God among the nations. We’re seeing that from cover to cover in Scripture. So how do you glorify God among the nations? 

And the answer to that question, how do you glorify God? You just go around singing about God. Well, think about it two ways. One, you glorify God by growing as a disciple of Jesus. So the more you look like Jesus, the more God is glorified in your life.

The more you think like Jesus, the more you desire what Jesus desires. The more you speak like Jesus, the more you love like Jesus, the more your life is conformed to the image of Jesus, the more God will receive glory through your life. But it’s not just about you.

You glorify God, not just by you growing as a disciple, but second by you giving your life to making disciples by leading other people to look like Jesus, leading other people to think, to live, to speak, to desire, to love like Jesus. The more that is happening in the world, the more God is receiving glory in the world.

That’s what we want. We want to see the glory of God among the nations. How does that happen? Through growing as a disciple and through giving our lives, making disciples. So what I want to do, and the rest of this short time that we have now is unpack, okay, what does that mean to make disciples?

What does it mean to be a disciple-maker? I think the title of this breakout is the life of a disciple-maker. What does that look like? What I want to do is show you just straight from scripture, straight from Matthew 28, 18 through 23, realities in a disciple-maker’s life.

Three qualities, attributes that are evident in a disciple-maker’s life and exhort you to grow in these three ways and in the process see a definition of disciple-making, particularly in the second reality. I think it’s to our detriment and not just our detriment, but others’ detriment that we oftentimes, even in the church, even in this room, don’t have clarity about what it means to make disciples.

If I were to ask all across this room, okay, how do you make disciples or ask just everybody in the church, you’re a part of the church, I’m a part of. How do you make disciples? I think that there would be a lot of different answers, ambiguous answers, confused looks, even some that are way off, some that are right in line with scripture.

If we are going to be clear about anything, we need to be clear about what Jesus commanded us to do before he ascended to the Father and what he said. This should drive you. And lemme say one other thing before we dive into these three realities.

This is essential for every single person in this room who wants to play any part in God’s plan, not just for those. So let’s not get confused here when we use goer and sender language. So that’s specifically talking about like I was on the panel last night that’s specifically talking about people who are going where the gospel’s not yet gone in Romans 15, acts 13 and 14 kind of way.

The reality is every one of us is commanded to go and make disciples of all nations. Not only a few people are commanded to carry out this commandment, they’re the goer, and then everybody else just kind of sits back and watches. That’s what we’ve got to avoid.

We all make disciples right where we live and wherever God leads and then when God leads us somewhere else to go do that where the gospel’s not yet gone, that’s what we’re referring to as a missionary, but those who are sending are making disciples right where we live and open to doing that wherever God leads. And that’s also important because having led a missions organization for the last four years, there are a variety of people who will come and say, I want to go and make disciples among unreached peoples.

And then you ask the question, how are you making disciples where you live? And they say, ah, it’s not really, I don’t really share the gospel that much. I’ve really not seen my life reproduced in others’ lives, not seen others baptized as a result of my life.

I’ve not seen others growing in Christ as a result of my life. Well, if that’s not the case, we are kidding ourselves to think we’re going to be able to make disciples in a foreign context where we have to learn a language and we’re experiencing all kinds of unique challenges that we’re going to be able to do there, what we’ve not been able to do right where we live.

So the more of us that are obeying this command right where we live, the more the mobilization can happen to do this wherever God might leave. So with that kind of setup, three realities, I’ll put it this way, three exhortations if you want to make disciples.

Trust in the Authority of Jesus

Here are three exhortations. One, trust in the authority of Jesus. Trust in the authority of Jesus. So I just want to show you this straight from the word. This is not, David made up some ideas about disciple-making. Put ’em together for a talk.

I want to show you this straight from the word disciple-making begins with trusting in the authority of Jesus. Jesus gathers disciples on this mountain and he doesn’t start with a command, he starts with a claim.

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. That is a massive statement. It’s the fulfillment of Daniel seven 13 and 14, the son of a man who would come and have dominion and glory among all the people’s everlasting dominion that’ll never pass away.

And this is the basis, this claim is the basis for everything that flows in this text. So let’s think for a second about what this means. Don’t jump over this. This is huge. So one, this means Jesus is not just the personal Lord and Savior over us.

