disciple

June 3, 28 A.D.  –   The Great Commission — The Year of the Lord’s Favor #85

David Chupp The 70 Weeks with Jesus Blog , ,

Week 68 — The Great Commission
Matthew 28:16-20

We are almost to the end of our study, which began last January, going through the four Gospel accounts of Jesus’ ministry week by week. This week, we will discuss Jesus’ final teaching before his ascension.  Our scripture is found in Matthew 28.

Matthew 28:16-20   “Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him, they worshiped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in 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.”

Look at verse 17: “They worshiped him, but some doubted.“  Does this verse bother you?  

It sure seems to bother a lot of Bible commentators.  Some feel uncomfortable attributing this ‘doubt’ to any of the eleven.   After all, this is not the first time they had encountered the risen Jesus.  He appeared on the evening of resurrection day to all but Thomas, and then all of them with Thomas 8 days later, specifically to solve Thomas’s issue of doubt.  They have had several weeks to get used to the idea of Jesus being alive again. So, some theologians have trouble attributing doubt to the eleven at this point.  Some are so troubled that they even try to force this appearance to be the one Paul referred to in 1 Corinthians 15:6, where he tells us Jesus appears to 500 people, just so someone besides the eleven could be the doubters. There is no evidence for that, and Matthew has specifically limited this encounter to the eleven.  So let’s ask the question that bothers them.  Why, at this point, would some of the 11 disciples have doubts?

We discussed doubt several weeks ago (if you missed it, check out “Doubting Thomas” — The Year of the Lord’s Favor #82).   But let me review:  Jesus is not bothered by the mental uncertainty we today describe as ‘doubt’.  He deals with uncertainty, like Thomas, by coming to him to resolve it.  To understand what bothers Jesus and what he defines as doubt, look again at his response to Peter’s episode of walking on the water and sinking in the waves in Matthew 14.  Jesus asks Peter, “Why did you doubt?”  But Jesus is really asking, “Why did you stop walking?”  For Jesus, the only problem with uncertainty is if it leads to a lack of obedience.   For the word our English Bibles translate as ‘doubt’ actually means to ‘hesitate or waver.”  Jesus is only concerned with mental uncertainty if it causes us to hesitate or waver in our obedience. 

Eleven disciples are worshipping Jesus.  They know he is alive and worthy of worship.  They have no uncertainty about this.  But some are hesitant or still wavering about what they should do now.  So, how does Jesus respond to this? The scripture says next:   And Jesus came and said to them….

Why does it say “Jesus came” if he is already standing before them being worshipped?

Jesus is drawing close to them.  This is my Jesus, responding in love and concern.   For those who feel that their doubts, wavering, or hesitation to act drives Jesus away, look closely.  Jesus is not offended by their doubt; he is compassionate and draws close to help them resolve their concerns.  When you have a problem, even if it is of your own making, Jesus will respond in love.  If we could only grasp how much he loves us and wants to help us with every part of our lives, even (as we discussed the past few weeks) in our doubts and failures.   Thomas is uncertain, Jesus comes to him in love and says, “Hey, if you need to see my hands and side, look here”.  Peter is at his lowest of lows, having failed miserably as a disciple and denied Jesus in his hour of need.  And how does Jesus respond?  He doesn’t come to chastise him; he comes to cook him breakfast and let him know he is forgiven and loved.  But these disciples have been through a lot.  Everything has changed for them after the crucifixion and resurrection, and they don’t know what they are supposed to do next.

“Oh, you have doubts?   You are not sure what you should do?  Let me tell you…..”

So Jesus comes and gives them directions.  We call those directions the Great Commission.

