follow all over the world. For example, in psychology, there are a lot of people that would say that they're disciples of Sigmund Freud. You've heard that name, right? You know, he was famous for, he was the founder of psychoanalysis. Or there are some who follow spiritual leaders, like the Dalai Lama, for example, right, who was the head monk of the Buddhist order.

So when people say that they're disciples, what they mean by that is that they're following the teaching and the examples of others, okay? But similarly, when we're talking about what does it mean to be a true disciple of Christ, what we're saying, what we're talking about here is that a true disciple of Christ is somebody who follows in his footsteps and does as he taught and of course as he lived.

And you know, but in order to follow Christ and to be Christ-like, what has to happen first? We have to what? We have to enter into a relationship with Christ himself. And that's really where true discipleship begins. It begins when, you know, scripture talks about in Romans 10 that if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, then you're going to be saved.

For with a heart, for with your heart, a person actually believes, resulting in righteousness. Well, what you're believing from the heart actually is that he not only raised him from the dead, but he rose again and that will result in righteousness. And with the mouth, you confess, resulting in salvation.

So being a disciple of Jesus Christ always begins with what he has done for the believer. It always begins with that. So let's think about that for a moment. What exactly has Jesus done? And you know, ladies, you have to get the gospel right. Because if you don't get the gospel right, you are going to be so shaped and influenced by the people out there that are getting the gospel wrong.

And just as an aside, I wanted to throw this out here. If you get a chance to watch the American Gospel, that is an excellent film. It's out there. You can even get it on your on-demand right now. But you need to know the gospel. And it's very clear.

We know that Jesus is the one that lived the perfect life that we should have lived when he was here in human form. And he died the death that we should have died. And he offered himself up as a substitute and a sacrifice for everyone who is willing to turn from their sin and to trust in him alone.

And so being a disciple of Christ really begins when one has accepted the free gift of grace given by God. And that is turning from your sin again, fully trusting in that finished work of Christ, and who is your Savior. And then, you know, of course we know that salvation is not of our own doing.

It's not because of any good works you've done. It's all about that faith and that finished work by your faith alone in Christ alone. So that's one aspect of it. But also, part of being a disciple is denying self. Jesus talks a lot about that. We don't necessarily talk about the cost of being a disciple.

But a true disciple is one that denies self. Luke 9, 23, Jesus says, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself," which means that believers with the help of the Holy Spirit are willingly of their own accord saying no to self. And that's hard, right? Because you have to say no to your flesh, which is actually one of your enemies that you're dealing with.

But we must say no to self, and we willingly set our desires and our wants and our lusts, and we bring those into submission to Jesus Christ. A true disciple is also somebody who not only denies self but willingly takes up her cross. In Mark 8, 34, Jesus says, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and come after me and take up his cross." And that's just another way of saying that by the act of your will, you are saying yes to Christ and his will, which again, sometimes can be quite painful, right?

Because we again battle three enemies. I already said the flesh, but you're also battling the world. And of course, you're battling Satan himself because he likes to discourage believers, of course. And then finally, a true disciple follows him. Jesus says in Matthew 16, 24 to 25, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me." So for whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

To follow Christ means to obey Christ. Jesus says in John 15, 14, "You are my friends if you do what I command you." So out of love for Christ, it's always an out of a love for Christ, right? We're not talking about moral living. I mean, we are talking about moral living, but it has to come from a heart that loves Christ.

That has to be your motivator. We obey out of love for Christ. We obey because we want to glorify him. To follow Christ also means to have just a fervent love for one another. So as a body of Christ, you know, all who belong to him, hopefully, you know, you're spending time with each other, practicing the one another's, building relationships.

In fact, the world will know that you are one of his by how you treat one another. John 13, 35 says, "By this will men know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another." And so a true disciple desires to serve one another in the body of Christ.

And so discipleship to Christ really begins when we hear these words, "To deny self, to pick up your cross, and to follow him, and then to obey those words." That's what Jesus tells us in his word. And so as true disciples, we are called to listen to him. In fact, if you are a Christian, it's the same, you know, to say that you're a Christian is the same thing as saying that you're a disciple of Christ.

They didn't use Christian that much, the actual label Christian in the Bible as much as they would say the way or a disciple. But it means the same thing. And so when we say we are a disciple of Christ, we're saying that we're committed to following in his footsteps according to his word and doing as he taught and living by the power and strength of the Holy Spirit.

And that's just where faith comes in. I mean, real faith, that's real faith in action. No longer living for self, but living for Christ. The Apostle Paul probably reiterates that truth the best when he says in Galatians 2.20, "I've been crucified with Christ. It's no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.

And so now the life that I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me." So the Christian life is the discipled life. It does start with that, but it also is the discipling life. It's not just a let go and let God.

There's a big part of striving for holiness while abiding in Christ. And so, you know, we who are called to follow Christ, we're also commissioned by Jesus himself to help others to follow Christ. In fact, when we take initiative and we come alongside and we disciple others, it demonstrates our obedience out of love for God.

Again, Jesus in John 14.15 says, "If we love him, we will keep his commandments." And one of his commandments to all true disciples is to disciple others. And that's kind of where we're going to focus tonight. Why don't you turn to Matthew 28. And we're just going to kind of focus on the Great Commission.

