The Church, particularly in the West, seems to have lost the key to how discipleship is achieved. The true meaning of discipleship has been misunderstood many times in church history, particularly in understanding the Great Commission. While some believe discipleship and evangelism are separate activities, the original Greek text reveals that making disciples happens through preaching the Gospel taught with depth and substance. The power of transformation comes not because of programmes and human genius, but through the power of the Gospel itself – this is the real ‘missing key’ that Jesus gave His church. Just as a missing key contributed to the Titanic’s fate, having the wrong interpretation of discipleship can lead the Church astray from its primary mission.

Automatically Generated Transcript

[00:00:00] Listen, I want to talk about a missing key, a missing key that happened in history. It’s right back in early of the last century, April the 15th, 1912. The scene is in the North Atlantic Ocean where this enormous recently built steamer is heading towards a catastrophe with an iceberg you know about the Titanic. But did you know that one of the causes of that terrible catastrophe, about 1,200 people perished in cold water or sharks, did you know that a part of the explanation of why that misadventure happened was a key that was missing? Because that particular ship had a second in charge person who’d been aboard earlier, but at the last moment had been sent to another errand, another thing to do aside from travel with the ship, but he put in his pockets a key to a little spot where sailors would climb

[00:01:15] up and look ahead to see what dangers might be coming and the key opened to a little cupboard thing there where the binoculars were kept. But because he didn’t remember to take it out of his pocket and give it to somebody else, the ship sailed without that opening ability and the person who climbed up to that lofty spot was just peering as best they could with their eyes and didn’t see the iceberg quickly enough. How the iceberg wrecks a ship is because it has a much larger part below the waters and the ship running into it, those below the water’s parts, acted as a great big saw opening up the ship for the water to come in and the sinking was inevitable. But the lesson is that there was a missing key that caused everything to go astray.

[00:02:18] I’m alerted to this because someone gave me, after one of my messages, something to read by another preacher. He happened to be a preacher in Dallas, a black man but who had great rapport with the whole people of Dallas as far as I can see, and a wonderful preacher, but he took a turn differently in his understanding and his preaching and his theology and this he said was because he’d found a missing key. The missing key that he found he said was the great commission wording about the word discipleship. I’ve been on about this these last Sundays, I’m continuing the theme a little bit today. But that missing key was how that word discipleship is understood and he thought he had the correct

[00:03:12] one. turning it would restore Christianity to being the proper thing it was always meant to be. There are others who’ve also joined with this man, Tony Evans, his name was, that there’s a missing key in understanding discipleship that’s led us all astray and some of the people joining with that idea, it’s quite wrong by the way I might tell you, there is a missing key but it’s not to be turned by the way he wants to turn it. But there are others joining with that idea who have said that what we need to understand by the word discipleship is that back in history, particularly in America there had come about a change in people’s understanding as they read the scriptures. And they read the scriptures to have about this great commission, we’d had it on the

[00:04:07] screen earlier, later on I might get it put up again, but we’d had it and we’d understood it to be about evangelism and the call that had come to the church had been to get with it, to win the world to Christ. Which idea is correct? But the missing key, Tony Evans thought was that discipleship was not to mean evangelism, but something else. Now part of the reason why that there’s quite a few people who think that’s the way that we talk about discipleship, is a bit different than evangelism, comes about because of the King James Bible. Now the King James Bible my mother always used to use and loved and I can’t speak against the King James Bible because she made me learn it off my heart and bribe me with 20 cent pieces and I won Sunday school prizes and got congratulated in

[00:05:08] big assemblies for what my mother got me to do and learning in the King James Bible and I appreciate much of that scripture that I’ve got deep inside as a consequence but when it comes to the King James Bible there’s something I need to alert you to and that is that the way it translates this Great Commission is one that is not saying about Jesus commissioning the disciples to go and preach the gospel but commissioning them to be doing discipling which is defined as teaching and so the King James Bible actually reads this way if I can find my spot it says go going ye ye this is King James therefore and teach all nations and that is the phrase that is I should say the clause that is telling us that Jesus commissioned people to teach as the

[00:06:15] major way to express the Great Commission in fact the grammar of the King James Bible is doing that because there was a word not well understood in ways that translators got to know the meanings of words which is finding other places where the it’s used and gradually ascertaining from a number of different spots where the word turns up something of what it means and then that gets published and it’s taken as the meeting and that works well when you have words that do appear elsewhere in the Scriptures particularly because you can bring 20 or 30 of those other spots and you get to know what the word means means by those contexts telling us, showing us. But when it came to the word that is translated, and I’ll say it to you in the Greek, it is mathia-tousate, mathute-sate. Let’s see if there’s

