SPEAKER_01: My friends, this is a little different.
SPEAKER_01: I not only get the privilege this morning of singing with you all, but I also get the privilege of opening the Word of God with you this morning.
SPEAKER_01: So, if you would please open your Bibles with me to Ephesians chapter 4.
SPEAKER_01: Before we do that, I know we've prayed like four times already this morning.
SPEAKER_01: I need to pray again.
SPEAKER_01: Would you join me?
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_01: Father God, as we come to your word, we ask humbly that by your grace and in your mercy you would reveal to us the truth that is in Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And Lord, we ask that the words that I speak today would bring glory to your name, to the end that the meditations of all of our hearts honor you as Lord and love you as our Father.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Father.
unknown: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: Again, if you could open with me to the book of Ephesians, chapter 4.
SPEAKER_01: Some of you will remember, those of you with super memories, if you can reach all the way back to the beginning of the school year in September, Pastor Jason led us in a series he called The Blueprint for the Church.
SPEAKER_01: It was through the first 16 verses of Ephesians chapter 4.
SPEAKER_01: I will let you in on a little inside baseball.
SPEAKER_01: Behind the curtain, I was assigned verses 17 through 24 sometime in August.
SPEAKER_01: And that is our text for this morning.
SPEAKER_01: Ephesians chapter 4, verses 17 through 24.
SPEAKER_01: Before we get there, I'd like to notice with you what Paul does in those first 16 verses.
SPEAKER_01: He gives us positive instructions there.
SPEAKER_01: Do this.
SPEAKER_01: Strive for peace.
SPEAKER_01: Love one another.
SPEAKER_01: Work together.
SPEAKER_01: Use your gifts for the sake of the body until it builds itself up in love.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: That's where it ends in verse 16.
SPEAKER_01: Here in verse 17, Paul switches from the positive instructions to the negative instructions, from the do's to the don'ts, from the thou shalt's to the thou shalt not.
SPEAKER_01: But have no fear, my friends, for wherever God speaks, there is grace upon grace, both when he says yes and as we shall see when he says no.
SPEAKER_01: So beginning in verse 17, now this I say and testify in the Lord that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their minds.
SPEAKER_01: He's writing a letter to a bunch of Ephesian Gentiles, and he tells them not to walk as Gentiles.
SPEAKER_01: It's a little tongue-in-cheek, it seems to me.
SPEAKER_01: There's no doubt these Ephesians know exactly what Paul is talking about when he says, don't walk like the Gentiles walk.
SPEAKER_01: Because that was them.
SPEAKER_01: They walked like that.
SPEAKER_01: They know exactly what he's talking about, but we don't.
SPEAKER_01: And so in God's grace, he tells us more.
SPEAKER_01: And he says, do not walk like them in the futility of their minds.
SPEAKER_01: Futility, it means vain and pointless and meaningless.
SPEAKER_01: Resistance is futile.
SPEAKER_01: You're not going to succeed.
SPEAKER_01: Try as hard as you want.
SPEAKER_01: You're not going to get there.
SPEAKER_01: It's like they're beating their heads against a brick wall, hoping it's going to fall down.
SPEAKER_01: They're doing that in their minds.
SPEAKER_01: That's what Paul says.
SPEAKER_01: Another way to put it is that all of their thoughts, everything their mind thinks, is meaningless, empty, void, fluffy nonsense.
SPEAKER_01: Well, what sorts of thoughts are we talking about, Paul?
SPEAKER_01: Or better, what kind of mind thinks meaningless thoughts?
SPEAKER_01: Look to your Bibles, Paul tells us.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 18, they are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to their hardness of heart.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, my friends, we could spend our entire morning just in that verse.
SPEAKER_01: There's so much there, but we must move quickly.
SPEAKER_01: What does it mean to be darkened in the understanding?
SPEAKER_01: Romans 1, right?
SPEAKER_01: For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who, by their unrighteousness, suppress the truth.
