Community Discipleship.

Steve Gentry

[0:00] I just want to continue to pray for a moment. Father, as we come before you right now, God, [0:05] I pray, Holy Spirit, that you would fill us, that you would teach us this morning, [0:12] God, that you would fill us with a passion for your Word,

[0:20] God, that you would just give us lives that are saturated with the Gospel, [0:25] that are desperate for your presence.

[0:33] [0:34] If you have your Bibles, Titus chapter 2 is where we’re going to be this morning. [0:38] Titus chapter 2. When I was a freshman in college, I was raised in church, I was a very religious kid really, [0:46] and I went to college and that first semester, some pretty astounding things happened to me. [0:56] And it really, what took place is that one of my friends, a guy that I got really close to, [1:03] his father wasn’t the healthiest guy in the world, and he had a massive heart attack one night,

[1:09] and Chris was his name, and he got a phone call about 10.30 one evening, [1:13] and he found out that his father had a massive heart attack, [1:16] and his mother was relaying the messages from the doctor to her son, [1:20] and the doctors had said that his father only had about a 10% chance of even living through the night. [1:27] And his father was in Florida, and he was in Lynchburg, Virginia at this time, [1:31] and he was desperately, and a few of us were trying to help, calling the airport, calling airlines,

[1:36] trying to get him the first available flight home, and he didn’t think that he was going to be able to get home [1:42] until the next day, and he was just in tears, desperately fearful that his father would die before he got home. [1:51] And so, around about 12.30 that night, it was just, just to set the scene for you, [1:58] there were about 25 or 30 of us crammed in this dorm room and spreading out into the hallway, [2:06] and we were just face down, crying out to God, okay?

[2:14] Begging God to spare his father’s life, okay? [2:20] I get a little emotional when I talk about this. [2:23] I’m a guy, so I don’t talk about it very often. [2:26] So, we’re all face down, begging God, God, just work a miracle here. [2:31] And at this time in my life, I was 19 years old, and I had never been in a situation like this, [2:38] and so it was really awkward for me. I didn’t even know what to pray.

[2:43] I had spent 19 years growing up in church, and I had never been in a situation where I had a bunch of Christian brothers around me, [2:54] because I lived in an all-male dorm. It was that kind of school, guys. [2:57] So, I’m there with a bunch of my Christian brothers, and we’re, I mean, we are literally face in carpet that’s like 20 years old and smelly, [3:07] and we are just praying, God, let his father live, at least until he gets home. [3:17] And the next thing we knew, it was 4 a.m., and we’d prayed for hours, alright? [3:23] So, the next morning, we’re all just going on two hours sleep.

[3:28] Most of the dorm was involved, and we were just begging God, and Chris gets a phone call about 7.30, and his father lived through the night. [3:38] So, we’re just like, oh, thank God. So, immediately, we started fasting. [3:44] None of us ate the next day. The next night, midnight, we gathered again. Midnight was our curfew, one of those colleges, guys. [3:52] So, we gathered once again in his room at midnight, and we just started praying again.

[4:00] And to make a long story short, what happened over the next few days is his father kept living longer and longer, [4:06] and the doctor kept coming back saying, he’s not going to make it. He’s not going to make it. [4:10] So, Chris makes it home. His father’s still alive. Well, about five days later, his father starts recovering.

[4:18] Okay? And the prognosis goes up, and it keeps going up, and his father lived. His father fully recovered. [4:26] His father, as far as I know, is still alive down in Florida, where it’s hot right now. [4:31] But here’s what I want you to get out of this story. I don’t so much want you to focus on his father. [4:39] That was amazing. It was a miracle.

[4:44] But what happened that was so significant in this story is what happened to me. [4:51] Okay? I’m not trying to be self-centered. But for the first time in my life,

[4:57] I began to have something happen inside of me that had never happened before. [5:03] And what happened to me was, is I started finding myself wanting to pray. [5:11] I started finding myself moving the events of my day around to give myself time to go before God and pray. [5:24] I found myself rearranging my life in ways that I have never done so that I could get before God by myself [5:35] and with other people and just pray. Instead of coming home at night and playing video games or calling girls or doing whatever it was, [5:45] every night for that entire semester, we had what we started calling midnight prayer, where we would get together in a dorm room.