And I'm hoping that I'm going to have time to get through all the notes tonight, but I promise you if we don't get to cover everything, we'll just pick up where we left off tomorrow morning. But Matthew 28. So as you're turning there, this passage is known as the Great Commission.

You're familiar with it, right? Yeah, the Great Commission. It's really our biblical support, I think, for when we start talking about, you know, making disciples. We have to allow scripture to shape that, not someone's program. And so it's good for you to just kind of look at this passage with fresh eyes, and we need to kind of think through it a little bit because it's really important.

But Matthew 28, and then just go to verse 18, and I'm just going to read from 18 to 20. "And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, 'All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.

And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.'" So as you can see there, that's a concluding passage, right, in Matthew. And again, referred to the Great Commission. And the cool thing is we just celebrated resurrection, right? The cool thing is this happened a week later.

So the timeline is this would have been about seven or eight days later, after Christ had resurrected, and he's appearing to different people. So he met with his disciples in Galilee about seven to eight days later after the resurrection. And so, you know, the reason why he met with them is he wanted to commission them.

He's kind of passing the baton, so to speak, and giving them some instructions. But it's not just isolated to the disciples then. This is for all of us who claim the name of Christ and who desire to make disciples of all people. So as we begin to kind of unpack this passage, I want you to kind of just silently pray in your heart and, you know, allow the passage to really awaken your hearts this evening.

Allow it to impact you and renew you in your individual calling, because we're all called to do this. This is not just for your pastor or for your elders or for your women's ministry or whatever. This is for all of us individually. And so as I'm teaching through this, allow it to impact you personally, because it's meant to.

It's the church's calling, and the church is not a building, right? The church is made up of a body of believers, and so this is an individual calling as much as it's a church calling. So let's bow our heads right now, and I'll just go ahead and pray. Father God, thank you so much for allowing me to come here today and to open up the Word with these ladies who love you and more just desire to grow more in their faith.

And Father, it's just a wonderful opportunity to start from the beginning. When your dear Son rose again on the third day, and Father just appeared to all of those who didn't even believe that he really would do that. And here he is meeting with the original disciples, commissioning them, and because we know that your Word gives us everything we need for our life and godliness, and it's put there for our instruction, we know that these words are meant for us today.

And so I just pray that as we go through this passage carefully, that you'll just impact each heart out there today. I know that when your Word goes out, it never returns void, and so I'm just trusting you, Lord, to do the work. In Jesus' name, amen. All right.

So here we've got, we'll begin with the claim of Christ, okay, the claim of Christ to his disciples. As Jesus gathered his eleven disciples up on that mountain in Galilee, he claims in verse 18, "All authority has been given, all authority in heaven and in earth has been given to me." So to begin, before we can even look at what Jesus is commanding us to do as far as making disciples, you need to know that it's really, really important that Jesus' claim as to his authority is the basis for everything that we do.

You have to really have a firm, just claim or just trust in that. And so what is Jesus really claiming here? Look back at your scripture there. What is the first thing that we notice? He's claiming to have authority in heaven and earth. Did you know that that was prophesied in the Old Testament?

When he claims to have authority in heaven and earth, Daniel actually talked about that. In chapter 7, verse 14, there was a time when Daniel prophesied that Christ would be, there would be, well, he said there would be a son of man who was given all authority to rule and to have glory and to have a kingdom of every people, nation, and language who would serve him.

A kingdom that is an everlasting kingdom which will never pass away or be destroyed. And it's interesting that that text is actually talking about Jesus or the Messiah to come and that's what Jesus is claiming here in this passage. He is the one that Daniel was talking about. But Jesus also makes a claim about his authority over every believer in this room.

In other words, Jesus is your personal Lord and Savior. Okay? You didn't just decide one day to make Jesus Lord and Savior. By the authority given to him in heaven and earth, Jesus just is Lord and Savior. You know what I'm saying? Right? Yeah. And, you know, we read about that all over scripture.

One that I'm thinking of right now is Philippians 2, 9 to 11, where after Jesus died and rose again, you know, he was exalted. So when he rose again, which you guys probably learned on Sunday from your own pastor, when he rose again he eventually ascended and is at the Father's right hand.

So he is Lord over all creation no matter what the world tells you. He is Lord of all creation. He has absolute authority over nature, nations, diseases, sin, demons, death, and over every life in the world. And one day, even though the world has no clue, one day, one truth that we know for sure is that every knee will bow.

Every knee. Every knee will bow and every tongue will confess Jesus is Lord. That is a guarantee. And so when we're talking about the Great Commission, like I said before, we're not talking about some special man-made program in your church. Because a lot of churches kind of make it seem like that.

But that's not where we're at. We're talking about the authority that has been given to Christ in heaven and on earth. And that's what should motivate your hearts to make disciples of others. It's just thinking about who Christ is and the authority that he has in your life. And so, you know, we go and we disciple others to follow Christ because we love Christ ourselves.

And we want to acknowledge his authority to others. That's hard on college campuses, isn't it? That's hard. I know what you guys are facing. I realize I work at a Christian school, but I deal with the secular community and counseling. And I know that's hard. But we have to stand firm in what we believe.

And you don't need to be afraid, by the way, because the word has authority. You don't have to argue people into the kingdom. You just need to allow God to do his work and allow the word to do his work. OK? But, you know, we disciple others to follow Christ because we love Christ ourselves.

And we want to acknowledge that. Jesus is our king. I mean, he is. And we are his subjects, so to speak. And we want to give him the worship that's due his name. I mean, I love it when we get to open up with singing. I love all of the music that we sang before we got started.

