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  A CALL BACK TO DISCIPLESHIP
  by Todd Atkinson
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Summary: This sermon reflects on the importance of discipleship,
focusing on the call to follow Jesus and the three key aspects of
discipleship: what to believe (theology), how to behave (morality), and
how to bless God (worship). It emphasizes the need to align our lives
with the teachings and passions of Jesus, leaving behind self-
centeredness and embracing a life of submission and imitation of Christ.

Topics: "Discipleship", "Imitation of Christ"
Scripture References: Matthew 4:19, Matthew 16:24, Luke 9:23, Matthew 28:19, John 13:34, Romans 12:1

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DESCRIPTION
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This sermon reflects on the importance of discipleship, focusing on the
call to follow Jesus and the three key aspects of discipleship: what to
believe (theology), how to behave (morality), and how to bless God
(worship). It emphasizes the need to align our lives with the teachings
and passions of Jesus, leaving behind self-centeredness and embracing a
life of submission and imitation of Christ.

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CONTENT
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And so many of them asked if I could come visit them at the start of
their year. And so three trips in three weeks was a little too much. I
missed my family, I missed my church home, and so it's just lovely to be
back.

As I was preparing this week, I was thinking back how that many years
ago, I took time each week to go to a cabin in the mountains. And each
week I'd spend one, two, or three days there praying. And I was really
praying about a question, an insightful question that a couple of people
in our congregation had asked me.

And I wanted to find an answer to that question. And the question was,
what is our vision as a church? So I was doing lots of preaching and
teaching and things that I thought were vision. But if I'm talking about
things that I think are vision, and they're still asking me what is the
vision, I knew I'm missing somewhere.

And I needed the time with the Lord to figure that out. And so one of
the things that became evident to me during those prayer times is that
it isn't necessarily our vision for the church that really matters, as
much as it is the vision of Jesus. Because the church here, other
places, belongs to him, it's his church.

And so that's the overriding question is, what is the vision of Jesus
for his church? What does he want his church to be like? So I spent
those days in the mountains looking back at the life story of Jesus,
again with fresh eyes. And as I looked back to it, I simply asked this
question, what were his greatest passions during his earthly life and
ministry? And I identified five. And it seemed like a foolproof plan to
me, simply find those things that Jesus is most passionate about and
make them our greatest passions, because how could you ever go wrong
doing that? And so I'm still convinced about that plan, find the things
that Jesus is most passionate about, and let's us make them our greatest
passions in life, and then there's no way heaven could ever fall for us.

But they would only be proud of us. So we're still doing that. This came
to be known in our church as the five passions, and everything in our
church and movement is organized around them.

The more time that you spend here, the more you'll hear about them.
Father Stephen actually began our year preaching on the five passions,
of which I'm contributing today. And if you're new here, you'll notice
these five paintings on the wall by Chandra.

And so there are explanations kind of at the back a little bit around
the corner. There's an explanation about each one of them, but each one
of them represents one of the five passions of Jesus. This week, we are
looking at the second of the five passions.

It's got a few different titles, but I'm going to call it the passion
for discipleship. We could call it the passion for teaching. They are
very interrelated because Jesus was called the teacher, but the ones who
were most receptive to his teaching were called disciples.

And so Jesus, the teacher, the disciples, the followers of Jesus, they
are two sides of the very same coin. So, but for my purposes this
morning, I'm going to call it the passion for discipleship. The very
first followers of Jesus were called disciples.

So this morning, I want to look at where their story began. How did they
become disciples? What did that mean for them to be disciples? And
through their stories, how do we today hear from Jesus a renewed call to
our own discipleship? The story that was read aloud for us this morning
begins with Jesus walking by the Sea of Galilee, and upon seeing two
brothers out there in a fishing boat, he calls aloud to them, follow me.
These two simple words change these fishermen's lives forever.