[5:55] And for an entire semester, there were 20 or 30 of us every night praying. [6:00] And it went from this place where we were begging God to heal someone to where after a few weeks, guys started confessing sin to each other. [6:12] We would be praying and guys would just come out and say, I am struggling with lust. I am struggling with pornography. [6:20] I have struggles in my life that you guys would never believe.

[6:25] And then it started to come up that we were praising God and we were begging God for people to come to know Him. [6:35] And just our lives began to change in a way that most of us had never experienced before.

[6:44] And I have come to find out over my experience as a follower of Jesus, which really started during that semester,

[6:55] that those moments in our lives where these amazing changes take place, we are never alone. [7:05] That there is not some book at the Christian bookstore that you are going to go buy and you are going to lock yourself in your bedroom [7:16] and you are going to start reading and then all of a sudden the heavens open up and God speaks to you.

[7:23] That rarely do we ever take these giant leaps in growth in what we call our walk with Jesus. [7:32] Rarely is it that we are alone. [7:37] But what usually takes place is that we are gathered together with other believers for a common purpose [7:44] and then just out of the blue our lives start changing. [7:52] And sometimes it is like you just look back and you are like, what is happening to me? [7:57] But then very soon after this takes place we sometimes find ourselves once again isolating ourselves.

[8:06] Separating ourselves from each other, wanting to do our own thing. [8:11] And we have seen what God can do in our lives when we get together. [8:16] But then that togetherness is the thing that our selfish and self-centered sinful hearts tend to move us away from. [8:26] And I am the same as you are. [8:29] That when we come together, this community, this bride of Christ, this body of Christ that we have been talking about the last few weeks, [8:38] it is not something that we naturally want.

[8:42] We naturally tend to move towards wanting time alone or time away or time to just be with ourselves. [8:50] But then that weekend turns into a week, then turns into a month, then turns into half a year, then turns into many years where we have separated. [9:00] And we then never see God working, never see the hand of God moving. [9:06] And what our natural response to that is, is saying either, God something is wrong with you or church there is something wrong with you. [9:13] Because we don’t want to say, I am the one that is individualizing myself and isolating myself from the very posture and environment that God says he wants to work in.

[9:32] God does not exist outside of community. [9:37] You have to finish that sentence really fast when you say it. [9:40] Because if you stop on the word exist, you are like, he is an atheist. [9:42] No, God does not exist outside of community. [9:47] And this is something we have talked about before. [9:49] But I want to just give you by way of reminder, it is God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

[9:54] We just sang the words. [9:55] He is a trinity. [9:57] He is the Godhead. [9:58] It is like this cosmic mystery that we struggle to wrap our minds around. [10:02] How one being can exist in three persons. [10:08] But when we look at the act of baptism, when we become believers, we bring someone and we baptize them in the water.

[10:19] We say I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. [10:25] Think about what we are doing there. [10:28] How do we do it? [10:29] Do we take the person away and isolate them and take them in a back room and say, okay, we don’t want people to see this strange ritual. [10:38] No. [10:39] What we do is we bring a person who is now professing belief in Jesus, we bring them in front of the entire church.

[10:47] And they profess their faith to the whole church through this initiation of discipleship.

[10:55] Matthew chapter 28 and verses 19 through 20. [10:58] What does Jesus say? [11:00] He says go make disciples of all nations. [11:05] And then look, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and the Holy Spirit. [11:08] Teaching them.

[11:11] He starts by saying make disciples. [11:14] And then we baptize them, and then we teach them. [11:18] What we are seeing take place in baptism is first they are baptized in the name of the original, always existing, eternally self-sufficient Trinity. [11:29] We are baptizing them in the name of the original community of God. [11:35] And then through this they are symbolically joined together with the church body for the purpose of discipleship.

