Redeeming the Time: Envisioning & Embracing YOUR Mission…to Make Disciples P a g e |1

Redeeming the Time, Part 3

Envisioning & Embracing YOUR Mission
To Know God & Make Disciples
Reviewing the Mission: It’s as Simple as Knowing God and Making Disciples.

In Part 2 of this series I spoke to the primary part of the mission Jesus gave us as simply
knowing the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus made that ultra-clear in His prayer in John
17.

2 For you have given him authority over everyone. He gives eternal life to each
one you have given him. 3 And this is the way to have eternal life—to know you,
the only true God, and Jesus Christ, the one you sent to earth.

I pointed out last week that the mission begins with the authority of King Jesus. And as the all-
authoritative One He has given one all-encompassing mission for His people: to know the
Father and to know Him whom the Father has sent. Knowing God then, is the single most
important part of the mission.

Knowing God necessarily leads to making disciples. The two are like lenses of a pair of 3D
glasses. Without these glasses, all of life looks fuzzy and out of focus. This leads so many to
frustration and confusion about their daily lives and what it should look like. We constantly
look to self-help articles, news shows, videos, books, etc. all in an attempt to help us manage
our time better, because we are just so busy. But as it turns out, when we put on these 3D
missional glasses Jesus gave us – to Know He and the Father and to Make Disciples – things
come into focus and we see with much more clarity that most of the busyness we are involved
in is not really pointed or aimed toward the mission! When knowing God is the first and
foremost mission of our lives, life will look, feel, taste, and sound different. Jesus priority will
become ours, and then we will see what He sees, think like He thinks, and make decisions that
are aimed at the bullseye He has given us.

We saw that last week from John 4 and the woman at the well. She came to know God, rather
quickly at the well that day, through the person of Jesus Christ. And that led to an
instantaneous desire to tell her entire village about the Messiah, many if not most, of whom
came to know Him too.

We also see this throughout the gospels. Andrew came to know Jesus, so he brought his
brother Peter along. Philip came to know Jesus, so he brought a couple of Greeks along to
Jesus one day. Paul met Jesus on the Damascus Road, and he spent his entire life making
disciples. There is no debate that when you TRULY meet God, you WILL make disciples. And it
stands to reason that if you are NOT making disciples, then you have NOT TRULY met the living
God. He does not leave you the same when you meet Him and know Him.

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And we also see this in Paul’s letter to the Colossian church. In chapter 1 he combines these
two parts of the same mission – knowing God and making disciples – with his own personal
rewording of the mandate.

28 So we tell others about Christ, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all the wisdom
God has given us. We want to present them to God, perfect* in their relationship to Christ.
29 That's why I work and struggle so hard, depending on Christ's mighty power that works
within me.

In verse 28, Paul wants others to come to know Jesus Christ, thus fulfilling the prayer and
mission of Jesus we just read in John 17. But, notice how knowing Christ immediately leads
right into making disciples through “warning everyone and teaching everyone with all the
wisdom God has given us.” This is hard work and struggle, according to Paul.

Since the two go together, and since you cannot have one without the other. If you are trying
to make disciples without knowing God, you are not making disciples of Jesus Christ, but of
yourself. And if you are knowing God and communing with Him but not making disciples, then
you are not truly communing with the living God, since really knowing Him leads to making
disciples. These two parts of the same mission are the spiritual 3D glasses we must wear at all
times in order to experience the certainty that we are headed in the right direction with our
lives, our money and especially our time. This is why we’ve named this series Redeeming the
Time. Buying back your time starts with getting life in focus with the mission Jesus gave.

Assuming you are pursuing a relationship with God through communing with Him, what does it
mean to make disciples? What will it look like? These are really crucial questions because our
culture today has seriously distorted discipleship so that it looks like something it is totally NOT
according to the Scriptures.

Making disciples starts and ends with obedience to King Jesus.

Let’s turn to the passage known as the Great Commission text in Matthew 28:18-20.

18 Jesus came and told his disciples, "I have been given all authority in heaven
and on earth. 19 Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing
them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. 20 Teach these
new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I
am with you always, even to the end of the age.

