Discipleship (Mark 6:1-13)

Well go ahead and open your Bibles to Mark chapter 6.

Mark 6 · chapter mention

We're going to be reading verses 1 through 13.

If you don't have a Bible and you'd like one, just raise your hand.

We'd love to bring one to you.

We have those handout Bibles that are the CSB translation.

They're really nice Bibles.

So if you want one of those, you can take one of those home with you.

That's a gift to you.

But we're going to be in Mark chapter 6, starting in verse 1.

Mark 6 · chapter mention

And I'll give you a chance to get there.

Okay, verse 1.

Where did this man get these things?

He said, What is this wisdom that has been given to him?

And how are these miracles performed by his hands?

Isn't this the carpenter, the son of Mary, and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas, and Simon?

And aren't his sisters here with us?

So they were offended by him.

Jesus said to them, A prophet is not without honor, except in his hometown, among his relatives, and in his household.

He was not able to do a miracle there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them, and he was amazed at their unbelief.

He was going around the villages teaching.

He summoned the twelve and began to send them out in pairs, and gave them authority over unclean spirits.

He instructed them to take nothing for the road except a staff, no bread, no travelling bag, no money in their belts, but to wear sandals and not put on an extra shirt.

He said to them, Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you leave that place.

If any place does not welcome you or listen to you, when you leave there, shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them.

So they went out and preached that people should repent.

They drove out many demons, anointed many sick, and anointed people with oil, and healed them.

Lord, we thank you for this text that's right here before us.

Lord, we thank you for all that you've shown us as we're going through this book of Mark.

And we pray, Lord, as we look at these thirteen verses, that you would reveal yourself to us, that we'd have soft hearts to the things that you want to encourage us in, to the things that you want to convict us in, to the changes that you want us to make in our life.

Lord, let us just be clay in your hands as we speak of these verses here before us.

Lord, I pray that I would be your mouthpiece and just a tool that you use for the Spirit to flow through and speak to your people here this morning.

We pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

You know, so as I was first reading through this passage and I was outlining the text, you know, I looked at this and I really thought, like, okay, these are two different stories that we're looking at.

Jesus being rejected in Nazareth and then Jesus sending out the twelve.

And I just thought, okay, we're gonna maybe just have too many messages that day.

But as I kept studying, I realized that these two actually do correlate.

And as we're gonna see, they'll have a common thread of discipleship.

It's gonna be that common thread of discipleship, but also ministering to the next generation and allowing the next generation to minister to us as well.

So last week we saw Jesus was returning from his trip across the Sea of Galilee.

He healed the man with the legion of unclean spirits.

And then he comes back across the sea and he arrives to this woman that's had a flow of blood for twelve years.

And then he goes to the synagogue leader's house and he heals the synagogue leader's daughter.

And then we pick up right here in verse 1.

It says, He left there and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him.

So, a lot of people that don't know scripture real well think that Jesus' hometown was Bethlehem.

But that's where he was born.

Where he was raised was in Nazareth.

And it's located in that northern region of Galilee, that northern region of Israel called Galilee, I should say.

And in Mark, this is the first time that we see Jesus in Nazareth.

But in Luke's gospel, we see that he's been there before.

Soon after his baptism and his temptation in the wilderness, it says that he heads up to Galilee.

And this is the beginning of his ministry, the beginning of his popularity.

And so he goes to Nazareth.

He stands up in the synagogue, just like we're going to see today, on the Sabbath, and he starts to teach.

And it says that he opened the scroll to Isaiah, or the scroll of Isaiah, to the prophecy specifically about the Messiah.

He read it and then he sat down and he basically said, You know, the scriptures have been fulfilled.

Here I am.

And then he talks to them about a few other things, and they get so outraged that this mob surrounds Jesus and they start pushing him out of the city, taking him to this cliff because they wanted to throw him off the cliff.

And then miraculously, Jesus somehow slips through the crowd and escapes it because that was not his time yet.

So that's the first encounter that we see with Nazareth, with Jesus.

But then, if you'll remember, we saw people coming from Nazareth, coming from his hometown to restrain him just a couple weeks ago in Mark.

