The Faith and Disciples

This morning, we're going to take a look at the faith and disciples. Now, I know that Courtney just read Acts 6 verses 1 through 7, and you're all prepared to hear about Acts 6, 1 through 7. But my dad said, Randy, this is the first place in the book of Acts where both the terms the faith and disciples show up. And they're so important that I'd like for you to talk about the faith and disciples. I told him I'm not sure I'm unemployed. This is how long ago he asked, but it turned out I became employed again, and so my schedule freed up, and so I'm here. So Acts 6 verses 1 through 7 introduce these two terms. Now, the faith is used in the New Testament a lot. It's used in Acts a lot, and it's used throughout the New Testament a lot.

The word disciples is used in the Gospels, and it's used in Acts, and it's not used in the Epistles, which is an opportunity to do some digging in and some head scratching, but hopefully as we make our way through that, it'll be useful. I think it's worth calling out and maybe worth considering that Luke wrote Acts. But most of our epistles are written by Paul.

So their vocabulary may reflect their authorship. But before we dive into the faith and disciples, I need to cover a theology word that I learned in seminary. That way my parents feel like the money they paid for that was worth it. So I'm joking. They were kind.

My dad has never brought it up once. And neither has my mom. I'd like to start by saying Adam walked with God and God taught him truth that Adam could not have known without God's specific revelation. Adam wasn't there from Genesis 1 all the way up to 26, right? When God makes Adam and his image day 6. Adam wasn't there. He wasn't there to observe it. He wasn't there to pass it around. God had to reveal that to Adam. And then Adam walked with God in the garden and he believed, right? Everything was good. Then he screwed up and he fell. It was the kind of fall that you don't recover from, okay? And so we get Adam, and Adam has children, and the children have children, and the children's children have children, and God reveals things progressively over time, but what the believers believed was limited to what was revealed at that time.

And the theology word that you all have to walk away with is the term progressive revelation, the idea that the revelation started at one point and continued throughout time. That's not the same as progressivism like politics or progressive dispensationalism, which is an error that we won't go into, but stay away from it. So we have this idea that the doctrine was being revealed, and as we look at the book of Acts, an important thing is happening. In the book of Acts, there is also progressive revelation.

The church is brand new, right? And they only have what the apostles, inspired by the Holy Spirit, are teaching them, and they're growing on it. They can't turn to the book of Romans. It's not there yet, right? And so the idea of the faith, as we look at it here, is that it's something that reflects what was revealed up until that time. When we look at it throughout the scriptures, just keep that in mind. All right, so let's talk about that idea here.

It's worth calling out, I'm going to step back here for just a second, it's worth calling out that at first, and my dad went over this, but at first the Christians were seen by the outsiders as just another sect of Judaism, right? Oh, hey, it's just the other Jews, but they have this new thing they're talking about. But it really became divisive really fast, right? And so the church had to separate from the Jews.

All right, so let's talk about the faith. And I was told by Joe McCauley, he said if I didn't have at least some impromptu story, then he would never come back again and listen to me teach. So he did say that. He's smiling real big though. So when I was in junior high, the church we were going to in Carson City had a vacation Bible school.

And the kids were called up for kind of an altar call sort of a thing because that was a good idea at the time, and they sent all the volunteers up to help pray with the kids so that they could come to know the Lord. And I want to say I was about 13 at the time, but I went up and there was a little girl there, and I thought, all right, just pray with her, and I realized I didn't actually at that age know the gospel. I was afraid that I was going to pray the wrong prayer. Like, what if I pray the wrong prayer and she's not saved? That's how confused I was, okay? So I'm not proud of this. I'm just calling it out.

So I learned... I learned... I asked some questions very quickly after that. I was like, that can never happen again because I need to know what the gospel is. And so I had to have a memorized, you know, quality understanding of what the gospel was. I learned the gospel, which is good. If you're not sure what it is, go to 1 Corinthians 15, look at verses 3 and 4 where it says that Christ died, was buried and rose again, according to the scriptures.