I mean, it's part of worshiping our king because that is who he is. And we should all desire for others to say and confess with their own mouth that Jesus is Lord. Right? Amen on that? Yes. Yes. Amen and amen. Now, after Jesus claims his authority over heaven and earth to his disciples, that's when he begins to urge the disciples to make disciples.

He says, "Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations." And so really what he's saying there is he's saying, "In light of my authority, I want you to go." That's the command, to go. If you want to parse it out in the original language, actually that verb translated "go" is a present participle.

How do you like that for college students? But it's a present participle, going. And so what Jesus is saying to all of us who consider ourselves true disciples of Christ is, "While you are going, make disciples of all the nations." So no matter where you're going, you're called to be actively witnessing for Christ by seeking to win others to him and then teaching new disciples to follow him or teaching them what you yourself have been taught according to the scriptures.

And that's how it's been from the beginning and will be to the end. To be a disciple is to make disciples. I mean, scripture doesn't know of any disciple in the Bible that's not making disciples. That's normal Christian living. That is part of being a Christian is making disciples.

In fact, in this entire passage, there's really only one main command to his disciples, which is to make disciples. Okay? Now, when we're talking about making disciples, within that passage itself, there's four goals that we can look at that's really, really helpful, I think, as you're kind of thinking through this whole issue.

And the first one, of course, is just to share the truth about Christ. According to verse 19, the early disciples were told to go beyond the nation of Israel, and they were called to call others to repentance and belief. And so these disciples spoke the gospel as they lived out the gospel.

And it's not any different today. I mean, as we're going, we should be sharing the gospel as we have opportunity. You know, I mean, it's one of those things where you have to pray for opportunity, and you have to be willing to share when you get opportunity. Again, I think what stops people is fear of man.

Right? We just need to trust that the Lord is going to do his work, and trust in the authority that Christ has and that he has in his word. I think a really practical way to share Christ, to be quite honest, is to just, you know, grab coffee with somebody and to just share your testimony.

I think that is a great way to break the ice. You know, you're building relationships with people, and they want to know what's different about you. That's what always comes up. They want to know why, when I'm around you, you're not acting like the world. What's different about you?

Why do you have joy when you go through trials? You know, why are you not cursing like the rest of them? Kind of a thing. And so, a great way is just to share your testimony. You know, part of my testimony, I was liberal as all get out, ladies.

Totally feminist. My neighbor, a woman, her name is Jodi, I love her, took a risk. She came over when we bought our first house, and she became my friend. And through that friendship, over time, she began to share her testimony. And then she began to share more truth. And then, you know, it just kind of goes on and on.

And then she began to invite me to church, right? And so, the good news is, is the church was solid. And so I heard the gospel every single Sunday because we had a very faithful gospel preacher, you know. And it's just amazing to me to think that she took a risk, number one, because it was probably a little bit intimidating.

But as she was witnessing to me, and as the pastor was doing his work, preaching well, the Spirit of God was bearing witness to me through these people in my life. And God is the one in his kindness and mercy who granted me repentance and redeemed my heart as I placed my faith in that finished work.

So, praise the Lord. Jodi obeyed the Lord, you know, and she was willing to come and reach out to me and share the truth about him. So, maybe you have neighbors. How many of you have neighbors? All of us have neighbors, yeah. You know, whom you need to reach out to.

You just never know what God's going to do. You know, you can share Christ with God. Actually, he doesn't have to, but God does use people to get the gospel to others. I never grew, I didn't grow up in a Christian family. I have very liberal upbringing, so I never heard the gospel in my whole life until I was 27, okay?

And I would have thought Christians were crazy anyway. I wouldn't have talked to them. So, it's just amazing that the Lord used somebody in that way in my life. And it's just amazing that I was even willing to listen to her. But God is the one doing the work.

He's drawing people near, you know, he's tenderizing the heart, as it were. He's allowing the word to have an impact. But making disciples doesn't end just with sharing the truth with people. I mean, that's a big part of it. But according to the second part of verse 19, when people respond to the gospel, that is to say they've turned from their sin, they've turned to Christ, from that point, they symbolize their identification with Christ through believers' baptism, right?

And that's, of course, we do that in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. And that's actually a command from Christ himself. We don't get baptized to become a Christian, right? We become a Christian and then we're commanded in scripture here to make a declaration of our faith in Christ through believers' baptism.

And that just becomes the opportunity, once again, to share our faith with others. Because after my neighbor shared the truth with me and I became a believer, then she did a great job of discipling me because she continued in her discipleship of me by having me write out my testimony.

She helped me to make an appointment with the pastor to kind of get this whole baptism thing down. Of course, it was completely frightening. But that's part of it. And within the next few months of being a new believer in an evening service, you know, I got to get up and do that whole bit.

I'm sure you guys do that as well. You have baptisms. Do you have baptisms here in the evening kind of a thing or baptismal services? But anyway, you know, before you, usually before your pastor or an elder baptizes you, you have a few moments to give about a 10-minute testimony typically.

And the neat thing is is that my husband wasn't saved yet. Okay? So I was able to use that opportunity because he was at least willing to come and listen to that and observe that. And the Lord used that testimony over time, drawing him near. And he got saved about a year later.

