What Does It Mean to Be a Disciple?

Tom: Thanks, Gary. You’re listening to Search the Scriptures Daily, a program in which we encourage everyone who desires to know God’s truth to look to God’s word for all that is essential for salvation and living one’s life in a way that is pleasing to Him.

We are going through Dave Hunt’s book Seeking and Finding God. We’re in Chapter 9, Dave; hopefully we’ll wrap it up today, because we do have something coming up that I think will be stimulating, at least, for most of our listeners—not that this isn’t. This is an absolutely terrific book: Seeking and Finding God, In Search of the True Faith. Folks, if you want a book that lays out the gospel as clearly and precisely…not only for those who may not understand the gospel—they’ll understand it—but I think it’s going to equip a lot of people to explain the gospel, to present the gospel to others, which is what we’re all about.

Dave: Yeah, I wrote this book for myself to give to people to whom I’ve witnessed who show interest, [or] maybe I’ve lead them to the Lord. It’s encouraging, Tom. As you know, we’ve been getting letters from people, some of them in the ministry, who say, “Wow, that book is just what I’ve always wanted. I’ve ordered a box of them.”

Tom: Yeah.

Dave: There’s only twenty-four in a box, so….

Tom: Dave, this book is only 120 pages. Now, I’ve never heard you speak in less than 200 pages. [laughing] But it’s all good stuff.

Dave: It’s intelligently written as well. I mean, you can give it to a university professor or a scientist, or you can give it to a regular…

Tom: Teenager.

Dave: …run of the mill, right.

Tom: Middle-schooler. Yeah, that’s great.

Dave: Mm-hmm.

Tom: Well, Chapter 9, the title is “The Call to Discipleship.” That’s one of the things I want us to discuss, Dave, exactly what discipleship is. But I think for some of our listeners, maybe they missed the program last week where we really went over the gospel. You have it laid out here very simply. You say, “To receive these priceless gifts (which we’ll talk about) one need only believe the gospel.” What gifts are you talking about? You say that, “lost sinners are offered forgiveness of all sins—past, present and future—and eternal life as a free gift of God’s grace by virtue of Christ’s fully accomplished redemptive work upon the cross and His bodily resurrection. To receive these priceless gifts one need only believe the gospel.” What is that gospel?

Dave: That, of course, is what the Bible says. Paul in Romans:1:16For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.
See All... said, “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. It is the (excludes everything else) power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes.” Obviously, [that means] who believes it. So, if you’re going to be saved, you have to believe the gospel. “Saved from what? What do you mean? I’m not drowning, or I don’t need some financial help at the moment, or whatever.” No, saved from God’s wrath. Why God’s wrath? Because He’s a holy God and He’s angry, beginning with Adam and Eve who rebelled against Him; and unfortunately that brought death, sickness, suffering into this world. Don’t blame it on God. This is not the world God created. He created Adam and Eve. He looked down and He saw everything was good.

Tom: “Very good” it says in the last verse.

Dave: “Very good,” right. It says that more than once. And they rebelled. And now we have a world of rebellion. Anyone listening out there, just be honest with yourself: when did you last give God credit for the breath you breathe? When do you think the average person walking up and down the street, going to work, going to school, whatever they are, sitting and watching porno or listening just to the news on TV—when did they last even think about God, the Creator of this universe, who holds their breath in His hands? Jesus came to this earth to rescue us from the judgment of God that’s coming upon us. Now, God chose Israel, for example, and God speaking through Jeremiah says, “My people have forgotten me days without number.” If you went to Israel today the average Israeli (30 percent) claim to be atheists, New Agers—you know, into everything.

For example, I see people everywhere reading The DaVinci Code. We just came from Bermuda via New York, JFK, and there in the window of the bookstore in the airport, I mean, stacks of The DaVinci Code. The DaVinci Code is a fraud. He bad-mouths the Bible, bad-mouths Jesus. And after trying to convince you—it’s a novel of course—but it sounds very authoritative…

Tom: It’s like a docudrama. He lays out some historical facts which make you buy into the false things that he claims.

Dave: Right, and then he finally, after trashing Jesus and the Bible—for which we have absolute proof: historical, prophetic evidence, internal evidence—he ends up worshiping at the shrine of Mary Magdalene. Isn’t that great? So, it’s incredible. But Tom, I’m taking too long, but the average person has no thought for God. All right? That doesn’t make God happy. He is a righteous, holy God. We have laws in the universe, [like the] law of gravity, for example; the laws of chemics, laws of physics and chemistry. There are consequences if you violate them.

