Grace Strengthened Multiplying Discipleship

Turn in your bibles to two Timothy chapter two. Two

Timothy Chapter two, We're going to be in the first

seven verses this morning, and as you turn there, I

want you to know that Pastor Eric Fulkerson, who's going

to be bringing the word this morning. Pastor Eric Fulkerson

has been living out the truth of these verses for

as long as I've known him, which is the entire

life of this church. When we first started core group

gathering for the planting of this church at Eric and

Carisa Fulkerson were part of that core group, and Eric

then became one of the first elders of this church.

He's still at least until February the fifth, a pastor

at this church. And then on February fifth, at our

members meeting here Wednesday night, both Eric and Shamus Drake

will be stepping down as elders to be a part

of the group that's going to go plant Providence Church

out West.

Yeah.

I know, happy, sad. What I want you to know

is that as Eric brings this word disapporting, he brings

it with authority, not because the authority is in him,

the authority is in God's word. But he brings it

with the kind of authority that comes from a man

who has been living it and living it in front

of us for a decade. As these scriptures call you

to endure in disciple making, that's coming through a voice

of one who has endured in disciple making. So would

you welcome Eric Folcuson as he comes to bring.

This thank you, good morning. It is always sweet to

be with you, and a blessing and an honor to

to bring God's word. And so when Josh asked me

to preach, I wondered, Man, what am I going to

preach on? What do I need? Personally? What do I

want the people of this church Crossway, the people that

may be part of Providence or part of Tony's Spanish

speaking church. I can't get that name in Spanish? So

what do I want to communicate? As I leave? Like

Josh said, happy sad? And what that came to was discipleship.

The thing that really drove my wife and I to

be part of this church was discipleship. And as I

think about discipleship and what this passage about, I think

of my son Jonah. He's been wanting to play tackle

football his entire life, and for one reason or another,

we couldn't make it happen until this last year. He's

a senior this year, so he had this one opportunity

to go into football as a senior and pursue the

thing that he wanted most in life, and that was

to be a football player, right, And I'm so happy

that we were able to give him that opportunity. And uh,

I remember having conversations with him, especially one it was

fairly long distance to drive to practice, but one as

we're driving to practice, like, Janah, you know what, I'm

so like, this is so sweet that you get to

have this opportunity. But this is your opportunity, your only opportunity.

Unless something happens, you're probably not gonna play college or

go to the NFL. So you need to be diligent.

You need to be disciplined. You need to be on mission.

You set the goal of to play, to get good

playing time, to potentially be a starter, and that's what

you need to strive for and be on mission to

do is put your all in this. Things are gonna

be hard. It's gonna be fun, yes, but there's gonna

be hard. Learn the practice is going to be tough.

It's gonna be during the heat of the day, you

might throw up, and he did persevere, endure. And as

I thought of this passage, Jonah reminded me of that

right like discipleship, persevering, enduring, being mission focused, How are you?

How are we as Christians being disciplined, being mission focused,

and enduring in our lives as Christians, in our lives

as disciple makers. See, that's what Paul is writing to

Timothy in this letter. As Paul is getting ready to

hand off kind of his ministry. This is passing the torch.

Paul's in prison, basically in his final time of life,

getting ready for death. And He's like, Timothy, this is

what you need to know. You need to be able

to endure through the hard things of discipleship. You need

to be able to watch out four false teachers. You

need to live a life that reflects that of Christians.

Because I'm on my way out, I've done all of that.

I can. I see the prize of Christ, and this

is what I want for you. And so as we

look at discipleship, I would sum it up in this

one sentence. Faithful discipleship is founded on the grace of Christ.

So endure and engage in the work of gospel rooted discipleship.

Would you read with me two Timothy Chapter two, verses

one through seven. You, then, my child, be strengthened by

the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and what you

have heard from me in the present of many witnesses.

And trust to faithful men who will be able to

teach others also share in suffering as a good soldier

of Christ Jesus. No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits,

since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him.

An athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to

the rules. It is the first share of the 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. So the

first aspect of discipleship is verse one. You, then, my child,

be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ jesays.

We need to ready ourselves through the strengthening grace of Christ.

