I'm so excited to preach to you today.
It is in July, this Friday, is the anniversary of the Epps.
Roger and Cheryl Epps, they've been married for, I believe it's 50 years, isn't it?
50 year anniversary, let's give them a hand.
And for Miss Cheryl to put up with Brother Roger for 50 years is a big deal.
No, I'm joking, I'm so grateful for them and their families here with them today, I'm so grateful for that.
I found out today that their anniversary is the same as my family, my wife and I's anniversary.
This Friday will be our 17th anniversary.
Now, I didn't say that for you to clap.
Pray for me that I will be the kind of husband I ought to be.
It was 17 years ago though, next week, that my wife and I went on our honeymoon.
And on our honeymoon, I learned all kinds of things about my wife.
I learned a lot of things about me.
I learned that I am not a good driver.
It was shocking to me at the time.
Now I have people in the church who have gone with me on visitation and they tell me,
the first time I drive, the next time people like Doug Siemens, like,
Pastor, why don't you let me drive?
And so, that's kind of part of it.
But I remember, the teens will think I sound really old when I say this,
but when we got married and we decided that we were going to go on a three week road trip,
we had a really long anniversary because after I got married,
just three weeks later, I was supposed to become the youth pastor at a church in Port Charlotte, Florida.
And so, he wasn't ready for us for that time.
We had another wedding we were going to go to that my wife was a bridesmaid in.
So, we just kind of, we flew from Boise, Idaho to Springfield, Missouri,
and then we began to drive in her car.
I married into a car.
Her car was nicer than my car.
And I got a CD collection that was inferior to mine.
That's a whole other thing.
Her taste in music is poor, but that's okay.
A lot of girl music.
Anyway, but we started to drive and there were times where I realized that I'm not a good driver,
but I also realized that my wife has no sense of direction.
She barely got here this morning on her own.
That's basically how that goes.
No, she's sweet, but we had our first fight and our first fight with Hunter Honeymoon
while we were driving around.
This is a bad illustration.
Why am I bringing this up?
But we were driving around and she's like, we're supposed to be going that way.
Our hotel's that way.
I'm like, no, it's this way.
No, it's that way.
No, it's this way.
No, it's that way.
I'm like, what's the name of our hotel?
And she told us that's like that one right there.
And she's like, and you know, this is when I realized that you have a choice as a husband.
You can be right or you can be happy.
But my wife has been awesome.
She is an amazing woman and I'm so grateful for her and I love her so much.
But I bring up that illustration to say this.
Do you remember when you didn't have a smart phone and even before GPS and when you would
go on a road trip, did you ever do this?
Did you ever go to AAA and get the trip tick map things?
Remember that?
Or and you would get directions and it would like you would flip it, right?
And we did that on our, did we do that on our honeymoon?
I believe we did.
We had our whole trip laid out.
We went from here.
We went from Springfield, Missouri to Tennessee.
What was the name?
Chattanooga.
It was such a big time for me.
Chattanooga.
We went to Chattanooga.
Then we went to Atlanta and then on down into Winterhaven, Florida and down to Port Charlotte.
But we had step by step, step, turn by turn directions that helped us get from one place to another.
And we actually had it on paper.
Who remembers paper?
It was amazing.
Paper maps.
We had a way to get from here to there.
Today's sermon is the third in a series that we've been doing called Our Commission Vision.
Our Commission Vision.
And it is, I believe the way that God would have me articulate our vision of our church to you in such a way that you, here's what I believe God would have you to do.
If you're a member of our church, or at least for you to consider if you're here today in becoming a member of our church and seeing what we're trying to accomplish.
This is the way that God, I believe, would help us to articulate that vision.
And so we're in our third sermon in the series.
The first one we talked about, our problem.
Who agrees with me that our nation has a lot of problems?
And even in our county, there are problems.
There are people.
And here's the number one problem.
We can talk about political, social, economic, family.
But all of those are downstream from the fundamental problem.
And that's the problem of the heart.
That our hearts are deceitful and desperately wicked.
And that if we're outside of Christ, we're dead in our sins.
And we need to be made alive.
And people tend to start to be doing the right thing once God regenerates their hearts and once they become new creatures.
If any man be in Christ.
He's a new creature, right?
And so the mission that God gave to us as a church is the Great Commission.
The Great Commission.
And last week I talked about, in that first week we talked about our problem and then how the Great Commission was really the ultimate solution to those problems.
Last week we talked about the Great Commission.
And the Great Commission is articulated five times in the New Testament in Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Acts.
And it was my goal.
I wish I had a second chance at it.
But it was my goal last week to articulate the Great Commission and to help you have a fully formed idea of what the Great Commission is.
The Great Commission is the process by which God calls us to reach people so that people become saved.
They get baptized and become part of local churches.
And in those local churches we're supposed to train them to observe all that God commanded us to do.
So the Great Commission involves two parts.
Evangelism, helping people who don't know Christ come to know Christ.
Who believes that's important.
We want everybody to get the gospel, to hear the gospel, and everybody's supposed to respond to the gospel.
Not all have obeyed the gospel.
So we want people to be evangelized.
But we don't want to stop with evangelism.
Evangelism is not the finish line.