But something happens after that. You're saved. And then what? There's the rest of your life, in most people's cases, that's probably years, left to live. And there's a lot to learn. The Bible doesn't just have the gospel in the New Testament. That'd be a lot easier for teachers to teach, right? They're like, all right, we're gonna go to church and hear the gospel again. But there's a lot more there.

And so when we see the word the faith, and if you look at the handout later on, which will either be on the internet or the printer will come up and you'll get it either next week or whenever, there's multiple places in the New Testament where the faith shows up.

And so when you see the phrase the faith, it's a term that we're going to define as the collected teachings of the apostles up until that time. in the Scriptures. And now we have all of the Scriptures. So the collected teachings of the Apostles, we've got all of them. We collected the whole set. I want to call out something that's worth noting. In Romans 4, verses 11 and 12, and I'm going to turn there, I have tried to put some places where you might want to interact with your Bibles.

You probably brought one that requires the internet today just because that's how this day is going so Romans 4 verses 11 and 12 Paul writes and he received the sign of circumcision a seal of the righteousness of the faith Which he had while uncircumcised so that he might be the father of all who believe without being circumcised that righteousness might be credited to them and credited to them and the father of circumcision to those who not only are of the circumcision but who also follow in the steps of the faith of our father Abraham which he had while uncircumcised so right there Paul says Abraham had the faith now I want to be very very explicit Abraham did not get early revelation of the gospel that we believe Abraham believed God and it was accredited to him as righteousness. But what God had revealed to him was not the full gospel that we believe today with the past tense Christ on the cross, his burial, his death, his resurrection, ascension, and seating. So I just want to call that out, that the faith for the most part in the New Testament is looking to what the New Testament has revealed predominantly. Romans 4, 11, and 12 is a good exception to that.

Alright, so if you've got your Bibles, please turn with me to Ephesians 4, verses 11 through 13. where Paul writes, and he gave some as apostles and some as prophets and some as evangelists and some as pastors and teachers for the equipping of the saints for the work of service to the building up of the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and to the knowledge of the Son of God to a mature man to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. Now I'll be honest with you, my dad sent me two lessons, some of which were part of things I've done as whole series, and I'm cramming it into this lesson here. So I don't get to exposit all of Ephesians 4, 11-13 to you, and I'm sorry. Please go read it, it's awesome. Spend some time chewing on it.

Today we're going to look at until we all attain to the unity of the faith, because that's the focus of the lesson. The faith represents that which is true, that which is knowable, that which is believable, and something that we should be unified in and on. I've been through a lot of church splits, unfortunately, and they were not rooted in this verse. Let's talk about truth, and we'll try to hit these points somewhat briefly, but they're worth calling out.

The doctrines presented in the Bible are true, okay? And I know that's not shocking here. At Holly Hills, we've said that hopefully every week, right? In the Sunday school classes, it's actually taught to the kids, and at a young age, we ask them almost weekly, is the Bible true? And we teach them that it is indeed.

God as the author of the truths in the scripture revealed truth and provided what the saints have needed all through history to be saved. Whatever the faith was at the timeline where they were in time as revelation progressed. We need to understand God's intent as the author through the Holy Spirit. God's intent was to communicate truth for us. for you. I'm sure that even Abby needs to know the truth there. Now she's looking at me. Alright.

Paul admonishes Titus to defend the truth of the faith in Titus 1.13.

We're not going to read that, but if you go there in Titus 1.13, Paul is saying defend the truth. The Cretans are liars. We need to defend the truth.

The faith is knowable. As believers, we're able to read and study God's Word and understand it. We're not getting it second hand, third hand, fourth hand, 1500th hand. We have the scriptures, we can read it, we can understand it, and we can know it. We can use proper hermeneutics, that's one of those important words that my parents paid for me to have really good under the belt, and engage with what is revealed in the scriptures so that our faith is rooted in a solid understanding of what is written in God's revelation of history, God's revelation through prophecy, His revelation through poetry, His instruction, and His letters that He wrote through Paul. and Peter, and John, and whoever wrote Hebrews, and Jude, and James. Anyways, you get the point. We understand that God loves us so much, and He wants a relationship with us, and we can know that, and He desires to communicate that so that we can know His love. John 1, 520 speaks of the fact that what has been revealed is not just true, but it is believable.

