Deciding to Follow Jesus: A Transformative Journey

**Bible Study Discussion Guide: "I Have Decided"**

**Bible Reading:**
- Mark 8:27-35
- Romans 6:3-4

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**Observation Questions:**

1. In Mark 8:27-29, Jesus asks His disciples, "Who do you say I am?" How does Peter respond, and what does this reveal about his understanding of Jesus? [30:24]

2. According to the sermon, what does it mean to be "covered in the dust of your rabbi"? How does this relate to following Jesus? [26:16]

3. What are the four stages of following Jesus mentioned in the sermon, and how do they build upon each other? [28:00]

4. In Romans 6:3-4, what is the significance of being "baptized into His death"? How does this relate to the concept of new life in Christ?

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**Interpretation Questions:**

1. Why is Peter's confession of Jesus as the Messiah significant, and how does it challenge the disciples' understanding of Jesus' mission? [31:35]

2. The sermon emphasizes the importance of community in spiritual growth. How does being part of a church family contribute to one's journey as a disciple of Jesus? [43:35]

3. What does it mean to "deny oneself and take up their cross" in the context of following Jesus, and how might this look in a believer's daily life? [01:07:01]

4. How does the concept of dying to self, as discussed in the sermon, align with the teachings in Romans 6:3-4 about baptism and new life?

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**Application Questions:**

1. Reflect on your personal decision to follow Jesus. How closely are you "covered in the dust of your rabbi"? What steps can you take to deepen your commitment? [26:16]

2. Consider the role of community in your spiritual journey. How can you actively contribute to and benefit from your church family? [43:35]

3. Identify an area in your life where you need to practice self-denial. What practical steps can you take to embrace this aspect of discipleship? [01:07:01]

4. Think about a time when you had to make a significant decision. How did your faith influence your response, and what did you learn from that experience? [21:52]

5. The sermon discusses the importance of spiritual disciplines like prayer and Bible study. What specific discipline can you focus on this week to grow in your faith? [58:39]

6. Reflect on the idea of dying to self. What personal ambitions or desires might you need to let go of to fully embrace God's purpose for your life? [01:07:01]

7. How can you invite someone in your life to "come and see" Jesus? Identify one person and plan a way to engage them in a spiritual conversation or invite them to a church event. [46:10]

I'm ready to provide the 5-day devotional based on the steps outlined. Here it is:

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Day 1: Decisions Define Our Path
Our lives are shaped by the decisions we make, and while we cannot control every circumstance, we can choose our responses. This choice is more powerful than the events themselves, as it molds our character and destiny. Reflecting on our past decisions can help us align our future choices with our faith and purpose. As we enter a new year, it's an opportune time to evaluate our lives and make decisions that reflect our commitment to following Jesus. [21:52]

"For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope." (Jeremiah 29:11, ESV)

Reflection: What is one decision you can make today that aligns more closely with your faith and purpose?


Day 2: The Depth of True Discipleship
True discipleship goes beyond mere church attendance or belief in Jesus' existence. It involves a profound commitment to His teachings and example, living so closely to Him that His influence is evident in our lives. This means being "covered in the dust of your rabbi," following Jesus so closely that His teachings become a part of us. This commitment requires self-denial and taking up our cross, moving from being part of the crowd to becoming a dedicated disciple. [26:16]

"And he said to all, 'If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.'" (Luke 9:23, ESV)

Reflection: In what ways can you deepen your commitment to following Jesus today, beyond attending church or acknowledging His existence?


Day 3: The Necessity of Spiritual Community
Being part of a church community is essential for spiritual growth. The church, though imperfect, provides the support and accountability needed to mature in faith. It is a family where believers can connect, grow, and serve together, contributing to the mission of the church. This community helps us move from spiritual infancy to maturity, enabling us to serve effectively and turn the world upside down for Christ. [43:35]

"And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near." (Hebrews 10:24-25, ESV)

Reflection: How can you actively engage with your church community this week to foster spiritual growth and accountability?


Day 4: Growing Through Devotion
Spiritual maturity comes from devotion to the teachings of Jesus, fellowship, communion, and prayer. These disciplines help us grow from spiritual infancy to maturity, enabling us to serve effectively. As we devote ourselves to these practices, we become more aligned with God's purpose for our lives, contributing to the mission of the church and impacting the world for Christ. [58:39]

"But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen." (2 Peter 3:18, ESV)

Reflection: What specific spiritual discipline can you commit to this week to foster your growth in grace and knowledge of Jesus?


Day 5: Embracing Sacrifice and New Life
To truly follow Jesus, we must die to our old selves and embrace the new life He offers. This involves sacrifice and a willingness to let go of personal ambitions for the sake of His kingdom. By dying to self, we align our lives with God's purpose, experiencing transformation that goes beyond personal growth to impact the world for Christ. [01:07:01]

"I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." (Galatians 2:20, ESV)

Reflection: What personal ambition or desire do you need to surrender to God today to fully embrace the new life He offers?

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"Because here's the bottom line. All of our lives. All of our lives are made up of the decisions we've made along the way. So wherever we are right now, the biggest contributing factor to where we are right now is the decisions we made that brought us here. Now, you say, Pastor, I couldn't, you know, things happened that I didn't know about. I couldn't plan for. Of course, we all have stuff that happens in our lives. But here's the key. You can't control what happens to you, but what you can control is how you decide to respond." [00:23:52] (34 seconds)


"Now, I want you to understand something. I want to give clarity here. A lot of you are sitting here thinking, well, I did that a long time ago. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe you did and you did good with that for a while. And then you kind of fell back a little bit from that. Maybe you did. But what you really decided. It was not necessarily to follow Jesus, but maybe to follow other Christians. How they were doing and what they were doing. Thinking that you were following Jesus." [00:25:07] (29 seconds)