Evangelism is the starting line where people get saved.
Then they're baptized.
And baptism, they're declaring, I am following.
I'm identifying with Jesus Christ and His death, His burial, and His resurrection.
And I'm identifying with this local body of baptized believers who also have been saved and have identified with Christ and His death, bone, and resurrection through baptism.
And so that's what God's called us to do.
That's evangelism.
But it leads to discipleship.
That when someone gets saved, the Bible, Jesus called it being born again.
And when someone's born again, it's like they're a babe in Christ.
Jesus uses that terminology.
The New Testament uses that terminology.
It says, as newborn babes desire the sincere milk of the word that ye may grow thereby.
And so part of the Great Commission is this thing that God's called all of us to do, not only to win people's hearts, but to win people's hearts.
Not only to win people to Jesus, but to teach them to obey Jesus in every area of their life.
And the ultimate goal of the Great Commission is for those people that believe and are baptized and are discipled, evangelism and the discipleship becoming a disciple of Jesus,
that those people would then adopt the mission themselves to go out and make disciples of all nations.
That's the Great Commission.
It involves the gospel.
What's the gospel?
That Jesus came, that he died, that he was buried, and then he rose again.
For our sins according to the Scriptures.
That it was predicted.
Isn't that cool that God predicted what he would do?
And that he did that.
And that Jesus Christ's death and burial in the resurrection was for our sins according to the Scriptures.
And that this message of Jesus should go out into all the world starting in Jerusalem, it says in Luke.
In Acts it says, in Jerusalem you'll be my witnesses, in Judea and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the earth.
And we said that it's not or, or, or, or, it's and, and, and, and.
Who knows that the gospel needs to be preached in Hancock County?
Who believes it ought to be preached in Ohio?
And in our nation, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.
That's what God's called us to do.
And so I believe that this commission is not a commission for pastors.
Only.
Is it for pastors?
I believe that this commission is not just a commission for deacons.
Is it a commission for deacons?
Yes.
I believe that this isn't just a commission for Sunday school teachers.
And for deacons, this is a commission for every believer.
Because I believe with all my heart, and some may disagree with me, but it's okay.
I believe with all my heart that the Bible teaches that Jesus Christ died for everyone.
And that everyone has a responsibility to respond to the light that they have, and they have to hear the gospel to be saved.
And if the gospel is for everyone, then the commission can't be just for a select few.
Then the great commission is for everybody.
So our problem is that there's sin in the world and death by sin.
That there's all kinds of problems in our culture.
But the problems are of the heart.
God transforms the heart through regeneration, through salvation.
And he sanctifies us and helps us to learn through sanctification through discipleship.
And that it's our responsibility, everybody, everybody who knows Jesus as Savior.
It's our responsibility to adopt that mission, to tell everybody we can about Jesus, and to help teach them to obey all that God's command us to do.
The message today is really this.
How in the world are we going to do that?
How do we actually accomplish that?
Who agrees?
This is the responsibility of the church.
We glorify God.
No doubt about it.
The chief of the end of man is to glorify God.
How do we do that on this planet?
We just studied in Sunday school Jeremiah.
And in Jeremiah chapter 29, which is what we studied this morning, God told Jeremiah to tell the children of Israel,
hey, you're going to be in this Babylon, in this land, among these people who don't believe in me for at least 70 years.
So what you need to do is to obey me and trust me and to do things to thrive in Babylon.
We live in a culture that is sinful.
Who agrees?
What are we supposed to do while we're here on the earth?
We're supposed to do the Great Commission.
How will we do that as a church?
Now here's the good news.
I believe with all my heart that not only were the words of Jesus inspired.
Who agrees that Jesus' words were inspired?
That he, in the beginning was the word.
He was the logos.
In the beginning was the word.
The word was with God.
The word was God.
The same was in the beginning with God.
The word became flesh and dwelt among us, the Bible says.
And so Jesus' words and his teaching were inspired.
But I also want to say to you, and I want you to think about this, I believe Jesus' methods were inspired.
That the way that Jesus did ministry was inspired.
Like when he came, he was teaching us to do ministry.
Who agrees that if we try to do the ministry that Jesus taught the disciples to do, we're on the right track?
Right.
And so I believe that it's important for us to say, okay, not only are we going to believe what Jesus said, we're going to pay attention to what he did.
And in the Gospels, we find a really clear picture of how Jesus did this ministry when he was here.
And it's a lot like, I believe, something that looks more like a map than like a menu of choices of ways you can pick from.
How do we do ministry?
We're going to do ministry the way we choose from the menu of options that are afforded to us.
I don't believe that's how we ought to do it.
I believe that it ought to look like a map.
It's a lot easier to go do this first, then this, then this to get us to a place and a direction to see where we're going.
And so Jesus, I believe, and I want to make the case that Jesus gives us a framework for how we can model our ministry to make disciples of all nations.
Is that interesting to you at all?
What is that framework?
Well, I believe that Jesus ministered to four distinct groups of people.
Okay?
The first group of people that he ministered to that I want to bring up today, and he did it in different ways.
The first group of people is the crowds.
Jesus ministered to crowds of people.