Now, there is only one way that we can be delivered from God’s judgment. “It’s appointed unto man once to die, and after this the judgment.” Every person will give an account to God for their life, what they have done with their life, the life that He has given them, and there is a heavy judgment that hangs over the heads of everyone. Now, there’s no way you can make up for that by trying to turn over a new leaf and live a good life in the future. It won’t work. And Paul argues this in Romans 3. How can God be just, yet justify sinners? A judge can’t just forgive the guilty person standing before him who must have the penalty prescribed by the law. God’s law says something! It says that sinners are under His condemnation forever. How is He going to forgive them? God Himself became a man through the virgin birth; lived a perfect, sinless life; paid the penalty for our sins—not just the physical suffering that He endured, but He took upon Himself the judgment that His own infinite justice required for sin. He paid it in full. He said, “It is finished.” The Greek word that he uttered was tetelestai. It was stamped on promissory notes in that day. It meant “paid in full.” Jesus Christ paid in full the penalty that hangs over the heads of every one of us. Now, what do we have to do? I can’t earn it. I can’t earn His forgiveness. I can’t help Him. Maybe I’ll make up for what He—He didn’t quite pay enough? That’s what Catholicism teaches.

Tom: Sun Myung Moon. That’s what he says.

Dave: You’re not going to make up for anything that is lacking, because nothing is lacking in what Christ paid. And if Christ didn’t pay it all, there is no hope for anyone because we couldn’t even pay the tiniest fraction of this debt, okay? So what do we have to do? Believe, accept it. The Bible says, “The gift of God is eternal life.” You can’t pay for a gift. It’s an insult if you try to. You can only accept a gift. So everyone who believes—you wouldn’t accept the gift if you didn’t believe. Everyone who believes the gospel that Christ is God who became a man, didn’t cease to be God, He’ll never cease to be man, He is God and man in one person,  He paid the full penalty for our sins, He rose from the dead, He’s alive, [and] He seeks an entrance into every human heart. Whoever you are listening out there, these are not my ideas. This is what the Bible says. And you can check the world’s religions, I guarantee you will find nothing anywhere that represents justice. This is a matter of justice! It’s all a do-it-yourself kit. Try to pacify God. Give Him some sacrifices, live a better life in the future than you have in the past. It will not work for an earthly court, it will not work for God, so you’ve got one alternative: you either accept what Christ paid for you and you accept it lovingly, thankfully, humbly as a person who, if you don’t accept this, there’s no other hope—or you will endeavor to pay that penalty yourself throughout eternity separated from God. It’s that simple.

Tom: Mm-hmm. Now, Dave, once a person does that, he or she becomes a follower of Christ, a disciple. And that’s what this chapter’s about, “The Call to Discipleship.” Can you just tell us—give us your perspective on what a disciple is, and how one disciples another person?

Dave: Well, in John:8:31Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed;
See All..., Jesus said to those who believed on Him, it says, “Certain people believed on him.” Now, there was obviously something defective in what they believed. I think they believed He was the Messiah, but they didn’t believe that He was who He really is. They didn’t even know their need of a Savior. But He said to them, “If you continue in my word, you are my disciples indeed, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” What would it set us free from? Well, from all the false ideas, from the bondage of sin, that you become a new person. The Bible says, “If any man is in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things have passed away, all things have become new.” It’s no longer you struggling to give up cigarettes, or pornography, or homosexuality, or whatever it is. This is something that God will do; Christ will do it. You open your heart to Him, He comes to live in you. He becomes your life and as Paul said, “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. And the life that I now live in this body (that I’m still functioning in), I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

Tom: Now, Dave, when you say Christ living in you, is that just a thought, a good idea, a concept, or is that a reality?

Dave: Well, Tom, it is a reality.

Tom: We are the temples of the Holy Spirit, aren’t we?

Dave: That’s what the Bible says.

Tom: That’s true.

Dave: However, we walk by faith. And God does not force us to do anything. We don’t become puppets that He pulls the strings to make us do what He wants us to do. It’s a knowing, intelligent, willing, submissive partnership, so it’s based upon His word. Jesus said, “If you continue in my word, then you’re my disciples.” So, being a disciple is first of all, to know the Bible. Well, Peter says, “As newborn babes desire the sincere milk of the Word that you may grow thereby.” So, when you’re born again, you’ve become a new person, a new creation in Christ. You’re just beginning a new life. You have to grow in understanding, and we do that by His word. We read His word, He gives His instructions. The Holy Spirit has come to live within. Christ has come to live within us, and now we follow orders. We don’t go into a trance and try to get some vision. You don’t need to do that. There’s a time for visions—and I’m not saying that God couldn’t do this again. If God speaks to you, I have no quarrel with that. But there are so many people running around saying God spoke to them—Neale Donald Walsch, for example.

