September 3, 2023 Multiplying Discipleship- 2 Timothy 2:1-7 Jared Farley Young Adult Pastor

Ministering to the heart of Western Arkansas's River Valley for over 165 years, welcome to Chapter and First, the Bible Teaching Ministry of Fort Smith's First Baptist Church.

You'll find sermons and teachings from Pastor Greg, our ministry staff, and guest speakers.

Thank you for listening.

Great to see you.

Great to see you.

My name is Jared Farley.

I'm the young adults pastor here at church.

Now, I know everyone is young at heart, right?

But you know, I am specifically tasked to minister to 18 to 30-ish year olds, all right?

So that means I'm on campus at UFIS, at the medical schools, uh working with young professionals.

And so, man, I love what I do.

I literally think it's one of the best jobs in the world.

I had spent a ton of time on campus at Henderson State in Arkadelphia before I got here.

And so, man, I love my time there, and I really truly believe that if we can reach college students and young adults and help them understand how to live in light of the gospel, abide in Christ, then they can literally go on to change the world.

And so, man, I'm thankful that our church values young adults, college students.

And so thanks for having me here.

And I'm excited to preach this morning.

Uh probably a little bit different than uh obviously what Pastor Greg would do, but we're so excited to just talk to you about our message this morning.

And he's been on the topic of evangelism the past four weeks.

And so I thought today uh something that I'm passionate about and something that follows evangelism most of the time and sometimes can go hand in hand is really discipleship.

Okay, so today we're gonna be talking about this idea of multiplying discipleship, something that I think uh God has given us the task to do that I think can transform our world.

Uh and so we're gonna talk about that this morning, and I think you'll be excited about it.

But uh, I need to make a confession to you this morning, church, which some of you know, but I just want to get it out of the way.

I am from Texas, okay?

So yeah, sorry.

Uh that that that goes different ways for different people, but uh, you know, uh I that's just where I grew up, right?

But now I've been in Arkansas for probably almost more than half of my life, so I consider myself in Arkansas now, so hopefully you can tune back in and listen to me this morning.

But there was a uh where I'm from in Texas is McKinney in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

And so if there's one thing that that you know and that we think about, and that's kind of a stereotype about Texas and specifically where I'm at, is what?

Well, there's a lot of different answers, but I would say it's football, okay?

Like, sorry, that's not a surprise answer.

And this, since football started this weekend, there's a story uh that has been going on in my head.

You know there's a town right next to McKinney called Allen, Texas.

Okay, and this is a stadium in Allen, Texas.

Now, if I were gonna tell you, hey, guess how much this stadium costs?

You'd probably throw out some numbers.

Some of you may have read the story.

But this high school football stadium uh in the area right where I'm from was built for$60 million.

$60 million.

Okay, now there's a couple football players that went to school there.

Uh one guy named Kyler Murray, if you've heard of him, he's a he's a decent athlete and plays football on Sundays.

And so they, yeah, I mean, man, they're a they're a powerhouse of a school.

But when I first heard about this, and this was back, you know, when when I was my time in high school, that they were planning on building this stadium, and the number that they threw out to build this stadium, again, it's just eye-popping, right?

$60 million, one of the state-of-the-art stadiums, I mean, in all of the country, really, uh, especially on the high school level.

But here's the thing about this stadium, right?

You see this picture, you look at it, and you think, man, what a what an incredible sight, right?

How much time, effort, and energy do they spend building this stadium?

And we know the money resources were there, the man hours and all kinds of things.

But here's what happened.

Get this, just 15 months after they had built this stadium, spent the money on this stadium, and had filled it with people and had been going to games and had been just an incredible thing for the community.

What they started to discover with that there were cracks within the foundation of this stadium.

Right?

And so they started to go through and inspect it, and some of the inspectors and the and the school officials started looking around and seeing certain cracks.

And so at first they said, well, maybe that's just, you know, concrete cracks, right?

Maybe that's just part of what happens, you know?

Uh it expands, it shrinks.

Okay, so they gave it a little bit of time, and the cracks grew bigger and longer and got a little bit more concerning.

