Summer with Jesus - Discipleship

Good morning.

Welcome to Church at the Grove.

Isn't that awesome?

Man, what a great service so far.

I don't even have to preach, right?

But I'm going to anyway.

Hey, as uh Jonah mentioned, my name is Pat, and if I haven't met every single one of you, I hope that I get the chance to do that after the service.

And I'm privileged to be here with you this morning sharing a message on what it means to be a disciple, taken from Matthew chapter 4.

Matthew 4 · chapter mention

And honestly, I can say that this is something that is near and dear to my heart.

When I was asked to preach, I had no idea what the subject matter was going to be.

This was several months ago.

And I said, Yeah, I'll do whatever you want me to do.

Be happy to preach.

And then it turned out this is the passage.

And I went, man, what an incredible God we serve.

That He takes the one thing that really speaks to me and through me, I hope, and says, I want you to share about this.

Russ, if you're tuning in online today and you're expecting to see Russ, guess what?

You got me instead.

But I hope you'll tune in anyway and stay with us.

Russ is down in Social Circle preaching at our other campus because our campus pastor in Social Circle, Nathan Boyd, is actually just beginning his sabbatical this weekend.

Now, he'll probably watch this message in a month or two, you know, after he gets back and gets recharged and all that.

And then he'll probably have some great critiques for me on how to improve next year when I speak again.

So listen, I pray that God speaks to you through this message.

He has certainly spoken to me through this message.

And I want to stop before I really dig into it and say thank you to Brother Don Cannon.

Man, I cannot thank you enough for your incredible leading into this observation of communion.

Y'all may not know this, but Don and Charlene, his wife, serve every time we have the Lord's Supper, they serve.

They come up here early, they set the tables up, they provide the juice and the bread for us to practice communion.

Isn't that amazing?

I just think it was incredible, and I'd appreciate y'all showing your thanks for them.

I eagerly anticipate what God's going to show us through this message today about being a disciple.

But I want to open up with a word of prayer because I want to ask God to challenge us and speak to us through his word.

But I also want to take a minute to remember all the people, the men and women throughout the hundreds of years that have given their lives in service to our nation, to allow us the freedom to gather together, to speak freely, and to worship freely.

And we remember that this weekend from Memorial Day.

This is the weekend that we remember those who have sacrificed their lives for our nation.

And we felt like coupling it with the communion this morning would also help us to remember the one who sacrificed his life for our salvation.

So not only are we free to worship together today in this land of the home and the brave and the free, but also we're free to spend eternity with the one who gave his life on that cruel cross.

So join me in praying and then we'll dive into discipleship.

Father, I thank you and praise you for this morning.

I thank you already for what you've done and what you've spoken into our hearts through the worship and through the practice of communion.

God, what an amazing God you are.

That you choose to take people that no one else considers valuable and create something, recreate something in them that allows them to share your goodness, your graciousness, your forgiveness, and your plan.

Because you have a plan.

You're a God of order.

You bring order out of chaos.

And Father, some of us might have chaotic lives right now.

We're asking you to bring order to those lives.

We thank you for the gift of Jesus, for his sacrifice on the cross.

And most of all, we thank you for your love for us that was expressed through that sacrifice.

We also thank you for those men and women who have given their lives for us, that we might be here today worshiping freely together.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Amen.

So, what does it mean to be a disciple?

I thought the best place to find this out is to go to dictionary.com, one of my favorite websites.

I got it bookmarked on my laptop.

So I went to dictionary.com, typed in disciple, and here's the definition they gave me.

Actually, three definitions.

The first one is this a person who is a pupil or an adherent of the doctrines of another.

Don't you like that word adherent?

Means you stick to it.

You don't just learn it, but you practice it.

Second definition, a follower of Jesus Christ.

Now I would have put that one first, but hey, I didn't write dictionary.com.

The third was this: one who is taught or trained by another.

So I've been thinking my whole life, man, no one ever really discipled me.

No one really taught or trained me.

And in the last couple of years, I'm sorry, I'm a little slow.