So he is our Lord, he is our savior. Lemme step back. You’ve heard it mentioned by different speakers. I mean in a room this size, I just don’t think we should assume that everyone in this room has submitted to the Lordship of Jesus and I’ve been praying specifically for some who are here at this conference who are involved in church.

I mean the very fact that you came to this conference for most, it’s like, okay, you’re probably a little more committed than the average, but it is absolutely possible to go to the motions of attendance and involvement in campus or college ministry and all kinds of good things and never submit your life to the lordship of Jesus. It is far too common in our day for people to say, yes, Jesus save me from my sins, but I have not yet surrendered my life to him as Lord.

And that is not an option biblically, it’s just not an option. You look at the weight of scripture, the weight is obviously yes just as our savior. But look in the book of Acts 92 times Jesus is called Lord.

Twice he’s called savior and Jesus is, he is Lord. That’s who he is. One day every knee is going to bow and every tongue is going to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. That’s where sometimes people say, okay, well may, I’m trying to decide whether or not to make Jesus Lord of my life.

Well, the reality is you really don’t have a choice in the matter, Jesus is Lord of your life. The only question that remains is whether or not you submit to his lordship now or you do so when it is too late.

And so I want to earn you if you’ve never submitted your life to the lordship of Jesus to do that, the loving lordship of Jesus to do that today for you, lay your head on your pillow tonight and then when you do to realize, so Jesus is not just your Lord, he is the universal Lord. Over all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me.

Now this has been building all throughout the book of Matthew. We have seen Jesus with authority over nature. He speaks in the wind and the waves obey. He has authority over nations, Jews and Gentiles alike.

He has authority over disease. He speaks and people are healed. He has authority over demons. He speaks and they flee. He has authority over sin to forgive sin, he has authority over death. Jesus rises from the grave.

So disciple-making starts with realizing Jesus is Lord. He’s Lord of every facet of my life and he is Lord over every life in the world that one day every single person in this room will stand before Jesus as judge.

And one day every single person in Yemen will stand before Jesus as judge and every single person in India will stand before Jesus as judge 7.3 billion people in the world. All of them one day will stand before Jesus as judge and will bow their knees and call him Lord.

So this commission that Jesus is about to give starts with believing that. And I just want to encourage you to trust in believe in the authority of Christ because, and Kevin mentioned this on the panel last night, I think the reason why so few from our churches are going relative to the billions of people who need to hear the gospel is because we don’t really believe that people need to hear the gospel in order to be saved. We don’t really believe Jesus is Lord over the nations.

Think about it. It’s a bold claim, isn’t it? Go to northern India with me for a minute and 500 million people in Northern India and 90 plus percent of whom, I don’t know where it is exactly, but we’ll just at least 90% of them are Hindu Muslim not following, trusting in Jesus.

You go to northern India, doesn’t it feel a bit bold to say to four 50 plus million people, if you don’t believe what I believe, you’re going to spend eternity in hell? Doesn’t that feel almost arrogant to say If you don’t believe what I believe, I mean just picture that in the world we live in, absolutely it does and it kind of feels that way even in our own heart, like to say to two plus billion people in the world, two to 3 billion people in the world right now, that you’ll spend an eternity in hell if you don’t believe in Jesus.

That feels really bold, feels almost arrogant, narrow-minded unless it’s true. And if it’s true, that’s the most loving thing you can say. If it’s true, then the most arrogant thing you could do or I could do is sit back and not go to northern India and tell those people that Jesus has made a way for eternal life in heaven for reconciliation to God.

So that’s the question that every one of us has to answer. If we’re going to make disciples, it’s going to start with believing in the authority of Jesus, believing that Jesus is Lord and Jesus alone can save and not just can save believing that Jesus will save.

Believing that Jesus will save, that this gospel when proclaimed has the power to bring people from death to life through its proclamation. And do you believe that you think about some of the reasons why all of us, including myself, are hesitant to share the gospel, not just around the world, but right on our campuses or in cities where we live, we’re prone to be quiet, we’re prone not to speak the gospel.

Why is that? I think because we forget how powerful this gospel is when we speak it, God will bring people, you bring people from death to life. This gospel has the power to save. Praise God. Somebody believes that gospel enough to share it with you and me, right?