It's incredible. It's incredible what Lord, that's just the providence of God. That's nothing that we're doing. It's amazing. It's amazing what God will do in a person's life. And so you can use testimonies at baptisms. If you have friends, family members, I brought my unsaved parents to my children's baptisms.

That's such a great way to again just acknowledge Christ to be able to share the truth about Christ. So yeah, if you're a true disciple of Christ and you have not been baptized, you actually realize you're living in disobedience, you need to think about that. Okay? Because we are called to symbolically identify with Christ through our baptism, believer's baptism that is.

Okay? Now, not only does Jesus commission his disciples to share the truth about him and symbolize or identify with him through baptism, but really the third goal of making disciples is to be committed to showing the word of God by teaching others to obey Jesus's commands. In verse 20, we read, "Teaching them all that I have commanded you." Okay?

So teaching us that we don't just receive the word from those who witness to us like my neighbor did. And you know, sometimes people get saved and they just sit in their churches, they soak it in, and then I call, what I say is they sour because they're not doing anything.

They just sit, soak, and sour. And they just show up week after week and they don't do anything. They don't involve themselves in the body of Christ. Actually, true disciples of Christ have a biblical responsibility to show the word of God through evangelism and through teaching others what they themselves have been taught.

And part of showing the word does happen in our local churches as you listen to your pastor preach week after week, but also showing the word of God happens in the life on life relationships. You know? Are you having community with one another? Right? That's an important aspect of the Christian life.

Of course it's going to happen. I mean, women are so relational. I'm sure it's happening all the time. When we meet regularly, it gives us an opportunity, especially with new believers, to model the Christian life by showing others how to pray. I mean, I didn't know how to pray as a new believer.

Did you know how to pray? That's a tough one. You have to model that a lot of the times. We disciple because we want to teach people how to study God's word in context and just things like that, how to grow in Christ through that, how to lead others to Christ.

I mean, that's what church life is all about. And so that's what making disciples is all about. And I praise God for the women in my church when I was a new believer who came alongside me and they just willingly and lovingly taught me so many things. Sometimes I would just meet with them in groups.

You know, you have your typical women's Bible study and you learn lots that way. But I just treasure those times when there were women that allowed me to come over to their home and they showed me how to be a godly wife and mother. I mean, that's tough because I already had children that were five, six, and a newborn.

And so I had already poured in all of the psychologized self-esteem stuff into my kids. And I had to relearn how to be a Christian parent. And I praise God for the, just the patience of some of these women who came alongside me and modeled, you know, Christ in their life.

And that's just part of life on life. We're not an island. We're not to isolate from each other. That's a big part of Christian living. And so it's important for you as well to come alongside other women and have other women come alongside you. Discipleship is just so vital so that you can grow and you can mature in Christ.

And also just to be able to give that opportunity to model in daily life. That's just normal. In fact, we find support for this in Scripture. So I'm going to invite you, we're going to, we're still under showing the word. So I'm just going to invite you now to kind of turn to Titus 2.

We're going to look at this for a little bit. We'll segue a little bit. And then we'll go back to our commission passage. But you know, Scripture has a lot to say about women discipling other women. It's a big part of what we should be doing with one another, no matter if you're married, old, young, single, we're all called to do it.

But Titus 2, 3 to 5, I'm going to read, Paul's writing to a bunch of churches. He's not just writing to one church. He's writing to various churches. And he writes, "Older women, likewise, are to be reverent in their behavior, not slanderers, or slaves to much wine. They're to teach what is good, and so train the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled." And so here we have Paul, again, you know, there's primary things that are going on here.

He needed Titus to go out and put in order what remained in the churches, and he also needed to appoint some elders. There were a lot of things going on at the time. But part of what he was doing, as far as putting in order what remained, was trying to teach groups of people what was appropriate for sound doctrine.

And we're looking at two of those groups, the older women and the younger women. There's specific commands, obviously, for us. And as you can see, as far as the older woman goes, there's really no age that's particularly specified. I mean, we know that she was an older woman. We know that she was probably—we just assume that she's been married long enough to at least have something to say about marriage.

We also know that she's probably passed through the season of life, you know, probably has grown children, has passed through the season of having little ones. He's probably talking about someone like me, you know, someone that's a little more gray-haired. But, you know, in the New Testament times, I mean, women served all in the church in numerous ways, not just in this way.

But here, Paul is just kind of talking about the responsibilities of older women to teach and train the younger. That's a big thing. And to teach and train the younger in the things of the Lord, which is actually just another way of saying making disciples. So let's kind of look a little bit at the older woman.

What is she to be like? What's that first characteristic? She's to be what in her behavior? Say the word. Yeah, reverent, right? She's to be reverent in her behavior. And that's an adjective, okay? It's an unusual combination if you look in the original language. It's kind of like saying, it's kind of a weird word really, but he kind of just means like being a priestess in a temple, somebody that, you know, has a holy way of living.

And do you guys know who Anna the prophetess is in Luke? She would be an example of what Paul, where Paul is getting at. She was widowed at a young age. Anna was probably widowed when she was in her 20s. It's kind of amazing to think about, especially in that culture.

And she didn't remarry. So what she did her whole life is she prayed day and night and fasted in front of the temple until Christ came. It's a wonderful story. And so she was known for being devout and holy. And that's kind of what he's getting at here. An older woman, an older Titus 2 woman should have reverence in that way.