When they heard those words, what do you think would have went through
their mind? Follow me, Jesus on this edge of the Sea of Galilee, two
simple words, but boy did those words pack a punch. What would have went
through their mind? Of course, Scripture doesn't explicitly lay that out
for us, but I think I've got some good reasons of what might have went
through their mind. First, I think it's important to understand that
this was not their only exposure to Jesus.

If you read all four gospel accounts, a fuller picture emerges, and we
see that Jesus had become something of a local celebrity in this area.
He is doing remarkable things. Word about him is spreading through the
whole region.

People are becoming familiar with him. He was leaving a distinct mark,
and people were beginning to ask the question, could this be the Messiah
of God? Could this be the one that our people have waited for for
centuries? Could this be the one that God has sent for our salvation? So
when Jesus said to these men, follow me, they recognized him when he
said those words. They maybe weren't personally acquainted with him yet,
but they certainly recognized him.

They have some idea who this epic figure in their region is. So when he
says to them, follow me, I think they must have looked over their
shoulders, wondering who he was speaking to. Because fishermen were not
esteemed in their society.

They felt terribly unimportant. So much was said in so few words. When
Jesus said, follow me, what did that entail except like, he sees me? The
disciple or the fishermen before their disciples felt very invisible.

They were thought to have performed one task in their society, and one
alone, which is the provision of food. But they weren't thought to
matter themselves as people. You wanted the fish, you didn't want the
fishermen.

And so here Jesus says, follow me, he sees us. He values us. Why does he
want me? He sees something in us.

He wants our company. Follow me. They were to become Jesus' closest
earthly companions.

No one had ever treated these men like that. No one had ever seen that
in them, worth or potential. No one had ever spoke to that before.

No one had ever wanted their intimate companionship before. Certainly
not a person that seemed to be a person of importance. There is so much
they did not know about Jesus at this point.

But there are some things that they were pretty sure that they did know
about him. Number one, they did know that Jesus was like, unlike anyone
they had ever encountered before. Unlike anyone that they'd even heard
of before.

Who is this man? They did know that no one had ever sought them out,
called out their names, invited them, initiated toward them. No one had
ever done that to them before. And they did know that if they passed up
this opportunity, that they may never get another one like it.

And so they responded in an absolutely exemplary way, which is partially
what makes them the original disciples. It's why we're looking at their
life again today. Because they are models and exemplars for us.

For us, who in our day, in our age, are still hearing the voice of Jesus
saying to us, to you, to me, follow me. And maybe here this morning, it
may be for the very first time you hear that voice. It may not be an
audible voice.

It may be a voice in your heart. But Jesus is still saying to people,
follow me. Perhaps there was an earlier time of your life when you heard
that voice.

May not have been those exact words, but it was the essence. It was the
call of Jesus on your life, inviting you to himself, inviting you to
belong to him and to walk with him. And so maybe this morning is a time
for covenant renewal.

It's a time for you to renew your life as a disciple. It's a time to
renew your calling, your journey of discipleship. Follow me.

When you hear those words, how do you respond? When you hear the voice
of Jesus pulling, tugging, inviting, how do you respond to that? Well,
I'll tell you how the original disciples responded. The Bible says
immediately. They left their nets and they followed him.

Immediately without delay. Without hesitation. Without suspicion.

Without reservation. Without thinking first of how to play the angles.
Immediately.

Second, it says they left their nets. This is all that they knew. They
were fishermen.

This is probably something, an industry that was handed down from
generation to generation, which is why in one case their father was with
them in the boat. This was everything their lives had amounted to.
Everything they had put their trust in and everything they thought their
future would look like was in that boat.

Their livelihood, their hopes, their sense of identity, who they were in
their society. Immediately they left their nets behind. Jumped into the
water.

Heeded the invitation of Jesus. Made their way to him. And it says and
they followed him.

Immediately they left their nets and they followed him. What does it
mean to say that they followed him? It's a phrase that we might use but
maybe not in the exact same way. Sometimes we say we follow a certain
sports team.

Which means we cheer for them. That is not what following Jesus means.
Being a disciple is not just being a fan of Jesus.

