This last Wednesday we closed the year on a talk about what it means to "be a disciple" of Jesus. So many of us simply consider ourselves "Christians" (and that term is fine!) but the hard thing about it is that it can mean almost anything at all to be a Christian. And I say that because that term ("Christian") is not defined anywhere in the Bible. And so, while it's totally fine for us to call ourselves that (we've been called that for centuries, after all), it can be difficult because there are people on both sides of every political view and on both sides of every ethical and moral issue and every social issue that would call themselves Christians. See, the Bible only uses the term "Christian" 3 times. The followers of Jesus were given a different term... perhaps a more direct and narrow term... they were, of course, called "disciples." It's pretty easy to define what a disciple is according to the Bible. The word "disciple" or "disciples" is used over 300 times in Scripture!!

My primary concern is not what students call themselves, though. My primary concern is that they know what a disciple of Jesus looks like... my main premise was that they should see "disciple of Jesus" as their identity and everything else as a role. If you're a Christian, you're a disciple first, and a student, employee, baseball player, show choir performer, or guitarist, etc. second.* 

*In the Great Commission, some of the last words Jesus said to His disciples before He left earth, He gave 3 aspects that make up a disciple's identity:

1. Rational - you're a learner. There is content to the Gospel and to being a disciple. There are facts to know. Now, discipleship is NOT fundamentally about how we perform or what we know, but about who we are. Most of us get this backwards. It starts with who we are in Christ. Out of that flows new actions, thoughts, and behaviors. Here are some good "nutshells" of these facts: *"We are imperfect people, clinging to a perfect Christ, being perfected by the Spirit." Another is, "The wonderful news of the Gospel is that Jesus frees us from trying to impress God or others because He has impressed God on our behalf. Jesus was perfect for us, in our place." 
2. Relational - as a disciple, you are part of a community. You are a member of the body of Christ. We should fight hard against the urge to be individualistic, self-centered, or narcissictic. It's not just about us. We were saved into the body of Christ---the Church. This is so hard for us to get our minds around, since our Western culture is SO individualistic. But we need to model this to the world. Being saved by the grace of God, we should in turn give grace to everyone else. Most importantly, the disciple is now living in a relationship with Jesus Christ. We are one with Christ; united with Him. We should talk and relate with Jesus like we would anyone else. 
3. Missional - you're a missionary. You've been given a task as a disciple of Jesus. So as you live in community with the Church and with the content of the gospel, you build relationships with non-believers and talk to them about what Jesus has done. 

Read Matthew 28:19-20 for yourself and see how these 3 aspects pop out. 

If Jesus would have remained dead, all further discipleship to Jesus would have ceased. But Jesus didn't remain dead. He's fully alive today, in the flesh even---in a perfected, resurrection body. He's just not on the earth, but in heaven. So being a disciple of Jesus continues. The real question is "will you fight to be a disciple of Jesus?"

Consider these 3 aspects often as you head into the summer. 

*Much of this content is from Jonathan Dodson, found in his book Gospel-Centered Discipleship.

Do Not Love the World - 1 John 2:15-17 

James Pruch

This last Wednesday we started a new series in Oasis called "Life Issues," talking about some of the everyday life stuggles and influences we have. Every day, whether we realize it or not, we are influenced. Perhaps the most significant way that this happens is through media. Media is simply the many channels of communication that try to get us to love something, namely ourselves! Whether it is wearing Axe Body Spray to get the girls or logging onto to Facebook to envy someone's life or possessions, we are influenced by communication. The problem isn't media (whether social, news, entertainment or otherwise), per se. The problem is that we use media to get what we want. We use media to get approval from others, comfort in life, and power over people and our destiny. 

The Apostle John writes to some Christians 2,000 years ago who never had iPhones or Facebook or body sprays or designer clothes. But they were continually at risk to love things other than God. Most of John’s first letter is about how loving God leads to loving others. But in our passage, John takes a detour from talking about loving others, to address loving the world. He talks about loving the world because he wants to make his point clear:If you love the world, you cannot love God. And if you do not love God then you cannot love other people.