The disciples worshiped and doubted.  This describes a large percentage of the modern church.  They come to church once a week and worship Jesus.  They have no uncertainty about who Jesus is, and they are clear about what they believe. But no action follows the worship. They sing praises in the church on Sunday but have no idea what to do when they walk out the door.  They leave their churches the same way they walked in.  They have no clear plan for what to do next.  So they don’t do anything.  And like Peter, when he stopped obeying Jesus’ command to walk on the water, they sink.  They have heard Jesus’ command to be at work in the world, but they waver because they are unsure how to fulfill it.   And like he treated Peter after his denial, Jesus doesn’t come to punish them for their lack of obedience; He sticks out his hand to help.  Jesus wants to solve this hesitation and wavering, so like these disciples, He gives a task.  And that task, in general terms, is what we call the ‘Great Commission’. 

I am sure you have heard many sermons on the Great Commission.  I have listened to quite a few.  They are usually accompanied by a call for people to consider becoming a missionary to some foreign land.  I really wanted to become a foreign missionary.  I always thought that was what I would do.  I have done many short-term mission trips in Central America, South America, and Africa, but God never opened the door for me to become a foreign missionary full-time…yet.  (As my friend George says, “We’ll see what God gives.”)  As I study this scripture in Matthew 28, I have come to realize that it is not simply a call to me to go to the whole world.  The eleven disciples will indeed go to most of the known world then.  As we said last week, Thomas went as far as India (and perhaps China).  But some of them never left Israel.  And yet those who never left Israel fulfilled this verse right where they were.

Skip Moen says of this verse:
“The Evangelical world has enshrined this verse as Jesus’ Great Commission.  Over and over, we hear these words as a command to spread the good news.  So, we mount our campaigns, run our revivals, and make sure that there is an altar call at the end of every service, just in case someone in the audience hasn’t yet proclaimed faith.  From D. L. Moody to Billy Graham, we have become so accustomed to evangelism by appeal that we no longer read this verse the way it was written.”1

Apparently, Dr. Moen thinks that our traditional reading of these verses may be off base.  Let’s take a look.

Go make disciples.    One of these three words is an imperative.  A command.  Can you guess which one?  … I’ll wait… Did you guess “Go”?  Then you are wrong.  “Go” is not an imperative.  It is not a command. In Greek, it is an aorist passive participle.   Now I know nothing is more boring than talking about Grammar.  But when you are translating, it is essential to understand verb tenses.  It makes a difference whether something has already happened, is happening, or will happen.  You may remember participles from your high school grammar class.  A participle is a verb turned into an adjective by adding the suffix “ing.”  For example, you take the verb “work” and add an “ing” suffix to make it “working,” and it then is an adjective that describes the noun “man.”  Working man — the participle ‘working’ modifies the noun “man”.    So, in this commission, it is not ‘go’ as a verb, but ‘going’ or ‘as you are going.’   But this is in the passive voice, not the active, which means someone else caused your going.  And for these disciples, it is God who caused them to be going people. (The primary action is also past tense, so God did something in the past that has caused you to now be going.).  So this word “Go” could be more clearly translated as “As God has led you to be going.”

Remember what is happening here.  They see Jesus and consider him worthy of worship. They worship him.  But they hesitate to do anything because they don’t know what to do.  So Jesus tells them,  Because you recognize me as worthy of worship, I have the authority to tell you how to walk in this world.  I write the rules for your life.

You don’t just go and live any old way you want to live.  You are expected to walk as Jesus walked.  And you don’t just go wherever you want to go.   You listen for your King to give directions, then go to that place.  But it doesn’t make sense if I say I will follow someone and then take off in a different direction without them.   Say I invite you to lunch at a new restaurant after church today.  I tell you to follow me in the car and I’ll lead you there.  But then you pull out in front of my car, even though you don’t know where we are going.  You are no longer following me.  We often say we will follow Jesus, but we don’t stop to see where Jesus is going before we start off to a different place.  If we are going to live life as Jesus asks us to, then we have to go the way he is going.  So the command is not the word go. 

Is “make” the command?  No, “make” is not the command either.  In fact, the word “make,” which you see in your English version, is not present in the Greek.  Our translators inserted this word so the sentence would make sense to them.  Unfortunately, however, it just clouded the issue.  We can’t ‘make’ disciples.  We can’t force someone to become a disciple, and we can’t produce disciples.  We can only be obedient in how we live our lives, and we have to trust Jesus for the results.  