[00:07:12] someone here I can pick on who can say mathute-sate. That’s the Greek. And the Greek word is telling us it’s a command word, because when you do languages, sometimes there’s a form that’s saying maybe, maybe, maybe. Sometimes there’s a form that asks a question. Sometimes it’s a command, and this is in the command mode. You call it the Imperative, and in the Imperative, this is the central verb. I can remember at school learning about verbs and language, message and how there are some words that are main verbs and some were verbs which are helping verbs. Put your hand up if, when you’ve been at school somewhere, that you’ve learned that some verbs are the main verbs. I want to know.

[00:08:04] Do you know that there’s main verbs? No, you better learn that. That’s important. You didn’t know? Well, the main verbs is what you pick out in any given spot Because it’s the major action being asked and if it’s put in the imperative style is a command Please keep on doing your introduction to service as well It’s a command you see and Well the this is a main verb in the command mode and there’s only one

[00:08:40] Because all the other verbs are helping ones You call them part of symbols and part of symbols get translated usually with an ink or an ed, you know Disciplined by the church. I grew strong Running down the street. I used to use in teaching about this about Heidi. I say running down the street Heidi tripped over I’d asked those who are being taught which is the main verb running down the street or Heidi tripped over What the answer is let me hear the answer, which is the main verb say it out loud Or you didn’t know you weren’t sure The main verb is the one that tells you the action that’s a complete verb Heidi tripped over But it’s no that’s not correct. Jim because it could be a main verb but it wouldn’t be in the form of a part reciprocal. If I

[00:09:36] use a tripped with the ED in the end it’s like saying well running down the road the running part it’s a participle and the tripped overs are main part but the hidey eye really confused running down the street is the part reciprocal and tripped over is a main verb And unfortunately, an ED can be in a participle, can be in a main verb too. Oh, well, next time I’ll pick better examples. But the way this is in the command of the Great Commission, teach all nations, is what the King James Version says is a great commission. And the first part is going, and that’s a participle.

[00:10:21] And coming after the main verb is another one, which is a participle, and it is about in the name, teaching them and all things, teaching in the name of Jesus and whatever, they’re all participles. And so there’s three major participles surrounding one main verb, teach all nations. Now because the King James read that way, there was a generation like my mother, who believed the Great Commission was mostly about discipleship being teaching.

[00:10:54] And I wouldn’t mind guessing, I won’t do this to the older folks amongst us, but if I tested amongst people who are rather up in years, that that would be what they were used to thinking discipleship was. So much so that there were places where you could go, we would talk about evangelism as one thing, and discipleship is something different. And indeed, I’ve sat in seminars where they taught, if you really want to do evangelism properly,

[00:11:23] make sure you understand it’s not discipleship, or other seminars the reverse way around. Don’t just keep doing evangelism because we also need discipleship. Now, what happened was that there was a time in history in America, according to the article in the writing of Tony Evans, when a certain evangelist, his name was Billy Sunday, don’t mix him up with Billy Graham, that’d be unfair to Billy Graham,

[00:11:55] but Billy Sunday was an ex-boxer, I think he was. He was an athlete person, and he had a style of preaching of really giving it to the audience, and he was very energetic and they didn’t need microphones like this one but very energetic, And he got known as like the boxing preacher, although he was always really keeping the audience sitting in terror as he berated them and told them. But what his basic idea was, you’ve

[00:12:28] got to get to say the sinner’s prayer. And he simplified evangelism to get people to come and say the sinner’s prayer. And people writing up about the history of evangelicalism in America, and particularly Tony Evans’ copying what they said, is that they shifted the whole meaning of the Great Commission away from discipleship and into evangelism. And that’s the missing key that’s caused not our Titanic, but it’s caused our churches not to succeed.

[00:13:05] Are you following me? Is this too complicated? If you’re following, have you been in churches that made that distinction and don’t get caught up just doing evangelism? You must do discipleship. Have you heard that before? I can see a few heads nodding. It is what happened, according to Tony Evans, back in the history of the states.

[00:13:29] And it’s due to people like Billy Sunday just emphasizing, it’s shallow, you’ve got to say the sinner’s prayer. You can hear an element of truth in that, that that is a rather shallow way to exemplify this more to evangelism and responding to the gospel than just the saying of a prayer. That may be a truth, but as applied to how one understands a Great Commission, it was actually a missing key misunderstood by Tony Evans and others.