SPEAKER_01: For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.
SPEAKER_01: So they are without excuse.
SPEAKER_01: For although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
SPEAKER_01: You see, it's this ignorance about the things that are most important.
SPEAKER_01: They don't know about God, and they don't want to know about God, because they already know enough, so that they don't want to know, right?
SPEAKER_01: They're darkened in their understanding.
SPEAKER_01: It's a willful ignorance about the things that are most important.
SPEAKER_01: Because of that, they are alienated from the life of God.
SPEAKER_01: Godliness, the life of God, godly living, is completely foreign to these Gentiles of whom Paul speaks.
SPEAKER_01: They know exactly what he's talking about.
SPEAKER_01: Remember?
SPEAKER_01: The apostle says as much in chapter 2, verse 12 of this book.
SPEAKER_01: Remember that you, my Ephesian Gentile friends, were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise.
SPEAKER_01: What Paul is telling us here is not some new teaching on Christian living.
SPEAKER_01: They already know this.
SPEAKER_01: This is a loving and gentle confrontation from the heart of a pastor to his people who know what it means to walk like a Gentile.
SPEAKER_01: Why are they alienated?
SPEAKER_01: Paul says, because of the ignorance that is in them due to their hardness of hearts.
SPEAKER_01: Because these Gentiles love the darkness rather than the light, they suppress the truth and the righteousness.
SPEAKER_01: Because their minds are futile and darkened, God casts them out from his presence, just like he did Adam and Eve, just like he does with sin.
SPEAKER_01: So they're alienated because they've been cast out.
SPEAKER_01: Because their hearts are hard.
SPEAKER_01: And a hard heart is something that our Lord hates.
SPEAKER_01: It's this lack of sensitivity to wickedness, a numbness, and inability to tell right from wrong.
SPEAKER_01: A living heart is soft and it beats and it feels.
SPEAKER_01: A hard heart is cold and stony, unmoving, and dead.
SPEAKER_01: Mark chapter 3.
SPEAKER_01: Turn there with me if you'd like.
SPEAKER_01: But keep a finger in Ephesians.
SPEAKER_01: That's where we're living.
SPEAKER_01: Mark chapter 3.
SPEAKER_01: There's a man in the synagogue on the Sabbath day with a withered hand in Mark chapter 3.
SPEAKER_01: And all the people there on the Sabbath day are watching Jesus to see, Mark says, whether he would heal him on the Sabbath so that they might accuse him.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus said to the man with the withered hand, Come here.
SPEAKER_01: And he said to all of them, Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?
SPEAKER_01: But they were silent.
SPEAKER_01: Have you ever caught a child doing something they're not supposed to be doing?
SPEAKER_01: And they know it?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah?
SPEAKER_01: When you call them out for it, they just stand there silently.
SPEAKER_01: There's two ways they do it, right?
SPEAKER_01: There's sometimes a little boy or girl who knows what they've done is wrong, and they stare at the ground and their shoulders are slooped.
SPEAKER_01: They're overcome with shame because they've already repented in their hearts.
SPEAKER_01: They know what they did was wrong.
SPEAKER_01: They know they've disobeyed you or hurt somebody else.
SPEAKER_01: What that kid needs is a hug and a conversation about why sometimes they do the things we know we aren't supposed to do.
SPEAKER_01: But more commonly, and I think more of us are familiar with this, is the kid who crosses his arms and froze his eyebrows and somehow stares at that spot of wall right past your elbow.
SPEAKER_01: He won't look up at your eyes.
SPEAKER_01: He'll stare through the wall before he looks at you because all he wants is for you to just go away and leave him alone so he can keep doing the thing he knows he wasn't supposed to be doing in the first place.
SPEAKER_01: There's no repentance in that heart yet.
SPEAKER_01: What that heart needs is a confrontation.
SPEAKER_01: And that's exactly what our Lord does with these Pharisees who are acting like stubborn children.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 5.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart.
