Discipleship in Family and Society

Welcome to session 5 of our series Kingdom Disciples, Heaven's Representatives on Earth. Once you understand the principle of discipleship, it now must be applied in the four spheres of the kingdom. In this session, we want to talk about its application in your personal life. As an individual believer, you must hitch your wagon up. to Jesus Christ. Find out how he thinks and feels about a subject and respond accordingly. And when you do, he promises to give you rest to the very depths of your soul. Then you want to transfer that to your family so that your family family feels the impact and the input of a discipling environment because when an individual contributes to the transformation of his family which is the goal of discipleship you set the stage for the improvement of a whole nation God's kingdom is divided into four realms, four spheres in which it operates and expresses itself. The individual life, the family, the church, and the broader society. God's kingdom is over all, but he has so structured it that the individual is to impact the family, the family, the church, and the church, the society. That's how his kingdom was designed to operate. So to become a kingdom disciple is to flow through all four of those areas under the rule of God because we all exist in all four of those areas on some level. It starts off with you as an individual. While family was where God wanted to go, he started off with a single man and a single woman that wind up becoming a family. So God even wants singles to be kingdom disciples. So your own individual life is critical, that you are a disciple separate from what anyone else does. You coming under the comprehensive rule of God and the lordship of Jesus Christ. The Pelicano was the most unwelcome ship in the world because in 1986 there was a sanitation strike in Philadelphia. The workers went on strike which meant trash accumulated. 28 million tons of it. And because there were no workers to pick up the trash, the trash was incinerated and put on this ship called the Pelicano. But no port would take it for two years. And so it wandered from dock to dock to dock, and all the docks would let them do is refuel to go somewhere else. There was just no place to land because there was just too much. When you look at the lives of people today, even among Christians, there just doesn't seem to be a place to dock. Filled with regrets or shame or guilt or addictions. Even though they claim Christ, it just doesn't seem to work. And they're loaded down with no resting place. Well, I've got good news. If you in your personal life become a visible, verbal follower of Christ, as we've described the kingdom disciple, a believer, who is progressively learning to enter the process of bringing all of life under the lordship of Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ will give you a place to dock, a place to rest. Doesn't negate the realities of life, regrets, sins, circumstances. But it is a resting place under his rule. No scripture brings this out any more than Matthew chapter 11. Jesus begins verse 25 with a prayer. He says, I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them unto infants. Yes, Father, for this way was well-pleasing to you. All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows... the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son will reveal him. So Jesus is praying to his Father, and he says that God reveals him. reveals himself to infants, not to the wise and intelligent. If you're going to become a kingdom disciple, you have to become what a baby is to its parent. And what is a baby to its parent? Dependent, not wise and intelligent. Let me put it another way. You will nullify, I will nullify development as a kingdom disciple. Human wisdom is allowed to trump divine wisdom. The moment human thinking, ideas, concepts, overrules, trumps heaven's point of view, you have rendered inoperative God's work, authority, and rule in your life. What a lot of people don't know... is that they wind up canceling out the very thing they're asking for in their prayers. They ask God for one thing, but they cancel it out with human understanding. You know, I don't like apples. Apples are not my favorite fruit. I know an apple a day keeps the doctor away, but I'm not into them apples. I'm an orange and banana kind of guy. So I'm not into apples. Well, I'm kind of not into apples except at the Texas State Fair. At the Texas State Fair, I'm into them apples, because them are candy apples at the Texas State Fair. They dip that apple in liquid sugar and I'm good to go. But my doctor told me that once they're dipped in liquid sugar, that apple is absolutely of no nutritional value to me. Not because it's not nutritional, but because I've dipped it in liquid sugar, I've canceled out its benefit. What a lot of people do is they go to church on Sunday, then they leave on Monday and dip the Word of God into human wisdom. Dip it in the human perspective and wonder why it's not working. The power that it promises, the authority that it promises, the victory that it promises is not taking place because God told his people you do nullify the truth of God with the traditions of men. So you have to understand Jesus'prayer. He will hide it from the wise and intelligent, that is, those folk who think they know more than God. So if you personally are going to become a kingdom disciple, you have to become dependent on the data from your daddy. And he has transferred everything, Jesus says, to his son. And his son transfers it to all that he wills. So the question is... who does he will to transfer it to? He tells you with three verbs in this passage. First