[0:00] One of the blessings, and there's been many, and being a Jayhawk transplanted to Oklahoma! is to be a part of Oklahoma Baptist.
[0:20] And I'm a strong believer in what our churches are partnering together to do and what they're accomplishing. And so I encourage you to give of your time, your resources, and your prayers to the work that we collectively are doing to spread the gospel, not just in Oklahoma, but around the world.
[0:39] If you have your Bible, go ahead and grab those and turn to John chapter 6. If you don't own a Bible, there are Bibles in the pews, and you're welcome to use that. And again, if you don't have your own Bible, please take that Bible home with you today.
[0:53] It's our gift from our congregation to you in hopes that you'll continue to be reading the Word of God. We've been in John chapter 6, and today's scripture will cover verses 60 through 71.
[1:05] Today's message will cover verses 60 through 71. So if you have your copy of God's Word, would you please stand with me as we honor the reading of the Word. Again, reading John chapter 6, beginning in verse 60, going through verse 71.
[1:20] When many of His disciples heard it, they said, This is a hard saying. Who can listen to it? But Jesus, knowing in Himself that His disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, Do you take offense at this?
[1:36] Then what if you see the Son of Man ascending to where He was before? It is the Spirit who gives life. The flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are Spirit and life.
[1:50] But there are some of you who do not believe. For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe and who it was who would betray Him. And He said, This is why I told you that no one can come to Me unless it is granted him by the Father.
[2:07] After this, many of His disciples turned back and no longer walked with Him. So Jesus said to the twelve, Do you want to go away as well? Simon Peter answered Him, Lord, to whom shall we go?
[2:22] You have the words of eternal life. And we have believed. And we have come to know that You are the Holy One of God. Jesus answered them, Did I not choose you, the twelve?
[2:35] And yet one of you is a devil. He spoke of Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot. For he, one of the twelve, was going to betray Him. May God add a blessing to the reading of His Word.
[2:46] Would you please be seated? A long time ago, a great pastor named Charles Spurgeon said, predicted that a time will come when instead of shepherds feeding the sheep, the church will have clowns entertaining the goats.
[3:07] And that time is, I believe, truly upon us these days. In fact, recently I watched a streamed service over Facebook, the church that I know well enough, and the video was taken backstage where the pastor and the worship pastor and those who were going to go on the stage had congregated and had gotten on Facebook to live stream basically what became a hype video, encouraging people to tune in and to watch the service.
[3:49] It started out by saying something like, we're about to hop on the stage and we want you to join us online. The pastor said, tonight is going to be an incredible experience.
[4:03] Tonight is going to be an incredible experience. And then he went on to explain why that experience was going to be so incredible. They had a band. They talked about the kind of music that they would play, that they had gathered, and said they were going to have a lot of fun.
[4:23] And another pastor took the phone, took over the live stream, and he made sure to let everyone know that tonight, that night's experience was going to be great, in part because they had a lot of cool lights.
[4:36] But he was most eager and most excited to share the fact that this experience was going to be so great because they had a fog machine. They had a fog machine.
[4:48] The experience was going to be made all the greater because the sanctuary would be filled with artificial smoke. Think about that.
[5:00] Made me wonder, you know, maybe our witness and our worship is lacking because we don't have enough dry ice.
[5:11] Maybe dry ice is the trick. I mean, how could Jesus forget such an important instruction? Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them, teaching them, but most importantly, don't forget the fog machines.
[5:28] Right? Got to have those fog machines. They're what really brings in the crowds. Or when Jesus sent out the 72 disciples to go into every town ahead of him and making sure that they had ample storage, right?
[5:43] He told them, don't take money with you. Don't take provisions with you. And maybe that was so that they would have extra storage to make sure they could carry all the cool lights and the fog machines so that when they arrived in these cities, they would act as sort of his opening act, preparing the stage and serving as his warm-up act before Jesus dazzled them with his miracles.
[6:03] Now, obviously, that wasn't how Jesus operated. Yes, he performed miracles and they drew large crowds to him, but the purpose of the miracles wasn't to entertain, but to teach.