Starting with verse 18 you’ll notice right off that Jesus presents Himself as a King. He has all
authority in heaven and earth. As the risen Savior He has conquered every demon, every
principality, every power, and even death itself. He is the most supreme being in all of the
universe and no one is more powerful or more loving and good than He. So He begins by just
simply declaring that in a very succinct and bold way. This is Jesus way of basically saying, “I am
God.” Everything else He says flows from that truth.

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Notice next in verse 19 that the verse begins with the word “therefore.” A basic rule of Bible
study when you come across this word is to ask this question: “When you see a therefore, ask
yourself, what is ‘therefore’ there for?” In this case, it’s there for this reason: everything Jesus
is about to say is predicated on the truth that He is God, that He is King of the universe, and
everything in it, visible and invisible, spiritual and material, past, present and future. Adapting
the words of one of my favorite teachers, “There is not one maverick molecule in the universe
over which Jesus does not declare, ‘I AM the King!’”

It is BASED on Jesus all-consuming authority as King of the universe that He commands them to
do one thing in specific: Go. That’s the main verb in the Greek text of this passage here. It’s
just “Go.” Every other verb, verbal or word of action in his passage hangs on that main verb
and helps us understand what we are doing as we are going. There are three reflections of our
going according to King Jesus.

First, we are to make disciples. Doing this is based on knowing Jesus Christ. When you know
Jesus Christ you know that He is the King of the universe with all authority in heaven and earth
given to Him. So you do just what He said. You go, and as you’re going you make disciples. To
make disciples means to make imitators of Christ. That’s what “disciples” means. It means you
point them to Jesus, show them what He did, teach them what He said, and you lead people to
do what Jesus did. It’s really that simple.

Second, we are to baptize people in the name of the triune God. When you know God you
know that God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. So you want to be identified with THAT God, and
you want to lead other PEOPLE to be identified with THAT God. Part of that identification is
baptizing them. It is a physical act of immersing oneself into water to show that a spiritual act
has taken place by God. God has immersed a person into His love, forgiveness and mercy and
grace because of the death and resurrection of Jesus. The Spirit has immersed us into the
family of Jesus. So we lead people to symbolize that by being baptized.

Third, we are to teach the new disciples to do whatever Jesus commands. Notice they are to
OBEY, a word not well-liked in our culture today, really by ANY one. We are born as rebels,
hating to do what others tell us to do, because WE want to do what WE want to do. But when
you come to follow Jesus and become an imitator of HIM, you don’t do that anymore. That’s
because you’re following a King to whom all authority has been given. You decide once and for
all to give up YOUR life and take up His…to deny yourself and take up HIS cross and follow HIM.
Obedience is not optional, either way, whether you come to follow Jesus or not. But when you
DO follow Jesus, obedience is not a burden but a joy. Why? Because you KNOW GOD!!!
Obeying Jesus’ commands and teachings is a no-brainer when you know Him and the Father.

To MAKE Disciples You Must First BE A Disciple

To summarize this, we must be disciples before we can make disciples. We must know God
before we can bring others to know God. Being and knowing come before doing. And if the

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being and knowing are happening genuinely, authentically, and effectively, then the doing will
happen as an outflow, and it will only need guidance and guardrails.

According to the Great Commission then, we must be obedient before we can teach others to
obey. We ourselves must know Jesus to have all authority in heaven and on earth, and
therefore obey what He taught. THEN we can make disciples by teaching them to obey
everything Jesus commanded. Our OWN obedience comes before teaching others to obey.

Far too often churches are filled with people who get this backwards. Consequently, churches
become filled with people who know about Jesus, but do not actually KNOW Jesus. If they did,
they would acknowledge His kingship over their lives and actually do what He says. Instead,
however, Christianity has become associated with teaching and not doing. James addressed his
own church’s tendency to do this in the first century. He wrote in very plain and simple terms,

James 3 - 1 Stop being so eager to become teachers! Theirs is the greater

condemnation.