So God give us the boldness and the confidence in the gospel to believe in the authority of Jesus to save. Go with me to Southeast Asia for a minute. A couple of believers, Southeast Asian believers who had been at some training and evangelism were encouraged to go up into a totally unreached village.

No Christians, no churches go up into that village and share the gospel. And so they go up into this animistic village. So they worship all kinds of gods and spirits in this village and they start sharing the gospel with these villagers.

The villagers wear necklaces and omelets and have gods up in their homes to try to ward off all the evil spirits around them as they’re hearing the gospel. Over a course of weeks, the villagers start to say, if this is true about one true God who has power over all gods and Jesus, then we don’t need these necklaces and omelets and we don’t need these gods up in our homes.

So they start taking them off, taking their gods down, bringing them to the middle of town to create a pile basically for a bonfire. You’re going to burn ’em. We don’t need these anymore until one day the believers go back up into that village and they find the villagers going back to the bonfire and getting their stuff back, putting it back around their necks on their wrists, up in their homes.

And the believer said, what are you doing? Why are you doing this? And they said, our village leader just died and people in the village believe it is because we’ve started to believe what you’re teaching us. So we’ve got to get these things back.

While the believers just went to the side and just broke and started praying, God, we don’t understand. Why is this? They were so close and now this happens. You love these people why?

And so they’re praying, then they finish praying. They’re like, what do we do? And they decide the least they could do is go express condolences to the village leader’s family. So the custom in that village is once somebody dies, they actually leave the body in the house for a number of days for a period of mourning.

Then they bury the body after that. So they go up to the village leader’s house, there’s people all around the house mourning, crying that go inside the house. They go over to the village leader’s wife and express condolences to her.

We’re so sorry that this happened. And they just walk over to where the village leader’s body was lying there and they say they just started praying, God, please amidst this scene show your grace, show your love, save people, show your glory.

And they said as they were praying, all of a sudden the village leader coughed and everybody got really still and dude coughed again. So people start coming over and the village leader sits up and everybody’s looking at these believers like, what’d you do?

And they said we thought that was as good a time as any to share the gospel. So they share the gospel and long story short, they ended up having the bonfire in the village as people trusted in Jesus.

So here’s the deal. I tell that story. I’m guessing there’s some in this room we were thinking, I mean really was he really dead? They’re just kind of dead and obviously I don’t know, I wasn’t there.

I do know that in villages like this, they know how to recognize death. They have processes they go through. But I love the way missionaries invented the training. Put it, he said, I don’t know. I wasn’t there, but I do know this.

So even if that guy wasn’t dead, God sure chose an opportune moment for that guy to cough. I think that’s a good point. So I don’t know exactly want that story, but I do know this. We serve the king who has the power to bring the dead to life.

Our savior has the power to do this all over the world among unreached peoples, all over your campus, all over the city where you live. He has the power to bring the dead to life. So do you believe that? Do you really believe that?

Because if you don’t believe that you’re not going to risk your reputation, you’re not going to surrender your life, you’re not going to give your life making this truth known. It starts with believing in the authority of Jesus, trusting in his authority, and thinking about it, not just that.

This is why going back to that panel last night, a high view of God is necessary for mission in the world because we believe God is worthy. We believe God is able to save and we believe God will save. We believe the end of the story is going to be.

We’ll dive into that on Saturday morning, but well spoiler alert, Jesus wins every nation, tribe, and tongue will gather around the throne and sing his phrases. So when we’re praying for the Yemeni people, we’re praying because we know Yemenis are going to be there on that day.

They’re going to be singing his phrases. So we can go to Yemen with confidence, total confidence, we can preach this gospel and know we preach this call. Somebody’s coming out, somebody’s going to believe.

So just believe in the authority of Jesus. This is where it starts in our own life to trust in his authority. Alright, I got to move on. But one other picture here, I mentioned the tendency for people to say, yeah, I’ve asked Jesus just to save me from my sins, but not really surrendered to him as my Lord.

Basically it’s created, I trust we realize this all across many of the areas where we live. I’m not saying everywhere, some of you’re in places where it’s much harder to be a Christian, but I a nominal Christianity, Christianity in name only where you profess faith in Jesus, but your life looks just like the rest of the world.

