Your pastor has asked me here to introduce some ideas about discipleship. I’ll give you some definitions. I encourage to consider them. The definitions will be on the slides behind me. I ask only that you write down what is on the slides this morning and consider these things when you have free time to yourself.
This includes our students and younger people that are here with us. I am speaking to you too. Today is for everyone, not just “adults, old people like me, or parents or someone else. Today is for everyone.
Can you find something to write with? You can write on your bulletin if you need some paper. Or you can borrow some from someone next to you.
Are you ready now to think on our first idea? Let’s start with reality. I want to ask you to write down a short definition of reality. It sounds easy but is hard when you have to do it. No, this is not going to be theory or speculation. Today we are going to answer the most serious question each of us will ever encounter.
Reality is one of those ideas that everyone thinks they know but is so hard to define. Take a moment to write down your definition of reality. Keep it simple. Something that even your grade school kids can understand. Take a moment to do that now, if you would.
Let’s think about reality. What happens if your definition of reality is wrong? Please think very seriously about the consequences if your definition of reality is wrong.
I want to give you three examples of what happens when your understanding of reality is wrong.
Scuba diving: After you pass your initial certification, you can go on to get what is called “advanced open water diver” certification. One of the steps is to do a night time dive. Diving in the dark requires that you know exactly how reality works. When you are diving, you breathe in and then you breathe out. The air bubbles always go up to the surface. That is the reality of air bubbles in water. Air bubbles in water always go up.
When diving at night, it is easy to get confused. If you get confused, you risk panicking. Panic, in scuba diving, is deadly. It is when we are driven by fear that we make decisions that do not line up with reality. In scuba diving, panic is usually the cause of someone diving down…not up. Reality is to line up our actions with the bubbles… to go up. But when we panic, we dive down, not lining up with the bubbles. Soon we run out of air and we die.
In skiing or mountain climbing in the snow, there is usually some chance for an avalanche. If the avalanche doesn’t kill you, at best, you get buried in the snow. Buried and disoriented, you must know what is true about reality. What kills people buried in an avalanche is that they often dig down and not up…so the advice is to stop digging, and to spit. Gravity still works in an avalanche. If you spit, the saliva will fall down. You go the opposite direction of your saliva. Only then can you dig your way up. Knowing which way is up is as necessary when buried in the snow as it is when you are night diving.
Finally, a true story. A pilot is training in the Air Force. Many times the pilot must practice flying upside down. The instructors say, “Always trust your instruments, never your instinct.” Why, because the instruments are lined up with reality. The instruments will tell you which way is truly up and which way is down.
In this instance, the pilot was learning to fly the jet upside down. When it was time to gain altitude, the ground control instructed the pilot to pull up. The pilot, trusting his instinct, pulled back on the throttle. Normally, pulling back on the stick causes the jet to climb up. But he did not look at his instruments. He did not look at the instruments which are aligned with reality. He trusted his instinct. He pulled back on the throttle, and flew straight into the ground. Like the diver and the mountain climber, trusting their instinct rather than aligning with reality, got them killed.
We are in a similar situation with these three examples… We are in a world that is panicked and flying upside down. The people around us are trusting their own understanding of reality. And the results are tragic.
Let’s go back to your definition of reality. Is your definition of reality based on your experience, your intelligence, your ability to know which way is up? Is your definition of reality aligned with the reality of what Jesus says or is it aligned with what the world says?
I grew up in church. I know how to give the right church answer. But knowing the right answer does not guarantee that I am actually aligning my life with reality. Many of you, like me, have been Christians for a long time. We are sure that we know the right answer. But what we say at church is often very different from how we live our lives. Many of us, and I speak from personal experience, have the right answer but do not actually trust that answer.
I will give you an example from my own life. I have been studying the bible for over 23 years. Seriously studying the bible. I even learned Greek so that I could read the New Testament in the original. For 13 of those years, I studied furiously. I had more bible knowledge than most seminary graduates and most pastors. But my life was no different than when I began studying so earnestly.
If you and I played Bible Trivia, I most likely would win. I studied history, philosophy, anthropology, and theology. But my life was no different than any other person who did not study the bible. Most likely, my life was worse than many who never even looked at a bible.
I was angry. I was proud. I was full of contempt. I was manipulative. I lied. I cheated. I used other people for my desires. But I knew my bible. I knew all the stories about Jesus. Yet I was a man controlled by anger, lust, and pride. Knowing the bible did not change me.
Worse, I had been through church leadership training, discipleship programs, bible memory programs, helped with the youth, taught the college students, even gave sermons to the adults. But my life did not look like anything Jesus describes. On my best day, I was a Pharisee. I knew the Law but did not obey it.
Many times I doubted my salvation. I doubted if I ever had trusted Jesus. Why? Because the fruit of the Spirit was never to be seen in my life.
What was my problem? Simply, my life was not aligned with the reality that Jesus teaches us in the Gospels. I was trying to define reality without listening to Jesus.
So what then is reality? Reality is God acting in the Kingdom of God. This Kingdom is here right now and it is available to everyone. The challenge for you, the challenge for me, is how to align our lives with Jesus so that we have access to reality, to the Kingdom of God which Christ came to proclaim.
