I'm so glad you have joined us again
for this important series of messages on discipleship.
I would like to take the time to
thank you, our listeners, for your cards and
letters of encouragement.
Also, I want to remind you that if
you have questions you would like answered on
this most important subject, please write to us
and we'll be happy to respond to you.
Nothing would give us greater joy than to
do that.
Our speaker today is Bill McDonald.
Now, for those of you who do not
know Bill, he is an author of over
50 books, correspondence courses, and many magazine articles.
He has been a Bible teacher for over
35 years and is presently one of the
instructors of a leadership training program here in
San Leandro, California.
We have entered into his class on discipleship
for this series.
The subject is discipleship, and you can't read
the Gospels without realizing that the Lord Jesus
was the master and he called 12 disciples
to be with him.
That's really the basic idea of discipleship, a
master-learner relationship, a teacher-learner relationship.
And the whole idea was that the disciple
learns the doctrines and lifestyle of his teacher,
and then he goes out and helps to
spread them.
That's what it was all about.
Jesus took these 12 men and he was
going to teach them his doctrines, and they
were going to observe his lifestyle, and then
he was going to send them forth to
propagate the message throughout the world.
You have that in Mark chapter 3 verses
14 and 15.
Mark chapter 3 verse 14.
He appointed 12, 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.
Notice that.
He appointed 12, designated them apostles, that means
sent ones, that they might be with him.
The purpose to be with him, of course,
was to absorb his teaching, to realize what
made him tick, and then that he might
send them out to preach.
It was what we would call on-the
-job training.
They lived with him, and it's kind of
strange that we don't have much of that
in the world today, do we?
We have seminaries, we have bible schools, and
the like, but the disciples actually lived with
the Lord Jesus.
They really got to know him, and an
interesting thing about his teaching was that as
he worked with them, he taught them as
they were able to bear it.
John chapter 16 verse 12.
I have much more to say to you,
more than you can now bear.
I think that's a beautiful thing about the
Lord Jesus.
He knew where they were spiritually, and he
taught them as they were able to bear
it.
I taught for 18 years in a bible
school, as you know, and what we really
did was put a funnel in the student's
mouth, and just poured information down into that
funnel, until many of them really had spiritual
dyspexia.
They really couldn't absorb it, you know, it
was coming too fast for them.
It would have been better if we had
taught them a little, and then taken them
out and say, now put it to work
this way, you know, and then brought them
back in and taught them a little more,
and then sent them out to put that
into practice.
That's what the Lord Jesus did, and I
think this is very important in the whole
subject of discipleship.
There really has to be preparation, there has
to be growth, there has to be advancement
to the stage where you can absorb it.
Years ago, I was invited to give a
series of messages at a conference at Taylor
University in Upland, Indiana, and I went charging
in with the stern demands of Jesus discipleship,
and the other speaker was rated as the
greatest comedian in evangelical Christendom, and the whole
thing was a nightmare when I looked back
on it.
I wish I had never gone.
So, one thing, he would have the people
rollicking in laughter, and it was really funny,
I had to laugh myself, and then I'd
come on with the teachings of Jesus discipleship.
Well, first of all, the students at Taylor
University weren't ready for it.
I would have been better probably to start
with the gospel or assurance of salvation or
something like that, and lead up to it.
And, as I say, I look back and
it was a bit of a nightmare.
The Lord Jesus taught them as they were
able to bear it.
Now, the goal of discipleship is for the
learner to become like his master.
That's the goal of all discipleship, and there
are two verses in that connection.
Matthew chapter 10 verse 25.
Matthew 10 verse 25.
I'll go back to verse 24.
A student is not above his teacher, nor
a servant above his master.
It's enough for the student to be like
his teacher, and a servant like his master.
That's what the Lord Jesus was working toward,
raising those men and maturing them so they
would be like him.
Matthew chapter 10 verses 24 and 25.
And then Luke chapter 6 verse 40, and
we'll be looking at this again.
Luke chapter 6 verse 40.
A student is not above his teacher, but
everyone who is fully trained will be like
his teacher.
Disciple is not above his master, but when
he's fully trained, he'll be like his master.