 In 1 John 2:16, John points out three things that are "in the world." First, he points out the desires of the flesh. This comes from our inner sinful nature that move us to want what is contrary to what God wants. Second, he mentions the desires of the eyes. We see things that are pleasing to our eye and we crave them. This could also mean any kind of intellectual desires or aesthetic desires—things that are not necessarily tangible. Finally, join points to pride in possessions (or life). This is pride in what we have. One scholar wrote that this person seeks to "impress everyone he meets with his own non-existent importance.” So John boils what is in the world down to three things. These three things are basically summarized like this: an unhealthy desire in what we do not have and an unhealthy pride in what we do have.

What we see is that sin is inherently anti-social! Life becomes a refrain of “I want, I want, I want, I want, I want, I want, I want, I want, I want, I want, I want!" When our lives sing this tune, we cannot love God, or other people for that matter. We are in the darkness and are blind and cannot tell where we are going. If you love the world, you cannot love God. But if you read John, what we see is that Jesus came to do away with this kind of life. The world--this narcissistic kind of living--is controlled by the evil one (John 12:31; 16:11) and 1 John 3:8 says, “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the work of the devil.” We can draw the conclusion then that John essentially says, “Do not love what Jesus came to destroy.”

The good news of the gospel is that Jesus came to destroy this kind of life so we can love God. Jesus destroyed the desire for approval because, by faith in him, we are approved by the Father. He destroyed the desire for comfort because our true comfort lies in the fact that we no longer serve the devil as our father, but we serve God as our Father. Jesus destroyed a desire for power because we can rest assured that he reigns over the world, so we do not need to reign over anyone--even ourselves. 

Media—the world—offers you what you can only find in Jesus. You may not believe this. But only Jesus can deliver because his promises come with a new life. And faith in him is the only way to receive him and the new life he gives. He said, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy leaden, and I will give you rest.” He said, “If anyone thirsts let him come to me and drink.” Go to him. He wants you to come. That might mean getting rid of Facebook or TV or a cell phone. It might mean simply cutting back. Whatever the case, God must be our treasure, not the world. As John says, "If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him."

And Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”Luke 23:34

Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Matt. 27:46

Heaven is not a place where you will sit on a cloud playing a harp in a diaper. It's not boring either. If we want to think about heaven in realistic terms, we need to have "kingdom" at the forefront of our minds. God begins the world with a garden-kingdom, with this people Adam and Eve. They were kicked out of the kingdom because they sinned. God then called Abram and said He would make him a nation of kings. God also promised Abram a kingdom--a Promised Land. Israel--the nation that arose from Abraham (his new kingdom name)--would go into the promise land only to be kicked out because they, like Adam, failed to obey. The prophets then came onto the scene and foretold about the New Heavens and New Earth (see Isa. 65). All Israel thought this to be a coming kingdom when Israel would be restored.

Then Jesus comes onto the scene and he preaches, "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand" (Matt. 4:17). Jesus says it plainly: "You want Heaven? It's in me. I have come to bring Heaven to Earth." Jesus came to give himself--not the benefits of Heaven. Everyone wants the blessings of Heaven, but few actually want Jesus.

The way to get into this kingdom that Jesus brought is perfection, because it’s a perfect kingdom with God as a perfect king. Remember, Adam failed to live obediently in God’s kingdom. Israel failed obediently to live in God’s kingdom. They were both cast out. Jesus came as God’s kingdom and lived the life Adam and Israel and you and I never lived. He died the death we deserved to die so that we might be welcomed into the kingdom. So we repent and trust that knowing Jesus is our way into the kingdom of Heaven.

