Embracing Discipleship: Humility, Assurance, and Service

Elders need encouragement. The Bible, in fact, commands God's people to encourage their elders, to respect them, and to show them honor. But people don't realize how much we really do need encouragement. And when I speak of elders, of course I'm speaking not only of ordained pastors but all ordained elders in the church. [00:45:20]

And in my opinion, for me the greatest encouragement that I can ever receive is that someone says "I'm praying for you, I'm praying for your family, that the Lord would sustain you." But to the question as it's asked, as the church encourages its elders to care for the church and to care for Christ's sheep and we have to remember that ultimately they're not our sheep, as Peter says. [00:55:30]

The doctrines of grace humble a man, but they don't degrade us. They don't flatten us, as one theologian has said. They, in one sense, show us how special we are to God. They show us that we are God's prized possession, that He chose us before the foundation of the world, that God created the world. [00:08:51]

And that He loves us with a special saving love and that we are His children forever. No one can take that away from us. No one can snatch us away. And there is a certain sense of assurance that grows within us. But we are all prone to be puffed up with pride, and so we have to pray against that every day. [00:09:40]

But if we're looking to the cross, if we're looking to what Christ did for us that objective reality that He didn't just come to make salvation possible, that He didn't just come to offer salvation, but He came to actually accomplish salvation, that it's a redemption that has been accomplished and applied, as John Murray said. [00:15:30]

That Christ actually did something, He affected something. He actually saved people in His atonement, and that atonement was a substitutionary atonement for sin. And God imputed Christ's righteousness to all who put their faith in Him, and He imputes our sin to Christ on the cross, and that sin has been paid for fully and finally, once for all on the cross. [00:15:30]

So creeds and confessions help to ground us. They also help to guard us. They become a perimeter for us to help us to know where we can go and where we can't go. They also serve us as maps, as guides for us. When we travel somewhere, when we hike somewhere, I like to hunt as you know, and I love to hike and backpack and fish and especially here in Florida, backcountry fishing you need maps, you need to know where you're going so you don't run aground and you can find your way back. [00:19:41]

And you use maps, looking at where people have gone before you. You're saying, "They've gone here, and they've told us don't go this way because you'll run aground there. You'll run aground into heresy there, into false teaching there, into error there, so steer clear of this way and that way and steer a straight path." And creeds and confessions help us to do that. [00:19:41]

Scripture teaches in this life that we may lose everything. Scripture teaches in this life that we are to sacrifice and we are to give. You cannot read any page of the Gospels or the New Testament and come away with any ounce of prosperity preaching or health and wealth prosperity preaching or name it and claim it or blab it and grab it. There is not one hint of it in the Bible. [00:23:15]

Everything in Scripture is about giving up for the sake of others, giving up for the kingdom of God. Everything we read is sacrificing for the sake of others and for the sake of the kingdom of God. Prosperity preachers who are preaching that drivel, that nonsense, are doing the devil's work. They are not preaching the Word of God. [00:23:15]

And at the very heart of the Great Commission of course is discipleship, baptism and discipleship. But a lot of times when we think of discipleship, what do we think of? I think that a lot of people think only of teaching. Sometimes we think of mentoring, and that's a good thing, or sometimes we think of small group discipleship. [00:24:09]

But I think too often, too many Christians think simply of teaching. Now, teaching is right. Teaching is the, if you will, one of the foundation imperatives of the Great Commission. But what Jesus says is "teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you." Often as we hear the Great Commission just quoted from memory we hear people say, "Teaching them all that I have commanded you." That's not what Jesus says. [00:24:09]