Though some people might think of it like that or treat it like that.
Christianity is not a spectator sport. Something that you do from back
and just cheer for him and the great things he does.

These disciples from this day began to walk with him, live with him,
travel with him, learn from him. They were not spectators. In other
instances we may say well we followed someone or we followed the car
ahead of us.

That means to trail behind. That also, that is not what following Jesus
means. Being a disciple is not following Jesus from a safe distance.

No, something very different is meant here when the Bible says they
followed him. In the first century this was an invitation, follow me, an
invitation to enter into a student-teacher relationship. Relationship
and not the kind of student-teacher relationship we would have at at
school or university which means we show up hopefully on time, we listen
attentively, we take it in, we write exams.

It was more of a apprenticeship, a close relationship where a student
would become attached to a teacher for life in order to learn from them
and to become like them. That's what is entailed in these words. When he
says follow me, they understood in their society here's a teacher, big
teacher, an official teacher, someone who's inviting us to become
apprentices, to learn under him, to live with him and to learn from him.

I understand a little about this. When I was just 17 I met an
evangelistic figure from Great Britain. He was preaching in Canada, felt
like the Lord pointed me out to him in a crowd, spoke to me afterwards
and at the end of that year of theological training asked me if I would
move to England and become his apprentice.

So I, with him and his wife, a group of people that would go around
preaching the gospel, so I literally lived with them, I apprenticed with
them. It wasn't a distant student-teacher relationship. I traveled with
them, I ate with them, I preached and I learned in a very, very close
proximity.

And in many ways I became like him. His name was Tony Stone, Dr. Tony
Stone, and many of the places I preached they would call me Little Tony,
not because I did not used to be a short fellow, meaning I was a
reflection of the person I was apprenticing under. That's what I did.

I moved to England, did an apprenticeship, learned under the closest
circumstances. And so maybe that's a little closer to what the Bible
means when it says, and they followed him. They left their nets, they
lived with him, they ate with him, they traveled with him, they learned
from him, they watched his every move.

And so a disciple is one who would follow Jesus in such a way as to take
on his manner of life. It was someone who would live like he lived, who
would do as he did, who would imitate his deeds. Remember, we're not
just studying the original disciples, we're asking ourselves the
question, how is our discipleship? So they did this so well, imitating
his life, that later on they become to be known as Christians, which
meant Little Christ.

They imitated him so well that people could see the connection. The
disciples called Jesus the teacher. That meant that his teaching had
absolute authority for them.

So in this apprenticeship, this disciple relationship, they didn't
choose what they would listen to and what they wouldn't, where they
would go and when they didn't. There was a deep sense of submission to
the teacher. His teaching had absolute authority for them, whether his
teaching pertained to what God was really like, the true nature of God,
whether his teaching pertained to how to treat people, how to pray, how
to forgive people, marriage, the list could be gone.

Everything he taught had authority for them, over every area of life. We
go to school and a teacher teaches a specific area. They are a biology
teacher.

They are a history teacher. But Jesus was the one who was their ultimate
teacher, taught them all about life and everything he said, every word
of it as well. Because he was the teacher that came from God, there was
divine authority there to teach on everything and anything, and it all
was true, whatever subject he touched upon.

Because it was the teaching of God the creator. In fact, if we had to
summarize Jesus' teaching into three categories, we would see that he
taught his disciples three things. We'll have a, look at, I'm feeling
very contemporary today.

I have a PowerPoint. I'm not saying this in any self-congratulating way,
but I made the PowerPoint. Okay, if you want to congratulate, just a
little.

Last night at 11 o'clock at night, it did not seem fair to send Amy Ron
an email saying, could you create a PowerPoint for me? So I had to learn
to do this. I did that. So just, sort of back to discipleship.

So this isn't my three categories, actually. These are the three
categories that we're going to look at. That were used by the early
church.

