Ryan Hale

Band

Generations of disciples

As a team, our goal is to reach four generations of disciples within multiple streams of work that, they themselves will go on to make disciples and churches that will make disciples and start new churches. Our work focuses on several different groups of people whether they be African or Asian immigrants into Europe, by mobilizing native Europeans to do this same work, or by sharing the Gospel and mobilizing others in further locations, back in the countries from where many of the people that we reach here in Europe have come.

The plan to make four generations of disciples isn’t simply based on an arbitrary plan to reach this number. Instead, we see this number of generations as Paul writes to Timothy in his second letter to encourage him to continue in his faith, making disciples of people who will go on to teach others.

Similarly, as believers and followers of Christ, we believe that the role that Christ has left us with until he returns is to live out the life of the new creation that Christ has given to us, producing the fruit of the Holy Spirit, and then going on to teach others to do the same.

But there is an additional important lesson that we learn from Paul as we read his letter to Timothy. We shouldn’t only teach others to do the same, but instead Paul says that Timothy must teach others to teach others.

And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others.
2 Timothy 2:2

So how can we describe the chain of disciples that we see in this case? We can understand it in this way:

Paul has already taught Timothy in the presence of many people.

Timothy should now go on to teach others, the “reliable” people.

And those reliable people will be taught to such an extent that they can go on to teach others.

So in all, we see four generations of disciples in this example:

Paul
Timothy and witnesses
Reliable people
Others

This generational disciple-making is really no different than what we see in other places in Jesus’s teachings as well. For example, as Jesus was praying for his disciples just before going to the cross, he said:

My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message
John 17:20

Jesus is referring to his disciples, but he says he isn’t just praying for them. He is also praying for those who will come after them, those who will believe through their message. It was important that Jesus demonstrated through his teaching how the disciples should also teach others, and teach others to teach others!

Or we could even also look at the Great Commission:

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.
Matthew 28:19-20

Jesus tells his disciples to go and make disciples, but then he says that they are to teach those disciples everything he has commanded his disciples to do.

And what had he just commanded his disciples to do? To make disciples! So the disciples are not only to make a disciple, but they are to make disciples who are to make disciples. They must not only be disciple makers and make disciples, but they are to make makers of disciple-makers.

Why this emphasis?

We should ask ourselves… why do we see such an emphasis on this pattern of making disciples who will make disciples? Why do both Jesus and Paul make a point of doing this and teaching this as they perform their ministries?

I believe that there are three main reasons:

First, our desire is that the movement toward Christ and the growth of the kingdom of God will continue to spread even if persecution comes and someone, even the primary leader, is killed or somehow taken out of action in the work of the kingdom. By making disciples who can make disciples, it becomes impossible to stop the work because it is decentralized. There is no primary person, no primary focus except for the worship of Jesus himself.

This is why the work of the kingdom continued after Jesus returned to heaven to be with the Father. The kingdom didn’t stop growing. No, in fact, it was only at that point that it had begun.

In a similar way, as Paul is put in chains, the work of the early church continued to expand. We see that other people continued in sharing the Gospel, making disciples and starting new churches even when Paul was not there. They had learned what to do and now they carried on the work even when Paul was no longer in their midst.

Second, as a corollary to the first reason is that having a primary person around whom you are building an organization or a movement will likely create division. Despite being Christians and redeemed in Christ, there are still many situations where competition enters the picture, whether because someone desires to take the place of another as the leader of a movement, or those who are following begin to name their preferred leader. This selection of a leader creates division where there should be no division, but instead unity.

This is the type of situation that we saw in Corinth where some people in the church said that they followed Paul, some said that they followed Apollos, others Peter, and still others, Jesus himself.

Jesus taught his disciples that they should not vie for authority or power, seeking position over one another. Instead, he taught them that there should be love and submission to one another, all under the authority and headship of just one who is the creator, savior, and lord of all: Jesus, and him alone.

Third, as we think about the expansion of the Gospel, Jesus and Paul both taught the relatively slow, yet deep and thorough process of making a disciple. The multiplication effect of making disciples who can make disciples provides the possibility that more people, more quickly, can hear the Gospel and can follow Christ. The kingdom of God also becomes geographically unbound and unleashed as the Gospel runs along relational lines instead of being connected to a geographical location as we see in many of our churches today. In short, while making disciples in a particular moment can appear to be a very slow process, and in reality it is a slow process, the multiplicative effect of making disciples who can make disciples can move faster and go farther than any megachurch across the face of the earth when viewed over a period of time.

How does this happen?

Making several generations of disciples is the pattern that we see both in Jesus’s teachings as well as that of Paul, so we should ask ourselves: How does that happen?

This only happens by making disciples in a way that is Biblical and reproducible.

We must follow the teaching of the Bible. The examples that we see in the Bible are both what we must teach as well as a pattern that we should follow. We should seek out both the message as well as the method of teaching. At the very least, we should take principles from the method so that we can do the same. We not only should seek the theology from the scriptures but also understand the practice.

As a good friend of mine says, should I believe that the theology that I can learn in the Bible is inspired by God, but not believe that the practice is also inspired by God?

Our disciple-making practice must also be reproducible. The teaching that I give must be able to be done, and done simply, by the person that I am teaching. They must be able to do what I have done in a way that the next person can reproduce that same practice with yet another person, teaching them to do the same.