[00:14:02] And I’m going to prove that to you now in what I’m saying. And this is important because the truth is neither that we should just put up with a shallow gospel, and that’s it. That’s not a good thing. The truth is neither that nor is it that where the real action comes, it comes from teaching afterwards. The actual truth is in the middle. The truth is that what we need is the gospel

[00:14:34] to convert people, but we don’t need it shallow, we need it to be done at depth. And indeed, the best evidence that I could give to you of what I’m saying here is that what makes disciples is the gospel, is what I’m now gonna follow and show you. But immediately, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, if I were a lawyer and calling people into court to prove my case, I get Matthew on the stand. And I say, how many chapters did you write? 28.

[00:15:11] And you get to 28 and tell people to teach all these things, is that what you’re on about? And he’d say, no, it’s the gospel. And I’d say, but you got 28 chapters. And he’d say, because the gospel’s not just a simple thing, it needs to be understood at depth. And I wanted my readers to get the full story and I gave them 28 chapters worth. And I could bring Mark up and he’d be saying the same thing, I could bring Luke,

[00:15:45] I could bring John with differing emphases, but the truth is that they’re called gospels and have been so ever since down history. And these gospels are the things that were given to people to turn them into disciples, which is what the word make disciples actually means. It means to turn someone into a disciple, as well as implying what you might do with them because they’re a disciple, which is teaching, which is actually helping them have an example to follow.

[00:16:18] Which is leading them out into a public witness with in the baptism. Yes, there are other things that need to follow the person coming, saying a sinner’s prayer that is a part of what is evangelism because it’s a part of giving the gospel at depth. And indeed as time passed and all the scholars who work out what the words in the Bible mean had more time to have fresh things written, manuscripts not only in the scriptures that we have but also other things written at all sorts of times, they got enough instances of the use of this word which word I got this person over here to say and how can

[00:17:02] I remember it myself properly? This word, this word, this word, what is this word again? Can you remember it? I know what’s wrong, I have to put these on. Okay this is the word which is the form of word coming from a disciple but it’s in a verb form and it’s the word that has disappeared for – here we are, mathì air tu sat-air. Mathì air tu sat-air. It’s the putting in the verb form, the command form to be the main verb in the sentence. Mathì u te sat-air. And the other things are things you do because you have turned them into a disciple. You’re going to baptise them.

[00:17:54] You’re going to teach them. You’re going to reassure them. But what the command of the Great Commission is, is to make disciples. And how what’s most important, especially for this message this morning, is that the way that you make the disciples is through the gospel. And the way that you’ll get them to be disciples that stick as disciples is that you gospelise at depth. All right, that’s actually what the grammar now, all of the people who translate the scriptures now, I don’t know about all the individuals but all of the things that they write up about the meaning of the word is that they’ve come to understand that it doesn’t just mean teach all nations.

[00:18:40] Jesus’ commission was to preach the gospel. Now I can prove that and last the couple of Sundays, I gave you one of my ways, telling you about mathematics, telling you about simultaneous equations. Please don’t turn off because you think I’m gonna get into an area that’s not your pet one. Simultaneous equations is just when you got two ways of looking at things and the first way wouldn’t quite clear it up but when you have the other way said a bit differently it really helps. And simultaneous equations is when there are are some of what you call variables. You don’t know what they mean, but because you can see it not only in this statement, but in the other statement.

[00:19:22] And you put them together. You can see what the variables mean. And the variable here is what is the word Matutje Sate? I think I think that’s right. What does it mean? Well, I’m giving us away, and I did this the other Sunday, and I’m repeating it again for some of you who weren’t here. Is that one of the other Gospels gives the same great commission. And in this Great Commission it has the main verb in the same spot and it has participles around it, just the same, but the main verb doesn’t say make disciples.

[00:19:56] It is in Mark and I’ll ask if we’ll put that up, Mark and chapter 16. And here it is, afterward he appeared to the 11 themselves as they were reclining at table. This is one of the times of Jesus’ appearance, and he rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who saw him after he’d risen. And he said to them, now the first part says go in our English, it sounds like a main verb, it’s actually a participle, it means going, going into all the world. And this is a part that is the main verb, but it’s not make disciples, it’s proclaim the Gospel to the whole creation. The other version of Matthew says make disciples of all nations. This one says proclaim the Gospel to the whole of creation.