And so they brought in some inspectors to look at the stadium, and in fact, what they found was that there were some structural defects in this$60 million stadium that they had built.

And so what happened was they had to close the stadium down for an entire year.

And the money that was required to fix the cracks in the foundation, guess what?

Another$10 million had to be spent to fix what had happened in the stadium, right?

Well, so now it's all good, right?

They play games there.

Um, the stadium's open, but man, when my when I that story was kind of swirling around in my mind, especially this weekend as football started, man, how awesome is that, right?

And being a little obviously sarcastic here, but how insane is it that the amount of resources, time, and energy spent building this massive stadium, only to find out just a little bit later that there were structural defects, that the time and energy invested into building this place, this football Mecca, was found to be deficient.

Was found that, man, actually we need to go in and spend more time and more money to get this right.

And so I want us to think about this today in the spiritual context, right?

To think that, man, all of our lives are spent building and doing things.

Right?

All of us have certain values and ideas that we hold at our core.

And so I want us to think this morning about, okay, well, man, what am I doing in my life?

What am I building?

What am I spending my time, my energy, and my resources on?

So that when I look back at maybe the end of my life or in the middle point of my life or wherever you're at in your journey, you want to look back and say, you know what?

I want to have built my life on something and investing in something that is not gonna turn out to have cracks in it.

That is not gonna turn out to be deficient, but actually God would look at it and say, Well done, good and faithful servant.

This is exactly what you should be building your life on.

And so today we're gonna look at that because something I think God has a word for us as a church this morning.

Right?

Maybe some of us would hold the image of a perfect family or the most satisfying job or that position at work or that degree that we're chasing after, whatever it might be, right?

All these things in themselves are not bad things, right?

We we need a job, we have to have a family.

But I'm talking about today the most ultimate thing that God might command us to do, to give our life towards, to say, man, hey, well done, good and faithful servant.

And God is actually inviting us as a church and as individual members of our church into something that can literally change the world.

And so we're gonna talk about that today.

So if you have a Bible, go ahead and turn to the book of 2 Timothy.

Go ahead and turn to 2 Timothy this morning.

It may be familiar or unfamiliar to some of you, but it holds some great truths for us.

Just to give you a little bit of background on this book, a man named Paul was writing this book to Timothy.

Timothy was a young pastor at the time, someone who spent a lot of time with Paul.

Right?

And we're gonna see here when we start reading in a second about what that looks like.

They almost had a father and a son type of relationship.

Paul would often take Timothy under his wing and show him the ropes.

Show him how to be a pastor, show him how to follow Jesus.

And at the time of writing this letter, as Paul was writing and penning this letter, he was actually in prison, right?

One of his several stints in prison.

But the fact here is that Paul in this prison knew that his death was imminent.

Okay, and so this is all important context because as Paul was writing this letter to Timothy, who he had spent lots of time with, think about that.

If you're in this position, Paul was writing knowing that he was not gonna live much longer.

And so think about what he wrote in this letter and the words that he was gonna pass on to Timothy, knowing that he wasn't gonna be around much longer.

How important, how much weight do these words hold?

And so, as we get into it this morning, I just want you to hold those truths in your mind so that as we read together as we study this passage, we can hold the weight of the Word of God.

So here it is.

We're gonna read several verses.

I'll stop in between and talk a little bit and comment on some of these.

We're gonna start in 2 Timothy 2, verses 1 and 2.

2 Timothy 2:1

You have it on the screen or you have it in front of you in the Bible.

Here it is.

It says, You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, and trust a faithful men who will be able to teach others also.

And so let's just pause here for a second and dig in to the scripture.

You can see the relationship here, as I mentioned before, right?

Paul writing to Timothy says, My child.

Right?

This type of intimate relationship.

And that's one thing for us to note this morning.

If we are going to be serious about building our lives first on the gospel, on trusting Jesus and abiding in him and following him, right?

Part of what comes with that is that we need to be invested in this idea of what discipleship is.

And so we see right off the bat that when Paul uses this language saying, my child, right, he indicates a close personal relationship, right?

