Matthew 28.16-20

A young girl was kneeling down on her mat, her hands clasped together, her eyes closed, and her heart towards God. She was worshipping the Lord Jesus in a building with other people - secretly. She knew deep down that in her country, if she were to get caught, she would be shot or imprisoned. At that very moment, an army of men came barging through the doors. They were screaming, yelling and cursing at everyone to get down on their knees, with their faces down onto the floor. Chaos loomed. People were so afraid that you could almost feel & taste “fear”. The sergeant walked around the room, batting his baton as if he was going to hit someone. He walked, walked and walked around the room, until he came full circle back to the entrance of where he and his men came. He then took a bible that he had seen, and told the people that what they were doing was illegal, BUT, he would make an exception for them. He gave them a choice to go free from their illegal act of worshipping God, if they would only spit on the Bible, in which he called it the book of lies, and to renounce their faith in the Lord Jesus. If they did not do this, they would be shot right where they were. Seconds of silence, minutes of silence passed, and finally one by one, people were praying a prayer “Lord Jesus, forgive me for what I am going to do. I am sorry. I love you Jesus”, and once they had finished, crying as they went up, spat on the Bible, renounced their faith, and left free with their lives still intact. As more and more people began doing the same, the young girl sitting looked appalled at what her brothers & sisters were doing. She felt the nudging of the Spirit to go up and to stand up on behalf of Jesus. She got up from her kneeling posture, and began walking towards the front. The sergeant still standing near the entrance thought “ah yes, another young disciple coming to renounce her faith, and spitting on this book...” She got to the front, looked at the sergeant, took the bible gently from his hands, began wiping the spit from the Bible, and prayed a small prayer saying “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” and at this moment, the sergeant took his pistol, placed the gun at the side of her head and pulled the trigger. She died instantly. She was 16 yrs. old.

A Somber story? No. A story about the power of God, through one disciple? Absolutely. This is just one story of many around the world, and throughout church history that has been told. We’re often very comfortable and relaxed in North America. Do we know and understand what it means to be a disciple of Jesus? What does it mean when Jesus says “Come, follow me”? This is what one dictionary definition says what a disciple is: “One who embraces and assists in spreading the teachings of another” or “one who believes and helps to spread the doctrine of another.” What does the Bible have to say about being disciples?
Before we get to what the Bible says about being disciples, turn with me to Matthew 28.16-20, let’s read this passage where Jesus gave the Great Commission to his disciples. **READ PASSAGE** Here, Jesus commands them to make disciples. He says “Go and make disciples” Before we get into that, we need to understand what just is a disciple of Jesus?

First of all, a disciple of Christ is one who abides, one who follows in Jesus’ words. Jesus says in John 8.31, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples.” Nobody can be a disciple of Christ, unless they have surrendered themselves to Him, and obey His commandments. Jesus himself says in John 15, “I am the vine, you are the branches...Remain in me, and I will remain in you.” How do we remain in Jesus? Three things: first, we must stay close to Him. Have you ever tried losing your own shadow? I tried it this past Thursday outside the ministry center, running around, dogging left and right, trying hard to lose my shadow. I couldn’t lose it. It stayed extremely close to me, and in the same that is how we ought to stay close to Jesus. Secondly, how do we remain in Jesus? To be involved in a local church, because the body of Jesus, is the church. the church is God’s people. We are to be active, participating in God’s work in our world, and third, we are to read the Bible and obey it. James 1.22 says “do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.”

