Life of Christ #1 – What It Really Means to Follow Jesus | True Biblical Discipleship

The Gentiles did have faith and were healed. I should have said that there is also the distinct possibility, and frankly the one that I think is more likely, that we’re not dealing so much here with a lack of faith on the part of Israel for those two people to be healed, but rather a sovereign choice on the part of God to heal those two people when so many others—and there were other lepers, and there were many needy widows—were not helped and were not healed because it was the sovereign choice of God.

I also would say that this matter of believing, I repeat myself: to need signs and wonders and to always be hearing stories of great healings to increase your faith is, in fact, a sign of very weak faith. The Lord was making very, very clear throughout His sojourn on this earth that the thing He was looking for so desperately was that those who, without signs, without wonders, and without a great deal of needing to be convinced, would simply believe in Him for what He was and who He was. And that, to Him, was more important than anything else. And the signs and wonders were an effort to bridge the gap of hearts that could not quickly believe. The better thing is to believe in your Lord, and that belief not be affected by the presence or the absence of signs or wonders or grace or deserts or rain or revival or persecution or prosperity — that you simply believe in Him.

As we take up the story again, we come to the first real call of the Lord to disciples, and brothers, I think this is one of the most high points of all the Word of God: this moment when He walks by Galilee, and He sees some men in a boat, and He addresses them, and they say, “Goodbye, Dad, goodbye employees,” and they get out of their boats and follow the Lord. He has been ministering for about a year now, and at the end of that year, He begins to choose disciples. I conjecture that He has watched a lot of people watch Him, who comes back the most frequently, who is the most interested. He has met them, and very possibly He has traveled through time and space, and He may have traveled back into eternity past and remembered His eternal choice, and now He’s making it real in time and in space. The idea of a disciple is one of the highest ideals of mankind. It is an Eastern thing; it’s not Western.

In the West, you had a teacher you sat under who taught you knowledge, and after you finished school, you left him and taught what he believed and what you believed. For instance, in Greece, there were different places where the teacher sat under the shade trees and taught, but the teacher was one who took out of a book and gave to the student. Now, that’s a Western concept from which we have gained our colleges, our universities, our Bible schools, and our seminaries. They have no biblical basis; no scriptural reason for existing; no place in the reality of a Christian concept.

The Eastern idea of the disciple also is not like… we have this capacity to see a truth and then pervert it…the Western Christian, and in your generation, there has been this discipleship movement, and you know you stand on the verge of something great, then you end up with something gross. What it turned out to be was a chain of command: people being told to do something, and they had to do it. That was discipleship: you obey, and it was always, or could be…the whole concept of it was massive, and it was legalism, just another form of legalism, and it has damaged Christians by the thousands. This week, just this week, one more time, I had to sit down and listen to a saint tell me some of the most unbelievable stories done in the name of discipleship. Things that one human should never do to another. It has nothing to do with the spirit of what we’re reading here this evening.

If it has any flaw, that shows it’s not the first-century concept…the first-century concept of a disciple wasn’t something that permeated the church; it isn’t even something so closely associated with the church. If I may, it’s more closely associated with the worker and the young worker. And that’s one. The second one – in the case of Jesus Christ – is that the Lord was preparing for the church to come to earth, and there is one thing about it that is unique, and that is: it is always a small number.

The concept in the East and in the Hebrew faith was a man, generally a rabbi, who would have a small group of people. They would live with him. They would go where he went. They walked with him. They emulated not only his teachings, but his life, and this could go on for years and years and years. It was a moving schoolroom, and in Jesus’ case – in the case of the Son of God – it was elevated to a high thing. They went with Him wherever He was. They watched the Son of God live the Christian life as the Son of Man on this earth.

Then Paul did this again with eight men who lived with him. He had won them to himself; they had been in his churches, he had known them for years, and then, for a full year, they gathered around him and watched and lived with him. It was a mobile thing. It wasn’t note-taking like the followers of Socrates…the Socratic concept. It wasn’t Plato and Aristotle.

I can’t get into it. I can only stop here and say that as we go along, we will from time to time look at this enormous, incredible thing of discipleship; oh, I hate almost to use that word; it’s been used so much with a different connotation. Imagine a man and imagine a little group who goes with him, very mobile. It isn’t to put together a church. Actually, in the form of the church in Rome with a pope and the cardinals and bishops, archbishops and bishops, and then peasants, but a mobile thing where men can learn to become workers. This is essentially what discipleship was. Try to find the word “discipleship” in respect to the church, and you will find it limited, if you find it at all.

Now, I want you to know that He actually calls these men, it seems, twice, as we’ll find out. The first time He calls them is here. You get the impression, and we might as well be honest in our dealings with Scripture. This is not a passage of Scripture you will turn to to prove that men left everything and followed the Lord. This is a very temporal leaving. They left Him. They left Daddy; John and James left Daddy, and Peter and Andrew left their nets — only perhaps for a day or a few days. Those men went back to the business of fishing just a few days later; it may be the next day. And just for the record, they went back after the crucifixion and the resurrection again, too, and took up their nets. Though on this occasion, He walks by and He says to them, “Come, follow me,” and they come and follow Him that day.

I wonder how many men — godly men, holy men — have ever come to a point that they could walk by someone and turn and look at him and say, “Come follow me.” And then I wonder, if he did, how many dropped whatever they were doing and came and followed him. I don’t know if it’s on the responsibility of the one who is the… what should you call him? I don’t know what you’d call him—the teacher; maybe we should use the term “teacher.” But there ought to be more young men who are looking for someone to train them. I am appalled at the amount of wonderful young men — potentially young men — who, when you talk to them, say, “Well, I’m going to come visit y’all on my way to Bible school.” Boy, you meet that kid three years later, and you wouldn’t touch him with a stick. My point is that there’s a great deal about discipleship here that isn’t part of the Christian tradition today. It desperately needs restoration, and the New Testament doesn’t even record a mentality toward Jesus-type discipleship or Pauline-type discipleship.