JESUS CALLS HIS DISCIPLES PRIMARILY TO BE WITH HIM, AND AS A RESULT OF THAT TO GO OUT IN MINISTRY AND SERVICE.

In Discipleship Journal, Carole Mayhall tells of a woman who went to a diet center to lose weight. The director took her to a full-length mirror. On it he outlined a figure and told her, "This is what I want you to be like at the end of the program." Days of intense dieting and exercise followed, and every week the woman would stand in front of the mirror, discouraged because her bulging outline didn't fit the director's ideal. But she kept at it, and finally one day she conformed to the longed-for image.  

Daily Bread, August 8, 1990.

Mar 3:14  And he appointed twelve (whom he also named apostles) so that they might be with him and he might send them out to preach 

Mar 3:15  and have authority to cast out demons. 

There were three purposes for which Jesus called / appointed the 12:

1. To BE with Him -- 

2. To preach -- 

3. To cast out demons.

Let us focus our attention on the first priority. The 12 disciples were PHYSICALLY near Jesus -- for 3 and a half years. They walked with Him when He went in public, they saw Him teaching thousands, they were there when He confronted the Religious Pharisees, when a Roman official came to Him and He healed - they saw it all. That’s why we have the four gospel accounts. These are EYEWITNESS accounts. The disciples were physically near to Jesus. They were given the mandate to preach and could cast out demons in Jesus name. But what is the Foundation, what’s the FIRST thing that Jesus APPOINTED THE TWELVE FOR? The NUMBER ONE PRIORITY of the disciple is to BE WITH JESUS 

 

We may say, “Okay, but today, how am I supposed to BE with Jesus”?

The Disciple’s Spiritual CORE IS Abiding in Jesus    (JOHN 15: 4,5)

Jn 15:4  Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. 

Joh 15:5  I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. 

DEFINITION -- The Oxford dictionary defines abiding as “continue without fading or being lost” -- it could refer to a memory, or a place or a person. 

“Abide in Jesus and Jesus abides in me” --  

Does Jesus continue in you and me? 

Is Jesus fading away to me? 

Is Jesus being lost to you and to me? 

This is where the ministry of the Holy Spirit is so vital for abiding in Jesus because the Holy Spirit and the Word of God, the Bible, are constantly pointing to Jesus.

This means walking in our daily life in such a way that we are confident that Christ would approve of our eating, drinking, sleeping, talking and everything else that we do. 

How about the financial transactions we have -- receipts with or without GST? Isn’t this a common temptation? Save a little money here and there? Isn’t Jesus watching? Or what we look at online? Are we distracted? Bored? 

It may be possible to stumble and fall -- but pick yourself up -- Peter and other disciples did fall, but they picked themselves up because Jesus was compassionate and prayed for them.

Their success is evident because all of us are a result of someone who was a disciple in the last 2000 years and they brought the gospel to us. So the fact that we are listening here this morning is PROOF that discipleship is successful.

Yes, we will sin and make mistakes. 

A lot of that happens when we are distracted.  

But let me take us back to the first reference from the Scriptures -- the key to avoiding this distraction is found in Isaiah 50;4,5 -- when we get up in the morning, God Himself will teach us and prepare us to know how to face the day ahead. 

Martin Luther, who was one of the leaders during the Protestant Reformation in Germany in the 1600s once remarked that he had so much to do in each day that he absolutely needed to pray for three hours or so in the morning. He drew strength from God directly in prayer -- though he was a very learned man. 

During the early 20th century, in the United Kingdom, Smith Wigglesworth was a plumber with a great ministry in healing sick people. He was born illiterate but learned to read the Bible from his wife -- it is said that the Bible was the only book Wigglesworth read. Here is one statement that he made:

“If it is in the Bible, it is so. It’s not even to be prayed about. It’s to be received and acted upon. Inactivity is a robber which steals blessings. Increase comes by action, by using what we have and know. Your life must be one of going on from faith to faith.”

(https://manoahswife.wordpress.com/2011/09/16/bits-of-smith-wigglesworth/  ) 

Let us not get stuck on not understanding what “Abiding” looks like in practice -- 

Can I OBEY Jesus? 

Can you COPY Jesus? 

Can you even take one verse of Jesus’ life and 

DO THAT? Is that impossible? 

So when the disciple remains in Jesus, Jesus will enable that disciple to bear much fruit.

But if a person does not remain in Jesus, he or she will end up doing nothing.  That means, the END RESULT will not amount to being FRUITFUL for God, for Jesus, and will not pass the scrutiny that God will judge all our activities and life with.

YES - - the bible often keeps reducing the options of life to TWO choices in black or white. 