When you ignore this truth and choose instead to teach everyone about obedience while not
doing it yourself, you actually become a card-carrying member of the Pharisees…the ones who
plotted to kill Jesus. Why? Because as Jesus rebuked them, in Matthew 23,

“Do not be like them, because they do not practice what they preach.”

What Discipleship Obedience is NOT

Too often, as stated before, discipleship and obedience have become something they are NOT.
It’s fascinating to reflect back on my life what I was taught that discipleship is, and what I
actually did, thinking I was a disciple. It’s like there’s some sort of cloud over our thinking when
we’re reading the Bible. We read the gospels, for example, and see what Jesus taught and said.
But somehow, within moments, something mysterious and strange happens so that we don’t
actually come away with actually doing what He said. Instead, we just read, study, or talk it to
death and somehow come away believing that doing all that stuff is the same as obeying it. But
it’s not. And I grew fearful years ago of the most terrifying scene in all of Scripture, scared to
death that I’d be standing in front of Jesus with so many others, in that scene in Matthew 7.

21 "Not everyone who calls out to me, 'Lord! Lord!' will enter the Kingdom of
Heaven. Only those who actually DO the will of my Father in heaven will enter.
22 On judgment day many will say to me, 'Lord! Lord! We prophesied in your
name and cast out demons in your name and performed many miracles in your
name.' 23 But I will reply, 'I never knew you. Get away from me, you who break
God's laws.' [Emphasis added]

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Jesus sets it simple and straight for us right here. “Only those who actually DO the will of my
Father in heaven will enter [heaven].” I was once one of the false disciples who believed that
doing all the OTHER stuff I THOUGHT I should be doing, or was perhaps TAUGHT that I should
be doing, was the stuff that makes me a Christian and gets me in heaven. Instead, according to
Jesus’ pretty clear statement here, it’s actually doing, or obeying, the stuff HE has told me to
do. With that in mind, let me review what discipleship obedience is NOT. All of these come
from my own personal experience, and no doubt many of you can identify with at least one or
two of these in your own experiences.

1. Obedience as a disciple is not doing or leading a Bible study. If you are in a Bible study or
if you are leading a Bible study, that does not mean you are a disciple of Jesus. Nor does it
mean that you are becoming a disciple of Jesus. Jesus’ disciples obey Him. They don’t just
study about Him and what He said.

2. Obedience as a disciple is not Bible memorization. If you are memorizing tons of Scripture,
we might be tempted to say “good for you!” But not so good, if you are not doing the very
stuff you’re memorizing. Too often even well-meaning Christians ignorantly and
superstitiously treat the Bible as if it were some sort of good luck charm. They really believe
that by memorizing it and locking it in their brains they are okay with God and are followers
of Jesus. Not so.

Here’s what James had to say to his people about this very issue of handling God’s Word
without doing what God says.

James 1 - 22 But don't just listen to God's word. You MUST DO what it says.
Otherwise, you are only fooling yourselves. 23 For if you listen to the word and
don't obey, it is like glancing at your face in a mirror. 24 You see yourself, walk
away, and forget what you look like. 25 But if you look carefully into the perfect
law that sets you free, and if you do what it says and don't forget what you
heard, then God will bless you for doing it.

3. Obedience as a disciple is not reading good, solid Christian books. I fell into this trap for
years and have felt that God has brought me out of it in the last four to five years. I love
reading so much that ever since High School and Bible College I consumed many, many
books. That’s okay…if you’re actually doing what Jesus said. Instead, I slowly and subtly
replaced obedience with reading and studying, figuring that since I was studying about holy
things that I was a disciple of Jesus. And when I use HIS standard of who is and is not a
disciple, I was not one, no matter how much I want to believe otherwise. The fact of the
matter is that reading a bunch of really good, solid, Bible-based, doctrinally-sound books by
Spirit-filled men does not make me an obedient disciple anymore than going to McDonald’s
everyday for lunch makes one a hamburger. Both of these just make you sick…one
physically and the other spiritually. Reading a lot of these good books makes you
smarter…true. But it doesn’t make you a disciple. It just makes you a very smart deceived
person.