So the command has to be the word ‘disciple.’  It is a noun in our English version, but in the original Greek, ‘disciple’ is not a noun but a verb. It is the Greek word, mathēteuō, which is the word for a disciple, but changed to be a verb.  The action in the sentence, the command, is to “Disciple!”  So we better translate the command, “As you are going through life, disciple!”  Go about your daily life, living as God commands, and you will disciple others.

So let me get this straight.  To help us understand the Greek phrase, our translators took a Greek participle and turned it into a verb, took a Greek verb and made it into a noun, and then added another verb that wasn’t even in the Greek.  Hmmm… I’ll give them credit, their “Go and make disciples” is much simpler than “As you are going through life, disciple!”  But I think they have missed Jesus’ meaning.

Discipling is not the same as teaching.  It is not about gathering information.  It is more like an apprenticeship.   An apprentice joins up with a master of a craft and learns to do everything by closely watching and imitating the master.  He spends many hours with the master.  He might even live with him for a time.  He watches closely every move and later tries to imitate what he has seen.  That is the way people learned trades for thousands of years.  And that is the way these eleven were discipled by Jesus.  The goal of a disciple is not to know everything the Rabbi knows but to be who the Rabbi is.  It is not informational, but transformational.  

Our command is to disciple as we walk through life.  Some will be called to go to foreign lands like the disciples, but not many.  Most of us will live life where we are, but live it in such a way that as we go about our daily lives, what we do disciples others.  Jesus chose 12 people to follow him for a year.  He poured into their life, and they watched him as he walked through life, following his every move. How does Jesus deal with frustration?  How does he deal with trouble?  How does he deal with sorrow?  What does he do at a party?  Jesus taught much more by how he lived life and how he dealt with people than how he preached.   On his last night with them before his crucifixion, he demonstrated an important aspect of how they should act as he took on the role of a servant and washed their feet.  He was discipling until the end.  

Paul said:         1 Corinthians 11:1. Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ. 

Paul says this is discipling.   Obviously, you cannot disciple others unless you are a disciple yourself.   We are all still in the process of being disciples of Jesus.  So we study the scripture to see how Jesus acted in situations and how he treated people.  And we then try to imitate Jesus’ behavior.   I know “What would Jesus do?” became a trite saying because someone sold a bunch of plastic bracelets, but the idea is a valid one.`  We would all be better disciples if we asked ourselves that question a hundred times daily.

 If we recognize that Jesus is worthy of worship, we must acknowledge that he has the authority to tell us how to live. Then, we must be obedient to live that way.  Once we have truly become disciples, we must disciple others.  And Jesus says we do that simply by living as he taught us.  We have to be intentional about this discipling, though.  Like Jesus, we need to seek out people to share our lives with whom we can positively influence. We need to make time to be with them and have meaningful conversations.  We have to spend enough time with them so they can see how we live, as it reflects how Jesus taught us to live.  

Who have you sought out to have a positive influence on?  You have done it, but may not think of it this way.  The process of discipleship is demonstrated well with parenting.  You already know that your children learned more from watching how you lived life than they learned from your teaching or lectures.  You disciple your children.  If you are like me, you look back and want to apologize for those times you didn’t act in a way that reflected Jesus, and you taught the wrong lesson.  We have all failed at times, but the lesson of learning from your failures is an important one. They can learn that from us, also.  Even after your children have left your house, you still have opportunities to disciple.  They are still watching.  And then you have the blessing of grandchildren.   Another great opportunity to disciple.  What amazing benefits to the kingdom of God from just living life as God has told us to live.  You have already been discipling.  But don’t stop there.  You have friends and co-workers.  Have you considered that you might have a responsibility to disciple them?  They are already sharing part of your life.  They are already watching how you live life.  

Finally, don’t underestimate the effect you can have on people you happen to encounter every day. If we believe that God is sovereign, in charge of this world, and is active and working in our lives, then we have to realize that our lives are not a series of random events. We will discuss this more in a few weeks, but (spoiler alert) I will show you in scripture how God is arranging our encounters with others with much more intent than we realize.  