It took me a while to figure this out, but in the last couple of years, the Lord has been showing me, bro, I not only gave you someone disciple to disciple you, I let you marry her.

And I went, oh, man, what a dose of conviction.

Very quietly, behind the scenes, my wife has been discipling me.

And there's sometimes I don't quite get it, so then she's a little more vociferous in her discipleship.

That means, you know, a little more.

Never mind.

In ancient times, a disciple who was sometimes called an apprentice or a learner followed his master or his teacher around all the time in order to discover his way of life.

How does he handle the conflict in the grocery store?

How does he handle not being able to find a parking space or someone cutting him off on the freeway?

Well, of course, they didn't have all that back then, but the disciple would follow the master around and would even live in the teacher's home to discover how does he handle life every day?

In essence, this learner, this disciple, this pupil, this student would become a part of the family of the teacher or the master who was counseling him.

How does he handle various situations throughout the day?

How does he handle relationships?

As he observed what the master or the teacher did, the learner learned more than any curriculum that anyone could have given him to study.

He could have sat in class his whole life and wouldn't have learned the lessons that he learned from watching the one who he admired handle daily.

Now, when when Joy and I were over in Romania and pastoring the Fellowship of the Grove in Aratia, it was this principle that guided me as she and I tried to disciple some of the young men and women in our congregation.

There was one young man that I asked if he would come with me because this guy just wanted to know everything.

He wanted to do everything, he wanted to be in everything, he wanted to participate at everything.

And so he asked me, What are you doing tomorrow?

Sometimes he would just come to our apartment and hang out.

And thanks to your generosity, I had a bunch of boxes of craft macaroni and cheese.

And so I taught him about one of the staples of good eating in America.

We made craft macaroni and cheese, chopped up hot dogs, and put it in it.

If you haven't had that, it's my signature dish.

I'm gonna tell you, you want to come eat that with me.

And so did this young man.

So he asked me, What are we doing today?

I said, Well, we're going to the grocery store.

I could see the crestfallen look on his face.

This was not what he anticipated.

He was looking for some incredibly holy, divine activity.

Like we're gonna we're gonna sit down with the Bible and dissect a verse, which, by the way, y'all don't let me forget to remind you that at the end of this service, as you walk out, our ushers and greeters will be handing you this bookmark.

This is a chance for you and your family to read through every day this summer through the book of Matthew with us as we preach it.

Isn't that cool?

So our church tries to do things like that to give you tools to disciple you and to help you to become who Jesus created you to be.

This young man goes to the store with me.

We're walking around, I'm pushing a buggy, and I'm, you know, I'm being kind of cocky.

Yeah, we're gonna get this for him, we're gonna get that.

We're shopping for a needy family in our church.

He's getting the opportunity to see this is what we do with the money that's given in the offering every week.

Well, part of what we do.

So about three or four minutes into the shopping excursion, he asked me, sir, now, this is the most polite guy you'd ever meet in your life, sir, may I please go back and get my own cart?

We all know the the idiot inside me wanted to say, heck no, buddy, you're with me.

But instead, I very calmly responded, Of course you may go get your own cart.

May I ask you a question?

Yes, sir.

I said, What do you need a cart for?

And he said, Well, I know another family in our church, a single mom with two little kids, and uh there's many days they don't have enough to eat, and I want to buy them something with the money I earned this week.

Wow.

Wow.

That's discipleship, that's inviting someone into your life, letting them see how you live, and then having them copy what you do.

So his imitation of my practice of generosity taught him how to be generous.

It was an eye-opening lesson for me.

I don't think that he would have ever considered doing that if I had not invited him to come to the store with me and see what the offering money was being used for.

Do you?

This is where you go, no, probably not, right?

Yeah, okay, thanks.

Today we're continuing our series called Summer with Jesus that Russ introduced last week as he talked about the importance of the genealogy of Jesus.

You guys remember that?

We actually read the genealogy and booed and hissed and all that stuff off the screen.

Well, today's message won't be nearly that much fun, but I hope it'll be equally challenging.

