Disciples of Christ

Tonight we are starting a series of sermons on Christian Discipleship and I am to be giving an introduction on what it means to be “Disciples of Christ”.

Whatever else it means, it means serious business. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German Christian who was executed for his opposition to Hitler, wrote an important book called the Cost of Discipleship. There is a cost. Jesus taught that:

“If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9.23)

But there is good news. As we heard in our New Testament reading, there is a burden, but with Jesus Christ that burden is light. Now, by way of introduction to this introduction let me say how we view discipleship at Jesmond Parish Church. And, first, for any who are newcomers, let me explain our vision statement. It is Godly Living, Church Growth and Changing Britain.

Godly Living is based on the first and greatest of God’s commandments:

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” (Matthew 22.37)

That, we say, will certainly involve trusting in Christ and obeying God’s word.

Church Growth is based on the great commission of Jesus to:

“… 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.” (Matthew 28.19-20)

That certainly involves telling the world and serving the church.

Changing Britain (or your own country if different) is based on the second great commandment:

“Love your neighbour as yourself.” (Matthew 22.39)

That certainly involves caring for needs and contending for truth. Every Christian disciple in some measure must be trusting in Christ, obeying the word, telling the world, serving the church, caring for needs and contending for truth. That is, if they take Godly Living, Church Growth and Changing Britain seriously.

So we are going to be thinking this session about what the Bible teaches on all those areas of discipleship, starting next week with Godly Living; and Ian Garrett is to be preaching on “Trust in Christ”. But why are we concerned with what the Bible teaches? Let me explain that, secondly, by telling you about the Foundation of this church.

It was founded in 1861, I quote, for the “maintenance and promulgation of sound scriptural and evangelical truth”.

So, one, we are to be concerned for the truth. Not everybody is concerned for truth today. Many post-modern thinkers deny there is such a thing as “truth” in any absolute way. There is just your truth and my truth. All is relative. An unbelievable recent judgment by the Supreme Court of the United States contained these words:

“At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”

That, of course, is sheer post-modern nonsense. You may be at liberty to, but it is sheer nonsense to define this universe as made of custard or human life in terms of a baby brought by a stork. (In case some of you still believe that, I hope to be saying something about marriage and sex on 18 November when we discuss Changing Britain and our “care for needs”.)

So at JPC, one, we believe in truth. It is not, however, any old truth, but, two, it is “evangelical” truth. Evangelical comes from a Greek word meaning “good news”. In a church context that is the good news (or Old English “gospel”) about Jesus Christ, the divine Lord and Saviour. So evangelical truth is truth as it relates to Jesus Christ.

But it is not only to be evangelical truth but, three, “scriptural and evangelical truth”. How do you know what the Good News or Gospel is? These days it is more fashionable to be “evangelical”. But what Gospel are we talking about? This past year or two the media has been publicising some pretty wacky “gospels” – the Gospel of Philip and the Gospel of Judas, for example. The Gospel of Philip was the meagre “evidence” for Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code and the Gospel of Judas was strangely given publicity by the National Geographic (of all magazines). These were fictional writings considerably later than Jesus Christ and from fringe Gnostic sects. The early Christians dismissed them as fantasies. Those early Christians only wanted reliable books that came genuinely from the apostles of Jesus or the apostles' associates. And that is the canon of Scripture you have in the Bible. There you have the New Testament apostolic books whose subject is Jesus, together with the Old Testament that also witnesses to Jesus and that he treated as “God’s word written” – to quote the Church of England’s Thirty-nine Articles. So our Founders talked about “scriptural and evangelical truth”.

But the question then comes, “how do you interpret the scriptures (or the bible)?” Answer: in a “sound” way. So our Founders talked, four, about “sound scriptural and evangelical truth”. “Sound” is when you are willing to listen and learn from what the Bible says, rather than say what you think it should have said. Sound is when the Bible is interpreted so that one place does not contradict another – in line again with the Thirty-nine Articles. Sound is when you let the bible judge the ideas of the church when they clearly contradict the bible. And sound is when you listen to the wisdom of other faithful Christians (throughout the centuries) over difficult passages. But those faithful Christians need to be like Charles Simeon, a great Christian at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, who said that when he went to the bible “he is content to sit as a learner at the feet of the holy Apostles, and has no ambition to teach them how they ought to have spoken.” That is “sound”. So it is sound scriptural and evangelical truth to which this church is committed.