The secular world tells us all the time, right? Oh, you're Christians in your faith. And how do they define faith? If I was in my normal Sunday school class, somebody would answer that. But I'll answer it for you since we're here. They always come to us and say, ah, you believe in the pixie fairy up in the sky.

They're skeptical, and they don't believe it, and they refuse to believe it. But as has been defended in the apologetics and polemics class, what we believe is verifiable historically, culturally, linguistically, and it carries veracity. This morning in the first hour, Bob mentioned the Cold Case book, which is an apologetics book, and my dad's mentioned that before as well. What we believe is not faith that some fictional, hopeful mumbo-jumbo. We believe something with veracity.

And last in this, well, second to last in this section here is doctrinal unity. All right, that's what Paul is talking about here in this Ephesians passage is doctrinal unity. One of the single biggest problems within the church bodies today that I've seen is doctrinal division that exists.

Have you ever been to a church that isn't premillennial or amillennial, but they unfortunately say we're panmillennial? We think it'll just pan out in the end, is what the pastor said to my dad one time. Makes me want to throw up a little bit if I'm honest. We don't want to just have a passive understanding.

If Paul calls us to doctrinal unity, that unity is in something. It is in something that is true, it is something that we can know, and it is something we can believe, and we can be unified in that. That's part of what Paul is calling for in the maturing of the body, is doctrinal unity. Now, the good news about doctrinal unity is that there's a really cool way that we can come to that doctrinal unity.

And if you go to the Holly Hills website, or if you did any raise your hand, this is as much interaction as I need this morning. Okay, raise your hand if you signed the doctrinal statement and the membership document some time ago, and if you haven't had a chance yet, ask, and we can get you signed up for it. You signed something that said you agreed with the doctrinal statement in our doctrinal statement has this really cool thing in it it says we believe that scripture is to be interpreted according to its grammatical and historical context including that god who does not change deals in a different manner with the gentile nations the people of israel and the god-created body of heavenly saints called the church That idea of a grammatical and historical context is what, in theological terms, we would call dispensational hermeneutics. Man, I'm scoring so many school points with my parents this morning. The hermeneutics is something that we've taught multiple times.

Roger and Bob and my brother-in-law Kurt, when he lived in Colorado, sadly the Lord took him away to Nevada. He didn't take him away. He took him away to Nevada. That's a different... Then also last year, my dad co-taught that as well, how to study the Bible.

There are consistent ways to study the Bible to get a consistent result, and we can get rid of all the disagreements if we are patiently using the proper steps to hermeneutics. You can go listen to the recordings online and get handouts. So if you didn't take that class and you're thinking to yourself now, shucks, they're on there. Hollyhillsbiblechurch.org. All right.

Last of this section here is Jesus is the author of the faith. In Hebrews 12, 2, it tells us that we should be setting our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our the faith. OK, it's actually the definite article, the is in there. The definite article is here. It's translated out of the English for smoothness of reading.

But what's really cool in the Greek is it actually says the the faith author. The, the faith author. Jesus is the author of the faith. Once though, once we believe, right? What we started this section with, I said, okay, you got the gospel and then what? Then there's the faith. You need to learn about the things that were revealed about Jesus, what was revealed about the church, what was revealed about Israel and you need to continue to learn about the whole scriptures as Paul writes to Timothy that that they would understand and have value in all of the scriptures, so we need to grow in our knowledge and It's going to take us our whole lives to do so.

I was really hopeful that when I went to seminary I'd be like all right boom boom boom nailed the classes and I went to seminary and There was this really old guy teaching and he said I'm still learning and I was like, oh man Because I was 21 and so at that point in time that seemed like this is gonna take forever But but there's some there's some answers here so firstly God gave us the Bible his word in John 1 1 right for our edification and Colossians 1 25 talks about the edification and secondly God gave us the Holy Spirit were indwelled by the Holy Spirit who teaches us and intercedes for us and as Romans 8.26 tells us.

