Discipleship - 2023-06-20

The speaker discusses the importance of discipleship in the church. He explains that a disciple is a learner who listens to the teaching of their pastor and then shares what they have learned with others. Discipleship involves learning biblical truths and passing them on to others. The speaker emphasizes the need for churches to focus on teaching the Word of God rather than social issues. He encourages listeners to share what they have learned with friends and family who may not attend church. The speaker also mentions the importance of rightly dividing the Scriptures and being a part of a church that teaches biblical truth. He concludes by urging listeners to be disciples who actively share their faith and knowledge with others. Hello and welcome to Bible Believers Baptist Church, this is Brother Tony, and I want to take a few minutes tonight, the Lord laid on my heart something, and so I just want to take a few minutes, I don't have a, I don't think I have anything lengthy to say, however I do have some thoughts and I wanted to bring it to you tonight, so if you have your Bible, take and turn to Matthew chapter 5, we'll read our text and then we'll pray and then we'll bring the message as the Lord allows. Matthew chapter number 5 verse number 1, it says, And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain, and when he was set, his disciples came unto him, and he opened his mouth and taught them, saying, Father, I thank you for the word of God, I thank you Lord that you've given me a message, and I pray Lord that you'd bless as we look to the word of God this evening, Lord, teach us, guide us, help us, and we pray it in Jesus' name for his sake, amen, and amen. The New Testament Church today, the New Testament Church is supposed to be a discipling organization, in other words, it's supposed to be a teaching organization. One of the things that I learned very early in my Christian walk, and when I say organization, of course I'm talking about the earthly church, I'm talking about a physical church, I'm talking about the local church. Now the church, the body of Christ, is an organism, and that contains all the believers who have trusted in Christ for their salvation, so there is no separation of denomination, or no separation of location, or no separation of time duration, in other words, anybody who was in the body of Christ during the first century, when Paul led someone to the Lord, and there's no difference between them and someone who is led to the Lord today, they are part of the same body. But when it comes to the local church, it's very different, so the body, the Lord's church, the body of Christ, is an organism, and the local church is an organization. Now what I learned about the local church, and the way I understand the local church, I just have to be honest, it's what the Lord taught me. It was not taught to me necessarily by my pastor up in Ohio, although it was a result of what he taught, and what I mean by that is that while he did not teach that this was discipleship, what I learned was, sitting in the church on Sundays and Wednesdays and revival meeting, was actually discipleship. So he didn't come out and say, this is discipleship that we're doing here on Sunday morning, or in Sunday school, or at the Sunday evening preaching service, or Wednesday night prayer and Bible study, he didn't come out and say, this is our discipleship classes, or these are our discipleship classes, this is another discipleship class, however, over time, as the Holy Spirit was dealing with me, and as the Holy Spirit was teaching me, I learned this as we went through the Bible. And what I mean, and how that happened was, the preacher would preach on something, and it was, I learned from what he was preaching about, or teaching about. If he was preaching against sin, or preaching about the knowledge of sin, or what is sin, I learned what is sin. So if you look at our text in Matthew chapter number five, the disciples came unto them and he taught them, and he opened his mouth and taught them saying. So a disciple is a learner. A disciple is somebody who hears the preaching of their master, of their teacher, of the one who is guiding them, and they learn from that. Now when it comes to that, so therefore what I'm saying is, I learned what Bible teaching was, I learned what discipleship was by what the pastor taught. So when he taught about baptism, I learned about baptism. When he taught about eternal security, when he taught about anything. We talk about the giants in Genesis chapter number six, and the relation to Goliath, and the future, what's going to happen, what Daniel tells us about in Daniel chapter two, and those kind of things. I learned that. I was being discipled in the Bible. And so biblical discipleship is learning the Bible, it's being a student. And of course that's what I want for our church here at Bible Believers Baptist Church. I want us to be a church, I want us to be a group, I want us to be a body of believers that are disciples, that are disciplers, that are discipled, and that will be someone who learns to disciple somebody else. Now listen, our goal is to teach others. Second Timothy chapter number two. Now we did have a discipleship course in our church, and it was brought in and it was taught by a brother at the church. And this is the main verse, now he used this verse, and if I remember right, he taught for several weeks on this verse, even