[00:20:51] You can see it’s the same meaning, just with different words. It’s a simultaneous equation and you can learn from this that the way you make disciples is that you preach the Gospel to all of creation, take the Gospel out, that’s what missionaries are sent to do is to take the Gospel to the world out there that hasn’t had it.” And it goes on to say, whoever believes in His baptism will be saved. So our friend Billy Sunday when he’s saying you’ve got to lead him in a sinner’s prayer wasn’t that far wrong. That might have sounded a bit shallow, but this is agreeing with him. Whoever believes in His baptism, well he’s added in being baptized will be saved. I’m not going to answer the question about, is baptism the part that saves you but it

[00:21:39] is the part you’re meant to do with being saved? It’s one of those participles. It’s what to do as a result of believing the gospel as you raise the flag, the way the Bible gives us. That’s why we get baptized. It’s just as the going doesn’t make you a Christian, or when other people are going doesn’t make you a Christian, but it’s the thing that is attending to your hearing the gospel? So likewise when the gospel is proclaimed and you hear it and you believe being baptized is what attends that believing. There’s a subtle thing here, I’m just not glossing over, that baptism isn’t what saves you, it’s what

[00:22:17] you do because you’ve got saved by believing. And your believing worked to save you because what you believe was not just a welcome into the Church, it wasn’t just the power of the ceremonies, it wasn’t just that you came for the appeal or anything else the church might give you to do…they’re not necessarily bad, but it’s not anything the church asked you to do that makes you saved…it is what that action represents your wanting to do, to leave in Jesus. If there was someone here this morning, and you’ve never been certain of knowing Christ, you’ve never been certain of being saved, it means made safe with respect to the last judgment, it means being delivered from your sins, it means getting put right with God, being saved is a relational thing that

[00:23:05] you come and get right with God. If there’s someone sitting here this morning and you’ve never been certain that you’re saved, I want to tell you if you believe the gospel, if you trust in Jesus, if you come to him as the Savior of your soul and the Lord of your life, that will make you saved. But then you might come and say to me, I want to be baptized too because that’s the way the Bible says, to show that you have believed. It’s not the baptism that saves you. It’s the belief. And Mark’s one goes on interestingly with some extras that were not in Matthew. And that is, these signs will follow those who believe and in my name, I my name, they’ll cast out demons. They’ll speak in new tongues. They They will pick up serpents with their hands and if they drink any deadly poison they will

[00:24:02] not hurt them. It’s not a statement for all Christians everywhere that this is a guarantee for you, you can quit worrying about snakes in Australia because you won’t die from them because you’ve become a Christian. It’s rather a comment of the style of miracles that God is going to do sometimes. But believe me that we still get sick and die. Believe me if you eat, go home today and drink deadly poison it will hurt you. But sometimes when people are doing God’s work they get in scenarios where people try to poison them and some of those people have been dramatically surprised at the fact that the missionaries didn’t die and it’s been the reason why some folks don’t stay disbelieving

[00:24:48] because somehow something happened by the hand of God but the work of the hand of God is what is being promised. By the way I came home one day from where I was at and as was my custom I went by the shop that I saw beautiful cream buns. And I pulled over and another car ahead of me had pulled into the same place to buy cream buns and they got into the place first. They didn’t buy them all, thank goodness. But they got back to their car and I got my cream bun but as I walked back, I saw on the back of their car. They had a little sticker.

[00:25:26] It read, They shall speak in others tongues. It’s actually a quotation from Mark. This spot here. These signs will follow them that believe they shall speak in other tongues. So I didn’t go back to my car with my cream bun in my left hand. I walked over to the window. and I said to the person who was eating his cream bun, I suppose, he hadn’t taken off. I said, well what about picking up serpents? Have you been picking up serpents?

[00:25:55] He looked at me with a funny look, and I said well the passage you’ve got quoted on the back also says you’re meant to pick up serpents, have you been doing it? And he drove off. Well, the point is that these things, signs that follow, these things, signs that follow, they follow them. The plurality of the Christian church has signs that follow the Gospel. Now, my dad did his study of the Holy Spirit,

[00:26:23] a whole big dissertation on the development of the belief of the Holy Spirit across the Christian era, and in that he discovered something very interesting and that was that whenever in the history of the Christian church they got back to the Gospel, Guess what also turned up? Miracles, different ones, different times. But this statement hasn’t gone out of been true. These signs follow them that believe and where there is a church that believes in God

[00:27:00] and the people become strong in faith, God is in action in that church and the signs can differ. You can’t tell God what signs he should do, but you just know that that happens when people believe the gospel because the power of discipleship, the missing key, the missing key is that we’ve been commanded to take the gospel at depth and indeed our big ships of denominations,

