Talk of JESUS . com

Tag: Church

  • Teach these new disciples…

    Teach these new disciples…

    The Great Commission

    Have we missed the point of the Great Commission?

    “Go into all the world and preach the Gospel;” that is what we all know (and have heard preached often). We’ll send a missionary and we’ll fund some missions. There: done, because our church has funded others to carry out the ‘great commission. ‘Lord be praised!

    But is this what Jesus instructed us to do in this final commission and grand conclusion to the Gospel of Matthew?

    [ctt title=”‘Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” tweet=”Matthew 28:19″ coverup=”8nBX8″]

    Go and make followers of all peoples (not just the Jews, or Samaritans or Europeans or Asians or Africans, all nations); therefore we send missionaries.

    The King James Version states: “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations.”  We have been pretty faithful in this in centuries past.

    “Baptizing them in the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost (Holy Spirit, as we say now).”

    We are quick to baptize new Christians, sometimes even as infants. Let’s check them off on our list of souls won to heaven. Yet keep in mind that “baptize” must include repentance and a permanent change of heart to bow down humbly to the will of God the Father. Through the ongoing guidance by the Holy Spirit, this commission of our Lord Jesus Christ implies a great personal responsibility for the believer – new believer and those accepted into the Kingdom long ago.

    A Command to the Church

    Jesus follows with the command most neglected by the church – your church, my church and nearly every church where the Great Commission has been preached:

    Matthew 28:20 NLT Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you.

    Do we do that?

    Jesus tells his disciples – those who believe – to go and make disciples. How? Preach the Gospel, Good News that Christ Jesus has come to all who believe, no matter what you may have done in your terrible, sinful past.

    Okay. I repented. I’m changed by my relationship with Christ and I’ve received the baptism – the permanent change that I want to do what God wants me to do (though by my sinful nature I continue to sin).

    I am a disciple of Jesus Christ – a Christian.

    Now what is that ‘great commission’ thing again? Send out a missionary?

    No. In fact, I am the missionary wherever any see the change Christ has made in me by his grace and love. I am changed. I must obey Christ as my LORD, not just read what He said as just more good advice. Jesus IS my Lord!

    He has commissioned me to do what?

    Since I obey Him, I must teach ALL that Jesus has commanded.

    Do we teach new believers ALL that Jesus has commanded, even in our own local congregations? Yet it is this overlooked part of the Great Commission to which we are all called. We are called to obey Jesus as our Lord within the body of the church, before we dare claim to know His mission to others.

    Set aside postcards from overseas missionaries momentarily and look to the souls of those who surround you within the walls of worship of your own church building.

    Proverbs 22:6 Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

    Are our own children doing this? Are they in church with us? Do they hear God’s word with us. Do they continue to worship the Lord after we have raised them up as teens in a distracted culture and young adults in an increasingly carnal group of worldly friends opposed to Christ?

    Are you, dear fellow disciple, teaching them to observe all that Jesus Christ has commanded you? (It’s no so easy as just sending a couple of bucks to a missionary somewhere, is it?)

    How do the  Sunday School classes and Bible studies look at your church?

    Are you making great progress on the great commission in your own community and in our own households?

    Teach them to observe all I have commanded you, Jesus tells us. The struggles of the church now and the struggles of the early church challenge us to obey Jesus and teach the Gospel. Continue to teach the Gospel to new believers and to some of us. Do we get it? (and teach the gospel…) We barely listen and learn within the walls of our own churches; yet listen to the writer of Hebrews dealing with the same issue:

    Hebrews 5: 11 There is much more we would like to say about this, but it is difficult to explain, especially since you are spiritually dull and don’t seem to listen.

    12 You have been believers so long now that you ought to be teaching others.

    Instead, you need someone to teach you again the basic things about God’s word. You are like babies who need milk and cannot eat solid food. 13 For someone who lives on milk is still an infant and doesn’t know how to do what is right. 14 Solid food is for those who are mature, who through training have the skill to recognize the difference between right and wrong.