Um I believe this.

Our continual study of the word of God leads us to a greater understanding and personal application of that word for our lives.

Here's the big idea for this morning.

A true disciple of Jesus possesses certain characteristics.

And as we walk through this passage, I'm gonna ask you to consider with me at least four characteristics that I observe in this passage.

We're gonna begin by reading Matthew 4, verses 18 through 22 from the New Living Translation.

Matthew 4:18–22

One day, as Jesus was walking along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, also called Peter, and Andrew, throwing a net into the water, for they fished for a living.

Duh! Jesus called out to them, Come, follow me, and I will show you how to fish for people.

And they left their nets at once and followed him.

A little further up the shore, he saw two other brothers, James and John, sitting in a boat with their father, Zebedee, repairing their nets.

And he called them to come too.

They immediately followed him, leaving the boat and their father behind, which leads me to observe this characteristic of a disciple.

A true disciple recognizes their master.

To understand the significance of this passage, it helps us to know a little bit about the culture of first century Judaism.

You see, a teacher did not normally come to a student and ask them to come follow him.

The student usually applied for a position of learning in a school that taught them the basics of their faith.

And depending on how well they performed at the school, the student was offered a chance to be attached to a master and understand more.

That's completely different from the way Jesus practices it, isn't it?

He called Simon, Peter, and Andrew to come and join him, even though it's obvious that they already had a job which they were doing.

But Jesus asked them to come follow him so he could teach them something new.

He invited them to come and become fishers for the souls of men and women.

Now, according to John 1 and Luke 5, Simon and Andrew had both already met Jesus.

When he called them to come follow him, they recognized that he was the long-awaited Messiah.

And as I'm writing this message, I stop and think, I wonder if we ever stop and consider that.

The long-awaited Messiah.

Do we recognize that Jesus is the fulfillment of thousands of years of prophecy?

That an entire nation had been longing for his appearance.

And I wonder, do we ever long like that?

Are we ever desiring Jesus to come be in our midst?

He was the one that an entire nation had been longing to see for many generations.

And I imagine that these lowly fishermen were filled with awe that he invited them to come and follow him.

It'd never been done before.

And certainly not with men of their ilk.

We sometimes consider serving in the church as our obligation.

Think about that.

Serving in the church or even in our community is our obligation to our Savior.

May that never be the case with any of us.

And yet I see it over and over again here when I ask people, hey, would you like to come and serve?

I don't know.

What kind of a commitment are you looking for?

I'm looking for a cross commitment.

I'm looking for you being willing to sacrifice yourself so that others feel welcome and included in the family of God.

Is that too much to ask?

I don't think so.

Now we wonder this.

And I'm saying this to myself too, because I've sat in your seat long before I was ever given the opportunity to serve on a staff at any church.

And I volunteered wherever I could.

But I considered this.

I wonder if I can give up my time and talent every single Sunday.

What if I just did it maybe once or twice a month?

Can you give up one or two Sundays a month for an hour and a half, maybe, to hold a door, to serve coffee, to rock babies in the nursery, to teach our kids, or maybe even to come up here and play on the worship team.

Man, weren't they awesome this morning?

Now, the rest of you guys might take this for granted, but I don't.

I'm typically out there till long after the service starts, not mentioning any names, but for those of you guys that are typically a few minutes after 9 o'clock, I try to stay out there to welcome y'all so that there's someone there to hold the door and make you feel welcome on our campus.

And these guys are in here playing.

Well, by the time I count all the kids and everything and get in here, Russ is usually getting up to preach.

And I miss the worship time almost every Sunday.

Man, if I just had somebody else that'd be willing to do that for me, I could come in here once in a while and sing and worship too.

Wouldn't that be incredible?

Anybody wants to volunteer for that?

You could, well, go ahead and raise your hand.

No, I'm just kidding.

Just kidding.

Here's what I questioned as I was writing this message.

If we really feel that way, like, I don't know if I can commit every Sunday.

I don't know if I can commit every month.

Do you recognize the one who is calling you to serve?