Secondly, a disciple of Jesus becomes more like Him. They resemble his character, that’s what it means when the apostle Paul said “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2.20). The old self has died to sin, and as the Bible tells us, “...if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Cor. 5.17). In Matt 5.48, it says that as disciples of Jesus, we must be “perfect...as our heavenly Father is perfect.” this perfection doesn’t mean that we are to be morally perfect, but to be perfected in love. Just as God’s love is perfect, our love is to be perfected as well. Bear with me for just a second, in the Greek, the word for perfection means “teleois”, which means developing into maturity, growing. So our love is to be developing, it is to be maturing. It is to be constantly and continually be growing.
Third, a disciple of Jesus submits themselves to His authority. Jesus called out his disciples in the Gospels by saying, “Come, follow me”. In Matthew 9.9 Jesus called out to Matthew “Follow me”. Matthew got up and followed Jesus. There is no indication that Matthew hesitated. He just got up and did what Jesus commanded him to do. The book of James says “Submit yourselves, therefore...to God” You see, a disciple cannot and does not go their own way. They have committed, submitted and surrendered themselves over to Christ.

And finally, being a disciple of Jesus, loves. The Bible in 1 John 4.19 says that we love because God had first loved us. In John 13.35 Jesus says that the world will know that we are his disciples if we have love for one another. Christ when he was walking on the earth, loved people, he had compassion for them. Matthew 9.36 tells us that when he saw the crowds of people harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd, he had compassion on them. The Greatest commandment that God has given to his disciples is found in Matthew 22.37-39. Jesus says that we must “love the Lord our God with all of our hearts, all of our soul, and all of our minds.” This is the first and greatest commandment. The second is as equally as important “Love your neighbor as yourself.” To be Jesus’ disciple, we are to love God first, and as a result of that love, flows our love for people. To love God means to follow and obey Him, to submit to Him and to humbly listen to Him. 1 John 2.4 says “The man who says, ‘I know Him’, but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him.”

So what does it mean to be a disciple? Matthew 16.24 gives us a good starting point, it says “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself (or herself) and take up his cross and follow me.” What does denying oneself look like? What does it mean to deny yourself? There is this book I received for my baptism a number of years back, it was written and compiled by a christian band called DC Talk. In it are stories of men and women, boys and girls who stood and eventually died for Christ. In many ways they denied themselves for the sake of Christ. The apostle Paul wrote in Phil. 1.21 “...to live is Christ and to die is gain.” There is a story about a family. The husband’s name is Haim, and he and his family lived in Cambodia in the 1970’s. Let me read you their story:

“All during the night, the members of Haim’s family comforted each other. They knew they only had a few more hours to live on this earth. The Cambodian Communist soldiers had tied them all together and forced them to lie down on the grass. Earlier that day, Haim’s whole family had been rounded up for execution. Because they were all Christians, the Communists considered them “bad blood” and “enemies of the glorious revolution.” In the morning, they were made to dig their own graves. The killers were generous. They allowed their victims a moment of prayer to prepare themselves for death. Parents and children held hands and knelt together near the open grave.

After his family finished their prayers, Haim exhorted the Communists and all those looking on to repent and to receive Jesus as Savior. Suddenly, one of Haim’s young sons leapt to his feet, bolted to the nearby forest, and disappeared. Haim was amazingly cool as he persuaded the soldiers not to chase the boy but to allow him to call the boy back. While the family knelt, the father pleaded with his son to return and die with them. ‘Think my son’, he shouted. ‘Can stealing a few more days of life, as a fugitive in that forest, compare to joining your family here around a grave, but soon be free forever in paradise?’ Weeping, the boy walked back. Haim said to the executioners, ‘Now, we are ready to go.’ But none of the soldiers would kill them. Finally, an officer who had not witnessed the scene came and shot the Christians.”

What does it mean to deny yourself? It means to give your life up and surrender it to Christ, it means to to allow your will to be overcome by the will of God. The Bible says that “...since we are his (God’s) children, we will share in his treasures - for everything that God gives to his Son, Christ, is ours too. But if we are to share in his glory, we must also share in his suffering” (Rom. 8.16-18). The Haim family shared in God’s glory, but they also had to share in suffering. We are not only to deny ourselves, but Jesus says that if anyone would come after Him, they would also have to pick up their cross. What does picking up our crosses mean? To understand a bit more, we need to understand first what the cross meant to the 12 disciples. The image of the cross was an image of humiliation. Only criminals were crucified on crosses. It was a common practice by the Romans for execution. Just like today, in the United States, one of the common practices for criminals is the death penalty. This is especially true in Texas. Criminals in Jesus’ day had to carry their own cross to the execution site. So, when Jesus said to his disciple that they must carry their crosses, he was saying that they must obey Christ unconditionally, even if it meant their death. If Jesus were to ask you this morning “are you willing to deny yourself, pick up your cross and follow me?” How would you respond? What would you say? Yes Lord? No way, Lord?