"You can believe that the Bible tells you the truth about Jesus and not really surrender to following Jesus. I heard another. A teacher used this phrase a long time ago, and I, I've adapted it from my life, adopted it for my life. And it's something you might want to think about too. And it's ask yourself this question. Are you covered in the dust of your rabbi? Now, what that means is a rabbi is a teacher. What was Jesus most known as? What was the title? They use most for him teacher rabbi." [00:26:16] (34 seconds)


"Peter answered, You are the Messiah. Different translations translate Messiah different ways. Messiah means Deliverer, Anointed One, Savior. So Peter is saying, We believe you're the one that was promised by God that he would sin to be the Anointed One of God, the Savior, the Deliverer of his people. That's the testimony of Peter and who he says that Jesus is. Verse 30, Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him. Now, people often get confused about that. But Jesus had a mission that he was on." [00:31:09] (38 seconds)


"Now, Jesus is not flawed, but the church is always going to be flawed, because flawed people need Jesus. And everybody has sinned and has those flaws. I love how this all got started when people started coming to see Jesus and hear His teaching. Then Jesus ascended back to the Father. He told the apostles to wait in Jerusalem. As He was going back to the Father. And He said, wait here until you're empowered by the Holy Spirit. Then you're going to become my witnesses for me, right? To call people to me." [00:45:01] (35 seconds)


"Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, the one that they crucified, the one that God has made both Lord, and Messiah. You get baptized in the name of Him, Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins, and there's a promise connected to it, you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. So here's an amazing promise, that if you would repent, which means to turn from your past, turn from your sin, turn from the mistakes and the failures of your life, turn from those things, and decide to be baptized into Christ, here's what's going to happen, God gives you the forgiveness of your sins, and He gives you the Holy Spirit Himself, and He wants everybody to understand." [00:50:29] (47 seconds)


"Part of connecting with Christ is becoming His disciple, joining other disciples in the growth process of being transformed by learning and following His teachings. Go back to Acts chapter 2. Those 3 ,000 that were baptized, you remember, that were added to their number that day? Look at verse 42, the very next thing they did. They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, to fellowship, to breaking of bread, and to prayer. They devoted themselves to the spiritual disciplines that will allow them to grow up as Christians." [00:58:39] (36 seconds)


"Now, steps two through four only happen if we do what I have here for number five. I'm going to close with this real quick. It's come and die. See, the only way we're going to move from the crowd to the family, to the disciple, to the place where we're serving, to the church, is if we're willing to come and die. come and die first. And when it says come and when I say come and die, I'm talking about dying to self. You die to yourself. That's the only way you're going to be willing to go through this whole process to become the servant that God has called you to be, because it requires you to stop living for yourself. To do that." [01:07:01] (50 seconds)


"When you die to self and you embrace that. In Romans 6, verses 3 and 4, there's a beautiful passage there that talks about the picture of those who came from the crowd. They've heard, they've made a decision about Jesus that they want to follow after him and accept what he's done for them on the cross. He's talking about those who made that decision. He says in verse 3, don't you know that all of us who were baptized into, Christ Jesus, were baptized into his what? Death. We were therefore buried with him through baptism into what? Death. In order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. There is no new life without crucifying the old one, friends." [01:10:00] (52 seconds)

I will sing of the goodness of God. I will sing of the goodness of God. I will sing of the goodness of God.

Also, we will send out an email. So you want to be sure you've got an updated email address in our database so that you can get those email notifications. And then when possible, we'll update the voicemail here at the church. So if you called, you would get a message telling you if there's any change on the service times there.

Always, if we're having services, we want you to use your best judgment on whether or not you should get out and try it. Some people live in areas where it doesn't take much. You're in a hilly area or a hilly driveway. You can't get out. We totally understand that. We want you to be as safe as you possibly can be. So don't feel guilty. Those of you that are staying home today watching online, we're glad to have that opportunity for you to do that.

Even though you have to know the dedicated people all made it. I'm joking. I'm joking. We're not going to lay any guilt trip on you about that. But don't let you use that online as a crutch. You know, if you're in a hilly area, you're not going to get out. If you can be here, we want you to be here in person, if at all possible.

Well, we are starting a new series today because it's Happy New Year, right? We've started into 2025 now. And the title of this series is "I Have Decided."

Now, a lot of people with the calendar new year coming on us will do an evaluation of the past year. They'll look at where their lives are and they'll try to make some decisions about how they might be doing, how they might want to change some things, how they might want to do some things differently in this new year. I think that's a good thing. I think you don't have to wait for January 1st to do that. Of course, you can do that any time in your life where you're going through some things. You're trying to decide what changes need to be made in my life.

Because all of us, no matter how good things are going or what the situation is, all of us can tweak it and look at ways to do better in our walk with God as a member of a family, as an employee or employer. We can always look at ways to do things a little better than we did this past year. And we can also celebrate some victories, right? Here's some things that I did do like I was supposed to. And I'm thankful for that and recommit to those things again for this coming year.

So I think these periods of celebrating things like New Year's, things like we had our 50th anniversary as a church and we looked at our past, you know, and looked at moving forward as a church, all of those things. Those markers serve as a good reminder to us that we need to be evaluating and looking at ways to improve on our witness as Christians, on our ability to impact the world the way God wants us to.

We all need to be looking at how we can be better husbands and wives and grandparents and sons and daughters and all of those relationships that we have that we can always do better with. Because here's the bottom line. All of our lives are made up of the decisions we've made along the way.

So wherever we are right now, the biggest contributing factor to where we are right now is the decisions we made that brought us here. Now, you say, "Pastor, I couldn't, you know, things happened that I didn't know about. I couldn't plan for." Of course, we all have stuff that happens in our lives. But here's the key. You can't control what happens to you, but what you can control is how you decide to respond to what happens to you.

And that's what shapes your life the most. Not what happens to you, but how you decide to respond to what happens to you. So I just wanted to do a quick series to kick off the year this year, looking at four critically important decisions we can make that can really change things for the better in our lives.

And the first one is the most important. And the other three we're going to be looking at are all based on this first decision being made the way it needs to be made. And today we're talking about how I have decided to follow Jesus.

