What should be the mission statement of every single church in the world?
Hi.
Welcome to today's Little Lesson.
We've been talking in our last two previous Little Lessons about the subject of making
disciples, and so the question that I posed at the beginning of this Little Lesson is
certainly related to that.
What should be the mission statement of every church in the world?
I've traveled a lot.
I've been a Christian since my teenage years.
I'm 59 years old as I'm talking to you right now, so I've been a Christian for about four
decades, and I've been in the ministry almost as long as that.
Traveled in 80 some different countries of the world, spoke in churches and so forth,
spoken to ministers, so I have a little bit of experience interacting with the [inaudible
00:00:56].
I've read a lot of books, listened to a lot of sermons, been to a lot of churches, and
I'm always a little bit surprised ... Not always, but often, very often surprised when
I read the mission statement of various ministries and churches.
Because what I'm expecting to find is that their mission statement is going to be the
mission statement that Jesus gave to the church, right?
You would think that.
But here's a church that says, "Our mission is to help believers live the abundant life
in Jesus Christ, fulfilling their destiny and walking in all the blessings that God
has provided to them."
That's okay, but it's actually not okay.
Let me just be perfectly honest with you.
If that's the mission of your church, you need to either shut down your church or change
the mission, because the mission ought to be, of every church and every ministry, to
make disciples, and what are disciples?
Well, we've already seen initially that a disciple is somebody that according to Jesus
in John, chapter 8, who continues in the words of Christ as being progressively set free
from sin, becoming more holy, and, secondly, that person is a person who is learning to
obey all of Christ's commandments, because that's what he said, "Go make disciples, teaching
to obey everything that I commanded."
I'll add to that, that a disciple, and honestly, it's only the disciples who truly believe
in Jesus.
If you're not a disciple of Christ, you don't believe in Bible Jesus.
You might believe in American Jesus, or some other Jesus, but you don't believe in Bible
Jesus unless you're a disciple.
So Jesus was preaching one time, and we read in Luke, chapter 14 and verse number 25, "Now
large crowds were going along with Him."
There you have it.
In some people's estimation and many ministers and pastor's estimation, "Well, wow, Jesus
was successful."
The goal had been reached, big crowds, because that's how we define success, look how many
people are coming on Sunday morning, big crowds.
Well, was Jesus happy with those big crowds?
Had he reached His goal?
Did He lift his hands up to the Father and say, "Father, take a look.
Aren't you proud.
I'm a mega church pastor now, because look at all these people that come to me once a
week for an hour?"
That's not what he did.
So he says to them in verse number 26, in the very next verse, he turns and he says
to these large crowds, "If anyone comes to me ..." Now that sounds like He means you
come to me, like you're interested in me, and you're professing that we have some kind
of a relationship going on, and you've come to me.
But look at this, "And he does not hate his own father, and mother, and wife, and children,
and brothers, and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot, cannot be my disciple."
So there you have it.
Who is going to argue with Jesus about what is the proper definition of a disciple, right?
I mean that's Jesus.
He ought to know, and He said, "Go into all the world and make disciples.
Baptize them.
Teach them."
Here's a characteristic of a disciple.
You can't be my disciple unless you hate the people that you naturally would love the most,
your closest relatives, come on, father, mother, wife, children, brother, sisters, even yourself,
yes, even your own life, he cannot be my disciple.
Now, of course, looking at the rest of the scripture, looking at that in context of the
rest of the Bible, very few people are coming to the conclusion that Jesus meant literally
that we have to hate our loved ones, because if you hate your loved ones, then you wouldn't
love them at all anymore, and we know the scripture teaches, for examples, husbands
love your wives.
We're supposed to love our children.
We're supposed to honor our parents.
That's in the Ten Commandments.
So we don't take Jesus in the strictest literal sense in this requirement to be a disciple,
but taking it at its bare bones minimum regarding what he must mean by this, at bare bones minimum,
he must mean that your love for your loved ones has got to be lesser to a significant
degree than your love for me.
I become the supreme person whom you love, and if, in fact, your loved ones demand that
you give them greater love than love for me, you tell them no.
If God's telling you to do something, and your mom or your wife says, "Don't do it,"
and you say, "Okay, I won't do it because I love you," no, no, no, big mistake.
You're not a disciple.
Jesus becomes the one you love the most, more than anyone, more than anything, and if you
don't have that, you're not a disciple.
You think about how outrageous that would be for anyone to expect such devotion, except
God, because the Lord said way back in the Old Testament, "Love the Lord your God with
all your heart, mind, soul and strength," and so from the beginning, God's saying, "I
deserve your deepest devotion, your highest love more than anybody else," and when Jesus
says this in Luke, chapter 14 and verse number 26, "You can't be my disciple unless you hate
your loved ones," that's tantamount to claiming to be God.
The only alternative is that He's a lunatic, and Jesus did not have the credentials of
a lunatic.
He had the credentials of God.
All right.
Well, we're out of time for today.
I think I'll talk about this a little bit more in our next Little Lesson as we continue
in Luke, chapter 14.
Thanks for joining me.
God bless.