of all, he says in verse 28, come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. He says, the first thing I want you to do is come to me. I've got the information. I've got the data. You come to me. That goes back to getting God's perspective. on the front end. After you've now discovered human wisdom must be nullified or examined in light of divine truth, you come to me. And here's what's going to help you come to me. You've gotten too tired of going to everybody else. You've gotten too weary of all the human attempts to fix your life. Come to me. Start with me. because you're weary and you're tired. So God will let us have the trash, have the guilt and the shame until we wake up and like an infant crying out that we come to him. You know, every Thursday they pick up trash in my neighborhood. I've never yet had a garbage man come to my door and ask, where's your trash? trash. They've never knocked on my door and say, I've come to receive your trash. I take it out to the trash bin and they pick it up. A lot of folk want Jesus to show up at the door and change their life. And he said, no, bring it to me. Cause when you bring it to me, I know you want me. If I just show up, that's a courtesy. Do you want me? Come to me, he says. When a quarterback hands off the ball to the running back because the pressure is coming against him, that means the other team is going to chase the halfback because the quarterback doesn't have the ball anymore. The quarterback has released the ball to the halfback. Jesus is saying, come to me. I can handle the pressure. But you... must come to me. First of all, for salvation, for the forgiveness of sins. God offers it to all, but you must come to him for it. But then after you're saved, you must come to him. to him, but not with human wisdom. I know I'd come to my father many times and I'd say, I'd say, Daddy, well, I think he'd say, hold up, hold up. He said, that's the problem right there. We starting in the wrong place. You think? No, come to me and let me tell you what I think. Just as we've done this with our kids, God does that with his kids. And So the first verb is come to me. The second verb he says in verse 29 is take my yoke upon you and learn from me and I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls. The second verb is take. Take from me, because I'm giving it away. When you come to me, I'm giving it away. So, you take from me. And in taking from me, the way you do that is through yoking. Hitching up your wagon to me. In this agrarian culture that the Bible was written in, yoking mattered. It was the way you plowed your field. You plowed your field by yoking a young ox with a mature ox. And the reason you yoked or hitched up a young ox with a mature ox is so the young ox would learn from the mature ox how to plow by being hitched up to an ox that already knew what it was doing. So Jesus picks this word on purpose. The yoking process involved a couple of things. It involved companionship, because now they're walking side by side. It involved surrender, because the old ox led the young ox, the young ox had to surrender to the guidance and the leadership of the old ox. And then it meant shared responsibility. It wasn't that the young ox did nothing. It's that what the young ox did, it was learning from the older ox. He says, I want you to yoke up or hitch up with me. After you come to me, hitch up with me. That is, move alongside of where I am going, of what I am saying, what I am thinking. Don't go on your own, but you must be hitched to me. I was going on a trip, a speaking engagement, and sometimes my youngest child, my youngest son, Jonathan, would go with me as an assistant and help me out at the speaking engagement. We walked up to the desk to get our tickets. When we walked up, because I'm a platinum flyer, I asked, were there any upgrades available? They said, yes, we have two upgrade seats available. I said, I would like to upgrade me and my son because I can get a companion upgrade. Somebody flying with me can be upgraded with me. So I said, give me a companion upgrade. She went in to get our tickets, and then she looked up and said, I am so sorry. I can upgrade you, but I cannot upgrade your son. I said, I don't understand that. I'm a platinum flyer. I get a companion upgrade. I want a companion upgrade, but you won't give me a companion upgrade, even though I've come to you for a companion upgrade. She said, I'm so sorry, sir, I cannot give your son a companion upgrade. But I said, why not? He is my son. Why can't you give him my companion upgrade since you promised that I could get it? She said, because I'm looking at your ticketing. And he has a different ticket locator number. We can only give you a companion upgrade if he was ticketed with you. But evidently, you ticketed yourself. He came separately with a different ticketing process, giving you two different locator numbers. So as far as our system is concerned, he is... your son but he's not your companion. He has not been yoked together with you in the ticketing process so even though you are biologically related it does not transfer to a yoking relationship. God has many spiritual children but not all of them are sharing his locator number. God has many spiritual children, but not all of them are hitched up to him in companionship, in surrender, and in sharing the responsibility through obedience to what they are learning from him. The third verb, he says, is to learn from me. He says, learn from me. The purpose of yoking is learning. The older ox is teaching the younger ox. So that you are becoming his disciple. The Greek word for learn is the root for discipleship. So he's talking about discipleship