[11:50] What I want you to understand today is that when the gospel comes into someone’s life, what happens is that the gospel creates a disciple. [12:03] This is not something that you can join up for. [12:08] This is not a class that you sign up for. [12:11] This is not a process that whenever you have time you begin to say, okay, I’ll sign up for discipleship 101.

[12:21] No, when the gospel comes into your life, when you come alive in Christ, when the gospel is real and you say, yes, Jesus has taken my sin. [12:32] Yes, he died on my behalf. [12:34] Yes, he rose from the dead. [12:36] Yes, I want this salvation. [12:38] You are God. [12:41] In that moment you become a disciple.

[12:49] It is where your identity is now found. [12:54] Being a disciple is far more about an identity than it is ever about a process.

[13:02] And when you find that your identity is now in Jesus and you are now a follower of Jesus, you are now a disciple of Jesus and you follow him, [13:16] what begins to happen is that God puts you in his body, the church. [13:24] And you are now put into real discipleship. [13:29] And that being a disciple is not about just something that is happening to you off in left field when everybody else is separate from you, [13:41] but it is about God bringing you in. [13:43] It is about that grand vision that Titus was given in Titus chapter 1.

[13:49] When Paul tells Titus that he is reconciling the world, that he is redeeming the world, that he is creating for himself a people for his possession, [14:00] to bring him glory, and then he kind of expounds on it in 2 Corinthians 5 where he says that Christ is reconciling the world to himself. [14:10] He is bringing us into this relationship with the Trinity that could not take place apart from the work of Jesus.

[14:22] But what he is doing more than that is he is not just reconciling us to himself.

[14:31] Because remember when we looked at Ephesians chapter 1 and Ephesians chapter 2, [14:35] when the church is the fullness of Christ, the church is the bride of Christ in chapter 5, [14:40] and then in chapter 2 we are building this church together.

[14:46] Through Jesus God is reconciling us also to each other.

[14:53] To where we come together, and we are joined together through this illogical gospel where the good dies for the bad, where God dies for his creation.

[15:08] And these people who really have nothing else in common, and really should be separated by race, by religion, by creed, by lifestyle, by socio-economic climate, you name it. [15:26] There are hundreds of reasons why you and I probably should live our lives and never even meet.

[15:34] But we find this common ground in the truth of the gospel.

[15:44] And we come together, we don’t come together because we like the same things, but instead we come together because we believe the gospel. [15:56] And we are desperate for God, and we want to grow, and we want to learn, and we want to be trained, and we need help.

[16:11] But then real life sets in.

[16:16] And that sin that so easily besets us apart from the gospel, that sin that we know in our brains we have been freed from, [16:30] but sometimes our brain doesn’t communicate that to our body for some reason, and even our brain struggles to believe it. [16:37] We once again fall into that habit of isolation, and then we say, what is wrong with me, and what is wrong with you? I don’t like you.

[16:51] And so we begin to lose our identity as a disciple, and we once again find our identity in our individualism, and our isolation, and we separate ourselves once again. [17:10] So what I want to do for the rest of our time together is I want to unpack Paul’s grand vision of what a healthy functioning church looks like as it relates as a community of people growing in the gospel.

[17:31] The author of Philippiansi helps us a little bit.

[17:38] And he says that anyone can form a club, but it takes grace, shared vision, and look at that third part, hard work to form a community.

[17:54] Quite often where our struggles are is that we want to find people in the church that look just like us, that think just like us, that talk just like us, that are just like us, and that’s where we think we’re going to find our common ground.

[18:12] That is sin tricking you once again.

[18:17] Because you’re looking for a club, a clique, buddies.

[18:22] You can find those at Mulligans.

[18:26] I think Thursday night is ladies night. [18:29] Alright, it’s probably single guys. [18:31] Alright, you can find that anywhere. [18:33] You can find it in fantasy football.

[18:39] This is not a club.

[18:42] Because this is not about you.

[18:47] This is about the gospel. [18:50] This is about discipleship. [18:52] Let’s look at what Paul says in Titus chapter 2.

