we're really going to be talking a lot about salvation today what salvation is and this is uh this is in many ways the central issue for our work I know that uh many or most of you are involved in setting forward the work of Christ and the at the center of that is salvation what is salvation by the way see that's the question that I want us to mainly think about today so here we go in Titus 2:11 the grace of God that brings salvation now you may have a different translation from that you may say something like the grace of God has appeared bringing salvation that's okay the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared publicly it is a public fact it has appeared unto all men teaching us that if we believe that Jesus suffered what we would have to suffer for the wrongs we have done we will go to heaven when we die does your version say that or does your version say something the grace of God that bring Salvation has publicly appeared teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lust we should live soberly righteously and godly in this present world looking for that blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ who gave himself for us that we might go to heaven when we die o did I make a mistake there that he might redeem us from all ungodliness my ASV here says from every Lawless deed and purify unto himself a peculiar people who' attended church Faithfully whoops another mistake who gave regularly who witnessed okay that would be included wouldn't it they're zealous for good works they just sit around thinking about doing good things they're zealous for good works these things speak and exort and reprove with all authority let no one disregard you remind them to be subject to rulers to authorities to be obedient to be ready for every good deed to malign no one to be uncontentious gentle showing every consideration for all men for we once were foolish also disobedient deceived enslaved to various lusts and Pleasures spending our lives in making in Malice and envy hateful hating one another see being lost is not a matter of where you're going it's a matter of where you are a lost person doesn't know where they are if you're really lost you can't even use a map because you can't locate yourself on the map this is the condition of lostness but when the kindness of God our savior and his love for mankind appeared he saved us not on the basis of our Deeds that would be the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees which we have done in righteousness but according to his mercy and here's how he saved us by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit whom he poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ Our Savior that being justified by his grace we might be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life and that is a good picture of what salvation means in New Testament terms and you will notice that the emphasis Upon A New Life a new spirit that is moving in US upon [Music] regeneration and the first move is the move to New Life to being born from above we talked about life last night or yesterday and I said life is a kind of activity and I see that most of the Goldfish this morning are still alive and um if one is not you will be able to tell it's not by looking at it uh it will no longer have in it that feature of life self-initiating self-directing activity comes from the inside the only thing that can move it will be from the outside and uh the life that we are given in Christ is a new new kind of activity it begins with the acknowledgment that Jesus is Lord and that's why in 1 Corinthians 12 verse 2 Paul says no one can call Jesus Lord except by the Holy Spirit I'm not talking about using the words anyone can do that but actually acknowledging recognizing seeing that Jesus is Lord that he is the one who is in charge of the universe that he is the mro of life that he understands and has power to supervise and govern in his kingdom to really see that is something you cannot do on your own that has to be given to you from God faith comes from hearing hearing from the word of God by Grace we are saved through faith and that not of ourselves the faith is not of ourselves it is the gift of God lest anyone should boast see this new project is going to eliminate boasting there will be no pride in this new life there will be a recognition that no one is in a position to boast because everything that's good that they have received has been given to them and we have to work through that carefully now because for many people and one of the reasons why we're in this non- disciple Christian thing is because people have mistaken Grace for passivity and they have become passive and so they might come to your church and say do it to me thrill me with your worship service enliven me with your word I am here to consume so you lay the goods on the table now and if you don't I'll go somewhere where they lay better Goods on the table and that passivity has generated a whole culture of consumer Christians that is Christians who think that being a Christian is a matter of consuming they consume the merits of Christ they consume uh Services uh they consume uh ministers uh that has happened in more ways than women and but they think that's their job to consume and they don't realize that what they're called to do is to participate and that the reason that they have new life in them is so they can live that new life out and so it's very important for us to have these passages like this before us when we begin to talk about the things we're going to be talking about today today we want to talk about the gospel of the kingdom of God and discipleship to Christ the gospel of the kingdom of God and discipleship to Christ now the Assumption if you disagree with me about these or any at any point you disagree with me just say hey that's wrong so we start now with this claim then now Universal assumption is that you can be a Christian and not be a disciple that's the universal assumption do you do you know of any church or denomination where you're told you cannot be a Christian unless you're a disciple anyone now you realize that this room has people in it who are really A Cut Above in terms of commitment and if you're going to let me stand here with that statement and and none of you is going to say oh yes I know a church where you had to be a disciple in order to be a Christian wouldn't you say that pretty well confirms the first statement on the screen I I I'm sincere you know I I don't like to just rattle on uh you get to be my age and you've talked as much