Now, I want you to understand something. I want to give clarity here. A lot of you are sitting here thinking, "Well, I did that a long time ago." Maybe, maybe not. Maybe you did and you did good with that for a while. And then you kind of fell back a little bit from that. Maybe you did. But what you really decided was not necessarily to follow Jesus, but maybe to follow other Christians, how they were doing and what they were doing, thinking that you were following Jesus.

Or what your church was doing, and you thought that means you're following Jesus. If you're participating in the activities at your church. Or maybe when you said, "I decided to follow Jesus," it was just about, "I'll start going to church somewhere. I'll attend church services." Not a bad step, but certainly not the totality of what it means to follow Jesus for a lot of people in our culture and the American church.

What they mean when they say, "I've decided to follow Jesus," is they've decided to believe in Jesus. And you see, you can believe in Jesus without following Jesus. You can believe the information about Jesus. You can believe that the Bible tells you the truth about Jesus and not really surrender to following Jesus.

I heard another teacher use this phrase a long time ago, and I've adapted it for my life. And it's something you might want to think about too. And it's to ask yourself this question: Are you covered in the dust of your rabbi?

Now, what that means is a rabbi is a teacher. What was Jesus most known as? What was the title they used most for him? Teacher, rabbi. And the idea of being covered in the dust of your rabbi in that culture, they walked on those dirty roads where dust would fly up as they walked when it was dry on their land. And if you were following close to someone, their dust would get all over you.

It's like following a car on a dirt road, right? The dust gets all over your car. So here's the question when we talk about, "Have I decided to follow Jesus?" Are you following him in such a way that you're covered in the dust of your rabbi? Are you following him that close?

So I want us today to look at Mark chapter 8. Be turning there in the New Testament. The Gospels, Matthew and then Mark in the New Testament, chapter 8, at this encounter. I want to start off looking at this encounter and then we'll break it down into four different stages of steps that people go through often in their decision to follow Jesus.

Okay, let's look here in Mark chapter 8. We're going to pick up with verse 27. Jesus and his disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. On the way, he asked them, "Who do people say that I am?"

Now, Jesus has been teaching for a little while now. He's already visited several different areas sharing his teaching and his life witness and example. And already, you know how the rumor mill got started. You know how one person starts saying something about somebody, then everybody else starts adding to it or spreading it a little bit. And oftentimes in the rumor mill, things get twisted around or changed a little bit along the way.

Have you ever played that whisper game where you have to whisper something in somebody's ear? They turn and whisper it into somebody's ear. And by the time you get to the end of the circle, it's a completely different thing, right?

So the rumors have started about Jesus. Who is this guy? He claims to be this. He made this claim in this town when he was teaching. He made his disciples are saying this about him. What do you think? So there's a lot of different opinions out there now about Jesus and who he is. Does that sound like our culture today? Absolutely. There's a lot of different opinions about who Jesus is. A lot of people say different things about who Jesus is.

Well, here's their reply, verse 28. The disciples are replying to Jesus. Some say John the Baptist. Others say Elijah and still others, one of the prophets. Now think about that. John the Baptist was still alive. He's still out there doing his thing. So people are kind of confused. Is this John or is this somebody else? You know, is this the same guy or is this a different guy? So that was part of the rumor that was out there.

But then they start listing people like Elijah and the other prophets. They've been dead a long time. But you see, this Jewish audience believes in life after death. And so they're probably thinking maybe it's one of the prophets come back. Maybe they have come back with this message from God that God wants us to hear.

So that is one of the rumors that's going around about Jesus. And there's different people there saying Elijah or one of the other prophets. And Jesus doesn't leave it there. In verse 29, he says, "But what about you?" He asked, "Who do you say I am?"

Now, he wants to know they've been walking with him for a while. They've been seeing his example for a while. They've been listening to his teaching for a while. They've already witnessed some miracles that he's done at this point. So he wants to know where are you at in this journey, right? What is your understanding at this point of who I am?

You see, everybody you talk to in the world is at one point or another on what they think about Jesus. Maybe they've never heard of Jesus, so you think they have no opinion. But that is where they are now. They don't have any understanding at all of Jesus. Other people may have heard of Jesus, but they have only heard certain things. They have no clue about who he really is. Maybe they've heard only people say negative things about Jesus, so they have a very negative opinion of Jesus. And others think, "Well, maybe he was just a good guy, a good teacher," right?

So Jesus wants to know the people closest to him, "What do you think about who I am?" And this is where we have that great confession of Peter. Peter answered, "You are the Messiah."

Different translations translate Messiah different ways. Messiah means Deliverer, Anointed One, Savior. So Peter is saying, "We believe you're the one that was promised by God that he would send to be the Anointed One of God, the Savior, the Deliverer of his people." That's the testimony of Peter and who he says that Jesus is.

Verse 30, Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him. Now, people often get confused about that. But Jesus had a mission that he was on. He still had things to do. And he knew that if they immediately started claiming that Jesus was the Messiah, it would change the order of how things were going to happen there, that they would want to kill him right away instead of giving him a chance to do the teaching that he wanted to do.

So he's told them to hold off a little bit on this. That didn't mean they would do it, that they wouldn't say anything about it. But he's saying, "Don't make it the main thing you're out there talking about."

Verse 31. He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things, be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to, what? Rebuke him.

The guy who had the best answer to Jesus' question is now the guy turning around thinking he ought to be able to rebuke Jesus. Rebuke means to bring correction to him because he's done something, said something that he shouldn't say or do. And Peter actually thinks, even though he's just said, "You're the Messiah," that he can now turn around and rebuke him for what he was teaching.

See, that's why I brought up this idea of following Jesus. Some of us say we're following Jesus while at the same time we're rebuking what he teaches. Are you really following Jesus if you're rebuking his teachings? If you're going against what he says and teaches, it's a good question.

Verse 33. When Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. "Get behind me, Satan," he said. "You do not have in mind the concerns of God but merely human concerns." Peter was only looking at it from a worldly point of view, from a human, fleshly point of view, and that's why he thinks he can rebuke Jesus.