[18:58] He begins it and he says, but as for you, teach what accords with sound doctrine. [19:03] He starts off the way he kind of ended off there in chapter 1 with the qualifications of those who are leading the church. [19:11] And he’s giving this correlation between right beliefs and right practices. [19:18] The terms there kind of theologically are orthodoxy or proper thinking and orthopraxy, proper living. [19:27] And he says that you teach sound doctrine because it’s only in truth that this community is going to function properly. [19:37] And that truth is all about the gospel.

[19:40] It’s not about anything else.

[19:44] And then he says things that really chide against me. [19:47] It’s like sandpaper reading the rest of this chapter. [19:50] Because I don’t want to hear what he’s about to say to me. [19:52] If you’re in that boat, understand that I am rowing. [19:57] I don’t like it. [19:58] I don’t like what he has to say here.

[20:00] Because my personal bent in my sinfulness is to keep everybody about at this distance with my arm up saying, you can come close, but don’t come that close, bro. [20:12] You’re too close for my comfort.

[20:16] Older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, and steadfastness. [20:23] Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior. [20:27] Not slanderers or slaves to much wine. [20:30] But I guess they can be slaves to a little bit of wine.

[20:36] If you’re a Baptist, you’re like, what? [20:40] What in the world? [20:43] My goodness. [20:45] I’m out of here. [20:47] They are to teach what is good. [20:50] If you don’t like women teachers, you don’t like that sentence.

[20:56] And so train the young women to love their husbands and children. [21:01] To be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind and submissive to their own husbands. [21:07] And all the men said, amen.

[21:11] We kind of want to stop there, don’t we? [21:13] And that the word of God may be reviled. [21:16] Likewise, urge the younger men to be self-controlled. [21:21] Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works. [21:25] And in your teaching, show integrity, dignity, and sound speech that cannot be condemned. [21:33] So that an opponent may be put to shame, having nothing evil to say about us.

[21:40] Slaves are to be submissive to their own masters in everything. [21:43] They are to be pleasing, not argumentative, not pilfering. [21:48] But showing all good faith. [21:51] So that in everything, they may adorn the doctrine of God, our Savior. [21:58] So we’ve already seen that through the first chapter, and really through just the context of the New Testament, [22:04] and what God has to say about His church, that the gospel creates disciples.

[22:10] So we understand that in being a disciple and in finding our identity as a disciple, [22:17] we are to begin this life of connectedness. [22:21] Because it’s pretty hard to be a disciple when you’re off by yourself. [22:24] You can’t disciple yourself. [22:26] That’s kind of an antonym. That’s not a synonym there. [22:30] Isolation does not lead to discipleship.

[22:32] It leads to you going nuts. [22:34] Because if you’re discipling yourself, there’s probably going to be a lot of talking to yourself in mirrors, [22:39] and reading to yourself out of books. [22:41] And nobody really wants to watch that. [22:42] And nobody will want to be with you anyway.

[22:46] So you can’t do this by yourself. [22:47] So we have to understand that in this vision that Paul is giving us of being a disciple, [22:55] he’s showing us that this process of discipleship is going to naturally and necessarily form a missional community.

[23:09] So out of discipleship is going to urge this community, where Paul is giving this vision here, [23:16] where people are teaching each other the truth of the gospel, [23:21] but they’re going to go even further than that in that they’re going to teach each other how to live with the truth of the gospel. [23:30] So what’s going to happen is it’s going to take this giant leap from just knowing a lot of information.

[23:39] And it’s going to become where this information reaches our hands and our feet. [23:45] And it’s going to affect how we interact with each other. [23:48] And it’s instead of pushing us away, what’s going to happen is that it’s going to bring us together. [23:55] And we’re going to be teaching each other how to live the gospel. [23:59] And from what Paul said, it’s going to infiltrate every single part of our lives, [24:06] from Sunday morning to our community group, and then even into our own homes,

[24:13] where we’re teaching each other how to live the gospel within our own families.

[24:21] What I want you to understand about this missional community that’s being formed is it is not a religious caste system. [24:30] Because that’s our first inclination, is to look at it and say, [24:35] OK, so old people are in charge. [24:40] Well, some of you are older than me. [24:43] OK, so we’re already doing it wrong, apparently. [24:48] All right.