One that there's really no relationship that rivals it, right?

From a father and a son or a mother and a daughter, right?

Parents and their children, right?

This should be one of the closest relationships that we can have here.

And Paul is using this language with Timothy, indicating that this intimate personal connection, right?

Relationships are a key foundation of everything that we do in the church.

And so there's something wrong if we if we come to church every day or every Wednesday or every Sunday or participate in a lot of church programs, but we find our life void of intimate, close, personal relationships with those around us.

And so this is a reorientation for us to say, okay, Paul, if if discipleship is what we should be invested in, then relationship is where it needs to start.

And so we have to come to the place where we're willing to be in these types of relationships with each other that lead to the transformational change that God wants in our life.

So he says, My child, that's the language he uses, that relationship that's close together.

He says then and goes on, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus, because right after this, he's going to give us a command.

Right?

And that command is going to be about discipleship, but he first wants to remind us that living the Christian life is impossible outside of the grace that is found in Jesus.

Grace is unmerited favor.

Literally, that God looked at us in our sin, knowing that we did not deserve grace, we didn't deserve mercy, we didn't deserve an opportunity to trust in Jesus.

But while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

That he sees us in our brokenness, he sees us in our sin.

That's what grace is: unmerited favor.

God, that God looks on us with favor because of the sacrifice of Jesus, if you've trusted in Christ.

And so he says, in that grace, right?

That's not just a one-time decision.

You know, that's what I thought, maybe growing up in high school, I thought, man, hey, maybe if I just say this prayer, right?

If I just make this decision, you know, it's kind of like fire insurance, right?

I'm not going to go to hell when I die.

Who wants to do that?

I want to go to heaven.

But really, Paul is telling us here that the gospel is not just a one-time decision that you make.

It's actually something that you have to live in every single day.

That we have to wake up every morning and just bathe in the grace of God.

God, I receive more of your grace today.

Holy Spirit, fill me.

Help me to live out the Christian life by the grace that is found in Christ Jesus.

And so I'm starting this way before I even get to the idea about discipleship, which we'll get here in a second, to help us understand that the heavy burden on us, this should lift it for us.

Right?

To live the Christian life, Jesus says his yoke is easy, his burden is light.

He says, by the grace, be strengthened by that, right?

That we don't have to work this up on our own, that we don't have to strive in our own power and our own effort, which always will lead to burnout or discouragement or failure.

God is saying, you know what?

I actually want to strengthen you by my grace, by my unlimited riches that He has in Christ.

Okay?

And so we get that picture.

So now we're gonna move on into verse 2, into I think the core of this idea of what discipleship is.

There's lots of passages in the Bible that we can go to to say, man, well, when we talk about discipleship, a church word that's thrown around a lot, right?

Maybe, you know, you've heard it if you've been in church any length of time.

But if we're gonna really boil down to what is the core of discipleship, here it is.

2 Timothy chapter 2, verse 2, I think, boils it down to a core.

2 Timothy 2:2

And this is what it says.

I read it, I'm gonna repeat it for us.

What you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, and trust the faithful men who will be able to teach others also.

So again, remember, Paul is writing this in light of his imminent death.

Paul knows he has few words left to give his son in the faith, Timothy.

And so this is the core of what he's gonna give him right here: a direct command to Timothy to say, what you have heard from me.

And so, what do we what do we think that might be?

Now we we might know what that is if we read Paul's letters.

We can literally understand that, but some of that would be investing in him, teaching, sharing meals together.

This is the amount of time that Paul and Timothy spent together.

So we're gonna think Paul is talking about the teachings of Jesus: spiritual knowledge, how to follow Jesus, how to live the Christian life, right?

How to pray, how to study Scripture, how to proclaim the gospel, how to share it with other people.

And so this encompasses a wide range of knowledge, how to follow Jesus and make his name known.

These things, right, that Paul had passed on to Timothy, he's gonna give him this idea to say, okay, hey, all those things that you've heard from me, all those ideas that I've given you, all those things that I passed on to you through my life and through our time together, I want you to do something with those things.

Right?

And here's where I want to pause for a second.