And then verse 34. He called the crowd to him. So at first, who's he talking to? Just those disciples that have been traveling with him, that have witnessed everything about his life. Now he calls the rest of the crowd that's gathered there that heard he was there along with his disciples, and he said this. Listen to this teaching because it has to do with following Jesus, okay?

"Whoever wants to be my disciple must—oh, what must they do?—deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his Father's glory with the holy angels."

Jesus is clearly defining what it means to decide to follow him. So let's break it down into four categories that we find people in, even today, that were in the crowd that day that were listening to Jesus.

These four different categories, all right? The first category I want to start with is the bigger circle, the outward circle of the crowd, right? He invited the crowd in to hear what he was saying about following him. The crowd has the idea associated with the idea of maybe they've heard about Jesus, but they don't know much about Jesus.

So the response to the crowd is "come and see," right? You got to start there. You got to at least be willing to take a look at Jesus. If you're not willing to do that, you'll never become a follower of Jesus. You'll never have the benefits of what it means to follow Jesus or the blessing of what it means to follow Jesus.

So it starts with this invitation to come and see. A lot of you have family and friends and co-workers that need you to go to them and say, "Come and see." Just come and check it out. Come and take a look at Jesus. Don't base your opinion on Jesus on what you've heard or haven't heard, on the opinions of people that don't really know Jesus that well anyway.

What you need to do is come and see for yourself who Jesus is. Now, you can't force anybody to do that, neither can I. Maybe there are people listening online who, since it's the new year, you've decided, "I'm going to check this thing out. I'm going to come and see and learn more about Jesus and the church and what he teaches before I make a decision about Jesus."

I'm not going to write them off, but I'm not going to decide to follow him yet. I'm just going to come check him out. That's a great thing to do, a great step to take. You should not be a follower of Jesus. You should do that with anything that you're going to decide to go after. You better check it out ahead of time, whether it's a job or a career or school you're going to go to, a person you're going to marry, even a person you're going to date.

Because here's the statistics: almost everybody marries somebody that they dated first. So it just makes a difference, right? Who you decide to date. So you need to check it out ahead of time. You need to take a look in advance and examine what's known about that thing or that person before you decide to go after that.

Okay, it's just good decision-making to check it out ahead of time. And that's why I think the church needs to do a better job of embracing the curious who don't yet know and follow Jesus. Sometimes we come across as if, "Well, I can't believe you don't believe in Jesus. Why don't you?" Right? Like it's an antagonistic approach.

Jesus wasn't antagonistic toward the crowd. He invited the crowd in to come and see, come and learn, come and find out more about what I'm teaching here. And his church needs to be a come-and-see group of people with our family and our friends and our co-workers, our classmates. We need to be not antagonistic toward people who don't believe in Jesus, but we need to take advantage of their curiosity about Jesus and invite them to come and see us.

And we need to take advantage of their curiosity about "come and see." Now, "come and see" could be attending church with you. It could be, "I've got this life group that we meet together on a night during the week. Just come check it out." We invite you to come be part of that. It could be, "Let's just have lunch this week and talk about this a little bit." Come and see.

There's a lot of different ways to invite people in to come and see. One of my best, exciting examples of that in Scripture that I like in my Bible study comes in John chapter 4 when Jesus meets the woman at the well.

The woman at the well has this terrible reputation, right? She's been married all those times, divorced all those times, living with a person she's not married to. Now Jesus is a Jewish teacher. She is a Samaritan woman there, and they thought they shouldn't even talk to each other. And certainly, that the Jewish teacher wouldn't show her respect or treat her with dignity in any way, but Jesus does, right?

And Jesus says some things to her that amaze her, and in verse 28, it says, "Then leaving her water jar, the woman went back to town and said to the people, 'Come see a man who told me everything I ever did.'" And she's not trying to cram it down their throat.

Here's the next sentence: "Could this be the Messiah?" She's inviting them to come and see, to check it out. And look at the response in verse 30. They came out of the town and made their way toward him.

And I love to share this part of the story. If you read the whole account, the disciples had just been in that same town, and all they did there was buy groceries and bring them back to Jesus, and they brought nobody else with them to come and see Jesus.

Sometimes we're just as guilty as those disciples that day at that well. We go into town, we go into work, we go into the school, and we don't invite anybody and create any curiosity in their hearts about coming to see and know Jesus.

So in this new year, we need to understand Jesus welcomed the crowds. The crowds don't make up the church, but they make up the potential people who could come and know and follow Jesus. And the biggest mission of the church is to seek and save the lost because that's what Jesus came here to do.

And if we belong to Jesus, we'll be doing the same thing. You're not going to find the lost in the inner circle with Jesus; you're going to find them in the crowd. So we need to invite the crowd to come and see what we see, what we know about Jesus.

And they may have some really bad opinions about Jesus, and that's okay. Let's start where they are and just invite them to come and see because a lot of times what they think they know about Jesus, they get smacked in the face when they hear the truth. It wakes them up; their eyes get really big because they had never heard that part about Jesus.

That's why it's important to also be a person in the Word yourself so that you can help lead them to that knowledge about Jesus. But it's also important for you to be part of a church that really teaches the Bible.

And that's why it's important for you to be part of a church that really teaches the teachings of Jesus so that if they come, they're actually going to hear some teaching about Jesus that's true, not just worldly opinions about Jesus. So you need to be connected to a body of believers, a local church, where you can invite them to come and see more about Jesus.

So the first step is the crowd and the come-and-see crowd. The second is what becomes then family. That's the idea: don't just come and see, but once you see, then come and connect to the family of God.

So it starts with "come and see," get the info upon which you can base your decision, and then make the decision to come and connect to the body of Christ. You connect to Christ, and when you connect to Christ, here's what happens: automatically, you also get connected to others who are following Christ.

One of the worst things that Christians have done in our culture today is try to separate being part of the church from following Christ. Like, I could be a Christian without being connected to the church. Friends, the church is the body of Christ. You cannot be connected to Christ without being connected to the church.