Jesus ascended back to Heaven after his resurrection. He now sits on his heavenly throne (Eph. 1:20; 2:6) and we saints are seated with him! He reigns in Heaven, and he will bring it with him again, in all its fullness at his second coming (Rev. 21-22). So Heaven is a kingdom. It's not a place where we are in an eternal trance. It's the perfect country and city that we always longed for, yet could never obtain or even imagine. Everything is perfect and holy there and Jesus is on center stage. Here on earth, we get a taste of it when the gospel spreads and people worship the King.

The point of Heaven is Jesus. Wanting Heaven is not enough to get there. Not wanting Hell is not enough to get there either. Wanting the kingdom without wanting the King is a tragedy. C.S. Lewis said, “Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and you will get everything else thrown in.” As we live, let us look for Jesus and not the benefits of Heaven. After all, Jesus is the true treasure worth losing everything for (Matt. 13:44).

It’s possible to read the Bible, study the Bible, and memorize large portions of the Bible, while missing the whole point of the Bible. It’s entirely possible, in other words, to read the stories and miss the Story.

This is what happened to the two disciples walking on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24.

They were dejected, down, and despairing because the one they had put all their hope in had just been executed. They heard “rumors” that he was missing from the grave but, as far as they knew, these were unsubstantiated claims. As they were walking and talking Jesus came up and walked with them “but they were kept from recognizing him.” Jesus asked them, “What are you two talking about? Why are you so sad?” Looking strangely at this stranger, they asked, “Where have you been? Don’t you know what’s just happened? It’s the talk of the town.” They went on to explain that the one they were banking on to restore Israel to it’s national and political prominence had just been put to death. Their hopes had been dashed, their dreams shattered.

Jesus looked at them and said, “Do you not read your Bibles?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself (Luke 24:27). Jesus showed them that if they had understood what the Old Testament was really about, they wouldn’t have been so shocked by the things that had happened. They knew their Bible’s, but they missed Jesus.

Luke 24:21 tells us what they thought the Bible was about. They read it as if it was fundamentally about their glory–Jesus was coming to restore their prominence, position, and power.

We make the same mistake.

As I mentioned in my last post, we often read the Bible as if it were fundamentally about us: our improvement, our life, our triumph, our victory. And as a result we treat it like a book of timeless principles that will give us our best life now if we simply apply those principles. We treat it, in other words, like it’s a heaven-sent self-help manual. But by looking at the Bible as if it were fundamentally about us, we totally miss Jesus–like the two on the road to Emmaus. In fact, unless we go to the Bible to see Jesus and his work for us, even our devout Bible reading can become fuel for our own narcissistic self-improvement plans.

So, if we read the Bible asking first, “What would Jesus do?” instead of asking “What has Jesus done” we’ll miss the good news that alone can set us free.

As I’ve said before, the overwhelming focus of the Bible is not the work of the redeemed but the work of the Redeemer. The Bible is not first a recipe book for Christian living, but a revelation book of Christ who is the answer to our unchristian living. Scripture, in other words, is the portrait of Jesus. It’s a picture of who he is and what he’s done. The Bible tells one story and points to one figure: it tells the story of how God rescues a broken world and points to Christ who accomplishes this. The OT predicts God’s rescuer; the NT presents God’s rescuer. In all of its pages and throughout all of its stories, the Word of the Lord reveals the Lord of the Word. The plot line of the Bible, in other words, is Jesus-centered. He is the Hero of the Story.

Even though it’s a children’s Bible, The Jesus Storybook Bible is, in my opinion, one of the best resources available to help both children and adults see the Jesus-centered story line of the Bible.

In the Introduction of that book, author Sally Lloyd-Jones rightly explains what the Bible is not before she beautifully explains what the Bible is. She writes:

Now, some people think the Bible is a book of rules, telling you what you should and shouldn’t do. The Bible certainly does have some rules in it. They show you how life works best. But the Bible isn’t mainly about you and what you should be doing. It’s about God and what he has done.