So when the early church would disciple people, called catechism, when
they would prepare people for baptism, when Jesus spoke to people and
said, come and follow me, and people in the ancient Roman Empire said,
you bet I'd love to follow him. What do I do? This is what the church
would teach them, these three categories. What to believe, how to
behave, and how to bless God.

So let's talk about these three, how to believe. So I put this on the
right because if you're new to church, I don't want our technical
language to be intimidating to you. You may not know what that word
means.

I didn't grow up in a church, so I wouldn't have understood what the
word theology meant. So Jesus taught them what to believe. He actually
taught them what don't believe.

That's why the only one that could teach what God was really like was
the son of God. Because in biblical terms, son means one who has the
nature of his father. One who is like his father.

And so it was the son of God came to reveal what God was really like,
what his real nature was like. And it really mattered that if they were
going to heed the call to follow him, if they're going to believe in
God, they had to have correct understandings of what God was really
like. Have you ever had something at work ever happen, and you've met
somebody, and you could tell that before you met them, someone else had
got to them, and so that somehow they've told something about you, and
you can tell they do not have an accurate idea of you in their heads.

They do not see you rightly. When that happens, how does relationship go
afterwards? How easy it is for you to meet that new person when they've
already been affected by someone else's thoughts about you. How does
that go for you? Not very well at all, does it? Because they have a
wrong idea of what you're like, and the wrong idea of what you're like
debilitates true relationship.

Jesus came to a day where people had a very wrong understanding of what
God was like, and so as long as they had wrong beliefs in their head of
what God was really like, how could they ever be in a true relationship
with him? And so the very first reason Jesus came was to teach what God
was really like, to reveal his truest and fullest nature to us. And so
if you want to know what God is really like, everything about him,
without any doubt, we look into the face of Jesus, and we know exactly
what God is like. And so he taught them, this is what God is like.

This is what to believe about God. We call that theology. And so
theology actually matters.

It's important to have a correct understanding of what God is really
like, and not an incorrect understanding of that. What about the second
one, though? He didn't just teach them what to believe. He also taught
his disciples how to behave.

Morality just means what is right and what is wrong. And so if you go to
the very next chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, after this call, Jesus
taught something called the Beatitudes. And in the Beatitudes, it's
really about how they treat people, how they think about people, how
they behave, how they carry themselves.

Jesus said to them, you have heard in the Old Testament, the Ten
Commandments, it was said, thou shall not murder. And then Jesus says,
but I say to you, don't even call someone a fool. Don't degrade people.

Yeah, yeah, of course you shouldn't murder, but I am going to give you
an ethic. I'm going to give you a morality that is far above the Ten
Commandments. Don't murder people in your heart.

Don't murder people with your words. Don't kill people, but don't even
kill their self-esteem. Don't kill their self-worth.

And so we live in a day where people may understand, number two, I would
like to know what God is really like, but don't tell me what's right and
wrong. So there were two different groups of people that are mentioned
in the Gospels. They're not in opposition to one another.

But if you think of it as concentric circles, the circle around Jesus,
closer to Jesus, called the disciples, and then there's another group of
people called the crowd. If you read an older translation of the Bible,
they would be called the multitudes. And so the multitudes are
listening.

They're intrigued by His teaching. They actually got to see miracles.
But they're not sure yet whether they want to be disciples.

They're not sure whether they want to fully heed the call to follow Him
and throw themselves into a life of holy apprenticeship. And so many
people from the crowds became disciples, but they didn't all make that
move. There once was a young ruler who came to Jesus and asked him the
question, a young lawyer, what should I do to inherit eternal life? He's
really asking about question number one.

Tell me the truth. How do you get into heaven? And so Jesus answers his
question. The young lawyer says, I've done all those things.

What else should I do? Jesus responds, sell all your money and give it
to the poor. Jesus didn't say that to everybody, but He said it to this
rich young ruler because He understood that this was the great obstacle
of His life. The Bible says, He went away sad because you can tell me
how to get to heaven, but don't tell me what to do with my money, or
don't tell me how to think about my money.