That is the connection to Christ that he wants you to have. Now, when you connect to the church, it's a family. And in a family, you've got family members. And when you have family members that make up the family, you have a dysfunctional family. You do, and I do too. Every family, listen to me, is a dysfunctional family, including the church, because it's made up of people.

And people make mistakes. People come short of what they ought to be. People mess up. They don't always treat you right, say the right thing, do what you think they ought to do, just like your family at home. They don't always get everything right the way you think they ought to do it, but they're still what? Family. So is the church.

We're supposed to come and connect to Christ, which connects us to the family. Here's the good thing about knowing that about the family ahead of time. If you're still out there trying to find the perfect church, I tell people all the time, "Please don't go there because you will mess it up." Because none of us is going to be perfect.

That's why we are connected to Christ in the church, because we recognize how flawed we are and how much we need a Savior, and we've run to Jesus for what he can do for us that we can't do for ourselves. So any church worth its salt that's on mission for Jesus is going to be full of dysfunction. You better believe it.

We're going to be people from all backgrounds and all circumstances who are going to come in at all stages in their walk with Christ or having never heard of Christ before. They're all going to come together, and that gives us a messy mixture of a family. But that's what all families are supposed to be like.

And God invites us into his family by adoption through Jesus and what Jesus has done for us on the cross. You see, this is a privilege to be welcomed into this imperfect, flawed family.

Now, Jesus is not flawed, but the church is always going to be flawed because flawed people need Jesus. And everybody has sinned and has those flaws. I love how this all got started when people started coming to see Jesus and hear his teaching.

Then Jesus ascended back to the Father. He told the apostles to wait in Jerusalem as he was going back to the Father. And he said, "Wait here until you're empowered by the Holy Spirit. Then you're going to become my witnesses for me," right? To call people to me. That's what they were given that job.

So they waited in Jerusalem, just like Jesus told them to. Jesus went back to the Father. The Holy Spirit came upon them and empowered them to begin teaching and preaching the gospel, the good news about Jesus. And we have it recorded in Acts chapter 2, where that all got started.

If you want to read about the beginnings of the church, go to the book of Acts. It's a history book of the very beginning stages all the way through the early years of the church. It's a great history of the early church.

And you see how things transpired. And in Acts 2, we find that Peter, one of the apostles, has become the main speaker that day, and a crowd has gathered. They're there in Jerusalem for a feast that was happening in Jerusalem, the Feast of Pentecost. And so there'd be hundreds of thousands of people in and around Jerusalem.

And a crowd gathers. You hear Peter teaching, right? Where does it start? Come and see, right? So the crowd has gathered. And God made sure a crowd gathered by giving them that ability to speak in languages they had never studied, right? That attracted a crowd.

And they heard them speaking in their own language, so they had their curiosity built up there that day to listen to what Peter was saying. And Peter preaches a sermon about Jesus, about he was who he claimed to be. And he gave us the signs to prove that he was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was the one who was who he claimed to be, the miracles and the wonders and the signs that God did through him.

And then in verse 36, it says this. He's finishing up his sermon. And I don't always do it this way, but sometimes you'll get to this in the sermon at the end. Therefore, here's what I was getting to today, right?

"Therefore, let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus whom you crucified both what? Lord and what? Messiah."

So the crowd came to see, and when they came to see, they heard the gospel. They heard the teachings about Jesus. And Jesus wanted this to start in Jerusalem, right? He said, "You're going to go to them first, and then it's going to go to the whole world."

So the apostles are doing exactly what Jesus wanted them to do. And so now they present this message. Jesus has been made both Lord and Messiah. The word Lord means what? Ruler, all right?

So this Jesus whom you did what to? Crucified. God has made him your what? Ruler. Whoa. When they heard "Lord" connected to the fact that they crucified him, that was not, in their mind, good news. But remember, this is good news because he didn't just say "Lord." He also said what? Messiah, Savior, anointed one, one who delivers you from what you've done.

The same one you crucified is the one who delivers you from your sin. It says in verse 37, when the people heard this, they were cut to the heart. And they said to Peter and the other apostles, "Brothers, what shall we do?"

That phrase, and there was a language that's translated that they were cut to the heart, we might use terminology today like they were convicted of their sin. They understood how badly they had messed up. And so they're asking the most important question anybody can ever ask when they ask, "Brothers, what shall we do?"

We have messed up our lives. Is there anything we can do to make this right? Is there any way we could be made right with God again after what we've done? You see, most people that come and see, if they actually are sincere in their search and they hear the truth proclaimed, it's going to lead them, the Holy Spirit works through the Word to convict people so that they understand their need for some answer for their sin.

And that's the perfect opportunity then for them to decide what they're going to do with Jesus. What are we going to do with Jesus? If I'm a sinner and I need to be reconciled to God because of my sin, and Jesus has come to do what he did for me, and I've heard that now, and I know what he's done for me, then what's my decision about what to do with Jesus now?

Peter told them in verse 38, "Here's what you need to do: Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, the one that they crucified, the one that God has made both Lord and Messiah. You get baptized in the name of him, Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins, and there's a promise connected to it: you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit."

So here's an amazing promise, that if you would repent, which means to turn from your past, turn from your sin, turn from the mistakes and the failures of your life, turn from those things, and decide to be baptized into Christ, here's what's going to happen: God gives you the forgiveness of your sins, and he gives you the Holy Spirit himself.

And he wants everybody to understand. Remember, he's talking to the crowd, this promise is for you, and for your children, and for all who are far off, for all whom the Lord our God will call. Does that promise still stand today? Who does it stand for? Everybody.

It's a promise that's still out there for every single person today that we invite to come and see Jesus, to come hear about what he's done, to come learn about his love for you and his sacrifice that he's made for you. This promise is still out there for you, but is there a response that needs to happen for you to have the benefits of the promise?

You see, the confusion people run into is they start thinking about these things as works. "I have to do some works to have my sins forgiven, to be able to be in a right relationship with God. I've got to do this work."

