Pillars of Discipleship, IV 

[Note to those reading this sermon via email or Web site: part of this message was a video from Highway Videos titled Money, the World’s Narcotic.  You can view it by going to http://faithvisuals.com/37224 …press ‘play’ to preview.] 

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Let’s look at few passages from the Gospels…

Matthew 4: 18 - 20

¹⁸ One day as Jesus was walking along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers—Simon, also called Peter, and Andrew—throwing a net into the water, for they fished for a living. ¹⁹Jesus called out to them, “Come, follow me, and I will show you how to fish for people!” ²⁰And they left their nets at once and followed him. 

Matthew 9:9

⁹As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at his tax collector’s booth. “Follow me and be my disciple,” Jesus said to him. So Matthew got up and followed him. 

Matthew 19: 20 - 21

²⁰“I’ve obeyed all these commandments,” the young man replied. “What else must I do?” ²¹Jesus told him, “If you want to be perfect, go and sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”  

John 1: 35 - 37

³⁵ The following day John was again standing with two of his disciples. ³⁶ As Jesus walked by, John looked at him and declared, “Look! There is the Lamb of God!” ³⁷ When John’s two disciples heard this, they followed Jesus. 

John 1:43

⁴³ The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Come, follow me.” 

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Since the beginning of the past summer, we’ve been using much of our sermon times to talk about what a disciple – a follower –  of Jesus Christ might ‘look like’.  Starting with the ‘Colors of Love’ series, we took a serious look at what it means to love as God loves us.  The variety of ways that that can work out in a life. 

Then for four weeks in this “Pillars of Discipleship” series, we’ve been getting even more specific with you about some of the basics of being a disciple of Jesus - some fundamental things that Jesus specifically talked about when he called people into this relationship of discipleship. 

In case you’re new among us (and we have had new folks coming into the community pretty much weekly lately – what an incredible joy that is!), so if you’re new, or haven’t been around much lately (welcome back!), or haven’t been paying attention! Let me give you an update, we’ve been talking about four things in particular; we’ve been calling them the “Pillars (as in foundation) of Discipleship”.  Here they are: 

#1 is having a plan for our spiritual growth that includes a recognition that we aren’t intended to make this journey alone. So part of our plan would be that we’ll find at least one other person to link up with on this journey.  This plan would spell out what we intend to do in areas of our personal discipleship.  Things like prayer, devotions, Scripture study, accountability, and so forth. 

The second pillar is to make corporate worship (i.e., public worship) a priority in our weekly schedules. Jesus promised that when two or three gather together in his name that he would be with us in a way that is different than when we are simply approaching God one on one.  And we talked about how important that kind of connection is. 

We sang a hymn recently “Come, thou Fount of Every Blessing” and one verse in that great hymn says it plainly:  “Prone to wander, Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love”.  That’s the human condition. God will never abandon us, but we stray from God. Pretty easily. So we need that regular connection, we need to be reminded on a regular basis that we’re a part of something much bigger than ourselves.  We need to be reminded of the greatness of God, and those kinds of  things happen (or can happen) best in times of public worship. 

Number 3 on our list, we talked about last week. That is the significance of service and how our spirits can resonate when we are serving in the place that the Holy Spirit has set aside for us – when we find that place, the church benefits and we benefit.  So the third of the pillars of discipleship is to have a willingness to experiment, to try new things, but to determine that we’ll make an effort to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit to find that ministry that matches our Spiritual gifts. 

The fourth of the pillars has to do with our giving. The statement is that we will work toward the biblical standard of a tithe of our income, again, for our own blessing and to support the work of God through this local church.  And I’m not going to say much, if anything more about that this morning, I thought the video did a nice job of putting our giving in the context of this day. 

This is a day that we’ve been talking about for over a month – a day when we celebrate our Discipleship. We’ve got brunch cooking over in the Fellowship Hall, the sanctuary looks wonderful, because we really want this to be a special day.  Like a family birthday party, or an anniversary celebration, today is a day when we will stand together and say, “We are here because we want to follow Jesus Christ.”  Our reason for being is to become more like him, to reflect the character of Christ, we want to be God’s light in a dark world. This is a significant day! 

I spent a couple of days this past week with about 50 pastors up at Princeton Seminary. On Wednesday night after that day’s sessions, I was sitting in my little room with two of those pastors, both colleagues and friends of mine… and I asked them a question.  I said, “I’m going to be inviting the entire congregation at Moorestown this weekend to make personal statements of our commitment or re-commitment to be disciples, followers, of Jesus Christ. 