See you to begin with Paul. You see his affection

for him. You, then, my child, like a mentor to

his protege. He wants him to succeed. You need to

take this to heart. This is my motive, Timothy. Or yeah,

this is my motive, Timothy. Keep this in mind. Writy

yourself through the strengthening grace of Jesus. Be strengthened by

the grace that is in Christ Jesus. As Paul see,

that's the foundation of multiplying discipleship. You may ask, well,

why do I need to be strengthened. Why do I

need to writy myself in discipleship? Don't I just go

out there and engage and just get after it. Well,

Paul says, right before chapter two and verses fifteen through eighteen,

he says, you are aware that all who are in

Asia turned away from me. Everyone abandoned me, among whom

are Fie Jealous and Hermogenes. May the Lord grant mercy

to the household of Niesiphorus, for he often refreshed me

and was not ashamed of my change. But he was

arrived in at Rome. He searched for me earnestly and

found me. May the Lord grant him and find mercy

from the Lord on that day? And you well know

all the service he rendered at Ephesus. See Paul has

been around. He's seeing the ups like everybody's. He's the Omniphosaurus.

He took care of me. Everybody else has abandoned me.

The ups, the downs, the in betweens, the discipleship. It's hard, Timothy,

You're gonna have to endure. He wants Timothy to be

able to stay strong in his personal disciplines of his

faith in order to endure the weight and the work

of discipleship. That's what he says even before he gives

Timothy the assignment that he's calling him to right like,

be strengthened. That's the first thing you need to do.

I'm not even telling you to do something yet, ready

your serve self for the work that has had So

how do we ready ourselves for discipleship? And I think

this takes us back to that keyword grace. Be strengthened

by the grace. See, if you look at grace, I

think there's two sides of the coin and how we're

strengthened by the grace in Jesus. The first one, I

think is one that most of us may be familiar with,

and that's the unmerited favior favor our saving. Let's look

at Chapter one, verses nine through eight through ten. Therefore,

do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord,

nor of me his prisoner, but share in his sufferings

for the Gospel by the power of God, who saved

us and called us to a holy calling, not because

of our works, but because of his own purpose in grace,

which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began,

and which now has been manifested through the appearing of

our savior, Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life

and immortality. Through the Gospel two eight through ten says this,

for by grace you have been saved through faith, and

this is not your own doing. It's the gift of God,

not a result of work. So that no one may

boast right. The first aspect of grace strengthening is God's

unmerited favor to send his son to die for sinners

in need of a savior, facing God's judgment, that he

would give his son to take our judgment. Man, that's

unmerited favor. That is grace, and that is strengthening for

our work. That's what we need to remember. The thing

that we were first so excited about Christ saving us

from that life. We need to remember that it's so

easy to forget as we get into the riggers of life,

as we start focusing on the things that we're experiencing

our own circumstances, we easily forget about what Christ did

from us. Let's remember, let's be strengthened by the salvation

and the gift of God we have in it. But

if you sit here this morning you're like, I'm not

familiar with this grace. I don't know that I'm a Christian. See,

this gift is for you this morning. This grace is

open for you. Trust in Jesus, turn to Him and

you can have that same grace, that same unmerited favor

that those who call themselves Christians have. I'd love to

talk to you after search or someone at this tap

two table would love to talk to you about that decision,

if you're contemplating that, or if you're said, yeah, I

did that right now. We want to know. See, the

second side of the corn of grace is the strengthening

power of grace, and one Corinthians fifteen ten it says,

but by the grace of God, I am what I am,

and His grace towards me was not in vain on

the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though

it was not I, but the grace of God that

is in me. This is with me. Philippians two thirteen says,

for it is God who works in you, both to

will and to work for His good pleasure. See Paul

is saying here, it's the grace of God that made

me who I am, who I am. It's the grace of

God that has made me effective. It's the grace of

God that has given me the ability to face what

I face, to endure what I've endured. And this same

grace is available to you, Timothy, to you Christian, you

just got to tap into it. See it's God who

works in you you and give you what is needed

to work for his pleasure and to endure. The strengthening

power of grace is real, and it's found by trusting

and relying on the Lord and then the spiritual disciplines

of prayer, of being in His Word, of being together

with other of God's people. And sometimes that means that

we're not quite ready for the work that God may

God may have us. And you know, Josh mentioned that

my wife and I and our family has been here

for ten years. Man it has been a sweet thing

to see God work. And as we were starting in

the core group, I think my kids were like around

eight years old. We had eight kids or five kids

under eight at the time, and we were like, yeah,

we're so excited about this church, flunt, we want to

serve in any way. I can't let it not be

kids ministry. And so they needed kids ministry kids and

we're like, well, we got five of them, so we

know what we're doing. Let's step in and let's do it.