as I have you can rattle on endlessly so seriously you know at any point that you want to interrupt please do I tell that to my students at USC and they hardly ever talk you know they just sit there they're trying to get it down you know it's an interesting thing about education is you don't have to believe what you write on your tests did you ever think about that I like to kid with my students when they turn into test said Do you believe what you wrote and they uh laugh because they know you don't have to believe what you write you just have to have the right answer right you get the right answer even if you guessed it you get credit right that's even true in seminary you don't have to believe what you write you just have now is that also true in our churches is that possibly related to the situation that we're in you see the problem for the church is never that they need more people more money more influence more education never and it's very hard for many of us who have been involved in churches to realize that because we often do need money and people and so what I'm saying is the basic need is never that the basic need is for the transformation of the people who are there our problem is the quality of the people who are there and one of the real turnarounds for me as a young minister or at least one who was trying to be a minister was the realization that I was not really helping people to change uh I was talking to someone talking to you last night when you drove was over about being Southern Baptist you know Southern Baptist can't get saved again that's forbidden you can discover that you weren't saved in the first place and get saved that's permitted but if you once get saved you can't get saved again all you can do is rededicate yourself and you can do that every Sunday night if you want or twice on Sunday and you know it really did I I I was very young and unbelievably green terribly sincere and it slowly dawned on me I'm not saying anything to help these people change that they it isn't their fault that they come and rededicate themselves and go back the next week they need it again what are we teaching people that leaves us in this situation you know what are we teaching people that's the that's the real question for us thinking back your first point right I I am confident that our fellowship sh that it use the language of becoming a believer in Christ as your savior and Lord okay so I think that there are a number of fellowships that are teaching lordship as part of Salvation that's right and that's good and we don't mean need to get hung up on the wording if you teach like Jesus really is Lord that entails discipleship see and uh now you have to be careful and not let that be just an admission of a Doctrine but in if that in practice and that is the that's the real heart of the matter because to say that Jesus is Lord is to say I am his disciple that's if you really understand that that's the way to go with it now um a part of our problem the second Point here is the loss of any precise meaning of the word disciple um and that's W widespread and that's one reason why by the way the upsurge in use of the term spiritual formation has occurred in the last 10 years or so in among big deal about spiritual formation well that's okay but the reason people turn to that I think is because the word disciple had become so flabby and misplaced and I'll just give you a couple of illustrations of that uh the among Evangelical Christians the par Church organization that is most well known for discipleship is The Navigators and when you looked at their literature some years ago they are in a process of change about this when you looked at their literature you discovered that Christians are divided into three classes first of all they're just Christians and those were people I guess who said that they accepted Christ or they had prayed the prayer or something of that sort and then above that were disciples and discipleship on that program were people I mean disciples were people who could make Christians and discipleship was a matter of learning how to do that and I mean I'm not don't know KN dos trotman and others who worked with that organization where they have done many wonderful things and when you look at what was done by trotman and others to prepare people to win souls make Christians you realize that it was indeed a very meaningful uh form of training in christlikeness and uh they certainly certainly Daws himself would never have suggested that that making Souls was just a winning Soul was a matter of learning a technique you had to grow personally you that was very good and then the third category was workers and workers are people who could make disciples in other words they were training people to be Soul winners and uh now again I want to emphasize that there's so many you know one of the things about talking about all this stuff is um I have a friend in Africa who uses the phrase I don't have time to tell you all the things I don't mean by that right so I I'm going to say things that that are uh in I hope in a good sense critical not judgmental but critical as we want to distinguish and discern uh and so the the problem here is you get a version of discipleship that does not mean being a person who is a student of Jesus learning to do the things that he said now some of that was mixed in again I emphasize if you read the if you read in the early literature of The Navigators you'll see that but uh The Navigators themselves came to realize some years ago and they under the wonderful leader ship that they have that they were producing people who were not Christlike and uh I used to say institutions cannot repent but here's a case of one that did and just said we've been doing this wrong and we've got to move in a different way and there was a struggle there is a struggle in the group but they're wonderful people and they are devoted to Christ and I believe Christ is turning them around that's just an illustration now of how a disciple comes to mean something other than a person who is a full-time student of Jesus in the kingdom of God and I'm going to try to put a positive spin on that a moment illustrate just another way if you're familiar with Sojourner magazine you know that magazine and again a wonderful group of people and um uh but discipleship to them means things like service to the poor political action uh protesting and so on writing pamphlets standing up for opposition to the government usually I you know if you want to find the government's nearly always wrong about something you