So sexually you live just like the rest of the world, financially, just like the rest of the world, and the patterns and habits, life, and relationships, just like the rest of the world. But you got to get out of hell free ticket because you prayed to prayer one day and this is not biblical Christianity.

And the last thing the nations need is the exportation of nominal Christianity from North America. They don’t need it. They don’t need a cheap diluted version of the gospel. They need the real thing that which has the power to save.

So let’s show it in our lives. Trust in his authority in your life. Live your life under the lordship of Jesus and believe in his lordship, not just over you but over overall. This is what drives us all authority and heaven on earth has been given to Jesus.

Obey the Commands of Jesus

This is why. So therefore go and make disciples of all nations. So one first ex expectation, trust in believe in the authority of Jesus. Second, a disciple-maker obeys this command from Jesus, this command from Jesus obeys this command from Jesus.

In this passage, there is one imperative verb in the original language of the New Testament and it’s surrounded by three les. So for those of you who just think English class, so one imperative verb, that’s the command, do this and then it’s surrounded by les that basically describe how that is done.

So the imperative is make disciples. It’s surrounded by three: going, baptizing and teaching, making disciples, going, baptizing and teaching. So there we see just best as I can see, a biblical definition of disciple-making.

That’s the command, make disciples of all the nations. That’s the clear command. That is not a comfortable call for most Christians to come be baptized and sit in one location as spectators where we do all kinds of good religious activities.

Devoid of kingdom productivity. That little packet I would encourage you can download that Born to Reproduce by Dawson Tribe. And I would encourage you, download, read it. It’s a little packet, you can download a PDF.

Just search for it. He talks about it. It’s a tragedy that people have been followers of Jesus for 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 more years and can’t point to one person who is walking with Jesus as a result of their life.

We were born to reproduce, not just to do a bunch of religious activity. That’s what Dawson Troutman hits on a bit. So this is not a comfortable call for Christians to come be baptized, sit in one location.

This is a costly command for every Christian to go baptize and teach in all nations. So every Christian here, just like Matthew four, follow me, I’ll make you a fishers of men. Every disciple a disciple-maker.

So biblically to be a disciple is to make disciples. So we obey this command. So as you think about this command in your life, I want to give you based on the language in this text three lessons to hang on to, okay, so what does that mean in my life? One.

So this is kind under this second one, one, share the word go this picture of going, this is Jesus sending them out to proclaim the gospel. So this is where we’ve got to be careful to make sure to see evangelism, the proclamation of the gospel as a fundamental part of making disciples.

So if we’re not careful, we can talk about disciple-making and just think, oh yeah, that’s when Christians who’ve been Christians for a long time just huddle together and meet for accountability and we’re going to talk about, that’s part of teaching people to obey. We’ll get to that in a second.

But Jesus was definitely not telling these disciples, go down all this mountain and huddle together for the rest of your lives. Make sure to have good accountability with each other. Now he was telling ’em to go and spread this message.

In fact, he said later in Luke’s version of this. Luke 24, end of Luke 24, and Acts chapter one that I’m going to give you my spirit for this purpose. You’ll receive power Acts one, eight, right when the Holy Spirit comes upon you so that you’ll be my what my witnesses to be a witness is to verbally proclaim truth and to share the word, not to say, well, I witnessed with my life.

I witnessed by being a good person. I witnessed by being nice, I witnessed by being kind. Well, okay, be nice and kind and live a life that’s worthy of the gospel. Absolutely, but that’s not witnessing.

You know the word for witness there in Acts chapter one, verse eight, it’s marre. It’s a word from which we get martyrs today. You think about it, Jesus spoke those words to those early disciples and 10 out of 11 of them tradition tells us would die martyrs’ deaths. John would be exiled to an island.

And let’s realize they weren’t martyred and John wasn’t exiled because they went out and lived kind nice lives. They were martyred and exiled because they spoke the gospel. We have persecuted brothers and sisters around the world right now in Somalia in North Korea who can live nice kind lives all day long and nothing will happen to them.

But your brother, my brother, or sister in Somalia, as soon as they speak the gospel out of their mouth, chances are their throat will be slipped. And I was at the border of North Korea just a few weeks ago. I look out and I know I got family there.

We have family there who are in prison camps and it’s not because they were nice kind people. Yes, that yes, of course, the fruit of the spirit, absolutely. But it’s because they spoke the gospel. They dared to speak the truth about Jesus and now they’re wasting away in labor camps there our family.