As you go about your daily life, see each person entering your life as if they were ushered into your presence by God Himself.  What would you say to someone, and how would you act differently if you knew God had specifically arranged for them to meet you that day? 

Think about it.  What if that person who happened to bump into you was put in that place by God so that you could have a moment of influence on them?  Would you act differently?  Would your conversation be different?   God is more intentional in the details of our lives than we often recognize.  I think most of what we see as “chance meetings” are divine appointments.   So, how can you demonstrate Jesus to that person God just dropped in your life today?   Every interaction we have is a chance to disciple, to reveal God to someone, as you just go about your life.  So as you live daily, live in a way that people will want to know the God you know, and demonstrate life lived the way Jesus demonstrated it to us.

Skip Moen was right about this.  We have focused too much on what he calls “evangelism by appeal” (Stadium Revivals, Crusades, Altar Calls, Witnessing programs).  We already know that most people who come to a church for the first time don’t come because the pastor invited them; they come because someone they know invited them.  Someone watched them live their life—someone who, by living life like Jesus, has been discipling them.  Many people make decisions at mass events, but never really commit to Jesus and never follow through.  

There is a place for “evangelism by appeal” in soul-winning campaigns, mass revivals, and door-to-door witnessing.  They can be important.   But they are not what Jesus is talking about in the Great Commission.   Jesus is talking about evangelism by discipleship..

As you are going through life, disciple!  Or as Eugene Peterson translates the Great Commission in The Message:

Matthew 28:19 Go out and train everyone you meet, far and near, in this way of life,

99% of Jesus’ followers today will never preach a sermon to thousands in a stadium.  But more people will enter the Kingdom of God because those 99 discipled their children, families, neighbors, or co-workers than will enter because of mass revivals.

You may be reading this, but not knowing how you should personally respond to Jesus’ command to disciple.  You may feel you are totally inadequate to disciple someone else.  But remember that Jesus is giving this instruction to a bunch of very young men, some teenagers.  We tend to think of the disciples as later in their lives, boldly ministering to everyone in the Book of Acts.  But when Jesus gave this command, they weren’t there yet.  They were young kids.  You have seen in the Gospels their immaturity in the faith, just a few months ago arguing over who gets to sit where in the kingdom of Heaven, having trouble understanding the simplest teachings, and then just a few weeks ago scattering and hiding, abandoning Jesus when things got hard.   If you feel inadequate and are unsure how or if you should be discipling anyone, then congratulations.  You are in the very same state of mind as these 11 young men.   They worshiped, but they doubted.

You don’t know how to disciple someone?  No problem, says Jesus.  Just go out the door and live life like I told you to.  Love your neighbor as yourself, follow me when you walk out that door.  I heard a preacher say the other day that too often we forget that we are the temple of the Holy Spirit and that we take God everywhere we go.  And he was right.  But I’ll add that we aren’t supposed to take God anywhere.  We aren’t the leaders, we are the followers.  We shouldn’t take God places; we should follow God to the places he wants us to go together.

Look again at what is happening in Matthew 28. Jesus tells these young men they are responsible for disciplining the whole world. These 11 very young men have only had a year with Jesus, and it has not been an easy year for them.  And now Jesus is turning over the responsibility of spreading the Gospel to these guys?  Is that crazy or what?  It would be crazy except for two things. First, they. go under His authority. Look at the verse in the middle of the passage that we haven’t discussed yet.  Right before he gives the Great Commission, he says this:

Matthew 28:18. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 

Why is that important?    God the Father has granted to Jesus all authority.  How much?  All.  The disciples are not their own authority; Jesus is.  They don’t have to decide on the best plan.  That is Jesus’ job.  He will make the decisions.  All they have to do is follow.  They don’t have to figure it out.  The pressure is off them to decide the best path.  They just need to be obedient to the path Jesus places them on.  In the military, there is a strict chain of command.  There are specified ranks that say who is in authority over whom.  Now, if someone is in authority over you, and they give you an order, then you don’t question it, you do it.   In case you haven’t figured it out yet, Jesus outranks you.  All we have to do is follow directions.  And because he is the supreme authority, he can grant us authority as needed.