Other people think the Bible is a book of heroes, showing you people you should copy. The Bible does have some heroes in it, but (as you’ll soon find out) most of the people in the Bible aren’t heroes at all. They make some big mistakes (sometimes on purpose), they get afraid and run away. At times, they’re downright mean.

No, the Bible isn’t a book of rules, or a book of heroes. The Bible is most of all a Story. It’s an adventure story about a young Hero who comes from a far country to win back his lost treasure. It’s a love story about a brave Prince who leaves his palace, his throne–everything–to rescue the ones he loves. It’s like the most wonderful of fairy tales that has come true in real life!

You see, the best thing about this Story is…it’s true.

There are lots of stories in the Bible, but all the stories are telling one Big Story. The Story of how God loves his children and comes to rescue them.

It takes the whole Bible to tell this Story. And at the center of the Story, there is a baby. Every story in the Bible whispers his name. He is like the missing piece in the puzzle-the piece that makes all the other pieces fit together, and suddenly you can see a beautiful picture.

For an amazing article by Sally on the need to teach children that the Bible is not about them, go here.

And here’s a message I gave on the subject of what we miss when we don’t read the Bible in a Christ-Centered way. This message was delivered at the 20/20 College Conference 2012 at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary a few weeks ago.

We Christians have a remarkable tendency to focus almost exclusively on the fruit of the problem. We do this as parents with our children, pastors with our parishioners, husbands with wives and wives with husbands. We do this with ourselves. Others do it with us. Like Job’s “friend”, Eliaphaz, we often draw simplistic conclusions about life, ourselves, and others based exclusively on what we see (Job 4:8).

The gospel, on the other hand, always addresses the root of the problem. And the root of the problem is not bad behavior. Bad behavior is the fruit of something deeper. Our chief problem, as Jesus made clear, is “not what goes into a man”, but the defiled heart–or root (Mark 7:15).

Harold Senkbeil rightly identifies our real enemy: death. Sins are the fruit of a much deeper problem, a problem that only God can solve. Death is the root of the problem.

“This looks good”, she thought to herself. Such shiny fruit; it fairly cried out to be eaten, to be enjoyed. And what a broadening experience such enjoyment would be---the knowledge of good and evil, the Mighty One had said. How could He want less than the very best for His own?

“My husband and I will  be like God Himself,” she reflected. “Now, could that be so bad?”

The serpent made sense: it would be much better to know both good and evil than to know only good.

“Here, have some.” She handed the juicy pulp to her husband.

“This is good stuff. By the way, Adam, do you know what God meant by that word---I think it was ‘die.’”

All sinful behavior can be traced back to the death that happened in Eden. To address behavior without addressing death is to perpetuate death. The Pharisees were masters of this and Jesus called them “white-washed tombs.” Many of us Christians are guilty of making this same mistake. We tend to think of the gospel as God’s program to make bad people good, not dead people live. The fact is, Jesus came first to effect a mortal resurrection, not a moral reformation-as his own death and resurrection demonstrate.

Most people think that the human dilemma is that our lives are out of adjustment; we don’t meet God’s expectations. Salvation then becomes a matter of rearranging our priorities and adjusting our life-style to correspond with God’s will. In its crassest form, this error leads people to think they earn their own salvation. More often in today’s evangelical world, the error has a more subtle disguise: armed with forgiveness through Jesus, people are urged to practice the techniques and principles Christ gave to bring their life-style back into line.

It is certainly true that sinful lives are out of adjustment. We are all in need of the Spirit’s sanctifying power. But that comes only after our real problem is solved. Sins are just the symptom; our real dilemma is death.

God warned Adam and Eve that the knowledge of evil came with a high price tag: “. . . when you eat of (the tree of the knowledge of good and evil) you will surely die” (Gen. 2:17). Our first parents wanted to be like God and were willing to pay the price. And we are still paying the price: “the wages of sin is death . . .” (Rom. 6:23); “. . . in Adam all die” (1 Cor. 15:22); “. . . You were dead in your transgressions and sins” (Eph. 2:1).