know Benjamin Frankin you should say every man needs a wife because sooner or later something bad is going to happen that he can't blame on the government oh you have to have to think about that I guess so I mean uh Lord knows there's plenty of room for that right and these go with versions of the Gospel I will mention in a moment uh but once again what you see here is though these again are lovely sweet people and um please I'm not I'm very sincere in saying that I mean it but that isn't discipleship and you can be involved in those kinds of things uh Ser Social Service issues service to the poor protesting correcting criticizing as what we what we used to say in the 60s speaking truth to power that's a good line isn't it speaking truth to power well that needs to be done Jesus did that didn't he right but it's not discipleship and so we really have a problem here um with the law the meaning of discipleship in any clear New Testament terms uh we fumble about trying to find new sometimes people will unthinkingly just suppose that discipleship means involvement in church activities it could that could be a form of it but you could be involved in church activities and not a disciple that's the problem with all of these understandings and others that may be kind of fogging around on the edge of your mind as I talk is that they don't come to this Central issue of transformation into christlikeness see what I'm saying to you is that that is what would make the church be what it is supposed to be as the people of God and do what it is supposed to do in the world is the transformation of individuals into christlikeness people progressively coming to the place to where they routinely and easily just do the things that Jesus talked about and I to help us pedagogically I like to just use blessing those who curse you because uh everyone in this Society who drives a car for example has plenty of opportunities to bless those who curse them right and sometimes even our families we have opportunities to bless those who curse us so this it's a good thing it's a simple thing and I will talk more about that later on but just imagine a place that where you have a person who when they're cursed and by cursing here we don't need to think of something formal I mean we're just talking about people who would just assume you drop dead you know who just saw you and thought off with you um who diss you people who diss you bless those who diss you you know maybe put a sign out front here say we teach how to bless people who diss you could you do that so uh now moving then into that area then we understand why there's no serious question of actually doing what Jesus said because we're not making an issue of right often most of our groups will have an emphasis on some particular things that Jesus said but but not all of them all right now last night we got to talking about the Great Commission so there are three parts now to the Great Commission and we want to look at them uh slowly and carefully and first of all it is make disciples now we're talking about the gospel of the kingdom and discipleship and we want to connect those two things and the Great Commission tells us that the first thing is to make disciples now that's why it's so important for us to know what a disciple is and of course if we're going to make disciples surely the first step is to be disciple and uh that step is is one which if we omit then everything nothing else will go quite right uh because we will have people who are not committed to learning see that's the difference like if you go go to uh the University or School of some sort and you sign up for a course in algebra well you're committed to learning Algebra I hope you are actually one of the problems is that often people who take courses are not committed to learning they're they don't really don't know why they're there and that's makes it very hard to teach because you don't have the commitment on their part you walk up to someone on the street out here it's passing and say I'm I'm like to teach you algebra that wouldn't be a long conversation so you have to get the commitment now that's what why I spent time yesterday talking about how you get people in a position where they see what's being presented to them as the pearl of great price the pearl of great PR the treasure in the field right that's talking about getting to people people to the position where they're say yes this is the most important thing now that goes with Jesus's saying seek first the kingdom of God seek first that must be the most important thing now imagine if you had groups of people together who acknowledge the lordship of Jesus and their whole purpose was to learn from him that's the most important thing in their life more important than anything else then you see you've got people who are ready for a different kind of operation to go on around them just like if you have a student that is really devoted to learning algebra you can tell them how to do it and they will do it and lo and behold they will learn it it's just that simple I learned that myself and going through my own education is that if you really decide you want to learn algebra and trigonometry and differential calculus and so on you you just do the things that lead to that in fact one of the great discoveries of my life occurred when I was in the first grade and the teacher had sent home a list of three-letter words cat rat dog hat and so on and my job was to learn how to spell those and I can still remember exactly where I was sitting up in bed when my big sister Mary Francis said all you have to do is repeat them and I discovered to my amazement that if I did that I could spell cat I could spell cat when I was in the front yard I could spell cat when I was walking to school isn't that amazing and it want the mind is like that the the self is like that now I would like you to think the thought that being able to bless those who curse you is just like that that means on the one hand if you don't do the things that will bring you there it won't happen you cannot learn how to spell cat by grace and grace will not force you to become the kind of person who easily and routinely blesses those who curs them who easily and routinely turns away from cultivating lust who easily and routinely does not have contempt for others now I feel like we almost ought to just stop here a moment and ask you to think about that and tell me what you think because that's really fundamental truth about this whole business of discipleship it makes people very uncomfortable because what it