SPEAKER_01: You see where we're going here?
SPEAKER_01: And he said to the man, stretch out your hand.
SPEAKER_01: And he stretched it out, and his hand was restored.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 6 The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.
SPEAKER_01: A man's hand was just healed, and all they care about is that they got shown up on their turf.
SPEAKER_01: They got proven wrong, and they respond with anger and hardness of heart to destroy the one who taught them something about love.
SPEAKER_01: And such hardness of hearts characterizes the Gentiles who don't know God, just like it did the Pharisees who did not know God.
SPEAKER_01: You see, here in Ephesians 4, there's this cycle that Paul's laying out for us.
SPEAKER_01: A hard heart leads to ignorance about the things of God, which leads to being further away from God and godly living and more alienation, which leads to more darkness, which leads to more hardness of heart and more ignorance and more alienation, and it goes and it goes and it goes and on and on and on, further away from God towards eternal judgment.
SPEAKER_01: The Gentiles go in darkness and in hardness of heart.
SPEAKER_01: And now we turn to verse 19.
SPEAKER_01: In verse 18, in that sequence, Paul tells us what a futile mind is like.
SPEAKER_01: Here in verse 19, Paul begins to show us what they do.
SPEAKER_01: What is somebody who has no love in their heart, is ignorant of the things of God?
SPEAKER_01: How do they live?
SPEAKER_01: Paul says, they have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.
SPEAKER_01: They have given themselves up, completely handed themselves over.
SPEAKER_01: Matthew uses this exact same phrase to describe what Judas did to Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: He handed him over, completely betrayed him.
SPEAKER_01: Do with this what you will, it means nothing to me.
SPEAKER_01: And that's what we and all of our friends who've yet to know Christ.
SPEAKER_01: That's what we've done to ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: We've given ourselves up.
SPEAKER_01: We've handed ourselves over.
SPEAKER_01: We've betrayed ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: And to what?
SPEAKER_01: Into sensuality.
SPEAKER_01: In English, that word comes from our word for senses, right?
SPEAKER_01: What you can smell, taste, see, hear, and touch.
SPEAKER_01: Physical things, bodily things, earthly things.
SPEAKER_01: The word is used all over your New Testament, but honestly, the best place to understand what it means is right here in Ephesians 4, when Paul tells us exactly what he means by sensuality, when he says they are greedy to practice every kind of impurity.
SPEAKER_01: This greed doesn't just mean wanting money.
SPEAKER_01: We know that, right?
SPEAKER_01: But rather, this greed is that insatiable can't ever get enough hunger.
SPEAKER_01: It's that thing you can never get off your mind.
SPEAKER_01: You look forward to it as the days and the weeks drag on.
SPEAKER_01: You catch yourself daydreaming about it, right?
SPEAKER_01: If I could just get 20 minutes by myself, it's not always wrong.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it is.
SPEAKER_01: I think we all know that.
SPEAKER_01: Addicts are this kind of greedy after their chosen poison, right?
SPEAKER_01: Man, I can I just need a drink.
SPEAKER_01: But really, my friends, we are all greedy after so many things.
SPEAKER_01: Beautifully, Jesus felt this feeling.
SPEAKER_01: This insatiable hunger, this craving.
SPEAKER_01: In Luke chapter 22, Christ says to his disciples, I have earnestly desired, it's the same word in the Greek, I have been greedy to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.
SPEAKER_01: The man's about to be betrayed, handed over, mocked, beaten, and crucified, and he knows it.
SPEAKER_01: And yet he can't get off his mind because he's looking forward to it and craving it so strongly, the moment when he could say, This is my blood poured out for you.
SPEAKER_01: Oh Father God, may we hunger and thirst after such beautiful things as your son did.
SPEAKER_01: What are these Gentiles?
SPEAKER_01: Bleak and darkened in their godlessness and hardened hearts.
SPEAKER_01: What are they hungering for?
SPEAKER_01: The text continues, right?
