The Gospel Scope & Discipleship

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The Gospel Scope & Discipleship

May 1, 2022

Make disciples of all nations! It's not whether the nations will be discipled, but who will be doing the discipling?! Thanks for listening!

Key Texts:

* Matthew 28:18-20

* Matthew 23:15

* Ephesians 5:25-28

* Ephesians 6:1-4

* Luke 13:20-21

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Transcript

That's really good, Bryce. Thank you. Yeah.

So making disciples involves teaching them, making disciples... discipleship takes time. But honestly, one of the main points that Bryce and I want to drive home in this episode, and what we were hinting at last episode, is where discipleship starts, and where it can go and it can end, but you need to be faithful to where it starts first before you go somewhere else. So discipleship starts with your family, and then it happens in your church, and then it moves to the world.

Don't think I will even ask you to make Jesus Lord of your life. That's the most preposterous thing I could ever tell you to do. Jesus Christ is Lord of your life.

Whether you serve him or not, whether you bless him, curse him, hate him, or love him, he is the Lord of your life because God has given him a name that is above every name. So that the name of Jesus Christ, every knee shall bow, in tongue confess that he is Lord. Some of you will bow out of the grace that has been given to you, and others will bow because your kneecaps will be broken by the one who rules the nations with a rod of iron.

And I'll not apologize for this God of the Bible.

[Music] Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you, and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. Matthew 28, 19 through 20.

This is the For the King podcast. I'm your host, Rocky Ramsey, and I'm joined with my co-host and brother Bryce, where we proclaim the edicts of the king over all his creation that Yahweh reigns. Our topic today is the gospel and discipleship.

The topic is the gospel and discipleship. And I know we started off with Matthew 28 last episode about evangelism, and the reason why we're reading it again is because we're focusing on another part of Matthew 28 here, namely making disciples and teaching them. So hopefully you see why we're connecting the two.

Evangelism and discipleship are very closely connected, but we're going to go into depth this week about the actual act of disciple making after they've been evangelized and these people repent, and they come into the kingdom of God. You're now starting the task and the duty of discipleship. Sound good, Bryce? Amen, yeah.

Maybe another way to think about it is discipleship is the logical extension of evangelism. You can't have, you can't like isolate one or the other. You can't have evangelism without discipleship, and you can't have discipleship without evangelism.

So, you know, that's what we see being baptized. Baptizing these people in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. That's what Jesus is commanding them to do.

That's the evangelism part. You are converting them to Christianity. That's evangelism.

Discipleship is the next part that he says, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you. And then he says, "Oh, Rocky, that sounds very legalistic." Does it? You're saying that Jesus commands things? Yeah, so you're pretty much saying we have to work our salvation. We have to work for it.

Oh, we work because we've been saved, brother. Oh, okay. Rest assured.

I'm going to try to present some work salvation here. We work and we teach and we do what is commanded of us because we've been saved and justified and baptized into the kingdom of God. How's that sound? Is that sound good? I have never heard that.

That sound, that's so clear. That's good. I hope I can speak clearly on that.

Yeah, that's what Jesus is saying here. He's not talking about working your way into the kingdom. He says, "Baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit." And then what happens next after they've been justified by faith alone? Then you teach them to observe all that I commanded you.

And it's not legalistic because if you love me, you will keep my commandments. That's New Testament. That's New Testament, folks.

That's not lifeless law. That's the law of liberty at work. We're now free actually to follow the law because we've been given the Spirit of God.

That's why he says, "Baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit." Amen. That sound good? Yeah. That sound Orthodox? That's Orthodox and that's preachable.

Is it biblical? It's biblical. Okay, that's good. So, did you want to comment at all, Bryce, instead of just goofing off with me, do you have something of substance? Yeah, I'd like to bring up something that me and Rocky, an experience that we both had mentioned last episode.

And we had talked about how there was an experience that we've had where we have preached the gospel to a person, both Rocky and I, on separate occasions. And the person seemed like they were converted and then me and Rocky dropped the ball. We did not disciple them and ultimately they're apostate.

