matheteuo

Making Disciples – Matheteuo

Matthew 28:16-20

Click here to listen to the entire message in an audio file, shared on Sunday, October 12, 2014

I’m going to throw a lot at you today. I want to say I’m sorry, but I’m actually not. Because this is so foundational to the Christian life I can’t apologize for it. There’s going to be a lot here you’ll want to chew on and allow the Spirit to work. The Holy Spirit is the only one who doesn’t anything here anyway, none of this is dependent upon me. So let me pray for us as we drink from the fire hydrant this morning.

Introduction

The Passion Scale

| —— CIA ————————– LWAP ————————– SOAR —— |

CIA = Cold, indifferent, apathetic

LWAP = LukeWarm and Passive

SOAR = Sold Out and Radical

Where are you on the passion scale in relation to…?

  • football
  • fishing
  • Pinterest
  • Facebook
  • hunting
  • photography
  • traveling
  • reading
  • watching TV / Movies

Where are you on the passion scale in relation to…?

  • alcohol
  • Internet usage
  • marriage
  • parenting
  • job

Where are you on the passion scale in relation to…?

  • Christianity
  • your relationship with Jesus
  • discipleship

Jesus’ Co-mission

At the end of the Gospel of Matthew, before Jesus ascended into heaven, He delivers his charge to his disciples. It’s his marching orders. It’s what he’s asking his eventual church to do. Scholars, pastors, and Bible translations call this charge “The Great Commission.” The great co-mission Jesus is asking his disciples to engage and participate in. Another group uses the phrase “The Everyday Commission” to indicate that this is something we should do every day. Here it is:

“Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. When they saw him, they worshipped him; but some doubted. 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.’”

Matthew 28:16-20 NIV

If we… us here in this room right now… if we are followers of Jesus, like these disciples were, then this co-mission is very important for us. It’s not just another 5 verses in the Bible that are good to know. This is vital to the lifeblood of the church. In fact, if the 11 disciples that Jesus spoke this charge to, did not actually do what Jesus said, then there would be NO CHURCH. This charge is Jesus inviting us into the divine conspiracy of bringing the kingdom of God into this world through a redeemed humanity. Hmmm…

So it’s pretty important to get this part right… or at the very least, to understand what Jesus is telling us to do, right?

Let me make a bulleted list for us so we can memorize this and get this down (because it’s that important):

  • authority has been given to Jesus
  • now go make disciples (of all nations) [this is how discipleship is to happen]:
    • baptizing them (in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit)
    • teaching them (to obey every I have commanded)
  • I am with you always

Our marching orders, our ROE (rules of engagement), our mission (what we do) as followers of Jesus Christ is to make disciples. Think about it. If the disciples hadn’t made more disciples, then the movement Jesus started would have died out pretty quickly. Think about this (this will blow your mind): Jesus trusted 11 HUMANS (fickle, unfaithful humans) to accomplish the propagation of the Gospel (that Jesus lived, died and came back to life to rescue humanity from sin and destruction). Jesus entrusted the most important message for the whole world to HUMANS!

Robert Coleman in The Master Plan of Evangelism says this:

“Though He did what He could to help the multitudes, He had to devote Himself primarily to a few men, rather than to the masses, in order that the masses could at last be saved. This was the genius of His strategy.

“It all comes back to His disciples. They were the vanguard of His enveloping movement. ‘Through their word’ He expected others to believe on Him (John 17:20), and these in turn to pass the word along to others, until in time the world might know who He was and what He came to do (John 17:21, 23). His whole evangelistic strategy–indeed, the fulfillment of His very purpose in coming into the world, dying on the cross, and rising from the grave–depended upon the faithfulness of His chosen disciples to this task. It did not matter how small the group was to start with so long as they reproduced and taught their disciples to reproduce. This was the way His Church was to win–through the dedicated lives of those who knew the Savior so well that His Spirit and method constrained them to tell others.

“Jesus intended for the disciples to produce His likeness in and through the Church being gathered out of the world. Thus His ministry in the Spirit would be duplicated many fold by His ministry in the lives of His disciples. Through them, and others like them, it would continue to expand in an ever enlarging circumference until the multitudes might know in some similar way the opportunity which they had known with the Master. By this strategy, the conquest of the world was only a matter of time and their faithfulness to His plan.”