And you might remember it was his mother, it was his brothers, and possibly some friends, and they came to talk some sense into him.

Says that they thought that Jesus had lost his mind.

So, so far the two encounters that we see have not been positive encounters with Nazareth or the people from Nazareth.

And today in our text we're going to see that not a whole lot has changed since Jesus has last been there since the last time he interacted with those people.

So look at verse 2 with me.

It says, When the Sabbath came, he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astonished.

So it's the teaching of Jesus.

So we're sitting here thinking, of course they were astonished.

They're listening to God, right?

But look at it from their point of view, from the people that were sitting in the synagogue at the time.

And I was trying to think of what would this be like for us.

And I think the best analogy, um, and I hope they don't mind me using them, would be maybe like Luke Sleton or maybe like Gabe, you know, these young men that go off for a period of time and then they come back to us.

And then we see like, whoa, they came back with 12 people with them that are calling them their disciples.

And wow, their fame has grown like through the Central Coast, all the way throughout Southern California.

Like, who are these kids?

Like, we we've seen most of these kids grow up from just these little people, and you know, they were the ones causing trouble in children's ministry and putting a frog in the punch bowl at the potluck, you know, and doing stuff like that.

But they come back and all of a sudden God has this mighty work that's going through them.

That's kind of what these people in the synagogue are seeing.

They're seeing this guy that they know knew, you know, forever pretty much, and he's coming back, and all of a sudden he has this crowd of followers, and he has these disciples, and people are calling him rabbi, and they're looking at him and they're thinking, Who is this guy?

You're like, this is the guy that we knew, you know, since they were about this tall.

And I mention that because sometimes it's hard for us to accept that somebody that we've known for a really long time is all of a sudden doing something incredible and amazing for the Lord.

Where you see them doing these things, but you're still thinking of them as a child, as an immature person, you know, running around.

And that's kind of what we're seeing here with these people in the synagogue, is that they're saying, Who is this guy?

Like we knew him since he was a boy, and he was a carpenter that was working on my house just a couple years ago.

You know, who is this guy?

Look at the second half of verse 2.

And this is those people saying this.

They said, Where did this man get these things?

They said, What is this wisdom that has been given to him?

And how are these miracles performed by his hands?

Isn't this the carpenter, the son of Mary, and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas, and Simon?

And aren't his sisters here with us?

So these are the people that knew him growing up.

Friends, family, neighbors, people he probably grew up going to the same synagogue with.

Friends that he played with as a child, you know, his peers that, you know, they grew up together.

He'd probably been to many of their weddings, to many of their bar mitzvahs.

He'd probably, like I said, done some carpentry or some building within their very homes.

And now they're looking at him, and instead of saying, praise God for what he's doing through this guy, this guy that grew up in our neighborhood, they're saying, Who does he think he is?

And when they say this is the carpenter, you know, a carpenter in English means we're that we're working with wood, right?

But the word that we see in the Greek, it's much broader.

It includes wood, but it also includes stone, and it generally is a term that means builder.

It just means that Jesus was a builder.

And as we look at that, I think it's just so appropriate that Jesus came, and the one profession that God chose for him to be in was to be a builder.

I think it's completely appropriate.

The creator of the universe, who's going to build a church where he's going to be the cornerstone, and where his disciples are going to be the foundation of that church, the building blocks.

Where he's going to fashion them and mold them and chisel them into the men that he desires them to be, that he can actually use for his kingdom.

Think about it.

Jesus was used to taking raw material and making it into something that was both beautiful and useful.

And placing those things where they could be useful and used for practical application.

He was already in the business.

Think about this.

He was already in the business of building before he even started his ministry on earth.

He was in the business of building from the beginning of what we call time.

He's outside of it, but what we call time.

And to me, it just makes a lot of sense.

And these people in Nazareth say, Isn't this the carpenter?

You know, and this is probably just as much an accusation as it is a statement of fact.

Isn't this the guy with no formal education?

You know, the laborer.

And now he's a teacher, and now he has disciples that are following him.