here. You can interpret come to me to be salvation, but yoking and learning is a growth process because that's what the younger ox is doing. So Jesus uses farming and And that analogy of yoking for the process of learning or him teaching you his thoughts, his truth, so you can, according to 2 Corinthians 10, take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. When you read the word, study the word, learn the word, go to church to hear the word, You want to learn from him so that you know what to do because of what you've learned. If you've only enjoyed it, if you've only understood it, but you've not learned to use it, then you will not benefit from it. He says, learn from me. And when you do this, he says, and you will find rest to your soul. I don't know if you caught that. When he says you come to me, I will give you rest. But when you yoke and then learn from me, you will find rest. What's the difference? The difference is having it and being able to use it. You see, there are many things in our lives physically that we have that we have not learned to use. I got some stuff in my house that I have that I haven't learned to use it. In fact, I have a car. that I've had it for a while and I got a book in the car that I never go to. So I'm discovering there's stuff in that car that has gone unused for years that I've never taken advantage of. Because it was all included in the purchase of the car, I have it. But because I've not learned it, I've not used it, And so I'm not benefiting from it. Everything you need to become all God wants you to be, you have, if you came to him. But you may not have found it yet, because you haven't learned from him. And he says, when you learn from me, here's what I'm going to do. I am going to let you find rest, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. You will find the rest. To be at rest is to be at ease. The concept of this ease means to be custom made. It means to be custom made. It's not off the rack. It's unique for you. We're all different. Different history, different backgrounds, different sins, different pain. So while there are generic things that... come to all of us as believers, there are unique things that relate to each of us as individuals. That's why this is a personal relationship with the Lord as the individual. You cannot cookie cutter God's work with you. You can cookie cutter the truth. but you can't cookie-cutter the application because we're all different. So you will find rest to your soul, to your uniqueness. Your soul is your individual personhood. Our souls have been distorted by... sin and circumstances. They're all over the place. It's like going to a carnival mirror and you look in the mirror and sometimes it's tall and short and fat and skinny because it's all kind of distortion and we've got to get it in proper sync. He says you will find order for your life custom-made for you. Just like when you got saved, he became your personal Savior. That didn't save everybody else, that saved you. He wants to yoke with you individually so that you can experience all of him. And you will discover that when you take on his yoke and learn from him, his yoke is easy. It's custom made for you and his burden is light. I was going carrying heavy luggage through the airport one day, heavy luggage from walking to the airport. And I passed the guy and he said, excuse me, sir. He says, doesn't that suitcase have wheels? That was downright embarrassing. I'm walking through with heavy suitcases when they had wheels. I took out that handle, put those suitcases on the end, and I began to roll. Now the weight in the suitcases was the same. I still had the burden, it just became light. Nothing changed about what was in the suitcase, but the weight changed. Because I used wheels I already had. Jesus says, and he's not promising like a lot of prosperity promises. Come to me and all your problems go away. There are no more trials. You'll become rich and all of that. No, no. Some things may take a while to change. Some things may never change, but you will change because the burden of them changes. He puts wheels on your life even while you have to carry the weight that comes with life. But this is not only true for you. But the second sphere is the family. Because when God created two singles and brought them together, he brought them together as family. Because family would be the foundation for society. It would be through family God would build a family. build civilization. That's why the deterioration of the family is the greatest social catastrophe we are facing in our country and in our culture. Whether it's divorce or abuse or abandonment. the social repercussions with crime or poverty, and a myriad of other ills. And now we not only are facing the dissolution of the family, we're facing the redefinition of the family. All of this is adding to social chaos. It would be the family. That's why Nehemiah 4.14 says, fight for your family. But why did God create the family? He created it for more than just you being happy. Now God's not being against being happy, but when God created the family in Genesis 1, male and female, He wanted there to be an earthly reflection of His nature. One God composed of three co-equal persons. When God did His work on earth, the second member of the Trinity came and yielded to the Father. Then God placed in a woman a womb. so that out of her could come a child. So from the Father comes the Son. When Jesus left, from the Son came the Holy Spirit that make up the Godhead or the family of deity. So when God created family, he was creating a replication of himself. So he made Adam, but Eve proceeded out of Adam, and then a child proceeded out of