And then later on Josh and Kara approached us and like, hey,

we'd like you guys to consider leading Crossway kids, like

anything but kids. And this time it was more about

a readiness and feeling equipped, like we could take on

the burden and the breadth of that ministry right Like

we didn't feel ready or capable to be like, man, yeah,

let's do it. Yeah we're excited, but we knew that

that was something that God had for us. So even

feeling not quite ready, kinda willingly reluctantly, we're like, yes,

we're going to do this because this is what God

has for us. And as we did that, we realized

that we couldn't do this in our own power. We

needed God's strengthening as we interacted with other people, as

we built relationships, as we laid down structures and foundations

for Crossway kids, we realized we couldn't do it on

our own, and we realized we weren't intended to do

it on our own. See, there's God's grace for us

to strengthen us through that. And had we said, nah,

we don't want to do this, we would have missed

out on the blessing of God's strengthening and growing work

in our lives. See. Tony Meredith puts it this way.

Our strength is not in how long we have been

Christians and how much we know about the Bible, or

in how long we've been in ministry. Our strength this

very moment is in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.

Our strength is derived from our union with Jesus and

is supercharged by our daily communion with Jesus. See. In

order to be strengthened by the grace, we need to

realize that it's not of our own doing. It's not

to pull yourself up by your boot traps type of thing.

Is a fall on your knees in humility before the

Lord God, give me strength to do this because I

might not know what I'm doing church planning, I know

what I'm doing being in student ministry. I might not

know what I'm doing in this or that, but you

do and you can give me the power. How are

you getting supercharged in your daily communion with Jesus? Are

you allowing Jesus to supercharge you in your daily communion

with him? And if you're someone who's been engaging in discipleship,

you're feeling weary and tired and wondering whether it's not

worth it, whethering it's worth it, like this is for you.

Anybody who's been in discipleship has been there. See it's

not considered strange that discipleship and life is hard. So

if you're feeling, man, this is hard, I don't know

if I continue. You're with everybody else, be strengthened by

the grace of Jesus. It's okay to need encouragement. And

that's why we have the church renew a priority for

union with your Savior and be renewed and strengthened because

we might not know it right that moment, what reading

his word is doing, but it's empowering us, both for

today and for the battles of tomorrow. To remember, grace

is the gift of God at Jesus, not by anything

you've done, but by his work. Trust in Him for

his strengthening. So we see the need for the strengthening

of Jesus. Now let's look at the reason that we

need the strengthening for the work He's called us to.

We're to engage in multiplying discipleship. Tewod Timothy two two says,

and what you have heard from me in the presence

of many witnesses, and trust to faithful men who will

be able to teach others. Also. See this is the

work that Paul is calling Timothy too. Timothy would have

been familiar with Paul's work, how he engaged with people,

the manner of which he did it, the model that

he set. And Paul tells Timothy, this, do what I

have done, but now go do it. Just as I

shared my life with the Thessalonians, just as I built relationship,

just as I taught others, just as I shed tears

and wondered if it was worth it. You endure. You

see the blessing as well, and the joys of discipleship,

Go do it once. The thing that is super exciting

to me and here in two Timothy is kind of

the generational and exponential multiplication that's that's shown here right

Like Paul says, I I told Timothy. Timothy told faithful men,

faithful men told others. Can you imagine if we did

that here at crossway off each one here, Let's say

there's two hundred fifty of us here right now, took

one other person, discipled them, and then told them to

take someone else. That two hundred and fifty turns into

five hundred disciplesuper relationships into one thousand, into two thousand,

into four thousand discipleship relationships just by picking one person

and telling them to disciple someone else. See that reminds

me of like multi level marketing or pyramid scheme, you know,

like the TopWare or you know you tell someone to, hey,

buy toperware you can sell it to and it just

goes down. But this is actually this is a legit

multi pyramid scheme right with eternal rewards. You got it,

Go do it. The thing is, discipleship doesn't happen from

the platform. It doesn't have happened from up here. This

is our family gathering. That the locker room halftime show speech, Like, guys,

this is what we gotta do. We've got to adjust here,

We've got to go out there. Now, go into it.