    Returning to the great commission of our Lord:

    How can we go out and make disciples of others, when our pulpits nurse Gospel milk to grown infant christians, never grown into a Bible study?

    Teach others to observe all that Jesus has commanded? How, when WE do not take time or effort to grow in the permanence of the promise of our baptism?

    In consideration of our growth in scripture and prayerful consideration, we must set aside quiet time with the Lord.

    God willing, I pray to continue in living these commands of Christ Jesus, who by our baptism and profession of faith we call, Lord. Beloved believer, I invite you to also obey the great commission of Christ Jesus. Go!

    Due to continued devotion to my book on Christian growth, posts to this site will be limited. [2014 note]

    Your posts and comments on any posts are encouraged. May the Lord bless you this day and this week. 

    – Roger Harned, Author & Site Administrator

  • SELF-absorbed

    SELF-absorbed

    Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. – Philippians 2:3 NLT 

    I have a list of texts I have sent to friends and loved ones which end with my request for their response. It seems that we have all become too busy with our own agendas to take proper time and response to others. Are they too SELF-absorbed to answer ME?

    The worst offenders on MY list are those I care about most. (Why don’t they answer ME?) Really, I would have called them, but they are always so busy and it seems I can never find a good time for them that works into MY own busy schedule.

    In fact, what I would most prefer is more PERSONAL contact and time just for ME and them in person… but that never seems to happen. Really, I need a hug now and then. It seems no one in available for such intimate things in these busy days and lonely nights.

    Now for the personal disclaimer: I am most guilty of thinking of MY SELF before serving others in the way I communicate. YOU may add me to your list of those who do not reply instantly to your impersonal texts, emails, forwarded clever emails, facebook stuff, game requests, etc. I do, however, respond personally to telephone calls (unless you are a bill collector or a recording from one of our personal physicians, dentists, school principals & others).

    ScottyWe all seem to have gone off the deep end into the cloud and no message from our communicator can beam us up to the reality of the relationships of this brief life.

    I And then there is:selfie

    “Social media” – an oxymoron for the internet where we can be superficially social.

    It is a place where a “selfie” can define who we are at one instant and then another selfie for our next hours online.

    What does all this have to do with living our life as a Christian in this world? you may ask.

    The application is quite simple (and should be quite SELF-convicting to you and ME). Let’s look at our letter from Paul to the church at Philipi.

    Philippians 2

    English Standard Version (ESV)
    Christ’s Example of Humility

    So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, 2 complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.

    3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.

    4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.

    5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.

    Have the same love, Paul advises, as Christ Jesus, who as God humbled Himself to men as a servant.

    Do you empty yourSELF as did our Lord?

    How can we claim Christ, while we witness that we are too busy for our loved ones?

    Therefore, what should we do?

    Be a loving wife – a loving husband – in Person, as if you were Christ Jesus and served your beloved in the same way He washed the feet of His Disciples.

    Be a loving friend, even as Christ wept for Lazarus, dined with Martha and Mary and visited His dear friends in Person at every known opportunity. (Do you think that our Lord did not have other things to do on His important agenda?)

    Be a loving friend like Paul and Peter and John, who all wrote from their hearts to their friends in many churches so many times as they traveled from place to place. The Apostles never forgot their friends, the saints of other churches, as they moved on in their mission, yet continued to pray for these beloved ones.

    Be a listener to those who cry out to you for help. Think how many times Jesus paused in an unexpected place to engage the heart and soul of one who cried out.

    sad selfieHelp me, their eyes say. Help me, their silence speaks. Help my emptiness (even their ‘selfie’ stares into your scrolling heart).

    Have we become, even as those claiming the love of Christ, so busy with our SELF-image of what a ‘christian’ ought to be that we seldom take the time to relate to one another as we would have our Lord love us?