Look at what Jesus is doing here. He did this several months ago when he sent the 12 out on a mission without him.

Matthew 10:1   And he called to him his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every affliction.

He gave them authority and sent them out.    He did it again later, sending out 72.  The scripture tells us they returned with great joy, reporting the great things they had seen done, healings, casting out demons, etc.  He is about to send them out again, reminding them of their previous “practice missions.”   I have all the authority, and  I am sending you out again.  

Not only do they go with his authority, but they go in His power.  In just a few days, Jesus leaves the eleven and ascends to heaven.  And he will tell them to sit and wait for 10 days. These are his last words:

Acts 1:8   But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.

He just gave them this impossible task of changing the world. But they go under his authority—they don’t have to decide how to do it, they aren’t responsible for figuring it out, and they go in His Power—more about that in a few weeks.

The Great Commission:  As you are going through life, disciple!

It applies to us also.   When you stop reading this and stand up, you walk into a world desperately needing Jesus.   It is our job to disciple others.  We do it simply by living life the way Jesus instructed us to.  By following Him wherever he leads us.   And we can go confidently, because we go in His authority and His power.

  1. Moen, Skip. “Osmosis Evangelism.” at skipmoen.com. February 15, 2008.

June 13, 27 A.D.  Jesus invites Four Fishermen to Join Him for Sabbath #36

David Chupp The 70 Weeks with Jesus Blog , , ,

Week 17 ———  Jesus invites Four Fishermen
Matthew 4:18-22     Mark 1:16-20

Last week, we discussed Jesus’ sermon in his hometown of Nazareth and how they wanted to throw him off a cliff when he was finished.  After Jesus was rejected at Nazareth, he moved his ministry base to Capernaum, on the Sea of Galilee. 

Matt. 4:18-22   While walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon (who is 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.”   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.

When did Jesus call the disciples?  Because most of us have only read the Gospels individually, we don’t understand the chronology of how Jesus called his followers.  If you are reading the Gospel of Matthew, you don’t hear of anyone following Jesus until the story in Matthew 4 above.  Then you hear of the four fishermen “immediately” leaving their boats and following Jesus, making you wonder what would cause them to suddenly leave their jobs, their only way to feed their family, and follow someone they had never met.   If your 19-year-old son came home and told you he had just given up the family business to follow some religious teacher whom he had never met before, how would you react?  You would likely be quickly trying to find out what kind of cult had recruited your son.  This is part of the reason we are walking through the 70-week ministry of Jesus chronologically.  When you put the story of the disciples and Jesus in the proper order, it makes more sense.

We have already discussed how two of John the Baptist’s disciples began to follow Jesus after his return from the 40 days in the wilderness (John 1:35-42).  One was Andrew, who first found his brother, Simon, before he went to Jesus.  The other is unnamed, but everyone agrees it was John.  The next day, Philip and Nathaniel began to follow Jesus.  All of this happened before John the Baptist was arrested and before our passage today.  So, if Simon and Andrew were already following Jesus, why would they be fishing over two months later in Matthew 4?  Because we don’t read the gospels chronologically, we tend to mash up the stories of Jesus and the disciples and think there was only one encounter where they met him and became full-time disciples.  In fact, there is yet one more encounter with Jesus and these men about a month after our passage today.  That encounter is in Luke 5:1-11. In Jesus’ day, it was uncommon for rabbis to have full-time disciples. Most disciples maintained their ‘day jobs’ (or, in the case of fishermen, their ‘night jobs’). At this point, Andrew, Simon, James, and John have been following Jesus part-time.