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4. Obedience as a disciple is not having an emotionally-charged, awesome experience in

praise and worship. Many think that because they love praise and worship music, and
because they feel that they really meet God in those moments that they are true disciples.
But again, this is simply an emotional experience. If there is no actual obedience to what
Jesus said, then that person is not a disciple. They are simply human beings whose
emotions are stirred with holy things in praise and worship.

5. Obedience as a disciple is not preaching or studying the Bible expositionally. I have been
led to believe for years that reading, studying and/or preaching through the Bible book by
book and verse by verse makes one not only a good student of the Bible, but also a disciple
of Jesus. Yet here again, I preached through countless passages verse by verse but did not
take seriously my simple obedience to the simple message Jesus spoke. I came to associate
a particular form of Bible study and preaching with discipleship, when the Bible speaks
clearly that obedience is the only association with discipleship.

6. Obedience as a disciple is not attending church meetings. In the south especially, being a
“Christian” is simply associated with having been baptized and attending “church” on
Sunday mornings. If you are more devoted, then you’ll attend meetings on Sunday nights.
If you are really devoted to prayer, you’ll show up for the Wednesday night prayer
meetings. Then there are the small groups, Bible studies, Sunday Schools, youth events,
etc. Churches are filled with so many meetings today that it seems as if going to meetings
has now been associated with being an obedient disciple of King Jesus. Yet so much of what
He teaches goes so unheeded, despite all the meetings about Him that people attend!

7. Obedience as a disciple is not believing the right doctrines or teachings. This is another
trap that deceived me for years. For I came to think that if I believe the right truth about
God and Jesus and the Bible, etc. and if I believed the right doctrines and teachings, then I
was an obedient disciple of King Jesus. Problem is, my head was just filled with a bunch of
truth that never really changed me. And I fear that this is where so much of Reformed
Christianity is headed now, because in so many cases the teachers usually understand it
correctly, but the followers come to subconsciously think that if they agree with the right
doctrine and biblical truth then they are a disciple. They are actually just doctrinally correct
lost people who are disobedient to King Jesus. And I was one of them once.

Being a disciple and making disciples begins and ends with simple obedience to King Jesus. If I
could break that down for you any more simpler I would do it this way.

How to Be a Disciple…and Make Disciples

1. Read Your Bible. Specifically, read the gospels. They tell us of Jesus Christ, the fulfillment
of everything in the Old Testament. The Old Testament is a narrative of God’s work in

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history with the nations, and particularly one, named Israel. The stories are recorded to
lead us up to the fulfillment of everything hoped for in Jesus Christ.

In the gospels you have the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, His death and resurrection, His
power and authority. You see Him in action, and in stereo since we have four gospel
writers. They record for us, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, everything God wants us to
know about what Jesus did and said.

Read what Jesus did. Read what Jesus said. Then read them again. Study them if you need
to, since some things He said and did are hard to understand. But obviously start with the
simple things first.

2. Obey What Jesus Said. After starting with the simple things He said and did, go out and do
them. Just like that. Just do them. Don’t read books on doing them. Don’t spend a week
studying the passages to learn more about how to do them. Just do them. You will grow as
you obey. You will mature and learn more as you do it. Let me give you a few examples.

 You could start in Matthew 1. When you get to chapter 2 you could start obeying God
by doing just what the wise men did: begin worshiping God by bowing down to Him and
honoring Him with your heart and body. Then, you can move on to the stories about
Herod’s murder attempts and the family’s fleeing to Egypt. This teaches you that God
was always in control of everything when it came to His Son, Jesus. And since you are
now part of His family, He is always in control of everything for you, too! So now what’s
left is to obey, by submitting your busy, frustrated, confused, and discouraged heart to
God who controls all things for those who are in the family of Jesus. Stop worrying, in
other words, and just worship a God who is sovereign over all the stuff in your life.