But those same people still tell you you've got to believe, and they still tell you you've got to profess your faith. Well, what are those? Are those not works? Not in the sense of earning your salvation, they're not, no. But they are actions that you need to take in response to what Jesus has done for you.

And baptism is the same thing. It's a response of faith to what you believe now about Jesus. So he's asked you to take this action to repent. That's an action he wants you to take if you want the benefits of the promise.

And baptism is no more than that and no less than that. You repent, that's an action. You get baptized, that's an action. They're both actions that are called for in Scripture as a response to your faith in Jesus so that you can have this promise that he attaches to it: the forgiveness of sins, the sins, and the gift of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit as a gift from God. So he says in verse 40, "With many other words, he warned them, and he pleaded with them, 'Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.'"

Those who accepted his message just prayed a prayer. Is that what they did? No. Why not? Because that's not the action he told them they needed to take. That's not the action in Scripture that you're told to take.

Praying a prayer is a good thing, but that's not the action called for here. The action called for here is those who accepted his message were what? Baptized, and about 3,000 were added to their number that day.

Now they come from being in the crowd to being in the family together. And notice how he words it. They were added to their number. Well, who's the "their"? You're being added to Christ, but you're also being added to each other. You now make up the body of Christ. That's what you're being added to.

When you're added to Christ, you're also added to the church. That's the process. We've made that two separate things in many churches in America today. You get saved, and then you join the church later on, as if they're two separate things. In the New Testament, they're one and the same.

They're not two separate things. Let's stop acting like one can be done without the other. Now, you can technically join a church without being added to Jesus. At some churches, they will just, you know, you want to join, they'll let you join.

But that's not the same as being added to Christ. So it's not just about getting baptized, and it's not just about joining a church, but it's also not just about believing. It's about having the kind of faith that produces the action that Jesus tells us to take in his Word.

That's how you get from the crowd to the family. It's by the response of faith, taking the action, not that your church came up with, not that your grandpa told you, but taking the action that your church came up with, not that your grandpa told you to take, but the action that Jesus in his Word tells us to take.

Because it's his church, it's his body, the church. So let's follow that teaching. Let's practice that practice. And here at Lakeshore, that's how we add people to the body of Christ. Through faith and repentance and baptism, that whole process of responding the way the gospel says to respond.

Now, why weren't these people told, "Well, first you got to believe"? It's because we know they were already convicted. It says they were cut to the heart. We know they believed what Peter said, or they would not have been cut to the heart. They would not have been convicted.

So he didn't have to start with, "First, you got to believe." They obviously believed when they asked, "Well, what can we do about it?" That was a profession that they believed what Peter said already.

All right. So it says, "With many other words, you know, he warned them and he pleaded with them." And then those who accepted the message were baptized.

So that's the response called for in Scripture. If you believe the message, and all through the book of Acts, here's what you're going to see: every time we have a record of an individual coming to that place that they were deciding to move from the crowd to connecting to Jesus and his family, they are baptized when they make that decision every time, no exception to it.

And so that's what we practice here at Lakeshore. It's not about singling out baptism, but it's also not about leaving out one of the very things he says to do in response to the invitation. We do both the faith and the baptism because both of those things, including repentance, are called for in Scripture.

All right. So we move from that to that brings you into the third phase, the third group, which is disciple. Once you're added, you become a disciple, and you come and grow from that point on as a newly added member of the family.

When you have a new addition to your family, a baby is born. Then the very next steps are to help the baby be cared for and given the opportunity to grow up and mature, right?

Well, the same thing is true in the family of God, the church. Some churches are so all about just getting them to join that there's not any growth process after that, at least not very much. And so what ends up happening is you have a church full of very immature baby Christians.

And immature baby Christians are very demanding, and they want their own way all the time. And they don't want to be asked to do anything uncomfortable, right? If a baby is uncomfortable, what does it do? It cries.

You let that diaper get full. What happens? The baby does what? It cries. Now, here's the thing. You don't mind changing—well, you do—but you do it because you know you're supposed to change a baby's diaper, right?

I'm amazed at how quickly it changes too. It goes from not so bad to the worst thing you've ever done, right? Very quickly. But here's the thing. You don't expect that baby to keep demanding that you change their diaper every time they get uncomfortable, do you?

That's not the way it's supposed to work. See, what's supposed to happen is that baby starts learning to do some things themselves and then to contribute back to the family and to society in the ways that they can.

That's what's supposed to happen in the body of Christ, the church, too. Part of connecting with Christ is becoming his disciple, joining other disciples in the growth process of being transformed by learning and following his teachings.

Go back to Acts chapter 2. Those 3,000 that were baptized, you remember, that were added to their number that day? Look at verse 42, the very next thing they did. They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, to fellowship, to breaking of bread, and to prayer.

They devoted themselves to the spiritual disciplines that will allow them to grow up as Christians. And so many Christians think, "I joined the church and I started attending; that's the level of growth I'm staying at."

That's not growth. That's immaturity. He calls us to growth. You see, being a disciple is what we're being baptized into. We now are, we could use the word, followers of Jesus. I have decided to do what? Follow.

If you follow Jesus, here's what a disciple does. He learns from the teacher. He watches the teacher's example, and he follows after that example in that teaching, and he puts it into practice in his or her own life so that you grow up to be like the teacher that you're following.

You see, the process, you've moved from the crowd to the family. Now you're in discipleship, where you're growing up as a follower of Jesus, which means you're spending time in these four things that they devoted themselves to: the apostles' teaching—where do we find that today? It's in the Bible. It's been recorded for us. We can learn these teachings from Scripture.

So we need to be devoted to what? Bible study. That's a fulfillment of this thing that they were devoted to as the early church. The fellowship, you know what that is? That's the church family.

They were devoted to each other as part of the family of God. They didn't neglect the assembly of the family. They participated in the family. They were present in the family. They devoted themselves to that. They weren't just occasional visitors to the family. They helped make up the family and move the family forward in the mission of the family.

