Ralph Porter

© 2004

    When I was young, Tennessee Ernie Ford was singing a popular song that everyone was familiar with. Sixteen Tons was built around the thought: "You load sixteen tons and what do you get? Another day older and a deeper in debt." Another day at work--riding the merry-go-round of life. Round and round we go. And what have we got to show for it? We're just a little older and more in debt. Is that all life is about?

    Why are we here? What's our purpose for living? Why doesn't God just remove us when we come to Christ? What else matters? Why go on living? What makes the difference between "riding the merry-go-round of life"--"another day older and a deeper in debt" --and a life worth living--life that makes a difference? Why are we here? What does God want us to accomplish?

    Jesus' last words to His followers were intended to answer that question. A person's last words to us are especially important. They tell us the most important things a loved one wants us to remember! Last week I, like many of you, lost a very special friend. Over the years there have been several old World War II vets that were "tough as nails," but who have loved me. David was one of those very special men. It was especially hard not to be able to get back for his memorial service last week.

    As I talked to our staff about his funeral service I was reminded of a file folder in the front of my desk drawer with very specific instructions David had left concerning that service. There were some things he wanted to say to his family and to us. They were his last words to us, and he didn't want to take a chance that we might not hear them. He also had some last words to me personally. My last memories of his final words to me were "I love you!" and "Don't ever stop preaching the truth! We need to know what God has said!" He didn't want me to forget those two things.

    As our Lord was about to leave His disciples, He too had some last words that He didn't want us to ever forget (Matt. 28:18-20). Paul's last words to his followers are recorded in 2 Timothy, his last letter to his young disciple. Among those words are included the same message that our Lord wanted to leave for His disciples (2 Tim. 2:2).

         "Then Jesus came to them and said, 'All authority in heaven and on earth 

    has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing 

    them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and 

    teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am 

    with you always, to the very end of the age.'"

    After Jesus died on the cross for us, His followers entered a new program for the present age. Jesus leaves his disciples a commission for their future ministry in that new program. What was God's plan for their future ministry?

THE COMMAND

    In His final commission to His followers, Jesus issues just one command. We normally think of it as two, but in reality there is only one commandment in His words: "Make disciples!"

    He doesn't just command us to make converts. To focus on just bringing people to trust Christ and receive eternal life is like a mother who gives birth to a child, stands up and says, "Well, I'm glad that's over with!" In reality, the birthing process is just the beginning. The mother will invest the rest of her life helping that child develop toward maturity! Making disciples works that way too. Once we've had the opportunity to lead a person to the Savior, the process of teaching them what it means to be a faithful follower of Christ is just beginning. We will spend the rest of our lives helping them develop to maturity as a faithful follower of Christ.

    Our Lord's commission is to make disciples, to help people understand what it means to become students of Jesus--faithful followers of Him. Considerable interest abounds in the church today concerning discipleship. It's a popular concept, but it's not understood. There's a lot of confusion about the relationship between salvation and discipleship, about the requirements to be saved and the requirements to become a faithful follower of Christ. Lessons which our Lord taught the twelve, his larger body of disciples, and the multitudes who heard His words, trusted Him, and became Sons of God. For the next few weeks we're going to look at what our Lord has to say about becoming a faithful follower of Him and the implications of those teachings for our lives today. This morning we want to introduce that theme by considering our Lord's command to make disciples.

THE PLACE

    Most people think that "Go" is the first command our Lord gives in this passage. In reality, our Lord assumes that His followers were going to get around. He was fully aware of the persecution that would follow, and the growing dispersion of His followers all over the world. They would be scattered everywhere. Some would voluntarily set out to travel to other parts of the world in order to proclaim the good news in many other lands. Our Lord's command is that as we go, wherever we go, we will reproduce faithful followers of Christ. Wherever we go, we ought to be about His business: Make Disciples!

THE TARGET

    Jesus adds to the idea of geographical distribution the extent of the target group we ought to attempt to reach. He commands us to make disciples "of all nations." This gives us a worldwide perspective. The word He uses is much broader than just other nations, it refers to nations and "people groups," to diverse ethnic groups, as well as to the Gentiles, the non-Jewish, pagan people of the world. It includes all kinds of people. We are to reproduce faithful followers of Christ among all kinds of people, wherever we may find ourselves in the world. That extends the target group to more than six billion people who populate the entire world. How in the world could we ever hope to accomplish such a huge task?