When you get to chapter 4 you read how Jesus responded to Satan’s temptation, and
then do what Jesus did when you are tempted. Know your Bible better than the Devil,
don’t be deceived by the way the devil uses the Bible, and say no every time he tempts
you to do something. That’s what obedience looks like here.

You would then move on to chapter 5, 6, and 7 in the Sermon on the Mount. Whenever
you read anything Jesus said or taught, you will be who you are, a disciple of Jesus, and
just simply do what He said. No further study needed. Bible study definitely enhances
your understanding and appreciation of what Jesus did and taught. But it is not needed
to obey it. Obey it first. Then study it more later and build a deep appreciation for what
Jesus is saying.

 You could pick a favorite teaching of Jesus in one of the gospels…to read it and do it.
I’ve been in the “Lord’s Prayer” for some time now. You can find it in Matthew 6 and
Luke 11. Jesus teaches disciples how to pray in those passages. And as easy as it is to
memorize it and repeat it, I have found it a difficult, disciplined practice to actually do
it., to actually pray the way Jesus taught me to.

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Why? Because when I start praying, I always begin with all the stuff I wanna complain
about, or want help with. I start with me, my problems, my issue, my questions. Yet
Jesus clearly and unarguably teaches me to pray by starting with the Father…not with
me. And there’s not a week that goes by where I don’t struggle to obey this, as strange
as it may seem. I still want to come to Him with all my stuff, but the Spirit brings the
“Lord’s Prayer” to my remembrance and reminds me once more to begin with the
Father, and not with me.

Now, the student, theologian, and exegete inside my heart and head wants to study
that more, to find out why I want to come to God that way, and why God wants me to
come to Him that way. I want to read lots of books about it, and exegete the passages
more closely. But I discovered a year or two ago that simply doing it the way Jesus said
was much more difficult than all my study and reading. At the end of the day, after the
bible study, interpretation, reading, exegeting, and theologizing, I still wasn’t simply
praying like Jesus told me to.

So I had to ask a hard question. Was I really obeying Jesus? Was I praying the way Jesus
wanted me to pray…the way the Father wanted me to pray? In reality, I was calling the
shots in my prayer life, not the Father. And yet I claimed to be His disciple, His follower.
But I was not imitating Him. I was not obeying the thing He told me to do. Is that
biblical discipleship if it doesn’t involve simple obedience to the simple thing He told me
to do? I can now say with an undeniable certainty, “NO!!!”

Conclusion: Discipleship is About Obedience… And Obedience is About

Love...and Friendship With Jesus

I grew up in a church culture where emotions were seen as detrimental to your faith. And to be
sure, when they lead the way instead of following the truth, this is very much true. However,
the Scriptures are filled with godly, good, true, right, and noble emotions that Christians are to
feel as a result of knowing God. There is joy, happiness, blessedness, peace, etc. all of which
are emotions. And the more the Spirit fills us, the more we will feel these emotions. Emotions
are a good thing!

I came to reconnect emotions with my walk with Christ and my worship of Christ when I
became a biblical-Charismatic. A biblical-Charismatic is one who understands that the Holy
Spirit does today the same things He did in the gospels and in the book of Acts…and it seeks to
do those things out of faith in God’s promises, in order to bring other people into the kingdom.
However, while I am grateful that the biblical-Charismatic in my life has redeemed emotions, I
have also seen that for the most part, whether one is a charismatic or not, emotions hold an
almost tyrannical rule over our lives.

Most people make most decisions based on whatever emotion is most strongly felt at the
moment of decision time. That includes Christians. Consequently, the church in our culture has

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grown to be one that is emotionally led, rather than Spirit led. As a result, obedience has been
mutated from the simple thing it is in the Scriptures into something very complicated,
approached with rationalization, and arbitrarily carried out in small parts. But this is not
obedience, is it? It’s actually disobedience when we choose which parts we want to obey and
disregard the others, even if we really believe we have a good, solid, doctrinal rationalization to
do so.

