Eagles Nest Church
Followers of Jesus: Week 2

      • 2 Timothy 3:16–17ESV

  • Question
    Does our day and age make discipleship more difficult than past generations? Why or why not?
    “In 1950, for instance, only 4 million Americans lived alone, and they accounted for less than 10 percent of all households. Today, more than 32 million Americans are going solo. They represent 28 percent of all households at the national level; more than 40 percent in cities including San Francisco, Seattle, Atlanta, Denver, and Minneapolis; and nearly 50 percent in Washington D.C. and Manhattan, the twin capitals of the solo nation.”
    Klinenberg, Going Solo, p. 208
    Many people today value convenience over commitment.
    They choose proximity and screens over staying rooted in real community.
    The question is whether that world has room for the kind of shared life Christianity requires.
    Christianity is about God forming a people who display His character.
    He sent His Son not just to save individuals, but to call a people to follow Him.
    And following Jesus means doing that together, in community.
    John 13:34–35 ESV
    34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. 35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
    The Bible shows us over and over again that TRUE discipleship happens in community.
    It’s a team sport, not a solo one.
    And if we are going to be disciples who fulfill the great commission.
    Yes, we must share the gospel with the lost,
    but we also must disciple ourselves and others in community.
    Matthew 28:19–20 ESV
    19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
    This is called the Great Commission.
    It’s why God leaves us on earth after we become Christians.
    We are to make disciples through evangelism and sharing the gospel,
    and then help them grow through discipleship.
    Pasto Mark Dever says:
    “The Christian life is the discipled life and the discipling life. Christianity is not for loners or individualists. It is for a people traveling together down the narrow path that leads to life. You must follow and you must lead. You must be loved and you must love. And we love others best by helping them to follow Jesus down the pathway of life.
    Dever, Mark. Discipling: How to Help Others Follow Jesus, (p. 13).
    But before we can disciple others, we must first be a disciple.
    Question
    What is a disciple?
    A disciple is a follower.
    You can follow someone’s teaching from a distance.
    People still say they follow the teaching and example of Gandhi.
    And being a disciple of Christ certainly includes that much.
    A disciple of Jesus follows in His steps, doing what He taught and living as He lived.
    But it means more than imitation.
    To follow Jesus first means you have entered into a personal, saving relationship with Him.
    You have been united to Christ.
    Colossians 3:1–4 ESV
    1 If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. 3 For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
    Through Christ’s death and resurrection, our guilt becomes His, and His righteousness becomes ours.
    That’s what makes being a disciple possible at all.
    Obedience does not create that relationship - it flows from it.
    Being a disciple of Christ, in other words, does not begin with something we do.
    It begins with something Christ did.
    Jesus is the Good Shepherd who laid down his life for the sheep (John 10:11).
    He loved the church and therefore gave himself up for her (Eph. 5:25).
    He paid a debt that he didn’t owe, but that we owe,
    and then he united us to himself as his holy people.
    God is good, and He created us as good.
    But every one of us has sinned by turning away from God and His good law.
    And because God is good, He must punish sin.
    He would not be good if He didn’t.
    The good news of Christianity is that Jesus lived the perfect life we failed to live,
    and then He died the death we deserve to die.
    He offered Himself as a substitute and sacrifice for all who will repent of their sin and trust in Him alone.
    So Christian discipleship begins here,
    with the reception of God’s free gift of
    grace, mercy, reconciliation with Him, and the promise of eternal life.
    How do we receive this gift and become united to Christ?
    Through faith, we turn away from our sin and turn toward Him,
    trusting Him as Savior and submitting to Him as Lord.
    Faith is not mere agreement.
    Faith is repentance and allegiance.
    At one point in His ministry, Jesus turned to the crowd and said:
    “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34).
    Christian discipleship begins right there,
    when we hear those words and obey them.
    It begins when Jesus says, “Follow me,” and we do.
    Question:
    Can someone be saved without being a disciple of Jesus?