And obviously 2 Corinthians 3.18, one of the best verses in all the Bible, tells us we're being conformed to His image and through the Holy Spirit, right? And third, and this one's a gotcha, alright? Ready, because you're in it. The third one is He gave us one another for our growth and our edification.

And so that brings us from the faith which I'm telling you, we just hit like the very smallest tip of the iceberg and there's a really big iceberg underneath the water. The next section here is disciples. Okay, so assuming we have an established doctrine of truth, that we have an established faith worth unifying around, how will the church reach unity?

I've seen various people try various methods. One is to study all by yourself and be all by yourself. Does that sound like a good strategy? The solo Christian? It's really easy to breeze through 1 Corinthians chapter 12 where he talks about the body when it's a body of one.

I win. Right? Or maybe we should just sit in the pews once a week and get a little bit of something. Right? I'm not trying to be legalistic when I mention these things. I'm just saying these are things people try, right? You get the essentials, you tell yourself. But there's a really cool critical principle that appears throughout the New Testament, and that's one that carries on through personal involvement and body-wide involvement of making disciples. I have this really nifty analogy. This is my analogy of the rope. and I like to trot it out whenever I can because it's one of the few analogies I have.

So the first one is that we as individual believers are fibers, okay? In a rope, you've got this little tiny strand and that's a fiber, okay? And those fibers get twisted together and those fibers create a yarn. And those of you who knit understand yarn. And those yarn pieces are twisted together to create a strand, and the whole strand comes together to be a rope.

And if we think of this, and I've got a laser on this, but I don't know if you'll be able to see it, if we think of this as the time-space continuum, That's a good word, right? Time-space continuum. If we think of it as the time-space continuum, God is intertwining us until the return of Jesus Christ. Intertwining us together as a body, passing down the faith through the history, and we get to be part of it.

Alright, so we have the rope analogy. God has established a pattern. I wanted to find a really cool color picture of rope that showed all this, but it turns out I couldn't find any, even though the internet is so big. All right, so Matthew 28, 19 through 20. Let's take a look at that. If you've got your Bibles, feel free to turn there.

Verse 19, Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, Jesus is speaking to his disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you. And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. Now, the number one thing that everybody knows about this verse is that it really should be translated, and therefore, in your going, be making disciples and there you go another little Bible nugget and you can store that away but you're missing the point if that's all you get away get from this verse here traditionally Jewish rabbis would be asked by someone will you let me be your disciple the rabbi would be the specialist, right? He's the Jewish teacher that has all the knowledge. And the students would come and say, please, will you let me be your disciple? And the rabbi could say yes or no. And maybe you're hoping for a good hair day or whatever it is that you're looking for, so that the rabbi will say yes.

But Jesus tells his disciples, we're going to flip this on its head. He says, you guys, go be the teachers that go look for the students. That's what Jesus modeled for them. He breaks the mold. The culture expects one thing in Jesus, always the contrarian. He says, you go find disciples and you train them up.

But once you became a disciple, you were going to walk with that rabbi, you were going to talk with that rabbi, you were going to think with that rabbi, and you were going to learn with that rabbi. But God's going to turn that right around and he's going to establish things in a different order so that we get to be involved and we get to be part of that.

So let's take a look at 2 Timothy 2.2. We're going to just keep blitzing through all these lessons all in a short amount of time.

2 Timothy 2.2.

The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. All right, so you're asking yourself, where's the disciple, right? We don't have the disciple word in here.

We already established it ends at the end of Acts. What is important here is that we recognize the pattern. We talked about the pattern that was there. And the pattern that was established by Jesus was that they would spend the time together, they would teach, they would invest the truth into the next person. And so the pattern exists, even if the word disciple is missed. This is what discipleship looks like. Alright, so Paul says, teach the things which you heard from me in the presence of many witnesses.

Now this is the trick shot here because I can't go to hollyhillsbiblechurch.org and listen to Paul's lessons in MP3. I'm sorry, as a webmaster, I can't do that for you. I wish I could. Be great, you know if anybody has any recordings of Paul the Apostle, you know, let me know We'll get him up there, right?