And then they say, Well, and then isn't this the son of Mary?

And William Lane in his commentary says this, and I'm just gonna read it to you.

He says, the additional phrase of the son of Mary is probably disparaging.

It was contrary to Jewish usage to describe a man as the son of his mother, even when she was a widow, except in insulting terms.

Rumors to the effect that Jesus was illegitimate appear to have circulated in his own lifetime and may lie behind this reference as well.

So these locals are basically saying, Isn't this that laborer who was born illegitimately?

And just as a side note, it mentions that Jesus has brothers and sisters.

I just need to mention this real quick.

You know, Mary was a virgin until Jesus' birth.

But she did not remain that way with Joseph being her husband.

She had other children.

And we don't know the fate of Joseph, but it's thought that he died very young.

But he obviously had enough time to teach Jesus how to be a builder.

And the thought is that Jesus probably supported his family, being the oldest, until his younger siblings were able to come along and start helping out with that before he jumped into ministry.

So that's the end of that side note, real quick.

And we're gonna go back to the scene of the synagogue and the people asking, why on earth should we listen to this illegitimate builder that's in our presence here in the synagogue this morning?

So look at verse 3, at the end of verse 3.

It says, So they were offended by him.

I can imagine what they're thinking.

Where are our standards?

You know, we'll just let anyone come in here and teach with authority, become a rabbi, you know, gain some followers and some disciples.

You know, maybe I should get some disciples too.

Come on, you know.

They're probably thinking, we need to get a real teacher in here that's been formally educated, that's been trained to do what this guy is doing.

And I think it's sad for the most part that they, and I'm gonna put us in here as well, have trouble receiving spiritually from those that we are the most familiar with.

Where someone that's in our own family or a close friend will say something to us and we'll be like, oh, that's nice.

But then we hear that same thing from a complete stranger, and it's like, wow, that's an incredible truth.

Whatever that might be.

And as a parent, or if you work with kids, you can probably really relate to this.

Or you tell a kid something, or you try to teach them something, and they just aren't picking up on it.

And then someone else that they don't know as well tells them the exact same thing, and they're like, you'll never guess what I learned today.

I know I can relate to that.

It's so backwards when you think about it.

You know, in reality, it's those closest to us that know us the best that God wants to use in our life.

And Jesus knew better than anyone what his friends, his neighbors, his family, and his community needed.

And these were the people that were the least receptive to him.

He had strangers flocking to him, but the people that knew him best wouldn't put their trust in him.

It's completely backwards of how it should be.

Look at verse 4.

It says, Jesus said to them, A prophet is not without honor, except in his hometown, among his relatives and in his household.

Everywhere Jesus is going, there's crowds.

People are flocking, people are worshiping, except some of the religious leaders, as we've seen.

But when he gets in his hometown, instead of honor, it says that they are offended by him.

And I think so often we can read this text or texts like these, and we see Jesus as just this stoic character, like, well, I was rejected, let's move on.

But being rejected by the ones that know you well, or the ones that have known you the longest, oftentimes make it the most painful.

When I imagine this scene in my mind, I wonder if there may have been a tear rolling down Jesus' cheek as he says this, as the people that he knew the best, the people that he grew up with, were sitting there openly saying to his face, you know, we reject you, we're offended by you, get out of here.

So, no doubt, I think, as we look at this, Jesus' emotions and his feelings are being tugged on in this moment.

Let's look at verse five together.

It says he was not able to do a miracle there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them.

You know, at first glance, when you read verse five, you're not used to seeing that God is not able in the Bible, are you?

To me, that stands out right away.

He was not able to do a miracle there.

Now, in Matthew's account, he adds that Jesus did not do many miracles because of their unbelief.

You know, have you heard the adage before that God can work with no belief or little belief, but he won't work with unbelief?

Have you heard that before?

You know, we're gonna get there in some weeks, but do you remember the story of the father that brings his son with an unclean spirit to the disciples in Mark chapter 9?

Mark 9 · chapter mention

And the disciples weren't able to cast out that spirit.

Then Jesus comes along and the father says to Jesus, these are his words, he says, If you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.