In these ways, ways that are Biblical and reproducible, we can see disciples of Jesus that are made from one person to the next, from generation to generation for the expansion of the kingdom of God, for his glory alone.

Making Disciples

The Royal Priesthood

One of the fundamental ideas for the work that we do, making disciples and planting churches and teaching others to do the same, is that God has made each of us to be his priests, collectively a “priesthood”. This is the belief that, if we are followers of Christ, if we are the people of God, we were all made to be his priests.

We believe, of course, that there are authority structures within the church. We believe that the church should be led by elders and that there are those referred to as deacons who are appointed to carry out special service-based tasks within the context of the church, but none of those responsibilities or roles would, in any way, negate someone’s identity or responsibility as a disciple of Christ. If we follow Christ, we are called to do everything that Jesus commanded, we are to teach others to do everything that Jesus commanded, and we are to teach others to teach others to do everything that Jesus commanded. To be priests means that we are to serve our God, carrying out all that God has told us to do in an act of love in response to the incredible love, grace, and mercy that he has shown for us.

From where in the Bible can we take the idea that we are all priests, collectively a priesthood? It is found, in fact, throughout the Bible, throughout the Word of God, so in this article, I want to highlight a few of the scriptures so as to help us see what God has said about us as priests as we serve him while also looking at the implications of this idea.

From the beginning until now

God made each of us in his image and called us to be fruitful, to multiply and fill the earth. This was the beginning and God’s plan, that we would be fruitful and multiply, filling the earth with God’s image. Every one of us were made in God’s image and so each of us are therefore a part of God’s plan, each of us carrying his image, each of us becoming a part of multiplying it across the earth for his glory.

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.

God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground. ”
Genesis 1:26-28

We believe that God’s plan has not changed. Despite the fall of man and woman into sin and despite man’s rebellion against God all throughout history, God continues to call each of us, even today, to multiply the true image of God, Jesus Christ himself, across the whole earth, amongst all nations.

Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
Matthew 28:18-20

God’s plan has remained the same. Just as it was from the beginning, as we can read it even now in Genesis 1, we see the same plan announced by Jesus in the “Great Commission”, recorded here in Matthew 28. We all, each and every one of us, have been commissioned, have been called to be part of his plan. We have all been called to serve God, to be his priests, to carry out his mission, to join God in begin part of his mission being completed here on the earth

The people of Israel

As part of this original and overarching plan, God’s original chosen people were the Israelites. God made a covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob, that if they would obey his commands, he would be their God and they would be his people. As God brought the Israelites out of their slavery in Egypt, he called Moses up onto the top of Mount Sinai where he gave Moses the law, starting with what we know today as the Ten Commandments.

Before announcing and writing out these laws, though, God told Moses the purpose of the people of Israel. He was clear in who he intended his people to be:

Then Moses went up to God, and the LORD called to him from the mountain and said, “This is what you are to say to the descendants of Jacob and what you are to tell the people of Israel: ‘You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites.”
Exodus 19:3-6

God brought the people out of Egypt with his power and might, delivering them from the mighty military power of the Egyptians that had kept them in chains. They had originally been welcomed into the nation of Egypt because of the family connection through Joseph, but as the pharaohs changed, the new pharaoh forgot about the commitment that the previous pharaoh had made to the Israelite people and instead enslaved them in order to do the physical work of building the nation of Egypt.

Now, to the Israelites, their time in Egypt was in their past because God had rescued his people.

Now, from one extended family, the Israelites had become one large nation, having multiplied from hundreds of people to hundreds of thousands, likely even more than one million people, and God had brought them out from Egypt into the wildnerness, taking them to the land that God had promised Abraham that his people would inherit.

Now, God is about to give his people his laws, but before he does, he tells Moses who he intends his people to be. They are to be a holy nation. In fact, they are to be a kingdom of priests.

God had made a covenant with the Israelites and they were to serve God within his kingdom. They were each meant to be priests. Yes, the Levites specifically served God in the tabernacle, and eventually in the temple that Solomon would build. That was the job of the Levites, but the identity of all of the Israelite people would be that they would all be his priests. They would all serve him. They would all represent God as individuals and as a nation before the rest of the nations. That was their identity and their identity gave them a purpose.

We can see, therefore, that this isn’t a new idea. This isn’t an idea that was invented by Martin Luther during the protestant reformation, nor even in the New Testament. It is repeated again and again throughout the Bible, but the idea that God made his people, all of his people, to be his priests is a very old idea. From the birth of the nation of Israel, God intended that all of his people would be his priests and they would all serve him.

Priests in the kingdom of God

Jesus came to earth as a descendent in the royal line of David, but he also came as a descendent as the one true son of God. He was God who was made and appeared in the flesh and he came as the Messiah who would lead his people once again out of slavery, although this time, instead of leading them out of slavery to Egypt or another world power, he led them out of slavery to Satan, the king in the kingdom of darkness. As a result of their sin, all of the people throughout the world, whether the people of Israel or any other people from any other part of the world, every person was captured into the kingdom of darkness as a result of their sin.

Jesus gave himself as a ransom to pay for every person who places their faith in him to be bought out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God. Jesus came and gave his blood, his entire life so that we could each be purchased away from the kingdom of God. This is what we learn from the end of the story in the book of Revelation as the Lamb of God is revealed as the one who is worthy to open the seals of the scroll that will pour out God’s wrath, the justice of God, across the entire earth at the end of time:

And they sang a new song, saying:

“You are worthy to take the scroll
and to open its seals,
because you were slain,
and with your blood you purchased for God
persons from every tribe and language and people and nation.
You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God,
and they will reign on the earth.”
Revelation 5:9-10

We can see here that Jesus made his people, those that he bought and purchased with his blood, to be a kingdom. He purchased them from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God. Yet within that kingdom, Jesus made them to be priests who would serve our God.