    The world is growing faster all the time. It took from the time of Christ until about 1850 for the world population to reach the first billion. That was nearly 2000 years! It only took eighty years, until 1930, to reach two billion. It reached three billion in 1960, thirty years later. World population achieved four billion people in 1975, just fifteen years later. Then the trend began to slow a bit, reaching five billion in 1987, and six billion in 1999. Both in about twelve years. It remains to be seen how soon the world will hit seven billion but that's so many people that we wonder how we could ever accomplish the task of reaching so many people to make disciples of all peoples.

    In fact, we could never accomplish the goal by adding people one at a time to the church. However, God's plan to reach the world isn't based on addition, it's based on multiplication. The power of multiplication to reproduce small quantities and bring about incredible growth is demonstrated by the story of the invention of the game of Chess.

    King Shirham of India was pleased when his grand vizier presented him with game of Chess. He asked him to name his reward. His request seemed so modest that the king immediately agreed to it. All he asked was that one grain of wheat be placed on the first square of the chessboard, two grains on the second square, four on the third square, eight on the fourth square, sixteen on the fifth square, and son on, doubling the amount on each square until all sixty-four squares were covered.

    When the king's steward got to the seventeenth square the whole table was filled with grains of wheat. By the twenty-sixth square, the entire chamber held considerable wheat and a nervous king ordered the steward to speed up the count. When forty-two squares were covered, the palace was swamped. At that point King Shirham learned from the court mathematician that, had process continued, the wheat would have covered all of India to depth of over fifty feet!

    Similarly, if each of us would train 10 disciples in our lifetime, and train each of them to do the same, by the time we reached ten generations, there would be more than eleven billion disciples in the world, each ready to reach ten more. We could easily cover the world with faithful followers of Christ, if we would just get serious about making disciples, reproducing faithful followers of Christ. However, after hundreds of generations at least one fourth of the world's population has never even heard the gospel! What happened to the plan? It has broken down because many of Jesus' followers have not been faithful to make disciples as He commanded us.

THE RESOURCES

    Jesus promises to provide two essential resources that will enable His followers to accomplish this task. In the introduction to the commission He tells us that all power--all authority--has been given to Him. That power is then passed on to us because of the second resource: He is with us. Therefore, Jesus assures us that we can count on His presence and we can count on His power. What more do we need to enable us to do the task He has called us to do?

THE MEANS

    Jesus also explains the two main steps in the process of reproducing faithful followers of Christ. First is is the result of baptizing them. This is the initial step of identification with Christ. By baptism we make a statement to friends and family that we belong to Him and want people to know what He has done for us. Following that initial step, we continue to teach them to obey everything He has commanded.

    That's a summary of what's involved in our Lord's commission: Each of us using God's resources, wherever we may go, to form faithful followers of Christ, teaching people to obey everything He has taught us!

         "And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses 

    entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others."

    Paul's final words to his followers in his second letter to Timothy are similar to Jesus' last words. In 1:13-2:2, Paul twice refers to what Timothy has learned from him. He indicates two things Timothy ought to do with the teaching he has heard:

         "What you heard from me, keep as the pattern of sound teaching, with 

    faith and love in Christ Jesus. Guard the good deposit that was entrusted 

    to you--guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us" (1:13-14).

    The first thing we ought to do with the things we have learned from Paul is to keep it ourselves. It represents the pattern of sound teaching. It's been entrusted to us. Therefore we ought to be careful to obey it ourselves as an example of what a faithful follower of Christ looks like.

    The second thing we ought to do with the things we have learned from Paul is the same thing our Lord asked of His disciples. It's the main thought in this passage, presented in 2:2:

         "And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses 

    entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others."

    Pass it on! That's the commission we were given by our Lord. Entrust what you have heard to faithful people who will be qualified to teach others also. You pass it on to them. So they can pass it on to others.

