Who Do You Say That I Am? "The Disciple Maker"

Good morning. I am Russ. So glad you were with us today. Some of you were with us last week, some of you weren't. We know who you are joking.

Either way, welcome back. We're glad you're here. Some of you I imagine might be here today having resolved something right. You made a resolution and you said I'm going to try church. And so maybe you're test driving us today.

I just want you to know we're so glad you're with us. You're actually around. We're just a bunch of everyday people who want to take following Jesus seriously and so feel free to test drive us as long as you want. But when you're ready to take a step or to know more about us, one simple thing you can do and that is walk up to that info desk out there. It's right in the center of the building and just walk up and say hi, some of the best of us hang out there and they would love to let you know about us and how to take a next step.

So, so glad all of you are with us today. If for some reason you missed last Sunday's teaching, it would be worth going back to. You can catch it on YouTube or Facebook. It marks a turn as we were walking in this expecting and longing for God to send a Messiah, a rescuing and life giving king and the birth of Jesus that led us into Christmas. But last week Josh kicked us off walking with Jesus through his ministry leading up to his crucifixion, his execution and his resurrection.

And that's going to take us all the way up to Easter. And we're doing that as we walk through this biography written by Mark. It gets called the Book of Mark or the Gospel of Mark. Bottom line, we're immersing ourselves in the life of Jesus. We want to spend and attend to him because I'm actually convinced of this, that if somebody were to pay close attention to Jesus, even just over the course of the next few months with us, you will find him to be the most compelling person to have ever walked the earth.

David Brooks, he's an author and opinion writer for the New York Times. He grew up as a secular in a secular Jewish family and he was agnostic for most of his life that maybe there's a God. But after paying close attention to Jesus reading the Gospels, it led him to choose to follow Jesus. What he saw as he got to know Jesus. Reading the Gospels like Mark was how Jesus navigated challenging times, power struggles in a world that he called crowded and angry.

And it struck him how bold Jesus was in the way he challenged that world, calling them to a higher path, a path where, quoting Jesus, the meek inherit the earth. Here's what Brooks said. He said Jesus was love and beauty in the midst of muck and violence and the most difficult circumstances imaginable. And when you see that beauty in the storm, that is powerful enough to inspire a leap of faith. So that's our prayer for all of us as we spend time with Jesus in the Book of Mark, is that by walking with him that the same will happen for each of us, that we will be compelled to take the next leap of faith or step of faith, whether it's your first steps or your millionth steps.

So today we're going to take on the next passage, which is Mark, chapter one, verse 16. And so you can pull that up in your Bible or your Bible app. I'll show it on the screen in just a minute. You see, Jesus spent the majority of his life living in this area in the north end of Israel called Galilee, around the Sea of Galilee. This is the area where mostly the people who live there are poor or working poor.

And a lot of it is blue collar. It's tradespeople. And he grew up learning his dad's business. His dad was, we often say, carpenter. The actual word is Tecton.

I don't want to mess with you carpenters. But he probably didn't work with wood. If you look at pictures of Israel, there's not a lot of wood. He was probably a stonemason. Stonemasons.

Come on. Right, so you and Jesus. But he was a tecton. He worked with his hands till he was 30. He doesn't start his ministry till he's 30 years old.

And here's where he begins. It begins with him inviting. As Jesus walked behind beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake. For they were fishermen, Tradesmen. Come and follow me, Jesus said, and I will send you out to fish for people.

And at once they left their nets and followed him. When he had gone a little farther, he saw James, Simon of Zebedee and his brother John. If anybody in your family's pregnant thinking about a Bible name, Zebedee put a pen in it. His brother John in the boat preparing their nets. Without delay, he called them and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him.

This is a strange story. Imagine a coworker, somebody walks up to a co worker and you hear them, look at them and go, come Follow me. And they go, sure. And they leave their job to go follow this person around. This should be a little strange to you and me.

It may help to know that these men were significantly younger than Jesus, maybe as much as half his age. John, we understand to be the youngest. And they too were just these blue, blue collar guys. You know, Jesus was a blue collar guy in that village over there. They were in this village doing their thing.

So what is it about this invitation that makes it compelling enough for them to leave their, not just their work, but their family and to understand that for them, family was central to their identity and their faith. So something big has to be going on for them to get up and walk away from their fathers father's vocation. See, in those days it was common to see a teacher. The ancient word for this, the Hebrew word is rabbi. So a rabbi.

You would see rabbis walking the roads or they'd be teaching in the synagogues. These were houses of learning. There was one in every village. These rabbis would be around. And they were more than what we think of as teachers today.