before he got into the lessons. They were like 20 simple lessons on discipleship or simple subjects, simple Bible subjects that we could learn from, but before he did, I remember he taught on this passage in Second Timothy chapter number two, and verse number two, and Paul says this to Timothy, he says And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men who shall be able to teach others also. And so what the point of this verse is, and the point of the message is, is that we should be disciplers, and not just disciplees, but disciplers of others. The things that we learn, the things that we learn in Bible preaching and teaching, we should tell others. I remember when I was at work, when I first got saved, I would learn something at church, and I would take it to work on Monday. I would talk about it as I read my Bible through the week, as I learned something, as I studied things, as I read the Bible, I would take it to work. I would take it out to somebody when there was an opportunity to present it to someone. And that's what a disciple is supposed to do. In other words, a disciple truly is a recruiter. A disciple is someone who's learning, but then they're recruiting and sharing what they've learned. I have a message that I preach, I don't know, I haven't preached it in a while, but it's real simple. It's a real simple message, it's about a church, it's about a Christian being likened unto a sponge. The church, of course, being the pail of water, and the Christian is a sponge, and you get into church, and you get the preaching of the Word of God, you get near to God, you get the singing of the hymns of Zion, and you get the fellowshipping and praying, and you learn from that. And what it is, it soaks into you like you're like a sponge, and you absorb all that. And what you're supposed to do with the things that you've absorbed during your Sundays or Wednesday services, you're supposed to go out and squeeze it out, and in other words, drip as you go and tell people about what you've learned. Now if you're not learning anything in church, and if you're not growing in church, then you don't have a discipling church. Now a discipling church is important, it's important to have, it's important to be a part of a discipling church, and a discipling church, again now, is a church that teaches. You have to be a learner. Now if your church is teaching and you're not learning, that's a problem with your heart or with your understanding. But the ideal is that God, of course, gives us pastors and teachers according to Ephesians chapter 4, so that he might teach us the things of the Word of God, and of course that's where we want to be. We want to be in a right relationship with God, being able to learn from the Word of God. And so when we do that, that's an important thing. So basically what it comes down to is being a learner, and being able to pass that along unto someone else. And when it comes to being a disciple and learning, you have to understand that again, the body of Christ, the church, the universal church of God, is an organism, but the body of Christ, the local church, is an organization. Now within that organization, you can have saved people and lost people. And so our goal is to make sure that we're discipling. Today, too many churches, their philosophies have not given themselves to teaching biblical truth, but they teach a lot of social truth and other social awareness issues, and they teach about things like that. And don't get me wrong now, I just preached the message and taught about, preached a little bit about fathers this past Sunday on Father's Day, and of course the Bible will teach us how to be good fathers, and it'll teach us sound social ways to interact with our society if we follow the teaching. But the teaching of the Bible is to teach us about who God is and about our destination for eternity, first and foremost for us. Now listen, the first and foremost for God is He's interested in His kingdom, and of course, filling His kingdom with disciples, Jesus Christ wants that. He wants us to be saved. And so the first thing that we need to know is that we are born again. And today, discipleship, and again, as I'm talking about discipleship here, I'm talking about what we learn and then we give out. You know, again, if your church is preaching and teaching the Word of God, but you're not giving it out, you're not a disciple. Remember the disciple's job is to bring it to somebody else. Again, you're the sponge. Now it's good, we're teaching through, we just started on the book of Joshua, we started on the book of Daniel, and we've been talking about the kingdom, we've talked a little bit about the King James Bible and those kind of things, and those kind of things that we're talking about, we should be taking to others. In other words, if the Lord leads you to some understanding, now I'm not talking about taking to them the whole message, although it's good if we have these electronic messages, you share them with somebody and say, hey, this was some good teaching my pastor did, why don't you listen to this? But if you get a point, for example, if you get a point about the King James Bible, Psalm 12, verses 6 and 7, the words of the Lord are pure words, as silver tried in a furnace of earth purified seven times, thou shalt keep them, O Lord, thou shalt preserve them from this generation forever. So if you believe and if you've understood, as I've taught it and preached, that the