Are You A Real Disciple

In verse 21, Jesus is speaking, there's quite a crowd around him, and in verse 21 he starts to speak, he says, actually look back at verse 12, he says, Jesus speaking and saying, I am the light of the world, he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. Jump down to verse 21, then Jesus said, I go my way and you shall seek me and shall die in your sins, whither you go, you cannot come. And then in verse 24, I said therefore unto you that you shall die in your sins, for if you believe not that I am he, you shall die in your sins.

Then verse 30, he says, as he spoke these words, many believed on him. And then this is the verse I'd like us to think about this morning, many believers here, many believe these amazing words Jesus was preaching. And then in verse 31, he says this, Jesus said to those Jews which believed on him, if you continue in my word, then are you my disciples? Indeed, then are you truly, really my disciples? You know, is there a difference this morning? Let's think about is there a difference between a Christian and a disciple? Is there a difference between a believer and a disciple? He said this, if you notice to the believers, the ones that believed in him, the ones that thought he was sent from God, they believed his message was from God.

And yet he turned to those people and said, if you keep on remaining in my words, if you keep on abiding, this is the same word for abide in John chapter 15. If you abide in my words, then you will really be my disciples. You know, as we were driving up here this morning, we passed church house after church house, after church house.

And I thought to myself, so many disciples of Jesus. Right. As we came, are they all truly, really disciples of Jesus? Well, Jesus gave us the answer.

He said, if we continue in his word, then we are really his disciples. In fact, it's kind of an interesting thought to think about that the word Christian wasn't even coined. You know, these early disciples of Jesus, they weren't Christians.

It wasn't even coined till the book of Acts. Jesus called them disciples. Later, people in the book of Acts, they said the Christians in Antioch were called the disciples were called Christians.

And so this was a later term. Yet we go around and we say we're Christians, but really Christians are disciples. I'd like to read something for this meaning of the word disciple.

I found this an encyclopedia kind of interesting. Now, if we were to look at the Strong's definition of disciple, it just means a pupil or a learner, somebody you might think that goes to school. But listen to this.

The meaning of the word disciple is not primarily derived from its root meaning, but from its widespread usage in ancient in the ancient world. Disciples are found in the world outside of the Bible. For example, among the ancient Greek philosophers, disciples learned by imitating.

The teacher's entire way of life and not just by remembering the spoken words, you know, we come here this morning and we read Jesus's words and we remember him, but the disciples in this time, in the early times when Jesus was walking this earth, the disciple mentality was you pick somebody and then you walked with that person, you imitated that person. I'll keep reading in the world of the Bible. A disciple was a person who followed a teacher or a rabbi or a master or a philosopher.

Even Plato and some have you say his name, that Greek guy, he had disciples. The disciples desire to learn not only the teaching of the rabbi, but to imitate the practical details of their life. A disciple did not merely attend lectures or read books.

They were required to interact with and imitate a real living person. A disciple would literally follow someone in hopes to eventually becoming what they are. A Christian disciple is a believer who follows Christ and then offers his own imitation of Christ as a model for others to follow.

A disciple is first a believer. Who has exercised faith. This means they have experienced conversion and put Jesus at the center of their life and participated in the rights of Christian imitation.

A full developed disciple is also a leader of others who attempts to pass on the faith to his followers. So a disciple was somebody like pick somebody in the world that you know, that you admire. Maybe maybe somebody would say, I want to be like Elon Musk.

You know, he owns SpaceX. He owns Tesla. You know, he owns a couple.

He owns a boring company that can put tunnels in. Now he owns Twitter. Maybe you said to yourself, I want to be successful in this world like Elon Musk.

So you get in and you follow him everywhere he goes, not just read about him. You get you call him up and you say, I want to be your disciple. I want to be your apprentice.

And you follow him along everywhere. You watch the way he makes decisions. You watch the way he sits down at board meetings.

You even watch the way he sends out Twitter messages to people. And you take mental note of these things and you slowly develop becoming more and more like Elon Musk. And pretty soon, you know, if you're successful in this.

Imitation, maybe you could own a bunch of companies like him. That's the idea of what a disciple is. Now, Jesus said here in our passage that we're reading, he said, if you continue in my word, then are you really my disciples? It's something we all have to ask.

You know, one of these days, this whole world's going to be over for us. We're going to stand before the Lord. And, you know, at that point, the question will be, are we really his disciples? Something we all need to ask ourselves.