Jesus said to him, If you can, everything is possible for the one who believes.

Immediately the father of the boy cried out, I do believe, help my unbelief.

That's the same word used in our text this morning for unbelief.

You know, I've heard messages on why the disciples couldn't cast out the demon from that child and why Jesus could, and it was because of a lack of prayer and fasting and faith on the disciples' part.

But in that story, Jesus addresses the faith of the Father.

And it wasn't until his father said, I do believe, help my unbelief, that Jesus healed the boy.

Think about that.

The power of God in our life is limited by our measure of faith.

By our measure of belief.

Think about that.

God's power cannot be limited.

He can do whatever he wants.

But the power of God in me is limited by my belief andor my unbelief.

Which makes me wonder what I've been missing out on, you know, because of my doubt and because of my fear and because of unbelief and things like that.

What have maybe you've been missing out on as well because of those things?

And that's what Jesus is confronted with here in Nazareth.

He wants to do miracles, he wants to heal those that need it, he wants to see people come to salvation.

But only a few show enough belief to be healed by Jesus.

And there's probably because only a few people showed up asking for healing.

You know, if you don't believe in Jesus, you're not going to come to him for healing.

So there just wasn't a whole lot of ministry for Jesus in Nazareth.

And it says in verse 6, and he was amazed at their unbelief.

This word for amazed is used 47 times in the New Testament, but Jesus only uses it twice.

The first time was when the Roman centurion comes and tells Jesus, You can heal my servant from here.

You don't need to come to my house.

Just say the word and he's going to be healed.

And Jesus, it says, was amazed at his faith.

The other time is right here.

He was amazed at their unbelief.

So we see Jesus not only pointing out faith when he sees it and when he doesn't see it, as we've been talking about as we've been going through the book of Mark, but also that Jesus marvels in amazement at faith.

And he marvels in amazement at unbelief as well.

So what we can take from this is faith is a really big deal to God.

He's given us every reason to trust him.

But somehow we feel like we have more control of the situation if we hold on to our own fear or we hold on to our own doubt.

And fear and doubt are only detrimental to what God wants to do in and through each one of us.

Now, before we move on, I have to ask myself this question.

And I found myself asking this question as I was studying through this.

Why is this story included in the gospel?

Why do we need to know that Jesus was rejected in his hometown?

And that this should be expected of any prophet.

The only thing that I could think of is the same thing that Paul instructed Timothy on.

Let no one despise your youth.

That if any kid in this church goes on to do great things for the kingdom of God, that we as a church should be in a position to be ministered to by the younger generation.

Even if right now they're snot-nosed troublemakers.

But we need to be in a place, I think this is our application as a church.

We need to be in a place to be ministered to by the younger generation.

When the Lord gets a hold of them and he starts using them for great and wonderful things, we should not only receive it, but we should encourage it within this church.

You know, I can think of two specific examples where I've seen this in churches where I've been on staff.

And both times it was two younger guys that got saved in college.

It wasn't at the same time, it was many years apart.

But both times these guys got saved in college.

They started coming to the church that I was working at.

They fell in love with Jesus, but they were still very rough around the edges.

Jesus was still doing a great work in their life.

They started to sense a call to ministry in their life.

They started jumping in and serving with both feet.

They made some mistakes.

They hurt some people along the way, but they were growing exponentially.

And then both of them, respectively, became ordained as pastors of that same church that they started attending in college.

And in both cases, a lot of the mature Christians that had been at that church since the young punk college kid walked in that door, they had a really hard time allowing themselves to be shepherded by the pastor that God had placed over them.

Because in their eyes, they were still the young punk that hurt them, maybe, some three, four, five, six years prior.

And I want us as a church to be found in a place where we're discipling the next generation to run this church in 20 years.

Discipling them to become our future pastors and elders and missionaries and church planners.

What's going on outside right now in children's ministry, it is not daycare.

It is not child care.

It's discipleship that's going on out there right now.

They're learning God's word and they're learning specifically how to apply it to their lives.

They're having fun, believe me.

But fun and entertainment is not the goal of what we're doing in children's ministry.