They were teachers, but they were understood to be masters, right? Masters of faith and of life. And, and they led what they might, we might think of today as like an advanced school, right, for spiritual life and leadership. So schooling was interesting in Jesus time. It existed and it was developing in his time.

But certainly by this point, kids would go at the age of four or five, boys and girls would go to the synagogue and there they would learn the Torah. The Torah is the first five books of the Old Testament. Genesis, Exodus, the discus numbers, Deuteronomy, right? They would memorize them. By the time they were 10, they had it memorized.

And then the vast majority of kids would go back and the girls would learn from their moms how to manage a home and the boys would learn their father's business. And this is what took place. Now eventually a few of them might be sharp enough that they would stay in school a little longer and they would learn the rest of the Old Testament, right, the Psalms and the prophets, and they would memorize those. And then a few of them might stick around a little longer and learn the commentaries on all this. The words called Talmud or Midrash is inside of that.

And then a very few of them might have a rabbi who specifically says, hey, I want to train you to, to be like me and to do what I do. So this is sort of what schooling looked like. So this existed in their day. And it existed that teachers or rabbis might invite people to learn from them. Jesus didn't invent discipleship.

This was a thing that was happening. And he was sitting in a role that they would understand. And he shows up and he says, follow me. That word follow is really simple. It just means get behind.

Get behind me. And they knew what that meant. This was an invitation to follow a master and to be trained by him to be like him. So people who followed a master were called disciples. The Hebrew word was Talmudim, or disciples.

We just think of it. I think of it as a trainee, right? This is an apprentice. You're learning from the one. A disciple has one goal.

He invited them in, they left with one goal, and that was to become just like Jesus, just like their master. There was a rabbi a couple of centuries before Jesus who described the goal of a disciple. And he said it this way. The goal is to be powdered in the dust of their master's feet, right? To stay so close that the dust that comes off their shoes lands on you.

And then Jesus tells them what the end goal will be. Come, follow me. But there's a goal. He says, I will make you fishers of people. You will fish for people.

This is an idiom for a teacher, what someone would do to capture the hearts and minds of people, like a fisherman catches fish. So the invitation is, come follow me. I will train you to be like me and do what I do. And then I'm going to send you to do that for others, to help others do the same. We see it clearly at the end of his life in the Book of Matthew, kind of a fairly well known passage.

And some of the last words Jesus had for these four guys and the others he intentionally trained to be like him. He gave this call in the end of the Book of Matthew when Jesus came to them and said, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. In other words, I'm the master. Therefore, go and do what? Make disciples of all nations.

Now it's your job. I did this with you, now you go and do what? Baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Quick note. For those of us who have been around church a long time, we sometimes think of discipleship as a thing that Christians do to grow.

And while that certainly is true, if we pay attention, it's actually something that's happening even before we might enter into life with Jesus. It may all be one thing. Simply taking steps from wherever we are, further and further into the life that Jesus offers, baptizing them and teaching them to do what? Obey Everything I command you do. That's training.

Go make disciples, baptize them, train them to be like me and to do what I do. And by the way, it doesn't all depend on you. You can relax. Why Jesus said, says, surely I am with you. How often?

Always to the very end of the age. Making disciples was integral to Jesus mission. He was a master of life. He was a master disciple maker. And he invited these everyday guys to leave their jobs, follow him around, pay close attention to what he says and does.

And when he looks at them and says, do something, they do it. And then one day he would send them out to make disciples of their own. This is what it means. To be a disciple is to make it our aim, our goal, our purpose, to aim our attention and our affection on Jesus, that we might one day be more like him, do more of what he does, and help others do the same. This little passage gets referenced as the calling of the disciples.

Here's a really good question to ask as you read the Bible. Where am I? Am I in this passage? Can I find myself in this passage? Another way we often ask it is what does this say about humans, women and men?

What does it say about us? And when I asked that question about this passage, I recognize you know who we are in this story. We're the Simons and the Jameses and the Johns and the Andrews. That that call, that invitation to follow him, to be trained by him and to be sent back out to make others, is a call that echoes down through the generations to you and to me. Jesus is calling you to be his trainee, his disciple.

He's inviting you into life with Him. He is the master of life. What does that mean? It means he lived the best way a human can live. It's extraordinary.

And he wants to empower you and train you to live that same kind of life, A life that he calls life to the full. Not the easiest life, but the best. A life where we're growing in meaning and purpose and belonging. All the things we ache for, not without struggle and more often, even through the struggle, that we can experience more and more of the life that he offers with him now and in eternity forever. This is the invitation.

Come. Follow me. Sometimes we tend to think, well, there are Christians and there are disciples. These are not two different things. There's only one.