[24:51] That’s not what he’s saying. [24:53] Well, let’s look at what he’s saying. [24:55] Here’s what I mean. [24:58] I have worked at churches in a couple of rural settings. [25:02] Rural means farms. [25:03] I worked at a church one time where the head deacon, I saw his license.

[25:08] It was really his name. [25:10] His name was Happy Farmer. [25:12] And yes, he was a farmer. [25:14] That was his real name. [25:17] And it scared me. [25:18] I almost resigned that day.

[25:20] Because I was like, where am I? [25:22] People are going to start visiting me at night. [25:25] This is strange. [25:27] And in this church, this was the rule. [25:32] In order to be a leader, you had to be a certain age. [25:37] And you’re like, but Steve, weren’t you on staff?

[25:39] Yes, but I was absolutely powerless. [25:42] I got in trouble a lot. [25:44] So there were all these 70-year-old men. [25:49] And if you’re in your 70s, there’s nothing as people in their 70s. [25:51] It just so happens that I was in a scenario where people in their 70s were in charge.

[25:56] None of them. [25:59] I checked. [26:00] I was there for a while. [26:03] None of them knew the Scriptures.

[26:08] None of them were living Gospel-centered lives.

[26:12] So when the leadership is not passionate about the Gospel, what’s going to happen to everyone else? [26:21] They’re not going to be passionate about the Gospel. [26:23] So this is not a caste system of just saying the elderly are in charge and the 20-year-olds need to shut up.

[26:34] What Paul is doing, remember, what is the context that we’re in? [26:38] Remember back in chapter 1 where he tells Titus, who by the way is probably in his 20s, [26:45] He tells Titus, Titus, or set the church in order.

[26:52] You, young man, appoint elders. [26:56] And then remember the qualifications of elders are all about the Gospel working in their lives. [27:03] Even more than that, in 1 Timothy chapter 4, he tells another young pastor, he says, [27:08] Don’t you let anyone in your church look down on you because of your age. [27:15] Paul is constantly telling these pastors, it’s not about your age, so why in the world is he going to tell Titus here that age matters? [27:30] Because what he’s doing is he’s giving him a vision for an enduring church and not a church that will only last five years.

[27:43] What he’s talking about is that when these people that we have reached in Crete,

[27:50] when they begin to live the Gospel out and when you begin to disciple them and appoint them as elders, [27:55] as they grow older, they’re going to saturate themselves more and more and more in the Gospel. [28:01] And they’re going to grow more and more and more in the Gospel. [28:04] And what is naturally going to happen is that they’re going to be disciples who make disciples. [28:12] And then the older are going to be teaching the younger. [28:14] And then it’s going to be a cycle that is never ending.

[28:17] That is the only hope that we have as a church. [28:22] As that those of us that are here is that we grow in the Gospel. [28:27] We saturate ourselves with its truth and we saturate each other with its truth. [28:34] And then as we grow older we begin to grab those that are younger and say, come on with me, I’m going to teach you how to live the Gospel. [28:43] And he gives this vision of older men teaching younger men and older women teaching younger women. [28:48] And it is not about this moralistic deism.

[28:56] Listen young lady, don’t drink and don’t smoke. [29:00] And don’t you chew because the boys aren’t going to want to kiss you.

[29:04] Alright. [29:06] No.

[29:08] No.

[29:10] He’s giving this amazing vision of the Gospel infiltrating their lives through the community that God is forming. [29:20] And then this growth takes place. [29:22] And when the community is going to start growing, what’s going to start happening is that people are going to see the beauty of the Gospel in each other. [29:31] And then they’re going to become more authentic. [29:34] And they’re going to begin to find more and more of their identity in being a disciple. [29:39] And when you are a real disciple of Christ, you cannot help but begin to make other disciples of Christ.

[29:50] There’s never this graduation ceremony where it’s like, okay, you’re not a disciple anymore, you’ve made it. [29:57] No. [29:58] But in that never ending process of discipleship that only ends when we’re glorified in Revelation chapter 7 verse 9, and we’re worshipping in front of the throne. [30:08] That’s when discipleship ends and eternity begins.