You know, it also says that older women are not supposed to be slanderers, right? And that is kind of an interesting word again, because it means not to be devilish or not to be malicious. And so the idea that Paul is trying to convey there is that people, in this case older women, who cannot control their tongues by speaking lies or making false accusations or spreading malicious gossip, whether it's true or not, is really doing the work of Satan himself.

And so, you know, that exhortation to master the tongue, why is it only especially directed towards women? What do you think? Do we kind of get caught up this way a little bit? Where there are many words, ladies, where there are many words. But if we're going to exemplify, and I realize that a lot of you are not, you know, aged like me, you're young, but you should be aspiring or you should be training yourself up in this way.

You need to think through these things. And, you know, you need to think about your conversations with one another. Are your conversations with one another God-honoring? Or are you getting caught up in gossip kind of thing? Are you using words that build up? Are you using words that edify?

Are you giving grace to those who hear them? And so that's kind of where he's getting at, that we need to have, well, out of the heart the mouth speaks, and so really it's a heart issue if you're getting caught up in that. But, you know, what are your words like these days?

And then he also talks about women, older women shouldn't be enslaved to much wine. I mean, the emphasis there is enslaved, actually. You know, the older woman isn't to be a drunkard. She's not to be in bondage to the wine of her day. So it kind of gives you some insight into the culture.

I wonder if they had a lot of trouble with drinking, which is interesting. And so, you know, that's kind of what he's getting at specifically, but can we be enslaved to other things today? What do you think? Yeah? It's not just alcohol. We can be enslaved to our emotions.

And in contrast, though, Paul's just saying we need to exhibit self-control. So this is not a perfect woman. This is just a faithful woman. That's what he's trying to emphasize. She's striving after godliness while abiding in Christ. She's trusting in God, and she's doing what is good. And one aspect of being devoted to doing what is good and making disciples is being willing to come alongside other women and putting into practice what Titus 3 is talking about, which is to teach what is good and to train, which leads us to the commitment of the Titus 2 woman, the commitment of the Titus 2 woman.

You know, as many of us know, and I'm sure you've experienced, I know I have, you're going to be exposed to so many teachers in your life. There's just so many people that want to speak into your life, a lot of different things. They want to give you advice about everything.

I bet when you were pregnant with that little one, probably everybody wanted to give you advice on how to be a mommy, right? So there are just so many people that want to speak into your life, but really here, Paul's just trying to say, look, you know, the ideal model is for a seasoned Christian woman to come alongside another woman, a younger woman, and to train her and to teach her what is good.

That's the idea. And so he's talking about, you know, the kind of teaching would be noble instruction or excellent instruction or holy instruction. And in the context of the letter, the primary goal would just really be to come alongside younger women and just commit to making them disciples by teaching them what they had been taught themselves to help them grow spiritually.

From this passage, part of the teaching, what was good, was just modeled or training. You have to take culture into view here. But that part of it is just encouraging women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sensible, which just simply means sober-minded, to be pure workers at home and submissive to their own husbands.

And the reason why is so that the word of God won't be reviled. And so there – and just, you know, don't check out right now if you're single. This isn't just for married women, okay? You're still commanded as a single woman to be sober-minded, to be pure, to be even a worker at home.

You ever thought about that? You think being a worker at home is just isolated to married women? It's not. That's for you as well. You need to be a worker at home. It just means manage your home. To be sensible so that the word of God will not be reviled in your life.

And so for me, you know, I love coming alongside younger women. I mean, that's a big part of my ministry is college age and teaching them these things. And just even teaching them what it means to have – to be submissive to authorities in their life if you're not married.

I mean, that's a big part of it as well. So the commitment should be just to train a generation of women to love and fear the Lord through modeling and through the teaching of sound doctrine rather than giving out worldly advice. I'm through with worldly advice. I want some advice from God's word, right?

I want to know what God has to say on these subjects. And he gives us everything we need for life and godliness. He speaks to issues in life. And so you've got to believe that we have a sufficient word that speaks to issues in life. And the same goes for your children.

We ought to – if you have children, you ought to be your children's primary disciples. You should be shaping, investing in your kids and helping them in that way. Now I think given the culture at the time, a lot of what's happening here in Titus probably happened in the privacy of women's homes.

So it's a little different for us today. We can still do it that way, but there's different scenarios. You know, there's all kinds of ways that we apply Titus 2. Of course we go into people's homes and do the one-on-one discipleship. Like I said, I treasure those days when I had that in my life.

Even if the women failed, you know, even if they failed, it was a good thing to see because I got to see how they worked through conflict. I got to see forgiveness being extended, things like that. That's just so huge, I can't even tell you. How do you teach that?

You know, you got to model those kinds of things. You got to see it lived out. That's why discipleship is so important. I think in the church today, some other ways this can be modeled is, you know, I would say probably biblical counseling would be one, that formal setting.

It's still a one-on-one thing, but that kind of looks like me coming alongside another woman and just kind of helping her to understand how to apply God's Word in difficulty. So that's one aspect. How many of you are going through the ACBC training? How many of you are learning that right now?

Okay. Yeah, so you know what I'm talking about. You know, someone comes along, they have a pattern of sin in their life, and they're really just needing some help with how do I repent of this? How do I deal with the sin in my life? You know, and then just kind of teaching them how to deal with things like that.