They're not Christians anymore. So, we want to keep that in the forefront of our mind because as Christians, we will experience this reality if we do not fulfill our God-given duty to disciple those whom we evangelize and convert. Yeah, it's an act of disobedience.

Exactly. It is sin. If you drop the ball on discipleship and sin, you need to repent of it.

And recognize that Christ is a great savior and he forgives your sins. And I know I've had to repent of that and it's very devastating, but we can't drop the ball on this any longer. So, this is why it's the scope of the gospel because we can't just preach the gospel.

And like Rocky brought up yesterday, it's not like, or sorry, last episode, it's not like the Billy Graham Crusades where you come to the altar, you get saved and then you go back home. You get saved and then you get baptized into the church and then you're discipled by the church and various different faculties. Yeah.

And you know why it's the scope of the gospel? Because what do you baptize into? A kingdom. You can't live as a rebel in the kingdom. You can't enter the gates of a kingdom and then immediately become a rebel.

Well, what's going to happen? You'll be turned right back around. You're not a part of the kingdom. You get arrested.

Yeah, you'd get arrested. That this is the beauty is really discipleship is life in the kingdom, living under the king's edict. Evangelism is they see the spires and the skyscrapers and the wonderful architecture and the beauty of the kingdom and they come in, they enter the gate.

And then discipleship would be, okay, do you know how we built this? The spire, the great church cathedral. Do you want to know how the king built the castle? Do you want to know how the king rules? This is discipleship. Yeah.

Do you like that analogy? This is a how then shall I live. The great Francis Schaeffer book title. That's the question that every Christian needs to ask.

When you're born again, you need to ask the question, how then shall I live? We all have a standard to live by. Is it going to be man's law or is it going to be God's law? Exactly. Yeah.

And again, the Christian faith is a totalizing worldview system. Christ commands dominion over all things. The Lord is in the heavens and he does whatever he pleases.

It's a totalizing faith. It's not coming to the kingdom and get saved for your sins because you feel bad about yourself and then now live like you hate the king the rest of your days. That's where discipleship comes in.

You teach people to love the king, to love the edicts of the king. Amen. So let's get into it.

Yeah. That Matthew 28, sorry, that Matthew 28 text, the word to make disciples there. It's a Greek word.

I don't know exactly how to pronounce it. It'd be like math to tail or something like that. Math, math, a tail, something like that.

But the point I wanted to bring up is it's also where we get the root word for mathematics, math, math, the retail, something like that. And the reason why, the only connection I wanted to make here is it eventually got boiled down to mathematics, but initially it just meant to teach through observation, to study, to be learned through observation, constantly looking at a system or the way something's operating to understand how results come about. Right.

So the reason why what's being articulated in that Greek word of make disciples there in Matthew 28 is observation and study of the person of Christ. That's why Paul says imitate me as I imitate Christ. If you're going to make a disciple, the only things you want to impart to that disciple would be the things that you do in the image of Christ, not your sin.

You don't want to impart your sin. You want to impart and disciple them into the image of Christ. So the observation, the study is that of God's word, the logos, the logos, right? Christ, that's what you're imparting to these people that you've evangelized.

Yeah. And then, and the observation point comes, it's very critical because it says in Mark 3 14 that Christ appointed them apostles and prophets. Sorry, he appointed them disciples that they might be with him.

Yeah. And then he would send them out, it says. So it's, they, they have, it's the observation of who the person of Christ is.

And we are all to display unto others who Christ is. Now that's not the gay, you know, preach the gospel at all times and if necessary use word. But what that is displaying is that you live as an example of what it looks like to not be a hypocrite.

So Jesus actually said that the Pharisees were being hypocritical when by not living up to the standard of the law because, and he called them blind teachers. He said that they're the blind leading the blind, only good to fall into a pit. Yeah.

So hypocrisy is something you're teaching. Everybody's being taught something, right? A disciple is not above his master, right? But he will find himself, the disciple will always be like his master. Yeah.

So whoever you're being discipled by, that's who you're going to be like. Exactly, Bryce. Yeah.

And again, discipleship is not, oh, I'm sorry. It's, it's an age old idea, teaching somebody to become like somebody else. But I guess a point I'd want to drive home is you're, you're being discipled at all times, no matter what.