Our role is to be the priests within the kingdom. He made us to serve him. He made us all to do the work of God. No one excluded. Everyone who has been purchased has also been made to be a priest.

A spiritual house to be a holy priesthood

Peter explains it further by saying that he have, together, been made into a priesthood. We are not just individual priests, but together we have been made into a priesthood, a people who are individually priests but together have been made into a group of people who collectively serve God:

As you come to him, the living Stone —rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him— you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For in Scripture it says:

“See, I lay a stone in Zion,
a chosen and precious cornerstone,
and the one who trusts in him
will never be put to shame.”

Now to you who believe, this stone is precious. But to those who do not believe,

“The stone the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone,”

and,

“A stone that causes people to stumble
and a rock that makes them fall.”

They stumble because they disobey the message—which is also what they were destined for.

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
1 Peter 2:4-10

In Christ, Peter says, we have been made into a spiritual house. We have been built together as one, and we are made to be as one so that we can be a royal priesthood. We are “royal” in the sense that we are part of the kingdom of God. Jesus is the king and we are his people. We are royalty because we belong to the king.

But we are not just royalty. We are a royal priesthood. We live as the people of the king within the kingdom of God, but he made us to also do the work of the kingdom. We do not simply live as royal subjects, but we live as priests within the kingdom. We serve our king. We do his business. He called us to be part of the work of his kingdom. As he grows his kingdom, as he expands his kingdom, or even as he maintains his kingdom from within, Jesus calls each of us to be his priests, to be the workers for the work of God.

What difference does this all make?

Why does any of this make any difference? What would change if we truly understood and lived out the fact that Christ has made each of us to be his priest? There are several changes that we would make if we each lived as God’s priests, :

First of all, we would accept a new identity for ourselves and we would discover a whole new purpose for our lives. As said in the beginning of this article, God’s mission is that his image would be spread all across the face of the earth. If that is God’s mission, we can also find our mission, the purpose of our lives, within the context of that which God is doing. We no longer will need to ask God what he wants us to do. We can simply join God in what he is doing, working as priests to be part of God’s mission.

Second, there would no longer be a hierarchy, real or perceived, within our churches. We would no longer see a need to leave the “religious work” to a certain subset of people within the church. Each person would be a priest and each person would grow in God, producing the fruit of the Holy Spirit and producing fruit in making disciples of Christ, multiplying the true image of God everywhere they go. There would be no need to reserve certain activities – baptism or the Lord’s Supper, for example – for a special class of people within our churches. We would no longer simply obey some of the commands of Christ and leave the rest to certain leaders. We would become “100% disciples”, obeying all of the commands of Christ – 100% of those commands – and teaching others to do the same.

And finally, understanding that every person in the church is made to be a priest within a royal priesthood in the kingdom of God, those that are leading within our churches would labor to equip and help others grow in becoming the priests that Christ has made us to be. There would be no need for a power struggle or divisions within the church because the leaders would actively teach others to not only know good theology, but just as importantly, to practice good practice. The maturity of the people within the church would be based on the living the life of a priest within the kingdom of God. The leaders would not primarily count the number of people in the church, the size of the building in which they are contained, nor how much money was collected in the offering in that week, but instead they would primarily consider the maturity of the people, the effectiveness of the priesthood, the equipping and growth of the priests within the church. In short, each leader would primarily consider the priestly life of the people within their church, calling each person more deeply into what it means to do their part in serving our God within his mission.

In short, truly understanding and living out the priesthood of the believer changes everything, both for us individually as well as for us collectively in the Body of Christ.

Fundamental to movement

In the beginning of this article, I said that the priesthood of the believer is fundamental to the work that we do. Our desire is to make “100% disciples”. Jesus said that we are to teach them – other disciples – to obey everything that he has commanded us to do. In that same passage, Jesus commanded his disciples to do several things. He said:

Go
To all nations
Make disciples
Baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
Teach them to obey

If I simply focus on just those three verses and my desire is to make a “100% disciple” – in other words, teach them to truly be the priest that Jesus has made us to be – then I must focus on teaching them to do each of the things that Jesus said in that passage. My job, as a disciple-maker – a priest-maker, let’s say – is to teach them to Go. Not just in a theoretical sense. No, in a real sense. In the sense of actually going. Actual movement.

And when I teach them to go, I need to teach them to go to the nations. Yes, we must go to our own people because our own people are part of all of the nations, but our heart and our desire must not only be for our own people, but for all people.

I must teach them to make disciples of all of these people. We must learn to make disciples as we go to the nations.

I must teach them to baptize. Jesus told his disciples to teach the disciples that we make to obey everything that he commanded us to do, and one of the things he just commanded us to do is to baptize other people. It is important to understand that he didn’t say that we must be baptized – which we must, of course – but he instead he said to baptize. To be a priest, to be a “100% disciple” means that we are willing, able, and practicing baptism amongst the disciples that we are making.