We all knew that the most basic invitation in the New Testament was Jesus approaching some fishermen, a tax collector, a physician, and a number of others and simply saying, “Follow me.”  And they did.  These two brothers, Peter and Andrew, dropped their nets right on the shore, and walked away from their old life to literally to go with Jesus.  All of them made radical responses to that two-word invitation. My question to these guys on Wednesday night was “Why?” 

“Why do you think that they did that?”  What was their motivation? Because, you see, factors like ‘obedience to God’, or ‘a promise of eternal life’, or, ‘wanting to change the world’ I think were mostly things that they learned later on. These were teachings that they picked up on the journey.  And I’ve been trying to wrap my mind around this question – what led those first disciples to say, “OK”  “I’m going to follow you.”  Wherever you lead me. Because they all followed him to their very death.  (Even Judas, in a way.)  He became their life from the moment of that call. 

I asked my friends that question, because I want to know what the answer is; becasue here we are today, standing in front of the same invitation. Some of you have already made your decision. You’ve said, “Yes” to the invitation. “Yes, I will follow you.” So today will be quite easy for you, really; it’s a re-affirmation of what your life is already about. 

Maybe some here have made some acknowledgment of Jesus’ call, at a point in your life, but you have been thinking more recently about what this profession means in ways that you haven’t thought about before.  (I hope that’s the case!) 

So, this question applies to you, too. “Why”?  Why bother?  This is not an easy life.  Why follow Jesus? 

And I know that there are those among us who have been like those among the crowds that we read about in the Gospels; they followed Jesus around – they stood, off to the side, and listened carefully to his teachings, and they watched him minister to a hurting world.  They saw him touch the lepers and heal the sick and the blind; they heard about how he loved people that no one else gave two hoots about… but they were on the edge, the fringe.  And maybe, for you, for some of you today, it’s like Jesus has suddenly appeared right in front of you. And now he’s looking at you… holding out his hand in invitation, saying, what about you?  “Come.   Follow me.” 

And he’s waiting for your response. (Because he doesn’t force anyone into this relationship.)  It is a relationship of love, and it is based in our hearts and our minds.  God has done all the work needed to make it possible for us to have a living relationship with him in Jesus Christ, but we, at some point, have to decide. Will you follow me? “Yes” or “No”?  Are you willing to go where I lead you? Are you willing to come with me? 

And that was the reason for the question that I was asking my friends. When people heard that invitation for the first time, or heard the implications behind the question for the first time … what did they see, what were they hearing; what was it that made them say “yes”? 

I really want to know this… because I want us all to see it, too. 

As I thought about this question, my mind went back to those opening scriptures, the times when Jesus went to those different people and gave the invitation.  It occurred to me that the invitation was, we might say, ‘customized’ for each person. 

Think about it: to Peter and Andrew: before calling them to ‘follow me’, he saw the working on their nets, and he said to them, “Follow me and I’ll show you how to fish for people.” So here’s these two brothers, hard workers both. They are part of a family fishing business that probably had been going for as long as anyone could remember.  And Jesus says to them: “Come with me, and I’ll show you something that is really worth giving your life to.”  Something bigger… something eternal.  So Jesus’ appeal to these two brothers was based on meaning, on the purpose of their life.  “Come, and I’ll show you real meaning.” And they came. 

Or, think of the two disciples of John the Baptist in John 1.  John the Baptist had already pointed out that Jesus was “the Lamb of God who would take away the sin of the world.”  Shortly after that, he is standing there with two of his own followers when Jesus walks by. He points to Jesus and says, “Look, the Lamb of God”. And these two disciples say, “Goodbye John…it’s been nice.”  And off they go to follow Jesus.   They knew, John the Baptist is a great guy and all… but he kept saying over and over that his purpose was to prepare for one greater than he… so when he says, ‘there he is!”, here is the one who can take away our sin, of course they went with Jesus. 

Up in Princeton this week, we were meeting with a guy by the name of Wayne Muller.  He is a author of a number of books, and a psychotherapist.  He was Henri Nouwin’s roommate at Harvard Divinity School, and appeared on Oprah, if any of that means anything to you! 