And we want to make disciples in the image of Christ. But when you send your kid to a public school, again, we're talking scope of the gospel application. How's the disciple made? You're constantly teaching that person the ways of God.

What does public school do? Constantly teaches young kids, not the things of God. There's no morality taught in school. There's just wickedness, right? And statism.

You're always being discipled. Discipleship is necessary. It's inevitable.

It cannot be stopped. It's a system that cannot be stopped. That's why Christ disciples, you know, it's built to creation.

And I guess a text that comes to my mind is Matthew 2315, when the seven woes and Jesus is saying, woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you travel around on sea and land to make one proselyte, to make one convert. And when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves. That is what public school is doing, right? That's not what we want to do as Christians.

Right. Not want to make anybody a son of hell. We want to make them a son of God.

And we need to teach them what sons of God do. And even broader than the school system, that's just what the world does. I mean, John says to the Christian, do not love the world or the things in this world.

And all that is in the world, the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, the pride of life, right? He says abstain from these things. And he ends his epistle in verse on little children abstain from idols. So in other words, what Rocky's saying here is it's not whether you're going to be discipled.

It's who's doing the discipling. Exactly. So again, we must ask the question, by what standard, or in other words, how then shall I live? Should I live by man's law, or should I live by God's law? And Matthew 28 says teach them to observe all, not some, all of what Christ has commanded of us, the law of liberty that Christ has delivered, which is the totalizing moral law of God, we are commanded to live by that, not as a means of justification, but as a means of walking according to the standard that God has given as a standard for righteousness.

Yep. That's, that's really good, Bryce. Thank you.

Yeah. So making disciples involves teaching them, making disciples discipleship takes time. But honestly, one of the main points that Bryce and I want to drive home in this episode, and what we were hinting at last episode, is where discipleship starts.

And, you know, where it can go, and it can end, but you need to be faithful to where it starts first before you go somewhere else. So discipleship starts with your family. And then, and then it happens in your church.

And then it moves to the world. So we see in Ephesians five, the husband's, husband's discipling their wives. So Ephesians five, 25 to 28, husbands love your wives, it's just Christ also loved the church, engaged himself up for her, so that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word that he might present to himself, the church and all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she would be holy and blameless.

So husbands also to love their own wives as their own bodies, he who loves his own wife loves himself. This is the husband's great task of discipling his wife, washing with the word sanctify her, that he may present her holy and blameless, not enslaved to sin, but holy and blameless. This is what discipleship is.

It's even baptized into the kingdom. Now you're hoping to present these people that you're discipling, blameless and pure. Right.

And it starts with your wife, it starts with your family. Amen. It's not, it's not like how we normally treat women in our society where we, you know, you're not in our society and like godly Christian circles that are surrounded by biblical teaching of patriarchy.

We should hold to that, but there's some patriarchus who treat their wives more like a doormat. And what they'll do is they'll put, they'll try to put a trash bag over their wife instead of helping her to show her true feminine glory by giving her the teachings of Christ. Yeah.

So husbands have a deep responsibility to disciple their wives, not let them run around and be wayward, loud mouth women, but to have the adorning of the internal person of the heart, a quiet and submissive spirit. So you have a responsibility as a man to teach your wife that these things so that they walk in these. Yeah.

So again, with the first government would be self government and you know, God disciples up. We have other people disciple us, but you know, Psalm 103, bless the Lord, oh my soul and all that is within me. You need to remind yourself of the gospel and control yourself, preach the gospel to yourself, disciple yourself in a very odd way.

David is discipling himself there. You know, he's reminding himself of what's true as we are discipled by our elders in the church and older men around us as men are, and then husbands in the family, disciple their wives. And then here, here, here's another, um, great thing that the, the godly men and families do.

They disciple their children. So Ephesians 6, 1 through 4, children obey your parents and the Lord for this is right. Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment of the promise so that it may be well with you and that you may live long on the earth.

Fathers do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. So here we also see, um, fathers instructing their children. So think about this.

Every person, unless there's a broken household is a part of a household. I mean, you're the majority of the human race. The human has a mother and a father.