    These last words from our Lord and from Paul serve as the motivation to us to consider what God wants us to do here at Pleasant View Bible Church. What is God's vision fro Pleasant View? We could establish numerous goals and programs in order to make disciples of all people here where God has placed us. Four major goals seem appropriate to me as I've been thinking about how we ought to be involved in reproducing faithful followers of Christ:

    Every active participant discipled by someone.

    Every active participant discipling someone else.

         Howard Hendricks has rightly indicated that every believer needs a Barnabas and a

          Timothy in their life-someone to encourage us to become all that God wants us to

          become, and someone that we are encouraging to follow our example. We all need

          both of these in our life!

    Every active participant praying for two people with whom they can share the gospel.

    Every active participant involved in a supportive flock that can encourage us to

         become all that God wants us to be.

    In addition to asking what God wants our church corporately to be doing to develop faithful followers of Christ, each of us ought to be asking how God wants us individually to be part of that process. Who can I help to become a faithful follower of Christ?

    If each of our past and present elders would make a commitment to take five others along with us in the course of our entire life, and teach them to do the same, in three "generations" we could cover all the adults in attendance today. In four generations we could double the size of the church. In five generations we could have 4000 active followers of Christ, ready to reach out to five others! What difference would that make around the world?

    That's what our mission statement is about: "BUILDING UP TO REACH OUT!" Everything we are doing inside the walls of this facility is intended to equip God's people so that they can do the work of ministry throughout our community:

         "It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be 

    evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God's people 

    for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up" (Eph. 

    4:11-12).

    Some would respond, but "that's what we pay the pastor to do!" It's not the pastors' job! It's not the elders that God has called to make disciples. It's not a job we pay someone else to do so we can wash our hands of it. The work of the ministry in this church is all of our ministry. It belongs to each of us.

    Former Oklahoma football coach Bud Wilkenson described the physical state of most people in this country: "America's physical condition is akin to situation on any given Sunday in football stadiums throughout the NFL: Twenty-two men on the field desperately in need of rest; while 80,000 people sit in the stands desperately in need of exercise." In the church we ought to be calling people to "get out of the stands, onto the field, and into the action."

    Tom Landry, the former coach of the Dallas Cowboys used to define coaching as: "Making men do what they don't want, so they can become all they want to be." Paul tells us that God has gifted leaders for ministry so that we can equip the saints to become faithful followers of Christ, ready to carry out the work of ministry.

    Throughout history God has used common people to share good news! Scripture is filled with examples of common people who witnessed to others. Daniel wasn't a pastor nor a prophet. He was a politician who lived for God. The blind man in John 9 was no theologian. He couldn't answer the questions of the religious leaders. All he could tell people is what he knew from his own experience. He used to be blind; but now he can see. Do you know what that's like? We can all tell people that we used to walk in darkness, but God has turned on the lights. Now we can see. The Samaritan woman in John 4 had a similar story.

    The persecuted people in Acts 6:1-4 were scattered everywhere. They didn't have all the answers. They just shared in simple words what Christ had done for them. Their testimony was used by the Holy Spirit to attract others. Their words were supported by their life. That's how God wants to use us! Plain people, in our environment, telling others what God has done for us.

    The commission our Lord gave His disciples is for all generations. Every follower of Jesus is called to make disciples. The work isn't finished until those disciples become disciplers of others! How many people do we know that would say they have reached their present spiritual level because we invested time to make a disciple? Are they making disciples also?

    Every Christian, no matter how much experience he has, has something to share with others. We can always tell what God has done in our life and teach them the truth of God's Word we've learned, no matter how simple those lessons may be!

    We can start by making a list of people we could help grow. Perhaps your task will be to present the gospel to them (invite them to our Valentine's banquet?) Perhaps they already know Christ and need help to grow in their walk with Him. Who could YOU help?

    Based on your list of candidates, ask God to indicate who you could teach. Get together with them this week, or as soon as possible; offer to study Bible or pray together. You will begin to grow together, because of the fellowship, and you will begin to help each other. Maybe you need to find someone you respect and ask them to help you in your walk with God. When we begin to concentrate on developing faithful followers of Christ, that will make life worth living! It will bring an end to the old "sixteen tons" syndrome. It will make life worth living!