SPEAKER_01: They are greedy to practice every kind of impurity.
SPEAKER_01: These Gentiles, they want things, they hunger and crave after things that are not clean.
SPEAKER_01: They want things that are defiled and dirty and unfit for common use, rotten eggs, spoiled milk, forbidden fruit.
SPEAKER_01: They want dying, decaying, rotting, meaningless, vain and empty things that pertain to the senses, that are physical, that are sensual.
SPEAKER_01: Their hearts burn with desire for sensual things that they ought not to want.
SPEAKER_01: And make no mistake, my friend.
SPEAKER_01: These Ephesians know exactly what Paul is talking about.
SPEAKER_01: And so do we.
SPEAKER_01: That the grace of God was bought by the blood of the Lamb.
SPEAKER_01: And that God no longer alienates you.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: He sent His Son here.
SPEAKER_01: We didn't have to clean ourselves up to go to Him.
SPEAKER_01: The God who alienated was the God who initiates.
SPEAKER_01: Well, we were all in that cycle of sin.
SPEAKER_01: Further and further away from God we went.
SPEAKER_01: And then just like that, God stopped it and He brought us near by the blood of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And we don't have to be alienated anymore.
SPEAKER_01: The cycle of sin has been broken by the blood of the Lamb.
SPEAKER_01: And that is the good news.
SPEAKER_01: That is the gospel of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: You don't have to be a Gentile anymore.
SPEAKER_01: There's a way.
SPEAKER_01: And if you believe in Jesus, this is what you believe.
SPEAKER_01: But Paul does not stop there, though he could.
SPEAKER_01: There's enough there.
SPEAKER_01: Paul tells us more about our old lives.
SPEAKER_01: He says that they are being corrupted through deceitful desires.
SPEAKER_01: This corruption, the verb is still going.
SPEAKER_01: Your old self is wasting away.
SPEAKER_01: The old you, the you you don't want to be anymore, the you that nags at you.
SPEAKER_01: It's breaking down.
SPEAKER_01: It is seeing destruction.
SPEAKER_01: Because that's what sin does.
SPEAKER_01: And Paul says that that's happening through these deceitful desires.
SPEAKER_01: What are these desires?
SPEAKER_01: They're the ones Jesus taught us about in the parable of the sower, right?
SPEAKER_01: They're desires that choke out the word.
SPEAKER_01: They're those things that, the riches of the concerns of life.
SPEAKER_01: They draw us away, they lure, they trap, they bait and switch, they promise joy, they don't deliver.
SPEAKER_01: They're those physical, earthly, temporal things.
SPEAKER_01: Those empty, vain, meaningless, worthy things that are being corrupted.
SPEAKER_01: Paul uses this word for desires in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, a very familiar passage.
SPEAKER_01: For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: For this is the will of God, your sanctification.
SPEAKER_01: That you abstain from sexual immorality, that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust, desires, not in the passion of desire like the Gentiles who do not know God.
SPEAKER_01: Just like our text for today.
SPEAKER_01: Do you see it?
SPEAKER_01: Saying the same thing.
SPEAKER_01: I hope it's becoming clear.
SPEAKER_01: Paul is calling us to walk like people who know Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Don't be like the Gentiles.
SPEAKER_01: Be like people who know the living God.
SPEAKER_01: But just how exactly do we do that?
SPEAKER_01: How do we put off our old Gentile self?
SPEAKER_01: What are we supposed to do, Paul?
SPEAKER_01: He's already told us, right, in verses 1 through 16, those positive instructions.
SPEAKER_01: He says, do this.
SPEAKER_01: Love each other and strive for unity and harmony with one another in the spirit.
SPEAKER_01: The question isn't, what do we do?
SPEAKER_01: We know what we're supposed to do, just like these Ephesians knew what they were supposed to do.
SPEAKER_01: The question is, how?
SPEAKER_01: How can self can such selfish and self-satisfying and self-absorbed Gentiles like me and you and us?