Eve, making a family structure. on earth that was designed to reflect him in heaven. He said, I want this family to be fruitful and multiply. children. But he didn't want us to have children just so we could have look-alikes. He wanted us to have children so he could colonize the earth with his image. He says, be fruitful and multiply, we're creating them in our own image. image is a mirror. God created family and children to create images of him that would be replicated to colonize the earth. So the reason that Satan didn't bother Adam till he got married was because he wasn't just after an individual he was after a program he was after an initiative he was after a divinely ordained goal so the reason that the family exists marriage exists the family exists is to replicate the image of God in history through childbearing and through that relationship so the parenting process. Deuteronomy chapter 6, keep feeding them with the word of God, whether they come in, whether they go out, place it on their forehead, let them bump into me all day long. Joshua chapter 24, 15, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. All of those family kind of discussions. Husbands, love your wives like Christ loved the church. Wives, submit to your husbands like the church submits to Christ. All of these family discussions. children obey you, all of that is not just tied to a happy home. It's tied to kingdom expansion. That's the tragedy of abortion. It interferes with kingdom expansion. That's why in Jeremiah 29, he tells them, even though you're living in pagan Babylon, he says, do not decrease their increase. Even though you're in a secular society, keep having children. He says, give your Boys to girls and give your daughters to sons so that they marry even in evil Babylon. Keep building family. It is the dissolving of the family that is killing the culture. And unfortunately, it's been aided and abetted by the church. Because we're not giving people a kingdom understanding of family, to bring family under the lordship of Jesus Christ, by creating kingdom husbands and kingdom wives and kingdom parents who raise kingdom kids. We're not filling the earth with the image of God, and therefore the family crisis continues. And the foundation of society is being eroded. I love Genesis 18, verse 19, where God says about Abraham. He says, I brought to Abraham. that which I plan to do for him. But in order for me to do for Abraham what I plan to do, what I need is Abraham to raise his children in righteousness and justice before them. That is, to give his kids my perspective. And when he raises his family in accordance with my guidelines, I will bring upon Abraham what I promised. Why did he promise Abraham? I'm going to make of you a great and mighty nation. But I'm not going to just make a nation. I'm going to build a family. And so what does he say? I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Family, generationally moving forward to build civilization. And so we are living in a day when the erosion of the family is killing our society. And unfortunately, not being helped enough by the church. So we are to train our families in kingdom discipleship. The first area of discipleship is not the church house, it's your house. It starts with sitting at the table and raising the family around the word of God, blessing each child around the table. That's what Psalm 128 verse 3 says. It says, raise your kids around the table as olive plants to become olive trees. Whoever owns the family owns the future. The saga of a nation is the saga of its families written large. So kingdom discipleship must be in the home. The church can't replace the home. That's one day, maybe two days a week. The home is every day. And that's where the values, people ask us, my wife and I often, why are all four of your kids in ministry? The only answer I can give, even We, like everybody else, have made our share of mistakes as parents. The only answer I can give is we try to regularly use the table not just for eating, but for discipleship. And it was in using the table for discipleship that oriented them toward a kingdom perspective. You know, when I... Through our national ministry, the Urban Alternative, we make our messages available across the nation. People order CDs of our messages and our teaching. The way that works is, I preach a sermon on Sunday here at Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship, and it's recorded on a master, a master CD. That master CD is then sent over to the offices of the Urban Alternative. It is then put on a master duplicator. Plugged into the master duplicator are slave units. These slave units make copies of the master. 16 on every slave unit every minute. Then they are packaged and sent out to people who have either ordered the message or who support the ministry and want the message regularly sent to them. And so it's dispersed throughout the country and in various parts of the world. Now there's only one master and that's the master that I preached. But the copies that are sent out are copies of the one master. And the copies that people get are so much like the master, they could be mistaken for the master, even though they're not the master, because there's only one master. It's just a reduplication of the master. We only have one master, but he wants to run off on your life. And then as you build families, he wants you through family to run off on their lives, so that when they separate and go to various parts of the world and build them. families. The duplication of the kingdom of God through discipleship is being made manifest through the replication of family for the colonization of the kingdom of God on earth.

