Church History Conference Part 4 – How God Raises Disciples: Jesus, Paul, and the Biblical Pattern for Workers

Gaius was converted in Derbe, grew up in the church there, and has been there for many, many years. Well, we got Timothy from Lystra and Gaius from the church in Derbe. We’ve got Secundus and Aristarchus from Thessalonica. These are in different countries with different languages. We’ve got Sopater over in the little elite little town of Berea. And on top of that, we’ve got Titus who got saved in Antioch and has watched that church grow into great fruitage. Paul is an old man, and he’s never tried to build a seminary or start a movement. And frankly, brother, he has never gotten a whole lot done. But here is genius, if there ever was Christian genius.

Each one of these men had been converted in and lived in church life as a local brother. Just as the 12 apostles had lived with Jesus Christ for three and a half years in an embryonic experience of church life. Don’t press that too hard, but just consider it a moment. They were living together in common with the Lord for three and a half years, bumping heads with one another and learning a great deal. Each of these men has grown up in a gentile church. Each of them has his own history, his different language, and his different culture. Each is rich in what he’s been through and where he’s been. And this old man must feel now he has something to say to someone else. This old man does something so similar to the Lord Jesus Christ that it is earthshaking. I guess he does it by letter. Let’s pretend he does.

Gaius, come from your church. Titus, come from your church. Aristarchus and Secundus, come over with me from Thessalonica. Sopater, come with me from Berea. Tychicus and Trophimus are not part of this party; they’ll probably get converted just a little bit later. Priscilla and Aquila, get over there to the town I’m headed for ahead of me, and make preparations, get a tent business started. He walks down the road, and one of them joins him from one church, one language, one culture; another joins him from another church, another background, another language, and another culture; and two more join him from yet another town, another language, and another culture. By the time he gets to the city he is determined to go to, he has eight young men who know what the church is, who know their Lord, who grew up in the church of God, and who grew up in a spiritual atmosphere. And they are not idealists. They are hardheaded young realists who know what they’re getting into, and they have been called.

Out of each of the churches, it seems one or maybe two have been called, and the fruitage of Paul’s life is here in front of him, finally bursting forth. He walks into this city, an old wise man, and he says, “Now, watch me.” They don’t even get into the city, and they meet 12…and they’re all going there to watch the church born, to live with Paul of Tarsus. They will live with him for four years, and there will be added to their little group later a man, oh boy, the name just slipped me. I’ll get back to it. Epaphroditus, my favorite of all of them. Anyway, they walk into this town. They’re getting close to it. They find some followers of John the Baptist. They don’t know how that church will start—followers of John the Baptist. Paul baptizes them. They get the Holy Spirit in whatever context that is meant, and Paul turns around to them, eight men standing there with their mouths wide open. He says, “See how easy it is?” They get 12 converts before they get inside the city limits, or 10 or 12, I’ve forgotten.

Anyway, he comes into this town and begins preaching the gospel, and they watch. They’re watching the birth of the church for the second time in their lives, each of them, and they live with that man through everything he does. They watch him through his sleepless nights. They watch him crying, his tears. They watch him in his loneliness. They watch him nurture the young, be patient with the slow. They watch him go to the cross again and again. They watch him being persecuted. They see what those professional Judaizers are doing in following him about. They watch an incredible and godly man raise up the house of the living God. And somewhere before those three or four years, he begins sending them out into some of the small towns around to preach the Gospel and try their hand at it while he nurtures them and advises them on how it’s done. They go out in the little towns, with names nobody had ever heard of, like Colossae and Laodicea.

The way that Jesus Christ raised up disciples…by the way, it’s been given a name: peripatetic. Chew on that. The way the Lord Jesus Christ raised up men lives again in the Gentile city of Ephesus. And when Paul of Tarsus dies, there is a witness and a testimony. There are workers to go on and take the Gospel. If you and I were to trace our lineage back, when we first really hit it, we wouldn’t hit Jerusalem, we wouldn’t hit Antioch, and we wouldn’t hit Ephesus. We wouldn’t hit Paul; we would find these men, for they are the ones who took the Gospel to the gentile world. I don’t know what that means to you, but brothers, sisters, would to God we’d give up our movements. Would to God that there were on this earth again, men who planted churches, holy men who understood the ways of God, who knew what headship meant.

When I saw the headship of Jesus Christ, I was in Phoenix, Arizona. I didn’t sleep for seven days, sitting in a motel room, jumping up in the middle of the night, turning on the lights, and writing like crazy. Men possessed with the desire to make Jesus Christ seen visible on this earth again, in the church, men who will not stop. Not for hell, they will not stop. Not for anything, they will not stop. Not for persecution, not for nothing, they won’t stop. Those men who would please wait until they get old, when they have finally learned, if I may say this, they finally learn their trade, gather unto them a few men, and raise those few men to take on the work, and then die in peace believing that if it is gold and silver it will go on, and if not, it won’t.

Now, to the young men who sat down here on this front row, and you are Americans, and for one moment I’m going to address you as Americans. This one down here is a little darker than an American. Where did you say you’re from, brother? California. That’s the worst of all places. For timber to come, it’s the worst timber of all.

I have watched men called of God blow it on the first press of the cross in their lives. I watched men get neurotic and wring their hands at the first trouble. Brother, forget it. I’ve watched young men go out for a weekend, say, “I’ve got to go back home. I got to go be with my wife.” I watched men make it a whole week and say, “I can’t take it any longer. I have to go home.” Brother, I want you to know something. You’d better be prepared to spend at least half of your lifetime separated from your wife and your family if you’re going to talk “worker” in the house of God.

We don’t have a very good reputation on the mission field or anywhere else, for either being people who can tough it out or for having any concept or understanding of the depths of Jesus Christ. But if the call of God burns in your insides, if His grace prepares you, and you can’t do this, and later He’ll break you if you even try, but you have to start off. You’ve got to believe you’ll pay any price to follow Him and obey Him, and you’ll find out you can’t. He’ll break you, and then He’ll give you His grace to operate on, but you’ve got to go believing you’ll pay any price.

Young man, I ask you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, don’t waste your life in a seminary or a Bible school. Go get where you belong. Go get in the life of the church. That’s where you be a hawk. Can you not humble yourself, give up God’s work and God’s calling, and become a simple brother in the house of God? And wait, and learn, the simple things of the church of Christ, and the life of Jesus in you. Then, you know what I’d do? I’d find me an old man who has played some part in the raising up of the church, or two or five or ten. Maybe an old man with a rich heritage, a rich heritage who has paid that price again and again and again. I would forget the calendar; I would forget time. It doesn’t matter, brother. If it takes you till you’re 60, and you put in four good years, that’ll be better than anything anybody else has done in a long, long time. Somebody say amen.

I’d find myself an old man outside the religious system, with a deep and rich heritage, who has maybe preached the Gospel in several continents and has some experience with several cultures. I’d go to him, and even if he said to me, “Oh no, no, brother, not me. Not me, brother. Not me. No, go. No.” I would ignore that man. I would look at that as hurdle number one to get past. I would sit under that at that brother’s feet until Jesus Christ sent me somewhere, or until I had to take him out and bury him. Brother, sister, do it. And if you can’t do that, go somewhere on this planet where you can. If you have to go to China, if you have to go to India, if you have to go to Nepal, if you have to go to Africa, go there. Learn where the church is right now, and how well she is right now, and where she’s headed right now. And when you get to be 70 or 75 years old, and you have walked through all the blood and hell that Satan can throw at you, and you have gained a little bit of Jesus Christ, and you have had just a small privilege of seeing the church, then pass it on to a few young men called of God who might take the work of God on.