In the verse that Brother Bill Long read to us, we find in the second half of it these words in Matthew 4 verse 23, it says this.
And Jesus went about all Galilee teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, healing all manner of sickness and disease among the people.
And his fame went throughout all Syria and they bought undemn sick people that were taken with diverse diseases and torments and those which were possessed with devils and those which were a lunatic and those that had palsy and he healed them.
And they followed him and there followed him great.
What's the next word?
Multitudes of people from Galilee and from Decapolis and from Jerusalem and Judea and from beyond Jordan.
The word multitudes is used in the gospel multiple times.
Jesus ministered to multitudes.
Can you think of any times that Jesus ministered to multitudes?
Have you ever considered the feeding of the 5,000?
Right?
And Matthew 14, it records that.
Towards them.
What was Jesus's attitude to the multitudes?
It was, there was varied at times but at least in this place he had compassion towards the multitude.
There was a time where Jesus stood looking over the city of Jerusalem and says, oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often have I longed to gather you like a hen, gather her chicks beneath her wings but you would not.
His intention, Jesus loved people and he loved the multitudes.
Think about like when those four men brought their paralytic friend to Jesus and it says that when they got there, verse 19 of Luke chapter 5 and when they could not find what way they might bring him in because of the, what is it?
Do you see it?
Multitude, they went to the house top and let him down through the tiling with his couch into the midst of Jesus.
There was a multitude there.
Do you remember when the woman had the issue of blood and she had been bleeding for years and spent her living, going to doctors, trying to get it healed.
The Bible says in the Old Testament that when the Messiah comes there would be healing in his wings and the Bible describes wings in the Jewish account as the hem of the garment was called the wings.
There was healing in his wings.
And when this woman, Jesus is walking with a crowd going to another place where he's going to do a miracle and there's tons of people pressing him.
And he feels this, the Bible describes this virtue that left him and he stops in the middle of these crowds.
He says, who touched me?
And Peter is like, who touched you?
You ever been like at a concert at the fair or something and you're in the middle of the crowds?
You don't ever ask in that moment who touched me.
It's the sweaty guy.
That's who touched you.
Who is really into country music and shouldn't be.
That's who touched you.
And so Peter is like, what are you talking about?
And then Jesus says to the woman, hey, your faith has made you whole.
Jesus ministered to crowds.
And by the way, he was pretty incredible at it.
He taught better than anybody ever taught.
If Jesus walked in in personal form, who agrees, I would stop preaching.
The floor is now yours.
He taught as one having authority.
He was the word.
He healed people authentically.
It wasn't trickster healings.
It wasn't, oh, your head feels better.
Send in money to my ministry.
That's not what was going on.
People with withered hands, their hand was healed.
People who could not see, began to see.
People who could not hear, began to hear.
People who were dead, got up out of the grave.
Jesus healed.
Jesus did miracles.
Sometimes Jesus fed the crowds.
But that's not what he did.
And afterwards it's kind of interesting.
So many of them, there was a time after he fed the crowds, the next day they were trying to chase him.
Because they want to be fed again, right?
You can assemble a crowd when you feed them.
If you feed them, they will come, right?
And Jesus looks at them and is like, listen, you want to make me king, not because of what I've said,
you want to make me king because of the food I made.
You are trying to make me the Burger King.
That's my interpretation, right?
You just want the food.
I'm the bread of life, that's what he said.
And so he ministered to crowds.
But that's not what he did the majority of the time.
He didn't just minister to crowds.
Who agrees, Jesus could have had a huge ministry if he would have just been at Caesarea Philippi.
Preaching and healing.
Come see Jesus, he knows everything.
He can heal everybody.
Plus you will get a free sandwich for lunch, right?
Just come on.
And who agrees there would be some big crowds.
But that's not all that he did.
He didn't just minister to crowds.
Jesus ministered in a community of disciples.
In our text that brother Bill Long said, in the latter part it says that he ministered to
multitudes.
But before he ever ministered to the multitudes, the Bible says in verse 18 of Matthew chapter
4 that the way that Jesus started his ministry after he was baptized, after he was tempted,
he came out and he did something interesting.
Verse 18, and Jesus walking by the sea of Galilee saw two brothers, Simon, Carl Peter and Andrew
his brother casting a net into the sea for they were fishers and he said to them, follow
me and I will make you fishers of men.
And what do they do?
Straight way it says, they left their nets and followed him.
Think about the timing of this.
Before he ever preached to a crowd, he called some men to be his disciples.
He did that first.
Not only are Jesus' words inspired, his methods are too.
Who agrees?
Okay.
So before he ever preached to a sermon or healed a person, he called some disciples.
I think that's interesting.
It was commonplace for a Jewish rabbi to call people to be his disciples.
Like the colleges of our day, the best colleges often try to recruit the most elite students
and the most elite students want to go to the best colleges.
That's what the Pharisees were doing in Jesus' day.
They would interview prospective disciples and when someone was good enough to make the cut,
the way that they would say, you graduated, you're one of my disciples, they would say, follow me.
But they would only say that to qualified candidates.
Jesus flipped this on its head.
Jesus went to people who weren't qualified.
These were not people who had already been trained.
These were fishermen.
Any fishermen in here?