Tom: Conversations…

Dave: Yeah, Conversations with God. Well, this god is certainly not related to the God of the Bible. Furthermore, this god is not related even to the conscience that God has given us, because this god violates everything, and he certainly denies who Jesus Christ really is and so forth. It has no salvation for anyone.

Tom: Yeah, and you know this by holding it up to the objective Word of God as opposed to some subjective experience anyone is having. That’s the way we check out things.

Dave: But even your conscience would tell you that this isn’t…

Tom: Yeah, and in some cases just simple logic.

Dave: Right, right. Simple logic. Okay, so then we realize what God wants us to do. Well, He says He wants us to fellowship with others who know and love Him. We gather together as Christians. It doesn’t say you have to join a church. You would gather together with other Christians who know the Lord, who love the Lord. And there are plenty of places that claim that, but they don’t preach the truth. They don’t follow the Bible, or they come up with their own bizarre interpretations of the Bible. Something new, you know. We don’t need anything new. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.” God’s Word has been settled. It doesn’t change. There are no new revelations. Nothing needs to be added to it. So we follow God’s Word. We meet with those who know Him, who love Him, and who follow His Word together.

Tom: So we become disciples by receiving the gospel. We’re nurtured in the word, we’re encouraged by other—you know, there are good teachers among God’s people. God has gifted many people that way. But the Holy Spirit ultimately is our teacher. But we grow in the Lord, and then we go out and make disciples of others.

Dave: Exactly. Tom, you were a Catholic, as everyone who has listened to this program knows. And you know that the bishops claim to be—and of course the bishop of bishops, the pope…

Tom: Right. Apostolic succession is what….

Dave: Right, claim to be the successors of the apostles.

Tom: Mm-hmm.

Dave: No! Every Christian is a successor of the apostles, because every Christian is called to be a disciple. Now, when Christ sent the first disciples out, He said, “Go and make disciples. You teach the disciples that you bring to Me. You teach them to observe everything I have commanded you. That is, they’re supposed to follow what I have taught you.” Well, that would include for them to make disciples, for them to teach their disciples, to observe everything Christ taught the first disciples. So Tom, every Christian today is a disciple of a disciple of a disciple of a disciple all the way back to the original disciples. And that means that there’s no hierarchy.

Tom: Mm-hmm.

Dave: There’s no clergy. People who have certain degrees and therefore have one-up on normal, ordinary Christians, and so they can order them around and so forth. Now, the Bible does say that there is to be order among the fellowship of believers. There are elders—they are looked up to because of their godly lives, because of their knowledge of the Scriptures. They’ve been studying it longer than the new convert who comes in. But it doesn’t mean that we ever follow a man unless he is following Christ, unless he’s following the word of God, okay? So every Christian is a disciple. Every Christian has the responsibility to make other disciples and to obey Christ in all those things that He commanded to the first disciples. It’s pretty straightforward Tom.

Tom: Dave, in the next couple of weeks we’ll finish this book, hopefully, on this program, and we’re going to be looking at what we’ll call, “The Four Programs of Purpose,” looking at Purpose Driven and so on. The reason I bring that up is that when you look at the Scriptures and it lays out what it means to follow Christ, there’s a lot there that you don’t find today, whether it’s in seeker-friendly or market-driven church, or whatever it might be, where they’re holding up all these goodies. You don’t find things like suffering for Christ, given to suffering. What about that? As a disciple, a follower of Christ, are we to expect that? And what about this country? You don’t hear anybody talking about that.

Dave: Well, there might be a few Tom, but very few, because it doesn’t sell. So the “purpose driven” people, the “church growth” people, they very often consult, or at least look to, market experts in the secular world…

Tom: Mm-hmm.

Dave: …men who aren’t even Christians. So pretty soon the pastor becomes the CEO, chief executive officer. You don’t even need the Holy Spirit. You’re so well organized that everything just works, and wow! With the marketing methods, you can draw in a lot of people. There are of course a number of problems with that. Number one, this is not what Christ said.

He said, “You make disciples and you teach them to observe everything I commanded you.” Well, what did Jesus say? [In] John 15, He said, “If you were of the world, the world would love its own, but because you are not of the world, but I’ve chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. The servant isn’t greater than his Lord. If they hated me, they persecute me, they kill me, what do you think they will do to you?” So you know, Tom, the way I put it kind of facetiously, I often say, “You know, a young man comes running up, or people come running up to Jesus and say, “Oh Master, we’ll follow You wherever You’re going.” Jesus would say, “Peter, sign him up quick! John, get him in the choir! James, make a deacon out of him, I think the guy’s got some money! We could, you know, somebody…Ah, he’s a big businessman, we could—he could be a leader! We could really use somebody like that. Let’s just kind of bend the rules a little bit, and don’t give him heavy stuff from the Bible, but try to draw them in, you know. These are seekers and we don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable.”