So, that's the goal of all discipleship.
But, there are limitations on discipleship.
For instance, a master.
There's a limitation on a master.
He's limited by what he knows and where
he goes.
You've heard the expression, you can't teach what
you don't know, you can't lead where you
don't go yourself.
This limits what a master can do with
his students.
He cannot expect them to advance beyond what
he is himself.
It reminds you of some of the might
in the course of time, but if so,
it's no thanks to him.
And that's what we read in Luke a
moment ago.
Luke 6 verse 40.
A student is not above his teacher, everyone
who's fully trained will be like his teacher.
The student's not above him.
The master can't expect to lead him beyond
what he is himself.
What about the disciple?
What's the on the disciple?
Well, I think that a disciple can only
progress as far as his faith permits him
to go.
Matthew chapter 9 and 29.
The Lord Jesus laid down a principle that
we'll be referring to frequently.
Matthew 9 29.
Then touched he their eyes and said, according
to your faith will it be done to
you.
Well, let me explain that.
In the life of discipleship, you can go
in up to your ankle if you want,
if you have faith to do it.
You can go in up to your knees.
You can go in up to your thighs.
I mean, there's a lot of water in
the life of discipleship.
You can go up to your chest.
Actually, there's water to swim in, and when
you get through with that, you can walk
on the water, but it depends on your
own faith, and this will be something that
you who are married will be discussing in
the days to come.
Maybe the husband will have faith, and the
wife won't.
Maybe the wife will have faith, and the
husband won't.
You can only go as far as the
two of you have faith, as far as
you're united in your faith in this matter.
It tries to go any further than that.
Now, as far as I know, there's only
one true disciple, and that's the Lord Jesus,
and he's the true master as well, the
true teacher.
It's an interesting verse in Isaiah chapter 15
verses 4 and 5 that speak of the
Lord Jesus as a disciple, and it's a
beautiful verse, and I'd like you all to
turn to it.
Isaiah chapter 50 verses 4 and 5, and
I'm reading from the New International Version.
It says in verse 4, "...the sovereign Lord
has given me an instructed tongue to know
the word that sustains the weary.
He awakens me morning by morning, wakens my
ear to listen like one being taught."
That expression, like one being taught, is translated
in some versions like a disciple.
Now, this refers to the Lord Jesus in
incarnation.
It's a prophecy of what would happen with
the Lord Jesus in incarnation, and what it's
really saying is that every morning he got
up and opened his ear to receive instructions
from God the Father for that day.
"...the sovereign Lord has given me an instructed
tongue to know the word that sustains the
weary.
He wakens me morning by morning, wakens my
ear to listen like one being taught."
That's quite a thought, isn't it?
So, the Lord Jesus, as a man here
on earth, had his daily quiet time, and
he opened his ear to get instructions from
God the Father for that day.
He was the true disciple.
It goes on to say, "...the sovereign Lord
has opened my ears and I have not
been rebellious, I have not drawn back."
Well, that would be a good place for
us to start, wouldn't it?
Day by day to go into the presence
of the Lord and open our ears to
hear what he has to say to us,
if we're going to be his disciples.
Okay, now, the Bible makes a difference, makes
a distinction between nominal disciples and genuine disciples.
Anyone who professed to follow the Lord Jesus
when he was on earth was a disciple.
Anyone who even professed.
You see, he wasn't born again.
He was still a disciple in one sense.
He was a nominal disciple, and you have
a couple of illustrations of that in John's
gospel.
John chapter 2 verse 23.
Now, while he was in Jerusalem at the
Passover feast, many people saw the miraculous signs
he was doing and believed in his name,
but Jesus would not entrust himself to them,
for he knew all men.
He did not need man's testimony about man,
for he knew what was in man.
Well, these people saw his miracles and they,
quote, believed in him, quote.
But it really says Jesus didn't believe in
them.
The Lord isn't particularly pleased with a faith
that demands miracles, and I think that's what
people who watch a lot of religious television
today should realize.
The faith that demands miracles isn't a pleasing
faith.
Blessed are ye if you have not seen
and yet have believed.
God wants us to believe on the basis
of his word alone and not because we
see the miracle.