And I talked to Amy, our children's ministry director from day one about this.

That this is a time of discipleship for these kids, a time of coming alongside the parents and what they're already doing in their home and encouraging that and building upon that.

And the goal and the hope is that when they enter into adulthood, that we can be ministered to by them.

And I don't say that selfishly.

That's not the whole reason that we're doing that.

It's so we get something out of it.

But we need to be ready for when they are ready, that we are receiving them with open arms, that we're not offended, you know, that the little kid that put laxative in the brownies at the potluck, you know, is now going to be called pastor.

You know, sorry, I keep picking on brownies.

But the thing is, we need to be ready for when those kids are coming in here, when they start leading worship, when they start teaching, when they start running lyrics and projections that, you know, we need to be so gracious towards those kids and so supportive towards them, but also so ready to allow them to minister to us as well.

To stop looking at them as little kids, but looking at them as men and women that the Lord's raising up and that have a calling upon their life.

So let's look at the second half of verse 6, and we're going to see the commissioning of the twelve.

It says, He was going around the village's teaching.

He summoned the twelve and began to send them out in pairs, and gave them authority over unclean spirits.

So my first question is, why was Jesus doing this?

And I think the simple answer is he's training his disciples.

He's preparing them for when he's going to be gone.

And he's giving them opportunity, like we saw when they were in the storm, to build their faith.

And it says that he gave them authority over unclean spirits.

But as we'll see, they were also preaching.

They were anointing people with oil, and there was healing going on as well.

So he's not only sending them out, but equipping them with everything that they need.

Because when Jesus calls and when he sends, he also equips and he provides everything that that person is going to need.

Like we're going to see in verse 8 here.

Look at that with me.

He instructed them to take nothing for the road except a staff.

No bread, no traveling bag, no money in their belts, but to wear sandals and not put on an extra shirt.

So this definitely is a faith-building exercise that Jesus is doing.

Remember how we were talking about Jesus allowing his disciples to experience the storm just a couple weeks ago so that he could start to allow them to build their faith.

And we talked about how our faith is built by having to trust God and then see him come through.

And then having to trust God and then seeing him come through.

And then next time, he's going to give us a little more and a little more.

And that's what he's doing with his disciples.

He's just giving them a little more, a little more.

And Jesus is sending his disciples out and saying, Don't pack anything.

Don't take food, don't take money, no extra clothes.

Just go and trust that God is going to provide everything that you need for you.

This would be like me telling you, there's a few gallons of gas in your car right now.

Just enough to make it down to Pismo, but not enough to make it back.

So right after service, I want you to drive down to Pismo with no money, with no extra gas, no change of clothes, no snacks or sandwiches for lunch, and trust God not only to provide for you while you're there, but to provide a way for you to get back.

How many of you are like, yeah, no problem.

Yeah, send me.

That's no problem.

And how many are like, you know, the planners out there?

And you start thinking about all of the what-ifs, you know, and and I can't do that because of this, this, and this.

How are the planners feeling right now about that whole situation?

Jesus is intentionally stretching his disciples so that they will find their dependence in him and not in themselves, and not in their own plans, not depending upon their own resources, even.

Jesus needs to give these disciples an opportunity to trust him for these specific things.

And they need this real life experience.

You know, they've been watching for a while now, but now they need to actually go out and do it.

And Jesus is so strategic, and I hope you can see that, and how he's discipling these 12 men.

He sends them out in pairs for a short time.

He tells them to meet back up at an allotted time and place, and then he plans a time for them to get away so that they can debrief and go over all of the things that they saw and the things that they learned.

And he's giving them just a little bit at a time and he's coaching them along the way.

You know, as far as we can tell, the disciples up until this time have only been observers, they've only been watching.

And maybe you've had an experience like this where you've just been observing something for a long period of time, and then somebody asks you, Will you do it now?

It's your turn.

You know, I want you to jump in.

And something becomes very real in that moment for you.

And it's like, I've seen it done a bunch of times, but now it's my turn to actually jump in and do it.

You know, part of my training that I went through was in a shepherd school, it's called it.