It isn't me.

It isn't Jonah.

It isn't Russ.

It's no one on our staff.

It's the Messiah.

It's Jesus.

It's the Savior of mankind.

The Lamb of God is inviting you to join him on mission here.

And perhaps even outside of this campus.

Here's the second characteristic that I noticed in this passage: a true disciple responds immediately.

As I was reading verse 20 and then a little later on in the passage, I read that these men who probably had very little education and are practicing their trade of fishing, taught to them by their fathers, hear the call and respond.

In verse 19, it says at once.

Later in that passage, it says that they immediately left their nets and followed him.

Years ago, I believe God spoke to me at a service and said, In my heart, in my mind, in my soul, I just knew he was calling me to go be a missionary in a foreign land.

I did not respond immediately.

Instead, I rationalized that it was actually much smarter for me to wait until I retired so that I could support myself.

Then I wouldn't have to ask anyone else in the church or my friends or family to support me because I could support myself.

Now, why do you think I felt that way?

Rhetorical question.

You don't have to blurt out any answers, but if someone has any good ideas, go ahead.

I'll tell you why I think I felt that way.

I grew up in a family that did not have a great deal of financial resources.

In fact, we were lacking in financial resources.

I thought it was humiliating when someone from Catholic charities would come over and give us used clothes to wear, or provide us with a box of food, or bring us toys at Christmas time, which happened regularly.

I thought it was humiliating.

I was ashamed of it, and I did not want to feel that way again.

I wanted to know that I'd made my own way, but was that really doing honor to Jesus?

I don't think so.

I don't think I was giving him any honor.

I was only thinking about me.

And then a friend of mine set me straight.

This friend said to me, I want to support you on the mission field.

And my first response was, dude, I know you're already supporting missions.

You don't have to support us.

God will provide somebody else.

He looked at me and said, Why would you say that?

And I said, Because you're already supporting.

Listen, if you'll just do our taxes for us while we're over there, that'd be awesome.

He said, Yeah, I'll do it.

Oh, by the way, when you live overseas and you're not home for more than three months, you're excluded from taxes.

What?

So I was excited about that.

But I said, dude, if you'll just take care of that and making sure it gets filed every year, that'll be awesome.

And then he said to me, Pat, if you deny me this opportunity, then I'm not a part of the mission work.

Because of personal reasons, I'll never be able to go to the foreign mission field.

But when I give to you every month, I feel like I'm part of the mission.

And this is my way of serving and providing for the people in Romania.

Wow.

That just blew me away.

And I thought, okay, I don't have a clue what God's doing.

That changed my perspective immediately, not just on missions, but on who Jesus is and what he's calling each of us to do.

He's so awesome, he calls us to do different things.

Can you believe it?

And sometimes in different ways.

One's gonna go and one's gonna support.

And that's how it was with us.

He asked me, would you deny me the opportunity to be part of the mission work that God's doing?

I said, No.

How much did you want to give?

And he said, Well, I want to support you guys$50 a month.

And I said, Care to make it$100?

See how quickly I learned?

No, I'm just kidding.

I didn't really say that.

I thanked him profusely for that.

But like Andrew and Peter, I only had a very little bit of education, and yet God called me anyway.

He said, I choose you.

I know you're not the smartest kid around, but I choose you anyway.

And I'm glad that I finally responded.

In fact, I wish that I had responded sooner.

Recognize Jesus when he calls you and respond to his call immediately.

That's my advice to you.

And if you're a true disciple, but you've never really thought about this, why not today ask yourself this question?

What is God calling me to do and why haven't I responded?

If you want to go have lunch with me, obviously I like to eat lunch.

Man, I'd love to take you out to lunch and talk about what God's called you to do.

I have found that more incredible conversations take place over a lunch table than in the lobby of the church.

Fact, than almost anywhere.

Sitting and sharing a meal somehow just brings you closer together, and God moves in that.

Isn't that awesome?

Here's the third characteristic that I see in this passage.

A true disciple is already working.