[6:19] And the main idea of the message that he taught was that people must repent for the kingdom of God is at hand. Now, I know I've kind of been joking about this, but I don't want to be one who puts down.
[6:33] It's heartbreaking when we see churches who embrace entertainment and they forsake the greater teachings of the Bible and how we are to make disciples.
[6:46] And that should be something that breaks all of our hearts and causes us to go into much prayer over them that they would have their eyes open and that they wouldn't waste their time in frivolous things trying to draw a crowd.
[7:01] But this is what Jesus has been doing. He's been preaching this message to repent for the kingdom of God is at hand. He's been doing so in John 6, verses 22 through 59, which we've been covering.
[7:13] This message where he has said that he is the bread of life, that he will feed them, or that he has, excuse me, fed them with physical bread.
[7:24] And then we know that as a result of his feeding them with physical bread, they followed him for more. But when he offered them the true spiritual, eternal, life-giving bread, which consisted of his own flesh and his own blood, he said most of them responded to that by grumbling.
[7:43] And then finally, realizing that he was not going to give them what they wanted, they turned their back on him totally. realizing that Jesus was not going to be who they wanted him to be.
[8:02] And in understanding that now he was calling them to believe in his teachings, they turned away from that.
[8:13] They were turned away from the true Jesus. A Messiah, they realized, who would not conform to their will.
[8:27] A Messiah who called them to act upon the truth that he had spoken to them. Who said that he is the Son of God sent from heaven, whose words, he said, are spirit and life.
[8:40] Whose flesh was true food and whose blood was true drink. Jesus expected them to act upon this truth, to appropriate him to themselves.
[8:50] No cool lights, no fog machines, just the truth. It was a truth that they rejected because he was a Savior that they didn't want. Without the experience and with the miracles seeming to have dried up, these seekers were displeased by what they sought and so they turned away from Jesus, proving that they were counterfeit disciples, seeking an experience, not a Savior.
[9:20] Wanting to have their stomachs filled with physical bread and becoming nauseated and repulsed by the truth that Jesus was the bread of life.
[9:33] To most denominations, such a drop in attendance would be a cause for alarm, wouldn't it? We see that Jesus began with that crowd of about 20,000.
[9:44] Not sure if all of them followed him to the synagogue in Capernaum, but certainly a lot of them did. And so we could come away and think, wow, you went from 20,000 one Sunday to 12?
[9:58] And that would cause us to be alarmed, wouldn't it? Well, that must not be a very good preacher that you have there. Even if things went from 100 to 12, people would be concerned.
[10:12] Maybe we didn't have enough cool lights. Maybe we did need those fog machines after all. But seriously, this would have appeared to be a colossal failure.
[10:26] This would have appeared to have been a colossal failure from the world's point of view. We had a lot. Now we have very few. But it wasn't a colossal failure because Jesus knew the hearts.
[10:42] He knew the minds, the intentions, the desires of each person that was amassed in that crowd. And as he'd prepare his disciples for the parable of the soils, he knew that there would always be curiosity seekers who are superficially attracted to him.
[11:00] But when they are presented with the truth, of who he is and what he demands of them, they realize that that comes at too high of a price.
[11:14] Too great of a cost. Jesus didn't mince words. He said it very clearly that such would be the case in Luke 9, 23-25. Our Lord said, to all who are gathered, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me.
[11:36] For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?
[11:48] Now that message does not appease the appetites of the flesh. It's a mandate to live a Christ-centered life, a cross-centered life, and not a self-centered life that says something like, do whatever you want, be whoever you want to be, define your own truth.
[12:08] Some people will hear that and they will disappear, not wanting to deny themselves, nor let go of their pursuit of worldly treasures that they think will bring them the satisfaction that they know is missing in their life.
[12:22] Or as is in the case today, they will reimagine Jesus into someone or some God who exists as some sort of cosmic genie to grant their wishes, to obey their commands, or a therapist who exists to build up their self-esteem.
[12:41] But Jesus sees right through all of that, and he always has. John 2, 23 through 25, we've been here before. It says there, now when Jesus was in Jerusalem at the Passover feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing.