So let us not sit back here in the comforts of a place where we have actually freedom to speak this and say we witness with our lives here. We witness for the words, we speak the gospel. This is where disciple-making starts with sharing the gospel.

So I want to encourage you to look right now. So don’t even just think about the nations right now. Look right now in your life, your sphere of influence, who around you and family on campus and a city and a community and school at work, recreation, whatever it might be, look at your sphere of influence.

Who around you does not know Jesus? Disciple-making is saying, I’m going to pray intentionally for these people and I’m going to talk about the gospel with those people, not just share it here or there, but just infuse my conversations with them with the gospel.

Picture it this way when I was in an unreached part of the Middle East and with some guys who had a business there and they employ Muslims and it’s illegal in this country to share the gospel. And so I get there and they say, well actually we share the gospel all the time.

I say, well how do you do that? They said, what we do is we take the core truths of the gospel. So think who God is, his holiness, his justice, his mercy. Think who we are, our sinfulness, created in the image of God but corrupted by sin.

Think who Jesus is, his life, his death, his resurrection, and faith, the way we are saved by grace through faith. They said, we take those and they said picture it like threads. What we do is in our conversations with Muslims all day long, we are looking for opportunities to weave threads of the gospel into those conversations.

We’re speaking about who God is, who we are. We are looking for opportunities to talk about. They know we’re believers in Jesus, to talk about who Jesus is and what he means in our lives, and then talk about how we need grace from God.

So they said, what we do is we just saturate our conversations with these threads and we look for opportunities, pray for opportunities to bring all those threads together and seek those opportunities out and pray that God will open eyes to the tapestry of grace, just been woven in front of them through gospel threads like live your life, threading the gospel into the fabric of your everyday conversations. Don’t talk like an atheist, don’t talk like an atheist.

Don’t talk like somebody who just believes the Old Testament. Don’t just talk about God, talk about Jesus. Don’t talk about it like you believe in a workspace. Let the gospel infuse your conversations. Look for opportunities to bring it all together.

Pray for opportunities to pray. Bring it all together. Pray for boldness. This is disciple-making, sharing the gospel with people right around you in your sphere of influence. Looking for opportunities to do that.

Well, I’ll get to that in a second. So that’s the first part. Share the word, share the word going. Then second, show the word. So baptizing them in the name of the Father of the Son and the Holy Spirit.

So why do you think baptism is so important here in the great commission or picture it like baptism was someone’s personal identification with the life of Christ and the body of Christ? What happened in Acts chapter two, as people are being baptized, they’re saying, I’m a believer in Christ.

I’m united with Jesus and his life, his death, his resurrection, and resurrection, and I’m united with all these other people in the body of Christ who are growing in Christ. So this is where I want you to see that disciple-making includes a demonstration of identification with Christ, not just in our lives but in the body.

So now think about this practically, think of this practically in each of our lives, once we become a follower of Christ, we need to see the life of Christ in action in others. We need to see the life of Christ in action in a body called the church.

This is why we emphasize we were talking about that last night, why we emphasize the church as the agent God has promised to bless for the accomplishment of the great commission because people need to see body life in Christ and in the context of that life to see what the life of Christ looks like in action. Picture disciple-making here.

One Corinthians 11, one Paul is saying, follow me as I follow Christ. That’s a bold statement. Who are you saying that to right now? Who are the people in your sphere of influence? You’re saying, look at my life and follow me because when you’re following me, you’ll be following Christ.

That’s a bold statement, isn’t it? This is what disciple-making is designed to be. Philippians four, nine, whatever you’ve seen, heard, learned from me, put it into practice and the God of peace will be with you. That’s a bold statement, but this is what disciple-making is, and this is where some people say, well, okay, I’m just not ready for that.

I’m going to make sure I get my life in order and then I’ll be able to make disciples in that kind of way. I’ll be able to show other people what it looks like to follow Christ. But this is where we realize we’ve got the whole thing backwards.

Picture it this way, practically, if you were to lead somebody to Christ like next week on your campus and your community, you’re going to lead somebody to Jesus next week. How is that new believer going to learn to pray?