So we don't have that we don't have the recordings of the things that he taught and that Timothy heard him teach in the presence of many witnesses But we do have his letters and this is a really short truncated list of the things that Paul taught he taught the gospel and He taught about spiritual growth. He taught about the church and body life. He taught about responsibilities for church leadership, the identification truths. If you're here at Ollie Hills, you know that's important.

Abiding and beholding. The Trinity and their involvement in the lives of the believers. Glorification. Love. That's an important one, right? Marriage, the family and parenting, trials and suffering, death to the law, moral behavior in light of believing.

That's just like the tip of the iceberg because Paul wrote a lot. And then we have what other authors like Peter and John wrote that we can also look to. But that's outside of context if you're what Paul is writing to Timothy. We might even call those things part of the faith, right? Paul wanted to make sure that these truths were preserved and understood through personal teaching by Timothy.

Timothy, you teach these things personally. So what does it mean to be a disciple versus being a student? As a student, I was a student in a lot of classes to the least amount of effort possible, now that I've bragged about going to seminary. But as a disciple, You are living and you are spending time and you are eating and breathing and walking and spending time with the teacher.

So Paul says, entrust these things to faithful men who will teach others also. So the word entrust here, unfortunately, could be translated in kind of a weak way, which we're going to refute real quickly here. And that would be kind of like in a dining scenario. You might put the food in front of somebody. That would be translated one way.

Paul definitely does not mean just gently put these doctrines in front of people. He means to entrust them, to command or commit them. It would be absurd for Paul to just suggest that Timothy passively set them in front of somebody. It's not just teaching. So Paul wants the teachings to be entrusted to faithful men. These are believers who are not merely interested in the newest teaching.

When Paul went to Athens, in Rumer and Acts, Paul goes to Athens in chapter 17, and the people in Athens love new things. That sounds like most of the first world loves new things now. We all tune in to see what Apple's releasing next, right? What's the new thing? Paul's not looking for people who are interested in new things.

He's looking for people who were faithful men. They needed faithful men. Now, I want to take a rabbit trail from this rabbit trail, because this is a good one. There are lots of teachers who have attempted their hardest to fix this need for faithful men.

And those teachers have said things like, only the faithful are saved. So if you're not faithful, you're not saved. So how do you know that you should entrust the word to them, you got to wait till they die. Oh, they were faithful and they were saved. Now we can give them the word they're dead.

So that doesn't work. And then there's the legalists who say, Well, you must be faithful. And we'll just beat that into you. That isn't a good solution either. And then there's the charismatics, and I grew up with some time period in my life having this, where you just need to feel your faith, and as long as we can just keep the feeling going, you'll be faithful. As it turns out, that wears out. And then there's liberalism, which would say that, hey, once saved, you had faith, therefore you're faithful. Let's just redefine the term.

But instead, what we have, and what I believe we teach here at Holly Hills, is a biblical doctrine of spirit-led body life, so that we actually have faithfulness, and when we see somebody get off the beaten path, we have Galatians 6.1, where it says, come alongside you who are spiritual and restore them. And so that faithfulness happens, even if there's a trip. Oh, we're with you, we're back, we're together. So, faithful men, can happen biblically and we can grow together from weakness to strength, which is an application of this discipling process.

Alright, so the next section here is walking. Now it's a rabbit trail, that's the second part of a rabbit trail there, I'm sorry, but it's really important. In the Old Testament, In Deuteronomy 11 19, there's actually a commandment that if you were a parent, that you would teach your children and when you were walking and talking, you would always be teaching your children the law. Now I'm not bringing that up because we need the law in a church.

Okay, so everybody put your stones away. Instead, I want you to know that this is what the Jewish readers at the time when they were receiving Paul's letter would have understood as part of this process. That's what they might have grown up with. It would have hopefully started in the home, impacted their tribe in Israel, and then impacted the nation. And then eventually, when they came in contact with Gentiles, the Gentiles could become Jewish believers. Exodus 12, 48 talks about how that can happen. We're not looking to duplicate the Old Testament law, but we're looking at the principles of walking.