SPEAKER_01: How can we walk in newness of life?
SPEAKER_01: To be renewed in the spirit of your minds.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 23.
SPEAKER_01: To be renewed in the spirit of your minds and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
SPEAKER_01: Those two words for spirit and mind refer to some of the deepest parts of the human being, and saying them together is like saying, in the soul of your soul, and the very spirit of your mind.
SPEAKER_01: And the point of that is just saying, it's on the inside, and the way you feel, and the way you think, and the things you want.
SPEAKER_01: Be different there, be changed there, be renewed in the spirit of your mind.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus taught us this too.
SPEAKER_01: It's not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person.
SPEAKER_01: But what comes out of the mouth and what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart.
SPEAKER_01: For out of the heart come evil thoughts.
SPEAKER_01: Murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.
SPEAKER_01: These are what defile a person, Christ says.
SPEAKER_01: And Paul, with Christ, is calling us to be renewed there, to be changed there.
SPEAKER_01: What you do and what you say flows out from your mouth, hands, and feet after it's risen up from within your cold, darkened, ignorant, unbelieving Gentile heart.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: But that is not the way you learned Christ.
SPEAKER_01: That's not you anymore.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't have to be.
SPEAKER_01: That's not you anymore.
SPEAKER_01: And we need a change that comes there, from the very center of who we are.
SPEAKER_01: And we do this by putting on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
SPEAKER_01: And we put it on the same way we put off the old.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: When you come to Christ, when you see the cross, when you realize that you can be changed and there is forgiveness for your sins, and you become poor in spirit, and you mourn.
SPEAKER_01: Salvation then is a matter of repentance and confession and trusting yourself to Christ.
SPEAKER_01: In the same way, putting on the new self is a matter of confessing that the new self is good.
SPEAKER_01: Pray.
SPEAKER_01: You pray and you ask God to help you put on Christ-likeness.
SPEAKER_01: And then you do it.
SPEAKER_01: Hear me now.
SPEAKER_01: It's not the doing of things that transforms you.
SPEAKER_01: You can't fake it.
SPEAKER_01: But that doesn't mean we're to avoid doing the things we know are right because we're afraid we might be faking.
SPEAKER_01: I can't leave it alone.
SPEAKER_01: If you fear you're faking, if you're afraid you're faking, if you doubt your own motivation in doing what's right, then you already know, my friends, what the right reason is to do the right things.
SPEAKER_01: You already know.
SPEAKER_01: Right, for example, say you don't know if you should be baptized because you you don't want to do it just because it'll please your parents.
SPEAKER_01: Then you already know right then in that moment that there's a better reason to be baptized than that.
SPEAKER_01: And you only want to be baptized if it's for that reason.
SPEAKER_01: That's where your heart is.
SPEAKER_01: So pray, confess right then, God, I'm afraid that I'm doing this because I've because I care more about my parents than you.
SPEAKER_01: Help me, Lord, to do this out of love for you.
SPEAKER_01: And then go.
SPEAKER_01: Don't let the fear of faking, the temptation to unbelief freeze you.
SPEAKER_01: We know how to do what is right.
SPEAKER_01: We were created for good works before the foundation of the world.
SPEAKER_01: The same is true of everything, guys, of prayer, of singing in church, studying your Bible in a coffee shop.
SPEAKER_01: If you're wondering, oh man, am I just doing this because I want to be seen by other people?
SPEAKER_01: Pray right then and confess it, and then do the things you ought to do while confessing the reasons why you ought to do them.
SPEAKER_01: And in so doing, you put on the new self that looks like God.
SPEAKER_01: Notice, it doesn't say the new self mustered together after the likeness of God, or the new self worked out after the likeness of God, or the new self beaten into submission after the likeness of God.
SPEAKER_01: No, God by his spirit says created.
SPEAKER_01: It's God who creates the new you.
SPEAKER_01: Not you.
SPEAKER_01: And he creates it such that it looks like him.