Now, some of y'all this might step on your toes just a little bit, okay?

But it's all right.

These shoes are not real hard.

James and John, as we see in this passage, are already working in the fishing industry with their father Zebedee, who some historians think may have been pretty well off.

He apparently owns more than one boat, and he has his boys mending met so that he can maximize his labor force.

And then Jesus calls them and they respond exactly as Simon, Peter, and Andrew did by immediately leaving their boat and following him, which is what verse 22 tells us.

Please notice that Jesus did not call a couple of vagrants sitting on the corner.

Nor did he call a couple of day laborers sitting outside Home Depot waiting on somebody to come and employ them.

He called two sets of brothers that were already at work.

James and John are working in their family business.

The family business that's probably going to be passed on to them when their dad can no longer operate it.

Mark 120 tells us that the business was apparently somewhat lucrative because it says that the brothers left their father in the boat with a hired men.

So not only was it good enough for their family, it was good enough to employ some other guys too, so it helped their families.

Now listen, when I got saved a month before my 25th birthday, Joy and I joined a local church down in Jacksonville, Florida.

And after a month or two, the youth pastor came up and asked me, Would you be willing to serve in the student ministry as a volunteer?

Would you ask anybody that today, Jonah?

Yeah.

If he comes up and asks you, man, why don't y'all respond like I did?

I immediately said, Yes, I'll do it.

I go home and tell Joy, hey, I'm gonna volunteer in the student ministry.

She said, What are you doing?

I don't know.

I didn't have a clue.

He asked and I said, Yes.

It was just something clicked.

After a couple of months of serving every week in the student ministry, someone else came up to me and said, Hey, would you be willing to teach a junior high school boys Sunday school class?

Again, I said, Yes.

Months later, I was asking myself, why?

If you've ever worked with junior high boys ministry, you know.

But it was a blast.

It was the first place that I ever shared my faith publicly with a group of people was that classroom of 10, 12 boys.

And one of those kids identified with my story.

And when I gave an invitation at the end, he accepted Christ.

Oh man, still gives me chills.

I knew right then that this was something I wanted to do for my whole life.

As long as God let me live, I wanted to tell people about Jesus and invite them to come follow him.

It was incredible.

Incredible.

From that, I started serving in various places around the church.

And then when we moved to Georgia and joined a church here, decades later, I was still serving in the church.

So when the opportunity to enter the foreign mission field presented itself, I had already served in the nursery, in kids' ministry, student ministry, men's ministry, music ministry, and the adult Sunday school ministry.

I'd been a teacher, an assistant, a leader, a committee member, an all-around volunteer.

Whenever you needed something done, I was there.

You can ask Joy or you can ask Kelsey, either one, they'll tell you.

Doors were open, we were there.

Am I right, girls?

Biscuit knows, man, she was like two or three weeks old when we took her to church for the first time, and I don't think she's missed since then.

Sound right?

Well, maybe vacation, but we'll give you that.

Listen, I wanted to do everything, and I wanted to know everything so that I could help other people know Jesus like I knew Jesus.

I wanted everyone to experience the transformed life that Jesus had provided for me.

All of that experience proved extremely helpful when we were on the mission field in Romania, as Joy and I oftentimes had to do everything until we could train up people to help us.

So ask yourself this question: Am I serving somewhere in the church or in my community to help other people know Jesus?

And I think if you'll be honest with yourself and discover that you're not, because I know some of you are not, then why not ask God to show you someplace you can serve?

If you're having difficulty understanding where God is leading you, well then come see me and I'll help you.

I'll help you figure it out.

Perhaps the reason God isn't clearly calling you is because you're not working anywhere.

You're just sitting on the sidelines.

And he's looking for people who are already at work.

If he can trust you with a little thing, he can trust you with a big thing.

Let's look at the last three verses and we'll wrap this up.

Matthew chapter 4, verses 23 through 25.

Matthew 4:23–25

Jesus traveled throughout the region of Galilee, teaching in the synagogues, and announcing the good news about the kingdom.

And he healed every kind of disease and illness.