We’ve looked at what is a disciple, and what it means to be one. Now, we look back at the passage in Matthew 28 where Jesus commands us to make disciples of all nations. God is a God of the world. He is God of black people, He is God of chinese people, He is God of white people, He is God of brown people. Doesn’t matter what skin color, race, culture people are from. Jesus commands us to make disciples, people who follow Christ from all nations. People from all over the world. Not necessarily just chinese people. God has a heart for the world, do we echo the same heart that God has? Romans 3.29 asks “Is God the God of the Jews only? Is he not the God of the gentiles too?...” One of the greatest and most awe-inspiring images found in the Bible that speak about disciples from all across the lands worshipping God, is found in Rev. 7.8-10. This is what it says “...I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice: ‘Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.’ All the angels were standing around the throne and...They fell down on their faces and worshipped God...” The body, the church of Christ does not only consist of one people group, but it includes all sorts of people, from all sorts of backgrounds. The other day I googled “beetles: how many kinds?” I had thought that there were maybe one or two kinds of beetles, but what I had found out was there are over 350,000 named species of beetles in the world! NAMED species. Could you imagine how many more un-named? It boggles the mind! In the same way, the disciples of Jesus are numerous, and they vary. Disciples of Christ come from all nations, people groups and cultures.

We know now that we ought to make disciples of all nations. The question then is, how do we make disciples? Four things, first, Matt. 28.19 says that we must baptize disciples in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Why is baptism necessary for the disciple? It is necessary because it brings us together with Christ. Being baptized says that we’ve died to sin, and now live the new life with Jesus. To be baptized means that we’re willing to live God’s way, that we have submitted ourselves to Him, and that we live the new life that God has given us and left the old life of sin behind. Second, we are to teach them to obey all the things that Christ has commanded us. This is why it’s important that we read the Bible, God’s Word, because without reading it we won’t be able to teach others about the things that Jesus has commanded us. We’d be clueless. I encourage everyone here to read the Bible, even if you don’t understand everything, persevere in your reading, ask questions, talk it over with friends - one day, you’ll come to have that “lightbulb” experience when things begin to make sense. Third, our lifestyle is our witness. We’ve all heard the saying “actions speak louder than words” - and it’s true. What’s more truer is that our lives tell the story of our God. We can share our faith, and evangelize until our faces turn blue, but if our lives don’t line up with the faith we profess, people will see us a hypocrites. There is a saying that I used to recall often, it says “It takes years to build up your testimony, only seconds to tear it down.” We must be careful of our lifestyle, because it may steer others away from a personal, living and vibrant faith in Jesus Christ. And last but not least, we are to spend time with them. We can look to Jesus as an example. He spent a little over three years with his disciples, teaching them, living life with them, walking alongside with them. He did not abandon them when times got rough, and this is exactly what we must do as well. You see, the Great Commission is not about “converting” people to a set of doctrines and beliefs. It is about discipleship. It is about bringing people to meet Jesus. It is about making disciples for Christ. Just because someone doesn’t “believe” in Christ doesn’t mean that we abandon that relationship. Our lives play an integral role in discipling others. With this being said, there are only two places of eternity. Either we are disciples of Jesus and we one day spend eternity with Jesus himself, or we spend eternity separated from God - in Hell. The Great Commission says “Go and make disciples of all nations” - That is what we are commanded to do. Will you be a disciple? Will you make disciples?