These were people who weren't the best of the best.
Fishermen in that day often would be ceremonial and clean, like constantly.
But when he said, follow me and I'll make you to become fishers of men, they understood what he was saying.
He was telling them, be my disciples.
I'll make you into something.
And they understood that this was a call to leave their nets.
And in fact, we know from another passage that Jesus had in that moment caused them to bring up a great drop of fish to the point that they didn't have enough.
Their nets were breaking.
They were filling up their boats and the boats were sinking because of all the fish.
And I believe this is just my thing and this is extra.
I didn't even write this down.
Jesus was financing their education in that moment.
That he says, fishing is one thing.
I'll pay for your education.
Here's enough fish to take care of your family for a while to get enough money to be taken care of a while.
You follow me and I'll make you a fisher of men.
Jesus went to these fishermen.
He went to tax collectors, people of low reputation.
And he didn't call qualified people. He qualified people that he called.
It's a big difference.
And we learned the process by which he recruited.
And Mark 13, 14 even gives us how he did it.
It says in verse 13, he goes up into a mountain and called unto him whom he would.
He went up to the mountain to pray.
And it says in verse 14, and he ordained 12 that they should be with him.
And then he might send them forth to preach and to have power to heal sicknesses and to cast out devils.
So the whole time he's ministering to multitudes, he was also training at least those 12.
Sometimes he trained them by teaching them didactically.
He taught them like, hey, listen to this.
Sometimes they're learning while he's teaching the crowd and he'll even stop while he's teaching the crowd and say,
now, disciples, let me tell you what this means.
Sometimes afterwards he would say things to the crowds that they couldn't possibly get.
And so then the disciples, when they were by themselves and say, hey, when you said this, what did you mean by that?
He taught them like that.
Sometimes he trained them by showing them what to do.
He's feeding the 5,000. He's doing what he could do. They're doing what they could do, right?
He would send them out as part of their training.
And that was in the sense of verse 14.
He ordained the 12 that they should be with him and that he might, what?
Send them forth to preach and to cast out devils.
So he taught them didactically. He was an example to them.
And then he watched them and trained them and coached them as to what to do.
So Jesus ministered in multitudes before he ever ministered to a multitude.
He grabbed 12 guys.
But those weren't his only disciples.
You guys understand that, right?
The 12 weren't his only disciples.
There were people beyond that.
Jesus ministered to a congregation.
In fact, you know many of their names.
Who here has heard of Mary and Martha and Lazarus?
Who agrees they were disciples of Jesus?
Followers of Jesus.
You've heard of Joseph of Arimathea.
You've heard of Nicodemus.
People who followed Jesus who weren't part of the 12.
In fact, after Jesus' resurrection and after his ascension,
after Judas, one of the 12 had betrayed Jesus.
One of the first things that disciples did was, hey, we need to fulfill what the Old Testament said
and to have another one take up his office.
And so they cast lots and came up with this guy, Matthias,
but the qualifications for even being one of the 12 after that to take Judas' spot was,
hey, this person that we vote on to be a part of the 12, to replace Judas,
has to have been here during the whole entire ministry of Jesus from the time that he was baptized
until his ascension, his resurrection and ascension.
Because one of the main things that the apostles did was, those 12 was to be once sent as witnesses of who Jesus was
and that he died, that he was buried, and that he rose again.
And what's amazing is history tells us all but one of those guys was margher for their faith.
And one was left exiled on the Isle of Patmos.
You know them by Jesus' own word.
He said to them, he said to Peter that on this rock, I will build my assembly, my church.
The word for church is the word assembly.
Assembly of what? Assembly of people, assembly of disciples, Christ followers,
people who are not just there for the food or the show, but people who are true followers or disciples or learners of Jesus.
And you even know them by number.
We know the number of the multitudes at least a couple of times, the feeding of the... how many?
Five thousand.
We know the number of the community of disciples, how many disciples were there?
Twelve, correct.
But we know that at the end in Acts chapter 2, before the Holy Spirit came, that there was 120 that were in the upper room.
We know that according to 1 Corinthians 15, Jesus was seen by as many as 500 brethren at once.
We know them by number.
And so Jesus ministered to multitudes.
He ministered to the 12th.
He ministered a community.
He ministered to a congregation.
Lastly, Jesus ministered to a core group within his 12 disciples.
There was three guys that got a piece of Jesus that the other 12 didn't get, that the other 120 to 500 did not get, that the crowds did not get.
Those three men were Peter, James, and John.
What I would say, a core group that were there.
Five times in the gospels, Peter, James, and John are mentioned as a group at the healing of Peter's mother-in-law in Mark 1 at the raising of Gyrus' daughter from the dead on the mount of transfiguration when Jesus was transfigured before them.
At the Olivet discourse right before the Lord's Supper when Jesus explained what would happen in the end times.
And with Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, it says that he had his disciples there and then he had Peter, James, and John go a little further, it says, and pray.
Just prior to his trial and crucifixion.
We don't have many one-on-one conversations that Jesus had with his disciples because most of the teaching he did was done in the context of the group, the 12, the 120, or the multitude.
And at the end of his ministry, Jesus had set up these three to help lead the 12 in that early church.
