Jesus taught the disciples

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So good morning. Good morning. Oh, you are here. Okay. How are we going with our integrated study book? Does anyone need to grab a copy now? Because inside, just before each message, each sermon, there's a place to take notes. And I'm preaching today, so I'd like to see lots of notes taking down there. But great book. I'm really like, I was reading through it when I first got the draft, came through, and I was like, thank you, Lord. What a blessed church we have. So much talent and so many opportunities to get into his word. It's good stuff. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord. Father, just singing those words that, Lord, you meet us right where we are. And Lord, it humbles us. Lord, when we come to worship you, Lord, we come into a church, into a place of worship, or we're at home tuning in, the Father, that your name is exalted. And Lord, as we open your word today, as we go through the book of Luke and look at the examples you give for us, Father, help us to understand that clear our hearts and minds we receive from you. And Father, we want to, Lord, be faithful servants to build your kingdom. Father, if there's anyone here today who's seeking you, Lord, who's trying to work out what church and religion is all about, we pray, Father, for your spirit just to guide them, just to, Lord, help them to understand. Father, just give them clarity. And Father, we just thank you for the spirit of fellowship that exists in our church family as well. And we'll just pray you continue, Lord, to guide us, give us wisdom. Lord, pray the words of the speaker be your words, Lord, not mine. Your name, amen. So when we're doing study two today, which happens to be on page six of the book, and Lindblum has written this study, the following study, and did a wonderful job. I just want to point out that she's looked at the parables. I'm not going to speak on the parables today, or I've prayed about it, and Lord said, go in a different direction, Doug, and that's fine. There is a link here on page eight. I encourage you to click on that. She's done a bit of research, bless her. Being a mum and a teacher, she really sees this as how to break down a study for you. I think it's a wonderful piece of prose, and I just encourage you to click on that and have a look at that. So last week, just want to review a little bit, we had this box which was done in an exercise, we had all the kids there. And as I hold it up, I want to see, excuse me, as I hold it up, can you tell me what box is missing? Follow me. It's actually in the bottom. What I did was I tipped everything out, and I thought, after you go through an illustration and you think to yourself, how does that apply to me? And I thought, would it be great if we could spiritually and maybe in our minds, tip everything else out so we get rid of tech and teachers and everything else. Put God in there first, and everything else gets added unto that. Because we've got God as our foundation in our call, in our life, and then what happens is that he helps us to cope with those other things. He helps us to deal with them, he helps us to put them into perspective. So they don't run our lives, so finances don't run our lives, God runs our life. Family doesn't run our life, God runs our life. If you love God, you're going to love your family, yeah? If you love God, then you're going to be able to go and enjoy your holiday. If you use your holiday to worship God, it's like the whale and the suckerfish metaphor that I've used over the years. I want to encourage you to have a look back at that and say, okay, Lord, if I took everything else out and put you in first in the call, and what you've laid on my heart, what does my day look like? What does my week look like? What does my month look like? What does my life look like? And so building on that for the call, the thing that Jesus did next was he taught his disciples. He had to get them together, and he said to them, he said, I need to spend some time with you guys. He picked 12 guys to start off with, I didn't count, 12 guys to start off with. And he had three years, three years to impart on them everything that he needed to do for the future, encouragement, gospel sharing, cultivating, sowing and harvesting. And so we're going to have a look at some of the aspects of how he taught the disciples. And so we're going to draw upon your knowledge you have already. So I'm going to ask you, straw boat here, put your hand up, you feel comfortable doing that. Who actually attended Sunday school when they were little? Okay, all right, your hands down. Who only heard about God's sort of youth groupie age? Okay, a few there, okay. Who only heard about God when they were an adult? Yeah, old, that's the idea, thank you. Okay, now I wonder how much you know, I'm glad the kids are gone now. Any kids here? Okay, cut, finish. I'm going to ask you to indulge me. I'm going to get them to put up on a screen in a moment, what it means to participate in the life of the church. And I wonder if you are smarter than a Sunday school kid. You'll notice a slide has up there, a couple of things that have just popped up there. And I just thought if you can take anything away from teaching today, the word wisdom in the Greek, in the New Testament Greek, is Sophia. Put your hand up, that's the first time you heard that. Okay, rodeo, you've learned something this morning, that's awesome. So that's not in the test, but I thought it might be. Now, here's an exercise for you, when we do this, it's going to