It was the school of ministry down at Calvary Chapel in Oxnard.

And part of that training was to go and shadow my pastor at weddings and memorials and hospital visitations and things like that.

And I did all of those things.

I went and I watched how he did it.

We were encouraged to take notes, so I would take notes of all the things that I saw and I was taken in.

And then about a year later, after I finished that school, I'd got an ordained to become a pastor.

Somebody asked me to do their wedding.

And I sat down to start preparing the ceremony and I looked at my notes, and there was pretty much nothing helpful for me in those notes.

And so I went back to my pastor and I just said, Hey, give me everything.

Give me all the outlines, tell me the order of the service, when do people stand and sit?

How long should the homily be?

You know, when does the bride hand off the bouquet to the maid of honor?

Just all those little things that I wasn't thinking about when I was just observing.

And then so I did my first wedding, and I think it went probably fine.

But after doing the first wedding, I knew exactly what questions to ask.

I remember doing some music for my pastor soon after I had performed my first wedding, and he was performing this wedding, and I was doing the music, and I just watched how he went through the whole ceremony.

And I remember taking mental notes of, oh, that's how he got from the vows to the rings.

And that's how he got from the rings to communion.

And these are the things that he said during communion about how special it was for them after saying their vows to take that together.

I learned way more after I had done it once.

And Jesus says to his disciples, hey, go do it once.

And then you're gonna know how to watch me.

And you're gonna be able to know how to take much more effective mental notes.

And you're gonna know which questions that you're gonna need to ask.

You're gonna know what to look for.

So he wants them to gain this experience and then come back to him and then they can debrief.

And then we see Jesus further directing his disciples in verse 10.

He said to them, Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you leave that place.

If any place does not welcome you or listen to you, when you leave there, shake the dust off of your feet as a testimony against them.

So we see a continuation of a theme that we have seen multiple times now since the parable of the soils.

You guys remember the parable of the soils?

Jesus is telling them, don't continue to cast seed on hard soil.

If you come across a hard path, don't throw your seed where it's not going to germinate.

Or where it may germinate and then die before it produces fruit.

Just move on.

And Jesus just proved this from Nazareth.

It was a hard soil and they moved on.

And he's saying, cast your seed where it can be accepted into the soil.

And then he says, if there's no place to cast your seed, then actually shake the dust off of your feet and move on.

Now that may sound strange to us, but shaking the dust basically meant that I don't even want to take the smallest part of this place back with me.

And this was something the Jews would do after leaving Samaria or another Gentile region.

They would leave there, like we don't want anything to do with the Gentiles.

They would literally shake their feet and try and get all the dust on so to not bring a piece of Samaria back into Israel with them.

Look at verse 12.

So they went out and preached that people should repent.

They drove out many demons, anointed many sick people with oil, and healed them.

And here we see the disciples doing what they've seen their rabbi doing for all this time.

They've been watching for a while, but now the rubber is hitting the road.

And I don't know if you remember, but a few months ago we talked about what it meant in this time to be called by a rabbi.

Where he would ultimately say to somebody that wanted to follow him, follow me.

And that meant following a rabbi for around 15 years before they even decided if you were ready to be a rabbi or if you didn't make it.

15 years of following and watching and observing.

And here's Jesus moving his disciples along way quicker than any other rabbi was at this time.

He's given them responsibility and an opportunity to flounder a little bit, honestly.

They're still young in their discipleship relationship with Jesus, and he's already sending them out and having them do ministry work.

And think about it, Jesus gave these guys a chance to follow a rabbi when no one else did.

They had already been passed over.

And he's giving them a chance at ministering way before any other rabbi would.

You know, there's some people that will wait until someone can do something just as well as they can before they actually let that person do it.

They say that good leaders will allow others to do things when they can do them 80% as well as the leader can.

And if Jesus was like either of those two scenarios, we would still be waiting to see Jesus send out his disciples.

Anyone here?

80% as capable as Jesus?

That's never gonna happen, right?