means is this if I am not a person who easily and r Ely turns away from the cultivation of lusting from contempt from so on it isn't because of the law of gravity it's because I don't intend to become that kind of person oo I won't say much about lit lure but on this particular point I do want to recommend because it's so important see what I'm saying to you is that people are not the kind of people that you might expect to see if you just candidly read the New Testament is because they do not intend and I want to suggest if you don't know this book that you get a copy of William Law's serious call to a devout and holy life and that you read chapter 2 because see this is kind of the missing link what we're talking about when we're talking about making disciples we're talking about making people who actually intend to do it you understand what I mean see it's just like I mean it doesn't work this way because the whole idea of mass education has just corrupted our culture but it's just like saying you know if you're in an algebra class you should intend to learn how to solve equations now the truth of the matter it is if you go into an algebra class in almost any high school or college and ask the students if that's what they intend they'll look at you like you got a hole in your head or something you know because they don't know what they're there for they'll say well I want to get a good grade I got to get these units because if I don't get these units I won't graduate someone somewhere decided in their superior wisdom that I should have units in this course that's what they know and that's why they do so badly math education and other branches like language learning in our culture you may know is just abysmal I will tell you the truth that at USC after many years decades of struggling with the progressive shallowing down requirements of Education that go with getting an education that everyone can get we have no meaningful requirement in mathematics none and you might be surprised how few schools actually do our culture instead we have group therapy for math phobia did you know that we have group therapy for math phobia you can enroll if you care to most people don't enroll because they just stay far away enough away from it so there's a huge need of mathematicians in our culture you can make a lot of money have a good job secure a profession but you got to learn how to do equations with the second degree among other things now you see if you just want the job you don't want to learn it if you just want the grade see that's now I've been led to believe that you really are doing something different that you really do intend to do something different in your churches the key is intention it is generating intention and that is what discipleship is about discipleship is intention that's why I said yesterday we talked so much yesterday it seems like a month ago but that's why I said you make a disciple by ravishing people with the kingdom of God and the way you do that is get them focused on Jesus it's amazing how little we actually hear about Jesus and on the other hand about the soul in our churches have talk about those things help people understand the greatness of Jesus what Jesus is doing he's often presented in a very narrow perspective maybe just Savior and judge something like that but we had to see him as we presented him last night and though we talked long last night we you really well Paul said the unfathomable Riches of Christ right so if you set out to talk on that you're dead you're going to fail you'll never it is unfathomable that's what unfathomable means that means if you focus on that you'll never run out of sermon topics you'll never get to the bottom of it but present Christ Lift him up in all of his glory and with him the kingdom comes because he is a great king he is a a great king go to people and say how are you doing with your kingdom so start there began to work on their responsibility for their life because they have a kingdom everyone does people come with kingdoms this gentleman here was talking about his little four-year-old son he has a kingdom doesn't he yes you cross it and you'll see and that's good see back to the the topic of La of yesterday self-will is not bad it's only bad if you exalt it to the top position see it's but that we we wind up we we wind up in human life normally with all of that we're in real trouble with our kingdom in real trouble things aren't going well normally it comes in the form of the breakdown of Human Relationships often it starts between parents and children what a heartache there is there you know it is not for nothing that at the end of the Old Testament it is said by Malachi that John the Baptist as we know him a prophet will come and turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to the fathers before the coming of the Messiah oh the wounds that are there you see these are kingdoms that are broken so then we bring people to look at Jesus and we understand his kingdom and see the place of life in his kingdom and that's how we make disciples and say look this is your greatest opportunity in life now secondly in the faintly yellow print up here um secondly we immerse these disciples in the Trinity the Trinity comes to them Father Son and Holy Spirit and we have much to say later on if we can get to it about what this means in terms of what we do together in the way of church services now church services are a primary problem in this whole project and we know that actually without deep theological thinking if we just look at the problem people have with what to do with church services right everything from what kind of musical instruments we wear to what we um wear how how do we dress what do we do when and what after that and you have our whole our whole visible church is racked over these issues isn't it it's partly due to the fact that there came a realization at a certain point in the past that just getting nice people together in a building and sitting them in rows and talking at them uh wasn't doing it so now what else do we do and then you have uh great movements coming out of the Jesus people wonderful blessings of new denominations coming out like like the vineyard and Hope Chapel and Calvary Chapel and these other groups one of my colleagues at USC Don Miller has made a wonderful study of these as a sociologist to understand why it is while all of the other groups are dwindling they're growing and you look at them from outside as he did and you see well they're pretty some pretty obvious differences in what they do and