Now, I have a little rabbit trail story to make sure that Joe comes back next time. And that is that when I was a teenager, my dad and my uncle started taking seminary classes. They went before me. That's why I knew I had to go. And they would go for walks. And they'd walk through Carson City, which is pretty gracious. There's not a lot to see there. But they would walk through cars, cows and houses. But they would walk and they would let me tag along. And guess what they would do? They would talk about the things they were learning. They were talking about the faith. And I would not raise my hand, but I could ask questions. I could say, wait a minute, do you mean this says this? Do you mean that this is how we interpret this verse.

And I would wrestle through things and they would walk and they would patiently engage me. Sometimes they went on walks without me because I'm pretty sure they wanted to delve into deeper things. But that walking is an important principle. We can abandon the legalism, but there's still a principle there in the pattern. All right.

So now that we've taken a look briefly at Paul's Single verse in 2nd Timothy 2 to we're going to take a look at Titus 2 1 through 8 now Some of you are panicking because it's a bit warm in here and you're thinking that's a lot of verses But we're going to skip the verse by verse exposition and hit some highlights instead Actually this this verse is actually when I taught on Years ago and you can actually go to the website and listen to the recording if you want. I But Paul writes to Titus, and I'm going to read this whole thing even though we're going to talk about some highlights.

But as for you, speak the things which are fitting for sound doctrine. Older men are to be temperate, dignified, sensible, sound in faith, in love, sound in perseverance. Older women, likewise, are to be reverent in their behavior, not malicious gossips or enslaved to much wine. teaching what is good, so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands, so that the word of God will not be dishonored. Likewise, urge the young men to be sensible, I think that's funny, because as a young man, I needed that all over the place. In all things, show yourself to be an example of good deeds with purity in doctrine, dignified, sound in speech, which is beyond reproach, so that the opponent will be put to shame, having nothing bad to say about us.

So now I'm going to just skip over a whole bunch of stuff, and I will load that with you, but take some time to study it. So there's a pattern here. Again, we have older men and older women. We can observe that the doctrine that was known by the older men and older women was important.

Both of them are instructed to be teaching the younger generation proper doctrine and proper living. The Cretans were known for being liars. Paul starts in chapter 1 by telling reminding Titus that the Cretans are known for being liars. So the church should stand out pretty strong against a bunch of liars, right? That would be an expected thing to see.

But we get direction here through the creation of a biblical spirit-led culture that is setting the stage for how the older generation is thinking and living, being passed down to how the younger generation should be thinking and living. If you, as an older believer, have raised a family, if you've served in a ministry, if you've studied God's Word, if you've loved your spouse through various mistakes and trials, the next generation needs to understand these truths practically, conversationally, and in their walking with you.

Now, I'm not sure which one of these I am. I'm going to be 40 this year. Am I an older man? Or am I a younger man? I don't know. But for the younger men and younger women, in modern times, we're finding that younger generations of believers are being encouraged to seek out other believers that are of the same age bracket.

You need to make sure you go to a church where there's lots of people just like you. And they need to be your same age bracket, your same financial bracket and the same life stage. Make sure you keep all the young newlyweds together, and all of the young parents together and then the parents of teens together, and then the college age student parents together and you just keep everybody segregated. And what you get is this really sad, homogenous group of believers who don't get the chance to learn from the older men and women. It's directly against what the scriptures teach, but it's culturally really popular right now. Because it feels good. Yay for the feelings. But we get this really sad, homogenous, fad-driven living as the result.

If Paul's letter to Titus is to be understood, younger believers need to insert themselves into the lives of older believers. Don't wait for them. Although, if you're an older believer, you're not supposed to wait for somebody to ask you, right? If you're making disciples. Don't wait. Go find an older person. Get to know them. Turns out they're pretty neat. I'm not sure which one I am. I think I'm straddling. Maybe I'm a bridge at 40, right? But there's lots of folks.