go, it's a five minute sort of intro to church, bit of a fun thing. So if you think it's the answer A, put your left hand on your head, if you think it's the answer B, you put your right hand on your head, and if you think it's the answer C, I'm running out of hands, put your left hand up in the air. Now that's good because you can sort of cheat between the two. Okay, you ready to do this? Are you smarter? Then a Sunday school kid, when we're ready, rock and roll. Here we go. A, B or C, vote now, quickly. Leave that until the answer comes up, and it'll tell you if you're right or wrong. All right, okay, that's number one out of the row. A, B, we'll see you vote quickly. Okay, righty-o. That's awesome. Okay, so a few people got that one right, yeah? A, B or C? Someone's here going. Good on ya, that's built up. Okay, everybody gets 100%, gets to leave church early today. Here we go, A, B or C? A, B or C? Ooh, here we go. If you disappointed people there, can't even vote them too late, I saw that hand. Getting harder now. You gonna vote? Don't give up on me now, turning halfway through. B, B, C, vote now, quickly. A bit worried about Bob, a little bit over here. Dylan hasn't voted much yet, it's all a bit... So far, Noah's voting with both hands up the air. We have to, ah yes, that's a good one. Quickly. Okay, righty-o. That was a good one. Couple to go, couple to go. There we go, what's this one? Ah yes, okay. Ooh, this is a Theologian, this one. Those are meant to bubble college. Pet maker. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. Yeah, a lot of seeds, got that one right, well done seeds. Big finish now, big finish. It's a deep one. It's a deep one. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you for indulging me. Give yourselves a clap, well done. I know some of you are going, oh please. I asked Pastor Dylan if we'd done this before, he said no, not in his memory, and so I appreciate having you out there. One of the things I did notice though, and I wonder if this is what the disciples were when they were with Jesus. When Jesus was asking them a question or posing something for them, whether or not they looked around, because I know there's a few people here who went to go, like this, and it's really, and we're so blessed to be able to reflect upon the life of the disciples, because there's so much of what they went through, we can relate to. I really believe that, I believe that when Jesus called the twelve together, he could have called, he called fishermen, he called tax collectors, he called the different types of people from society together, and he said, I need to teach you in three years what it's about. So I'm going to go through some things that Jesus taught. Jesus taught about his authority first of all. He taught the disciples about his authority, because he had his authority to pass on to them, so he needed to establish that, because if you're going to follow somebody, you didn't know, yeah, they've got something grounded there happening, they've got something that means a lot. In Luke 6 verse 20, is a sermon on the mount. And he said, looking at his disciples, he said, looking at his disciples, he said, so he wasn't just, as he was addressing the crowd, it says a great crowd was there, but he looked at his disciples and he said, blessed is, and off he went. And so the implication we have there is that when Jesus is going to give us some information, he talks directly to us. And so he's established his authority, he's passing this on. In that, in that sermon on the mount, he talked about the ethics of the kingdom. He taught them the authority of the kingdom of heaven and how it plays out. He taught them what it means to have the basis for life and ministry. Going to exercise one day, sit down and I'll encourage you to go through the sermon on the mount, either the Matthew 1 or the Luke 1. We're staying in Luke to try to be true to our following here of their study premise. And have a look at the applications there about what it means to be right with the kingdom of God. And sometimes we don't add up to that. We don't live up to those expectations. But Jesus was still teaching. He was still getting across them. This is the authority I have, and I've come to redefine the Lord of fulfill the law of Moses. Not to change it, or not to abolish it, abolish it, sorry, but I've come to fulfill the law. That's the authority my heavenly father's given me. And I'm going to pass that on to you. And that happens when in the great commandment, sorry, the great commission in Matthew 28. Where he says, all authority on heaven and earth is given to me, therefore go. So Jesus taught the disciples authority. Not authority in their own understanding, not authority in Jesus per se, but authority in the heavenly father. When the great humble things we can do is say, Lord, is this what you want me to do? Because I need your authority, I need your understanding for this. So a lot of times we participate in things because it just feels good at the time. And sometimes we can justify that and say, oh yeah, I think God's with me on this one. But when we understand that our heavenly father teaches us authority, and we go everything through him, then things fall into the way that he would like it to be. Not how we transfer it into our understanding. Secondly, Jesus taught them to pray. And that's what we do. He taught them to pray. And one of the great explicit things in Luke 11, chapter 1, sorry, chapter 11, Luke 1, I've got a middle ear of things, some eyes and the ears are doing weird things. I can actually hear three of me speaking