[12:57] But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them because he knew all people and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in a man.
[13:11] In his first epistle, John further described them as those who went out from us, but they were not really of us, for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us, but they went out so it would be shown that they are not of us.
[13:27] And we see that throughout the New Testament, these counterfeit disciples infiltrating the church. they have sought to create Christ in their own image or use him to build their own kingdom.
[13:40] Men like Demas, Simon the Magician, and most tragically of all, Judas Iscariot, who was one of the twelve, who stayed with Christ after he delivered this bread of life discourse, but who would later commit the ultimate betrayal.
[13:58] Judas was the ultimate counterfeit disciple, revealing how close one can associate with Christ without ever truly believing Him.
[14:15] Still we know that some will turn, but that others will respond in true faith. those whom the Father has drawn to His Son and who believe savingly in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.
[14:32] And so Jesus concludes His words here in this section, and as He does so, the outright rejecters leave Him, leaving only those who claim to be His disciples, some of whom we understand possess genuine faith and some, at least one, who did not.
[14:51] But, verses 60-71 describe the reaction of these two groups, the false, counterfeit disciples and the true disciples. And so here's the main idea for this morning's text, sermon.
[15:09] False disciples follow Jesus primarily out of a desire to use Him to get something material. True disciples, on the other hand, come to Christ, poor in spirit, mourning over their sin and hunger and thirst for the righteousness, for the righteousness that only He can supply.
[15:33] And so while I believe Spurgeon was right and what he said is true, I think we can look throughout the history of the church, we can look at John 6 and see that that's always been the case for God's people.
[15:46] that there will be those who come because they want to be entertained. They don't want the truth and ultimately will reject it.
[15:56] So before we continue on as a believer, what I want you to think about as we go through this is, first of all, are you a true disciple of Jesus Christ? You claim to be a believer, are you a true disciple of Jesus Christ?
[16:08] Do you hunger and thirst for the righteousness that only He can supply? But in addition to that, I want you to think about what kind of a disciple are we as a church trying to make?
[16:22] What are our ministries, our engaged outreach events seeking to accomplish? What do they actually accomplish? Collectively, should we be pursuing the kind of growth and be uncompromising in our sharing of the true gospel as we obey our Lord's mandate to make disciples?
[16:42] Are we doing that? We can't veer into a model of disciple making that is truly based upon attractional methods that seek to grow crowds by worldly methods.
[16:56] So think as we go through this, are we as a church doing that? And if we are, what needs to change about us and about you individually? Now as an unbeliever, as you hear this, the same question that I want you to think about is are you a true disciple of Jesus Christ?
[17:14] Do you desire Him? Or are you trying to use Him? What is your motivation for being here physically this morning or following along virtually right now online?
[17:25] What are you seeking the Lord and His church for? Here John again presents us with two reactions to Jesus' preaching and His preaching always produced a reaction.
[17:38] First of all, we see the reaction of the false disciples in verses 60 through 66. The reaction of the false disciples. Again in verse 60, it says that when many of His disciples heard it, they said this is a hard teaching.
[17:55] Who can listen to it? So while large crowds followed Jesus, especially in His early ministry, most of them were fascinated by His sensational miracles that He performed, especially when He healed diseases and on at least two occasions when He fed large crowds miraculously.
[18:15] They were, many of them, thrill seekers, not truth seekers. The disciples introduced here in verse 60 were no different. They were superficially attracted to Jesus by the miracles that they had seen.
[18:28] Again, going back to verse 2, it says there a large crowd was following Him because of the signs that He was doing on the sick. The meal that they had eaten was another reason why they were gathering in verses 3 through 13 of John 6.
[18:41] We see Jesus feeding them miraculously with a small lunch. And the hope that, again, they had as a result of that in verses 14 and 15 that Jesus would be the kind of Messiah who would rescue them from the oppression of the Roman Empire.
[19:00] And so all of these things all of these things are playing into their seeking Jesus because He does miraculous things, because He can feed us bread physically, and because hopefully this is the guy who will overthrow the Romans.