[00:27:31] if I could call the denomination a ship, often they misfire if they think that they don’t need Billy Sunday and his sinner’s prayer or whatever form might be popular at that time, but they need lots of teaching and lots of programs. You know, the biggest enemy of a lot of churches is that they have good programs, but they rely on them. Don’t rely on programs. It’s the gospel that does the work and if you’ve got people who just come with a love

[00:28:07] of the message of Jesus and how he died for us, how he’s alive and there’s a saviour you can be called to, if you have a church filled with those people, it will have people being saved everywhere. It’s not how good is your program, have a good program by all that’ll help, but what the Great Commission about is that we are called to preach the gospel to every nation as Mark has worded it. And that’s actually what it means to make disciples.

[00:28:37] It means to gospelize them. Now to finish, last week I was on a spot and I didn’t know, was it last week or the week before, I didn’t know whether I managed to nail it properly. This morning’s message is to help me with my nail work and it’s from the book of Acts and we’re looking at this whole business of discipleship I was telling you how I got confronted with how people think discipleship should be done by programs. It was this passage where the man who led the whole new discipleship conference that

[00:29:10] was on six weeks, while I was giving a scholarship to go and the man who was in charge told us all of the opening introductory talk. As to why he got this conference going, he says, it’s because the missing key is discipleship. moment my head was nodding, but I didn’t mean discipleship like he meant it. That’s the problem. Some people think discipleship is all about relationships and all about programs and all about ways of doing it. No discipleship is done by getting people, whatever means you can use to get them to here it, to take on board the Gospel and then teach them about it so they go take it deeply. That’s discipleship. When they had preached the Gospel to that city and made many disciples.”

[00:29:57] Now, they made many disciples is our word. I won’t try saying it again but the one is a verb. When they had made many disciples, that’s the main verb. But they also preached the Gospel to that cities, another main verb. This is the sentence. This has got two main verbs. The first one is preached the Gospel. The second one is made many disciples. His explanation, as he said while I was having a conference, was that he’d realised he’d been busy, in evangelism and not done any discipleship,

[00:30:26] that he needed to do more of the making discipleship and leave the gospel work he was in. And the thing is that the text is not saying that. It is saying what the result of the preaching the Gospel was. When they had preached the Gospel to that city, and come to the place where they’d made many disciples. One action by the Gospel were the results of making many disciples. That’s how you can understand that verse. I didn’t blame him for interpreting it the other way because in the English, you could take it either way by how the English reads. When they’ve preached the Gospel of that city and made many disciples

[00:31:05] and he said, what you should do is have evangelism in the daytime and home groups in the evening and that way you get to have both making disciples and discipleship. Can you hear what I’m trying to say? It’s a misunderstanding of the text that’s come originally from the King James Bible interpreting the Great Commission to teach all nations instead of make disciples of all nations. Well, I want us to have put back up on the screen the Matthew passage which has a Great Commission, the one that we’ve already set it off by heart and in Matthew 28. And I want us to just to go through and to see what it’s actually saying. And Jesus came to them and said to them, all authority and heaven on earth has been given to me. Going therefore make disciples of all nations. That’s a missionary call. Going into all the

[00:32:09] world for the purpose of gospelising them, so the gospel depth will make the disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. That’s telling us, it’s a Trinitarian Gospel, Father, Son and Holy Spirit are all aspects of God. Teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you, because they’re disciples you are going to teach them. But you made them a disciple by gospelizing them at depth, and behold I’m with you always, even to the end of the age.” That’s one of my favourite Bible passages because it tells us what we’re here to do is to take the message, the gospel, and sow it into the lives of as many people as we can, and pour a lovely little water of God’s prayer, and of fellowship, and other things that help the growth. But it is the fact of the gospel that makes you a disciple. If you

[00:33:12] haven’t been gospelized, you haven’t had the missing key turned in you yet. Let’s have a prayer. Heavenly Father, I thank you for Tony Evans. He’s a terrific preacher. I’m glad that I got to hear him in Dallas a lot, a fair bit. And I thank you, Father, for his ideas, but I’m not following this one of his. And sometimes, Lord, the people who get talking about, you know, mission things don’t understand what the mission is. The mission is to tell people the good news of Jesus and to gospelize them at depth. We pray that that will be our story, that we’ll take on board the command of Jesus to give our lives to be people that take his message to everyone everywhere. We ask in Jesus’ name, amen.