Think about let's imagine a little bit back when Jesus called his disciples. Think of those fishermen out on the out on the Sea of Galilee. And in one account, Jesus is walking along and they're just fishing and they're mending their nets.

And he comes up to him and he says, come follow me. Think of the things that would have gone through their mind. Think of Peter.

Think of Andrew. You know, they grew up maybe all their life with their dad as fishermen. Maybe the smell of the sea, you know, the the wind that came off of that lake, maybe just the sight of fish and, you know, the warm breeze coming just brought back all these memories.

I remember going hunting with my dad and, you know, he'd take me out, pick me up from school. We go get jerky, get a root beer. And, you know, just those memories still come back to me.

Think of them. You know, they had these dreams. They had bills to pay.

They had families. Peter was evidently a married man. And Jesus walks up to them in the book of Luke.

He performs a miracle. It's the miracle where they can't pull in so much. They pull in so much fish, it almost sinks the ship.

And Peter falls on his knees and says, I am a wicked man. And what does Jesus say to them? He says, come, follow me. And what do they say? It says they left their nets and followed him.

A little later, he talks to James and his brother, the sons of Zebedee. And it says he told them the same thing. Come, follow me.

And they said, it says in the scripture, they immediately left the ship and their father and they followed him. In Luke, it says they forsook all and they followed him. Matthew was sitting at a table collecting taxes for the Roman government, I suppose.

And as Jesus came by, you know, he probably had the dream job. He had a great salary, probably had great health care. I'm sure Rome was offering great benefits.

And Jesus came up to him and said, follow me. And Matthew, it says in the book of Luke, it says he left all. Rose up and followed him.

Think of their commitment, the things they had to give up. As I read these passages, I see that followers of Jesus forsook their jobs. They forsook their families, Zebedee, right there, their father.

They also forsook their possessions, ships, nets, fishing, jobs. All of this they forsook because they knew Jesus was the rabbi to follow. You know, they to them, Jesus was so much more than Elon Musk.

And so Jesus actually gives us some of his requirements for being his disciples. Now, I don't know if you notice before we go on any further, did you notice with all of those disciples, pupils, apprentices that he called, what was the common word that he said to each one of them? There's a common word, but you pick it up, follow, follow, follow, follow. Did you notice that to every one of them? He said followers.

So it's it's no wonder we call ourselves followers of Jesus. In fact, we sing a song this morning. I serve a risen savior.

He walks with me and talks with me. He lives within my heart. So these early disciples, they were followers, and Jesus even told them, he said this, he says, whoever be of you that forsakes not all he has.

What a what an incredible teaching of the one we call our master. If we don't forsake all that we have, you cannot be my disciple. You cannot be my follower.

He also told them in another passage in Luke, he said, unless you hate your father and your mother. And your wife and your children, your brother, and even your own life, you can't be my disciple. And then he goes on to say, and whoever does not bear his cross or take up his cross every day and follow me cannot be my disciple.

Now, you know, that's a big that's a lot of requirement. But Jesus wants to give us in exchange for that. He wants to give us all the things we sang about this morning.

He wants to give us eternal life. He wants to give us his Holy Spirit to comfort us and to cheer us and to guide us along life's narrow way. So what is a follower? You know, if we're truly a disciple, which is a follower, what is a follower? Let's think about those disciples, those three and a half years they left their nets, they left their father and they just walked with Jesus.

Now, I'm sure many of you remember playing the game. Follow the leader, right? Remember that? What did you do? Person walked and everybody followed him. If he turned, everybody followed him.

You know, if he went this way, he went this way. If he sat down, we all sit kind of a fun little game as a child. I don't know if it'd be fun anymore, but.

But, you know, that's what a follower does. He follows his master. If we want to be like Jesus, that's the goal of a Christian.

We have to follow him. We have to imitate him. We have to practice what it's like to be a follower of Jesus.

Now, we Christians, we disciples have a serious flaw in us. It's in me. I'm sure it's in everyone in this room.

And that is we sometimes like to have our we like to split up our lives into two little groups. One group is our secular life. You know, it's our life where we do our jobs and we we we have our fun and our pleasures.

And then we have our spiritual life, our other half, right? That's where we come together on Sunday and we sing songs and we worship the Lord. And I asked this question this morning, and this is what the Lord's been laying on my heart as of late. Is that what disciples do? What do what did those three and a half years, those disciples do as they walk with Jesus? When we think about them walking every day, following him, whatever he did, you know, they watched what he did and how he reacted to people that made him angry.