And we'll actually be talking about that tomorrow. I'll get a little bit deeper into that. I think it can be a public ministry, too. For example, how many of you are like in a small group? You know, that's kind of A-form. Yeah, quite a few of you. Where you've got a woman kind of leading you through the scriptures, because you want to learn it in a deeper way, apply it to your life.

And that's what that happens. Or even in a women's conference like this. And so again, you know, I'm thankful that I was allowed to experience all of those things. And I've just learned so much from other women that it's just something that's just amazing to think about. But to kind of sum up, on the issue of women making disciples, my pastor back home wrote this quote.

He says, "Teaching what is good requires the seasoned, mature Christian woman to be committed to being responsible, confrontive, and affirming in an ongoing relationship with a younger woman." So really the key phrase in all of that is ongoing relationship. It's really key, so I would circle it. That's really part of the goal.

And we all need to be women committed to sharing the truth about Christ, symbolizing or identifying through baptism, and then showing the word by teaching other women what is good and hopefully when you have that life on life, being able to model some of the teaching what is good, which means it should be happening regularly and consistently.

And you know, this is one way God has basically ordained in his church how women are to grow within the context of discipleship. So you may be the seasoned Christian woman out there. I don't know. I don't know your ages. And so for you, you know, you might be thinking about who, you know, I haven't discipled anyone.

Is there someone in my sphere of influence that I need to be thinking about coming alongside and investing in? Or you may be the younger woman out there who also is committed to making disciples. You know, you can do that. I teach that class. I teach college women how to do that within the context of young personhood.

But or little children if you have kids. Or if you serve in youth group. I mean, that's a relationship. You know, young people really need to know and really want to hear from you. I was at a high school group a couple of weeks ago and you know, they wanted me to talk to them about social issues.

They had some really deep questions for me. They wanted to know how to deal with comparing themselves on social media. That's a hot issue. And they really struggle with the self-image deal, comparing. They wanted to talk about how to handle when they have, most of them have a friend that's dealing with transgender issues.

I'm sure that is not, that is something you're dealing with. How do I deal with a friend that's struggling in that way? They wanted to know about biblical womanhood. I think you can all probably come alongside a young person like that and probably disciple them and help them walk through those issues.

Because you need to help them to learn how to shape their answers, not by the culture, but by God's word. Seriously. And so I was kind of encouraged that they were even asking the question and we were even having the conversation. It was great. So I just want to encourage you, whether you're married or single, young or old, it's just really important that you take this seriously.

Because I know it's a challenge. You know, we want to be self-sufficient. We don't want to be in these kinds of relationships because that means I've got to be transparent. Okay? And there's a lot of fear in that. But that is normal Christian living. We have to be with one another and able to encourage one another to love and good deeds and to grow spiritually.

It's just part of the walk. Okay? So we talked about the three goals and the last thing that we want to cover as far as the four goals is making disciples also means serving the world. Okay? Going back to our passage now, kind of moving back to Matthew 28, at the end there Jesus says, "To make disciples," he says, "for us to make disciples of all nations." And he doesn't mean simply nations or even countries.

He's actually talking about tribes and families, neighbors, clans. You know, there are over 6,000 people groups that haven't been reached yet. So he's saying get out there. And, you know, for some of us we can travel and we can do that. I do that. You know, Jen mentioned a little bit about that.

But not all of you can do that. Not all of you have that situation. But you can certainly start making disciples in your own families or perhaps it's your spouse or your children. Maybe it's your siblings. Maybe you have unsaved parents. That's your mission field. You know, it could just be your neighborhood.

It could be your workplace. You know, contrary to what people are telling you the world is not getting better. I'm sorry to disappoint you. But the world is not getting better. And even worse, a lot of your friends and neighbors are probably following false religions and that's even sadder.

And so they need Christ as much as you need Christ. Do you think you need Christ? Do you need Christ? Yes. Your friends need Christ too. So serve the world by reaching out to your own mission field and the Lord can work through you like he did my neighbor 27 or so years ago.

Finally, after learning that we must obey Christ by making disciples, Jesus gives us a wonderful promise in verse 20. Look there for a second. He says, "And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age." It's really comforting to know that we're promised by Christ himself that as we're making disciples, he's going to actually, this is what I was talking about before, we don't need to fear because as you're going out and making disciples, whether that's sharing the gospel or teaching others what you yourself know, Jesus promises to be spiritually present with you until the end of the age.

And that just kind of means until he returns a second time. Are you praying for that by the way? That Christ will return? Because he's coming. You should be praying for that. And so as believers, we don't have to be anxious about our life. We shouldn't be worried about making disciples because it's not based on you as much as it's based on Jesus and what he can do through your life.

And so we just need to have a willing heart. We need to have an obedient heart and to remember overall that the Lord is with you and he's for you. He's not against you. I mean, what more do you need to persevere in this life? I mean, seriously, what more do you need to be discipled or to be a discipler?

God is going to be with you regardless of your successes, your failures. He's with you. And so you need to trust him and ask yourself if you're going to go and make disciples. It's really, really important. Okay, so that's kind of the foundation. We have to lay that foundation before you kind of get into any kind of biblical counseling training or anything like that.

We have to know where the authority is and what scripture says in reference to what it means to make a disciple and to be a disciple. So with that foundation in mind, I have time because you're going to go into your small groups type thing about 9 o'clock, so I'm going to go ahead and try to get through some of that last part.