at the moment. One in each ear and one in the speakers. But Jesus said that after Jesus was praying the disciples said to him, when we read this in Scripture, Lord, teach us to pray. Lord, teach us to pray. Lord, teach us to pray. While watching him, he was modelling for them. Lord, teach us to pray. And Jesus didn't say, well first of all pray about how the weather or pray that we have a great day for the working be. The first thing Jesus said was, Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. So what did he teach them? He taught them that in our understanding and where we fit into the whole part of our Christian walk and our life in God is we fit into that sovereignty of God first. And then he goes through and he breaks it up as we go through. And as he's breaking up, he gives a time of confession. So the order we go through talks about honouring God, humbly appealing, and then confession. That Jesus taught the disciples. And he teaches us as disciples, whole life disciples that when we pray, to get at the order right. The next time you go to pray, can I encourage you if something's really heavy on your heart and you want something or something's coming up and you've got a decision to make or you want to try to purchase something or you're going to visit a doctor or whatever, the first thing you do is pray. Lord, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom is so important. I want to put that into perspective before you look. Before I even go to what is on my heart because he really knows what's on your heart. That's why you're praying. He draws us to pray because he knows what's in our heart. The next thing Jesus taught if I got my notes right is he started immoral compassion for them. Boy, don't we need this in the world today. Society teaches us that if you have any compassion for someone you've got to agree wholeheartedly for them. They use compassion, they twist it around. So when we come to things of diversity and inclusiveness if we say, well, we want to do it this way we don't recognize this and all of a sudden we're bigots and we're racist and we're biased. The Lord does teach us compassion. He taught the disciples compassion. Have a look at the examples he taught them. First of all, the little children of Luke 18. People are also bringing babies to Jesus to place his hands on them. And what did the disciples say? The line starts over here. Do you need a drink of water? No. The disciples say get out of here. You're too annoying, go away. Jesus in his compassionate heart wanted. And he said let the little ones come to me and do not hinder them for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Here we have this social dynamic of all these people crowding around Jesus and then we have the mums and bringing their kids to him to be blessed and to pray it over and the disciples are getting overwhelmed by all this and Jesus says, I need to teach them compassion I need to teach them how to have a heart in heaven and so I'm going to make sure, hang on fellow stop let them come here. You can say, well is this about children's ministry? You can read into that if you will or understand it that way or it can just be compassion for those who need to come to Jesus and how not to stand in their way. Have compassion for those who are seeking him. The healing of the woman in Luke 8 in 45 and Luke 6 Jesus said there is a big crowd of people happening around them and they said going through this crowd all of a sudden Jesus felt the power go out and we read. When the power went out and we stopped and he said who touched me and the disciples response was quite interesting well there's a lot of people touching you teaching moment Jesus said no, hang on a second he looked around and he was telling the founder who wants to be my wrong one, I was a bit blurry. Who touched me Jesus said and when they all denied it Peter said master the people have crowded around you, someone touch me I know the power has gone out of me. Folks when we're doing things in church or in life and we've got these boxes and everything is all fumbled in, just be interuptable by God just to allow yourself to be interuptable. Do I need to see this through or can I just wait a second to see what happens? In all the crowd that was happening Jesus is teaching disciples and I believe he's teaching us to understand it clearly that sometimes we need to just stop and look for that person or stop and look for the need or stop and look for the impact it's having. Because when we're interuptable by God and he prompts us with his Holy Spirit then we say okay Lord what is it you want us to do? And he's teaching disciples there okay we might be trying to get through this crowd but that's not the important thing the important thing is to have a look around you and be interuptable. When it comes to Jarius' daughter the compassion there now it starts off in this chapter in Luke 8 where Jarius comes up to Jesus and says my daughter is really ill in the meantime Jesus is going through the crowd and this happens with the woman who has healed you and then they get news that Jarius' daughter is dying and you think what's Jesus doing? How can he let a kid die? That's just wrong. Jesus looked in the eyes of Jarius and he said your faith has healed her go away now she'll be right. Jesus in all these things that are happening even in the time of great despair when he got the news there was compassion in Christ's heart. I've got a funeral I'm doing tomorrow of a family friend of a family friend of a family friend and I met with a family on Friday and one of the hard things to do is