King James Bible has been preserved and it is the preserved Word of God, why, you should share that with somebody else. You should share that with somebody else and say, hey, look at this verse in the Bible, and listen, it'll come up if you want, if you're ready to be a discipler, if you've been discipled, and listen, every service is an opportunity for discipleship. Every service, I know that as I teach, every lesson that I preach and teach, God is able to do something with, and so every church service, every message that you listen to is an opportunity for you to give it to somebody else. Now, you may have a family member who does not attend church, they may be a lost family member, and so you can choose the Holy Spirit guiding, of course, choose what you would be able to give to maybe a lost family member, maybe a friend at work, maybe someone who you love who does not believe the King James Bible is the Word of God, maybe somebody who believes and works for salvation. What you learn about these things, you're supposed to be able to take it and give it to somebody else, as he said in 2 Timothy 2.2, who shall be able to teach others also. And so, as my calling is, is to teach and preach to the church, the body of Christ in a local assembly, your job, our job, everyone's job is to take those messages out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come. We have something good. We have something better than what the world offers. I think we have something better in that we have a Savior who died for our sins, who loved us and gave us an eternal home in heaven. Do you have friends and family who are not saved? Well, you've got something better. Do you have friends and family who maybe attend church that do not believe that the King James Bible is the Word of God? You can share some of these messages and some of these things that you learn in church to others. You can share what it means to be a Bible student. We've learned there's a lot of churches out there who preach and teach, and like I've taught when we were teaching about the kingdom of God and the kingdom of heaven, a lot of people think they're building a kingdom upon this earth. But as we've shown you, when it comes to the kingdom, the kingdom is the Messianic kingdom. It's the kingdom of God. It's a kingdom that God is building, but it's not one that He's building today physically. You know, He's building that spiritual kingdom, and yet He's going to build it physically when Christ comes back. And there's a distinction there that's called rightly dividing, right? You know, study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the Word of truth. Not a lot of churches out there, not a lot of churches rightly divide the Scriptures. And so being dispensational is an important thing. Understanding those kind of things and sharing it with others is most important for our Christian Listen, for our Christian growth, we need to share those things. And when I say share, I mean give what you have received. In other words, because you have received it, you should give it out. That's what it means to disciple. And I look forward to, again, I keep my opportunities to present things to our church, to the Bible Believers Baptist Church here in Andalusia. I'm thankful for that opportunity, but I share it with our church. I give it to our church so that they may give it to somebody else. Now, of course, I want you to grow. But again, you have people at work. You have family members who might not be in church who need to hear the message. And listen, the Holy Spirit will guide you into what, as I just said, the Holy Spirit will guide you into what to give them. Now, every message is not for every person, but there's a message for you to give out if you're listening for it. So when it comes to being a disciple, this is just my quick message tonight. Just something quick about discipleship is the fact that us being disciples means that we learn it and then we give it away. And so I hope tonight that you've learned something about discipling and about being a disciple and a discipler. Not just a disciple, but if you've learned something, give it out. If you share something, go let them have it. Give it to them. Don't be afraid. God rejoices in the truth. And so should we. And preaching the gospel, preaching the Word of God, giving it out is a privilege and an honor. Okay, that's the message for this evening. It's about discipleship and being a discipler. And I hope the Holy Spirit has spoken to your heart. Father, I thank you for an opportunity to preach here tonight. And I pray, Lord, that those who would listen to this message, whether now or later, Father, that they would be stirred up to be a discipler. In other words, to teach somebody else, to teach somebody else to follow Christ. Lord, maybe to share about their church, their good church. Maybe to share about the Word of God, the King James Bible. Maybe to share about just the fellowship that is important in Christ. Now, Lord, I pray for anyone who hears this message who is not born again. Lord, you and I know that they need to be saved. And I believe, Lord, that you're able to save anyone. And so, Lord, I pray that if anyone gets under conviction about anything this evening, that they would respond to you, whether it be about discipleship or about being revived or being saved. Lord, I pray that you would bless in everything that's done. I ask it in Christ's name, for His sake, amen and amen.