We're going to sort of transition now into deeper discipleship, page 10. And this is where we start thinking more specifically about sheep to sheep. How do we deal with people, broken people in the church? The hard people, right? The people that are just difficult to deal with. I think in a spiritual sense, the church is like a hospital, okay?

I say that because, you know, I know that we're all new believers or new creatures in Christ as believers, but we're all kind of recovering in a way from radical heart surgery ourselves. But we still battle with this residue of sin. You know, we're not perfected, this side of heaven.

And so inevitably, we're going to find ourselves in situations where we need to be involved in deeper discipleship relationships with other people who are struggling. I am sure you've had many friends come to you in tears needing to talk about stuff. And so I'm hoping to kind of help you think through what do we talk to them about when they're struggling in a deeper way as they're stumbling along, right?

And so you get this privilege when this happens to administer in love with the right bit of medicine, which of course is God's word, to reorient somebody back to good spiritual health. I think one of the things I want to probably throw out there right away, because this is kind of something that happens in biblical counseling, you know, people are not problems attached to people.

They're not your project. Okay? We come alongside people out of care and concern for them, wanting to help reorient them back to Christ. So we need to think of it that way. It's not a medical model. I am a doctor, but I'm not that kind of doctor, right? And so this is ministry.

This is loving people. This is a one another ministry actually. And so you need to kind of have that attitude when you think through this kind of a ministry. We want to help somebody that's off track with Christ. My favorite scripture in the Bible is 1 Thessalonians 5.14, I can't even talk, which says, "And we urge you, brethren," it's on your outline, "And we urge you, brethren, admonish the unruly, encourage the faint-hearted, help the weak, and be patient with all men." And so Paul's actually giving you three categories of people, actually kind of four if you want to throw in patience there, but he's actually giving us a way that we can understand how to disciple certain groups of people when they're kind of caught up in certain kinds of behaviors, if you will.

This is what I call deeper discipleship, when you come alongside helping people with particular struggles like this. And what's the first struggle that Paul's talking about there? What's the first one? What's the first kind of person? Say it out loud. That's right, unruly. That word just means disordered. You know, a person that's disordered, it kind of is a military word.

The visual he's trying to give you is this person is going along and they're just completely out of line, completely not keeping within their rank, so to speak. It kind of gives you a picture of someone who's just insubordinate or rebellious, maybe non-submissive. They just don't obey, basically. I call them the unbenders in counseling.

I get them a lot. They're just kind of out of step with the rest of the soldiers in church, if you will, and they are just rebellious towards God's word and what it has to say for their life and just even in Christian living. They're not always unbelievers. A lot of them are believers, but they're just living in a very undisciplined way.

And so it has a lot of faces in church. Unruliness is not just one thing. So it's kind of tough to pinpoint all of them, but in Thessalonica, in that church, the unruly people were the people that refused to work. They wanted everybody else to take care of them.

And so, you know, they were just kind of expecting others to come along and support them, but Paul says, "Look, if these people don't work, then they shouldn't eat." And so that kind of unruliness can happen in a church. But more often than not, what you're going to see is unruliness that you're going to see in churches typically are people that slander the leadership, you know, say things to kind of divide the church.

That's unruly. That's very unruly. Or people that are engaging in adultery or people that are engaging in any kind of sexual immorality, that's unruly. That is completely out of step with Christ, right? So that's where he's getting at. People who are enslaved to alcohol, that kind of thing. I mean, I was helping a woman in a local church who would say she's a committed believer, completely enslaved to alcohol, you know?

That's how she handles her problems. She's under pressure. And that's her false savior. That's what she turns to, to deal with the pressure in her life. So there's lots of people that would name the name of Christ and still struggle in this particular way. And that would be another example of unruliness.

And so there's lots of different kinds. But what does Paul say that we're to do with people like this? If we come alongside someone that we care about that's engaging in unruly behavior, what are we supposed to do? What does he say? What's that command there? Yeah, that's right.

Admonish. And you know what? All that means is to warn. That's all that means. To warn them with the idea that we need to show them the consequence of their sinful conduct. That's why you warn them, because you want to bring that to light. Not in front of your friends or in front of people.

You do it in private. But that's the whole idea. Practically speaking, though, before I would ever admonish anybody, I wouldn't just, you know, run over to admonish a person. I always take time to pray. I want to make sure that my motives are correct. I look at the big old log in my eye before I look at the speck in my brother's eye or my sister's eye.

And I think through how I'm going to do it. You always want to do it in private, of course. But, you know, the whole goal of admonishment is restoration. It's not to condemn people. You get me on that one? They're off track with Christ. It's about Christ and their relationship with Christ.

And so the whole idea is to try to come alongside and admonish them and to warn them that they are going to go down a road that is not good. But we do this when there's a pattern of sin like that. And that woman that I was telling you about that was engaging in drunkenness, she was somebody that I needed to talk to in private.

And I just simply told her out of love for her, you are at a step with Christ and the rest of God's people. You're turning to a false God. And this is not, this is going to end in disaster. Just think of the consequences that she's going to reap if she doesn't repent of this behavior.

She's going to lose her marriage. She's going to, she's going to probably lose her job. And so, so many things. A good proverb that you can share with someone that's being unruly is Proverbs 13, 15, which says that good sense wins favor, but the way of a transgressor is hard, you know.

And that was kind of my admonishment to her that it's not going to be, you're just thinking like in the present. You're not considering the consequences of your actions. But at a heart level, you know, a Christian who's being unruly, you can't just, you can't just think about the behavior on the outside.