We must reflect deeply about the cost of following Jesus -- this is all in the final analysis -- Do you want your life to be fruitful or to be nothing? (Jesus is not saying here to the disciples that they will lose their salvation, but even many Christians live a life without doing really significant things for Jesus -- they may reach heaven, but is their earthly life just “nothing” or is it ‘bearing fruit”)

So that’s what Jesus Was saying THEN, 2000 years ago -- to the disciples, and today, in 2019 -- Jesus says to you and I “ Abide in me”. 

Note :- From the Sermon notes - Series on Discipleship - by Dr. Anil Jacob for Crossway. 

Stanley Thomas Isac

Stanley is serving as the Pastor of Crossway Church in New Delhi, he can be reached at stanleytisac@gmail.com 

JESUS WAS DISCIPLINED IN DAILY SECRET PRAYER

Early African converts to Christianity were earnest and regular in private devotions. Each one reportedly had a separate spot in the thicket where he would pour out his heart to God. Over time the paths to these places became well worn. As a result, if one of these believers began to neglect prayer, it was soon apparent to the others. They would kindly remind the negligent one, "Brother, the grass grows on your path."

Today in the Word, June 29, 1992. 

Mark 1:35  And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed. 

a.        Mark 1:35. This is one verse about Jesus’ lifestyle which stands strong on its own. But we get greater clarity when we read the preceding verses. In short, the previous evening had been a very busy day for Jesus -- he had been healing the multitudes, casting out demons and curing and healing diseased people. This had been so successful that people came to his house. Not just a few people -- but the ENTIRE CITY!

b.        Physically, Jesus must have been exhausted and tired -- if you speak to people who are involved in evangelism or very intense spiritual labours, it is often tiring -- because we are serving others not only with our words, but also from our inner beings. My wife and I had once met a missionary who serves in Chhatisgarh, and he had said that actually the hardest thing to do do is evangelism in missionary work -- because that is the real front line, one feels the resistance of the forces of darkness who don’t want to give up people whom they have captured. Even Paul asked people to pray for him to be bold. So Jesus was tired. You could expect Him to sleep. 

c.         Spiritual strength: you and I as a disciple of Jesus can expect “to be in the secluded place” -- but even if you are PHYSICALLY secluded, disciples DRAW SPIRITUAL strength in Prayer by being in morning fellowship  with our heavenly Father. 

d.        But what does this verse say -- it says He was out early in the morning, WHILE IT was dark. I believe that this is one of the secrets of Jesus’ successful ministry - that he was disciplined, that He had a lifestyle of being secluded from people, and that even he saturated his personal time in prayer.

DISCIPLES draw their power and strength not ONLY with the physical discipline of getting up early in the morning but COMBINING that with dependence on God in prayer.

Military commandos have a disciplined lifestyle; Olympic athletes have a disciplined training lifestyle; in any area of human activity - physical and routine discipline give you very good results.

Here, what we are seeing is ALSO that Jesus was focused in getting His body to obey but ALSO to be AWAY from People when He was CLOSE to God in prayer.

And this is the secret of godly living -- we need to pull away from people in order to be close to God. When we are close to God, in prayer, in meditating on the Scriptures, in bringing our confusions, troubles, doubts to Him in prayer and only sharing them with Him, we will get the results that Jesus got!

How many Christians run around with other believers having “time of fellowship” or “hanging out” and so on -- which is fine. But do they ALSO spend that much time BEING in the presence of God -- even if it is NOT in the morning, at least once a week, Secluding yourself to pray and to have god examine your heart, allow the Word of God to penetrate, and influence and change and convict me? Doe that happen?

That’s the meaning of being in the “secluded place” that Jesus was also secluded -- even from his own disciples.

So there is a part of Christian living that is not very social. Like Jesus, we must spend a lot of time WITH GOD.

e.        Application to me: If Jesus was like this, how much more we need to be full of prayer early in the morning. That’s the only way to prepare for the day ahead and the challenges ahead. Since Jesus prayed early in the morning, I may even ask, will not the disciple of Jesus also want to do what Jesus did?

f.          Another application comes to mind: In Jesus’ life, we see that He spent LOTS of time in secret prayer with God and with nobody seeing Him. But when he had to pray in public, he would pray very briefly and God would answer that public, short prayer. The secret is what is the hidden life of prayer -- this is what Jesus referred to in Mathew 6:6

g.        MODERN APPLICATION:  About 25 years back, Stephen Covey wrote a book called “first things first”. You may have seen it in bookstores. It’s not a Christian book. One thing that Covey uncovered in his study of great leaders is a simple principle that we are seeing in the life of Jesus : “Private victory precedes public victory”. And this is the same thing that Jesus talked about in Matthew 6 -- our father watches what we are doing in secret. What is done in secret will be rewarded publicly by God.

Note :- From the Sermon notes - series on Discipleship by Dr. Anil Jacob for Crossway. 