Now, if every father is being discipled by other men, you know, is being, uh, disciplined by the Holy Spirit by the elders in the church, um, that thing that sorry, that way, and every man is discipling his wife and his kids, then, then that probably covers 99% of the human race is being discipled. Does that make sense? Bryce? You see what I'm saying? Yeah, that's good. Yeah.

And I think that's why we're saying start in the home, start in the family, because this is really the hub in the central, um, training grounds for discipleship in Christendom. Um, so when you think about how the gospel goes to the nations, you do have spectacular men and women that will go as missionaries to a foreign place and proclaim the gospel. Now, now how does, how does yeast? That's yeah.

How does yeast leaven alone? Well, when we think about the kingdom of God and Jesus teaching that the kingdom of God is like leaven in a lump of bread, does a piece of yeast somehow randomly transport to the other part of the yeast and then leaven that, that part right there? No, you know, maybe a yeast cell can get into, um, another part of the bread, um, you know, at random and spread that way. But a majority of the way a lump of bread is being leavened is by one yeast cell leavening, uh, and breaking down the glute molecule where it's at and then, and then multiplying and spreading through mitosis into the net, the next part of the bread and then the next part of the bread and then it slowly leavens the whole lump. Um, so people are some sort of STEM major or something.

Yeah. I got, I got a STEM field master's degree from a reputable secular university. So I pretty much own everything and you can't argue with me.

That's some high order science. But do you see my point though? And I think, yeah, I know that's, that's good. Yeah.

I think everybody can grasp what I'm saying. Yeah. I think there's again, churchy entity, there's this romanticized view of mission work where you have to go, if you really want to be a missionary and be a great evangelist, you have to like be like a Billy Graham where you gotta, you gotta travel to the ends of the earth to a remote region and learn a language and disciple somebody.

That's the real discipleship work. When Jesus says, baptize the nations and teach them all that I command them and make disciples of all nations, what Jesus has in mind there is really the model and Ephesians. What we see the model laid out in, in the new Testament is that it starts with families and then spreads like wildfire throughout the whole world.

Um, you have, think about, think about it like this. You have one part of a town being evangelized instead of going to, you know, if a, if a, if a guy in the Midwest tried to go to California, there'd be a big barrier to culture and common understanding. But if you went to, you know, say a guy is in Michigan and then he goes to Illinois or Minnesota, he'll have much more in common with that person.

So that that's the way the kingdom of God spreads is organically like leaven in a lump, which is adjacent and not, you know, randomly teleporting to some random place in the lump and trying to leaven it that way. Do you see my point, Bryce? Yeah, that's, that's so good. I mean, in other words, you, you just really get the statement here.

Like I know Jordan Peterson's really famous for saying like, if you want to change the world, like clean up your room first. But I mean, this is strictly biblical because what you're doing is you're following the order of governance that God's given you, right? If you want to be a leader in the church, Paul says, make sure you're married, have kids and you can examine your kids, right? Look to see if you even take care of that household. And then we'll see and judge upon that government, whether or not you've been able, or whether or not you will be able to take care of the church.

Yeah, right. And in the same way, think about the government. Look at Exodus 18.

When, when Moses goes to elect magistrates, different judges, it's men who do not take a bride, who fear the Lord, right? And they have self mastery over themselves. So if you're faithful with a little, you'll be faithful with a lot. That's a biblical principle.

So and that's a really good way of putting them above that. The leavening doesn't jump to one end of the bread, whatever, like, I don't know how, you know, I'm just a philosophy major. So maybe if you put an abstract language, I'd understand it.

But it's, it's from what's next to you, right? You focus on your sphere of influence. And you don't try to neglect that and think that you're doing something spiritual by going across the country or across the world, which we don't want to neglect that that's a high calling as well. Yeah, don't, don't nuance us to death as we say this, you guys know what we're getting at here.

You know, we're not trying to say being a missionary is not an important task because Paul the Apostle would go to Athens that, you know, he would go to different places, he went all the way to Spain. There's a place for that. But what Bryce and I are emphasizing is the majority of discipleship in Christendom happens in this model, the way leavening and the way yeast and a lump of bread usually spreads is that by going to the adjacent spot next to it.