And finally, if I am teaching them to obey, I must also teach these priests to teach other people as well. If we understand Jesus to say that we are to teach the disciples, and we are teaching them to be disciples, then the implication is that we not only teach them to do what Jesus said, but we also teach them to teach others.

Our desire is, and must continue to be, that each person is a priest in the kingdom of God. Each person must learn to be a disciple of Christ and teach others to be a disciple of Christ. This is the only way in which we can see a movement of people who will come to God, spreading out into each people on the earth, leading one generation of disciple-makers to become the next generation of disciple-makers. One generation of royal priests that will become the next generation of royal priests. This multiplication of priests, of those who will make disciples of Jesus, will allow the kingdom of God to continue to grow and expand both much further and much faster than our old paradigm of only a select few performing the religious activities on behalf of the rest of the community.

A vision that fits Jesus’s description of the kingdom of God

I have heard several people say that they have sometimes wondered why there is such a difference between what they read in the Bible and what they have experienced in their churches. More than one person has held out each of their two hands to me saying that, on the one hand, they feel that they read the Bible and have one sense of what the life of a Christian looks like, but then show me the other hand and say that their experience in the Body of Christ seems to be so different.

“Why do I sense such a significant difference?”, they ask. “Why do I sense such a difference between what I read in the Word of God and what I experience in the Body of Christ?”

I believe the answer to these questions are related to the fact that we have often not been taught to be the royal priests that God has made us to be. We have been taught, possibly intentionally, but I sooner suspect inadvertently, to be spectators, to be consumers in the Body of Christ instead of being priests in the kingdom of God.

We were never meant to be spectators. We were never intended to be consumers. We were meant to priests. Christ made us to glorify him, to live the full and abundant life of a priest in his kingdom. We were made with a purpose, but if we are not living the life that he intended for us to live, we can expect to sense the difference that so many have felt.

Jesus described the way that the kingdom of God should work within the parables that he told to the people as he walked the earth teaching them to follow him. Here are a few of those parables:

The parable of the yeast

The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty pounds of flour until it worked all through the dough.
Matthew 13:33

Jesus says that the kingdom – his kingdom, where he is the king – is like yeast that worked its way all of the way through the dough. How is it possible that the yeast worked its way through the dough? Each yeast cell did its work. Every part, every cell, multiplied itself to fill the entirety of the dough just as every person within the kingdom is meant to be a priest and do the work that God has intended for them to do.

The parable of the sower

Listen then to what the parable of the sower means: When anyone hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in their heart. This is the seed sown along the path. The seed falling on rocky ground refers to someone who hears the word and at once receives it with joy. But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. The seed falling among the thorns refers to someone who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, making it unfruitful. But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.
Matthew 13:18-23

In this parable, we see that there are three separate soils – the rocky soil, the thorny soil, and the good soil – actually all produce believers. Even the rocky soil and thorny soil produce a plant, but only the good soil produces a crop. In other words, by being the priests that Jesus has made us to be, we produce fruit. Some may produce more fruit than others, but that is not the point. The difference is that the good soil produces fruit. It produces what it was intended to produce. The plant does what it was made to do. In the same way, the priests in the kingdom of God produce the fruit that they were intended to produce.

Parable of the bags of gold (the talents)

“Again, it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his wealth to them. To one he gave five bags of gold, to another two bags, and to another one bag, each according to his ability. Then he went on his journey. The man who had received five bags of gold went at once and put his money to work and gained five bags more. So also, the one with two bags of gold gained two more. But the man who had received one bag went off, dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money.

“After a long time the master of those servants returned and settled accounts with them. The man who had received five bags of gold brought the other five. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with five bags of gold. See, I have gained five more.’

“His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’

“The man with two bags of gold also came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with two bags of gold; see, I have gained two more.’

“His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’

“Then the man who had received one bag of gold came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. So I was afraid and went out and hid your gold in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.’

“His master replied, ‘You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed? Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest.

“‘So take the bag of gold from him and give it to the one who has ten bags. For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
Matthew 25:14-30

Jesus told a longer parable showing us that while he, the master in the parable, is away, we are to be like the servants. He has left us in charge of a few things, but his expectation is that we will be at work. All of us, not just a few of us, investing and using what he has given to each of us so that he will receive a return on his investment when he returns from being away. Jesus describes each of us in a new way as his priests. He describes us as those who are continuing to do the work while he is away. Jesus is describing each of us as his priests, doing the work of the kingdom of God.

Living as a priest

God’s intent is that we would be priests, royal priests, within the kingdom of God. He never intended that we would be a spectator or a consumer, but instead that we would be the people of God who would do all that he has commanded us to do. This is the people that we both wish to be and the vision that we are calling everyone, everywhere to live out, taking on the identity that God has already given to us and living out the reality of the priesthood in our daily lives, serving God for his kingdom and his glory.

Band

The Lord Said to My Lord

The Pharisees hadn’t really even considered any other possibilities. They were stuck – and in fact, the Jews, even today, remain stuck – on the idea that the Messiah had to be a political king, just like David. This king would come and lead the people of Israel to freedom, throwing off their conquerors and oppressors and renew their status as an independent political nation and as God’s chosen people.

