Am I a disciple of Christ?
Hi, welcome to today's Little Lesson and for the previous two Little Lessons, if you've
been following along, you know we've been talking about the two foremost commandments,
loving God, loving neighbor, and we've drawn some conclusions because love for God is expressed
by obedience to his commandments.
Obviously, if the second greatest commandment is to love our neighbor as ourself, the greatest
expression of love for God that one could have, would be obedience to this second greatest
commandment, which is to love my neighbor as myself.
And so we're trying to examine ourselves to see if we really do love God.
Do I really love God?
Well, you can answer that question by answering this question.
Do I really love my neighbors?
And love, of course, is not just a feeling about a neighbor saying, oh, I just love my
neighbors, I just love them.
No, it's doing something to help them, to serve them.
And of course, the greatest thing that you could ever do to prove your love for an unsaved
neighbor is to, out of concern for their eternal welfare, tell them about Jesus because you're
concerned, if they love God with all their heart, mind, soul and strength and are expressing
it by loving their neighbor as themselves.
And the greatest expression of love that I could have for a fellow believer is to also
of course, be concerned about their spiritual health and how well they're doing in loving
God with all their heart, mind, soul and strength as expressed by, in loving their neighbor
as themselves.
Okay?
So we've talked about these things in some detail over the last two Little Lessons.
I strongly encourage you, if you're watching this Little Lesson and you didn't see those
previous two, go back and look for those two lessons that were titled, Five Facts About
the Two Greatest Commandments.
But today we're going to be looking at how this all ties in to being a disciple of Jesus
Christ because Jesus couldn't have made it more clear.
He said, by this shall all men know you are my disciples if you have love one for another.
And so the outstanding characteristic of the disciple of Jesus Christ is that he or she
loves the other disciples of Jesus Christ.
And of course, as I've said in our previous two lessons, that's not expressed just by
having nice, warm, fuzzy feelings about each other and passing out hugs and handshakes
at church.
But by truly being concerned about the spiritual welfare of my brothers and sisters, and particularly,
do they, are they loving God with all their heart, mind, soul and strength, and are they
loving their neighbor as themselves?
That's why I am so concerned about the many professing Christians who are completely uninvolved
in oblivious to caring for the people whom Jesus referred to as the least of these.
Why?
Because Jesus will say one day to every everybody, one of two things.
Either I was hungry and you fed me or I was hungry and you didn't feed me.
You are either a sheep or a goat.
And it's all based on, did you love your neighbor as yourself?
And that's the proof whether you love me or didn't love me because to the extent that
you did it to the least of these my brethren, Christ says in Matthew 25, you did it unto
me.
So this is so important and it bears repetition and it's worth meditating about and thinking
about and talking about.
It's so fundamental and well, Christians tend to follow rabbit trails, doctrinal rabbit
trails, and there's so much in fighting over who's got the right doctrine and when spirituality
is equated with having the right doctrine, we're missing it by a million, billion miles,
to be honest with you.
And just the fact that we're fighting amongst each other on these things is an indication
of how far we're falling short.
That our love is no better than that for our brethren.
It's a reflection of our true love for God.
Okay, so these are serious things.
What God wants is he wants people that love him and that couldn't be more clear from scripture.
Love him with all their heart, mind, soul and strength, which of course, as we've already
said in the last two lessons, is expressed by keeping his commandments.
And if there's any commandment that you're going to keep, you're going to keep at least
the second most important commandment to love your neighbor as yourself, right?
Right.
That's what God wants.
So God wants lovers, lovers of God, lovers of people.
And so people who truly love God, love those that are created in his image and they're
concerned about their spiritual welfare.
If they're not saved, they're concerned about that.
Concerned to the point of doing something.
Because if I don't do something, if I don't pray for my unsaved friends, if I don't let
my light shine before them, if I don't share the gospel with them, I can't make a claim
to loving them.
And then that proves I really can't make a claim to loving God.
All right, so I hope that you're thinking about these very sobering facts.
Now, we read in the gospel of Luke that there was a time where Luke describes a point in
Jesus's ministry in Luke chapter 14 and verse number 25 and he says, now, large crowds were
going along with him.
That's Jesus.
And he turned and he said to them, and then Jesus said, you can say three things to those
large crowds that were going along with him.
And those three things make it very clear that Jesus was not satisfied with just having
a big fan base of people who are going along with him.
He wanted something much more, and it shouldn't surprise us because it's contained in scripture
from the beginning.
He wants people who love him as God with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength.
And not just having warm, fuzzy feelings about him, but expressing their love for him by
their obedience to his commandments, of which the second greatest one is to love neighbor
as self.
And so Jesus just says that same thing in a little different way here, when he enumerates
the three requirements that one must meet in order to qualify to be one of his disciples.
And in verse number 26 Jesus says, if anyone comes to me, which is a phrase that Jesus
uses in other places as a invitation for salvation, come to me all you who are weary and heavy
laden and I will give you rest.
So coming to Jesus is just what it sounds like.
You're coming towards him because you want a relationship with him.
If anyone comes to me, if anyone wants a relationship with me and does not hate his own father and
mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he
cannot be my disciple.
Okay?
So we're out of time for today's lesson, but I want to leave you on this little note.
No one actually thinks that Jesus literally means that we should hate the ones that we
naturally love the most.
So bare a minimum, what he means is you have to love me Jesus supremely way more than you
love anyone else whom you naturally love.
Why?
Because I'm God, and you're supposed to love God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength.
And if you don't love me more than anyone else supremely, you can't be my disciple.
So as we ask ourselves that question, I'm I Christ's disciple?
Here's the first question specifically to ask ourselves, do I love Jesus supremely?
All right, we'll pick up here on our next Little Lesson.
Hope to see you then.
God bless you.