Understanding Spiritual Growth - Lesson 3

Dr. Stephen Martyn 
Understanding Spiritual Growth  
sf304-03
Historic Teachings on Discipleship 
Lesson Transcript

As we launch into our third little teaching time here together, I want to remind you of a classic book by A.B. Bruce that was printed, first printed in 1871. It's still in print today, A.B. Bruce. It's called The Training of the Twelve, and I consider it truly a classic work where Bruce is trying to lead us in this whole discipleship ministry.

Here's what he says on page 16. Bruce wrote, both from his words, now his here is Jesus, both from his words and from his actions we can see that he, Jesus, attached supreme importance to that part of his work which consisted in training these men as if it had been the principal part of his own earthly ministry. As such, in one sense, it really was.

Now, I think what Bruce is trying to say here is that the church then, which was at nearly 100 years past the great Wesleyan revival that had swept across England and Scotland and Ireland and then it had spilled over into the new world and had gone global, that was starting to fizzle out as a movement. And so discipleship was not being taken as seriously then. Now, I want you to think about other great authors who have spoken to us in this area.

One of them is my old professor who is still with us, Robert Coleman, The Master Plan of Evangelism. Dr. Coleman wrote, he first penned this, it was first published in 1963. This is one of the older versions of this.

This thing has sold millions of copies and it's still being sold today. I had a course from him in seminary that basically covered this text and I think if I would have just truly listened to the man then, I would have been a far better disciple, discipler than what I was. So, Coleman is very, I think he's an essential read, a quick easy read on our major task of evangelism.

Really, it's going to be a whole world of discipleship, not just bringing them in, but bringing them into maturity. Then, let's go way far back. Let's go into the fourth century, into the early 300s and talk about the father of monasticism who was Antony, A-N-T-O-N-Y, sometimes referred to as Antony the Great.

Now, Antony really helped pave the way for who knows how many millions upon millions of people to be discipled in the way of Christ. Now, as Protestants, especially as evangelical Protestants, we tend to dismiss these early church fathers, but that's to our peril. There's great lessons in formation that we can learn from the desert fathers.

What did Antony tell us? Now, you can learn about Antony in the writings of Bishop Athanasius. Athanasius, who's a great defender of the faith. I mean, his work on the Incarnation is tiny little work, but it's, in my mind, the classical book on the Incarnation of Christ.

The North African Egyptian bishop who fought mightily against the heresies of that day. So, Athanasius gave us Antony. Now, what did we learn from Antony? Well, we learned how important withdrawing is for the sake of being formed in the image of Christ is.

It took Antony a long time to have the chains broken in his own life. But friends, when the terrible Diocletian persecution fired up across North Africa, in the very early 300s, the Spirit led Antony, he was in his middle 60s now, to come out of the desert where he'd been training a few. But the Spirit led him and said, go up to Alexandria and stand with the saints, for the saints.

Now, I'm talking about the holy ones, the Christians. I'm not talking about any one particular person. We're all in that, every Christian, true Christian is in that category.

The saints were being thrown into jail. Some of the saints were being thrown into work camps. But before they were thrown into the work camps, they hamstrung them in one leg.

Now, you have your Achilles tendon cut. That means you're going to limp around for the rest of your life. And they poked out one eye.

Now, you and I think we have persecution today. Others were martyred. They stripped them of their property.

And so, Antony goes up to stand with the saints, to go with them before into court. He was not afraid to die. One morning, or one evening, the Holy Spirit told him to wash his clothes.

Now, in that day and age, when you washed your clothes, that meant you were being prepared to be martyred. The next day, Antony goes out in the middle of the main highway, their street, and he stands before the prefect as the prefect was coming up the road. Now, that would have been certain martyrdom.

Yet we know historically, the prefect turned aside and did not slaughter Antony. Antony went on to live another 60 plus years doing all sorts of discipleship making. And by the way, that probably was the turning point of breaking the terrible Diocletian persecution.

We know that the Edict of Milan came along by 313 and that backed off, that made that persecution backed off. Antony lived in close community with others. The world made its path to Antony, including major leaders of that day to seek counsel from Antony.

We know that he worked to meet the needs of the poor. We know that they offered spiritual guidance to regular people around them, ministered to them. We learn much from the life of Antony.

I'll tell you the main thing we learn from the life of Antony is how to enter into spiritual warfare, how to take on demonic forces. It's a powerful classic book, a highly encouraged Bishop Athanasius book on the life called The Life of Antony. All right, let's move forward.

My colleague in the faith and at seminary, George Hunter, wrote this wonderful text called The Celtic Way of Evangelism. Well, it's amazing that the life of Antony and then also the writings of John Cashion, who followed some 40 something years after Antony's death, went global in the time. And there were those in Ireland who picked up on the way and they wanted to have their own what they called dies art, desert experience.

And so, the Celtic Christians lived as whole families in community, and they evangelized family units. And that spread into Scotland by the mid-550s. And then it spread into Northumbria or northeastern England.