As an individual believer, you must hitch your wagon up. to Jesus Christ. Find out how he thinks and feels about a subject and respond accordingly. And when you do, he promises to give you rest to the very depths of your soul.

Then you want to transfer that to your family so that your family family feels the impact and the input of a discipling environment because when an individual contributes to the transformation of his family which is the goal of discipleship you set the stage for the improvement of a whole nation God's kingdom is divided into four realms, four spheres in which it operates and expresses itself. The individual life, the family, the church, and the broader society. God's kingdom is over all, but he has so structured it that the individual is to impact the family, the family, the church, and the church, the society. That's how his kingdom was designed to operate.

So to become a kingdom disciple is to flow through all four of those areas under the rule of God because we all exist in all four of those areas on some level. It starts off with you as an individual. While family was where God wanted to go, he started off with a single man and a single woman that wind up becoming a family. So God even wants singles to be kingdom disciples. So your own individual life is critical, that you are a disciple separate from what anyone else does.

You coming under the comprehensive rule of God and the lordship of Jesus Christ. The Pelicano was the most unwelcome ship in the world because in 1986 there was a sanitation strike in Philadelphia. The workers went on strike which meant trash accumulated. 28 million tons of it.

And because there were no workers to pick up the trash, the trash was incinerated and put on this ship called the Pelicano. But no port would take it for two years. And so it wandered from dock to dock to dock, and all the docks would let them do is refuel to go somewhere else.

There was just no place to land because there was just too much. When you look at the lives of people today, even among Christians, there just doesn't seem to be a place to dock. Filled with regrets or shame or guilt or addictions.

Even though they claim Christ, it just doesn't seem to work. And they're loaded down with no resting place. Well, I've got good news. If you in your personal life become a visible, verbal follower of Christ, as we've described the kingdom disciple, a believer, who is progressively learning to enter the process of bringing all of life under the lordship of Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ will give you a place to dock, a place to rest. Doesn't negate the realities of life, regrets, sins, circumstances.

But it is a resting place under his rule. No scripture brings this out any more than Matthew chapter 11. Jesus begins verse 25 with a prayer. He says, I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them unto infants. Yes, Father, for this way was well-pleasing to you.

All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows... the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son will reveal him. So Jesus is praying to his Father, and he says that God reveals him.

reveals himself to infants, not to the wise and intelligent. If you're going to become a kingdom disciple, you have to become what a baby is to its parent. And what is a baby to its parent? Dependent, not wise and intelligent. Let me put it another way.

You will nullify, I will nullify development as a kingdom disciple. Human wisdom is allowed to trump divine wisdom. The moment human thinking, ideas, concepts, overrules, trumps heaven's point of view, you have rendered inoperative God's work, authority, and rule in your life. What a lot of people don't know...

is that they wind up canceling out the very thing they're asking for in their prayers. They ask God for one thing, but they cancel it out with human understanding. You know, I don't like apples. Apples are not my favorite fruit. I know an apple a day keeps the doctor away, but I'm not into them apples.

I'm an orange and banana kind of guy. So I'm not into apples. Well, I'm kind of not into apples except at the Texas State Fair. At the Texas State Fair, I'm into them apples, because them are candy apples at the Texas State Fair.

They dip that apple in liquid sugar and I'm good to go. But my doctor told me that once they're dipped in liquid sugar, that apple is absolutely of no nutritional value to me. Not because it's not nutritional, but because I've dipped it in liquid sugar, I've canceled out its benefit. What a lot of people do is they go to church on Sunday, then they leave on Monday and dip the Word of God into human wisdom.

Dip it in the human perspective and wonder why it's not working. The power that it promises, the authority that it promises, the victory that it promises is not taking place because God told his people you do nullify the truth of God with the traditions of men. So you have to understand Jesus'prayer.

He will hide it from the wise and intelligent, that is, those folk who think they know more than God. So if you personally are going to become a kingdom disciple, you have to become dependent on the data from your daddy. And he has transferred everything, Jesus says, to his son. And his son transfers it to all that he wills.

So the question is... who does he will to transfer it to? He tells you with three verbs in this passage.

First of all, he says in verse 28, come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. He says, the first thing I want you to do is come to me. I've got the information.

I've got the data. You come to me. That goes back to getting God's perspective. on the front end.