[30:14] As we’re going down this road, it’s only disciples that can make disciples.

[30:23] And if you’re not seeing, you reproduce your faith in others, then your problem is a vision problem for your life.

[30:37] Because what Paul’s giving us in Titus chapter 2 is a vision for our lives. [30:43] That when we begin to believe the truth, we will also begin to speak the truth to each other. [30:50] And then we will grow in that truth and it will consume our entire lives.

[30:59] He even goes as far as to tell the slaves that the Gospel infiltrating their lives will change their master’s lives.

[31:14] And if you are young in the faith, understand that discipleship is going to require of you a massive amount of humility.

[31:26] Because some who are very young in the faith are physically older than some who are a little bit older in the faith. [31:38] That’s just the culture we live in. [31:41] And it wasn’t any different for Titus.

[31:44] He’s in a land that he doesn’t know anything about. [31:48] He’s new. He’s new in town. [31:50] And Paul’s like, hey, you better whip those old men into shape. [31:54] Titus is like, um, man, they don’t even like me. [31:59] I mean, it takes a lot of humility when you’re an older man to learn from a younger man. [32:02] And honestly, I’ll tell you this, it takes more humility when you’re a young man to learn from an older man.

[32:09] Because older men are typically more humble than younger men because, well, life’s been beating them up a lot longer.

[32:16] It’s us young guys that struggle with that. [32:18] And I still consider myself a young guy. [32:20] I’m going to hold onto that as long as possible. [32:23] I’m only 30. [32:24] All right. 30.

[32:27] I’m an adult now.

[32:32] But what is going to happen in this natural progression is that we must connect ourselves with each other. [32:39] And the vision that Paul has, look, let me fill you in. [32:43] It is absolutely impossible for this vision to be fulfilled on Sunday mornings.

[32:50] And I hate that. [32:52] Let me tell you, this hour a week we have together, if I could have the rest of the week, it would be pretty easy. [32:58] But the vision that Paul is giving us is that it’s going to have to infiltrate every aspect of my life and even the moments of my life that I want for my own.

[33:11] This is why we have such a huge emphasis on community groups.

[33:19] Because you cannot grow in the gospel one hour a week. [33:24] And you’re like, well, I read my Bible during the week. [33:29] The vision that God gives us is not a vision of you by yourself growing.

[33:35] I’ve tried it. [33:37] I’ll be honest. I’ve tried isolationism. [33:40] I’ve tried to grow myself. [33:43] It’s unbiblical and it doesn’t work. [33:45] But the problem is that you are afraid that people will find out that you’re a fraud.

[33:52] I’m afraid of that.

[33:55] I have to speak on Sunday mornings. [33:56] I’m really afraid of that.

[34:01] Sometimes I’m afraid you’re going to drive by my house and see how high my grass is. [34:05] Right? Oh, man.

[34:10] Because why we isolate ourselves is because we have a drastic problem with distrust in the gospel.

[34:19] We’re afraid that people will find out that we’re sinners.

[34:24] The gospel kind of says we are. [34:27] So I already know. [34:29] The person sitting beside you knows.

[34:33] You’re not fooling us because you took a shower this morning.

[34:37] That didn’t wash the sin off. [34:39] Still a sinner. [34:40] Well, I hope you took a shower this morning. [34:42] Maybe some of you didn’t. [34:45] We’ll deal with that next week.

[34:48] All right.

[34:50] But we’re afraid that everybody’s going to find out that we’re really sinful. [34:55] And the smile that we have on our face on Sunday morning is sometimes manufactured. [34:59] And throughout the week when we retreat to our own family and when we retreat to our own real lives, it’s not perfect.

[35:07] And sometimes we argue with our wives. [35:10] And sometimes we say things to our children that we shouldn’t. [35:13] And sometimes we want the baby to stop crying. [35:17] That’s just me. [35:18] Okay. [35:20] And sometimes, you know what, when we hit our hands with a hammer, guess what?