And he walked away sad. If you have a little bit of time to spend this
week, you might want to ask yourself a question. You can Google this.

I did this part of my preparation. Ask yourself, what was the morality
of the Roman Empire? When these young disciples and many others after
them became Christians, what life had they known before that? So I just
Googled morality or ethics of the Roman Empire. You want to be careful
how deep you read because you're going to hear repeated words like
promiscuity, depravity, obscenity.

You are going to hear those and a whole other host of words repeated. So
you think the morality of our day is mixed up. You should see what first
century Rome was like.

Why do I raise that? Because when these people became Christians, when
they believed upon Jesus and they said, yes, I will follow you and
become disciples, they did not bring with them the morality of the Roman
Empire, the morality that they had known growing up, the morality of
contemporary culture. They did not bring it with them. When they said,
yes, I want to become a disciple, the church taught them what a Jesus
morality was like, how Jesus thinks about good and bad and constructive
lifestyles, destructive lifestyles.

And so God in Christ gave them a completely new way of thinking about
how they were to live their life. And so when they fully became
disciples, which was identified at their baptism, that's why they were
washed with water, is because their old life of paganism, their old
Roman ways of thinking about things were washed away from them. So don't
be under any illusion.

A Christian morality is a unique morality. We're not trying to imitate
the Roman Empire. We're washed from it.

We're not trying to imitate the world in which we live. We're washed of
it. The same one who taught us what God is really like is also teaching
us a sense of what's right and wrong.

And he has the authority to do that. The third category. We had to
summarize Jesus' teaching into three categories, what to believe, how
they behaved, and how to bless God, which means how to worship.

How to worship. If the first category is about having our attitudes, our
minds in submission to Christ, and if the second attitude is about
having our actions in submission to Christ, this category is about
having our affections in submission to Christ. And so the word
spirituality gets thrown around a lot.

We're talking about a unique, distinctive Christian spirituality. And
the reason I raise this is because we can get it right on number one.
People have correct understanding of what God is like, but do not feel
close to him at all.

They could have it right on number two. I treat people like Jesus would
have me treat people, and still not love people or love God like they'd
like. So in that case, number two becomes something else, and it becomes
a system of rules, as opposed to a part, a component of discipleship.

But number three is about having our affections ordered. It's about
relating to God. It's about coming into his presence.

It's about having a heart that's close to him. And what I want to say to
you, beloved, is that we live in a society that wants to pick and choose
between those, and I want to say to you, you cannot do that. Because if
the life of a discipleship is about living a life of submission to
Jesus, you are not in submission if you say, well, I'll, how about one
of the three? So we have people in our society, and we all have the
human, same human nature, which means we would all want to do this.

I want to have a good spirituality. I want to be close to God. I don't
think doctrine or theology is that important, and I feel impinged upon
when Jesus tries to speak to me about moral issues, but I still want to
be close to God.

Or I want to have correct theology and do what I want to do, but
worship, it feels a little emotional. I don't like the language of
intimacy. And there is a reason why he taught all three.

In the early church, when they would prepare people for baptism, there
were also symbols of each of these three. Anybody know what was it that
embodied the theological part? Number one. Anybody been through our
catechism? There was a concise statement of Christian beliefs.

It might be on the wall over there. The Apostles' Creed. That was a
succinct statement of what Christians believe about God.

And that's why when you get baptized, why there's a, why the Apostles'
Creed features highly in that. In the early church, when they prepare
people for baptism, anybody know what a concise statement of Christian
morality was? I'm sure you've been through this in Corpus or somewhere.
Rob's sweating.

What was the concise statement about, that would give us ideas of what a
Christian morality might look like? Big red. The Ten Commandments. And I
want to suggest, you will not understand the Ten Commandments right if
you don't understand the Beatitudes.

Because Jesus actually took the Ten Commandments and then actually does
something even more wonderful by talking about the intents of the heart
in the Beatitudes. And is there anybody that knows what was the concise
statement of unique, distinctive Christian spirituality in the early
church that kind of captured what it meant to relate rightly to God?
Pardon? The Lord's Prayer. I assure you I get no money for this.