    I offer no answer for us – we, the SELF-proclaimed ‘christians’ who look to others just like everyone else. (Perhaps a little SELF-examination through scripture and prayer would be in order.)

    I will suggest one possible snare into which we ought not fall as we get so caught-up in the rush and impersonal ‘social’ habits of these last days. It is from the Apostle Paul’s caution for the church of the next generation in his letter to Timothy.

    2 Timothy 3English Standard Version (ESV)
    Godlessness in the Last Days

    But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty.

    2 For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, 4 treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power.

    Paul is speaking of NON-Christians; however he warns how such godless people and behaviors easily creep into contact with believers (and he has some unequivocal advice about these relationships).

    Avoid such people. 6 For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, 7 always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.

    Perhaps the time has come in our own busyness to examine the quality of our love we so flippantly and familiarly overlook in our responses to loved ones – especially in our heartless blind eyes so evident, so near and so frequent in our ‘personal’ devices and ‘social’ communication.

    Is anyone listening? (Please comment.)

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • PK’s, EK’s, DK’s: Our kids; God’s kids – 3

    PK’s, EK’s, DK’s: Our kids; God’s kids – 3

    The purpose of my instruction is that all believers would be filled with love that comes from a pure heart, a clear conscience, and genuine faith.  – 1 Timothy 1:5 NLT

    Continuing in the series of (our Saturday posts) our focus is on ‘Preacher’s Kid’s, Elder’s Kids and Deacon’s kids and the focus of scripture from Paul’s letter to Timothy.

     Why is the integrity of leadership in the pulpit and authority behind the pulpit important?

    Think about your preacher (minister, priest, rector, brother, pastor… whatever you and your church would like to call the man in the pulpit). Why would ANYONE in the church listen? Why would anyone from outside of your church family want to listen to this man, a mere mortal? (And I accept and include some pretty good preaching I have heard from godly women.)

    WE, the people of Christ’s church, recognize the Authority of God and Christ Jesus  inherent in the office of the Pastor of our church.

    Our LORD stands behind the authority of the pulpit.

    Yet IF NOT… IF a church leader of any office: Pastor, Elder, Deacon, even a mere member representing your church and claiming Christ; IF ANY Christian does not preach the gospel with the integrity of our life, Christ Jesus is maligned in our soiled image of claiming His Name in vain.

    The world has retorted our faith with stories enough of the evil of priests and pastors and hateful ‘christians’ with a cause more self-righteous than our own lives.

    PK fishWe would ALL do well to think of ourselves as being in the spotlight of a ‘Preacher’s Kid’ and modify our witness (behavior) in front of others accordingly. Please allow me one personal example.

    A number of years ago a young man in high school met two new students who turned out to be the son and daughter of the new Pastor of his church. These two ‘Preacher’s Kids’ were both well-dressed, well-behaved, more intelligent than most. It did not take long for everyone to learn that they were the new “PK’s.”  This label always preceded everything they accomplished and anything they wanted to do.

    Although he hardly spoke to the new boy and the new girl at school, the young man was more than pleased to participate with them on Youth Sunday along with his ‘church friends’ of the youth class at church. Unfortunately (as often happens in real families who do not live next door to the church), his family was a little late. After the service the new pastor, “Reverend ___,” asked by young man’s mom into a room to talk, closed the door, and talked to his mom at some length (no doubt a continuation of his angry exhortation about lateness in front of everyone as they all hurried into the ‘Youth Sunday’ service.)

    After that, this Christian young man no longer wanted to go to church.

    Pastors have to practice EVERYTHING they preach, don’t they? We expect this.

    And as for the Preacher’s Kids: imagine how well they had witnessed such things before, knowing many of the incidents like these in their biological father’s life (by their dad, who happened to be the preacher). Imagine their embarrassment when later it was found out that Reverend ___, their dad, was having an affair with the church secretary!