They watch how he reacted to food. You know, when he got tired, they watched how Jesus reacted. They didn't just study his words.

They walked with him. They they watched how he reacted to the religious Pharisees. They watched how he prayed, how he went and fasted.

They watched all of his actions for three and a half years as they walked with him. It wasn't just a once a week meeting where they, you know, came and praised him and then went on with their lives. It wasn't a 15 to 30 minute time in the morning where they said, OK, I'm going to read some of your words, Jesus, and then I'm going to go live the rest of my life today.

It was a commitment of following him all day through the whole day. Now, I ask this question as a soul searching question. Have the requirements for being a disciple changed? Think about that, if these were the requirements for the early disciples, have they changed for us? Is there somehow some that don't need to follow Jesus all day or is Jesus wanting our whole attention? How do we follow Jesus as his disciples every day? Obviously, we don't have Jesus here standing here that we can follow like the early disciples did.

But somehow Jesus said this. He said, it's better than I go away, that the Holy Spirit could come into your heart and he could guide you. And he even told his own disciples he would do greater works than him.

Think about that. How does a disciple today, each one of you that maybe raised your hands, I'm a disciple of Jesus. How do you follow Jesus every day of your life? And all through the day, how does a disciple start each day when you woke up this morning? How if you're truly a disciple of Jesus, how should we have started our day this morning? What about good morning, Lord? What about I'm not my own? What about I'm going to take up my cross today because that's what disciples do.

And today is going to be your day. Thank you, Lord, for giving me another day. You know, we're all so tempted to whip out our phone or whatever it may be, and immediately start into our day.

What about starting off the day with him as our master, with him as our focus? I want to be more like Jesus today than I was yesterday. You know, if you were trying to be like Elon Musk, I'm sure you'd wake up in the morning and think, where is he? You know, we got to make some more. I got to become more like him because your goal is to, you know, own something like SpaceX or Tesla.

How does a disciple start each day? How does he face the responsibilities? You start your job, you go to work. How do you, how does a disciple, a follower of Jesus face his job? You know, some verses came to my mind. It says in Proverbs, in all our ways, acknowledge him.

It says, do everything for the glory of God, whether you eat or drink. You know, this is my encouragement. Can we somehow work our jobs with the Lord? Can we somehow commune with him while we work? Can we start off our day, Lord, today's yours and walk with him through the whole day? What happens when we come across an interruption, a problem? You know, it doesn't go the way we were hoping today.

You know, maybe you get a flat tire or maybe that person just really annoys you. Can we somehow commune with him and say, Lord, tell him our, bring in, casting our cares on him and ask him for grace to help us. And like, we're walking with him just like the early followers did.

The early disciples would have watched Jesus and okay, how does he handle this? And how does he handle work? And how does he handle relationships? What about when you need to buy something? You know, maybe there's that new thing, that new toy you want to get, or that new whatever, fill in the blank. Should a disciple of Jesus even go to him for that? Should he even submit all of that to him and say, Lord, show me what I should buy, what I shouldn't buy? What about when we interact with difficult people? Those can be difficult relationships. So my whole, my heart here is, maybe in your own heart, you're identifying.

Do I have a split heart, a secular life where I just kind of, maybe even I'm my own rabbi, maybe I am my own master. And then I have these set times of when Jesus is my master. But is that really what followers of Jesus are supposed to be? Is it possible that followers of Jesus are supposed to follow him all the time? Here's a question, a soul searching question.

Can you be a follower of Jesus and not follow him? Kind of a strange oxymoron, but a good question to ask our hearts. Here's a quote I was reading in a book this last week, and it said this. The average Christian today does not make much spiritual progress at all.

He is converted, joins the church. And five years later, he is right back where he started. 10 years later, he is still where he was.

Or he was even slipped back a little. That is not satisfactory to those who seek and thirst and hunger after God. This was from a man who his whole life hungered and thirsted after God.

So can we divide our lives into these sections? Can we divide our lives into secular and then our spiritual life? The Bible says we're to pray without what? Does anybody know? Ceasing, amen. The Bible says in everything, give thanks. The Bible says rejoice in the Lord, what? Always.

It says as you've received the Lord, so walk ye in him. Walking has an idea of movement, constant movement. See, these all of these things indicate to me that it's a moment by moment walking with God.