So, here it says, yeah, these people believed
on him, quote, quote, but he didn't believe
on them because he knew what was in
them, and he knew that they weren't genuine.
Then in John chapter 6, there's even a
more striking illustration of this.
John chapter 6 and verse 66.
The Lord Jesus had just given the bread
of life discourse, and he said some very
difficult things.
He said, you have to eat the flesh
of the Son of God and drink his
blood, or you'll never have everlasting life.
And, of course, that was horrifying to a
Jew, to his Jewish listeners, to eat flesh
cannibalism and to drink blood which was forbidden
by the law of Moses.
If they knew anything, they knew that that
was, those things were abominations to God.
And here Jesus is saying, eat my flesh
and drink my blood.
Of course, what he meant was believe on
me.
To eat his flesh and drink his blood
is equivalent to believing on him.
There's nothing to do with the communion service
or anything of the sort.
It's a simple matter.
It says in John 6 47, he that
believeth on me has eternal life.
But the more they rejected it, the more
difficult Jesus' sayings became to them.
And that's the background.
Verse 61, aware that his disciples were grumbling
about this, Jesus said to them, does this
offend you?
What if you see the Son of Man
ascend to where he was before?
The Spirit gives life.
The flesh counts for nothing.
The words I have spoken unto you are
spirit and air life.
In other words, even if you could eat
my flesh, it wouldn't do you any good.
Flesh doesn't profit anything.
Believe my words.
It's not eat my flesh, literally.
It's believe my words, literally.
Yet there are some of you who do
not believe.
For Jesus had known from the beginning which
of them did not believe and who would
betray him.
He went on to say, this is why
I told you that no one can come
to me unless the Father has enabled him.
From that time, notice, many of his disciples
turned back and no longer followed him.
Many of his disciples?
Not the twelve nominal disciples.
They were never born again.
They weren't true believers.
They professed to be students of his.
Jesus asked the twelve, you do not want
to leave too, do you?
Simon Peter answered, Lord, to whom shall we
go?
You have the words of eternal life.
We believe and know that you are the
Holy One of God.
Then Jesus replied, have I not chosen you,
the twelve?
Yet one of you is a devil.
He meant Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot,
who though one of the twelve was later
to betray him.
In other words, Peter says, we believe and
know that you are the son of God.
And Jesus said, when you say we, just
realize that we is eleven, not twelve.
Even of the twelve, one of them was
not a true disciple, was not a genuine
disciple.
So here you have a host of nominal
disciples leaving the Lord Jesus, turning away from
him, and even Judas proved to be not
real.
But even among the true disciples, there are
gradations of discipleship, and I think the Lord
Jesus hinted that in John 8 and 31.
John 8, 31.
If you hold to my teaching, you are
really my disciples.
In other words, the more we obey the
teachings of the Lord Jesus, the more we
are his disciples, and none of us will
ever be a perfect disciple.
After we've done all that we should, we
still have to say that we are unprofitable
servants.
Now, I'd like to say this at the
very beginning, that all true believers are disciples
of the Lord Jesus.
I know this is an argument today.
Some people say some are believers and some
are disciples.
No, all true believers are disciples of the
Lord Jesus.
In fact, as I've already said, it's wider
than true believers.
Nominal learners.
And I'd like to say, too, that discipleship
includes all the teaching of the Word of
God.
We're going to use it in a more
restrictive sense in this course, but in its
broadest sense, discipleship includes all the teachings of
the Scriptures, because the Lord Jesus certainly went
over the whole gamut of truth with his
disciples.
And you get that in Matthew chapter 13,
verse 52.
He said to them, Therefore every teacher of
the law who has been instructed about the
kingdom of heaven is like the owner of
a house who brings out of his storeroom
new treasures as well as old.
New treasures as well as old.
And so, he was saying that the disciples,
they would go back into the Old Testament
and bring out precious truths from the Old
Testament, and then the new truths that he
was giving them here concerning the kingdom of
God.
Some of you sisters might be wondering, well,
what part do we have in this whole
matter of discipleship?
The Lord Jesus was a male, and all
his disciples were male as well.
Well, in Titus chapter 2, verses 3 through
5, we have the answer to that question.