that means differences and how they relate to one another and still the the question remains I mean how because actually though there are some differences here this problem of discipleship pretty well remains an issue across the board it has not been the problem has not been solved and the temptation to program differently and so on I think is is a very strong Temptation um that that we need to avoid and this second clause in the uh Great Commission really is the key to understanding this if you have a church meeting where people all sit in a row on IR removable benches and they play an organ and have a choir with robes and occasionally sing a little Bach if in that place the people who are there honor the Trinity and invite him to come and be there I mean really be there and get off of the idea of performance and program as solving the problem what will happen is the Trinity will come and the truth is it doesn't much matter what you do in the way of programming or not programming as long as you honor the Trinity the Trinity will come now that I don't think that will happen if you don't have disciples one of the things we miss in reading the scripture is the order you have to have disciples and again you don't don't worry about the name you have to have people who really honor Jesus as Lord and when they come to church they come in that attitude and spirit and they come together with one another they're prepared to really love one another they're invoking the presence of God over the whole thing uh then it it will happen it has happened over and over you look at the Spectrum of church history you see people did all sorts of things in the way of having of coming together and it's hard to find a single one of them that God has not mightily blessed now see we humanly think well if he blessed that that mean he must favor that no no that doesn't mean that probably means the people there are really disciples looking for the presence of God that the fact that God blesses something is never a reason to think he approves of it entirely that he thinks it's the answer it just means he's willing to bless it and I'm sure that it has to have some essential features but uh the fact that God blesses a practice doesn't necessarily mean that it's the way to do it there might still be a better way or there might be at another time a different way that is better and so on so let's keep that in mind now then once you have um these two in place you're ready for the Third part if you try to go to three without one and two you will wind up with some form of legalism and it will kill you and it will kill everyone around you but now if you have disciples and you are living in the presence coming together living in the presence submerging them in the trinitarian life that clows in the community of Disciples of Jesus then you canot teach them to do everything Jesus said so now that is how discipleship and the gospel of the kingdom comes together because if you don't preach some kind of whole life gospel you'll never make disciples you have to preach a whole life gospel and I've used the word Kingdom and so on uh but however that works I talked last night about how we shouldn't make a legalism out of the language kingdom of God and Kingdom of Heaven some people do that we don't need to do that we need to get the point and the point is living now within the range of God's effective will whole life not not religious things we do that and then non-religious things we on our own now discipleship is learning how to come from the position where we are running our own kingdom and bringing increasingly our whole cell into the kingdom of God so back to our circle diagram of earlier uh moments the uh parts of the cell that we distinguish there are increasingly brought into the kingdom of God all right so now then let's try to be very explicit about what is a disciple um I given you some language here on the next screen what is a disciple first first take a disciple is one who is with Jesus learning to be like him now that's a general idea of discipleship that applies to everything if you have a third grader uh in school who is studying with their teacher learning how to do let's say long division or what are the capitals of the United States or what are what are the countries in Africa uh what are the mountain ranges around the earth and so on that is a typical case of discipleship that little student is with a teacher learning to be like that teacher with regard to his or her knowledge of these things that they're studying one who is with Jesus learning to be like him now discipleship is a matter of being with Jesus so you have to be prepared to invoke him invite him and then as you do that you're going to experience his presence with you and you're going to realize that what you're doing you do not do in your own strength the discipleship is not something that can be done merely by human effort that's why going back to the Great Commission be a disciple living in the trinitarian presence see that's key you can't go on without that and that is the meaning of the teaching of Grace that we receive from the scriptures Grace means you can't do it on your own you don't have to see so it's not an issue with that at all but we're with Jesus and we we experience him acting with us I like to illustrate this in terms of carrying uh a log or something heavy and you're carrying it in your own strength and then all of a sudden it's lighter someone has taken a hold of it and Is Lifting with you or maybe then you have to lift a load which you know you can't lift and when you bend down to pick it up you lift it right that's the difference in Grace that's what Grace does Grace makes a difference like that and of course if we really understand what we're doing as human beings under God we're constantly attempting to do things we can't do isn't that right I mean that's that's not surprising or unusual uh that is standard for the life of Grace the fact you can't do something has nothing to do with the case question is does God want it done and are you willing to stoop down and to put your hands on that load knowing you cannot lift it and start lifting and watch it come up you understand what I'm talking about see that's god with you that is use that wonderful verse I gave you yesterday from Isaiah God's glorious arm went at the right hand of Moses see you remember Isaiah 6312 I think it is God's glorious arm so what did Moses have to learn well God gave him baby lessons out there by the bush you remember what is that in your hand Moses it's a staff throw it down