Those 12 helped lead the 120 that became 3,120 on the first day of the Holy Spirit, indwelling the people of God after Jesus left.
Isn't that amazing?
They could embrace the 3,000 as converts, but not just converts, but then disciple them to grow them as disciples and help them embrace the mission because Jesus had equipped them for ministry and for leadership.
So do you get my point?
Don't lose out on me, okay?
I know it's hot in here.
Maybe that's just me.
I'm a little bit chubby.
Okay.
Four groups. What are they?
The crowd, the community, the congregation, and that core group.
Why am I telling you this?
What if we embrace Jesus' method of ministry as our method of ministry?
Pfft.
Mind blown.
If we want the blessings of the ministry that Jesus had, we must take the approach that Jesus took.
That is, we should not expect Jesus' blessing if we're not doing what he commanded.
He had a disciple making ministry.
He reached people.
He taught people.
And he sent people out to minister.
He did this through a very specific process.
He helped people take steps to follow him.
What if we modeled our ministry like Jesus' ministry?
That's what's been happening here for over, this year will be the 70th anniversary of Trinity Baptist Church.
We're going to celebrate it on the first Sunday of December.
Isn't that amazing?
I am so grateful for God's hand of blessing and His sovereignty over this particular ministry.
Who's grateful for this place?
And for these people, and I'm grateful for those who have gone before, who have led this church to be a great commission church.
I'm not changing the mission of our church.
I'm clarifying how we're going to embrace it.
If the great commission is a process where we reach people for Christ by preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ to the lost.
If when they believe, we baptize them and then we teach them to obey everything that Jesus commanded them with the goal of helping everyone who has reached to join in and embrace that same mission.
And if this process needs to happen in every corner of the world, starting locally and going to the uttermost part of the earth.
Who agrees? That's a big thing.
We better have a plan.
We better have a process.
We better have a pathway turn by turn directions to help everyone be a part of that ministry.
And so we can make disciples of Jesus Christ faithfully by helping people identify and take their next step on the discipleship pathway.
We have a discipleship pathway by which you can grow and be a part of that mission in our church.
Those steps are based on the four groups that Jesus ministered to.
The first group is those who have not taken any step at all.
It's the crowd.
Jesus ministered to the crowd.
Jesus had compassion on the crowd.
Do you get it?
The crowd we're called to minister to most immediately is Hancock County, Ohio and the surrounding areas.
According to the Census Bureau, there were 74,920 people in Hancock County in April of 2020.
That may not sound very...
I thought Hancock County is small compared to other counties.
74,000 people.
Almost 75,000 people.
Who agrees? We have a lot of people in our county.
If you were to add up all the people who regularly attend a Bible preaching, gospel preaching church in our area on Sunday,
we have a lot of people that need to be reached and that we need more Bible preaching churches.
Who agrees with me?
If you keep the goal in view, 75,000 people, and that doesn't even count people who would come that are beyond that,
there's a lot of work to be done.
I'm glad for the 300 or so people that are here today.
74,000 people.
Who need Jesus?
So, we have a lot of people to reach.
And some who are part of the crowd are starting to come on Sunday mornings to our services.
Maybe you're here today.
Maybe you wouldn't describe yourself as a disciple of Jesus.
Maybe you're not a believer.
We have public services where everyone is welcome to come.
We put our services on the Internet for people to hear the message of the gospel.
And we have people who are part of the multitude, the crowd become a part of our congregation.
Primarily, though, our main way of doing it is not to, this is so important.
There's kind of two approaches you can take.
Come and see or go and tell.
I'm for both.
We got to reach people everywhere we can.
Are you with me?
But we can't wait for them to come and see.
We have to go and tell.
We have to.
And so, our desires that people who come and are part of the multitude, the crowd become part of our congregation.
That's step one on the discipleship pathway.
Step one is our congregation or our worship service.
There are many people that were a part of the crowd that Jesus spoke to that became a part of the assembly of disciples.
The first step that we want people to take is going from the crowd to becoming a part of our congregation.
How does that happen?
Well, we practice what the Bible teaches about the church.
We practice what's called regenerate church membership, which is what the Bible teaches.
To be a member of our church, you have to have placed your faith in Jesus Christ as your Savior.
And to follow Him in baptism.
That's not the finish line.
That's the starting line.
We want you to know Jesus Christ as your Savior and to be baptized.
To be a member of our church, you have to have done that.
That is what the Great Commission teaches.
And this was the practice of that early church that had been directly discipled by Jesus.
In Acts 2 verse 37, it says...
That's what repent means.
Turn from what you are believing to believing in Jesus.
If you look at the context of all that he was teaching them.
And be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus for the remission of sins.
And you shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.
When you receive your gift of the Holy Ghost, you will receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.
And you shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.
When you receive your Christ as Lord, you are saved.
And those who are saved, profess their salvation.
And identify themselves with Jesus through baptism.
To join our church, you have to have been saved and spiritually baptized in a church of like faith and practice.
And by joining the church, you are partnering together with this local body.
And making yourself accountable to those in the church and to those outside of the church.
You don't have to be a church member to be saved.
But to follow Jesus as a disciple means to be a part of a local body of baptized believers.