After you've now discovered human wisdom must be nullified or examined in light of divine truth, you come to me. And here's what's going to help you come to me. You've gotten too tired of going to everybody else. You've gotten too weary of all the human attempts to fix your life. Come to me.

Start with me. because you're weary and you're tired. So God will let us have the trash, have the guilt and the shame until we wake up and like an infant crying out that we come to him. You know, every Thursday they pick up trash in my neighborhood.

I've never yet had a garbage man come to my door and ask, where's your trash? trash. They've never knocked on my door and say, I've come to receive your trash.

I take it out to the trash bin and they pick it up. A lot of folk want Jesus to show up at the door and change their life. And he said, no, bring it to me.

Cause when you bring it to me, I know you want me. If I just show up, that's a courtesy. Do you want me?

Come to me, he says. When a quarterback hands off the ball to the running back because the pressure is coming against him, that means the other team is going to chase the halfback because the quarterback doesn't have the ball anymore. The quarterback has released the ball to the halfback.

Jesus is saying, come to me. I can handle the pressure. But you...

must come to me. First of all, for salvation, for the forgiveness of sins. God offers it to all, but you must come to him for it. But then after you're saved, you must come to him. to him, but not with human wisdom.

I know I'd come to my father many times and I'd say, I'd say, Daddy, well, I think he'd say, hold up, hold up. He said, that's the problem right there. We starting in the wrong place.

You think? No, come to me and let me tell you what I think. Just as we've done this with our kids, God does that with his kids.

And So the first verb is come to me. The second verb he says in verse 29 is take my yoke upon you and learn from me and I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls. The second verb is take. Take from me, because I'm giving it away.

When you come to me, I'm giving it away. So, you take from me. And in taking from me, the way you do that is through yoking.

Hitching up your wagon to me. In this agrarian culture that the Bible was written in, yoking mattered. It was the way you plowed your field.

You plowed your field by yoking a young ox with a mature ox. And the reason you yoked or hitched up a young ox with a mature ox is so the young ox would learn from the mature ox how to plow by being hitched up to an ox that already knew what it was doing. So Jesus picks this word on purpose.

The yoking process involved a couple of things. It involved companionship, because now they're walking side by side. It involved surrender, because the old ox led the young ox, the young ox had to surrender to the guidance and the leadership of the old ox.

And then it meant shared responsibility. It wasn't that the young ox did nothing. It's that what the young ox did, it was learning from the older ox. He says, I want you to yoke up or hitch up with me.

After you come to me, hitch up with me. That is, move alongside of where I am going, of what I am saying, what I am thinking. Don't go on your own, but you must be hitched to me. I was going on a trip, a speaking engagement, and sometimes my youngest child, my youngest son, Jonathan, would go with me as an assistant and help me out at the speaking engagement.

We walked up to the desk to get our tickets. When we walked up, because I'm a platinum flyer, I asked, were there any upgrades available? They said, yes, we have two upgrade seats available. I said, I would like to upgrade me and my son because I can get a companion upgrade.

Somebody flying with me can be upgraded with me. So I said, give me a companion upgrade. She went in to get our tickets, and then she looked up and said, I am so sorry. I can upgrade you, but I cannot upgrade your son. I said, I don't understand that.

I'm a platinum flyer. I get a companion upgrade. I want a companion upgrade, but you won't give me a companion upgrade, even though I've come to you for a companion upgrade. She said, I'm so sorry, sir, I cannot give your son a companion upgrade. But I said, why not?

He is my son. Why can't you give him my companion upgrade since you promised that I could get it? She said, because I'm looking at your ticketing.

And he has a different ticket locator number. We can only give you a companion upgrade if he was ticketed with you. But evidently, you ticketed yourself.

He came separately with a different ticketing process, giving you two different locator numbers. So as far as our system is concerned, he is... your son but he's not your companion.

He has not been yoked together with you in the ticketing process so even though you are biologically related it does not transfer to a yoking relationship. God has many spiritual children but not all of them are sharing his locator number. God has many spiritual children, but not all of them are hitched up to him in companionship, in surrender, and in sharing the responsibility through obedience to what they are learning from him. The third verb, he says, is to learn from me. He says, learn from me.

The purpose of yoking is learning. The older ox is teaching the younger ox. So that you are becoming his disciple.