[19:20] Consequently, though, seeing that He would not be who they wanted Him to be, they chose to turn their backs on Him in their only hope of salvation. They had eaten and swallowed the physical bread that He had given to them, but they could not stomach His teaching about His being the bread of life.
[19:39] He told them to eat His flesh and to drink His blood. It wasn't so much that Jesus' teaching was incomprehensible to them as much as it was unacceptable in their eyes.
[19:53] In fact, they were offended by it. They were offended by what He said. In the Greek, difficult is an adjective which literally means rough, withered, or stiff.
[20:08] Figuratively, it describes something that is harsh, unpleasant, or hard to accept. They were offended by His claims.
[20:19] They were offended that He said that He had come down from heaven. They were offended by His contention that He was the only answer to mankind's spiritual need. And His call they were offended by that He would ask them to eat His flesh and drink His blood.
[20:37] What shut them out of the kingdom wasn't that they didn't know what Jesus was saying, but that they understood it and they found it to be repulsive. They couldn't tolerate. Now, we know that we live in an age of tolerance.
[20:52] It isn't interesting to you as it is to me that those who demand tolerance are the most intolerant people. People are easily offended in our culture.
[21:05] And so, as a result of that, I think I've seen, and you may have as well, many pastors have sought to dull the edge of God's Word, abandoning the meatier, the hardier, the more offensive teachings of the Bible, at least offensive to unbelievers.
[21:22] And instead, what they do is something I call preaching cotton candy sermons. Cotton candy sermons. And cotton candy is good. Cotton candy is yummy.
[21:34] Well, maybe some of you don't like it, but for most of us, it's yummy. It's good. It's full of sugar. In fact, it's pretty much nothing but sugar. It's light. It's fluffy.
[21:45] It's colorful. And instantly, it dissolves in your mouth. You don't have to chew cotton candy. It just dissolves in your mouth and you swallow it.
[21:56] There's little eating involved in it. But cotton candy, as you probably know, and as you fed to your children, you understand it's not nourishing. It doesn't really fill anyone's stomach.
[22:08] And actually, it has bad results. If you eat a lot of cotton candy, your teeth are going to rot. And eventually, if you don't go to the dentist, they will fall out of your mouth.
[22:20] Right? But who doesn't like cotton candy? Who doesn't like a little bit of cotton candy? If you read the Bible, you are going to be presented with your own sinfulness.
[22:33] You are going to be presented with Christ as your only hope for salvation. There are points that fallen mankind doesn't, these are points, I should say, that fallen mankind does not delight in.
[22:44] It doesn't taste very good to them. It doesn't dissolve easily in their mouth. But, that doesn't make them any less true. It doesn't make them any less true.
[22:57] As Christians, however, we learn to delight in the Word of God because we know that it contains truth that nourishes our souls, that add to our spiritual growth, that make us more like Jesus Christ.
[23:13] I remember, as an athlete in college, I started paying more attention to what I ate. I wanted to get bigger. I wanted to get faster. I wanted to get stronger. And so, I made sure that I fed myself things, foods that would attribute to that.
[23:30] And, in doing so, I learned to enjoy the taste of them because I enjoyed the results that they were having. I remember being an elementary school student and for whatever reason, right, they give us pizza, pudding, some healthy foods, but, you know, I wasn't interested in any of that.
[23:53] But, for whatever reason, they thought that they would put out a pan of spinach. A pan of spinach. And, I think in a school of three or four hundred kids, I only remember one or two ever actually taking spinach out of that pan.
[24:07] In fact, I remember going down the line that you could smell the spinach from, you know, feet away and holding my nose as I got closer because I didn't even want to smell it because it stunk so bad.
[24:23] I didn't realize. Spinach is good for you, right? And now, at this point, I actually enjoy eating spinach. A whole pan of it? No, but, it's good.
[24:36] It tastes good, especially because I know the results that it has for my body. It leaves me feeling much better than a big glob of cotton candy. Likewise, a mark of a false disciple is someone who holds their nose when they hear the clear teaching of God's Word.