Jesus, meanwhile, had been showing the Jews, through miracles and through the authority of his teaching, that he had been sent to them by God, the Lord of heaven and earth, and there were several who were now looking to him as their Messiah. Yes, many, if not most of those that believed in him, still believed that he would be the political king that they wanted him to be, even if Jesus continued to show them a different way, a different path. Jesus had no intention to become the political king, the ruler that they expected. He was God himself, on a mission to destroy the power of evil in our world by taking the consequences of sin upon himself, reestablishing his rule and reign in the kingdom of God. He would receive the justice that the rest of us deserved, allowing us all to go free for the sin and rebellion that we have committed, purchasing us instead from the kingdom of darkness to come into the kingdom of light.

The Pharisees and Sadducees had been coming to Jesus to ask him what they believed were difficult questions. Jesus easily handled the questions, amazing the crowds who were listening. But then Jesus decided to ask a question of his own, just to silence these religious “leaders”:

How is it that David, speaking by the Spirit, calls the Messiah Lord?

Jesus is saying that, if the Messiah is the son of David, he wouldn’t call the Messiah Lord. No, the Messiah, in that case, would call David Lord. In that case, David would be the Lord and the Messiah would be his son.

Or said another way, if the Messiah was just a human being, a political leader who would come to lead a human-based, earthly, political kingdom, why in the world would David call him Lord? Yet that is exactly what David did when he wrote Psalm 110, which Jesus quotes back to the Jews:

The Lord said to my Lord:
“Sit at my right hand
until I put your enemies
under your feet.
Psalm 110:1

It wasn’t as if the Jews hadn’t understood this verse as being prophetic, speaking of the coming Messiah. They knew that it was a Psalm that David wrote. They knew that this psalm was speaking of the Messiah, except, like many of the other prophecies, it didn’t fit their preconceived notions of who the Messiah would be. They had developed their own framework, their own idea, of who the Messiah would be, and then they tried to fit the scriptures inside of their structure, their idea of how God’s plan would be worked out. In short, they predetermined who the Messiah would be and then bent the scriptures to fit their own ideas.

Unfortunately, I believe the same thing happens very often to us today. Very often, instead of simply reading what Jesus has to say or trying to understand what he is attempting to explain to us, taking his words at face value, we prefer to put him and his teaching inside of our box. We have a structure for whom we believe the Messiah to be, we have our own idea for whom we believe Jesus to be, and then when we find something that he says that doesn’t conform to that idea, instead of listening to him and conforming our idea to what he has said, we twist and bend what he has said to fit our idea.

Because we do this, we end up far off of the tracks. We end up thinking that Jesus came to serve us. We end up thinking that God’s story is really all about me, and so, just like the Pharisees and Sadducees, we focus instead on the life that we have in this world instead of the eternity that is the true reality for which we should be living.

Yet if we would just live for Jesus, listening to what he has to say and conforming our lives to his word and his teachings, then we would, like the Pharisees and Sadducees would have found if they had just listened to Jesus in their time, find that there is so much more that he offers us. So much more than we could ever begin to imagine because his ways are different from ours. His plans are so much greater than ours. Listening to him, we will align our lives to his plan. Not our ideas nor our own plans, nor the plans of the world. Not the ideas and plans of him who is leading and guiding the system of the world, the evil one, but truly the one that we can call Lord, Jesus himself.

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All these I have kept

The man that we now refer to as the “rich young ruler” thought that he was a pretty good guy. He was rich, so surely he was blessed by God, or so he may have thought. He had been obeying the commandments as he had been taught to do since he was a young boy, so surely God looked upon him with favor, he assumed.

But yet, he knew that something was off. Something was still missing, and so he came to Jesus to ask him what he needed to do to inherit eternal life. He wanted to know how he could go to heaven.

Jesus responded, telling the man that he already knew what to do… he needed to keep the commandments.

“But… which commandments?”, the man asked.

Jesus baited the man a little further into the conversation by listing off a few of the commandments related to how we are to treat other people:

Do not murder.

Do not commit adultery.

Do not steal.

Do not lie.

Honor your father and mother and love your neighbor as yourself.

“Yes, I’ve done all of these!” the man responded, seemingly excited that he was on the right track. “What am I missing?”

I can almost hear the man feeling pretty good about himself. He was nearly certain that Jesus, this great teacher, was just about to declare that he was ready to enter into heaven, to inherit eternal life.

But he didn’t realize that Jesus had brought him to a true point of decision. Up to now, the man had affirmed that he had been living rightly from a human point of view, but all of these things, the commandments that Jesus had listed off up to this point, are each possible to do living a good “moral” life. You can do all of them without recognizing God as your king, as the sovereign ruler over your life. You can keep all of these commandments that Jesus had initially listed without even believing in God. You could be an atheist and do all of the things that Jesus had said up to that point.

Now, Jesus changes the nature of the conversation, helping the man to truly understand what he needs to do to inherit eternal life:

“If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
Matthew 19:21

Jesus calls the rich man, he gives the man a challenge, to truly recognize Jesus’s authority. Previously, as Jesus listed the commandments, he said nothing about the commandments regarding how we should treat God. For example, Jesus never mentioned any of these first three commandments of the ten:

Have no other gods before me.

Do not make an idol, nor bow down and worship it.

Do not misuse the name of God.

Beyond these, while Jesus had previously noted that we must treat our neighbors as ourselves, he says nothing about loving God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. He had never even talked about the first and most important command!

Jesus changes the conversation by telling the man that he is right, he is missing something, just as he suspected. In fact, he is missing something, or someone, very important. He is missing God.

It is as if Jesus said to the man:

Do you want to inherit eternal life?

Do you want to live forever?

Do you want to have eternal significance?