The Bible equates obedience with love. But our culture equates love with emotion, not
obedience. So discipleship is counter-intuitive, once again. Cultural love tells us that you do
stuff for others when you feel the swell of “love” inside your heart, bubbling over. And if you
try to do something without that swell of love, then it’s really not coming from your heart. It’s
coming from duty and obligation. And everyone knows that duty and love are not the same.
Except when you die for someone. THEN it’s called a duty of love. So we reduce duty and its
relationship to love only in terms of someone’s death or sacrifice.

But let’s work backwards from that point in our culture. What does the Bible say about this
view? It wholeheartedly agrees with it! Here is what Jesus said in John 15.

12 This is my commandment: Love each other in the same way I have loved you.
13 There is no greater love than to lay down one's life for one's friends.

John echoed this truth again in his first letter. We read in 1 John 3,

16 We know what real love is because Jesus gave up his life for us. So we also
ought to give up our lives for our brothers and sisters.

So love is very much equated with the duty of self-sacrifice and dying then, isn’t it? But let’s
continue to work backwards from there, and see what else Jesus has to say about love and
duty. Returning to John 15, we move on to the next verse which reads,

14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you slaves,
because a master doesn't confide in his slaves. Now you are my friends, since I
have told you everything the Father told me.

Now, we see that Jesus equates love with commands! And what’s even more counter-intuitive
to our culture is that Jesus also equates commands with friendship!!! How strange is that to us
in our culture today?! Love. Obedience. Commands. Friendship. Two of them seem (love and
friendship) seem opposed to the other two (obedience and commands), don’t they? But not in
Jesus’ mind. He equates them all. He calls us His friends if we obey His commands. We show
that we love our friend, Jesus Christ, when we obey His commands. Look at what else Jesus
said about this formula.

John 14 - 21 Those who accept my commandments and obey them are the ones
who love me. And because they love me, my Father will love them. And I will

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love them and reveal myself to each of them… 23 Jesus replied, "All who love me
will do what I say. My Father will love them, and we will come and make our
home with each of them. 24 Anyone who doesn't love me will not obey me. And
remember, my words are not my own. What I am telling you is from the Father
who sent me.

And going back to 1 John, we see that he elaborates on this theme he heard Jesus teach back in
John 14.

1 John 5 - 1 Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has become a child of
God. And everyone who loves the Father loves his children, too. 2 We know we
love God's children if we love God and obey his commandments. 3 Loving God
means keeping his commandments, and his commandments are not
burdensome.

Why is it this way? For one simple reason: Jesus showed His love for us, by making us His
friends, by obeying HIS Father’s commands. Jesus was the Son of God, remember? He had a
Heavenly Father. And He obeyed His heavenly Father. We learn this from Hebrews 5:8.

“Even though Jesus was God's Son, he learned obedience from the things he suffered.”

Paul goes on to teach us from Philippians 2,

5 You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had. 6 Though he was God,
he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. 7 Instead, he gave
up his divine privileges; he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a
human being. When he appeared in human form, 8 he humbled himself in
obedience to God and died a criminal's death on a cross.

Jesus loved the Father. He did nothing without the Father’s direction. He did nothing without
His Father’s permission. He never wavered outside the plan His Father gave Him. And the
Father loved the Son. And there was a friendship there. The relationship of the Father to the
Son and the Spirit to the Son shows us that the Trinity is grounded and made up of obedience
and love. The Spirit obeys the Son. The Son obeys the Father. And each person in the Trinity
loves each other!

This is the example then that Jesus has left us.

We can be wrapped up and swallowed up in that kind of eternal, inexhaustible love by being
Jesus friend.

And we become Jesus friend by obeying Him. We obey Him by doing what He tells us, and
doing what He did. Love is as simple as that.

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It’s as simple as obedience.

We make it something far too complicated when we take love out of the realm of obedience
and friendship and commands and place it in the nebulous, fickle realm of feelings and
emotions. When love lands in that realm, it ceases to be love, because it ceases to be obedient.
Therefore the friendship actually ceases.

If you wanna be a disciple of Jesus, you have be His friend. If you want to be Jesus’ friend, you
have to obey His commands. When you do this, you will become a person who can make
disciples of Jesus.

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