Motivate you, go out and go into the world and

disciple discipleship happens on those Tuesday morning discipleship coffees. The

Wednesday lunch is with another lady, that playdate. That's where

discipleship happens. Let's say it's not just for pastors and

church staff. It's an all Christian thing. Jesus says, go

and make disciples That's an instruction for everyone. If you

feel kind of like straddled on the sideline, you know,

I kinda don't want to go onto the field, but

I kind of do. I'm not quite ready. Just go

go by the grace strengthening power of Christ. Step onto

the field. Get in the game. You don't have to

play every play. Just get into the game. You get

in the game and you engage. God will bless your efforts.

But it requires action and it requires vulnerability. If you're

not sure how to go about doing that about discipleship,

talk to your small group leader, talk to one of

the pastors, in this church. Talk to the staff, talk

to someone, say huh, I don't know what I'm doing?

Can you help me? We want to equip you to

disciple in this church. Love to have that conversation. Discipleship

will call lost time, Discipleship will cost energy. But if

you integrate discipleship into your already established rhythms, man, like

you already have dinner, right, invite someone over, maybe you

go to the park, invite another family or another lady.

Try and establish established discipleships and the things that you

have already going on. Because if you're anything like me,

I'm a picture perfect optimist. Like man, if I can

develop this discipleship plan for my kids and just do

it this way, it'll be perfect. I'm not going to

start it until I get it done. What happens, right,

I never get to it right. So if you do

the things that you're already doing. You're driving with your

kid to practice, Hey man, how are things going? How's

your time in the world today? If you're driving home

from work. I used to have an hour commute to

Randolph from Castroville, Like make a phone call, right, hey man,

how you doing, how's it going? How you been doing?

We were talking about this this small group the other day.

Are you okay? How can I pray for you today?

Integrate discipleship in your everyday life. Paul breaks down three

necessary postures for this picture of discipleship in these three analogies,

the good soldier, of the athlete, and the hard working farmer.

Let's look at them. So first, a good soldiers share

and suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No

soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is

to please the one who enlisted him. See this is

the reason that Paul started this chapter with the foundation

of grace, strength strengthening through Christ. First analogy he gives

is suffer as a soldier. See, suffering is coming through

the disciplines it's going to take to endure the challenges

of Discipleship's Timothy, suffer like a soldier, Suffer like a

good soldier, right like this is this is a good soldier,

not one who's just trying to get by. This is

someone who's an exemplary soldier. So suffer well. And as

a former army soldier, just analogy kind of hits home

for me. So there's four things that soldiers typically face

and one is soldiers face suffering and require a perseverance,

and the moment you get off the bus that basic training,

their goal is to ensure that you suffer, suffer, suffer, Right,

They're trying to train the soldier to endure the suffering

that they're going to face on the battlefield, to ensure

that they can persevere through it. Because in training it's

all fun and games. But once you get on the battlefield,

those are live rounds. And I'm telling you right now

that Christian discipleship is live rounds. So we need to

ready ourselves. We need to endure, we need to persevere

because things sometimes aren't always hunky dory. I remember when

I was in the army station in Korea, and you know,

when you go to the training exercise, you're basically practicing war.

And it was the middle of winter, and at dawn

and dusk you're doing basically going out onto the perimeter

in the prone position waiting, you know, like basically practicing

like you're going to try and repel an attack. Right,

And so when it's single digits snowy, and you're laying

in the prone position in South Korea away from your family,

it's not exactly ideal, but it's what I had to

endure at the time to ready myself for battle. How

are you readying yourself? Secondly, soldiers are mission focused above all.