He had the group do a rather unusual exercise at the beginning of our time together on Tuesday. Again, there were about 50 people in the room, a kind of large parlor type of room; and we were all sitting in a big square.  And he said that we were going to go around the room and introduce ourselves.  But instead of saying, “Hi, I’m so and so, from ______________ church, or town”, he said, “Let’s do something different”.  Tell us who you are (i.e., your name)… and here’s what I want you to do…. 

“Everyone”, he said, “has at least one burning question that you hold in your mind or your heart.  A question that we might say, ‘holds you’.  It is a question that frames your day, it is there when you fall asleep at night and eventually you think about it when you’re awake.  It’s a ‘soul’ question…” And he said, “I want you to share that question with the group. We’re not going to try to answer it, but we’ll learn from the questions.”

Well, you know, I thought – “This isn’t going to happen.”  We hardly know each other – many of us don’t know each other at all.  We’re from different denominations, we have different experiences, we’re not on the same page theologically.  But, in spite of that… people shared.  Only one person took a ‘pass’.  (No, not me!)  It took us the whole afternoon session and the evening session that night to get through everyone.  Over four and a half hours! 

And by the time we were finished, there was something happening in that group.  And I realized that so many of the questions were similar – having to do with where God wanted them to be, where was God in my ministry when I work so hard, and the church is failing?  Why can’t I find an answer to this question that I so need peace about?  Questions of doubt, questions of faith. 

It occurred to me, here’s 50 leaders in God’s church -  who knows how many hundreds or thousands of people depend on these persons for wisdom and guidance… and yet we all had deep questions of our own. 

And I thought again about that invitation of Jesus.  Follow me.  And my wondering: what was it that touched the hearts of those first disciples so deeply that they knew they had to say, “Yes” to Jesus? 

And I think, maybe, that the answer to that is that they realized that Jesus was the only hope they had to find a satisfying answer to their ‘soul questions’.  To the two disciples of John the Baptist, when John pointed out that this person, Jesus, was “the Lamb of God who would take away the sin of the world” they went after him.  Because their soul question had to do with their sin… where can I find peace and forgiveness? Where can I go to lay my burden down? They went with Jesus. 

Then there is Nathaniel who followed Jesus after Jesus revealed that he knew Nathaniel’s heart.  Could it have been that Nathaniel’s soul question had to do with loneliness?  Does God know me? Does anybody really care about me?  And there was Jesus saying, “I know everything about you. Follow me.”  And he did. 

Or the rich young ruler who was looking for fulfillment in his possessions… and Jesus says, “Sell them all and follow me”.  The answer to what you are really looking will never be found in ‘stuff’.  It’s right here. It is knowing God. Follow me.”  (He went away sad… we don’t know his response.)

Simon and Andrew looking for meaning, purpose in life… their soul question was answered.  I’ll really give you something worth living for.  Or, Matthew, sitting in his tax collection booth – reviled by everyone, even his own family.  And in Jesus he sees unconditional love – something totally new to him.  No wonder that when Jesus says, “Follow me” he walks away from his old life, too. 

So here we are today.  And I just wonder – what is your soul question?  What it is that consumes you? What are you looking for?  Deep inside? 

And I believe that when our hearts are quiet… and when we concentrate on looking at Jesus – who by his own promise is here today, that we will all know that he is the answer to all of our questions. 

He is here… holding out his hand and inviting each of us… “Come. Follow me.” 
That’s what this day is about.  That’s what these commitment cards are about. 

Let me share something that I said last week: “Bringing these cards to the Altar is not our way of saying that we’ve got it all together in these four areas. It’s not even our saying that we’re going to do these things.  It’s really a statement of our intentions. That’s all we can honestly do.  Saying “Lord, I’m going to try and be your disciple. I hear you calling, and I want to respond. And in doing that, I’m going to be as open as I can to the leading of the Holy Spirit in these four areas. Four things that the Bible talks about a lot as basics in a life of Christian discipleship.  That’s all.  It’s our way of saying, “Lord, we’re listening as best we can… lead us!” 

What is your heart’s question?  If you believe that Jesus is the answer to that question, then hear his call, and Follow him. 

I believe that these types of decisions can be made in private, but I also believe that they are much more powerful when publicly expressed in some way. So, we’re going to give you the invitation to sign one of those cards, and bring it here to place on the Altar as a symbol of your covenant.  Keep one for yourself.  You can bring them as we sing….

Let’s pray.