And again, this is part of the sermon where I'm always preaching to myself and hopefully to you as well as you hear it.

But man, I think we can get so good in our church and in my own life as a church culture of coming and listening and getting a lot of knowledge.

Right?

That we might say, right, that that's the kind of goal.

The more knowledge I can get about who Jesus is, the more knowledge I can get from the sermon, the more knowledge I can get from my Sunday school class, the more I can consume, the more I can intake, then that's that's it.

That's the goal.

And I'm gonna use an analogy today that God's really been convicting me in my own life about this fact.

But let's say the Razorbacks, right, they played this weekend.

Some of you, you know, maybe you caught the game, I don't know.

Um, but let's say Coach loaded up the team, right?

There's these huge buses, right?

They got to take this caravan to go to the game, or maybe they fly on a plane.

But let's say they're they're riding the buses, okay?

And coach said, hey guys, all right, let's get on the bus.

And so he's packing the buses full.

Right?

They're all piling on the bus, they're getting on the bus, and then they uh get on the bus, they're situated, they're set there.

Maybe they, you know, they pick out the movie they want to watch on the way to the game, right?

This is a charter bus, um, and they get their snacks ready, and so the team's on the bus.

Right?

And they're in the bus.

And they start driving.

And then coach gives up and gives a speech and says, Man, great job, guys.

Glad we all made it on the bus.

We did our job this week.

Right?

How silly would that be?

Because the bus is just a vehicle to the destination.

Right?

So sometimes we can treat coming to church or going to our Sunday school classes as the destination, as the goal.

Now, again, please don't get me wrong.

We want you here and we need you here.

God says, do not neglect the gathering of the saints.

And so we need to be at church together, we need to be worshiping together, we need to be going to Sunday school, we need to be building relationships with each other.

But if it stops with just us collecting knowledge, then we failed.

Because what Paul says to Timothy in this passage is, okay, hey, I've entrusted you this information.

Yes, it's important to have right theology, it's important to have right understanding of the Bible, it's important to know the truths about the gospel, but more than that, he says, I also want you to start to entrust these things to others.

And that's why I entitled the message today, Multiplying Discipleship.

We can't have discipleship unless it's multiplying, unless it's extending beyond ourselves.

Right?

So the point is not just for you to collect knowledge and to get more understanding, even though that's important.

The point is that that knowledge would come into your head, would transform your heart, and then would transform your hands in the way that you live and who you share it with.

And Paul understands that, and that's that's the information that he's giving to Timothy here.

He says, Hey, I want you to start to entrust this knowledge and this information to others.

Entrust, that idea of entrust means to give something valuable to someone, right?

Something that's very important.

Now, listen, before I had a baby, right?

And my daughter Lucy is 10 months old, basically, and she's doing great, she's thriving.

Um, but before I had a baby, I was really scared of babies, okay?

Um, I did not want to hold a baby, okay?

Because I'll tell you what, I was like, man, those things are really fragile, they're really small, like I just didn't know what to do with my hands whenever someone would say, Hey, you want to hold my baby?

I'd be like, no, please, please, no, I don't want to hold your baby.

Because the worst thing you can do with a baby is what?

Drop the baby, fumble the baby, right?

Like, I mean, I'm serious.

Like, I was, you know, so I was deadly scared of like, you know, I don't know what to do.

Right now that I have a baby, it's really not as hard as I made it out to be.

But when I was, you know, 20, I was like, man, this is insane.

You know, how does anyone hold the baby?

You know, so I thought, man, this is incredible.

But here's the idea behind the story is that, man, it's that idea, and that image just popped into my mind because, you know, I'm I'm trying to be a new dad here.

But man, when I hold my daughter, it's something that I make sure I have a secure grip, right?

Like she is literally very important to me, especially when she was, you know, three months old, right?

And so I think of the same way, right?

How valuable, how cherished, how how loved is my daughter that I would make sure not to drop her, okay?

I know that's an obvious idea about babies, but think about in the same way, and this that's why the word entrust to me really stands out here, that these truths that we have, that we need to carefully entrust and pass these on to other people.