Jesus loved and gave himself up for the assembly.
So if you are part of the crowd, we want you to be saved.
We want you to be baptized and to be a part of our congregation.
And when you assemble here with your church on the Lord's day,
you can grow in a way that people who are not part of the congregation do not grow.
This is a rare message for me.
95% of the time I am going to be in a text and we are going to walk verse by verse through the Bible
because this is what transforms people's hearts.
The Holy Spirit of God using the word of God to transform people's hearts.
Who agrees?
And that's what we are going to do.
And when people come and hear the word of God, I have people in this church, this is not a credit to me.
This is not me being a great preacher.
I have people come to me and say, do you have a video camera at my house?
Because what you are talking about is happening in my house.
And you know what that is?
The word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword.
Piercing the dividing asunder of soul and spirit and joy in the mirror.
And as a discerner of the thoughts and the intense of the heart.
The Bible is alive.
The word of God is alive because the Holy Spirit is alive.
And when you get saved, the Holy Spirit comes inside of you.
And people that come and hear it and hear it with the sense of wanting to obey it.
When people do that, it will begin to transform their lives.
I believe that with all my heart.
We sing the word of God, we read the word of God, we teach the word of God.
We even give you a time to respond to the word of God after it's preached.
That's the point of this Sunday morning service.
And the first step is to become part of the congregation.
And attend the service as a priority of being a disciple.
Here's the second step.
Are you ready?
Step number two on our discipleship pathway is our Sunday school classes.
Jesus ministered the crowds to the congregation.
Then to the community.
When you come into the worship service at our church, you can experience all that's offered in this experience.
Right?
You can worship God through the songs.
You can worship God through hearing the preaching of God's word.
You can begin to know people who sit around you or that may pass you in the hallway.
Often though people who attend our services only do not get to know the people in the church.
Jesus called 12 to follow him.
Jesus Christ taught the disciples all of these commands that were called the one and others.
Can you think of any of the one and others?
Did Jesus say love one another?
By this all men know that you, my disciples, if you love one another, right?
It's difficult to love one another and to pray for one another and to care for one another if we don't know one another.
Right?
And so we have created environments much like the early church did for people to get to know each other and love each other in Christian community with a focus on God's word.
Our Sunday school classes meet every week an hour before our services.
They are open groups, which means they expect new people to come and be a part of them every week.
In my ministry and church, I have known in every church I've been in people that have come for years to the service that know basically no one.
That know maybe a few that sit around them, but there's people in this section that have gone together for years and people in this section that have gone together for years in the same service and have no idea who each other are.
It ought not to be that way.
But we can't introduce everybody to everyone, but let's introduce you to someone.
And so there are open groups that meet each week.
They expect new people to come and be a part of them every week.
Most of our classes are mixed gender.
Most are between 10 and 20 people in attendance.
Some are larger, some are smaller, but that gives you an idea.
There is a ladies class that meets and they're just ladies.
We keep men out of the ladies class.
Most men don't want to go to the ladies class.
But they're organized by age and demographics.
And in those classes you can get to know people attending the church that are like you.
In those classes, we have a plan to go through every book of the Bible every nine years.
You say, wow, that's a big plan.
What part of this do we want to skip?
Is all this important?
Right.
So we want to have a plan to get through the word of God.
And it's going to take some time.
But it's okay.
You've got the rest of your life.
We never graduate from this.
And so that's the plan.
We get together.
We get to know each other.
We encourage each other.
We love each other.
We do community together.
We spend time together.
And the point of it is to learn God's word with people, to love people, to care about people,
and to minister to them.
You need people around you that know you and that you know and to be encouraged by them and to encourage them.
And they've done research on people who get involved in open groups in their church.
They found that 75% of those who take this step are still in church five years later.
While only 25% of those who only take the worship service step are still in church five years later.
People that are connected in community in the church often grow at a different pace and depth than those who just attend the worship service.
And so from the crowd to the congregation to community, we want to do one more step.
And that's step three.
And I haven't talked to you about this step publicly for two and a half years.
And today I get to talk to you about it.
Step three in our discipleship pathway is discipleship groups.
Jesus had Peter, James and John that he poured into at a different level.
And poured into the 12.
And a different level than the 120 and different in the multitudes.
The first two steps you may have already been aware of.
But this step is somewhat new in our church.
Jesus told them, follow me and I will make you to become fishers of men.
And discipleship groups are different than Sunday school classes.
While Sunday school classes are open, meaning they are ongoing and expect new people every week.
Discipleship groups are closed and do not expect new people every week in each particular group once the group is started.
They are small groups of three to five people that are of the same gender, men with men, women with women.
And they meet for the purpose of growing in discipleship through accountable relationships.
In those groups that meet weekly for about 12 to 18 months, they learn to do five disciplines.
They learn to be in the Word of God on a daily basis.
They learn to get something from the Word of God in that time.
They are accountable to each other to do that, to have that discipline, to pray, to care about how they're taught to be accountable,
to have someone that they're praying for who needs Jesus and actively trying to reach for Jesus.
They pray together and fellowship together.
That's what they do.
What I've watched happen, I've seen every one of these environments grow people.