    What about people who prayed for salvation, but doesn’t live like a disciple of Jesus?
    They don’t go to church,
    they don’t kill their sin,
    they don’t love God’s Word,
    they don’t look any different from the world?
    Over and over and over, the Bible tells us NOT to assume these people are Christians.
    Because a Christian is a disciple and a disciple is a Christian.
    There are no Christians who are not disciples.
    And to be a disciple of Jesus is to follow Jesus.
    There are no disciples of Jesus who are not following Him.
    This matters.
    Because I’ve heard so many Christians,
    even pastors who I highly respect try to argue that there are two classes of Christians.
    Andy Woods, who I really like actually,
    believes this.
    He says there are Christians who have their fire insurance,
    and then there are Christians who are disciples, who will have more rewards.
    Now, Andy Woods is probably 50 times smarter than I am,
    So how could he get this wrong?
    It’s because he’s desperate to keep the gospel a gospel of Grace.
    And his worry, is that the second you start “fruit inspecting,” as he puts it,
    The question is:
    “Ok, how much?”
    “How many good things do you have to do before you can be confident you’re a Christian?”
    So what’s the mistake here in this kind of thinking?
    The mistake is thinking that grace and transformation are competing ideas.
    But they aren’t.
    Grace is not threatened by fruit - Grace is what produces fruit.
    The New Testament never treats obedience as an optional upgrade for advanced Christians.
    It treats it as the inevitable outworking of real faith.
    The Bible’s concern is not,
    “How much fruit proves you’re saved?”
    Its concern is, “Is there any life at all?”
    Andy Woods is right to protect the gospel from works-righteousness.
    That instinct is good, and I strongly commend him for it.
    But Scripture protects grace in a different way.
    It does not lower the definition of discipleship;
    it grounds assurance in union with Christ, which necessarily produces a changed life.
    Fruit inspection does not ask,
    “Have you done enough?”
    It asks,
    “Has God done anything?”
    The issue is not perfection; it’s direction.
    Not sinlessness, but repentance.
    Not flawless obedience, but a real following after Christ.
    The Bible knows nothing of a category called “saved but not following.”
    Jesus calls disciples.
    And everyone He saves, He calls to follow Him.
    Matthew 7:21–23 ESV
    21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ 23 And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’
    Matthew 18:15–17 ESV
    15 “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. 16 But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. 17 If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.
    Revelation 21:5–8 ESV
    5 And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” 6 And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. 7 The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son. 8 But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”
    If you want to be a Christian, listen to Jesus.
    He says that being a Christian means denying yourself, taking up your cross, and following Him.
    God’s love for us is free and undeserved,
    but the response it calls for is clear: we must turn from ourselves and live for Him.
    Christians are people who have real faith in Christ, and that faith shows itself in where they place their hopes, their fears, and their lives.
    They rest all of it on Him.
    They follow Him wherever He leads.
    You no longer set the agenda for your own life.
    Jesus Christ does.
    You belong to Him now.
    1 Corinthians 6:19–20 ESV
    19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, 20 for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.
    As Paul says, “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price”
    Which means that Jesus is not only our Savior.
    He is our Lord.
    2 Corinthians 5:15 ESV
    15 and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.
    What does it mean to die to self and live for Christ?
    It means that obedience to Jesus matters more than self-preservation.
    As D. A. Carson puts it,
    “To die to self means to consider it better to die than to lust; to consider it better to die, than to tell this falsehood; than to consider it better to die than to . . . [you name the sin].”
    D. A. Carson
    That is what real faith looks like when it takes shape in a life.
    The Christian life is the discipled life.
    And it begins when a person becomes a disciple of Jesus Christ.
    So that’s what a disciple is,
    But why disciple others?
    The Christian life is also the discipling life.
    Disciples make disciples.
    We follow the One who calls people to follow Him by calling others to follow Him as well.