But that commitment also means two things. It means, five, as the foundation said: “the maintenance and promulgation (or proclaiming and spreading) of sound scriptural and evangelical truth”. Maintaining is guarding the gospel; it is making sure false teachers do not distort the truth. When church leaders say that the virginal conception of Jesus and his empty tomb is a myth or that sex outside marriage – pre-marital or extra-marital or homosexual sex – is acceptable, or that money is the most important thing in the world, we say, “No!” We must maintain the biblical truth against these and other errors. But we must not only maintain it. That can lead to a dead orthodoxy. We must also “promulgate” or proclaim and spread it. We are to “maintain and promulgate sound scriptural and evangelical truth”. And all that is why we need to know what the Bible teaches. So much by way of introduction.

I now want you to turn to our New Testament reading and Matthew 11.23-30. And if you want my headings, they are first, THE NEED; secondly, THE QUALIFICATION; thirdly, THE SUBJECT; and fourthly, THE COURSE.


First, THE NEED

In one sense, a disciple is in the school of Christ. The word “disciple” simply means a “learner”. But why do we need to learn from Jesus? Look at verse 25:

“At that time Jesus said, ‘I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned... ’”

The wise and learned did not, and still so often do not, see or understand the significance of Jesus’ teaching and his miraculous work nor did, or do, they understand about God and his purposes. But learning about God is the most important thing in this life – learning what he is like and what his purposes are for this world in general and you in particular. Only then will you be able, among other things, to solve the problems of this life, let alone be ready for eternity. The need is because too often the wise and learned of this world do not solve life's problems. Take the last 150 years and Darwin, Freud and Marx – three of the most significant of “wise and learned” men over that period. They have not solved life’s fundamental problems. It seems, if anything, they have created more problems. The fundamental problem, as all admit, is that there is a difference between what “is” and what “ought” to be. The question then is, “what is the explanation?” That is where people disagree. The Bible’s explanation is that the first man and woman rejected God’s word and went their own way and problems have resulted ever since. For we all by nature follow in their footsteps. But what answers did these “wise and learned” men give?

Darwin suggested that things would get better as they were more evolved. For him, therefore, time or history is itself redemptive. But it was not long before what had evolved was the dreadful First World War leaving millions upon millions dead in the trenches of northern France and Belgium.

Freud argued that the problems of life are mainly due to the frustration of your needs for nutrition, power and sex. But as Freud was dying in September 1939, the Second World War was breaking out with more millions dead including the millions killed in the holocaust. Freud and his atheism had not provided an answer to life’s problems any more than Darwin did. (You can read more about Freud in this month’s Coloured Supplement in the Newsletter.)

So, what about Marx? After the Second World War until 1989 and the fall of the Berlin Wall many still thought Marx had the answer. But they were so wrong. Marx believed that all life’s problems were due to economics and the lack of wealth. He believed that culture, politics and even religion evolved from, I quote:

“… the degree of economic development attained by a given people... instead of vice versa.”

That was Engels summary of Marx philosophy. Marx reduced everything to economics. That is pure materialism. And the result of world-wide Marxist teaching in Africa, the Far East, South America and Eastern Europe has brought misery and death to even more millions. The truth is hidden “from the wise and learned” – certainly it was hidden from Darwin, Freud and Marx. So there is a need. Jesus teaches the need. History and experience confirms the need. Which brings us...


Secondly, to THE QUALIFICATION for learning the truth about God, man and the world and all that Jesus teaches.

God hides these truths from the wise and learned. But in his providence - and Jesus says this is not just some whim of God, but his good providence, his good pleasure – in his good providence he has (verse 25b)...

“... revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure.”

We cannot understand why this is so, but Jesus assures us the reason is “good”, if only we could understand it. Yet we can understand that the essential qualification for discipleship is the “humility” of “little children”. It is not “little children’s” lack of knowledge, any more than their lack of physical size or age, that is at issue. It is rather that children generally do not think they know everything. They are more dependent and love to be taught more than many older people. They are teachable. Remember Charles Simeon and his approach to the Bible – he wanted to learn from the apostles rather than to have taught them. Simeon was teachable. So the qualification for discipleship is child-like humility.