Jesus’ whole evangelistic strategy depended upon the faithfulness of His chosen disciples to this task.

Question: Are you making disciples?

If the reproduction of Jesus’ church depended on your faithfulness to investing and deploying a few women and men, would the church still be alive after you’re gone?

Are you making disciples?

What does it mean to “make disciples”?

Well what does it mean to “make disciples”? It would be fair to ask that question, right? I mean Jesus, your boss, or your spouse wouldn’t ask you to do something in abstraction… meaning they would equip, demonstrate or model what they wanted that something to look like. So what does Jesus mean when He says: “make disciples”? Great question. To begin to answer this we need to depart the English and look at the Greek (which is the language the New Testament was written in… and it would have been the language the Gospel of Matthew was written in… this is the original language that we have to peek at to really get at what Jesus meant). Again, this is an important co-mission to get right.

The Greek word for “make disciples” is mathēteuō. This word is found in 4 places in the Bible. 3 of those are located in the Gospel of Matthew and the 4th is in Acts.

Mathēteuō is a verb. The noun related to this word is mathētēs. Mathētēs is used 261 times in the Bible. It is used primarily as designator to those who followed and wanted to learn from Jesus. You have to have a descriptor and name for that person, place or thing (noun) and mathētēs was the word used to name those who followed Jesus: in other words, disciple. A disciple of Jesus is a mathētē of Jesus.

According to a Greek dictionary:

“Mathētēs means more in the NT than a mere pupil or learner. It is an adherent who accepts the instruction given to him and makes it his rule of conduct. [It is also] the general designation…given to those who believed on Christ” (pg. 356).

Mathētēs shows up a lot. Mathēteuō, on the other hand, this co-mission Jesus is entrusting to us, shows up 4 times.

  1. We’ve already read one of them in Matthew 28:19 “Therefore go and mathēteuō of all nations…” Translators put the english phrase “make disciples” in the place of mathēteuō. To make a learner/follower.
  2. Matthew 27:57 “As evening approached, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who had himself mathēteuō Jesus.” Translators put the english phrase “became a disciple of” in the place of mathēteuō. So it carries with the connotation, to become and to make.
  3. Matthew 13:52 “He said to them, ‘Therefore every teacher of the law who has mathēteuō about the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old.” Without getting into the context of what Jesus is talking about here (we’ve only got an hour to do a service here), translators put the english phrase “been instructed” in the place of mathēteuō. So we’ve added a level of instruction to the meaning of this Greek word along with become a learner and to make a learner/follower.
  4. The 4th instance is in Acts 14:21 “They preached the good news in that city and mathēteuō a large number of disciples.” Translators put the english phrase “won” in the place of mathēteuō.

The four instances of mathēteuō bring the range of meaning from make followers of Jesus, to become, to instruct, to win.

The same Greek dictionary defines mathēteuō for us:

“Mathēteuō means to be a disciple or follower of another’s doctrine. [However] mathēteuō must be distinguished from the verb matheo or manthano which simply mean to learn without any attachment to the teacher who teaches. Mathēteuō means not only to learn, but to become attached to one’s teacher and to become his follower in doctrine and conduct of life’” (p. 357).

Therefore, mathēteuō, in the biblical sense is making a disciple and it means to be a deeply embedded follower and a learner who becomes, is made, and is instructed in the life of Jesus Christ.

  • To know and to follow.
  • Learning and doing.
  • Study and action.
  • Increase in knowledge of Jesus Christ and a practicing follower of what Jesus Christ does.

Where do you think this definition of “making disciples” that Jesus charges us to do, where do you think it falls on the Passion scale? CIA, LWAP, or SOAR?

Does this overwhelm you? Does this sound like a lot? Does this yoke seem easy and burden light? It seems like a lot of work, yes?

Well, you haven’t seen nothing yet. 

How did Jesus “make disciples”?

How exactly did Jesus “make disciples”? If Jesus tells us to go and mathēteuō,how did he model such a practice?