[24:58] And, it offends them. It offends their senses. They are people who are offended by Jesus' words. But, they're taking offense doesn't lead Him to change anything that He's already said or instructed in order to keep them coming back.
[25:17] And, that's what Jesus did here. We see He's doubled down on all of His preaching points. He's repeated them. He loved them enough to tell them the truth. He revealed how utterly bankrupt they were spiritually, needing to acknowledge Him and confess their sin and commit themselves to Him as their only hope for salvation.
[25:38] But, since Jesus understood that, understood the condition of every heart, of every person, He was conscious of the reaction to His words.
[25:49] In verse 61, it says there, but Jesus, knowing in Himself that His disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, do you take offense at this? And, Jesus, knowing that the central claim that they took offense to was His claim to have come down from heaven, He asked them in verse 62, then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending where He was before?
[26:10] His implication seems to be this, if you saw Me go into heaven, would that not convince you of My heavenly origins? Some commentators here, though, see Jesus referring to His ascending as an implied reference to His eventual crucifixion.
[26:27] According to that view, the Lord was making a crucial point. If the false disciples were offended by His teaching, how much more would they be scandalized by His execution? Whatever the case may be, Jesus left the question here open-ended because knowing how His hearers would respond would determine how they would answer that question.
[26:50] Next, He says in verse 63, it is the Spirit who gives life. The flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are Spirit and life.
[27:02] As He had in John chapter 3, verse 6, Jesus here contrasts the Spirit which gives life to the flesh that profits nothing. Spiritual life, He says, comes only when the Holy Spirit imparts Christ's life to the believer.
[27:18] And again, this is the consistent teaching of Scripture. It's the consistent teaching recorded in John's Gospel. Let's look. John 3, 6-8.
[27:30] Jesus, speaking with Nicodemus, says, that which is born of the flesh is flesh. That which is born of the Spirit is Spirit. Again, speaking of the essentialness of the new birth and salvation.
[27:41] Do not marvel, He said, that I said to you you must be born again. The wind blows where it wishes and you hear its sound but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.
[27:53] And then jumping back earlier in John 1, verses 12-13, we read, but to all who did receive Him, Jesus, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God.
[28:07] How did they get that right? Well, He says in verse 13, they were born. They were born again not of blood. Two Christians can come together and have a child and it does not pass into the bloodstream.
[28:18] Nor the will of the flesh. It can't be the will of somebody else for you that accomplishes that. Nor the will of man. Not even your own will but of God alone.
[28:30] Only those who are truly disciples of Christ understand that His words are spirit in life and thus they desire to obey them.
[28:41] True disciples are those who continue in the word of God. Who are convicted, not offended. And because God causes them and calls them to abide in it, they continue to walk in His word.
[29:02] Allowing it to serve as a guide to their path. They embrace Jesus and they embrace His word. Thus the Bible teaches that salvation comes also through the agency of the word of God.
[29:18] Those who are not offended by it. Luke 8, 11 and verse 15. Now the parable is this. The seed is the word of God and then Jesus jumping down in verse 15 says and that for that in the good soil they are those who hearing the word hold it fast in an honest and good heart and bear fruit with patience.
[29:40] Luke 8, 21 Jesus answered them My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.
[29:51] James 1, 18 Of His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth that we should be a kind of first fruits of His creatures.
[30:03] And in James 1, 21 Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word which is able to save your souls.
[30:14] 1 Peter 1, 23 Since you have been born again not of perishable seed but of imperishable through the living and abiding word of God.
[30:27] How do you or how are you reacting to God's word? Do you embrace it as spirit and life as truth?
[30:41] Or does it repulse you? Are you tempted to reject it? Are you unable to stomach it? Jesus knows and is fully aware of the status of everyone who claims to be His disciple.
[30:57] Verse 64 He says But there are some of you who do not believe for Jesus again knew from the beginning who were those who would follow Him who it was who would betray Him.
[31:09] And as always with those who reject Christ's offer of salvation the issue again was not lack of information but a lack of faith. And these false disciples like all others would be held accountable for rejecting the only hope of salvation that they had because they would not believe.