But someone in our movement, part of the Via Vancouver church plant,
Sarah Maynard, just this last week came out with a book on the Lord's
Prayer. Sarah Maynard has been a significant intercessor in our country.
She has run Red Leaf Prayer.

So she leads about 400 or 500 intercessors across our country. And as
she got to Novia and the things that we love and this kind of teaching,
she never really thought of the Lord's Prayer as being one of the
greatest things. She led prayer all across our country and never really
thought of the Lord's Prayer as being central to that.

So this has been a major epiphany for her. And if you Google Sarah
Maynard, the Lord's Prayer, you'll realize outside of here, she's
teaching in every venue across our country. She's teaching on the
importance of the Lord's Prayer and how to become intimate with God
through the Lord's Prayer.

So her book is called The Prayer of All Prayers. You might want to read
that. I'm not sure if that's okay to do with the book.

I'm not trying to make her money or anything. But when people write a
book or something like this, we draw a bit of attention to it. The
Lord's Prayer.

So I want to ask you a question today. If you are new here today,
checking out Christianity as it were, in some way, might you hear the
voice of Jesus calling to you saying, I'd like you to follow me. And
when he says those words, what does that generate in your heart? I hope
the same thing as the original disciples.

You want me? You would have me? You see me? You value me? You want to do
life and eternity with me? And I hope that immediately you'd leave your
nets and follow him and become his apprentices and learn to be like him.
Maybe the majority, I would guess, of us here today have made that
decision at some earlier time of life. And so my question to you is, how
is your discipleship going? Because there are all kinds of things that
can cut short our discipleship.

We might look back and say, I felt like I was on that train and it was
so encouraging. And you yourself might not know what happened. Sometimes
we have something in life that feels gravely disappointing happening.

And we all have those things happen. And sometimes it takes some time
looking back to realize how that grave disappointment affected us. But
one of the effects it often have upon us that we might not realize for
some time is that it caused us to look inward.

I don't mean just for a moment of reflection or evaluation, but it
caused us, it turned us in on ourselves. Where suddenly life became
about me and about self-preservation because I had a disappointment and
a loss and I'm tired of disappointments and it turns us in on ourselves,
which is the antithesis of discipleship. When you become a disciple, you
don't turn in, you turn up.

You live a life turned upwards, not inwards. Which is exactly why Jesus
said these words. If any of you want to come follow me and be my
disciple, you must deny yourself.

Self takes a different place. Deny yourself, take up your cross and
follow me. And so for some of us, we may have to realize that I have
suddenly become turned inward on myself.

And maybe I'll ask the question, how is it working for you? Because when
we do that, it takes some time. We do it to preserve ourselves, but give
you six months and we feel horrible on the inside. Jesus said if any man
wants to lose his life, give it away to me, he will find life.

But if he tries to save or preserve it, he will lose it. It's like
taking a hand of sand. The harder you squeeze and hang on, the more it
runs through your fingers.

And so the moment we make life all about me, we lose what life is
actually about. So before we move on to the table, if you're new here
today, you've never said I'll follow you, Jesus. I urge you to make this
day your day.

And while we go into prayers, in your own way say, Jesus, I want to
follow you. I want to be your disciple. I give you my life.

But if you're here today and feel like discipleship maybe doesn't play
the same role in your life it once did, maybe you pray a different
prayer. Lord, I'm not sure what happened. I'm not sure where on the
inside, something got a little bit off track.

I don't know what turns me so inward. But I once again give my life to
you. I give my time to you.

I give my nets, my livelihood, my business, my family, my energies, my
passions, my thoughts, my affections, how I think about you, how I treat
others, how I love. I give it back to you. Because I have found a joy in
that.

And a rightness and satisfaction that recently I have lost.

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Video: https://sermonindex2.b-cdn.net/6pEWoG9j47s.mp4
Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/todd-atkinson/a-call-back-to-discipleship/
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