You know, I think that's why a lot of times we struggle spiritually, is because we were designed to multiply spiritually.

Right?

God set this out in the beginning, right?

That each of us has a responsibility to pass these truths on to others.

And so we were, if we were designed that way, but again, we're not doing that, then many of us might say, well, why am I struggling spiritually, or why don't I feel close to God, or or why am I not growing in my faith?

Well, it's because you're not doing what you were designed to do, which is to receive from God your life to be transformed, and then for you to pass that on to other people, for you to be in close relationship with others so that you can share the gospel with them, so you can help them grow in their faith, and then they can start to do that as well.

That's the core of what's happening here in this verse.

Entrust this information to others who will also be able to teach.

A multiplying effect.

And so this passage that we're talking about this morning is the concept, again, that I boiled down to what is called discipleship.

And I've got a definition of discipleship here that I just want to give you something very simple on the screen.

The simple definition of discipleship is the relational process of helping others follow Jesus and seeing that process multiplied.

It's that simple definition.

I think this concept of discipleship is what Jesus built his ministry on.

That's why he spent so much time with 12 people.

Right?

We would think if Jesus would come, would he pack a stadium full of people every week?

No, Jesus, in fact, intentionally spent time with just 12 men.

And even more than those twelve with three.

Why did he do this?

Well, I think it's because Jesus understood that this idea of discipleship, this relational process of helping others follow Jesus and that being multiplied was actually the vehicle that would change the world, was actually the vehicle that would reach the most amount of people.

In his infinite wisdom and knowledge, that's how he designed and set up his ministry where he would spend most of his time.

And so I just want us to follow the model of Jesus.

Alright, now, as we move on in this passage, we're gonna real quickly just go through the next uh couple verses, and and Paul is gonna give basically three examples.

So keep it in the context of discipleship, but Paul is gonna give us a couple of examples of people that we should emulate and attitudes and actions that we should emulate in the discipleship process.

Okay, so verse 3 and 4, here's what it says as you move on in your Bible, and it's gonna be up on the screen again.

He's talking again, remember, in the context of discipleship.

This is what he says share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus.

No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuit since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him.

Okay, so let's pause here again just for a second.

Suffering is a part of the Christian life.

I'll tell you what, it's not easy to live for Christ in the world.

And if you just take a look around the world, depending on where you live in the time period that you live in, it's going to be a lot harder for some than others.

But make no mistake, it's going to be hard in unique ways depending on where you live.

I've heard stories of believers in China who have not considered themselves to have suffered unless they have spent actual time in a prison cell.

Many of the pastors in China, they're not going to make you a pastor until you've done that.

Until they've said, well, this you know, convert hasn't actually suffered.

Their faith hasn't actually been tested.

What a challenge for us to think about.

And so Paul is actually saying, hey, share in this suffering, right?

Paul's not saying try to avoid suffering at all costs.

Even though that's that's, I think, part of our American value system, is to say any suffering out there or anything that makes us uncomfortable, we might avoid that.

We might push that away.

Paul actually says, share in suffering.

Share in the suffering that comes with following Jesus, with proclaiming his gospel counter-cultural message to a world that is straying further and further away from who Jesus is.

And so, in the context of discipleship, when he says share in suffering, we have to know that to make disciples, it's not easy.

I don't think it's complicated, but that doesn't mean it's easy.

It's actually hard to open up our lives, to sacrifice our time, our energy, and our resources to be in relationships with people and help them walk closer with Jesus so that they can begin to do that with others as well.

That's hard work.

That means sacrificing of our time, our energy, and our talents to make that happen.

But then Paul goes further to say, okay, hey, there's going to be some suffering involved.

He's going to use the idea of the first person here, which again is a soldier.

He says no soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him.

So Paul's going to compare our mission of discipleship.

What we should be building our lives on, what we should be giving our lives to, right?

Knowing Jesus, making him known, walking with people through discipleship, to a soldier, the laser focus that a soldier has.

Many things can distract us, even seemingly good things.

I've got a picture up here about the Naval Academy.