The Greek word for learn is the root for discipleship. So he's talking about discipleship here. You can interpret come to me to be salvation, but yoking and learning is a growth process because that's what the younger ox is doing. So Jesus uses farming and And that analogy of yoking for the process of learning or him teaching you his thoughts, his truth, so you can, according to 2 Corinthians 10, take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. When you read the word, study the word, learn the word, go to church to hear the word, You want to learn from him so that you know what to do because of what you've learned.

If you've only enjoyed it, if you've only understood it, but you've not learned to use it, then you will not benefit from it. He says, learn from me. And when you do this, he says, and you will find rest to your soul. I don't know if you caught that.

When he says you come to me, I will give you rest. But when you yoke and then learn from me, you will find rest. What's the difference?

The difference is having it and being able to use it. You see, there are many things in our lives physically that we have that we have not learned to use. I got some stuff in my house that I have that I haven't learned to use it.

In fact, I have a car. that I've had it for a while and I got a book in the car that I never go to. So I'm discovering there's stuff in that car that has gone unused for years that I've never taken advantage of.

Because it was all included in the purchase of the car, I have it. But because I've not learned it, I've not used it, And so I'm not benefiting from it. Everything you need to become all God wants you to be, you have, if you came to him.

But you may not have found it yet, because you haven't learned from him. And he says, when you learn from me, here's what I'm going to do. I am going to let you find rest, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

You will find the rest. To be at rest is to be at ease. The concept of this ease means to be custom made. It means to be custom made.

It's not off the rack. It's unique for you. We're all different.

Different history, different backgrounds, different sins, different pain. So while there are generic things that... come to all of us as believers, there are unique things that relate to each of us as individuals.

That's why this is a personal relationship with the Lord as the individual. You cannot cookie cutter God's work with you. You can cookie cutter the truth. but you can't cookie-cutter the application because we're all different.

So you will find rest to your soul, to your uniqueness. Your soul is your individual personhood. Our souls have been distorted by... sin and circumstances. They're all over the place.

It's like going to a carnival mirror and you look in the mirror and sometimes it's tall and short and fat and skinny because it's all kind of distortion and we've got to get it in proper sync. He says you will find order for your life custom-made for you. Just like when you got saved, he became your personal Savior.

That didn't save everybody else, that saved you. He wants to yoke with you individually so that you can experience all of him. And you will discover that when you take on his yoke and learn from him, his yoke is easy. It's custom made for you and his burden is light. I was going carrying heavy luggage through the airport one day, heavy luggage from walking to the airport.

And I passed the guy and he said, excuse me, sir. He says, doesn't that suitcase have wheels? That was downright embarrassing.

I'm walking through with heavy suitcases when they had wheels. I took out that handle, put those suitcases on the end, and I began to roll. Now the weight in the suitcases was the same. I still had the burden, it just became light. Nothing changed about what was in the suitcase, but the weight changed.

Because I used wheels I already had. Jesus says, and he's not promising like a lot of prosperity promises. Come to me and all your problems go away. There are no more trials.

You'll become rich and all of that. No, no. Some things may take a while to change. Some things may never change, but you will change because the burden of them changes. He puts wheels on your life even while you have to carry the weight that comes with life.

But this is not only true for you. But the second sphere is the family. Because when God created two singles and brought them together, he brought them together as family.

Because family would be the foundation for society. It would be through family God would build a family. build civilization. That's why the deterioration of the family is the greatest social catastrophe we are facing in our country and in our culture.

Whether it's divorce or abuse or abandonment. the social repercussions with crime or poverty, and a myriad of other ills. And now we not only are facing the dissolution of the family, we're facing the redefinition of the family.

All of this is adding to social chaos. It would be the family. That's why Nehemiah 4.14 says, fight for your family. But why did God create the family? He created it for more than just you being happy.

Now God's not being against being happy, but when God created the family in Genesis 1, male and female, He wanted there to be an earthly reflection of His nature. One God composed of three co-equal persons. When God did His work on earth, the second member of the Trinity came and yielded to the Father. Then God placed in a woman a womb.

so that out of her could come a child. So from the Father comes the Son. When Jesus left, from the Son came the Holy Spirit that make up the Godhead or the family of deity.