There is only one invitation he ever gave. Come, follow me. Nothing more and nothing less. Now, I want you to know there's some really good news in this passage for us. One is he didn't Just pick the elite, spiritually special people, right?

We don't have to be the best of the best. Jesus wants everyday kind of people. In this case, he takes these everyday guys, fishermen, people who went back after learning the Torah, that was it, went back to work. And yet he trained them. And ultimately they helped launch a movement that spans 2000 years and covers the world and reaches us today, everyday people.

And it doesn't mean it takes some kind of big dramatic thing. You don't have to leave your job and move to, I don't know, Timbuktu, wherever that is, right? You just aim your attention and your affection on Jesus right where you are, and he will train you in the context of who you are and what you already do. Where you live, the people in your family and in your neighborhood and in your work and in your school, wherever you are. And it is simpler than we ever imagined.

It doesn't take a PhD to pay attention to Jesus, respond to what we see, and to help others do the same. Now that last part, I'm riffing quickly. Help others do the same. And that can sound intimidating, especially when you use it the way Jesus said it. Go and make disciples.

We may think, oh man, I gotta get, like, I gotta get really ready to do that. Unless it's as simple as this image.

I love this. Who's the leader in this image? May ask it a different way. How many leaders are in this image? Clearly there's one leader, but each duckling is just simply following the next duckling, right?

That there may be one master, one leader, but each one is following another one Christian leader. Paul, in a letter wrote in the Bible, he said, follow me as I follow King Jesus. There's this. He writes to somebody he trained. So here's, here's Paul, kind of second generation Christian.

And he trained and equipped a guy named Timothy. And he's writing a letter to him. It's in the Bible, second Timothy two. And he says the things. So here's Paul writing to Timothy, the things you heard me say in the presence of many witnesses, entrust to reliable people.

Next duckling. Who also will be qualified to help others. Next duckling. So simple. He's just saying, pass it on, share it.

One generation to the next, to the next. This is how we got here today. Jesus trained the first generation. He trained the next and trained the next. And now it's our turn.

And you don't have to have it all. You just have to have something to share to help others do the same. Let me give you a Snapshot of what this looks like in my life. I've got a Monday night dinner where some friends and I get together. And it's the most intentional space that I'm in every week asking or focusing on following Jesus.

And so before the holidays, we noticed how good a listener Jesus was. And so we decided to practice listening when we were at our family get togethers. Pause for a moment, think about the people that you don't normally see, right? The people who are going to gather around those tables. And so we ask ourselves those questions.

And as we were doing that, I noticed something that there was someone that I commonly see at our family get togethers. That's the only time I see them. And I kind of prejudged them in ways that weren't nice, right? So my goal was like, how little time could I spend with them?

It's not pretty, right? Jesus might be calling me into a better life, right? So I noticed this as we talked. And so I decided, well, that probably is a person that Jesus actually wants me to pay attention to. And so I just chose.

I said, hey, I will pay attention. And it. So I just chose to slow down, ask some good questions, pay attention. And it was good. Not dramatic, but good, right?

I left relaxed. I wasn't busy trying to like, navigate how to avoid anyone. And I'm confident that they experienced more loving kindness in my presence than they ever had before. And I didn't just survive a holiday, right? I got to be a little bit of good news in the way of Jesus.

And then tomorrow when my Monday night clan meets back together, I'll share my story, they'll share theirs, we'll encourage each other, and then we'll pay attention to something else that Jesus is up to in our lives and we'll decide to do the next thing he wants us to do till we follow Jesus together.

It's a way that he trains us. So it's really simple. Let me just give you two words, and they're words you may hear us say around here. We just want to study and practice, study Jesus and practice, practice his way of life, right? Study and practice.

Look, this is the way anybody gets good at anything. Somebody who is good as a mechanic, they have to know the car, right? There is an intellectual studied in some way. They know a car, but you can know all things about a car. But if they've never actually put their hands on the car, you don't want that mechanic.

Let me shift the metaphor. You don't want a doctor who's never actually Done the procedure, right? Oh, I've read all the books. I passed the test. You're like, can I have another one?

If you really love coffee, you don't want a barista who just knows coffee. You want one that can make a good cup and has actually made good cups. If we want to get good at anything, we study and we practice. If we want to get good to be trained by Jesus to become like him, we want to get good at living our lives in the way he would if he were us. We simply study Jesus.

We pay attention to him and we practice. We study him. Writer of Hebrews says, fix your eyes on Jesus. That guy Paul I mentioned earlier, he's a guy who was training Timothy Man. He says this, he says more than I count everything in my life, he says, as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing King Jesus, for whose sake I've lost all things, he says, I count them as rubbish.