becomes a snake now what if Moses had just stood there and held it well actually Moses was in so in the dark about all this at this point that he didn't know what was going on God was teaching him throws it down becomes a serpent now he says pick it up well picking up serpents is a challenge to your faith isn't it Moses it up next thing put your hand in your robe now pull it out lepus put it back in clean do you understand what's going on there see we are learning with we are with him learning to do things now those are pretty spectacular things often we need those to help us and sometimes we need them to help people but often we need those uh in order to help us understand how interactive life with Jesus grows now I'm going to go back to John 17:3 again with you and if you have if you didn't yesterday zero in on that verse and start thinking about it and what I said about it now is the time to do it because this tells you what eternal life is this is eternal life Jesus said in his great High Priestly prayer that they would know you the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent and what I said to you was that knowing in the Bible always refers to interactive relationship so a disciple is someone who is interactively with Jesus now what that really means is some in practice is something like this that I never go into a situation where I assume that I am in control of the outcome I never do that that means among other things that if I have to do something that I think I can't do I won't assume it can't be done that means among other things that for example if I think I know what's supposed to happen I don't like coming here talking to you I have no idea what supposed to happen there's some things I have in mind that I would never when I go to speak to a group or run a service or all I would say pray with anyone or Minister I ne try never to assume I should say I try never to assume because sometimes my kingdom asserts itself without me thinking and I start acting as if I were in charge you see I it would be very foolish of me to assume that I know what's supposed to happen now I have some ideas and that's okay I have some hopes and some plans but those are always held in abeyance with the idea that Jesus knows what's supposed to happen so I obviously plan to do certain things I if otherwise I wouldn't have done this PowerPoint right but I don't assume that I know what is supposed to come out of that because I'm living interactively with Jesus and I'm really very hopeful that a lot of things are going to happen that I don't even think about and you remember what Ephesians 3:21 says that he is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we can ask or think that's out there right that's really out there and uh it's a great encouragement to see things happening that you didn't think about isn't it yeah sometimes it's a little challenging but other times it's very encouraging but he's in charge another way of putting this is I'm learning from him how to lead my life as he would lead my life if he were I the the reason I use this formulation is to put the emphasis where it has to be which is on my life my life is the one that is of Interest here I mean it's not altogether harmful to say I want to be like him but we have to remember he led his life now I lead my life and now I have to get concrete about that I mean the very kind of person I am that's my life so for example uh it may be a challenge to you ladies to think about Jesus leading your life but he could do that he he could be comfortable there so what you want to learn then is how to lead your life as he would lead your life if he were you so suppose your some of the people I have the hardest uh time getting through to are investment bankers and lawyers because they have the hardest time in the professions thinking that Jesus might actually lead their life and if youve ever if you know what the life of an investment banker is like I often think of people being on the floor of the Chicago Exchange doing future in pork bellies actually he could do that he could do that it's not bad work it's important any work that is that is important for others can be done in the spirit of love and in the power of the Kingdom so another so I'm I'm an apprentice in Kingdom living see he's the master of living in the Kingdom I'm The Apprentice I'm learning how to do that it's the easy way of living yes that's what he said isn't it Matthew 11:28-30 come unto me all you that labor and are heavy laden and I'll give you rest take my yoke upon you and learn underline learn of me you know what a yoke is it's not something in an egg a yoke is an instrument by which animals as we used to say beasts of Burden combine their energies and when you put a young horse into a yoke with an older horse to work when you do that that young horse at first does not know what to do and uh in fact uh I'm a 19th century sort of person and I was raised with horses and cows and things of that sort they lived in the barn and I lived in the house most of the time but um actually worked I me you watch a you watch a young horse when they you put them in the horness with a experienced horse the first time and the usual routine is they will be out ahead of the old horse and the old horse will just be walking along so well if you want to pull the whole thing you can so go ahead and then after a while they slack off and then the Single Tree starts hitting their legs and making their life miserable in that direction and takes them a little while to get on to that not too long then they figure well now if I just walk with that guy over there maybe this would work out okay that's what Jesus is talking about take my yoke upon you and learn of me for I am meek and lowly of heart and you'll find rest to your souls it's down in somewhere some conference um maybe it was in Orlando and uh de it was for people who were head of uh Student Life on Christian college campuses there was a dear sweet lady um who had been a missionary and had served in so many capacities and now she was had been Student Life director of student life at a Christian school and I just remember this dear lady so clearly she just got up and said I don't know a thing about this rest he's talking about I have no idea what he means I don't know what the easy yoke means now see that's very typical because you don't have to know that in order to qualify for a position a dear man who's pastor of an Anglican Church in Kansas City said in a recent meeting kind of blurted out he's a pastor very successful Pastor he said they don't