Thirdly, and most important of all is THE SUBJECT that the disciple has to learn.

Well, the number one subject in the Christian’s curriculum, if I may put it that way, is Jesus Christ. Look at verse 27:

“All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”

So if you want to know what is hidden from the wise and learned of this world, you need someone to open up or reveal all that is hidden. Jesus says that one is himself. Certainly, if you want to know about God, you need to know about and to know Jesus Christ. Nature, according to the Bible, can lead you only so far – to the belief that there is a God and the belief that he is concerned for moral right and moral wrong. But it doesn’t give you saving knowledge – the knowledge how you can solve the fundamental problems of this life and the problems that relate to heaven and hell. But Jesus knows the answers. “All things” in verse 27 that have been committed to Jesus, must include “these things” in verse 25 that have been “hidden from the wise and learned”. And in this verse 27 Jesus tells us two vital truths about himself.

First, that only God the Father fully understands God the Son – Jesus Christ – “no one knows the Son except the Father”. How Jesus is one with his Father and both truly God and truly man is a mystery. The Bible teaches that is true. The Christian Creeds state the facts. But how those facts are possible, only God the Father knows.

Secondly, only Jesus Christ fully understands God the Father. Typical of other religions is the dying remark of Mahatma Ghandi, the Indian religious leader. One of his relatives asked just before he died, “Babaki, you have been looking for God all your life. Have you found him yet?” “No” was the reply, “I’m still looking.” What a contrast with Jesus who “knows the Father” and reveals him to his disciples. Do you want to understand God? Then look to Jesus, the divine Lord and learn from him.

So, to recap – first, there is a clear need to be a disciple since the wise and learned of this world cannot begin to tell you about God and his purposes for you. Secondly, the qualification for discipleship is humility and teachability. Thirdly, the subject to know is Jesus and all he is and all he has done for us – his life, his death his resurrection, his present reign and his coming again in glory and to judge the world.


Then, fourthly, THE COURSE – or what is involved in being a disciple according to Jesus.

How do you start the course, so to speak; and how do you continue? Look at verses 28-30:

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

The first thing you do to become a disciple is to respond to Jesus’ invitation to “come to him”. He does not say “go and do this or that and then come”. That is what other religions say. Jesus simply says, “come” – come just as you are, not understanding everything, with many problems and faults through your ignoring God – that is called “sin”. He doesn’t say, sort your problems and sin out first. He simply says “come” as you are. The invitation is to people with problems and sin – people “who are weary and burdened” – and he then promises you rest.

What is “rest”? It must include rest from fear of eternal punishment for your sin, because Jesus Christ takes away your sin and forgives you as you seek his cleansing; and he gives you his Holy Spirit for new life. And he gives you rest from the fear of death itself for you share his risen life as you come to him. He gives you rest in many other ways, too. So coming to Jesus is how you enrol as a disciple.

But how do you continue? Answer, you need to be “yoked” to him. The Jewish rabbis used to speak of the “yoke of the law”; but their rules and regulations were a “heavy burden”. Jesus said the teachers of the law and the Pharisees:

“... tie up heaven loads and put them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.” (Matthew 23.4)

But when you are yoked with Jesus and learn from him, he is there, by his Spirit, to help you and strengthen you. And he understands you – all your circumstances. He is gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls. For, he says, “my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” And he makes things easy at the most dreadful and in the most terrifying of times, if you have accepted that invitation to “come to me”. Bonhoeffer, to whom I referred at the start tonight, said, as he was going out to be executed by the Nazis:

“This is the end, but for me the beginning of life.”

He believed in the Resurrection of Christ as the foretaste of his own resurrection. So if you have come to Jesus as his disciple, one day he will give you also eternal rest – a rest not of idleness but of God given activity without the stress and pressure and pain of this life as we live, at last, as God intended.

Who has never yet come to Christ and needs to respond to Christ’s invitation tonight? It is so simple. Pray a simple prayer in your own words. There is one in the little booklet Why Jesus? They are free and available at the back. Or if you want to think more about things, join a Christianity Explored group. But if you do respond you should then publicly confess Christ and your faith in him. That is done especially in baptism, renewal of vows or confirmation (if you were baptized as a child).