[35:24] We don’t say, bless the Lord, oh, my soul.

[35:29] All right. [35:30] I was weed eating yesterday and the line broke and I did not say, oh, praise Jesus. [35:36] He’s going to redeem this for the good. [35:38] Mm-mm. [35:40] Furthest thing from my mind. [35:41] Right there.

[35:42] All right.

[35:45] But what the Gospel says is that, yes, you’re a sinner, but Jesus has taken that baggage onto Himself. [35:52] And what discipleship does is when we come together and we disciple, we’re going to see the ugly side of each other. [35:58] That’s when it’s going to get really uncomfortable. [36:00] But what happens is that throughout the life of a disciple, what we begin to realize is it’s not that Jesus is more and more taking the baggage, [36:09] but we come to more and more of a realization of the redemption that He’s already worked into ourselves.

[36:17] It’s not that we’re getting more and more saved. [36:21] All right. [36:21] It’s that we’re getting more and more to an understanding of what we’ve been saved from. [36:26] In Romans chapter six, verse 18, Paul says that the same striving and effort that we were willing to put into our sinfulness is the same striving and effort that we must put into our discipleship.

[36:49] I don’t know about you, but when I was a young man, now I’m going to pretend like I’m old. [36:56] When I was younger, I put a lot of effort into sin.

[37:02] And I bet some of you to do all your like stone faces like, I don’t want anyone to see you just described me.

[37:11] But what if we put that type of effort into our community discipleship and to forming a missional community? [37:18] And it’s not just any kind of community. [37:20] It’s a missional community because what a missional community does is it magnifies the gospel. [37:27] It’s the cycle that takes place. [37:29] The gospel creates a disciple. [37:31] The discipleship that you take place, it forms missional community where you’re forming a community around the gospel and the work of the gospel in our lives.

[37:39] And then what begins to happen is that this gospel that’s working in us, it begins to be pushed out of us and into the lives of others and into the life of the community. [37:50] Look back at verse 10.

[37:54] Not pilfering, but showing all good faith so that in everything under this, they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior.

[38:12] Understand that the excellence that God has put into us through Jesus, what God wants to see take place in our community, [38:21] in people teaching people life on life, relationships being formed where we’re really getting over our sinfulness and becoming more and more repentant about our sin [38:35] and becoming more and more obedient to the vision of the gospel and the scriptures. [38:39] When that begins to happen, it becomes this adorning ornament and magnifying light onto the truth of the gospel. [38:53] God finds His own beauty in His people forming a real community of discipleship.

[39:04] And He says that’s how they’re going to see. [39:08] That’s how the world’s going to know My truth because we are adorning it here on this earth. [39:18] But He doesn’t stop there.

[39:22] For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people.

[39:30] I want you to look at that just for a moment. [39:34] In scripture, whenever Paul writes what the gospel does to us,

[39:43] in other words, a gospel implication or this is what the gospel working in your life is going to look like, [39:49] this is the type of obedience that the gospel will cause in you. [39:53] He’s very quick to either start or finish that thought with a gospel declaration.

[40:01] In other words, what he’s saying here is that this is not about you becoming this moral Judeo-Christian ethic of a person where you’re earning your keep. [40:12] No, He’s saying, and all of this is going to happen, [40:15] and you are going to become these people who can be seen by the community, can be seen by the culture. [40:21] And people say, God is with those people. [40:26] Because of the community that they’re building, because of the way that they’re loving each other, [40:31] because of the way they care about each other, because of the way that helping relationships are being formed.

[40:41] Because the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all people. [40:50] He says the gospel is going to cause this, but it’s only because it’s true.

[40:57] Not because of you.

[41:00] That rhymed. [41:02] Verse 12, training us. [41:04] How often do you think of grace and then think of training? [41:07] Never.

[41:10] But in this text, grace trains.

[41:15] To renounce ungodliness and worldly passions. [41:19] And to live self-controlled and upright and godly lives in the present age, [41:25] waiting for the blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, [41:32] who gave Himself for us, to redeem us from all lawlessness, [41:36] and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, who are zealous. [41:42] In other words, passionate for good works.