pay us to live they pay us to preach so the performance becomes and of course not just preaching but all the other things you have to do as a pastor that's what you're held to is the performance whereas what Jesus is talking about is transformation and we have to put that right up front now I'm not speeding along here so let's uh we're going to have to come up to a break here so let's let's end on this note the gospel heard does not produce disciples where is the problem where is the problem and I want to suggest to you that the central problem is in the message preached I want to suggest that our result is due to the message that is preached or at least the one that is heard because actually my experience is you don't necessarily preach what is heard and I find that you can that you can even come in and preach the gospel of the kingdom of God and people will hear you talking about going to heaven when you die because that's all they've ever heard and so when they hear anything that sounds religious it translates into that and so it's a real feat to succeed in getting through but at least the one that is heard produces the result that we have it does not have a natural tendency to produce disciples so however you word it now and there will be real barriers here because uh uh Dan mentioned lordship but even over that issue there there's a a huge uh outbreak of uh difficulties that come with that you may know the lordship controversy so-called and uh basically John MacArthur and a few others who said that you could not be saved unless you intended to obey Jesus and then people immediately jumped on that and said that's work salvation ryri Zay Hodges and others I think I I never quite know what what you're reading so in case you haven't read that I mean there is a controversy over this uh and it comes with the misunderstanding of Grace which we'll have to talk about later but and also it turns out that that that Gospel of lordship as it is preached does not have a natural tendency to produce disciples either and um I discussed this some in the second chapter of the Divine conspiracy you may want to look at it but here's the bitter truth your system is perfectly designed to produce the result you're getting now that language is from the language of business gurus of which of which the woods are full people who want to tell you how to make businesses work and they use that saying and there's a this is a profound truth your system is perfectly designed to produce the result you're getting so if you want a different result you have to change the system this goes with another saying that they use it is the mark of a disordered mind to think that you can repeat the same process and get a different result so we have to find the place of change now Ry is the one who takes the non-l lordship Salvation position and I think this will clear clear up a lot of things that we're we're talking about here so ryri says in response to McArthur some of the confusion regarding the meaning of the Gospel today may arise from failing to clarify the issue involved the issue is now notice the issue is how can my sins be forgiven what is it that bars me from Heaven what is it that prevents my having eternal life now notice all of those words are loaded having eternal life means going to heaven when you die in this context now you have to bring that over against the New Testament the answer is sin now actually he doesn't mean sin he means guilt and one of the systematic ambiguities is between that in much contemporary theology is between sin and guilt and the issue there is whether or not Jesus removes sin or just guilt now then you go back and read the passage I read to you from Titus or 1 John or almost any place and see what you think is supposed to be removed Jesus came the gospel of Matthew says to destroy the works of the devil now is that guilt Jesus came to save his people from their sins not from guilt see this is this is the one way of stating the issue there's no question that for ryi he means guilt as you will see I think from the other things read therefore I need some way to resolve that problem the problem of how to go to heaven when I die and God declares that the death of his son provides forgiveness of my sins now he doesn't mean that he means that if you believe that Jesus died for your sins you'll be forgiven you see if you don't take it that way then you get universalism and that's why there was a huge battle over limited atonement in the past of Western theology because Jesus only died for those who will be saved because if his death provides forgiveness for everyone then everyone is Forgiven that's universalism they're just all sorts of little theological points that you have to be careful with as you go through this through faith I receive him and his forgiveness then the sin problem is solved he means the guilt problem is song because he would be the first to tell you that Christians continue to sin and I can be fully assured of going to heaven I see that's the issue later on he distinguishes issues of Christian Life from issues of Salvation he says on page uh 74 of his book you can believe that what he taught while on Earth was good Noble and true and it was you can believe he is able to run your life and he surely is able to do that and he wants to but these are not issues of Salvation that means you can still be saved and reject those right that issue the issue of Salvation is whether or not you believe that his death paid for all your sins and now actually the difference in wording itself is instructive and important I don't have time to pursue all these rabbits but you need to think about that you have to believe that his death paid for all your sins you see that is the way the gospel is often presented what is actually presented is one theory of the atonement and that by believing in him you can have for forgiveness and eternal life that believing is what Taps the resources transfers his Merit to your account in the Bank of heaven so you're paid off now ryy says when one believes he commits to God well commits what he commits his eternal Destiny that's the issue not the years of his life on Earth the nons salv ation issues belong to Christian Living or relate to the Christian Life not to the issue of Salvation I do not these are his words I do not need to settle issues that belong to Christian Living in order to be saved right now what is driving Rari what is driving him is the idea of salvation by grace and so in anytime he thinks about a difference in this life he thinks works and that is where the