You know, I was listening to a leadership podcast a few years ago, and the guy was saying in his church, if someone has 50% of his ability with momentum moving forward and continuing to grow, that he just lets them do it.

You know, looking at Jesus, it sounds like he's along those lines of that guy that I was listening to, that pastor on that podcast.

The disciples are still very rough around the edges and have a long way to go, but they're heading in the right direction and they're showing promise.

And Jesus is able to use them to heal the sick and to cast out demons and to preach a message of repentance.

Through discipleship, and this is really the point of the message here today, but through discipleship, Jesus is able to be in seven places at once.

He's obviously where he actually is physically at this time, but there's six groups of disciples that he was able to send out into six other places to continue on in the ministry that he was doing.

And isn't that the point of discipleship, right?

It's a multiplication.

If you can replicate yourself as a discipler, if you can help somebody else come to a similar place of spiritual maturity as you, in effect, what you've done is you've doubled your impact for the kingdom of God.

Because now that person's able to go and disciple someone else while you're discipling somebody else.

What was Jesus' last command to his disciples to go and make disciples, right?

You know, I so badly want to see this become a part of our church culture here at Abai.

Where we're pouring into the next generation, we're pouring into our children, we're giving them opportunities to grow, giving them opportunities to fail, and giving them opportunities to start ministering to the whole church body.

And I pray that we would be so gracious in allowing the next generation to gain that experience that they need.

And sometimes it's going to be at our own expense.

It may mean sitting through a stinker of a sermon sometime, or a painful time of musical worship, or a time where half the lyrics on the screen are not correct.

But you get the idea.

But I pray that we would be found as their biggest supporters.

You know, instead of remembering them as a kid or remembering some you know mistake that they made five years ago, that we would be seeing what God's doing in them, encouraging that, taking part in the growth that God desires in each one of them, nurturing that calling that God has placed on their life.

So it's my encouragement to all of us that we would grow together and extend grace to one another just like Jesus did to his first disciples.

And I'm not just talking about young kids that are outside right now.

I would love to see that as a church as a whole.

And when I look out and I see already how varied the ages are in this church, I absolutely love it.

Because I would love to see the discipleship continue on in this church.

And we've talked about this before, but we really see it as three different levels of discipleship here at Abide.

This is our most formal time of discipleship.

We're opening up God's word, it's one person giving a message, and hopefully we're all drawing closer to Jesus through it.

The second form of discipleship is through our home groups, where we're getting together, we're getting into each other's lives, we are knowing each other and being known.

We're getting into the nitty-gritty and really participating together and growing in community that way.

And then the the least formal way is the one-on-one or the one-on-two discipleship times where we're just grabbing coffee, we're sharing a meal together, we're inviting somebody over to our house, and where it's a time where it doesn't even have to be a program, it doesn't have to be a 10-week book that we're going through or anything like that, but just a time where we're sitting down, how are you doing?

How can I pray for you?

How can I encourage you?

You know, and maybe where the older generation is telling the younger generation, you know, I've I've been there before, and this is how God walked me through it, and this is how God wants to walk you through it.

There's no training, there's no program, it's just meeting up with people, being in each other's lives, caring for one another, and praying together.

I I just really hope that that is a culture that we can continue to foster here in this church.

Would you pray with me?

Lord, I thank you so much for this text.

Thank you so much for the example of Jesus.

Or we thank you that Jesus was so strategic and provided such a good example of discipleship, of raising up, of preparing, for giving chances to his disciples, allowing them to make mistakes and do boneheaded things, but then to have the grace to say, that's okay, you'll do better next time.

But that's okay, you know, you need to change these things, um, and and I'll continue to use you.

But Lord, help us as a church to foster that environment as well, of raising one another up, of discipleship, of looking at our kids as not somebody that we're just trying to keep quiet while the adults hear the Bible, Lord, but we see that as true discipleship.

Help us to see them as little disciples running around, future pastors and missionaries and church planners and church elders and ministry leaders.

Lord, help us to have that vision and to encourage and foster that environment here today.

God, we love you so much.

We just want to glorify you and honor you and see your kingdom built.

Continue to use this church to do exact exactly that we pray.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.