I got the chance to visit the Naval Academy and talk to some of the midshipmen there, as that's what they're called there at the Naval Academy.

And it's a pretty intense place.

The Naval Academy, I think, only admits a very low percentage of people that apply.

So it's the best of the best in our country that want to serve our country in this way.

And so the unique thing about this campus, the Naval Academy, and all the midshipmen is that all 4,000 of these midshipmen live in one dorm.

And I'm showing it to you right there.

All 4,000 of these midshipmen eat at the same time.

They go to the cafeteria, they sit down together, and they eat within 30 or 40 minutes.

And all of these midshipmen follow a very regimented schedule.

I mean, I was blown away when I was there about the laser-focused attention that these midshipmen at the Naval Academy have.

So he was literally gonna be the person in charge of that submarine and missiles on the submarine.

Okay, so you can see why, as a naval academy, they would have to be so focused, so driven, so regimented in their schedule that literally everything that they did and thought about and spent their time on was laser focused towards the one goal that they had to protect and to serve.

And so I was convicted by that.

Because I started to look at my own life and I started to think about, yes, hey man, very important task, very important duty that they have, but how much more spiritually significant is it for people to know the gospel and to trust in Jesus and to place their faith in him than it is what they're doing at the Naval Academy.

And so Paul, again, is comparing this idea, the laser focus of a soldier.

Christians, we should have the same mindset and idea about discipleship and about fulfilling the mission of Christ as these midshipmen do.

Alright, now as we move on to verse 5, Paul's going to give us another person here to emulate, to think about.

And this is what it says an athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rule.

So Paul gives a soldier, the laser focus of a soldier, he comes to the athlete to say, hey, athletes are not crowned unless they compete according to the rule.

So Paul is using another well-known person here in this society.

Right?

The example here is that Romans were very into athletics.

Right?

They had a system set in place, they took this very seriously.

And so some things that these athletes had to do, they had to meet several requirements to compete in the games during this time.

So some of these requirements for the athletes were, man, one, the first thing is you had to be a Roman-born citizen.

Right?

To compete in the in the games that the Romans had, you had to be born as a citizen.

The second thing was that, man, you had to dedicate yourself to train specifically for your sport in the thing that you were doing for at least 10 months.

Right?

So you had to be completely, totally focused on training and getting ready, and then the third thing is, man, you had to compete according to the rules.

Of course, that's kind of an obvious statement when you're gonna compete in the games, right?

If you're gonna go do triple jump or pole vault or the javelin or whatever else, man, you had to go by the rules of that game.

Or else you would be disqualified.

You couldn't compete, and so, man, take this, as Paul is saying, hey, take this athlete imagery and bring it down into the spiritual sense.

Right?

That, man, to be someone who makes disciples, we have to be, first of all, ourselves committed to walking with Jesus.

Right?

We have to be committed to abiding in Christ.

Not just gathering information, but knowing Jesus, living in an intimate personal relationship.

That we have to be committed to do that, that we have to have trusted Christ, that we have to have repented of our sins and believed in Jesus and placed our full faith in Him.

The second thing, as just as the Roman athlete has to dedicate themselves for training, as I just mentioned this earlier, and it kind of goes together, is that, man, it's one thing to believe intellectually.

It's one thing to attend a church service, it's one thing to attend a Wednesday night class, but it's another thing to immerse yourself in Christ.

It's another thing to seek after Jesus.

It's another thing to strain to know Christ, to abide in him.

And so for us, man, maybe that's a reality check to say, okay, hey, am I just going through the motions?

Or am I really seeking to be transformed by Christ and to know his gospel?

And then we have to compete according to the rules, right?

We have the book, right?

The Bible, the word of God that lays out for us how to live our life and how to make disciples.

And it answers all the questions that we need in life.

And then the last thing that Paul is gonna say here within this context of discipleship, talks about the soldier, talks about the athlete.

He's gonna talk about the farmer next.

This is what he says in verses 6 and 7.

It is the hardworking farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops.

Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything.

The last example here is a farmer.

Farmers are some of the hardest working and most dedicated people you might find yourself to meet.