[31:27] But again Jesus was not caught off guard at all by their reaction. As revealed again by His parting words to these false counterfeit disciples in verse 65 This is why I told you that no one can come to Me unless it is granted by the Father.
[31:44] And so again Jesus reinforces instead of watering down His preaching points that God is sovereign in salvation and so verses 64 and 65 maintain the tension between divine sovereignty and human responsibility in regard to salvation found throughout Scripture.
[32:05] Sadly but predictably verse 56 says after this many of His disciples turned back and no longer walked with Him.
[32:18] What they wanted Jesus would not give and what He offered they would not receive. Now as Christians we are called to go and make disciples but not by any means necessary.
[32:33] We are called to declare and to share the good news of Jesus Christ but then we leave the results up to Him.
[32:47] Not rewriting not revising the gospel or the word of God so that it has a greater appeal to larger crowds. We don't rewrite Scripture.
[33:02] We don't revise what God's word has said. You know I enjoy watching movies based on true life events for whatever reason because it really happened it draws me in more but then I'm always upset whenever I watch that movie and then I go back into research on it and find out that Hollywood tweaked it all.
[33:28] They revised a lot of it. They rewrote a lot of it. They put tension where there was no tension. They put a character in the story who doesn't even exist. I understand why they do it and so do you because they want to tell a story that will draw people to watch it.
[33:47] And I think tragically if we're not careful we're tempted to do the same with Jesus in his word. Well let's just change that a little bit here. Let's just revise that a little bit over here.
[33:59] As I think people would come and they'd be more interested in what we had to say if we just helped out Jesus a little bit here in this way or there in that way. It's heartbreaking when false disciples are revealed and it's heartbreaking to realize that many churches have added to the growth of them.
[34:29] We are to preach God's word and declare it leaving the results up to God himself knowing that it may produce a dwindling crowd and if so we still don't seek to alter God's word in any way whatsoever.
[34:44] Next we see the reaction of true disciples. True disciples. Verses 67-71 So Jesus said to the twelve do you want to go away as well?
[34:59] Simon Peter answered him Lord to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life and we have believed and have come to know that you are the Holy One of God.
[35:11] And so here good old Peter as he had on many other occasions acted as the spokesperson for the rest of the twelve and in so doing he expressed two marks of true disciples.
[35:22] The first is faith. Faith expressed in the statement that he made we have believed we have believed and the second is faithfulness expressed in his question Lord to whom else shall we go?
[35:42] Faith marks the believer spiritual birth and faithfulness marks their character. The perfect tense of these verbs translated have believed and have come to know convey the idea of an action completed in the past but has continuing results.
[36:01] True disciples are those whom Jesus described in the parable of the soils whom the seed of the gospel has taken root within and who as a result produced fruit for the kingdom.
[36:16] So in this way John contrasts the difference between the faithful and the fickle. Yet still troubling is what Jesus says in verse 70. Look at your Bibles again.
[36:30] Jesus answered them, did I not choose you the twelve and yet one of you is a devil? Verse 71 reveals the identity of that false disciple still hidden from the group who was counted as faithful.
[36:51] Judas Iscariot. Verse 71 says he was speaking of Judas the son of Simon Iscariot for he one of the twelve was going to betray him.