Titus chapter 2, verses 3 through 5.
Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent
in the way they live, not to be
slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to
teach what is good.
Then they can train the younger women to
love their husbands and children, to be self
-controlled and pure, to be busy at home,
to be kind, to be subject to their
husbands so that no one will malign the
word of God.
So, the sisters have a real ministry in
discipling other sisters in the truth of the
word of God.
We might list some of the ingredients of
discipleship.
Just think of it this way.
Supposing you were to take another person and
start them on the road to Christian discipleship,
I mean, assuming they're already born again, what
are the things you would want to get
across to them?
Well, I would suggest to you that the
primary emphasis of the Lord's teachings on Christian
discipleship is the emphasis on character, and we're
going to see that again when we go
over Luke chapter 6 in detail.
We're going to see that the emphasis in
the New Testament is on the person's own
character, what he is.
The man is the message.
What I am is more important than anything
I'll ever do or say.
People are amazing.
They can read character.
We have those expressions, don't we?
People say, what you are speaks so loud
I can't hear what you say.
Edgar gets that I'd rather see a sermon
than hear one any day, which was another
way of saying the same thing.
And probably the greatest stumbling block to the
spread of the Christian faith in the world
today is the lives of Christian people, probably
doing more harm than any other single thing
you could possibly think of.
And so that's why all through the New
Testament you have this tremendous emphasis on character.
I think that's what Jesus said when he
uttered those words, follow me and I will
make you fishers of men.
We try so hard to be fishers of
men, don't we?
We take courses, we follow all the latest
angling devices, but listen to what he said,
follow me.
To follow him means to live the way
he lived.
And he's saying, look, follow me and I'll
take care of the fish for you.
And I really believe that's true.
Okay, that's why you have sections in the
New Testament like this.
The section on fruit bearing in John chapter
15.
What's that all about?
It's about the development of Christian character.
Abide in me, as I in you.
The branch cannot bear fruit except it abide
in the mind.
When we think of fruit, we invariably think
of souls one to Christ, but I really
don't think that's what it is primarily there.
Fruit primarily there is the development of Christian
character.
Think of the fruit of the Spirit in
Galatians chapter 5, verses 22 and 23.
It's character, the fruit of the Spirit.
Think of the armor of the Christian in
Ephesians chapter 6, verses 11 through 17.
What's that all about?
Well, I believe it's Christian characters.
The breastplate of righteousness.
I think that says that if I have
a righteous life, the devil will have little
to shoot at.
All of the parts of the Christian armor
there, a lot of our brethren take them
and make them positional.
They say, well, that's what I am in
Christ.
I'm righteous in Christ.
I don't think that's what it is at
all.
I think it's what I ought to be
in everyday life.
That's how you put on the armor of
the Christian soldier.
Now, if you want to see the importance
of it in practice, turn to 1 Thessalonians
2.
You know, brothers, that our visit to you
was not a failure.
We had previously suffered and been insulted in
Philippi, as you know.
With the help of God, we dared to
tell you his gospel in spite of strong
opposition.
In other words, courageous.
It was part of his character.
He was a courageous servant of Christ.
For the appeal we make does not spring
from error or impure motives, truthfulness, purity, nor
are we trying to trick you.
No hocus pocus in his presentation of the
gospel.
On the contrary, we speak as men approved
by God to be entrusted with the gospel.
We're not trying to please men, but God
who tests our hearts.
You know we never used flattery, nor did
we put on a mask to cover up
greed.
God is our witness.
We were not looking for praise from men,
not from you or anyone else.
As apostles of Christ, we could have been
a burden to you, but we were gentle
among you, like a mother caring for her
little children.
We loved you so much that we were
delighted to share with you not only the
gospel of God, but our lives as well,
because you had become so dear to us.
Now isn't this interesting?
Describing his entrance to Thessalonica with the gospel,
and he's talking about what he himself was,
and his fellows, what they were as men.
Surely you remember, brothers, our toil and hardship.
We work night and day in order not
to be a burden to anyone while we
preach the gospel of God to you.
You are witnesses, and so is God of
how holy, righteous, and blameless we were among
you who believed.