to suss out at what's going on and the other people who are walking close with God or they just know about God or they're anti-God and they should talk into them but the one thing that God always lays in my heart, I always pray in the car before I go into the house, well just help me to know and feel what's going on. Help me have compassion for them and sometimes the compassion says okay don't share the gospel just now sometimes the compassion says yeah you need to share the gospel now. Folks when we have a real sense of the compassion that Christ laid on our hearts and what we do is we come sensitive to those around us and we help them to understand what it means to walk with God because it's all about our witness in the end because we understand the compassion brings honour to God and that's what Jesus was doing is bringing honour to his heavenly Father by doing those three examples many many examples throughout the the gospels of Jesus' life and ministry where he did that where he bought the people to that point and he demonstrated the disciples the problem we have in 21st century 1st century church with air conditioning and comfy chairs and we forget sometimes what it's like to live in hard times life is life where people experience difficulty people to experience what it's like to have thoughts about trying to balance the world and trying to get things in the right order and then this God stuff comes in pray for compassion pray that God will touch their hearts pray that you will have words that will encourage you don't want to be fat in faithful do you not just sit in church say oh God give me the tech you want to be part of the ministry of the kingdom of heaven and that's what whole life discipleship is about it's not just about the here and now it's about what God can do through his kingdom with us and the last and the second last one is the emphasis that God places then on honouring the witness we have in Luke 10 Jesus is approached by the Pharisees and he asks in his curly questions and Jesus what is the commandment saying this is love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and love your neighbour's yourself and Jesus said well go and do that and the guy said I've been doing that he said well you need to sell everything and the point of that is that it's not so much what he asked that man to do but those very words to the disciples listening to this man who had a world question the disciples the first thing he said was love God love your God and love your neighbour some of the commandments what a great lesson to teach the disciples instead of come out with an answer first seek God instead of come out with an answer and say well okay I'm going to love my neighbour what does that look like but still honour God in my witness because the harsh word will turn away people the general word turns away wrath and Luke 9 verse 23 we have another example there of commitment besides diversity he said if you don't want to follow me he's telling these disciples he must take up his cross and follow me that means when we have difficulty no matter what's happening pick up your cross and follow Jesus and when we do that when we focus on that in the teachings of the disciples was there's going to be tough times and you imagine the surprise in their face when they watch their master their teacher their rabbi walking with a cross after being flogged and they go oh there's a lesson to be learnt there man do you want me to do that and Jesus said take up your cross and follow me again it's about honouring the witness that you have around you in Luke 24 4 and 5 or 45 Jesus says to these disciples I want you to open your minds to what's happening and he opened their minds so they could understand the scriptures right at the end of the time when he's having it together and he's talking about what's going to happen next his ascension and all the things he says to the moment you open your hearts and minds disciples so you can receive what's about to happen and of course that's when they went and they were waiting in the acts we read in Acts where Luke wrote in Acts waiting and praying together for the Holy Spirit for the to come and to give them greater understanding and to perform what they need to do but the question I have for us and I do include myself in this is your mind opened to God is your understanding open to God are you able to learn new things with God or do you think you've got it nailed down to the Bible and we go through the gospels particularly we think oh we cover this in Sunday school we cover this this with youth group talked about it, young adults talk about it now we get in church I believe God can teach you something new every time you open his word and when we have an open mind to hear what God is saying we don't close off, we don't just tune out we say okay Lord teach me this time and having a teachable spirit is what he's trying to get through his disciples that's why it says in our title Jesus taught the disciples but I wonder what your teachable spirit says about you are you a person who can learn from God or do you think you've got it all nailed down in the right way I'm a lover of dogs our family have had dogs for as long as I can remember we've had dogs for as long as I can remember we've had dogs that we can train and some dogs we just cannot train we have some dogs that were so easy to command and obey and others just look like you're speaking a different language at them and some of the dogs that we have we've got three dogs we had three dogs that we had in our life just recently we had Meg who was a sort of