And they devoted themselves to the breaking of bread. Breaking of bread was a term they started using for what we call communion or the Lord's Supper. They came, like Jesus had told them to, as often as they decided to do it, which was the first day of every week at least, and more often many times than that.

They would come together around the Lord's table to remember what Jesus did for them on the cross, in the very way Jesus asked them to remember it. By taking the bread, which represents his body, and the juice, which represents his blood, and doing that together as a family.

So they devoted themselves to that. It was important to them, and they were devoted to prayer. Not expecting other people just to pray for them, but they became prayers themselves.

They developed a prayer life along with the rest of the family, and they prayed for one another, and they prayed for the lost. They prayed for the church and the advancement of the church. And they prayed for the same thing. They prayed for the lost. They prayed for the kingdom of God.

Now, here's what you have to know. They were devoted to those four things primarily. They did other things too, but those were four primary things they were devoted to. And those early Christians lived in a very pagan culture, like ours.

They lived under a very pagan government, totally apart from God, the Roman government. They lived in a culture that thought they were crazy for making this step of following after Jesus, many of them. Many of them had family and friends that deserted them when they decided to follow Jesus.

But by being devoted to these four things, it says they turned the world upside down in their lifetime for Christ. That's what being devoted to those four things will do. It'll turn the world upside down for Jesus. That's what it means to follow Jesus.

Which leads to the fourth thing, and that is, they became ministers in the body of Christ. They came and started serving instead of expecting to be served. They understood that the role became, as I learn and as I grow, I start serving others with what I've learned and the growth that I'm having.

I start investing in people other than myself in this work of the mission of the church. In Ephesians 4, Paul talks about this, beginning with verse 11. He says, "Is that what it says?"

No, let's read the next verse. "To equip people for what? Works of service." What's the main work of your pastor? To equip you to do the work of the kingdom.

Through the teaching and the example that I do, my main role is not to do it for you. It's to equip you to do the work of the kingdom. It's to equip you to do this for yourself so that you become a servant, a minister in the body of Christ.

Now, not all pastors are good at that, and most pastors in the American church have so much pressure on them to cater to the church that they don't do a good job of equipping them to do the work because they're so expected to do it themselves, and they're afraid of losing their jobs.

Well, I started out as a pastor not coming out of the church, and my wife was a little bit shocked sometimes with my attitude, but here was my attitude: I don't work for the church anyway. I work for the Lord, and I have my job assignment from Him. It's to equip you to do works of service in the body of Christ. That's my main job.

Now, I do other things too. Every pastor should, but this is the main job of a pastor that's following Scripture in the role of a pastor-teacher. He says to do that, all right, to equip people for works of service so that, here's the reason for it, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become, what's that word? Mature.

Oh, we don't need a church full of babies. We need to become what? Mature, attaining to the whole measure of Christ. Then, he says, we'll no longer be infants tossed back and forth by the waves, blown here and there by every wind.

We will grow to become, in every respect, the mature body of him who is the head, that is Christ. From him, the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love as each part attends services.

No, as each part does its work. That's how that works. That's how the church gets stronger. That's how the church has more impact in the world. That's how a group of people back in that early time of the church, in a pagan culture, turned their world upside down, is they all got involved in the work of service in the body of Christ, the church.

They all understood that they had the opportunity to serve the one who had given everything for them, and they embraced that opportunity, and they gladly gave themselves. That's how they got involved in that maturing process.

Now, steps two through four only happen if we do what I have here for number five. I'm going to close with this real quick. It's come and die.

See, the only way we're going to move from the crowd to the family, to the disciple, to the place where we're serving, to the church, is if we're willing to come and die. When it says come, and when I say come and die, I'm talking about dying to self. You die to yourself.

That's the only way you're going to be willing to go through this whole process to become the servant that God has called you to be because it requires you to stop living for yourself. To do that, you come and die to self.

And that makes all the other steps possible. When we let go and crucify our plans and give them over to God's plans, we die to self. Following Jesus in this way leads us to a place that is better than we could ever imagine.

We think the idea of dying is the worst thing, when in fact it takes us to the best place we could ever be when we learn to die to ourselves. Look at Mark 8 again. Look at verse 34 and 35 again.

When he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said, this is what he told them. "Whoever wants to be my disciple must do what? Live your best life. Make sure you're taken care of."

No, you must do what? Deny themselves and take up their what? Mercedes Benz? No. That's not a necessarily evil thing, but that's not what it says here, right? Take up their crowns.

Cross and follow me. You know what the cross is? It's a symbol of death and sacrifice. If you're going to be a disciple of Jesus, it means you take up a what? A cross. You embrace the idea of dying to yourself.

Let's take up their cross and follow me. We talk about, "I've decided to follow Jesus," but not many of us want to take the cross with us to follow Jesus. Because that means sacrifice. Very uncomfortable thing, that cross. Not easy to carry around. Not easy to hold on to.

But that's what it means to follow Jesus. He says in verse 35, "Whoever wants to save their life will lose it. But whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel, the good news about Jesus, that's where you actually save life."

That's where your life becomes what it was supposed to be when you die to self and you embrace that. In Romans 6, verses 3 and 4, there's a beautiful passage there that talks about the picture of those who came from the crowd. They've heard, they've made a decision about Jesus that they want to follow after him and accept what he's done for them on the cross.

He's talking about those who made that decision. He says in verse 3, "Don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his what? Death. We were therefore buried with him through baptism into what? Death. In order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life."

There is no new life without crucifying the old one, friends. The old one has to be put to death to have the new one. Now, we can't do that on our own. We need what Jesus did for us, but if we choose to follow Jesus, we're choosing to put the old man, the old woman, to death, and baptism pictures that death.

We're going into being buried with Jesus and then rising up to that new life that he gives us, leaving the old one in the grave. The problem is we keep going back in the water and grabbing it and pulling it up again. We keep going back to the old things, the old ways.

We don't want to be uncomfortable. We don't want to make those changes. We don't want to live differently than what we've been living before. We just want to follow Jesus. But if you follow Jesus, you eventually go to the cross, and you have to decide, will you follow him there?