Look at the invitations Jesus gives to them.  In John 1, they ask where he is staying, and he says, “Come and see.”  Not only do they spend the day with him, but they follow him to Galilee, where they see the miracle in Cana, and then they travel with him to Jerusalem for Passover.  After Passover, they are baptizing people in the Judean countryside and then travel back through Samaria to Galilee with him.  However, when Jesus returns to Jerusalem for Shavuot (Pentecost), there is no mention of disciples on that trip.  Simon and Andrew likely stayed in Galilee and ‘caught up’ on their fishing until Jesus met them again at the Sea of Galilee in our passage today.

In Matthew 4, Jesus tells Simon and Andrew, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”  “Will make” in Greek is a future tense verb, so Jesus is saying, “And I will in the future make you fishers of people.”1  Matthew says they “immediately left their nets and followed him.”  But they haven’t left their nets for good because they are fishing again (unsuccessfully) in Luke 5.  Clearly, Luke 5 is a different story.  Jesus teaches from their boat, and then they catch an ‘astounding’ amount of fish.  Then Jesus says, “Do not be afraid; from now [this present moment] on, you will be catching men.”  Then Luke 5:11 tells us,  “And when they had brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed him.”  At this point, they become full-time disciples.  Peter later says in Luke 18:28, “See, we have left our homes and followed you.”  Also, as in Matthew 19:27, “See, we have left everything and followed you.”

For years, we have thought that Jesus had one meeting with Simon and Andrew, and they became disciples. In the same way, we think of our coming to Jesus as a one-time decision.  Instead, we see with these men that it was a process, a journey.  The old Chinese proverb, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step,” is indeed true. But it’s not much of a journey if the only step you take is the first one.  So let me add my own Southern Boy proverb: “A journey of a single step is not much of a journey.”  Today, our churches are filled with people who have decided to believe in Jesus, taken that first step, and then halted. They may attend church, but if you engage them in a conversation about their spiritual journey, they often mention their church membership and baptism.  They have little to say if you ask about their ongoing relationship with God.

Let’s say I invited you to go on a trip.  I ask you to ensure you have your passport and I pick you up and we load your suitcases in the car.  We drive to the airport and then sit in the parking lot for an hour and never leave the vehicle.  Then, maybe one day a week from then on, we load up the car again, drive to the airport, sit there for an hour, and then go home. That is not much of a trip.  But this is like many people’s walk with Jesus.  They start, then they stop.  They think about starting again once a week or so, but they don’t.  This is not discipleship.

Discipleship in Jesus’ day was much like the idea of apprenticeship.  In Jesus’ day, and for thousands of years afterward, if you wanted to learn a trade, say you wanted to be a blacksmith, you didn’t go to blacksmith school.  There was no correspondence course or YouTube videos.  You became an apprentice.  You would often go and live with the blacksmith in his house.  You would follow him everywhere he went.  You would wake up when he woke up, sleep when he slept, and do whatever needed to be done.  For a long time, you would just tend the fire or sweep the shop, all the while watching your mentor.  One day, he might let you hold the sword in the fire or the horseshoe as he hit it with his hammer.   Over the years, by observation and then imitation, you would slowly become like the blacksmith, able to see when the metal was hot enough to form and swing the hammer as he did.  It was a process over the years.

When Jesus called the disciples to ‘Follow me,’ it literally meant ‘come after me’ or ‘come behind me.’  Think of putting your feet right in the footsteps of Jesus, who is walking ahead of you, as if walking in a minefield.  Where Jesus stepped before is safe, so keep your feet in line with him.  You move as he moves; you step where he stepped.  You see how he greets people, how he talks to people, how he loves people.  You see how he prays to His Father, seeks His Father’s direction, and studies and memorizes and uses His Father’s scriptures, how he teaches, and how he heals.  All of this to become like him.

The point is not just to know what Jesus knows or even to do what Jesus does. The point is to be who Jesus is—a reflection of Jesus.