I mean, it might be one thing for you to give him a book on prayer or some sermons on prayer or here’s a study on prayer that’s going to be helpful, but it can be far more helpful in addition to that for you to sit down and say, I want to show you how I pray. I want to show you what I do in the morning when I wake up, how I seek God’s face before seeking his hand.

How that leads to just repentance and then asking, and here’s what intercession means. How’s that new believer going to learn to study the Bible? Sure, again, you give ’em some resources, but wouldn’t it be far more helpful for you to sit down with ’em, open up the Bible, and say, here’s what I do. I read a chapter, I ask these questions.

I kind of dive into memorizing that particular verse. Here’s what I do when I don’t know an answer to a question, here’s how I apply it to my life. You show ’em how to study the Bible. Now at this point, you’re starting to think, okay, wait a minute.

In order to do that in somebody else’s life, in order to show somebody else how to pray, I got to know how to pray in order to show somebody else how to study the Bible. I got to know how to study the Bible. And this is where we realized God has this whole thing rigged.

God has disciple-making not just for others to grow in Christ. He’s actually designed disciple-making for you to grow in Christ. Because once you start to say, I want to lay down my life to show others how to follow Jesus, then you realize I got to grow.

If I’m going to show this other person how to pray, I got to learn to pray and it leads. And so then they are growing in Christ. You are growing. I’m convinced every single follower of Christ in this room, you will plateau in your spiritual growth.

You’ll hit a ceiling over your head. As long as your Christianity is just consumed with you, you will be stunted significantly in your growth. But when you start to say, I want to show other people around me how to follow Jesus, you will have to grow and God will take disciple-making.

He’ll lead you to new depths and heights in your relationship with him. As you’re showing people how to follow Jesus, share the word, show the word. Third, you’re going to keep moving on. Teach the word, teaching them to obey everything Christ has commanded you. So this is where I would just ask the question.

I’ll put it this way. Are you a receiver or a producer? Are you a receiver or a producer When it comes to God’s word and here’s the difference, here’s the difference. Go with me to Sudan for a minute.

So you’re in South Sudan in Mud Hut and you’re teaching Sudanese church leaders just walking through the word with them and the whole time you’re walking through the word with ’em, you hardly ever see their faces. You ever see their eyes and it’s not because they’re sleeping or not because they’re kind of looking off, it’s because they’re writing down every single thing you say and they come up to you afterwards and they say to you what they said to me.

They say we believe we have a responsibility to take everything you have taught us from God’s word, translate it into our tribe’s languages, and teach it into our tribes. They’re not just listening to receive, they’re listening to what to reproduce.

They realize it does not tend to stop them. It’s supposed to spread through them. So now come back into a normal worship gathering on Sunday in your church or even in this room or at any session like, okay, are you listening just for you to see what you can get out of this?

Or are you listening to think, I’ve got to pass this on. This is not just for me. I want to teach others to follow Jesus. Like what God is entrusting to you, I hope I trust through His word during these few days is not intended to be just received by you, yes, received by you, but then reproduced through you.

Your word, time in the word in the morning, it tends to flow through you during the day. This is disciple-making. You are outward-looking. Everything God is doing in you is not just for you, it’s for the sake of others.

And so you are sharing the gospel. Those who are not in Christ as they come to Christ, you’re leading them to be baptized in the church and showing them what it means to be a part of the body of Christ and experience the life of Christ and you’re teaching them to obey everything Christ has commanded.

This is what we do as disciple-makers and we do this, Jesus says, among all the nations. Among all the nations. So we do this with an eye toward spreading the gospel, seeing disciples made in different people groups.

Now obviously we’re talking a lot about that when it comes to the unreached and the thrust of this conference is aimed toward that. But let me remind us even right where we live, God has, and we’ve talked about this some, God has brought people groups to us right around us.

The opportunities for sharing the gospel with different nations across cultural barriers are right next door for many of us. I mean the church I pastor has 106 different nations represented in it. Greater Washington, DC There’s so many opportunities to reach the nations right there.

College campuses have so many opportunities to reach the nations right there, God has done that. God has done Acts 17, 25 to 26. God is orchestrating the movement of peoples that they might seek him and be found by him.

God has brought people right to you that need to hear the gospel who maybe speak a different language or look a little different or come from a different background. So let me encourage you, think cross-culturally about disciple-making even right where you live.