    Such stories are all-too-common for leaders of the church. The gossip ruins lives, in addition to the sins of the flesh of a mortal ‘preacher’ of the word. In a greater sense, we are all preacher’s kids. Jesus Christ made no such mistakes as are so often brought to light by the enemies of the Gospel. “See? Christians are no different,” they say.

    That’s right. We are ALL sinners – even the preacher – and even the preacher’s kid’s, like you and me. Jesus Christ is our preacher, God is our Father and in that familial sense, we are ALL preacher’s kids saved by grace.

    Never-the-less, scripture holds the leaders of Christ’s flock to a higher standard. You can see why.

    Paul points his ‘Preachers Kid’ in the faith, Timothy, to these higher standards for choosing his own children who will help him with the leadership of the church. You can see why.

    Once again (and without designation of ‘pastor, elder, deacon, preacher’s kid, elder’s kid, deacon’s kid, our kids, your kids, their kids…) let’s consider the higher standards of God for leaders of Christ’s flock:

    1 Timothy 1:

    8 Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully, 9 understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, 10 the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, 11 in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted.

    Paul is not yet speaking of those called to lead the church, but of those who we hope to draw to Christ by our righteousness in the Law. Yet sadly, in these last days, we need to point to a scripture directed toward the world which has not been heeded even by those who train our preachers, fill our pulpits, appoint our church leaders and then are ‘shocked’ to discover scandals by those who do these things even before and while they claim Christ.

    Paul goes on to point out what a sinner he was BEFORE he was saved and came to Christ Jesus in obedience to the Gospel.

     1 Timothy 2

    First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, 2 for kings and all who are in high positions…

    8 I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling; 9 likewise also that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control…

    11 Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. 12 I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.

    [This is NOT to say that a woman should not preach or teach – a topic we will not approach here.]

     1 Timothy 3

    English Standard Version (ESV)

    Qualifications

    • must be above reproach,
    • the husband of one wife,
    • sober-minded,
    • self-controlled,
    • respectable,
    • hospitable,
    • able to teach,
    • not a drunkard,
    • not violent but gentle,
    • not quarrelsome,
    • not a lover of money. (Though) He must manage his own household well,
    • with all dignity keeping his children submissive
    • He must not be a recent convert (Young perhaps; but not new to Christ)
    • dignified,
    • not double-tongued,
    • not addicted to much wine,
    • not greedy for dishonest gain.
    • 9 They must hold the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience. (We will not elaborate here.)
    • 10 And let them also be tested first…prove themselves blameless.
    • 11 Their wives likewise must be dignified,
    • not slanderers,
    • sober-minded,
    • faithful in all things.
    • gain a good standing for themselves
    • great confidence in the faith that is in Christ Jesus.

    It’s a long list of higher standards to which we should hold the leaders of our church. I do not even qualify.

    Do you? Do your church leaders? Does your pastor?

    train up a childIn deed and in witness we are like: Preacher’s Kids, Elder’s Kids, Deacon’s Kids.

    It’s just like when our kids are somewhere else people look at them and say: “We know you are ‘Roger’s kid’ {or Lissette’s kid…or Roger and Lissette’s kid}. They may as well have said, “We know your parents. Why are you acting like THAT?”

    So I ask us:

    If we are children adopted into the Royal and Holy Household of GOD our Heavenly Father,

    WHY are we calling CHRIST JESUS our LORD, while our worldly witness does NOT stand up to these HIGHER STANDARDS of a “Preacher’s Kid?”

    Do we call a man to the pulpit or to church leadership without holding him, his wife and his family to the higher standards of the loving family of God?

    Dear Preacher’s Kid, of the family of God and Christ Jesus:

    Repent! and return to the loving Father, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who seeks and finds even the lost sheep within the church — the loving Father who runs to meet the prodigal son… (or prodigal daughter…) and would welcome you home.

    He has trained you up in the way you should go.

    Now come home, beloved child of God.

    Pray also for me.

    Roger