That would make us humanists. We got to really think about what's going on at the heart level. And essentially, you know, that's when we start asking deeper questions like what do they want that they're not getting? Why do they want to have, you know, it's usually a pride issue.

You know, why are they seeking to take Jesus' rightful place on the throne of their hearts? And so those are some things to think about. But I even gave you like a definition of pride there that was from a booklet that one of my colleagues wrote. Because a lot of times unruly people struggle with particular issues of pride, and you can read that on your own.

Thankfully, that lady I was telling you about, she actually repented. And that was just such a joy to see that, that she was willing to lay aside her sin for the sake of Christ. And Jesus is your perfect example of discipleship. You know, he admonished a lot of people in scripture.

So you don't have to take my word for it or follow me. You just follow Christ because he admonished people when they were at a step. And I think I gave you some scripture verses. The next category are the faint-hearted. These are people that Paul says are literally small-souled.

That's what that word means in the original language. Small-souled. These are women that are anxious. These are women that are timid. These are women that are just faint-hearted. You know, they fear everything. They fear the unknown. They are captive to worrying habitually. A lot of times they have a sense of inadequacy or maybe even a lack of confidence in their abilities.

And they often lose heart. You know, they just kind of want to give up before they even get going. Do you know someone like that in your church? Are you someone like that in your church? It's a common one. There's no temptation common to man. This is a very common thing I see.

And it was happening in the church in Thessalonica. Think about that. That was over how many years ago? And so you have women that were faint-hearted. Not women, just people that were faint-hearted in that church as well. They were kind of struggling because they really thought they had loved ones that had died.

And they were struggling because they didn't know what was going to happen when Christ came back. What was going to happen to their loved ones that were buried? And so Paul had to encourage them with the truth and say, "You know what? When Christ returns, your loved ones who are already dead, they'll be raptured as well.

So don't worry about that." But in the church today, I mean, women struggle with a lot of things. You know, probably the most common thing I see is women struggling in their marriages. They're faint-hearted. They're losing heart. They need encouragement. How do I deal with a disobedient husband? Or how do I deal with an unbelieving husband?

Or whatever. And that's where that comes in. They're just discouraged because the circumstances might feel like it's beyond their control. And so we encourage them, you know. He says to encourage them. And that command is actually in the present tense imperative, meaning that if you're given a chance to counsel a faint-hearted woman or disciple someone like that, you are called to continually encourage them.

It's a continuous act. And so you need to be observant. Be looking out there in your church and see if you have friends or women that might need some encouragement. Again, people are going through lots and lots of things and they need our encouragement. There's definitely more to be said about that.

But I want to move on to helping the weak so we can kind of finish on time because I want you to work through those questions. But another category is just helping the weak. It's another group of women that you'll probably find in your church, no doubt. You know, the definition for weak here kind of means people, those without strength.

Not physically, but more spiritually. And the first one that he's referring to really is a spiritually weak faith. And so those would be people that just kind of have a lack of knowledge of the will of God. Some through just a lack of courage to trust the Lord. Maybe they're facing persecution in their families or just from others.

And it can also mean morally weak. You know, there are many people out there who just keep falling into the same sins over and over again. And so there are some women in your churches, unfortunately, that just get carried away by their emotion and they struggle with self-control and with their thought life.

And in Thessalonica, Paul was kind of alluding to the weak being sexually, sexually tempted in chapter 4. But the command that we're given, I mean, we're not to run away from these people. You know, we recognize this is going on in their life and the command that we're given is to help them.

But it has a much bigger meaning than what we think, you know, help. What Paul has in mind there is to give sympathetic assistance. You know, it's kind of that idea of supporting a weak person by keeping yourself directly over against the weak so you are sustaining them. And Paul talks about that actually in Galatians 6, 1.

You who are spiritual, if you're caught up in a trespass, you are to restore such a one. So you're picking these people up, you're bearing their burdens, and you're holding them up. And, you know, the church is just full of weak people. It's, you know, sometimes they're just new believers, they come out of hard lives, and there's just lots and lots of things that we can really encourage and help them in.

But Jesus, who is the believer's perfect example of discipleship, really helped those who were weak. And you know what? Peter actually was an example of a weak believer in the beginning anyway, before Jesus was crucified. He was often very frail, he was often very half-hearted, but Jesus helped him to face his weaknesses.

And, of course, we have learned lots from Peter. It's amazing how he had such full devotion at the end. And then the last thing that I want to point out in 1 Thessalonians is that Paul says that we need to be patient with all men. Okay? So that's a category of people, that's everyone else who does not fit into the first three categories but actually in those who do.

So it's kind of a both/and. He's saying that all men, all women, need to be patient with people as God sanctifies them. And that's something you're going to run into because if you're really serious about making disciples, one thing that I've noticed, and I train counselors all the time too, one thing I notice, and maybe even Esther can confirm, sometimes when we come alongside people we want them to grow spiritually really fast on our own timing.

Right? And we can't figure out why they aren't growing at the fast pace that we think they should. So we need to remember that God does the sanctifying. He's just using us as an instrument in his hand to get the word to them and to come alongside and encourage them, but he does the growing.

And so God is asking us to have a steady patience with people that really expresses that long spiritedness and a slowness to anger, which of course is reflective of God's steady patience with us all the time.