SPEAKER_01: He's making us like him.
SPEAKER_01: What more could we ask?
SPEAKER_01: The truth of Jesus, my friends, is that our old self, corrupted and corrupting, according to the empty desires in which the Gentiles walk, can be put off.
SPEAKER_01: Remember, that's not the way you learned Christ.
SPEAKER_01: You don't have to be that way anymore.
SPEAKER_01: But in Christ, the creator of all the earth created a new self for you that you can now put on here, today, right this minute, tomorrow, when you wake up at work, at the dining room table, in your workplace, in your schools, your hearts, in the very spirit of your minds.
SPEAKER_01: We, you and me, and us and all who believe in the good news of Jesus Christ can be made new.
SPEAKER_01: Because we are people who have heard and were taught the truths of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And people who really know the good news of Jesus Christ don't walk like Gentiles walk.
SPEAKER_01: But we will walk in the newness of life and true godly righteousness and holiness.
SPEAKER_01: And it is that righteousness and holiness that we confess is good when we do what is right.
SPEAKER_01: And so the way to grow, the way to grow is to know more about that righteousness and holiness of God.
SPEAKER_01: To be so caught up and enamored with the beauty of God most high that you know what you're supposed to look like and you can strive after it.
SPEAKER_01: So, my friends, meditate and pray and reflect and study and seek.
SPEAKER_01: Seek the righteousness of God.
SPEAKER_01: Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness.
SPEAKER_01: So let's do that now together.
SPEAKER_01: Let's reflect on who our God is.
SPEAKER_01: Our God, the God, in his stunning power and might created the world and everything in it.
SPEAKER_01: He showed grace to Adam and Eve when they fell.
SPEAKER_01: He could have killed them right then.
SPEAKER_01: That's what he said would happen.
SPEAKER_01: There was grace even at the foot of the tree.
SPEAKER_01: He called Abraham out of Ur to make a people who would walk before him.
SPEAKER_01: He rescued that people from the depths of oppression and slavery.
SPEAKER_01: He guided them by the hand through the wilderness, providing for them with food and water and bread and birds.
SPEAKER_01: He gave to them a land of promise.
SPEAKER_01: These slaves who had never had a home.
SPEAKER_01: He gave a country all their own.
SPEAKER_01: He gave them wealth and power and security.
SPEAKER_01: And all of this our God did, despite the constant bickering and nagging and complaining of his people.
SPEAKER_01: Even despite their outright idolatrous rebellion.
SPEAKER_01: They've been saved by the very hand of God.
SPEAKER_01: The pillar of fire is in front of them, and they want to go back to Egypt.
SPEAKER_01: Even then, even then, he saved them again and again and again.
SPEAKER_01: He raised up for them judges and kings and prophets to save and to guide them.
SPEAKER_01: In his righteousness, he sent them away into Babylon in exile, but in his great love, he brought them back before their elders had even forgotten what the temple looked like.
SPEAKER_01: That gracious and loving and patient and merciful, holy and righteous God of all the earth, who cannot turn a blind eye to sin that destroys and corrupts through its evil desires, yet in his great love, he laid on himself, on his very own Son, all of the iniquity of the world, taking away our guilt and shame and raising us up to new life in Christ, that through the cross we might put off our old selves and be renewed in the very spirit of our minds, that we might be able to love and live just as the living God does in true righteousness and holiness.
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_01: Oh God, we are astounded when we recall your greatness in all the earth.
SPEAKER_01: Father, we remember you and we see here your goodness on display.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Father, for the gift of new life through the cross of your Son, that he rose from the dead to everlasting life, that we could rise with him.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Father, for Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: We pray this week as we go home to our families, to our workplaces, that we would glorify you in the way we live.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you, God, for all that you have given.
SPEAKER_00: That concludes the sermon from faith evangelical free church.
SPEAKER_00: Our mission is to declare the word of commandment and disciple believers into the movement from the words of Jesus.