Farmers often have to wake up early and stay out late.

The word hardworking means in this passage to toil intensely.

The farmer endures the cold, the heat, the rain, and the drought.

The farmer has to plow whether the soil is loose or hard.

He does not wait for his own convenience because the seasons don't wait for him.

The farmer has to plant when it's time to plant, and when weeds appear, he must remove the weeds.

When the crop is mature, he must harvest.

What drives the farmer is a harvest.

The results that we see in the end, the results of life change, that when we obey God's command, to make disciples, to build relationships, to share the gospel, and then to walk with that person so that they become fully mature in Christ.

And then we can see them do that with other people, right?

This is the greatest blessing that we can see.

That God's plan A is to use his people to give the gospel message to the world.

It's not plan B.

It's not like God said, ah, you know what?

I guess I could do it a lot of other ways, but you know, since there's people there and Christians around, I guess I'll let them do it.

You know, no, the idea is God actually wants us to join in this work with him, knowing that we will be most satisfied when we are obeying God in this way.

So, what does that mean for us, church?

We can see as we've read this passage, as we've talked about discipleship, the main truth and the idea here is that he wants, in his farewell letter that Paul was writing to Timothy, he wants him to focus on this plan that he has to change the world, which is discipleship.

We have an incredible opportunity to leave our mark on the world by impacting someone else.

Here's the idea: when you lead another person to Christ and help them grow in their relationship to God with the point that they can do that with someone else, this is spiritual multiplication.

This is multiplying discipleship.

This process was modeled by Jesus and the apostles as the most strategic, effective, and biblical way of reaching the world for Christ.

I've got a video here.

Here's a chart that I'll show you right after the video, but I've got a video that's going to show you this idea of what multiplication looks like.

Here it is.

You remember this question from math class, right?

This is when we all learned the power of compound interest and exponential growth.

At the end of 30 days, that doubled penny becomes just over$5 million.

Turns out, the same concept applies to missions.

Imagine you filled a football stadium with 100,000 people for a gospel outreach event, and 20% of them came to know Christ.

That day, 20,000 people would come into the kingdom.

If you did that every day for a year, over 7 million people would come to faith.

That sounds pretty great, right?

Here's the question though.

If you kept that pace of 7 million people each year, how long would it take to reach the world's population of 8 billion people?

Over 1,000 years.

1,095 to be exact.

A 100,000-person outreach event every day for a thousand years?

From a pure number standpoint, mass evangelism will not reach the world for Christ in our lifetime.

What about a different strategy inspired by that original math problem?

Instead of preaching to 100,000 people every day, suppose you made one disciple each year, focused on their development, and equipped them to make their own new disciple every year.

At the end of the first year, you would have two followers of Jesus.

You and your disciple.

At the end of the second year, you would have four, eight the third year, sixteen the fourth, and so on.

32, 64, 128.

How many years would it take to disciple the world using this strategy?

34 years.

Do the math.

Something profound happens when we take a multiplication mindset.

In the Great Commission, Jesus tells us to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

He continues by instructing us to teach those disciples to obey everything he commanded us.

What was his final command?

Go and make disciples.

So our role is to make disciples that obey the command to make disciples that obey the command to make disciples.

We're to go to all nations and make disciple-making disciples.

That's multiplication.

Reach the few in order to reach the many.

What if you didn't feel the burden to preach to an entire village or city or country, but instead were faithful to the simple multiplication principles of the Great Commission?

The entire world could be discipled in our generation if we started with just one.

What about you?

How might God want you to be involved in making disciples that make disciples and seeing movements of Jesus among every tribe, tongue, people, and nation?

Would you rather fill a stadium every day for the next thousand years or commit to making one disciple this year?

Let's do this together until all have heard.

Starting with discipling one.

So, who's your one?

Alright, so I hope that video was just a powerful illustration of the type of ministry that Jesus and Paul and Timothy and the apostles gave their lives to that we see in the pages of Scripture.

Right?

The idea is that we would make disciples in this way.

And so I want to wrap up with some application for us.

And here's the chart just to give you some more numbers.