News about him spread as far as Syria, and people soon began bringing to him all who were sick.

And whatever their sickness or disease, or if they were demon-possessed or epileptic or paralyzed, man, that's a mouthful.

He healed them all.

Large crowds followed him wherever he went.

People from Galilee, the ten towns, also known as Decapolis, Jerusalem from all over Judea and from east of the Jordan River.

And from this passage, I deduced the following characteristic.

A true disciple is ready for God to use him.

We see that Jesus is going all over the region teaching people and preaching the gospel message.

And people are coming to hear him.

They're coming to hear his message.

They're also coming to be healed.

Some are coming to be delivered.

There's some who are probably curiosity seekers, and they're just coming to find out for themselves: is this really the long-awaited Messiah?

The true followers of Jesus, his disciples, those that are following him every day, are being used by God in various ways.

I really thank the writers of the chosen video series because they've helped me understand that some of these true followers are helping find venues, helping find food, they're triaging the ministry, they're engaging with people in each locale in order to allow Jesus to preach and teach.

You know why I found that to be so illuminating when I watched the chosen video series?

Is because that's kind of what my job is here at Church at the Grove.

I try to help our campus pastors use their gifts of teaching and preaching every week by engaging with you, our church family, in the lobby, in the parking lot.

By equipping you, encouraging you, recruiting you, inviting you to become servants that serve every week in the ministry.

Our vision here at Church at the Grove is to reach people far from God and lead them to become followers of Jesus.

I think that God's using me to equip those people who come to follow Jesus to show them how to serve in ministry and how to reach others.

We want to help people discover what they believe.

We want to help them find a place to belong.

We want to help them become all that Jesus has recreated them to be.

And together, we want to build the church locally and globally so that we know Jesus better and we make Jesus better known.

I can't think of a better job for me than to get to help you do that.

We have five mission trips this year, and the first one is leaving for Honduras tomorrow.

We're gonna pray over this team.

I don't know if any of them are here.

Is there anybody on in the first service that's here from that trip?

Nobody?

Okay, well, we'll be praying over them in the second service and uh sending them off to share their faith in Jesus with those who perhaps have not yet heard and leading them to become followers of Jesus.

And then they will serve the family that's there as missionaries so that they can disciple those new believers.

A true disciple is ready to share with both their actions and their words.

I believe that if you go out and show someone the love of Jesus with your actions, you're gonna have an opportunity to use your words to explain to them what he means to you and to share your testimony.

You can tell people about Jesus while you're serving them, I promise you.

I've seen it happen over and over and over again in my own life.

People are more likely to believe what you say when you're serving them.

So, my final question for you today is this Are you ready to become a true disciple of Jesus now?

I'm gonna close this in prayer, but before I do, please take one of these.

If you're wondering, how can I disciple anyone?

I don't know what that means.

Take one of these bookmarks and read this passage with your family every day.

That's a great first step in discipling someone, is teaching them the value of daily Bible reading.

And then perhaps over breakfast, lunch, dinner, TV, whatever, maybe you can pause for a minute and just say, What did you think about today's reading?

What did you get out of it?

Maybe you even go back and talk about these four points and say, Did y'all get any of that?

Do you think he's right?

What do we believe the Bible says?

And if you come up with a fifth point, please text me or email me, pat at church of the grove.com.

Let me know your thoughts.

Maybe we'll include it in the next message.

I believe God has something for every one of us to do as we become who He created us to be.

So please join me in praying this morning.

Father, I praise you and thank you for who you are.

I thank you for Jesus and his sacrifice.

I thank you for the gift of eternal life.

Father, I pray that if there's anyone in this congregation today, or perhaps who's watching online with us that has yet to give their life to Jesus, may today be the day that they say, Father, forgive me.

Jesus, heal me and change me.

Admit that you're a sinner, believe that Jesus died for those sins, and then commit your life to living for Him and to serving Him.

And may everything that we say and do today and throughout this Memorial Day weekend honor and glorify you, Father, in Jesus' name.

Amen.