The King James uses the word dung, by the way. I count them as rubbish or dung in order that I may gain what King Jesus. I want to know King Jesus. A disciple studies Jesus. We, our attention is on Him.

We want to know him here for sure, but also experientially, relationally, as the being that he is. We study him to know Him. And so we do things like read the Bible, right, or we pray, or we participate in gathering like this, or gathering small with others. And we pay attention to what the Holy Spirit is doing in our lives. We study Jesus so that our imaginations can be expanded.

What could it look like to live with God in His kingdom now? And we can't live into it if we can't imagine it. So we study and we practice. We actually do things. We put things into practice.

We don't just learn stuff. I heard one lady this week talk about how she had an issue with her pain in her feet and her doctor had told her to take time of rest, to stay off her feet. But she's really active, and so she ignored his advice. And then one day, as her feet were hurting, she had this epiphany. She had this thought that changed her life.

It was really simple. She thought, what if I do what they say?

You feel this way with Jesus? What if I just do what he says?

If he's the Master, what do we do? We do what he says. We practice. We study and we practice. And we spent last fall talking about practice, giving, serving, gathering big, gathering small, praying, reading the Bible, being hospitable, telling the good news.

We could go on and on. And on and on. And they're all verbs. They're all action.

We study Jesus and we practice his way. That's what it means for us to follow Jesus, to step into the footprints of our King and of Simon and of Andrew and of James and of John and those who have gone before. Let me dial this way down. There are three questions that over the last several years, I have been more experiencing more and more of the life that Jesus wants, right? More and more where I'm responding in the ways he would.

Less anxiety in me, less reactive, more thoughtful about other people, more active, more better at showing and telling the good news. And there are three questions that I'm consistently asking, especially in communities and with people that when I'm asking and responding to these three questions, they've done more to help me grow than anything else. Three questions. What am I noticing?

What's standing out to me? What am I noticing? What do I want to do about it? Right? What if I did what they say?

What do I want to do about it? Something simple. Five minutes or less, next 24 hours. And who can I share this with? I want to walk through this.

I want to show you how Jesus expanded this invitation. It's in Luke 9. He said to them all, whoever wants. Who does whoever exclude? No one.

This invitation is for you. He says, come, you're welcome in, but you have to want it. He's not going to coerce you. He's not going to manipulate you. Want it?

Intention. Choose to what? Be my disciple? Deny yourself. Because actually making the aim yourself and your dreams and desires doesn't work.

You can't be that when you're making Jesus your aim. Deny yourself. Take up your cross and follow me. Being intentional is what these three questions do for me. What am I noticing?

What am I going to do about it? Who can I share with? Let me give one example of what this looked like. What am I noticing? I was reading Psalm 23 a couple of months ago with a couple of young guys, and, well, you asked this question, well, what.

What does this tell us about God, this psalm? And I. I saw the. You know, my cup overflows. And I thought, well, God is wasteful, right? Because what kind of.

Are you? Any parents in the room? Would you pour milk for your kid until it pours over onto the table? Seems terrible, right? Not terrible, but I'm like, he seems wasteful.

Just an observation. And one of the guys, his name's Max Dubrowski, right? I love him. I just love saying Dabrowski as well. I'll probably say it again.

Max Dabrowski says, I'm not gonna be able to stop myself now. He goes, yeah, unless as a parent you've got an unlimited supply, then it's not wasteful. Boom. Here's what I recognize that it might just be true that with the God that we follow, I might have 247 access to an unlimited supply of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and on and on.

My imagination has been expanded. We were studying Jesus and I noticed something that what would it be like to live my life knowing I have 247 access.

To what? All that God has to give. What am I noticing? What am I going to do about it? What's one simple thing, five minutes or less that I can do in the next 24 hours?

So before we were done, we asked this question, and I just simply said, hey, I'm going to include this in my prayer. I'm going to pray Psalm 23 tomorrow morning. And when I get to that overflowing cup, I'm going to thank God for offering me 247 access. And to help me access it more, some of our crew around here, they call these I will statements, because you just start a sentence with I will, and then you fill in the blank, right? I will read Psalm 23 tomorrow morning.

I'll praise Psalm 23 tomorrow morning. Or I'll text a friend who needs some encouragement. Or I'll ask God to open doors for a spiritual conversation with one of my one more people, my friends, who aren't yet following Jesus. What am I noticing? What am I going to do about it?

And who can I share this with? We ask this question, and the person who comes to mind is a friend that I've had for 17 years who is not today following Jesus. But it comes to mind, and I realize I want what God is pouring into me again, that cup does what overflows. I want it to pour onto him. And so I simply said, yeah, I can share this with my friend.