That is not the way Jesus went about it. He wanted quality. Quantity isn’t going to help. Furthermore, you’re leading people astray. So Jesus said to His disciples, and He said to those who came saying, “We’ll follow You,” He said, “Deny yourself, that is, your own interests, your own desires. You’re dead. Now, you’re going to live for others and I’m going to live through you.” And Jesus said, “You know where I’m going, guys? I’m heading for a hill outside Jerusalem called Calvary. They are going to nail me to a cross. If you’re going to follow me to the end, make up your mind. Pick up your cross right now, because that’s where we’re going.” Wooo, that chased people away. You’d never get some marketing expert from the secular world, some advertising agent or whatever, to say, “Wow, we can sell this one!”

Tom: Scare them to death, Dave.

Dave: Well, then, there’s a problem Tom. So if I’m going to be a real Christian—you know, I’ve said it many times: Look, you want invent your own religion? Go ahead. But don’t call it Christianity unless you follow Jesus Christ. Christianity is not a religion, even, it’s a way of life. It is established. It has its founder. It has its Scriptures. It has a history, the early church and so forth, down through history—martyrs, people who have suffered for the faith, who are faithful to Christ. So if you want to make up a religion, go ahead, but don’t you dare call it Christianity! And sadly, Tom, and I guess that’s what you want us to deal with the next few weeks, there are a lot of churches—they call themselves Christians, and I wouldn’t deny that some of the leaders may very well be Christians, may really be sincere. They want to draw in more people, but they’re not following the pattern of Scripture. They’re not following the literal words of the Bible. Earnestly contend for the faith, once for all delivered unto the saints. Why? Because the eternal destiny of souls is at stake! We’re not going to sneak people in under false pretenses, give them terrific music like they like. It’s one of the problems, Tom. “Well, we wouldn’t want to give them some sacred old hymn from the past. Let’s give them the kind of music they listen to in the car, they listen to in their homes. Let’s give them some real good worldly music.”

Rrraaa! you know, this rebellious-sounding stuff, loud and, well, a particular beat to attract them. I don’t think that’s the Bible. And if you listen to or you enjoy or your church presents a beat, noise, whatever, that would not be acceptable in God’s very presence…See, Tom, one of the things we’ve forgotten—we’re into entertainment now. What they call worship, maybe I’m getting ahead of ourselves here, but what is called worship and the worship team—what do they do? They’re picking stuff that the audience will like. No! That’s not the audience! God is the audience! I thought worship was to Him! We should be offering Him what He would be pleased with. That’s worship. But instead we’re entertaining ourselves, and it’s a sad situation.

Tom: Dave, the whole business of discipleship, and you’re looking at some of the particulars, and we’ll look at those things in the next four programs, the Lord willing. But as disciples, we’re looking at the Word of God and what it says to be a disciple, what we can expect, and “count it all joy,” you know, James writes—you know, when you suffer for these things and so on. Now, if that’s what the Bible says, I’m getting a view of church out there that leaves all of that out. How can I really become a disciple? It’s not that I’m preoccupied with the idea of suffering or doing this. I just want to live my life for Christ and I want to do it His way. But if I’m getting a false view of what it is to be a Christian, a disciple of Christ, I’m in for trouble.

Dave: Well, Tom, you’re not following the Lord and, once again, we’re not trying to say, “Well, let’s be as disagreeable as we possibly can and so forth.” No. We should be winsome. We should win people, but we must do it with the truth…

Tom: Yeah.

Dave: …and we can’t water this down. My wife and I and our family have spent some time back behind the Iron Curtain, and I will never forget those dear people back there saying they prayed for the church in the West. And they wondered why it was that they were suffering and why Christianity was so popular in America. Did that mean that America was a Christian country? No. I think it’s something we need to consider very carefully. Jesus was not popular. They crucified Him. How can we make Him popular today without changing who He really is?

Tom: Dave, we’ve wrapped up your book Seeking and Finding God. We encourage all those to write in and get a copy of the book, but….

Dave: We gave it…we gave it a light touch, Tom.

Tom: Yeah…

Dave: But…

Tom: But it is in search of the true faith, and that’s our heart for all of our listeners. We’re going to be covering, again, the Purpose Driven Life. Now 15 million copies [have] sold, so I don’t know of anything that’s so influential. We’ve been looking at what’s come into the church for almost three decades now, Dave, you, you know, before me. But in those years I’ve never seen anything like this, so I think it demands some scrutiny, because it’s impacting, affecting so many people’s lives. And all we want to do is search the Scriptures daily to see if these things are true to God’s Word.

Dave: Amen.