If you think you're the younger one, find somebody who's the older and get cozy. Get intimate. Love one another. Learn from one another. And I've got an observation here. on this idealized younger family that's been presented here. The older men are to be teaching the younger men doctrinal truths, but that doctrinal truth should not stop at the younger man's ears. If he's married, who else should hear it? His wife? His children? Maybe his friends? Maybe his other family?

There's been many times when I've gotten to spend time with one of the elders. I'll give an example of Mike Doyle. One of the times I learned something from Mike Doyle at Bible study at his house, and then we were having Bible study at Aaron and Trish's house, and we were going through some other series, but Mike taught on 2 Corinthians 3.18, and it was so impactful to me. I said, guys, we're not going to go over what we were going through.

You have to hear the 2 Corinthians 3.18 stuff, because it'll change your whole perspective. If you're being discipled, if you're being taught by somebody else, it's going to pass on, and you better not, as a guy, hold it up here. You better come out of your mouth to your spouse.

It will impact your wife and your children, and it will impact their walk. As for the gals, the relationship that the older women have with the younger women will absolutely impact their husbands and their children as well. You're going to change your family if you're being discipled. in a good way, even if there's sometimes some bumpy spots because you've been doing it wrong, right? Both of these roles for husbands and wives will show reverence to God's Word.

And that's important. And just in case you're listening to this and you're single, guess what? You also get to participate in this pattern. you can still be involved and you can still be discipled or be discipling. It's just that Paul's letter to Titus gives the example of the pattern of married couples. And I'm going to tell one last story to make Joe happy.

And when I was an older teenager, I think I was about 18, although my dad can correct me on this, he started to be discipled by a guy named Art in Reno. And I knew it was Monday. It was Mondays that you were discipled, right? Usually I knew it was Monday because dad would walk in the door a little bit late, but really energized and excited and There were things that he had not learned all of his life as a believer that he was being taught that changed the life that he knew he was capable of living because before he thought he had to do it by his own strength and art was teaching a grace-based abiding life and There were some things he had a little off.

But my dad came home and he was excited. And then one day my dad said, Randy, would you like me to disciple you? And I was like, I won the dad lottery. I was pretty excited because my dad, who loved me so much, and had expressed it in so many ways, sat down with me and taught me about God's Word and God's grace. And I know my parents and I are crying. This is embarrassing. No, I'm just kidding. It's not embarrassing. It's awesome.

But being discipled changed my family. My dad being discipled. And as it turns out, it's also changed my own personal family. It's how I interact with my wife and my daughters. And some of you have had kids that I've asked, can I take them out for coffee or breakfast? And guess what? I do that because I want to spend time with them and I want to teach them God's Word. If I haven't yet, just ask me. Jessica loves it when I tell her I'm going to leave early so I can go have coffee with somebody.

Finally, and you're all relieved because it's getting warm in here, in conclusion, because we're learning the truth of what is in the faith, because we're being taught not just the milk of God's Word, but the meat as well, there comes with it the general responsibility, and I don't mean that legalistically, to make sure that the faith doesn't stop with you. The author of Hebrews gets close to closing the book of Hebrews in chapter 13, verse 7, where he writes, Remember those who led you, who spoke the word of God to you, and considering the result of their conduct, imitate there the faith. The definite article is eluted for smoothness in reading in English, right?

But it's there. And when we disciple, we leave a legacy of God's truth, the love of the body and the character of Christ, possibly for generations to come, hopefully for generations to come. And when we're being discipled, we learn to leave the very same legacy. We don't know when Christ will return. I hope it's today. I know you do too. But we know that while we wait for his return, we are preparing those who might wait for his return after us.

Empowered by the Holy Spirit to learn, to lead, and to walk in his loving, sanctifying life. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we come before you. We're super grateful for the chance to blitz through all of these verses. We pray that in this body the idea of understanding the faith would grow deeper and that we would understand every time we run across those two words what they mean. And we pray for the idea of disciples and disciple making that that would be something that we would understand more deeply and have as a part of our body life together. We thank you and we praise you for your word in Jesus name. Amen.