It brought Christianity to a huge part of what we call the British Isles today. So this is a text worth looking at. All of these texts can help you get a bigger vision of what we are about.

Then following Antony and John Cashion, Benedict arose in the 500s, Saint Benedict. Now you think, what in the world is a monk leading a monastery? What does he possibly can possibly say to us today? Friends in humility, an immense amount about the spiritual life and the one who can bring it to life for you is the great Anglican spiritual theologian, Esther de Waal, Esther de Waal, seeking God, the way of Benedict. Let me encourage you to dive into these easy to read, but you can't read in fast type books.

Here's a text on what it means and how important it is to listen, to listen to the Lord. And how do we do that? What does it mean to live a stable life? What does it mean to change at the same time? Because you're not going to follow Christ without pretty substantial change. What does it mean to balance things out in your life, to have a balanced work, a ministry, play, family life? How do we relate to material things, to people? How do we relate to authority? This is probably more apropos today than it has ever been.

I use this text regularly and I know it's a life changing text. This can help you get a sense of what deep discipleship is all about. Now, look, we turn to the Reformation, to Luther and Calvin, and especially to Calvin for his understanding of the church.

I require Calvin in one of the main classes we teach on what is the nature of the church? What does it mean to be in the body of the church? We want to know who these people are. Another one that I love, if we go past now the Reformation, the early 1600s, if we go into the 1700s, we see the Wesleyan movement. I love Howard Snyder, also one of my colleagues, the radical Wesley.

Listen, I encourage you, let Wesley speak for himself. Just look at the techniques. Let me share something with you.

I've studied a number of congregations in the United States, been to a number of congregations. And one of the ones that really touched me the most is Redeemer Prez in New York City. And, you know, the founding pastor of Redeemer Prez was Tim Keller.

And, you know, I was blown away in those services. But what really touched me is how he adopted some of these classic techniques, including in Wesley. So if you're going to be in Keller's church, you're going to meet in a home group every Friday night.

And then you've got instructional time on Saturday mornings. And I went into a congregation in downtown New York City that was filled with younger adults. So let's understand what is the two-year process that Wesley said, hey, it's going to take two years at least to get this thing rolling and to get the means of grace, these primary disciplines set in our lives dispositionally.

Let me also have you look at another contemporary person, Greg Ogden. Do you know Greg Ogden's name? Transforming discipleship, making disciples a few at a time. I love that text, especially his concept of triads, you know, get three people.

You can move this with three people. I think it's I'd rather move with ten, but I think you can do it just as effectively with three as Greg Ogden said. And then Eugene Peterson, you hopefully have gotten the commemorative edition of a long obedience in the same direction.

This is classic discipleship. This is how Peterson discipled from the pulpit. But he was also smart enough to know that's not ever going to be enough strong biblical, theological messages.

But then he put his people in groups and he shepherded them in groups. Now, all of these are huge, huge background materials for you to be to be immersed in. Be wise, know the field here.

Most of all, be humble enough to know how other people have gone before you. And the Lord has blessed them with the fruit of mature disciples. Now, I just want to open it up now and see if there's any other comments about who we can look to as models today for discipleship.

Well, I did have one question about it. Could you explain what the triad is? Oh, just three people. OK, so it's just three people.

You've got you've got a leader. And I didn't bring the book with me because but anyway, you've got the leader and he she is taking on two other people over a period of time. It's a wonderful book.

It's a solid book. All in a pastoral setting. He was not the lead pastor.

He's the discipleship person. And of course, the point is, you multiply, you know, you train three or you train to send them out, multiply it. Chuck's got a word.

One of the books I read while I was in seminary was by Sherman, and it's called Your Work Matters to God. And it was one of those books that, you know, when you're in seminary, you think you're going to be a preacher and you're going to reach all these people. And I literally had to put the book down at the end of the first, second and third chapters because it reminded me of the fact that ministry is not exclusive to the pulpit.

No, no, absolutely. I mean, another name you could put in there is John Piper, too. Of course.

I mean, he's kind of the flagship, right? Any one particular text you want to... Well, his magnum opus was, you know, Desiring God. And the point that God is most glorified when it's not just an intellectual connection, but actually you delight in him more than you delight in anything else, which is huge. His book, Don't Waste Your Life, is the one that I gave away by the bucket loads.

Love that. Yeah. Yeah.

Good, good. All right. Here, the invitation now, the invitation to get to seek the counsel of others, especially others who have gone before you.

Of course, you're going to have to contextualize all of it. This is the difference between a program and a process. Don't bring in a program necessarily that works somewhere else without contextualizing it, but better still contextualize in terms of taking the best insights you see from disciple makers and making it appropriate for your setting.

I pray that the Lord will give you a fire in your heart to follow after his desire for people to be grown up who love him with all of their hearts, all of their souls, all their minds, all their strength. In Jesus name. Amen.