In Mark 3, we get a glimpse of what becoming a disciple, particularly of Jesus, looked like:

“Jesus went up on a mountainside and called to him those he wanted, and they came to him. He appointed twelve–designating them apostles–that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach and to have authority to drive out demons.”

Mark 3:13-15 NIV

In Luke, it explains what he did before he appointed the twelve:

“…Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God. When morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them…”

Luke 6:12-13 NIV

What did Jesus do before he chose the twelve disciples/apostles? He went away from the crowds to spend some time in prayer (a significant amount of prayer). Prayer. He prayed. He prayed for a long time. Luke tells us he prayed all night long. That’s some serious praying.

What did Jesus invite these appointed disciples/apostles to do? What was he asking the disciples to do?

  • that they might be with him
  • he might send them out to preach (and have authority over demons)

Jesus calls them to a significant relationship as well as a particular mission. Heath Davis, our discipleship pastor here, uses the terms: investment and deployment. Jesus invests deeply in his disciples relationally, and he deploys them into action rather quickly as the investment relationally continues.

So it could be said that picking a disciple involves much prayer, and you would be asking a potential disciple to “be with you” and to “be sent out to preach.”

Before we talk about how we are to engage in Jesus’ co-mission in “making disciples” (mathēteuō)… let me clue you in on what is going on here culturally surrounding first century discipleship.

Bill Hull, in Choose the Life: Exploring a Faith that Embraces Discipleship, writes:

“The first thing Peter, Matthew, James, and company must have thought when Jesus said [make disciples] is that they should go find and develop other people like themselves… To Christ’s disciples, discipleship meant making a serious commitment to follow a leader.

“In the first century a young man could join one of a variety of different rabbinical schools. Each school was led by a rabbit or teacher. Evidence from history suggests that in some cases students chose their teacher, and teachers had the privilege of accepting or rejecting their applications… Disciples of first century Judaism learned everything from their teacher. They learned his stories and his life habits. They learned to keep the Sabbath his way as well as his interpretations of the Torah. When a disciple learned everything his teacher knew, he would go and teach his own disciples. If by Bar Mitzvah (age 12) a young man hadn’t achieved what was expected of him, he would be rejected and then would return to a life of one of the professions–farming, fishing, carpentry, and the like.” (pp. 31-32)

What does it mean that the disciples Jesus chose were fishing and collecting taxes? They had been rejected. They hadn’t achieved what was expected of him. Jesus chose the rejects. It wasn’t their abilities or their social status that made them somehow worthy to be a disciple. In fact, they didn’t choose to be a disciple of a rabbi, they had already tried, and failed. Jesus chose them.

“You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit–fruit that will last.”

John 15:16 NIV

Isn’t that amazing?! This should give us ALL hope!

Jesus chose the rejects. We did not choose Jesus and then try to perform good deeds for him. Nope. Jesus chose us and we couldn’t hack it on our own. I don’t know about you, but when I mess up (which is very often…just ask those closest to me: my wife, Amanda; my children, Sari and Macie; by co-workers and our church office staff. Yep. As long as I’ve been here at this church and in this community, I’m sure that those who know me well could create quite a list of what ails Jeremy Mavis. And if I were to see such a list I would be overwhelmed at how I am not good enough for Jesus. I would feel like a failure.

Thank God that it is not dependent on my own effort. Thank God that Jesus chose me. Thank God that His Holy Spirit empowers me. Any other belief system has at its heart a merit-based ladder to climb up to God. Christianity is unique in that God comes down to us (because we cannot climb any kind of ladder to get to God). Jesus chose me. Jesus chooses me in spite of myself.

Jesus tells his disciples: Follow me. In first century vernacular, that translates, Hang out with me because I believe that you can be like me. And if you stick with me you can become what I am. I don’t know about you, but sticking with Jesus requires a whole lot of faith…but if history is any indicator of the faithfulness of Jesus Christ… just look at the propagation of his followers: billions and billions of them.

Are you a disciple yourself? Do you believe that Jesus chose you? Even the kind of you only you and God know?

Secondly, if you are a disciple, are you mathēteuō-ing? Are you a disciple who is “making disciples”?

How are we to engage in Jesus’ co-mission in “making disciples”?