Francis Chan, in his book Multiply, said: 

“It’s impossible to be a disciple or a follower of someone and not end up like that person. Jesus said, “A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher” (Luke 6:40). That’s the whole point of being a disciple of Jesus: we imitate Him, carry on His ministry, and become like Him in the process.  Yet somehow many have come to believe that a person can be a “Christian” without being like Christ. A “follower” who doesn’t follow. How does that make any sense? Many people in the church have decided to take on the name of Christ and nothing else. This would be like Jesus walking up to those first disciples and saying, “Hey, would you guys mind identifying yourselves with Me in some way? Don’t worry; I don’t actually care if you do anything I do or change your lifestyle at all. I’m just looking for people who are willing to say they believe in Me and call themselves Christians.” 2 

Again, discipleship is not a one-time decision. It is a journey full of decisions. Discipleship is not knowing the right things. The process is not informational but transformational. You don’t just learn more about Jesus; you become more like him.  

For Jesus’ disciples, things didn’t come instantly or even quickly.  Jesus’ disciples made many mistakes.  He had to explain many things repeatedly because it took them a while to understand.  He tried to teach them about compassion to the Samaritans, and a bit later, they asked him if they could ask God to rain down fire from heaven and consume them.   Another time, Jesus is explaining God’s great plan of salvation and how he had to suffer and die, and Peter says, “No way I’m letting that happen.”  Even up to Jesus’ last day, they had trouble grasping what was going on.  Yet Jesus had patience with them.  “While the Gospels record many instances of Jesus instantly healing people’s illnesses, we know of not even one instance in which he simply waved his hand to fix an ugly habit for one of his disciples immediately. Instead, he kept teaching and correcting them, giving them time to grow.”3

Ok, fellow disciples, does that make you feel better?  You don’t have to understand everything and get it all right to be a disciple.  The process of discipleship is about learning from your mistakes by keeping your eyes on the master.  Jesus knew his disciples were going to step off the path.  He knew they were going to take their eyes off him.  Remember the story of Jesus walking on water.  That is an excellent picture of discipleship.  Peter saw his master walking on water and began to imitate Jesus.  He got out of the boat and started walking on the water.  Then he got distracted by the wind, took his eyes off Jesus and began to sink.  But Jesus didn’t just watch him falter; he didn’t yell at him for being a poor disciple. He reached out his hand to pull him up, and they walked back to the boat together.  

There will be times in your walk with Jesus when you take your eyes off the master.  Like Simon Peter, you get distracted by the things of this world.  You will make mistakes and wander off the path; you may feel you have made such a mess of your life that you are sinking in the deep.  But Jesus is standing there holding his hand out to help you back on the path.  If that is where you are today, know that you can’t frustrate Jesus more than Peter did.  I am so glad the Bible shows all the impulsive, goofy things that Peter said and did.  If Jesus can put up with Peter, he can certainly put up with you.

Just before Jesus’ last supper with his disciples, Jesus washed their feet.  

John 13:12-15   When he had washed their feet and put on his outer garments and resumed his place, he said to them, “Do you understand what I have done to you?   You call me teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am.   If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.   For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you

He is discipling unto the end.  Follow my example.  Act as I act.  Love as I love, serve as I serve. Be who I am.  Did you notice that he said, “You call me Lord and Teacher?”  There is an essential difference in those two terms.  You can be a student of someone without being a disciple.  You can sit in their class and listen to their lectures.  Perhaps you even take notes.  You can gain information.  But it is only about being informed, not being transformed.  A disciple is much more.  A disciple seeks to imitate the heart and actions of their master, their lord.  A disciple is changing behavior.  Jesus expected his disciples to be obedient:

Luke 6.46  “Why do you call me lord, lord and not do the things I say?”

A student of a Rabbi (teacher) seeks information, while a disciple of the lord (master) seeks transformation.

At the meal that follows the foot washing,  Jesus tells them one of them will betray him.  