And it gave me a chance, sitting over coffee in a relaxed way, to go, hey, I got a weird thing. I thought of you reading Psalm 23 this week, and it gave me a really simple way just to say, hey, I think of you even when I'm reading the Bible, and I just want you to know how deep my affection for you goes as a friend. It was meaningful for him, and I got to show and tell a little bit of good news. What am I noticing? What am I going to do about it?

What do I want to do? About its intention. I'm choosing this and who can I share it with? Now we as a church, more and more of us are practicing this, asking questions like this, intentional spaces and communities and in all sorts of different ways. We want to be the kind of people who are just intentional attention.

We have turned our attention, our aim on Jesus, to study him and practice his ways. And so as a church, we understand this is our job, like this is what we do. We want to equip, we want to. You've maybe heard us say this through the last year and we'll continue to move this direction that we're the kind of church that wants to show you how. We don't just want to inspire you to go do stuff.

We'll show you a house so that you feel confident and do doing that.

So there are a few ways that you can learn this or practice this together. One of those is jumping into a group. Here we have things called connect groups. They happen here in this building. There's one going on behind that wall right now.

They're asking those questions right there, right now in the book of Luke. Some of the most fun conversations I have every week happen behind, on the other side of that wall. There's a blue sheet on your way out. Look at the tables or stop by the info desk. It's got the times for those connect groups.

Next week we'll also have some open groups. Some of them are new, some have been existing that you'd be able to sign up for out there. Or you can walk up to the info desk and say, help me get in with a group of people. It is essential to have people to follow Jesus with people who can. Together you can intentionally, intentionally study and practice Jesus.

So there are groups. There are also a couple of other sessions, workshops, short term, one shorter than the other. The first one is something that we're trying this month called Growth Track. This is four sessions happening on Sunday morning. Four sessions intentionally there to help give us what we need to start taking steps, to feel confident taking steps and following changes Jesus.

Four sessions happening on Sunday mornings. We call it a growth track because what happens when you start to follow Jesus? You do what you grow, right? You grow and you heal. And so this would be really good.

And we're going to send out invitations for those of you who are new to our church, as best as we can tell, or new to Jesus. If you were baptized in the last year, this would be great for you. Four sessions, really getting you started on the path with how to follow Jesus. And Follow him simply as an active participant in our church. One more invitation.

So that one is four weeks. This one, I call it. We call it an intensive, a disciple making intensive. It is 13 weeks. I use the word intense, right?

But this is a long, slow simmer in processing and practicing the way of life of Jesus. It's the best thing we can offer. It's limited because we can only do it in small groups. But if, when I said 13 weeks, getting together intentionally to focus on growing as a disciple, if something in you went, what? I'm in.

I'm interested. I want to know who you are. If you in some way have been like, ooh, I could do that. I want to know who you are. So this is my email.

Hit me up directly or find it on the website. All you got to do is let me know and just go, hey, I want to know more. And we'll let you know. We've got. We've got an opportunity here in January with a group of people and then we'll do more later this year.

So I just want to know if you're interested. I want to know you. We can tell you more about it. And so we will show you how to follow Jesus. So two requirements for all of those things, really simple.

One is you have to be humble enough to not feel like you got it all together. So if you're like, I don't got it all together, we go, you're our person. If you think you've got it all together, I can't help you. Sorry. Humble enough to know you don't have it all together and willing enough to show up and keep showing up.

That's it. If you're that person, email me. I want to know. Three questions. Let's end here.

We've had a morning. You've heard me talk for a while, singing. What's one thing that's standing out to you this morning? What are you noticing today?

Maybe it was on the drive in. Maybe it was something somebody said. What's one thing sticking out to you?

And even if you can't find it, ask this question. What's one simple thing I want to do? Make a habit of doing something intentional. What's one simple thing you Want to do? 5 minutes or less.

Next 24 hours. Maybe it's you and God. Hey, I'm going to take five minutes and pray tomorrow. Maybe it's another Christian friend who needs some encouragement and you'll shoot a text.

Maybe it's a lost friend that you're going to pray for. What did you notice? What do you want to do about it? Who can you share something with, something you've heard today, something that you've noticed? Is there somebody that you can talk to over lunch or reach out to?

If you got kids, Tell them what you noticed. Who can you share it with?

King Jesus. Make us like you.

Make us like you. Train us to live our lives as you would if you were us, in our place, in our time. We trust that your way of life is way better than anything else we can imagine. And, King Jesus, it's in your name we pray. Amen.