This is a radical thought, but I think we do it in the same way Jesus does:

  1. Pray,
  2. call people to be with him,
  3. and send them out to preach.

In Heath’s words:

  1. Pray,
  2. invest (relationships),
  3. deploy (on mission).

In The Trellis and the Vine, authors Colin Marshall and Tony Payne use these words:

  1. Prayer
  2. Personal Relationships
  3. Proclamation of the Gospel

Whichever series of words one uses, it doesn’t matter…

1) Pray as if the future of the world depends on it (because it does!). I imagine that you already have lots and lots of personal relationships with people both in and out of the church, right? Are you praying for them? Are you asking God if he wants you to invest in their life? Are you asking God for the courage to literally ask someone to come to your men’s or women’s group, your co-ed small group, or (heaven forbid) you create and lead a group because there isn’t one exactly in the way God is leading and he is probably leading you to start one? This only happens when you fully depend on the Lord through prayer. In Bible speak, this is called: faith.

2) Take the time to invest in others, call people to be with you amidst a personal relationship. This is convicting for a lot of us. Let’s be honest, the church isn’t great at making disciples. We just aren’t. There are lots of reasons why, and that conversation could be for another time, but let’s set aside the fact that we haven’t done a good job of Jesus co-mission in the past, and turn a corner in the here and now. Heaven forbid that we use the excuse that we feel bad that we haven’t done this in order to justify not changing to even start this.

Bill Hull offers a great list to start with:

A: a disciple submits to a teacher who teaches him or her how to follow Jesus
B: a disciple learns Jesus’ words
C: a disciple learns Jesus’ way of ministry
D: a disciple imitates Jesus’ life and character
E: a disciple finds and teaches other disciples for Jesus

Churches and its parishioners are typically great with B, C, and D. We are not so great at submitting to another (A), and we’re not great at finding and teaching other disciples for Jesus (E). Submitting to another means to listen and engage in B, C, and D alongside of someone who can show us what Jesus’ words mean, open our eyes to his way of ministry, and challenge us daily/weekly/monthly to imitate Jesus’ life and character (this would most definitely include confrontation when one’s life doesn’t imitate Jesus’ life and character… ouch… we independent and individualized Americans definitely don’t want that!)

The letter E in Hull’s list is the third engagement of the life of a disciple: “A disciple finds and teaches others disciples for Jesus.”

3) The purpose of discipleship is to make other disciples. A disciple is inherently a disciple-maker herself. Again, we are reminded of Jesus’ charge of going and making disciples of all nations. We can’t forget that the purpose of discipleship is not to grow and become like Christ in and of itself, rather as one grows and becomes like Christ (in Jesus’ words, way of ministry, and imitation of life and character), they are discipling others in that process.

I’m sure you are all aware that this takes time and effort. This requires work. The Trellis and the Vine authors write:

“Imagine if all Christians, as a normal part of their discipleship, were caught up in a web of regular Bible reading–not only digging into the word privately, but reading it with their children before bed, with their spouse over breakfast, with a non-Christian colleague at work once a week over lunch, with a new Christian for follow-up once a fortnight for mutual encouragement, and with a mature Christian friend once a month for mutual encouragement. It would be a web of personal relationships, prayer and Bible reading–more of a movement than a program–but at another level it would be profoundly simple & within reach of all” (p. 57).

If you are a disciple of Jesus at any level, you have got to have people on your heart that you know need Jesus. This is not an accident. This is the Spirit whispering and leading you to connect with them. This is you fulfilling the great co-mission of Jesus by making disciples.

There is so much more that could be said… but we’ve got to stop at some point here.

Before we conclude, I want to offer you one rather potent environment that embodies the discipleship process and the fulfillment of Jesus’ great co-mission regardless of how intentional or lazy you are: Families. Whether you are parenting on purpose or parenting on accident, your children will grow up and be just like you. You can say all the right parenting stuff and share the best wisdom in the world with your children, but if what you say isn’t deeply embedded into who you are, then they will follow and they will be like who you are. This could be incredibly helpful to hear, or absolutely terrifying! I could spend a whole day talking about changing who you are because that’s who your kids are going to become…oh… we are going to spend a whole day on this. Saturday, October 25 from 8:30a to 5:00p we are doing a parenting workshop called Have a New Kid by Friday. What a funny title, eh? In all actuality, having engaged with this curriculum together with my wife over the summer, the title should be Have a New Parent by Friday. Your kids’ behavior problem is not necessarily his behavior problem. Sure it’s a problem. But the solution is a change in who you are, and that change makes itself known in your child when you change. Fascinating!