salvation lordship lordship salvation and non Sal well you don't know quite what to call the other one but that's that's what that's how they join the issues all right oop these are the three three gospels that are heard at present now I'm trying to take these from the Viewpoint of the person who's sitting listening and it's very often very great difference between what is said and what is heard but these are the three that are heard the first one is the one we just looked at in Rari that the gospel the good news is entirely about forgiveness entirely and the good news is that the beating you you deserve has been taken by someone else and if you believe that it has then you won't get that beating your sins will be forgiven and you'll be in heaven because they won't be find any reason to keep you out if you believe that Jesus suffered your sin penalty that is standardly the ver version of The Gospel that you will hear among Evangelical and conservative not to mention fundamentalist churches that's what you'll hear you'll hear that if you listen to the main people on television who have nationwide programs presenting the gospel Charles Stanley will say that who's the man at Belleview in Memphis Rogers and I love both of those people they are sweet wonderful people and they don't mean it to come out this way but when that when they tell you what it is you have to do that's what you'll hear number one and then that will leave all of the issues of what ryy calls Christian Living unconnected conceptually no connection and you see various ways of trying to connect it in the reformed tradition one of the ways that that is stressed is you'll be so grateful that you will obey and then of course they have congregations full of people who are not so grateful and don't obey now one of the reasons why that comes through is because in the history of the reformed movement back in the days of Luther and Calvin forgiveness was such a huge issue that people often when they received that their lives were totally transformed I'm not saying that shouldn't happen indeed it would be wonderful if it did happen it just doesn't happen and it doesn't happen because of the way things have developed up to the present point the second one is basically the gospel of the left Jesus died to liberate the oppressed and you can stand with him in that battle and you'll hear that preached and ordinarily people who take this and they don't say much of anything about forgiveness right I mean take your sojourners magazine read it to to see what it says about forgiveness of sins do you read sojourners yeah well I mean is that right or wrong see now on the other side there's a big problem largely a misunderstanding because actually the people who go the route of number one do more in many respects for the oppressed than the other people they just don't talk much about it right I mean it was the people in the first group for example that broke the back of slavery in this country it wasn't folks in the second group now is oppression bad did Jesus talk about oppression he sure did and it sure is bad and we should be opposed to it is forgiveness essential forgiveness of sins yes it sure is you cannot bypass reconciliation justification now in my own view I think it is right to think that regeneration comes first and then justification and then sanctification and then glorification they all fit into a pattern there a natural progression along a continuous line you don't get the way it's often presented now justification is a whole deal no one make much sense of regeneration and there's no natural progression to sanctification and that's because of the way this is presented the third one here is actually the gospel that huge numbers of people here they don't really think much about these other issues at all and that is just do what your church says and it will see to it that you are received by God for short take care of your church it'll take care of you and of course the sacramental churches so-called High churches often tend more in terms of that I mean you you do the the things that church says and some cases beginning with birth and ending with death you have rituals that are said and you can be sure um that you're okay but actually that is looking more to heaven when you die three has more in common with one than it does with two though there are a lot of interesting combinations that you can make and I'm talking to you as you as young bright people who are going to think about this see and you and when you think about it you have to take as your key what the scripture says it has to be scriptural if it isn't in the scripture you don't do it that has to be the rule in my opinion and now that goes back to the things we talked about yesterday morning about knowledge and where do we get knowledge and the scripture is the place that God has deposited in a public way the knowledge that we need to have eternal life and I don't mean go to heaven when we die though that will take care of itself see if you get out of sin management because these really are all gospels of sin management what are you going to do about Sin they're not gospels of regeneration and New Life new life now in the present kingdom of God the present Kingdom of the heavens under the Living Lord Jesus Christ they are not they they don't deal with that see it's often presented as somehow as if we had never sinned we'd have no use for God no use for Christ and I've heard uh leading representatives of Evangelical Christian this country say on their television programs that guilt Grace is only for Guilt see the misunderstanding of Grace is another way of approaching this and when you and then you go to your Bibles and you do thorough inductive study on Grace it'll do as much as any other one thing could do to help you get all this straight what you want you understand what Grace is and we're going to go on that so you you you have to think of yourself now in presenting yourself to the world and we'll end up there talking about that in presenting Christ to the world is it primarily or only a problem of what to do about Sin those are gospels of sin management and all three of the gospels that I've mentioned basically turn on that now compare that to the fourth gospel that I have here which isn't the Gospel of John and it certainly isn't The Gospel According to Willard this is the gospel that you will find and these verses that I've given you here some of them we've already talked about some not put your confidence in Jesus and live with him as his disciple now in the present kingdom of God