One thing about a good soldier is that they're truly

mission focused. They know their mission, they know what they

needed to prepare, and they execute on that mission. And

while soldiers aren't completely excluded from civilian aspects of life,

soldiers don't allow the civilian aspects of life to take

away their focus from accomplished the mission. So they're going

to prioritize those things that's going to lead to mission

success over the things that aren't. Are there things in

your life that you need to prioritize. There's a cost

to the service. One thing for sure is that there's

a cost of serving as a soldier. There's a cost

of freedom to pursue anything you want to do. You're

under the guide of the military. There's the cost of

family time. If you get deployed, you may miss birthdays

and births and weddings and all kinds of stuff. The

toll of battle, the cost of physical harm, and the

potential of giving up your life. That's the cost. See

engaging in discipleship will cost you, but keep your eyes

on the mission and the prize of Christ and be

strengthened by Him to pull you forward through those times.

The cost is worth it. Soldiers follow good leaders obediently. See,

Soldiers follow the orders of their leaders. And most good

leaders are typically in line with preparation and execution of

the mission. And so faithfully following the orders of a

good leader is going to lead to mission success. And

soldiers want to please their leaders. And so this is

the same. Like we have a mission from Christ. He

has given us everything that we need through his grace,

through his word to accomplish a mission. Let's follow him faithfully.

Are you aiming to please the one who enlisted you

through his work on the cross? Are you mission focused

and making disciples? See this is again, this is not

just a pastor thing. This isn't everyone. Thing is for

the mother with four young kids who's just trying to

get through life faithfully, working hard to raise her four kids.

How are you taking advantage of the opportunities to disciple

your kids and teach them about God's words. For the

family who has teenagers, how are you taking advantage of

the opportunities to teach your kids and disciple your kids

about Christ again in the rhythms of your life, to

make it easier as they prepare to be adults. Those

are the things that we should be focusing on. How

about small group participant? Are you engaging with others in

discipleship relationships or are you kind of waiting for someone

else to do it for you? See, this is something

that you can take the initiative and do on your own.

Find someone in your small group and say, hey, guys,

let's get a coffee. That will encourage your small group leader,

your small group coach, your pastors, will encourage your Lord.

And if you're not, it's not too late. Engage today,

make a plan for this week. The second analogy is

the athlete. An athlete is not crowned unless he competes

according to the rules. If you've ever trained for athletics

or seen someone that does, you know that there's a

few things that define an athlete. The first one is

they're dedicated to striving for excellence and perseverance. See excellence

than anything doesn't come easy. Striving for excellence takes time.

It takes doing the things that you might not want

to do is those five am wake up calls that

go on that ten mile run. It's the afterwork strengthening that. Man, Like,

I'm tired, has been a long day. I don't really

want to do this. There's nothing easy about excellence. It

takes perseverance. It's over. It's getting beyond the muscle soreness.

It's getting beyond the fatigue, it's getting beyond the lack

of motivation. What is the pain in the heart that

you're going through today that you need to persevere through

the strengthening grace of the Lord, bring it to him.

Athletes are disciplined. What is necessary to excel to perform physically?

It takes a bunch of stuff, right, Like, Man, you

gotta be on a good schedule. You gotta eat right,

you gotta sleep right, you gotta put things off that

you might like, Man, that those cookies look great, Not

if you're trying to be a professional athlete. Right, So,

there's things that you have to be disciplined about, maintaining

your physical fitness, maintaining your diet. Maybe it's that from

a discipleship perspective, Maybe it's that getting up early on

that Friday morning at six am, to meet with that

discipleship buddy of yours. Maybe it's on that Saturday when

you want to do something fun, it's meeting with someone

who really needs to talk. Athletes also a athletes also

have their eyes set on the prize at hand. They're

motivated to endure the hard discipline, training, putting off those cookies,

putting off the fun, to receive the prize, to pursue

that championship, right to get that ring. But this means

following the rules, This means competing. Honestly, Do you have

your eyes on the prize of Christ? Can you reflect

on what it it looks like, maybe to be with

Him in eternity? And Paul in verse chapter four, talks

about this. He says, for I've already been poured out

as a drink. I've done my work. My time of

departure has come. I've fought the good fight. I've finished

the race, I've kept the faith. Henceforth, there is laid

up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord,

the righteous Judge, will award me on that day, and

not only me, but all those who've loved disappearing. There's

a prize waiting for us. We're not just doing this

out of like, hey, nothing happened. No, we have Jesus.