Stanley Thomas Isac

Stanley is serving as the Pastor of Crossway Church in New Delhi, he can be reached at stanleytisac@gmail.com

Are you TEACHABLE ?

We must face the fact that many today are notoriously careless in their living. This attitude finds its way into the church. We have liberty, we have money, we live in comparative luxury. As a result, discipline practically has disappeared. What would a violin solo sound like if the strings on the musician's instrument were all hanging loose, not stretched tight, not "disciplined"? 

A.W. Tozer, Men Who Met God.

GOD GIVES DISCIPLES OPEN, TEACHABLE HEARTS; THE DISCIPLE IS SOMEONE WITH DISCIPLINE

Prophetic Passage about Jesus Before His time/ The Servant - Isaiah

Isaiah 50:4,5

Isa 50:4  The Lord GOD has given me the tongue of those who are taught, that I may know how to sustain with a word him who is weary. Morning by morning he awakens; he awakens my ear to hear as those who are taught. 

Isa 50:5  The Lord GOD has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious; I turned not backward. 

1.        In this passage, we have a reference that is written nearly 600 years before Jesus’ life on earth. This is a prophetic passage -- and here we have the Holy Spirit showing us some specific matters about how God’s servants are taught. In Old Testament times, genuine prophets heard directly from God.

a)        One thing that’s very clear is that Isaiah, who is directly writing here, but also a reference prophetically to Jesus is this. Isaiah and Jesus were both “Taught” -- that's the real daily lifestyle of a true disciple -- after all, he or she wants to be influenced and taught by the person he or she is being mentored or coached by, isn’t it?

b)       In these few verses, we may notice the following:

i.          When was the Servant taught? What time of day ?  Notice that it simply says, “morning by morning”.

ii.        For what purpose was the Servant taught?  When we as disciples are taught, whom is this teaching for? It’s for others, it is for those who are tired, fed up, discouraged, and weary --

iii.      Who was the teacher of the Servant? Notice that this is the real purpose of THE MORNING Quiet Time -- to listen in the heart of hearts, in the morning to receive God’s teaching TO us for others. God is happy to teach us early in the morning -- and we must do what he teaches us to do, and then we can encourage and support others.

c)        Now this passage shows the inner secret life of the prophet Isaiah (when we read ahead, it becomes clear that this is also referring to Jesus who will be ), we see that God speaks to the disciple, to the one He wants to teach, and to you as you want to serve God with greater sincerity, heart. God is the one who opens the ears of the heart.

d)       Now notice the major focus of this verse. “Morning by Morning” -- refers to a habitual lifestyle that is unbroken. In other words, there is a certain rhythm, there is a predictability and there is a discipline, a routine that Isaiah had (and Jesus) had in being awoken by God. Only then could the servant of God actually communicate to the people of God what God had spoken.

e)        I can testify personally -- the morning is often the time when there is little external noise, disturbance, and distraction. Mental focus and mental clarity is very high -- and if we are sensitive to the Holy Spirit and yield our bodies to PULLL out of Sleep and push into the day, early in the morning, we will find that we are actually receiving a very clear understanding from the Bible early in the morning. This is something I have experienced many times again and again.

EXCEPTION: We must NOT burden the lady who is pregnant or someone is in surgery or ill or ailing with this verse -- this is not meant to find fault with those who genuinely need to rest and cannot do what is mentioned here. It is not God’s nature, to find fault with those in peculiar situations in life.

Note :- From the Sermon outline - series on Discipleship by Dr. Anil Jacob for Crossway.        

Stanley Thomas Isac

Stanley is serving as the Pastor of Crossway Church in New Delhi, he can be reached at stanleytisac@gmail.com

Jesus the right model of Discipleship.

One Sunday morning in 1865, a black man entered a fashionable church in Richmond, Virginia. When Communion was served, he walked down the aisle and knelt at the altar. A rustle of resentment swept the congregation. How dare he! After all, believers in that church used the common cup. Suddenly a distinguished layman stood up, stepped forward to the altar, and knelt beside the black man. With Robert E. Lee setting the example, the rest of the congregation soon followed his lead.

From the very start of Creation, God made men and women to be His image-bearers, to be close to Him in a personal relationship and the purpose of this “Creation mandate” was to work, to relate to the entire created world, and to go forth and multiply.

This was reiterated after the Fall to Noah and to Abraham and Moses and the nation of Israel so that the Fall would be reversed through the plan of salvation - but hte underlying theme is consistent with the Creation mandate -- we must bear His image and go forth and multiply.

Jesus is the perfect and exact representation of God in human form (Hebrews 1:3), so whatever Jesus did and said with the disciples is something we must consider seriously, and it is also consistent with what God wanted from the very beginning. Jesus called and initiated who would be on his first team of 12 - they responded (in various ways, Judas being one of 12 who went bad) -- so there is human agency and divine agency in this process. The primary purpose of discipleship is to be with Jesus (not only passively ) but actively as a result of this being with Christ - which should result in other believers also wanting to know how we can grow into the maturity of Jesus Christ (the unity of which Jesus wants in John 17.              