Well, the only way that you can do that is to give yourself to God. How can you do that? You have to put off yourself, put off the things that you want and the things that you consider to be important, and give yourself wholly to him, wholly to God.

You have thought that your money, your riches, could save you, but these things are only temporary. If you want something that is not temporary, but is instead truly eternal, as you are asking me, you must come to God.

How can you do that? Get rid of your money and come to me.

Why get rid of your money? Because you love it more than you love me.

Why come to me? Why come follow me? Because I am God. I am eternal, and in me you can find eternal life.

Your good morality isn’t enough. Your ability to follow the commandments and be a good person isn’t enough. No, your ability to inherit eternal life goes much deeper than that. God isn’t impressed with your ability to follow the law, to follow a set of rules. He isn’t impressed that you are a good, moral person. He is only impressed with your belief in him, your faith that is lived out by truly showing the state of your heart, that you truly believe what he has told you. God must be your God. In fact, I am God and I am standing right here in front of you, telling you how you can inherit eternal life.

Do you want to live forever? Go sell all of your possessions. Give them to other people. This will be the demonstration that you truly believe in me, that you truly trust me, and this will show that you truly believe that I am God.

Then you will inherit eternal life.

The man’s money, in and of itself, wasn’t the problem. Jesus didn’t give the man a universal command that all rich people must sell all of their possessions and give them to the poor. The question, instead, is the state of our heart. What are those things that stand in our way to truly know Jesus, recognize him truly as God, and do all that he has told us to do? Those are the things that must be removed so that we can give ourselves fully to Christ.

This is why Jesus told the man to get rid of all of his possessions. They stood in his way of truly knowing Christ and thus inheriting eternal life, and that is why the man went away sad. He was not willing to give up his possessions to follow Jesus. He wanted his money and his possessions more than he wanted Jesus, more than he wanted a relationship with God, and so eternal life would not be his.

We have a choice, and it is a choice that stands before us every day. What are those things that stand in our way to fully acknowledging Jesus as not only our Savior, but also our Lord? What are those things that prevent us from truly knowing him? Those are the things that we must remove from our lives, acknowledging Jesus instead as the Lord and king over our life, living for him and for his will.

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The Transfiguration

When John the Baptist was baptizing out at the Jordan River, there had been a group of priests and Levites who had gone out to him, sent out by the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem, to learn about who John claimed to be. They asked him a series of questions, to which John responded in the negative each time. John told them that he wasn’t the Messiah, so they asked:

Are you Elijah?

Are you the Prophet?

Why these questions? Elijah had already come and returned to heaven, and there had been many prophets, nearly all of whom the Jews had killed or persecuted and treated badly. Well, they asked these questions because of prophecies that they had read that had been written by Malachi and Moses.

First, Malachi had said that Elijah would come in advance of the coming day of the Lord. These were literally the very last written words of the prophets, approximately 400 years prior to John’s arrival on the scene:

See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the LORD comes. He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents; or else I will come and strike the land with total destruction.
Malachi 4:5-6

Jesus later confirmed – in fact, immediately after the Transfiguration – that John the Baptist was the Elijah that was to come and he had prepared the way of the Lord in calling the people to repentance for their sins. However, Jesus also noted in that same statement about Elijah that he would also come in advance of the second coming of Christ.

Clearly, then, Elijah is an important figure in the ministry of Jesus and as he stood there on top of the mountain with Jesus at the Transfiguration, Elijah represented the importance of the prophets, those whom God sent to call his people back to himself in repentance and who told the people of the coming Messiah, fulfilled in the life of Christ.

In addition, though, we see that Moses is also there on the mountain top with Jesus and Elijah. Moses represents the Law, that which was given by God, through Moses, to the people of Israel as God made his covenant with them that if they would obey the commandments that he had given them, God would be their God and they would be his people.

Together in the Transfiguration, Peter, James, and John, whom Jesus had brought with him, were able to witness the representation of the Law and the Prophets and the fulfillment of all that both had said in the Messiah, in Jesus. Then, though, as Peter is blabbering on about building shelters for everyone so that they can spend the night, God interrupts him from above:

This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!
Matthew 17:5

So now, we not only have the Law, the Prophets, and the Messiah himself, we also have God speaking, affirming to the disciples that Jesus is his Son. He is the one with whom the Father is pleased and God tells the disciples, and all of creation through all time, to listen to him, to listen to Christ. His voice is the voice that counts. His voice is the voice of truth, the voice that gives life. He is from heaven, just as he said, so God calls us to listen to him. The Law? Yes, read it. Obey it. Do as it says. The Prophets? Absolutely. But Jesus’s voice is the one voice that is authoritative over all. Over the Law. Over the Prophets. Over all. Listen to him.

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Lose your life for me

In case there was any doubt about the level at which Jesus wanted his disciples to value him, to live for him, Jesus made it completely clear. In the same discussion, Peter had first called Jesus the Messiah and the son of God. Then, he turned around and rebuked Jesus for telling them that he was going to be killed.

But Jesus explained to both Peter and all of the disciples that losing their lives was part of the job description of being one of his disciples:

Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?
Matthew 16:24-26

Jesus himself was headed to the cross. He knew that his time was coming and he had explained that reality to his disciples. Yet when Peter tried to stop him from saying it and suggesting such things to him and the rest of the disciples, Jesus called him Satan! Jesus was completely serious and explained to his disciples that the news was even worse than what they first thought: they must also do as he was about to do. It wouldn’t just be him going to the cross. It would be them also.