And if we're not careful, if we just allow ourselves to fall back into what's normal, we will do the split in our own hearts. Here's another soul searching question. Would someone define you or me? Would someone define me as a person trying to imitate Jesus? Will they look at me and say, you know, Jeremy, he when he's making a decision, he he is trying to go to Jesus to find out.

When Jeremy is trying to work through a problem at work or at home, he's going to Jesus. I can see he relies on him when he is thinking about what to eat. He's going to Jesus when he's deciding what to buy.

He does it with Jesus. You know, I was thinking on the way up here, I was talking to my family about this. And I had this little, you know, Jesus told parables.

And I had this little parable. I'll call it the dad parable. Imagine if I jumped into my car, you know, to go with my son for the day.

I was going to spend some time with him. And I was excited. We're going to spend the whole day together.

So I jumped in the car and he jumped in right alongside of me. And he goes, good morning, dad. You are the greatest dad ever.

You know, I thank you so much, dad, for the night's sleep last night. And dad, please make sure I get food today. And and glory to your name, dad.

And have a good day. And then he pulls out a book and starts reading. And we drive mile after mile.

Then he pulls out his phone and he's looking at his phone. And I'm sitting there thinking, I start talking to him. Hey, did you see that beautiful rainbow? And I look over and he's still, you know, embedded in his book.

And he doesn't even hear my voice and can't put his phone down. And finally, about lunchtime, he comes around and he goes, dad, thanks for this. Thanks for this food.

And please bless it to my body, dad. And thank you again. And amen.

And, you know, and then he goes back to looking at his book and looking at his phone. What kind of relationship would I have with my dad or would that boy have with his dad? Now, imagine the same story. Boy jumps in the car.

Good morning, dad. How are you? And, you know, dad, I hope we're just going to spend the day together. And I'm hoping that by the end of today, I hope to be more like you, dad.

Just show me things that teach me things that I don't know. And then through the drive, you know, he points out the rainbow. And yeah, maybe he looks at the book some, but then says, dad, you know, I just read this.

What do you think about this? And the dad points out the rainbow. It's a communion all day. Which one do you think should be what followers of Jesus do? Should we commune with the Lord all day? That's my heart.

That's my heart for the church, that we don't fall into religion. And console ourselves that we are walking in right relationship with God. But Monday through Saturday, we're just living for ourselves.

You know, in first John, it says, whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did. Jesus said, I abide with my father all the time. He says, I can't even do anything without my father.

My father does everything through me. You know, he shows me everything. And that's what we're supposed to imitate.

We're supposed to imitate this communion, this abiding. He said, if you abide in me and my words abide in you. Remember, we started off this.

He said, whoever wants to be my disciples and be a true disciple must continue or abide in my word. Remember, he is the word. He's the word of God, right? He lives in our heart.

I serve a risen savior. He lives within my heart. He walks with me and talks with me.

That's the relationship he wants to have with us by his Holy Spirit. This is the blessing of the new covenant in Hebrews chapter two. It says this looking unto Jesus, the author and the finisher of our faith.

The answer for all of these things. How do you deal when you first wake up in the morning? How do you deal with problems? How do you deal with your job? How do you deal with how you eat your food? All these things. A disciple of Jesus looks to Jesus who is the author and the finisher of his faith.

I want each one of us to be honest with ourselves and allow the Holy Spirit to show us in our hearts. Because one day we won't be able to change. One day we will stand before him and it's either going to be, I know you.

You are my follower. You're my disciple or I never knew you. So each one of us should look now while we have the time and say, are we really followers of Jesus? Are we really in love with him? Is he really the highest treasure in our life? I have a song here.

I just want to read you some of the words. It says living for Jesus, a life that is true, striving to please him in all that I do. Yielding allegiance, glad hearted and free.

This is the pathway, a blessing for me. Oh, Jesus, Lord and Savior, I give myself to be for thou and thine atonement. It's give thyself for me.

I own no other master. My heart shall be thy throne. My life I give henceforth to live.

Oh, Christ, for thee alone. I'll read you the last verse living for Jesus through Earth's little while. My dearest treasure, the light of a smile seeking the lost ones he died to redeem, bringing the weary to find rest in him.

Oh, Jesus, Lord and Savior, I give myself to be for thou and thine atonement. It's give thyself for me. I own no other master.

My heart shall be thy throne. My life I give henceforth to live. Oh, Christ, for thee alone.