You absolutely cannot disciple anyone else in the life and character of Jesus if you have not been radically changed by who Jesus is yourself.

So much more I could say here, but we have to conclude.

Conclusion

Back to the Passion scale. CIA, LWAP, SOAR.

Where are you on the passion scale related to your discipleship? Are you CIA, LWAP or SOAR?

Hear me clearly (this is so important): You cannot strive to be a disciple of Jesus! This is not a result of your own effort. If you walk out of this room before I say this you will think discipleship is impossible or at the very least you will say that you do not have what it takes. Wrong. You do, but only because you know the one who chose you: Jesus.

We can only be a disciple of Jesus who disciples others if we:

  1. Live by faith. Hebrews 11:1 “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” and Hebrews 11:6 “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.”

    You can put a Packer jersey on a Viking fan, but that doesn’t make him or her into a Packer fanatic. You can change the core of a person by anything external. Only Jesus can change the core of a person and that starts when one begins to live by faith. The process of discipleship that starts when one begins a life of faith doesn’t mean that you set saving faith on the shelf and then start the hard work. No, faith is the operating system that runs a life of faith.

    We can only be a disciple of Jesus who disciples others if we live by faith.
  2. Live by the power of the Holy Spirit. In 1974 a man named Walter Henrichsen wrote a small book called Disciples are Made not Born: Making Disciples out of Christians. He says: “Becoming a Christian is free of charge. It costs the believer absolutely nothing. ‘For by grace ye are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast’ (Eph. 2:8-9). But there is a cost attached to becoming a disciple. The cost is to become involved in God’s “thing” rather than our own. How easy it is for the Christian to become preoccupied with his dreams, his aspirations, his own little deal, and miss God’s perfect plan for his life. Rarely does the Spirit of God shout at a person. His voice usually comes in the form of an inner prodding (as the believer reads the Scriptures). The disciple is one who is in tune with the voice of the Spirit of God” (p. 35).

    We can only be a disciple of Jesus who disciples others if we live by the power and the voice of the Holy Spirit.
  3. Remember that Jesus chose us, we did not choose Him. John 15:16 “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit–fruit that will last.” When we fail and fail we all will, it is incredibly important to remember that God chose us. He believes we can be like his Son, Jesus Christ. God believes in us much more than we believe in ourselves.

    We can only be a disciple of Jesus who disciples others if we remember that Jesus chose us.
  4. Are desperate. This should have been first, but I wanted to end on this one…because for those of us who are very religious, we strive to do the right thing and beat ourselves up when we fail… or feel continually guilty that we are not all that God wants us to be.

    Henrichsen says: “This is the way it has always been, and it is the way it will probably always be. Christianity is a religion of rescue. It is designed for the desperate. It is for people who have a craving for something more than they can eke out of life by themselves. They are candidates for what Jesus has to say. They are the ones who ‘hear Him,’ who not only listen to what He says, but act on it. One of the fundamental requisites for true discipleship is a spirit of desperation that burns deep within the soul” (p. 36).

    Are you desperate for the things of God, the life of Jesus Christ, and discipleship in the power of the Spirit?

Do you feel Holy Spirit convicted that your life:

  • is comfortable and ordered for your own personal happiness
  • OR it is unordered, indicative of a lack of faith and desperation for those who are lost, new in the faith, and those floundering in life?

We can only be a disciple of Jesus who disciples others if we live by the power and the voice of the Holy Spirit.

Mathēteuō – to make disciples, become a disciple, been instructed about the kingdom of heaven, and won a large number of disciples.

Are you a mathētē who is mathēteuō-ing? Are you a disciple of Jesus, who is desperate to make disciples?

Let’s pray.