I've seen people who weren't coming to church, begin to come to church and God's Word begins to change them and they get saved.
How are you excited when that happens?
It's amazing. I've seen people who were formerly disconnected, they were just coming, but then they get into a group and people start to love them.
They start to love people and they're learning from the Word of God in their Sunday school classes and they're growing.
And then I see people take this step from their Sunday school classes and get into discipleship groups.
And where in this service, in the congregation, you're coming to here and I have gotten into the Word of God and learned it.
And I want to feed you the Word of God who feels like they've been fed when there's preaching that goes on.
And when you go into Sunday school and the science school teacher feeds you, the discipleship takes one step further and says,
hey, you've learned how to be fed. Now it's time to learn how to feed yourself.
It's time to learn how to feed yourself.
You need more Bible in your life than what you get in this service.
You need more Bible in your life than what you get in just this service or just in Sunday school one day a week.
You need the Word of God every day of your life.
And you don't need to just read it. You've got to obey it.
This isn't for knowing. This is for doing.
I wish that what was in my heart could directly get into your heart about this area.
There is such a treasure in these pages that if you don't get into it and dig it out, you are missing out.
You're missing out and all. And here's what happens.
But to just say, okay, hey, start reading the Bible. Here's your Bible. Good luck. That's hard.
You need someone that can help you learn.
Remember the Ethiopian eunuch and Philip comes and says, hey, do you understand what you're reading?
And what did he say? How can I unless somebody shows me.
And he says he sat at that place and opened up Isaiah 53 and started there to teach unto him Jesus.
And that's what happens.
And in the discipleship group, the goal is to help each other, each person learn how to feed themselves so that later on they can feed others.
We help people get into the Word of God until the Word of God gets into them.
And when the Word of God gets into you, then the Word of God comes out of you in obedience as you submit to it.
And when you talk to lost people, you know what that's called? Evangelism.
The Word of God coming out of you when you talk to lost people, that's evangelism.
And the Word of God coming out of you to your kids when you're raising your kids, you know what that's called?
Parenting.
And when the Word of God comes out of you at church with people in your groups, with people that you love, your friends and loved ones, you know what that's called?
Sometimes it's called an admonition. Sometimes it's called provoking one another, loving the good works.
And sometimes it's called a judgment. Are you with me?
We need a bunch of people that are full of the Word of God that are filled with the Holy Spirit, preaching and proclaiming and encouraging and being sent to make disciples of all nations.
And so that's what happens.
Here's what some people in our church are saying about discipleship groups. This is what they say.
I'm becoming more bold in my witnessing.
We sent out a survey, hey, you've done this group for the past year. What are you learning?
I'm becoming more bold in my witnessing.
My wife, years ago, there was a girl that was in a group like this at our previous church.
And she, here's how the prayer requests went in the discipleship group over a few months.
Man, my boss is really annoying.
Would you pray for me that I can endure my boss?
A couple weeks later.
Man, I'm learning so much through the reading.
I started telling my boss, and I was worried to talk to her about Jesus before, but now I'm just telling her about the things I'm learning.
And I found out that it's easy to talk to my boss about God.
A couple weeks later.
I think my boss doesn't know Jesus.
And we've been talking a couple weeks later, hey, pray for my boss.
Because we've been talking, I invited her to church and she decided to come.
And a couple weeks later, my boss came and got saved.
I got a praise.
What changed?
This girl knew the Romans road.
This girl had been in church her whole life.
She knew that there were tracks out in the...
She knew there were tracks out there.
She knew that she could hand her boss a track.
What changed?
God changed her heart.
The word of God got into her heart.
And then what came out of her mouth was different.
And all of a sudden, this boss, now had something to respond to.
Some people say this is an opportunity for spiritual transformation for every believer that needs to be part of.
Every one of this truly cares for each other and encourages one another.
One person said, I love Jesus more now and it shows I'm growing up.
Now, what's the pathway?
Crowd, congregation, community, core, commission.
Worship service, Sunday school class, discipleship groups being sent.
Step four is commission.
Our aim in all of this is multiplication.
Our aim in this is service and sending.
The goal is just like Jesus.
Jesus reached and then he trained and then he sent.
We reach people, we teach people, then we send people out to minister.
People get trained in our services.
People get trained in our services and at the end of the services, they're not dismissed, they're sent.
Disciples get trained in our Sunday school.
They minister to each other and to the lost and saved.
We're becoming a part of our church.
The church ministers to each other as they grow in love and provoke one another to love and to good works.
Discipleship groups multiply so that those who have learned to walk with the Lord and evangelize and pray help others to do that as they were taught and held accountable to do so.
As people grow in the Lord, they get a heart for the lost.
I'm watching that happen in our church.
Believers, here it is, this is so important.
Believers are used to the Lord to reach unbelievers.
Discipleship groups multiply discipleship groups and create commission leaders.
Sunday school classes help send people to start new groups and do new ministry.
I'm so thankful you guys helped us put a bathroom on the back of our building so that we could get the preschoolers back with the children.
We're about to move our nurseries over.
We're going to build four more new adult classes for Sunday school and for discipleship groups.
Thank you for giving towards that.
Isn't that awesome?