Now, there are several ways in which that happens. There are several ways in which the disciples, and even us, must take up our crosses. It isn’t simply a metaphor. Yes, for the disciples it was a physical reality. Many of them would, in fact, be crucified on the cross, just as Jesus was. But that wasn’t all to which Jesus was referring. He was also talking about the decisions of our lives. He was talking about how we live, and furthermore, for whom it is that we are living. Are we living for Jesus? Or are we living for ourselves? Do I live to please him? Or do I live to please myself? Which is it?

Jesus calls each of us to lay down our own desires, our own will, and instead die to ourselves. When we pick up our cross, we instead follow our king. We follow the one that we love, the one who made us, so that we can instead live for him. We do that which pleases him, that which glorifies him. We choose those things in life that glorify him more. Not simply those things that I want, but those things that he desires.

Jesus says that if we will do that, if we will put him first, we will actually find our lives. We will have the full and abundant life that he has promised each of us. We will have all that he wants to give us, and it will be more than we could have ever imagined.

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Who are my mother and brothers?

Post author By Ryan Hale
Post date September 12, 2025
No Comments on Who are my mother and brothers?
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If he were here today, I feel reasonably sure that Jesus would be called a radical, a zealot, an extremist, if you will. He never hurt anyone, but he certainly didn’t “pull his punches” or “mince” his words.

My sense is that Jesus was focused on one thing: Reestablishing his kingdom so that he could glorify God. Jesus spoke some difficult words, he said some difficult things to anyone that stood against that goal.

For example… One day, as Jesus was traveling from village to village, his mother and brothers came to find him, presumably to take him away from what he was doing and to take him home. John tells us that his brothers didn’t believe in him in the early part of his ministry, so my sense is that they wanted to intervene, to bring his work to an end, to take him home so as to end the focus and embarrassment that had come on their family because of the crowds that were following Jesus’s ministry work.

But his mother and his brothers remained outside. They stood outside the house where Jesus was teaching. They didn’t go in, so as Jesus was told that they had arrived, Jesus responded directly to the person who came to tell him that they were there:

“Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” Pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”
Matthew 12:48-49

Can you imagine? Even in a culture that doesn’t practice the closeness of familial ties, this would be an incredible rebuke, a slap in the faces of his family we might even say. What would the person go back out to tell his mother and brothers? “Sorry, Jesus says that his family are those that are inside listening to him… Not sure what that means for all of you…”

But this IS a culture that practiced those familial ties. In their culture, the family stayed together. The family worked together. The family even lived together even in the same house or houses, and here is Jesus saying, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?”.

He isn’t disowning them. No, they have denied him. They have denied his identity and their hope is to take him home and return back to the way it was before. They thought that he was out of mind. They thought that it was time to end this madness, this delusion that Jesus was living within. No, everyone was supposed to be at home. Everyone should be quiet. Everyone should be doing what they were supposed to be doing, contributing to the family and living in the way that they were supposed to be living, according to the way a good Jewish boy should be living.

However, Jesus didn’t see it this way. He responded to the person who had told him that his family had arrived by looking at his disciples and those with him there in the house and essentially saying, “This is my family.” Those that are doing the will of God, those that are listening to me, these are my family members.

How often do we get swept up into our cultural norms, into thinking in the way that our culture thinks instead of thinking with a focus on the kingdom of God? All of the time! I can say that it required me moving outside of my own culture to be able to see it with more clarity. In fact, I had many places where I was blind to see my own self in the light of the kingdom of God because the culture in which I had grown up was my dominant perspective. In many ways, it probably still is, and probably still prevents me from seeing how the kingdom of God is working all around me.

This is our challenge. We need to continue to remain in Christ, abiding in him and walking with him to such an extent that we can see with greater clarity the priorities of the kingdom of God over the priorities of the world around us. From there, once I understand those priorities and see them with that level of clarity, I must then reorient my actions so as to organize my life based on what Jesus wants and is doing over those things that I want, or those things that the culture tells me that I should want. This is the question that I should ask myself on a daily basis: How can I do all of that?

Jesus spoke directly, and at times with difficult and challenging words, so as to help people see clearly and wake them from their sleep that had come on related to the culture that would lie to them about the priorities of life. May we also be a people that sees clearly the priorities of Christ and that of his kingdom.

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Dancing and mourning

After having been questioned about his identity, even by his own cousin and the prophet who was called to prepare the way for his coming, John the Baptist, Jesus began to reflect on the desperation of the spiritual situation that he had walked into as he entered the world:

To what can I compare this generation? They are like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling out to others:

‘We played the pipe for you,
and you did not dance;
we sang a dirge,
and you did not mourn.’

For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ But wisdom is proved right by her deeds.
Matthew 11:16-19

This generation of people, Jesus says, can’t seem to make up its mind. If a song that is intended for dancing is played, they won’t dance. If a song that is intended for mourning is played, they won’t mourn. No, instead, they will only doubt and will never believe. They prefer to call out that which they perceive, or they themselves consider to be the faults in the others and go on to ignore the message that they were receiving.

In many ways, we can say that this is still the same today. In a very similar way to how the Jews would not dance nor mourn in the days of Jesus, neither will we listen to the “music” that is being played today. The kingdom of darkness that rules our world tells us lies continually and we routinely listen to those lies, preventing us from reacting to the music that is being played. Instead, we remain distracted, continuing on with our regular routine, continuing on with our normal business, our daily life, never actually hearing the music and neither dancing nor mourning.