And then of course as we’re hitting on over and over and over again in places where the gospel’s not yet gone, so is I hope, I hope that somebody were to ask you, okay, how do you make disciples? You’d say, okay, I share the word God, share the gospel.

I show the word in my life and intentionally look for opportunities to share the gospel and fear of sphere of influence. Show the word to those in that sphere of influence and look for opportunities to teach others to obey everything Christ commanded.

This is what I want to do individually. This is what I want to do. It’s a part of the church that I’m in. I’m a disciple-maker and this is Jesus. This is Jesus’ plan for how the gospel will spread to the world.

We hear numbers like 2, 3 billion people. We think, okay, what difference can my life make? Here’s the encouragement I give you. Jesus spent the majority of his ministry those few years, not only with a group of 12 men, 12, but in a pretty isolated part of the world.

He wasn’t traveling everywhere. He was in a pretty isolated part of the world and he did this picture of disciple-making. He led these men to see the Father, to follow the Father. He showed them what that looked like in their life.

He taught them to obey. And then he said, I don’t want to oversimplify it, but this is exactly what he did. He said, now you go and do the same thing with some other people. And as you do that with other people and they do that with other people and they do that with other people, this gospel will go to the nations disciple-making the unusual strategy of Jesus.

Think about it. If we are in charge of how to get the gospel to two, 3 billion people, we’re thinking, okay, what do we do? Big events, massive events, maximize technology in this way or that way.

I do all these things and I’m not saying those cannot be helpful, but Jesus said, I’m going to find a few people. I’m going to pour my life out for them in a way that they’re going to multiply into others and they’re going to multiply into others.

Depend on the Power and Presence of Jesus

This is the beauty of how your life can be a part of God’s global plan through making disciples. It all leads to the third exhortation. So believe in trust in the authority of Jesus. Obey this command from Jesus, sharing, showing, teaching.

And third, depend on the presence and power of Jesus. Depend on the presence and power of Jesus. I am with you always to the end of the age. I love this to be encouraged here. This mission that Jesus has given us is not based on who we are or what we can do.

I was talking to somebody just on the way in here saying, I don’t know how to do this in my life. I said, I think you’re at a good spot. You need God to do this in and through you.

That’s the beauty of Matthew four 19. Follow me, I will make you fishers of men. Matthew 28 20. I will be with you. I have created this mission in such a way that you need me in you working through you with my supernatural power to do what you could never do on your own.

This mission is not based on who you are, what you can do. This mission is based on who Jesus is and what he’s able to do in and through your life. And much like Richard said last night, I just want to put an exclamation point on it, just like in Joshua, his presence was for his purpose to bring them into the land.

Jesus has given us his presence. Why do you have the spirit of God in you? You have the spirit of God in you. And we see in scripture multiple reasons, but go back to Acts chapter one, verse eight. You’ll receive power.

My presence comes upon you so that you will be witnesses, so you’ll be disciple-makers. You have supernatural power. The power of God, this great God we were hearing about in Samuel and Kings and Chronicles today and Psalms like this, God has chosen to reside inside of you right where you’re sitting that’ll knock you out of your seat if you really think about it.

Jesus is in you. His presence is power. Your temple of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit of God is dwelling in you right now for the accomplishment of this purpose. So I exhort you go on your campus, in your community, in your city, to family, to friends with the confidence and the power of his spirit in you and belief in the authority of Jesus over all to bring about the fulfillment of this mission, disciples sing disciples made among all the nations.

I’ll close with this. Go with me back to Sudan for a minute. So when I went to Sudan, this was years ago, I actually saw somebody that I was in Sudan with that I hadn’t seen in a while earlier today. It was the most, so this was before South Sudan had been formed, so still wartime civil war happening in Sudan and we were going to serve the persecuted church there.

And it was at that point the most dangerous trip I’d been on. And it involved a lot of just wrestling through, okay, God, are you definitely leading me to go on this trip? Heather and I prayed through it, really believed God was saying yes and so counted the costs.

Went on this trip the night before we were going to fly into Sudan, we had landed just south of the border and we were about to go in and the guy who was leading the trip brought us all together and he said, we need to talk about one of the dangers that we’ve not yet discussed.