We're growing.
We have space.
It's an amazing thing.
We want Sunday school classes to start Sunday school classes.
And we want churches to start churches by sending leaders to Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and the uttermost part of the earth as God calls people who have been discipled and been equipped.
And where all these people are sent to.
Where are they sent to?
As they're trained, what are we sending them to do?
They're sent back to the crowd.
Do you get it?
They're sent back to the crowd.
They're sent back to the multitude.
The 74,920 people in Hancock County.
The 11.78 million people in Ohio.
The 331.9 million people in our nation.
And the 7.88 billion people on our planet.
Do you have a view for the mission?
Do you have it?
Do you have a view for the mission?
It's a big mission.
So that's our pathway.
Congregation.
Next slide.
Community.
Core.
The core commission.
The community mission.
The congregation commission back to the crowd.
So that's the pathway.
What's your next step?
Pastor, that sounds like a lot.
What are you trying to get me to do?
I'm trying to give you steps.
In Trinity Baptist Church, we think steps not programs.
We have programs, but the programs help us facilitate steps
because we're not trying to just make programs.
We're trying to make disciples.
Do you get it?
We're not trying to make more programs.
We're trying to make disciples.
And so where yet?
Are you part of the crowd?
Maybe your next step is to become a part of a local New Testament church.
Are you part of the crowd?
And the next step is to get saved.
What's the mission?
The Bible says that we're all sinners.
And our sin separates us from God.
The soul that sins, it shall die.
It's a point of an end once dying after this, the judgment.
He's not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
The Bible says the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
If you put your faith and trust in Jesus, the Bible says that you are
saved.
Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
And so that may be your next step.
We don't want you to go to hell.
We want you to go to heaven.
It's as simple as that.
We're not a bunch of good people that are going to heaven because we're good.
We're people that have trusted in what Jesus said.
Like that thief on the cross who looked at Jesus and said,
remember me when you come in your kingdom.
Remember our faith and trust in Jesus knowing he's our only shot.
But that that's not where it stops.
Then we become his disciples.
We get baptized.
Maybe that's your next step.
You need to get baptized and become a part of this New Testament church.
Maybe you've not been a church member for a long time.
You don't have a local church.
We're asking to be a disciple and to be a disciple.
You need to make yourself accountable to this church and help us to be accountable to you
and to know that we have an accountability of you.
That's called church membership.
So take this step from the crowd to the congregation.
If you've been coming to this service for a long time and you're like,
you know what, Pastor Ben, you said that there are some people that don't know a lot of people
and that aren't practicing the one another in the context of the assembly.
I need to get involved in a Sunday school class.
Maybe that's your next step.
We're averaging about 230 people in Sunday school and about 330 people in our church service.
So there's about 100 people that are coming to this that aren't coming to a Sunday school class.
And I think it would be awesome if you took that step.
If you took that step.
So if you're not, you get to know people, you get to love people, you get to getting God's word at that level.
It means an hour before the Sunday service.
So you can come next Sunday and just try out a class.
There are those classes.
You can find a menu of those classes back in the welcome center.
Maybe you've been coming to the Sunday school class and you've been fed and you've learned how to feed on God's word
and you're like, man, I need to grow as a disciple.
Maybe the next step for you is to get involved in the discipleship group.
When my wife and I came two and a half years ago, she took three or four ladies.
I took five guys, Deacons and Sunday school teachers mostly.
And for a year we met and we did exactly this.
I taught them to be in God's word every day, to pray every day, to help them grow in their evangelistic zeal.
And then at the end of that year, each one of those guys took three or four, five guys
and they've been doing that for a year.
And out of those groups now we have between 10 and 15 men and women who are ready to take on three to five men with men, women with women,
to pour their lives, to do what has been done for them in your life, to help.
And what's cool about it is like, it's not about like knowing it's about doing.
So they've learned how to be in God's word.
And you can help them by being accountable to you by helping to train you.
And then you can learn from them how to grow in your walk with Lord in these discipleship groups.
And then here's the thing for all of us.
We don't wait until people know how to navel gaze in the Bible before they start telling people about Jesus.
We are trying to send people out all the time.
All of us need to have somebody that we're concerned about telling them about Jesus.
Who agrees with me?
We all need to be doing that.
And so maybe that's your step.
Maybe there's someone in your life that needs Jesus.
Maybe there's someone in your life that you know got saved, but no one's come alongside them and helped them.
Listen, we don't want to have babies.
And then abandoned babies. That's a tragedy.
We don't want to have spiritual babies and then abandon them.
We want to make sure that everyone that gets saved in our church knows what the next step is.
And that there's people that are there that are ready to help them grow to be everything God's called them to be.
And then all of us can then adopt the mission and make disciples of all nations.
Imagine what a church would look like if we fully gave ourselves to doing this ministry.
What could happen?
Who agrees our city could be better?
Our church would be better.
This community would be better.
And eventually God may answer the call, our prayer to Him to call someone in this place to some other part of the county,
to some other part of the state, to some other part of the world, to start churches and to make disciples.
People's eternities are at stake. Do you believe that?
So my question to you is this, what's your next step?
What's your next step?
Would you bow your heads and close your eyes with me?