So when God created family, he was creating a replication of himself. So he made Adam, but Eve proceeded out of Adam, and then a child proceeded out of Eve, making a family structure. on earth that was designed to reflect him in heaven. He said, I want this family to be fruitful and multiply. children.

But he didn't want us to have children just so we could have look-alikes. He wanted us to have children so he could colonize the earth with his image. He says, be fruitful and multiply, we're creating them in our own image.

image is a mirror. God created family and children to create images of him that would be replicated to colonize the earth. So the reason that Satan didn't bother Adam till he got married was because he wasn't just after an individual he was after a program he was after an initiative he was after a divinely ordained goal so the reason that the family exists marriage exists the family exists is to replicate the image of God in history through childbearing and through that relationship so the parenting process. Deuteronomy chapter 6, keep feeding them with the word of God, whether they come in, whether they go out, place it on their forehead, let them bump into me all day long.

Joshua chapter 24, 15, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. All of those family kind of discussions. Husbands, love your wives like Christ loved the church.

Wives, submit to your husbands like the church submits to Christ. All of these family discussions. children obey you, all of that is not just tied to a happy home.

It's tied to kingdom expansion. That's the tragedy of abortion. It interferes with kingdom expansion.

That's why in Jeremiah 29, he tells them, even though you're living in pagan Babylon, he says, do not decrease their increase. Even though you're in a secular society, keep having children. He says, give your Boys to girls and give your daughters to sons so that they marry even in evil Babylon.

Keep building family. It is the dissolving of the family that is killing the culture. And unfortunately, it's been aided and abetted by the church. Because we're not giving people a kingdom understanding of family, to bring family under the lordship of Jesus Christ, by creating kingdom husbands and kingdom wives and kingdom parents who raise kingdom kids. We're not filling the earth with the image of God, and therefore the family crisis continues.

And the foundation of society is being eroded. I love Genesis 18, verse 19, where God says about Abraham. He says, I brought to Abraham. that which I plan to do for him. But in order for me to do for Abraham what I plan to do, what I need is Abraham to raise his children in righteousness and justice before them.

That is, to give his kids my perspective. And when he raises his family in accordance with my guidelines, I will bring upon Abraham what I promised. Why did he promise Abraham?

I'm going to make of you a great and mighty nation. But I'm not going to just make a nation. I'm going to build a family. And so what does he say? I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Family, generationally moving forward to build civilization. And so we are living in a day when the erosion of the family is killing our society. And unfortunately, not being helped enough by the church.

So we are to train our families in kingdom discipleship. The first area of discipleship is not the church house, it's your house. It starts with sitting at the table and raising the family around the word of God, blessing each child around the table. That's what Psalm 128 verse 3 says. It says, raise your kids around the table as olive plants to become olive trees.

Whoever owns the family owns the future. The saga of a nation is the saga of its families written large. So kingdom discipleship must be in the home. The church can't replace the home.

That's one day, maybe two days a week. The home is every day. And that's where the values, people ask us, my wife and I often, why are all four of your kids in ministry?

The only answer I can give, even We, like everybody else, have made our share of mistakes as parents. The only answer I can give is we try to regularly use the table not just for eating, but for discipleship. And it was in using the table for discipleship that oriented them toward a kingdom perspective.

You know, when I... Through our national ministry, the Urban Alternative, we make our messages available across the nation. People order CDs of our messages and our teaching. The way that works is, I preach a sermon on Sunday here at Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship, and it's recorded on a master, a master CD. That master CD is then sent over to the offices of the Urban Alternative.

It is then put on a master duplicator. Plugged into the master duplicator are slave units. These slave units make copies of the master. 16 on every slave unit every minute. Then they are packaged and sent out to people who have either ordered the message or who support the ministry and want the message regularly sent to them.

And so it's dispersed throughout the country and in various parts of the world. Now there's only one master and that's the master that I preached. But the copies that are sent out are copies of the one master. And the copies that people get are so much like the master, they could be mistaken for the master, even though they're not the master, because there's only one master. It's just a reduplication of the master.

We only have one master, but he wants to run off on your life. And then as you build families, he wants you through family to run off on their lives, so that when they separate and go to various parts of the world and build them. families. The duplication of the kingdom of God through discipleship is being made manifest through the replication of family for the colonization of the kingdom of God on earth.

Transcript for:Discipleship in Family and Society

Transcript for:
Discipleship in Family and Society