a box across thing we got ironically from Bud and then we had Hammer we've got that photo up there the black dog named Hammer which we got from a family who gave him to us and we're blessed we're not that one we've got the three photos of the dogs before we go to Tanky and then we have Tank the blue cattle dog and one of the things about Tank was that he was trainable now we had him when we were here before we went to Gatton and he stayed with us until he was 15 and he passed away but he was maniacal about a tennis ball he's the one in the front Hammer's the one at the back and what's Hammer doing watching Tank because he's trying to herd Tank up and he did that till the day he died just kept herding things and then we had Meg at the back just being cool and chill because she didn't really understand most commands she just wanted to live a life and enjoy herself but the blue cattle dog he was interesting when he was 10 I taught him a trick every morning I used to walk down to the front gate sorry every morning every Wednesday morning and walked out the wheelie bins to the front gate it's about 55 metres down from our house to the road and he used to come with me and have a sniff around and have a look around and things like that and we used to walk back up together and after a while I thought I want to forget teaching him something 10 years old you know the saying you can't teach an old dog new tricks 10 years old what I got him to do well I got him to wait at the mailbox and I would walk up to the house and when I got up to the house I'd click my fingers and he would yelp and then run up to the house pretty cool trick 10 years old never taught him before two years after that Courtney came to stay with us and she taught him to shake hands I never bothered teaching him to shake hands but Courtney taught him in one afternoon so he had a teachable spirit about him and I was thinking about this message and I thought man if we could be as teachable as a blue cattle dog wouldn't the heaven kingdom of heaven be awesome no matter how old you are if a dog is 70 and can learn something new what excuse does that give me amen I'm going to play a little clip for you now that I managed to get on another thing about tanky he really hated the camera he'd do all these cool things and when you took the camera out on your phone he'd go like this and be all coy and shy but we're going to play this clip and here it is this is me working with him training the to stay I hope you can hear it right tank where are you tank it here good boy sit sit good dog okay wait wait wait wait wait took a few whites wait wait wait wait who's that good dog hey and he used to run straight up to you and run straight behind me and sit like this at the feed bin because he knew he'd get a treat if he did that right wouldn't it be wonderful though to be as teachable as a blue healer I know that might sound derogatory teachable as a dog but you can never be too old to learn from God when Jesus was teaching disciples as I said right at the start he had three years and these guys would have been all different ages all would have been the same age the same university age or whatever they all would have come with a different understanding of their world into the world that Jesus revealed to them question and challenge I have for you this week as you go through the parables really pray and Lord teach me something fresh in you here Lord and just show me what you want me to learn I've read this parable 42 times before that is just something you Lord and he will I believe firmly he will challenge you about something he will teach you something so in these teachable moments that we have our prayer could be Lord instill in me a teachable spirit I know I don't know it all Lord be a student of prayer Jesus taught them to be a student of prayer we can be a student of prayer study prayer find out what it's about embrace in prayer exercise an authentic witness Jesus taught us to be an authentic witness to be fair dink about who you are not just some sort of facade about it or wear a mask but be authentic about who you are to be a conduit of compassion to be a person that has compassion and empathy for people and they just feel that draw to the kingdom of heaven because of what you're doing not because what God's doing through you and lastly learn that any authority comes from him first anything we do comes from him worship team if you'd like to come up I'm going to pray in our closing prayer Heavenly Father we this Lord thank you that you took that time with the disciples Lord to teach them Father we're going to look at many other aspects of whole life discipleship over the next several weeks the remaining 10 weeks or so 8 weeks or so we look forward to hearing what Edmund is going to share from his insight Lord you've taught him Father we thank you that in our walk with you Lord we walk with you to learn from you and not too old to learn something new and afresh Father we know you can teach us and Father part of being taught is to be an obedient Lord as we saw in that clip with the dog with Tank Father it's one thing to hear the command it's another thing to understand the command it's the other thing to obey the command and Father I pray help us to be obedient Lord break down whatever needs to be broken down the Lord want me to learn from you when you teach us Lord lead into that teaching Lord because we want to bring all glory to the kingdom Father we want to see souls saved because of you Lord we want to see people know who you are as Lord and saviour because of who you are in your name. Amen.