First we must begin with what Jesus says, “Repent, for the Kingdom of the Heavens is at hand.” That is to say, it is already here! Let me give you a loose translation: Turn around because you are going in the wrong direction. You have been diving down, digging down, flying straight into the ground.
A little later, after Jesus says, “Repent for the Kingdom of the Heavens is already here, ” he tells the first disciples, “Follow me.” A little later, Jesus tells the disciples, “take my yoke upon you…” And finally he said, “Without me, you can do nothing.”
What did Jesus mean by these statements?
First when he said, the KOH is at hand, he was saying that reality is right behind you. That’s the meaning of repent. To turn around. Stop diving down. Stop digging in the wrong direction. Do not trust your own ability to fly in the right direction.
When he says, “Follow me,” he is inviting us to see how to live in reality. He is inviting us to watch him as he lives his life in alignment with the reality of the Kingdom of God. This is why he told the Pharisees, I do nothing of my own, but only what my Father in Heaven does.” His life was aligned with what the Father was and is doing.
Here’s a second definition of reality: Reality is what God the Father is doing right now in the world around you. If we want to get the definition of reality right, we must know what God the Father is doing. We must know which way is up. We must know how to trust the instruments the Father has given us so that we do not fly straight into the ground.
In order for us to know what the Father is doing right now, we must accept Jesus invitation to “take his yoke upon us.” When we yoke, or fasten two oxen together, they are side by side – aligned – so they face the same direction, so they pull in the same direction.
IN Jesus’ day, a farmer would put a young ox with an old, experienced ox. The young ox would try to do all the pulling himself. The old ox would just stand there, making it impossible for the young ox to accomplish anything. Eventually the younger ox would exhaust himself. Then the older ox would start walking in the right direction. The younger ox would just follow him rather than be dragged along.
This is what Jesus meant when he says in Matthew 11:28 that we are to be yoked with him. When we are yoked with him, we learn to pull in the right direction, at the same pace, and accomplish the task in front of us. We don’t run ahead. We don’t lag behind. We keep in step with him. This is the meaning of Galatians where Paul tells them to “keep in step with the spirit.”
As Jesus says, “without me you can do nothing,” He is not being cruel or insulting. He’s simply saying that if we DO NOT yoke ourselves to him, and go in the direction he is going, we will accomplish nothing. If we don’t we will be exhausted, frustrated, and full of doubt.
Try thinking about it this way: Reality is experienced walking with Jesus, in the same direction, at the same pace, for the same purpose.
Let’s take a minute to see what happens when we try to walk with Jesus and with the world. The world is going the other direction. Imagine two oxen, yoked together, with one facing north and one facing south. We can say we are yoked to Jesus but we must answer the next question. Are we yoked with him to go in his direction, or are we yoked with him trying to go the direction of the world?
Thus Jesus says, “you cannot serve two masters.” It’s not that Jesus doesn’t want to share. He’s telling us that if we try to yoke ourselves to him on our terms, so that we can get all the world says we should get, we will be facing the wrong direction.
Jesus will not go in the wrong direction. He will wait for us to turn around and agree to go in his direction. We are very much the young ox. We must be yoked to Jesus and trained to walk in the right direction. Yoked to him, going in the same direction, accomplishing what He wants, is what we call discipleship.
What happens when you get the definition of reality wrong? You plow the wrong field. You plow the field by only your strength. You accomplish nothing but exhaustion and frustration.
So let’s be very direct: we must be trained by Jesus to go in the same direction, at the same pace, in order for us to have anything he promised. He promised that if we walk with Him, we will have love, joy, peace, be free from anxiety, be free from fear, be free from worry, be free from anger, be free from manipulation and lust. In short, we will have the peace that passes all understanding.
So let us conclude today. Do you want the life that Jesus promised? Do you want the life that is like an eternal spring of fresh water? Do you want to be patient, kind, full of peace? Then we must align our lives with Jesus so that He can train us.
Discipleship is simply being trained by Jesus to do what He did, in the way that he did it, for the purpose that he did it. Discipleship is simply being trained by Jesus, for our whole lives, so that we may experience the deepest desire of the human heart: to be connected to God the Father in a dynamic, life giving union that satisfies our deepest desires.
We have a choice. We can become his disciples or we can choose to be our own disciples. We can choose other teachers. We can choose to be disciples of Jack Welch, of Steve Jobs, of Donald Trump, of Peter Drucker, of anyone but Jesus. The result will be a life of worry, anger, frustration and futility.
Jesus will not force us to choose him. We must choose to follow him, to be his students, to go to his school.
Our choice is a simple one but with the most to win or lose. Either we become his students or we become someone else’s student. If we choose Jesus, we gain our lives. If we choose another, we may gain the whole world, but lose our lives in the process.
Back to reality. Alignment with Reality is why Jesus trains us so that we might fully live in the KOG. Any other choice is to lose everything.
So now I ask you, do you want to be yoked to Jesus? You have to choose, and then move with Him. I invite you to be his student this morning to experience reality and the life that comes with it.