    Why?
    For love and obedience.
    Love comes first.
    The motive for discipling others begins with God’s love for us in Christ, and nothing less.
    He has loved us, and so we love Him.
    And one of the ways we love Him is by loving the people He has placed around us.
    When a lawyer asked Jesus which commandment mattered most, Jesus answered by quoting Scripture:
    Mark 12:30 ESV
    30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’
    God is not interested in partial devotion.
    He calls for all of you.
    Your ambitions and motives. Your desires and hopes. Your thinking and reasoning. Your strength and energy.
    Every part of life brought under His Word and shaped by it.
    But Jesus didn’t stop there.
    The lawyer asked for one command and received two.
    Mark 12:31 ESV
    31 The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
    Jesus’s point is clear.
    Love for God is demonstrated by love for those made in God’s image.
    You cannot keep the first command while ignoring the second.
    To not have love for neighbor is to miss love for God entirely.
    John makes the same connection.
    1 John 4:19–20 ESV
    19 We love because he first loved us. 20 If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.
    Anyone who claims to love God and does not show itself in love for others does not love for the true God at all.
    This is why discipling others matters.
    Discipling is simply doing deliberate spiritual good to help someone follow Christ.
    And few things display love for God and love for neighbor more clearly than that.
    The second reason we disciple is because of obedience.
    Love for Christ expresses itself in obedience.
    John 14:15 ESV
    15 “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
    And what has He commanded? “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations… teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19–20).
    Part of our obedience, then, is leading others to obedience.
    Throughout the New Testament, Christians carry out this work according to their abilities and callings,
    but all share the same responsibility.
    The Great Commission belongs to every disciple of Jesus.
    Discipling is not an optional add-on to the Christian life. It is basic to it.
    If we are not laboring to make disciples, we should seriously ask whether we are a disciple of Christ at all.
    Jesus’ final command shows us both where and how disciples are made.
    He begins by declaring that He has all authority in heaven and on earth.
    Because His authority is universal, His mission is universal.
    We are sent to make disciples of all nations.
    But Jesus also tells us how this disciple-making happens.
    He commands His followers to baptize and to teach.
    Those are not private acts - they are church acts.
    Which is why the Great commission cannot be separated from Church Membership.
    While individual Christians carry the gospel into workplaces, schools, neighborhoods, and nations,
    the ordinary ministry of baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and teaching happens through local churches.
    The first place Christians should normally look to be discipled, and to disciple others, is within the life of the local church,
    both gathered and scattered.
    As the theologian David Wells once said:
    “It is very easy to build churches in which seekers congregate; it is very hard to build churches in which biblical faith is maturing into genuine discipleship.”
    David Wells
    So practically, when you gather with the church on Sundays,
    do you come only to receive, or do you also look for ways to give?
    And during the week, how do you use your meals and spare time?
    Are you thinking about evangelism and about building up other Christians?
    You might think you need to be fully discipled before you can disciple others.
    While that is important, Jesus has commanded you to make disciples.
    In fact, part of being a disciple is discipling others.
    Growth in maturity includes helping others grow.
    God places you in a church not only so your needs are met,
    but so you are equipped to care for others.
    Christianity is not for isolated individuals who need no one.
    It is for disciples of Christ who follow Him and help others do the same.

      • John 13:34–35NIV2011

      • Matthew 28:19–20NIV2011

      • Colossians 3:1–4NIV2011

      • Matthew 7:21–23NIV2011

      • Matthew 18:15–17NIV2011

      • Revelation 21:5–8NIV2011

      • 1 Corinthians 6:19–20NIV2011

      • 2 Corinthians 5:15NIV2011

      • Mark 12:30NIV2011

      • Mark 12:31NIV2011

      • 1 John 4:19–20NIV2011

      • John 14:15NIV2011

Eagles Nest Church
pastorzach@eaglesnestmn.org
(218) 562-5252
http://www.eaglesnestmn.org
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