My prayer is that we would awaken, that God would shake us from the blindness and deafness that are the distractions that Satan has placed in the world all around us. Instead, I pray that we would hear the music that Christ has been playing and that we would dance, or we would mourn, moving to the rhythm that he has been sounding out, no longer distracted and unable to hear his call.

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Send out workers

Jesus traveled around to all of the villages and towns in the area where he did his work. Even though there were times where his disciples wanted him to stay and set up their ministry work in a particular area, or even though the people would ask Jesus to stay for a much longer time, Jesus continued on, covering an entire area with his message, that the kingdom of God had come near.

In what seems like an effort to be able to cover more ground more quickly, Jesus also sent out his disciples. Jesus would be subsequently coming through that same area where he would send the disciples, but he would send them in advance of his arrival.

As he sent them, though, he started with this command:

Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”
Matthew 9:37

Jesus commands his disciples to pray and to ask God to send out workers into his harvest field. Now, in one sense, the disciples themselves are the answer to the prayer, but in a completely other sense, their first instruction as he sends the disciples is that they are to pray for workers.

But at that time, they themselves are the only workers! In all of the earth, they are the only ones carrying the message of the kingdom of God that they had heard Jesus telling and that they are now to go out to repeat. Who else are they going to pray and ask God to send?

There are no pastors.

There are no missionaries.

So who will it be? The only possible response to this question that I can think of is that these workers will come directly from the harvest. The harvest field itself will provide the workers who will be sent to do the harvest work that needs to be done.

So, practically speaking, what does that mean? It means that when Jesus sent his disciples to proclaim the kingdom of God, they were not only looking for believers in the message, they were looking for workers for the kingdom.

Do we have any less of a harvest that needs to be done today? There are billions and billions of people across the earth that need yet to even hear the message of God’s redemption through Christ and the only way in which that will happen is to pray that God will send out workers into his harvest field.

Within those billions of people, there are many languages that most of us will never speak. There are differences between our cultures that will block the Gospel from moving forward. There are natural human tendencies that will continue to create tribes among the peoples that will divide us between “us” and “them”.

We also must pray to the Lord of the harvest, that he would send out workers into his harvest field. Those workers can and should, come from anywhere and everywhere, but given the size of the harvest field in certain parts of the world, let us pray that the Lord would send out workers into his fields where the name of Christ is not known and where the kingdom of God has not yet been proclaimed. And let us pray that those workers will look like, speak like, and understand the cultures of the peoples of those cultures where the harvest fields are today the largest around the world.

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Say the word

Jesus performed miracles to confirm what he was saying was true. Only by doing the works that only God could do could Jesus show that he was speaking the words that only God could speak. The people were amazed at Jesus’s teaching because he spoke as one who had authority. Why? Because he did have authority. He is God. He is the Creator himself who had come in human form to make himself known to us.

As Jesus finished his sermon on the mount, he began to climb down, but as he did, Matthew records that he began to perform several miracles. He healed a man with leprosy, Peter’s mother-in-law from a fever, and several others showing his power over disease. He healed demon-possessed people showing his power over evil. And he even calmed the wind and the waves showing his power over creation.

Jesus was performing miracles, doing things that only God could do, so that people would see and believe. They would believe what he taught them. They would believe that he truly was God. And they would not only believe, but they would give their lives to him… completely.

One of Jesus’s greatest challenges, however, was to get his own people to accept him. Even seeing the miracles that he performed, the Jews were rarely able to accept and believe that Jesus was the Christ, nor the son of God.

There was one man, though, that demonstrated that he truly knew who Jesus was. Except he wasn’t a Jew. In fact, he was a Roman. He came from among those that the Jews believed needed to be overthrown, to be conquered by the Messiah, for whom they were waiting. This man knew that Jesus could heal others, not because of some magical power that he seemed to possess, but because Jesus truly had authority. In fact, he knew Jesus’s authority spanned space and time. He could give a command in one place and in one time and it would be carried out in another place at that same time, or in a different time, or in whatever way he chose.

Why? Because Jesus is God. This Roman centurion understood, based on his own tiny experience, relatively speaking, with 100 soldiers, that when he gave a command, that command would be carried out just as he had said that it should be done.

The centurion replied, “Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and that one, ‘Come,’ and he comes. I say to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”
Matthew 8:8-9

It is an amazing thing to try to understand what this man understood. As a centurion, even he was used to giving orders to his soldiers. He gave orders to specific, physical people. They then went and carried out those orders. In other words, there was someone that was responsible. Someone that he could see. If that order wasn’t carried out, the centurion would know who it was that he should hold responsible.

But the centurion is saying that he knows that Jesus can simply say that word and that his servant would be healed. That is a different type of authority! That is an authority that goes well beyond the authority of the centurion. Who would Jesus be telling to go? Who would he be holding responsible if the order wasn’t carried out?

Those were unnecessary questions because this centurion knew something incredibly important: Jesus’s authority was absolute. Jesus is God. He is the creator over all things. What he says is to be done is what will be done, whether Jesus tells someone else to do it, or he simply says the word, what he says is what will be done. Period. No questions. He has the authority to express his will, and the authority that gives him the assurance that his will is carried out when he declares something to be done, whether he is there or not, just because he says the word.