Right. And, and the reason why Rocky and I started with the family is because the family as the Puritans say, is the seminary, which means back in their language, it meant the plant nursery. It's a nursery for church and Commonwealth or church and state, you don't have church and state without the family.

So families take precedence because in a by Abraham's offspring, shall all the families of the earth be blessed? Who is that Abraham's offspring? At offspring, it's Christ. Right. So in Christ, does all the, the families of the earth find their blessing? So even God's history of redemption takes place with families.

Exactly. And we are the household of God and the church. So it's always family oriented.

Yeah. Amen. So as we wrap up here, just, just to push it further, rule yourself and then, sorry, disciple yourself in an odd way, like, like Psalm 103, remind yourself of the promises of God, remind yourself of Christ, listen to older men and older council, older people in your life without council plans fell with many advisors.

They succeed proverbs 1522. So it's good to be discipled by Christ himself through the Holy Spirit, but also through people around you after you've done that, then focus on your family, those adjacent to you. And then, as we can, if we continued on in Ephesians six, we'd see how slaves are to relate to their masters, which a great analog of that today would be those that run businesses.

You're supposed to disciple the people and respect the people that are working under you by discipling them in the faith. That's important. That's a way you would do things that way in the civil sphere, you would disciple people by governing according to God's laws, the civil magistrate.

So it continues to build up, right? But I just wanted to do a quick note on that. So to finish up, this is the last statement I'll make. The demands of discipleship is to be like the teacher.

That is Christ. Christ is a servant, but also a king. You can't, you can't forget like Jesus in the gospels is the same Jesus in Revelation.

So he's servant, but he's also king. He doesn't stay meek and mild. He also turns into a victorious, serrated, bloodthirsty warlord.

And I don't, that's not blasphemous at all to say that that's how he's portrayed in revelation. He's got a blood drip, a sword dripping with blood by vanquishing his foe. So a disciple is to be humble, but humble, but also meek with immense strength from Yahweh.

Amen. Is that good? Yeah. And I'll just add one note.

I mean, one easy way to do this is literally just grab a dude who is a new convert and just teach that person what the Bible says. Like I have a young guy that I get together with weekly and oftentimes what we do is we just sit down and he just rails me with questions. What do you think about this? How do I think about that? How do I think about this? And he's a high school and like the time period that he's living in, like of course he has so many questions because I mean, he's probably being, not probably, he's being starved from the school system and from church.

Yeah. You know, so oftentimes that's just what it looks like. It's not anything.

This is not this ethereal thing. Like literally just get together with the person and show them what to do. Yeah.

Right. Like invite, like, like I'm about to tear down my, our mom's pool tomorrow. Like that would be an opportunity to say like, Hey, like why don't you come alongside me and let's tear down this pool together and show him how to, how to do that.

Well, like there's a lot, when you're doing manual labor like that, a lot of times it's very easy to get frustrated. Like, Oh, now you get to display to him what it's like to not be frustrated. Like we had an older guy who used to disciple Rocky and I, and I remember a time where he would invite some of us over and I never partook of this, but there was others who were, he would just change his oil and ask that they would come do it with them.

Yeah. Right. So I mean, it's, it's not this weird, a ethereal thing.

Like it's literally just, just teaching people what it looks like to be a Christian. It's not that hard. Amen.

Right. Exactly. That's a good way to end.

So thanks for listening guys to the for the king podcast. You can check us out more at for the king podcast.com. There's a new article. My friend, Zach wrote, fur babies, dog moms.

And I forget, I forget the whole title, but go on my website and you can look at my most recent blog post would be a reblog of Zach's, Zach's blog. And he's basically just critiquing dog culture and how we've made an idol out of dogs. It's actually, it's really funny at times to read it because it's so true, but I highly encourage you to go check him out and support him as a brother.

So thanks Zach for, for writing that and letting me read the log it. And if you have any questions about anything that Bryce and I have said, or just want to reach out to the podcast, you can, you can reach out to me at for the king podcast@gmail.com. Thanks for listening guys. I always end with the doxology to the king of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, the honor and glory forever and ever.

Amen. Sole day. Yo.

Hey. Hey. Hey.

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