Will you go there to be crucified, buried, put the old person there, and leave them in the grave to rise up to the new life that he has for you? Friends, I for one understand the problem of keeping the old man in the grave, right? It's not easy.

But in order for me to save my life, I have to be willing to lose that old life. There is no other way. If you try to keep saving that old life, you can never have the new life that he wants you to have. You have to let it die. You have to bury it and leave it in the grave.

But when you truly decide to follow Jesus, you bury that old life. You follow him not just to the cross but through the cross to the victory that came on the other side. See, that's where the victory is. Without the cross, there is no victory in Jesus.

So we have to go with him through the cross to experience the victory that only Jesus can give us. Maybe today you're listening online, maybe you're in the room at the Smyrna campus or here at the Antioch campus, and you're in the room, and you're listening online.

Maybe you've decided that a conversation is not going to come, and you've just decided this year is going to be different for you. I love your decision. I think that's great. But if you're thinking you're just going to pull up your bootstraps and make it better, then maybe you've missed the point.

You see, you're supposed to do just the opposite. You're supposed to take off the boots, take off the old life, bury it, and leave it there, and start brand-new with Jesus.

Let's pray together. Father, we thank you that today we've been reminded that as we walk into 2025, as we already have, we either walk in with a decision to really follow Jesus, or maybe we're still not there.

But if we really want life to be what you've designed it to be for us, we can't keep holding on to the old life. The new year doesn't change that. The new year doesn't make any of that new, really. It's just a time on the calendar.

What makes things new is Jesus. What makes people new is that decision to go from being in the crowd to being true followers of Christ. May we be those who truly decide from this day moving forward in this new year, we are really going to follow Jesus, wherever that takes us, trusting that his love for us, his sacrifice for us, his presence with us is all we really need.

It's in his name that we pray, amen.

We're going to stand and sing. We invite you, if you have a decision you need to make, to come up front. If you're listening online, just message us there. We'll be glad to follow up with you there.

Let's stand and sing together.

Can everyone have a seat, please? This time, Paul is going to come and lead us in a time around the Lord's table together.

We are so thankful that you made the decision to be in the assembly of the church together for the first Sunday of 2025. Thank you for making that choice today. We love having this time together.

If you would like to continue worshiping through the giving of an offering, we have offering boxes available. There's one in the back of the auditorium, and there's one as you exit the auditorium. There's a slot in the top of those boxes; you can drop your offering in those slots. You can also give online at lakeshorechristian.com or by scanning the QR code in your bulletin.

You can also mail in your offerings to the church office. Any way you do it, do it as an act of worship, showing that you honor God, you put him first in that part of your life, and know that you're funding the ministry of the church. It helps us accomplish all that God has called us to do. That's part of what it means to be devoted to the fellowship of the church is to give your offerings to help advance the work of the kingdom.

Thank you for doing that, all of you that are doing that on a regular basis. We also want you to know each week in the bulletin we put this insert that gives you announcements of activities that are coming up.

We have a welcome lunch coming up on Sunday, January the 26th. If you are new to Lakeshore Christian Church and you haven't attended one of these lunches, it's a free lunch that we invite you to. We have childcare available if you need it, but you have to register in advance so that we know how to plan for that, okay?

We want you to be here, but please register in advance, and it's a good time to ask questions you might have, get to know more about the church, meet some of the staff, and we love to get to know you better too, so it's a great time for that to happen. It will be that Sunday following the 11 o'clock service on January 26.

We also have scheduled our next baby dedication. We've had some families welcome blessed additions to their families this year, so it's Sunday, February the 16th. And again, you need to register in advance. You can do so in the kiosk in the lobby or at lakeshorechristian.com. You can register for any of these events.

We're also, as you know, during the cold winter months especially, we collect warm items for those experiencing homelessness. We have a place out in the lobby for you to put those items, things like gloves and scarves, hand warmers, things like that, hats, warm hats, and things like that. If you can bring any of those items, just put them in that area out there by the child check-in area. There's a place there for those donations.

We always collect clothing donations too. We partner with Thrift Smart. There's a clothing bin in the cafe area. You can bring any clothing donations to put into that bin. I do want to caution you again real quick. Every now and then, people will drop off donations outside our doors. They don't get to us most of the time if you drop them off out there.

We want you to set up a time to bring them inside so that we can be sure they get into the bin and all of that. So please just, you know, you can call ahead of time, make sure somebody's here since you can bring them into the building, or just bring them on Sundays. You can bring them anytime you're here for services and put them in that bin there.

And if the bin's full, just set it right beside there. We always call them to come pick it up when the bin gets full. So we love that partnership with Thrift Smart. Not only do we donate to them, but then they give us back, based on the weight of our donations, they give us back gift cards that we can use for people who need some help getting some clothes and things that they have, household items there at Thrift Smart.

So we could give those out. They could take those cards and go in and shop with those and get them in the bin and get the things they need. So we love helping people like that in our church family and in the community as well. Thank you for helping us with all of that.

Visit our website regularly, follow us on social media to keep up with everything that's going on here. We love having you here. If you're a first-time guest today, stop by the information counter before you leave. We have a gift we'd love to give you there at the information counter.

Let's all stand together. We'll close with a word of prayer. I do want you to remember to pray for one of our members. There's lots of needs within the church family, but last Sunday, as a matter of fact, one of our members had a fall at his home, Rick Desmond, and they found out he had a fractured back, and they had to go in and do surgery.

He's still in the hospital at Skyline, so just keep Rick and Deb in your prayers if you would. He is improving. He has gotten to move from ICU now to a regular room and all of that. He's improving and probably will be going home soon, so just continue to keep them in prayer with healing for that.

Let's close with a word of prayer together. Father, we thank you again for your love, your sacrifice for us. You have sent Jesus here to be that perfect example of living out his teachings because he lived it out himself. Help us to truly follow Jesus, not just in word but in action.

Help us to truly surrender, die to our old selves, and live the new life you call us to in Christ. In his name, we pray, amen.