You saw it in there.

But disciple making starts out, and it may not look like it has a huge effect, but the compounding effect of making disciples who make disciples who make disciples literally goes on to exponential impact.

And so it's just incredible the idea.

And I think Jesus knew as he started off in his ministry this idea of multiplication in our lives.

And so I want to wrap up this morning with a little bit of application for us.

I want to talk about being a disciple and being a disciple maker.

And so I want us to reflect this morning.

The first thing I have here, if we're going to be thinking about making disciples and multiplying, here is a great definition of what a disciple is.

Very simple.

A disciple has a heart for God, and their time reflects it.

Again, as I've talked about, we can get into the trap.

I can get into the trap of just intellectually believing in God, acquiring information, even though we need that.

It's great to study, it's great to know things.

But there's a lot of people who might believe in God, might know Jesus, might even know the gospel message, but their lives haven't been transformed by Christ.

Jesus did not separate the term disciple and Christian.

They are one and the same.

And so this definition is one of the best ways that I can put it is that, man, we have a heart for God, and that if someone would look into your life, they could see that your time reflects it.

Not just that we give lip service to it, that if someone followed you around for a week and they would look at your life up close and personal, what would they find?

Would they find that your time is spent seeking God in prayer because we know that God reveals Himself to people who seek after Him?

Would they find us gathered with the people of God in community, building relationships with one another, encouraging one another?

Would they find us sharing the gospel with our neighbors, our coworkers, our friends, talking about who Jesus is because that's who we are?

That's what our heart reflects as a disciple.

And so I'd encourage us this morning as a reminder in my own life that, man, we want our time to reflect and believe what we say, to be a disciple of Jesus.

And then as we move further than that, man, we don't just want to be disciples, but in the video and what we're talking about this morning, we actually want to be people who are disciple makers.

And so this looks like having a heart for others.

Or having a heart for people in our time would reflect that.

This is where Jesus wants us to grow into.

Again, that each one of us, right, the the command that Jesus left us, go and make disciples.

Did he give any qualifications on that?

Said, ah, only the preachers, only the full-time people in ministry should be making disciples.

Or man, only the people who, you know, right, he didn't give qualifications on this.

Right?

He said, anyone who's trusted in me and who is in relationship with me needs to be participating in this plan to make disciples.

So as a disciple maker, we would think that our heart for others starts to reflect it, our heart for people, right?

Where our time reflects that even further, that we would be building relationships with people, that we would spend our lives pouring into other people, where we would begin to multiply ourselves, where we take what we learn and we heard and we are entrusting it to other people, right?

That we help people follow Jesus more closely, that we care so much about what we see God doing in people's lives that we want to be used by God to multiply that effect even further.

And so I just want to encourage us this morning that imagine if we would begin to carry this out just in our own spheres of influence, right?

And the video was right, man.

This should be not an overwhelming vision, right?

That each of us can start with one person.

Right?

Who is one person in our lives, right, that we can begin to share the gospel with, to encourage, or maybe it's someone who already professes faith in Christ, but but they're not maturing in their faith.

How can we begin to build a relationship with that person?

Come alongside them, help them follow Jesus more closely so that they can begin to replicate and multiply that process with someone else.

That man, if we took this command of Jesus and ran with it, how much would people in our city change?

Think about the transforming effect that that would have.

Christ followers joining with God in his ultimate purpose for the world.

We are never more at peace than we are fully obeying God.

The beautiful thing is, anyone can do this.

Making disciples is not for the super Christian, as I said before.

It's for every single person in the body of Christ that has made a profession of faith to follow Jesus.

That we can all participate in this in our own way.

Every Christian is invited to participate.

Pilot, coach, teacher, accountants, business owners, doesn't matter.

God is holding out the invitation to join him in his mission to change the world.

We pray this message has been a blessing to you and helped to strengthen your walk with Jesus.

Please know we want to minister to you and pray for you.

Send an email to contact us at fsfbc.org and let us pray for you and help you in any way we can.

Thank you for listening to Chapter and First, the Bible Teaching Ministry of Fort Smith's First Baptist Church.