We have him today and we have him in eternity.

That's what carries us up. That's what gives us the

motivation is the prize of Christ. Paul has his eyes

on the prize. Set your eyes on the prize to

motivate your discipleship efforts. And athletes prepare practice and strength

and kind of already talked about that. They get themselves

ready for competition. Right, They're growing in their strength training,

They're growing in their conditioning. How are we growing in

our walk with the Lord? How are we strength readying

ourselves growing in our knowledge of the Lord? Are you

working to strengthen yourself? Are you strengthening yourself through consistent

union with Christ? Are you taking what you have and

sharing it with others? Are going back to my son

Jonah as we were prepping for football right after we

got them signed up, probably June time frame, It's like, Dad,

what do I need to do to get ready to

be physically ready for practice? And like, hey, we can

do this for you know, maybe help with speeds and agility.

Work out in the heat because it's going to be hot.

Do these things get ready for practice. And so he

did them right, and then he went through the three

or four months of football. And now Micah, one of

my other sons, is getting He was like that, I

want to play football next year, and she's like, Jonah

is now taking what he learned in the three months

of football, Like, Micah, this is what you need to do.

This is what you need to do. You need to

do this to get ready to prepare him for the year.

Like Jonah didn't need a strength and conditioning degree to

teach Micah right, we don't need a seminary degree to

teach and disciple others. Take what you know, now continue

to grow in that meet with someone else, share what

you can continue to grow, and let that be multiplying

throughout this church. And the last analogy is the hardworking farmer.

Notice the adjective hardworking again. There's a difference between the

hard working farmer and the heart and the farmer that

gets by. Think of a farmer, I think of time

and energy that it takes to cultivate, to sow, to reap,

to fertilize, to weed all of that stuff. Disciple making

will take time, energy to engage, to develop relationships, to counsel,

to instruct, to exhort, to interact. Secondly, disciple uh, A

farmer does diligent work, but they're reliant on external factors. Right,

It doesn't matter how hard a farmer works. If there's

no rain, his crops aren't gonna grow. But he still

has to work hard and trust that everything else is

going to come into place. The same as with discipleship.

We work hard and gauging in discipleship relationships, trusting that

God is going to take our work and turn it

into fruit. Sometimes, as we know, doesn't result in the

way that the farmer wants it to, same as with discipleship.

But this is where perseverance come in, because the more

we love, the more it hurts when it doesn't go

the way we want it to. That means you're doing

discipleship or right pouring yourself out. Ultimately, it comes down

to faithfulness in the work that the Lord has given

up us be obedient to Christ by being an active

participant in discipleship. This work is the work of all Christians.

Jesus knows how hard it is, and he wants you

to trust. In a minute, he calls you to go

and make disciples. The last verse of this passage is

verse seven. Think over what I say for the Lord.

We'll give you understanding and everything. Paul's like, Hey, I've

told you some stuff here. I've given you some analogies.

Think about it, meditate in it, ponder it. Rely on

the Lord as you process this letter. Rely on the

Lord as you engage in discipleship. And this is done

in the strength of the Lord. We're not meant to

do it on our own, nor are we capable of

doing it on our own. So as like eety ready

to close out, I want to invite the band to

come up. I want to ask you to ponder some

things here in two Timothy, how can you grow and

strengthen yourself for the grace of Jesus' coming weak as

you try and supercharge your union with Christ on a

daily basis. I want you to think of a name

or a face, someone who comes to mind that you

might want to reach out to this week and engage

in a discipleship relationship. That may just be a coffee right, like, Hey, Joe,

let's get coffee this week? Who is that? Write it

down on your bulletin or in your Bible, and I

want you this week to reach out to that person

engage in discipleship, as Christ calls us to see, making

discipleships relies on the strengthening of the Lord, and it

is powered by the work that He did. To strive

for the prize, we need to remember what the Lord

has done.