Matthew 26:20-22   When it was evening, he reclined at the table with the twelve.  And as they were eating, he said, “Truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me.”   And they were very sorrowful and began to say to him one after another…

Matthew tells us each disciple asks, one after the other, “Is it I, Lord?”.  Then, in verse 25, Matthew tells us, “Judas who would betray him said: “Is it I, Rabbi?”  You see, there is a difference between calling Jesus your rabbi or teacher and calling him Lord or Master.  If you are a student out to learn information, you have a rabbi or teacher.  If you are a disciple out for transformation, you have a master or Lord.  Judas was only a student, not a disciple.

The last thing Jesus says in Matthew is Go and make disciples.  Somehow, we read this and think he said, Go and make people who believe in me. Go and make converts who believe the right things.

How can we be apprentices of Jesus?  Again, an apprentice would live with the master, watch his every move, and imitate everything he does.   So, we need to live with Jesus. We can’t do that like the original disciples did.  Even before Jesus left the earth and ascended into heaven, only a few could be with him constantly; only a few could apprentice under him.   But God had a plan.  “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, the Spirit of truth (John 13:16-17).  Later, Jesus tells them, “I will not leave you as orphans” (John 14:18).  God had a plan for us.  God’s Holy Spirit will come and be with you forever.  We can’t live with Jesus right now, but his spirit will live in us and teach and help us.  However, an apprentice not only lives with the master but also observes the master and imitates all he does.  How do we observe and imitate Jesus’ actions?

Fortunately, we have 4 Gospels that tell us much of what Jesus said and did.  But we must read them like disciples, not as students.   We must not just read the Bible for information; we read for transformation.  Jesus didn’t just read the scriptures; he studied them, memorized them, and lived them.  This is why we read, study, and memorize — to imitate Jesus.  Not just to know what he knew but to live as he lived.  So we have Jesus’ Bible (the Old Testament), the gospels of Jesus, and then the records of what his disciples did — examples of his apprentices who went out and did what Jesus did, lived as Jesus did.

We must pray like Jesus. Jesus prayed a lot, and he taught us how to pray. The prayer he gave us (the Lord’s Prayer)—don’t pray it like a student who memorized it but a disciple who intends to live it.

Acts 10:38 tells us Jesus went about doing good.  Everywhere he went, he lifted people up.  He healed the sick, freed people from oppression, helped them in the moment, and gave them hope.  That’s what he gave the woman at the well who was living in depression in a hopeless state.  He gave her hope.  

You probably have Romans 8:28 memorized.  It says: 
“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”
But do you know the next verse?
Romans 8:29  “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son,”
Don’t get hung up on the “foreknew” and “Predestined” words.  I don’t think the point of this verse is the theology of limited or unlimited atonement but more about discipleship, God’s plan to redeem the world.  The process of discipleship is transformational, becoming more like Jesus.  Or, to say it another way, to be conformed to the image of God’s Son.  This is the story of the Bible.  In the beginning, God created us in His image.   Our destiny is to be in the image of God.  This is what God predestined for us from the beginning of time.  But sin tarnished that image.  When we choose to sin, we abandon that image.  By allowing Jesus to cleanse us from sin and becoming his disciple, we become more like him.  

The story of the Bible is the story of God redeeming all of creation.  He is in the process of redeeming us, returning us to his Image and to a place where we can commune with him as he originally designed in the Garden.   Discipleship is God’s plan to conform us to his image.

Where are you in your journey with Jesus?  Have you taken that first step?  Have you decided to follow Jesus, become his disciple, his apprentice?  Have you taken that first step or those first few steps and then stopped?  Maybe you are sitting in the car with Jesus once a week at the airport and never getting out.  Have you gotten distracted and stepped away from your apprenticeship?  Have you stopped following in his footsteps and wandered a little off the path?  Or maybe you are ready to go all in—no turning back. You want to be a proper apprentice, study the master’s ways, and do as the master does. 

Jesus is still calling.

  1. The Greek word ‘anthropoi’ refers here to both men and women
  2. Chan, Francis.  Multiply: Disciples Making Disciples.  page 16.
  3. Spangler, Ann and Tverberg, Lois.  Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus: How the Jewishness of Jesus Can Transform Your Faith.    Kindle edition, Location 937