I thought we’d discussed sufficient danger, but he said, what we’ve not talked about is the snakes in the Sudan. And now as soon as I say that, I know some people think snakes are cool and I’m just not one of those guys.

Fall of man, end of story. So I don’t like snakes at all. And so he starts talking about, he says six of the eight deadliest snakes in the world live in the part of Sudan where we’re going. And he starts listing ’em one by one like the green mamba, the black mamba.

And he said, I mean these are venomous. If they bite you, we have a snake kit. But they were not made for these kinds of snakes. And he said, their bites are lethal. So one guy says, well, what will we do then? He said, we’ll pray.

That’s when you realize how little a small theology of prayer you have when you’re like, that’s all. So he said, well pray. He tells a story about one guy, a Sudanese guy who was walking some cattle down the middle in between these trees on a trail and there was a mamba up in the trees and just kind of slithered down and bit like two or three cows in a row and they all just fell over dead within 60 seconds.

He’s like, so I just wanted you to be aware. You guys sleep good and we’ll head out in the morning. And we’re like, no chance. You lay down in your bed that night, you close your eyes, all you see is mambas. So I’m laying there. I can’t go to sleep.

Really, all I’m thinking about is these snakes and rethinking whether or not I just read this strip. And so I couldn’t sleep. So I get up and I start reading through the word and I come across Psalm 91. I’m looking for a verse.

And Psalm 91 talks about you’ll trample upon the lion and the serpent and you’ll trample upon the cobra. So I’m like, it doesn’t say mama, but it’s pretty close. So I stayed up that night and memorized Psalm 91.

I’m like, if I’m not going in with anything else, I’m going in with the word. So the next morning everybody gets up, we go in, fly on this little tiny plane into the middle of nowhere and we get out, get our stuff.

We go to this river, which is a whole nother story. It’s this crocodile-infested river. And the Sudanese brothers and sisters have created a little boat there that we’re going to cross on. It’s like a little canoe.

And on the side of it, it says it’s called the May float. Well, that’s really funny. So we cross the crocodile-infested river and then we float and get to the other side. There’s a truck waiting like a jeep waiting for us.

There’s enough room for most of the guys to get inside except for one. They’re like, Hey, can somebody sit on top of the Jeep? And I was pretty eager. I was like, I’ll go. So I climb up on top of the Jeep and we drive forward and I look ahead and we’re about to go down this trail in the middle of trees I level with me and I remember the story from the night before and I think, oh no.

So I just start, it was just me. So I’m like, you’ll trample upon the lion and the serpent trample upon the cobra. So I just shout to the trees, the word, and it was like this the whole week.

Everywhere I would go looking around and you’d tram upon the line and the serpent, and you’d go to sleep at night just like God. I pray T tram upon the line and serpent around me. I think about that picture, and I think that’s the way God has designed our lives to be lived.

Here’s what I mean by that. When you are living to make disciples of the nations, then you are living for something you cannot do on your own. You need the word of God and the spirit of God. Like every moment.

Every moment you’re like, I’m so scared to share the gospel with this person on my campus. I’m too tentative to speak right now. God help me. God help me. I’m trusting your word. I’m trusting your word. I’m going to do this.

And then you end up doing that and right around where you live. And then when God leads you in other places, you’ll be in places where you need the word of God and the spirit of God to do what you cannot do. And the beauty is God has promised, Jesus’ promised, I will be with you.

I will show you the power of my presence in ways you never could have imagined sitting back, not making disciples of the nations. So I encourage you, you are missing out. I am missing out. We are missing out.

If we are not giving ourselves this command, we give ourselves this command. It will be good for the nation. It will be good for the glory of our God. And I promise you, it will be good for us. It’ll be good for us. So lemme pray.

Oh God, please help us to trust in the authority of Jesus. Help us to see you’re in a mountainside saying all authority belongs to you. You’re at the right hand of the Father right now saying in this room, you have all authority.

Help us to believe, trust, submit to your authority. Help us to obey this command that you’re giving us. God, I pray you’d help us to make disciples. We will depend on you. We need your power and your presence in us to see that become a reality.

So, God, I pray that all across this room that you would lead us in this journey of disciple-making right where we live, wherever you lead, and you would show your power and presence in and through us in ways far beyond what we could ask or imagine right now. We pray this according to your word, in Jesus’ name, amen.