[41:52] In other words, what happens is that this life of discipleship is going to generate missional living from within the community.

[42:04] Here’s how this happens. [42:06] James chapter 1 in verse 22. [42:08] Paul writes, excuse me, James, who’s actually the half-brother of Jesus, writes that instead of just being people who come together, [42:16] he actually fights this mentality of Sunday morning Christianity. [42:20] He says, instead of just being these people who come together and hear about the greatness of God, [42:26] and hear about all that God is doing, become people who actually leave,

[42:32] and then come back together and help each other and be doers of the Word. [42:38] People who are growing, people who are changing, people who are passionate about the gospel of Jesus Christ, [42:45] because it is what saves us. [42:48] And it is what is restoring God’s creation back to what it used to be. [42:53] And then in this doing, what is going to happen is we’re going to be filled with this hope, [42:59] that’s going to take us through suffering, that’s going to take us through pain,

[43:04] that’s going to take us through this mundane life sometimes, [43:08] that’s going to take us through the boredom that we experience sometimes together, [43:11] that’s going to take us through the hard times, but it’s only going to happen in community.

[43:17] Notice that he ends this chapter about this blessed hope of the reappearing of Jesus Christ that has not happened yet, [43:25] but the trust that we have in it brings us together. [43:29] In Romans chapter 8 he puts it that what happens is that the earth is actually groaning for the end of time to happen. [43:39] He says that he doesn’t even consider the sufferings that we go through as a person, [43:45] to be significant of mention compared to the glory of what God is bringing about through his community. [43:56] And then look at it, it says,

[44:11] Look at this, [44:23] Who have the first fruits of the Spirit grown for it?

[44:31] In other words, our lives are to be marked by our hope in this future glory that God has promised us, [44:38] but what Paul says here is that we now as the people of God have the opportunity to experience the first fruits of that future glory. [44:50] In other words, experiencing that glory a little bit now is not out of our reach.

[44:59] What’s the glory of those first fruits he’s talking about? [45:02] Galatians chapter 5 reveals to us, [45:07] But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

[45:24] Understand that what the gospel is bringing to us from God right now are not the ability to just do these moral things

[45:45] that just pretty ourselves up so that we look presentable to each other? [45:52] No.

[45:56] But the Spirit gives us these gifts that can only function in community.

[46:10] When you look at the fruits of the Spirit, these first fruits of the redemption and restoration that God is giving us, [46:18] they can only be expressed when you’re in gospel community with other people, [46:23] when you’re experiencing discipleship, when you’re growing in the faith. [46:29] So what we need to understand is that it’s only when we’re real, it’s only when we’re intentional, [46:41] and that gospel transformation that God’s bringing us, this change, is only useful when we’re in relationship with each other.

[47:01] This gospel transformation is only useful when we’re in helping relationships with each other, [47:11] and we’re helping each other see the glory of God through the truth of the gospel.

[47:21] And if you don’t have that, you need it. You’re desperate for it, even if you don’t think you are.

[47:35] The gospel isn’t going to change so that it fits in your life, but our lives can change so that it fits in the gospel.

[47:52] Father, we come before you right now. We want to ask, we want to pray, we want to beg you to form a missional community at the village.

[48:13] Where we have an enduring vision, where we grow in the gospel, and as we get older we are training those who are younger in the gospel.

[48:26] Where husbands are teaching wives, and fathers are teaching sons, mothers teaching daughters, women teaching women, men teaching men.

[48:39] God, because we don’t naturally grow in the gospel. We must be intentional. We must repent. [48:52] God, may sin not isolate us from each other, but the truth of what Jesus has done, may it break the barrier of isolation that is taking place in the lives of these people this morning.

[49:07] God, bring us together.

[49:11] Right now, we are going to respond. We are going to come forward as believers.

[49:20] We are going to reflect on the death of Jesus that makes it possible for us to come together as a community.

[49:29] We are going to eat of the bread and we are going to drink of the cup, proclaiming and professing the gospel to each other.

[49:39] If you need to talk, or if you want to believe this morning, I am right here.