The real problem we all face is death. Physical death, to be sure. But ultimately and most horribly, spiritual death---being cut off from God forever. And everyone must die. You can either die alone or die in Jesus.

In his death Jesus Christ swallowed up our death, and rose again triumphantly to take all of the teeth out of the grave. In the promise of the resurrection, death loses its power. When we die with Jesus, we really live! (Senkbeil)

Sanctification consists of the daily realization that in Christ we have died and in Christ we have been raised. Life change happens as the heart daily grasps death and life. Death is the operative device that sets us free in Christ–when we die, we truly live. Daily reformation, therefore, is the fruit of daily resurrection (Romans 6:1-11). To get it the other way around (which we always do by default) is to miss the power and point of the gospel. In his book God in the Dock, C.S. Lewis makes the obvious point that “You can’t get second things by putting them first; you can get second things only by putting first things first.” Behavior (good or bad) is a second thing.

“Life is a web of trials and temptations”, says Robert Capon, “but only one of them can ever be fatal---the temptation to think it is by further, better, and more aggressive living that we can have life.” The truth is, that you can’t live your way to life–you can only “die [your] way there, lose [your] way there…For Jesus came to raise the dead. He did not come to reward the rewardable, improve the improvable, or correct the correctable; he came simply to be the resurrection and the life of those who will take their stand on a death he can use instead of on a life he cannot.”

Moral renovation, in other words, is to refocus our eyes away from ourselves to that Man’s obedience, to that Man’s cross, to that Man’s blood---to that Man’s death and resurrection!

 Learning daily to love the glorious exchange (our sin for his righteousness), to lean on its finishedness, and to live under its banner, is what it means to be morally reformed!

This article was sent to us from Hannah Guritz

ABC News’ Melinda Arons and Lauren Effron report:

Although Denver quarterback Tim Tebow didn’t lead the Broncos to the Super Bowl, he continues to silence his critics over how he plays the game.

“No matter what happens, you’re always going to have those critics and those haters,” he told ESPN’s Hannah Storm. ”You just have to learn how to deal with that. I think I have and accept that.”

Born in the Philippines to evangelical missionaries, Tebow is deeply religious and wears his evangelical Christian faith on his sleeve, and more controversially, on the field, where he openly prays on his knees at the end of every game.  It’s a move that has become so well-known, it’s now a verb — “tebow-ing.”

“The greatest form of flattery is imitation,” he said. ”But just that prayer is being talked about is pretty cool.”

But while his open Christian faith has been an inspiration to some and sparked a national conversation about the power of prayer, it also spawned “Tebow-hating,” a sport in of itself.  Many fans and even players say a football game is no place to proselytize.  Still, Tebow says he has no plans to change.

“For me, it’s a great opportunity on a public platform to get on your knees and humble myself and thank the Lord for all the blessings he’s put in my life,” Tebow said. “[It] shows you’re putting something else or someone else first. That’s why I do it. I’m pretty sure I’m not the first athlete to get on his knees and pray.  But it’s something that I do more for myself than for everybody else.”

One thing even Tebow’s most ardent critics can’t fault him for is his charity work.  In addition to his missionary work with orphanages in the Philippines, he regularly brings sick children to his games through his foundation. Tebow brought Joey Norris, a young boy with cancer, to the playoff game against the New England Patriots, and where the Broncos suffered what he called a devastating loss.

“I was extremely disappointed,” Tebow said. “But I still have a kid who is fighting for his life, and I have a choice to make. I can choose to sulk and feel pity after this loss and this disappointment. I can choose to try to go invest in him and try to encourage him and make him smile and be a part of his life. That really changes your perspective as a young man and as an athlete.  For me to try to invest in him, he helped me more than I helped him on that night.”