                                                                  Note :- From the Sermon outline series on Discipleship by Dr. Anil Jacob for Crossway.         

Stanley Thomas Isac

Stanley is serving as the Pastor of Crossway Church in New Delhi, he can be reached at stanleytisac@gmail.com 

Carry the Cross “DAILY”

A brief, simple, but expressive eulogy was pronounced by Martin Luther upon a pastor at Zwickau in 1522 named Nicholas Haussmann. "What we preach, he lived," said the great reformer.

Luke 9:23 Then he said to them all:
“Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves
and take up their cross daily and follow me.

Follow Jesus every Day

A. Discipleship is a painful, lifelong, daily process of transformation,
(Philippians 3:13-14).

B. Our will power, determination, and strength can’t help us meet the
challenges in discipleship. Therefore we need to do exactly as Jesus did.

C. First he was led by the Spirit (Matthew 4:1),
Second he had an intimate relationship with God, 
Third, he depended on God’s grace (Luke 22:43).

If Jesus’ death and resurrection were the brains of God’s salvation plan
discipleship is the heartbeat.
It is the sacrificial lifestyle of true disciples that inspire the world to leave
everything behind and follow Christ exclusively.
God sent his son to set the captives free.
It’s the disciples who shall go forth and ring the bell,
in every possible way.

Note :- From the Sermon outline series on Discipleship by Dr. Anil Jacob for Crossway. 

Stanley Thomas Isac

Stanley is serving as the Pastor of Crossway Church in New Delhi,
he can be reached at stanleytisac@gmail.com 

Carry the Cross

Carry the Cross

In Planet In Rebellion, George Vandeman wrote: "It was May 21, 1946. The place - Los Alamos. A young and daring scientist was carrying out a necessary experiment in preparation for the atomic test to be conducted in the waters of the South Pacific atoll at Bikini. "He had successfully performed such an experiment many times before. In his effort to determine the amount of U-235 necessary for a chain reaction--scientists call it the critical mass--he would push two hemispheres of uranium together. Then, just as the mass became critical, he would push them apart with his screwdriver, thus instantly stopping the chain reaction. But that day, just as the material became critical, the screwdriver slipped! The hemispheres of uranium came too close together. Instantly the room was filled with a dazzling bluish haze. Young Louis Slotin, instead of ducking and thereby possibly saving himself, tore the two hemispheres apart with his hands and thus interrupted the chain reaction. By this instant, self-forgetful daring, he saved the lives of the seven other persons in the room. . . as he waited. . for the car that was to take him to the hospital, he said quietly to his companion, 'You'll come through all right. But I haven't the faintest chance myself' It was only too true. Nine days later he died in agony.

Luke 9:23 Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.

A. Jesus was sought after to kill for who he was, (Matthew 26:62-68) and the crowds rejected him for his actions, (John 6:66).

B. This is the cross. We too will be persecuted for who we are (John 1:12) and be ridiculed for our actions, (John 16:33).

C. This is how we carry it. Resist pressure and stand firm to the end regardless of what the world will say or do unto us.

There are no crown-wearers in heaven who were not cross- bearers here below. - C.H Spurgeon.

Note :- From the Sermon outline series on Discipleship by Dr. Anil Jacob for Crossway. 

Stanley Thomas Isac

Stanley is serving as the Pastor of Crossway Church in New Delhi, he can be reached at stanleytisac@gmail.com 

Denying Myself

Denying Myself

During the US civil war Abraham Lincoln met with a group of ministers for a prayer breakfast. Lincoln was not a church-goer but was a man of deep, if at times unorthodox, faith. At one point one of the ministers said, “Mr President, let us pray that God is on our side”. Lincoln’s response showed far greater insight, “No, gentlemen, let us pray that we are on God’s side.

Luke 9:23a - Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves……

One of the hardest thing in one's daily living is to                                             

1. Deny Yourself (Denying myself)

A. Self-denial was the foundation of Jesus’ ministry. Evident in the incarnation (Philippians 2:5-8) and the death of Jesus Christ (Isaiah 53:7).

B. Two biblical methods for denying yourself.                                             

First by living for the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31) and serving others (Mark 10:45).

Denying myself is a daily process which is difficult but not impossible. We have the finest example in Christ Jesus to look up to and follow. 

Note :- From the Sermon outline series on Discipleship by Dr. Anil Jacob for Crossway. 

Stanley Thomas Isac

Stanley is serving as the Pastor of Crossway Church in New Delhi, he can be reached at stanleytisac@gmail.com