[37:02] Now here's the thing that we've got to understand in this when it comes to Judas we see on the eve of Christ crucifixion when he gathered with the twelve in the upper room and declared that one of them would be his betrayer listen none of them had any idea and when Jesus said this one of you is a devil they had no clue it wasn't as if they were all kind of looking sideways over at Judas and being like yep we know we've seen in the upper room it wasn't as if when Jesus said hey one of you will betray me that they all were looking you know again sideways at Judas yep we knew it and we knew it all the way back in John 6 Jesus when you preached the bread of life discourse we knew that he was the one who would betray you they had no idea in fact what were they doing they were asking him is it I Lord is it I Lord is it I Lord they didn't know and what's disturbing and what's troubling about that is that we understand from the example of
[38:10] Judas is that you can claim to be a disciple you can understand and know what the book of the Bible and what it says you can know all the books and name them in order you can serve in church you can volunteer in ministries of the church like Judas you can go on mission trips but still not truly believe you can fool everyone but Jesus Christ and a day is going to come when Jesus will return and he will separate the sheep from the goats and I believe that on that day we will be shocked as we look at those and hopefully you are in with the sheep and you'll be shocked by those who you see standing next to you
[39:10] I think I think even more shocking is we'll look over and we'll see those who are in the goats and we'll see people who we thought for sure knew Christ as their Lord and Savior who we were convinced were faithful followers of Christ so what should we do with that what should we do with this so maybe we should form a type of church police force we'll call them the CPF and we'll give them badges and we'll give them fancy jackets like the FBI or any of those other government agencies and we'll give them the power to interrogate church members if you them on their way out from work throw them in a van and drag them over to one of the buildings many rooms in this church and interrogate that soul until we know for sure that they're truly saved obviously we shouldn't do that because I think those who would make up the CPF would probably be the most likely to not be saved so we shouldn't do that what should we do well
[40:20] I think we need to be making sure that we're always sharing the gospel here always sharing the gospel here you know I know that I've gotten to the point where I've looked at you know the crowd in the Bible study or Sunday morning or Sunday night and felt like these people are saved and I feel pretty confidently in that but I know that Judas was counted as one of them and he wasn't saved so we're always sharing the gospel with one another and we're always sharing the gospel period wherever we go declaring the good news of Jesus Christ in praying and praying and praying that God would lead us to those that he'd have mercy on those who don't believe that he'd have mercy on those who walk around as his counterfeit disciples that they would know that they would believe that he would draw them that they would be saved and that they would be counted faithful at the end of the age so a few questions of application as we close again that
[41:29] I will consider tonight when we when we gather together again at 630 if you want to come here and be a part of that also encourage you just to stick it in your Bible in your pocket come back to it later today tonight we will for sure or later this week the first is are there passages of scripture that you take offense to and I would encourage you to go to those passages and just dig into those passages and pray and ask your questions of me or others are there passages that you take offense to dig into those pray over those and talk about those with God and with other believers second as a church what methods are we employing as a church to make disciples have they been more successful in drawing a crowd or making disciples this is something I want us as a church to consider we do engage events whatever outreach or missions events that we do or are part of are they more successful in drawing a crowd or making disciples and then third how should
[42:38] Christians in the church measure their effectiveness how should Christians in the church measure their effectiveness we see again through the eyes of the world that this message that Jesus gave would have been seen as a colossal failure he had a large crowd and he was left with twelve and one of them was a devil but we know that it was not a failure at all not even close but how are we as Christians measuring our effectiveness what makes us excited large crowds or seeing people giving their testimony and being baptized and watching them continue to grow and mature in our church as we are doing what the Lord has called us to do to make disciples to teach them that they would be a disciple who makes disciples I'm going to pray and I encourage you during the invitation if you need to come forward for whatever reason and you would like to pray for me
[43:42] I'll be standing here if you realize that you're a counterfeit disciple and you have questions about that and you would like to you just can't wait you want to talk to me about that right now I'm more than willing and happy to do that I'll be right here willing to speak with you and pray with you right now let's pray together Lord God we thank you that you are God we place for our sins who has risen again on the third day as proof that he is the son of God that he reigns forever more and we know that as he has come as was promised as he has lived as he has died as your scripture said he would and as he has risen again as your scripture also said would happen so your word says that he is going to return and Lord we look forward to that day God until that time may we be spending our days living our lives faithfully to you sharing the gospel to you not counting success the way that the world views success but continuing to share the gospel wherever you would have us to go
[44:54] God that we would be a church of disciples making disciples and that we would do so through your methods! So Lord we pray that you would be with us God for those who have heard this and they wonder if they're a counterfeit disciple I pray that you would cause them to wrestle with you and grapple with your word and our hope would be that they who were once a counterfeit would become the genuine thing Lord we love you we ask these things in Jesus name Amen Amen