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And have you ever really stopped and thought about the fact that from the time you're born, you are taking in information, and your mind is learning how to process life and to process all of that information. Someone starts speaking to you before you're even born. In fact, one of the coolest things that happened to me when my kids were born, particularly with Aubryn, it was most obvious with her, but all through the pregnancy with Aubryn, I would talk to her at night and I would pray for her, and I would talk to her through through Jada's belly, and I would say, Hey, Aubryn, you know, and I really what I'd say before we even knew her name, because we didn't know what she was gonna be, I would say, hey baby, and I would just call her baby because we didn't know, we didn't find out what our babies were gonna be until they were born. And so, and people, my my parents about killed us for that. They thought we were crazy, or your parents particularly. Uh, they were not happy because they wanted to know now. Um but we were weird like that, and so we waited. Um, and so I would say, hey baby, and when she was born in the delivery room, they put her on the little table to do the testing on her, and she was just crying, crying really loud, and I said, Hey baby, just like I'd always said, and she instantly stopped crying and she kind of starts looking for me. It was one of the coolest moments as a dad. Uh just you know, here we have this crazy out-of-body alien type experience, but then that moment was like it redeemed itself, right? Redeemed the whole thing. And she heard my voice and she responded to me, and it was awesome. But you know, here's the thing. We're we're we're taking in information, we're taking in processing all that's going on around us. And um, it takes you a long time in life to get to the point where you you've you've been out of school longer than you were in school. You guys remember that point when you kind of crossed over that threshold? You're like, I've been out of school, I still haven't gotten there. You know, I'm just like, man, this is crazy. I've been still haven't gotten to the point where I've been out of school longer than I was in school, you know, at some level because of preschool stuff, but we've got to count that too. Um but here's the thing like we're learning, we're learning, learning, and we're learning all these things so that we can make our lives better. And we worship education at some level. And listen, I'm not down on education, I love education. In fact, I believe that God created us to be learners, to be educated. He put that ability in us so that we can learn to process information and to use that information to make life better. And we know that developed countries that have a good education process, uh, the life that people live in those countries is substantially better, right? Significantly better than those who don't have the opportunity to be educated. Learning to read is a huge indicator of what will happen with your life. In fact, um, we were at the school, some of you guys know this, but we we've seen statistics that have matched up that in the state of Texas, they actually look at the reading level. Okay, listen, they look at the reading level of third graders, and if they can't read by third grade, they actually project how many prison beds they will need in the number of years to come. Did you know that? There's formulas that are tied to that. It's crazy. Because we know that education is important. But listen, here's the thing. Not everything that we learn is useful, and not everything that we learn is true. Right? Not everything that we learn is actually helpful, and not everything that we learn is actually good for us to learn. We learn a lot of things that are not good for us. But as we continue our discipleship series tonight, we've talked for two weeks now on trying to unpack a definition that would help us all have our maybe some handles on what does it mean to be a disciple? And we said that a disciple is someone who follows, who learns, who obeys, and who leads. And last week Harley talked us through what follows looks like. And as I was thinking again about that this week, I just reminded that you can't be a disciple and be sitting still. See, a disciple is moving, a disciple is making progress towards something. And so in our lives, as ones who are saying, as particularly the church, and if you're not a believer in Christ, if you're not a uh if you're not someone who's come to grips with the scripture and uh the truth of it, and that it's uh pointing us to the person of Jesus, um, if you're not there, then maybe this doesn't apply to you. But for for those who are Christians, who are believers, like we ought to be moving in the direction of following Jesus, right? He's given us an open invitation, and we're all given that invitation. Anyone who would receive, anyone who would believe, can come after him. And so you have to be moving to be a follower. But I want you to think about something tonight, is that in the text, in the Bible, in the scripture, when it talks about discipleship and it says disciple, the word disciple, in the Greek language, if you actually translate that into modern day language for us, the word would be translated to learner. Not follower, but actually learner. Methetes is the actual Greek word there, and you would translate that into the word learner. That's interesting, isn't it? So you have to learn to be a disciple. And tonight I want to talk to you a little bit about what that means. So in Luke chapter 6, again, if you don't have a Bible, there should be some Bibles there in front of you, you can grab one. Um I know that it is helpful for me to look at the scripture for myself, and so I encourage you to do that. But I want you to look in Luke chapter 6, verse 39 and 40. I brought this up the first week, and we're going to revisit it tonight. But in Luke chapter 6, verse 39, it says this. He, being Jesus, also told also told them a parable. Can the blind guide the blind? Won't they both fall into a pit? A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher. Now, we get the first half of this. Um, hopefully, he's using a metaphor, and he's saying, What would it be like if you took a blind person trying to lead another blind person around? They're eventually going to fall into a pit. Um, because the blind person leading the blind person can't see any better than the person who's blind, who's being led by the blind person. Are you still with me? And so the point he's making is that's kind of not a good thing for a blind person to try to lead another blind person because they're gonna both end up in the pit. Now, let me explain what he's trying to push at because he points us to it in the second half, the second verse here, where he says, a student is not above his teacher, but when he is fully trained, he will be like his teacher. Notice again, he uses the word teacher twice, and he's saying that there's something that's being taught, and if the person who is teaching is teaching things that are not true because they are spiritually blind, then guess what? The person who's following the spiritually blind person who's already spiritually blind is going to fall into a spiritual pit. Are you with me? This is why you've got to be very, very careful. We have to be very, very careful who we choose to be our teacher. Let me let me say one word on this. Um, I take it very serious when I teach the Bible. And it's because I know the scripture says in 1 Timothy 3 and other places that people who teach the Bible will be held to a higher level of accountability. You know why? Because people are listening to that teaching and they're putting it into practice, which means if I'm teaching things that are false, then you're putting bad stuff into practice and leading you away from God instead of towards God. Now, I know, and I'm just going to be honest with you guys tonight, not everything that I have taught in my life has been true. And you're like, oh, great, this is that's that's encouraging, that's really helpful. I can tell you that there were some times in my life where I taught scriptures, and I taught them in a way that was not faithful to the text. Now, I won't give you any examples tonight, okay, but I want to tell you that there is a way to teach the Bible in a way that is not pointing us to the truth of what it really means. Okay, and I'm not talking about going to books like Revelation and Daniel and some of the harder books and trying to look at these mythical, like these weird passages, people say that this is there's no way that's true, it's mythical, it's it's it's not, there's no way that that could possibly be real, and what is the symbolism behind that? Blah, blah, blah. Okay, there's a lot of conversations that go on about all that, but let me tell you this: just in some obvious passages, if you're not careful, you can teach the Bible, particularly the Old Testament of the Bible, in a way that actually leads people away from truth instead of to truth. And that's exactly what the Jewish leaders were doing in Jesus' day, is because they were teaching the rules of the Bible without reliance on God. And that's a dangerous, dangerous thing to do. Because then you just heap burdens on top of people of commands and rules that they can't do without giving them the answer to their salvation, the answer to their redemption, the answer to their hope and their power to actually do the things that God's called us to do. Are you with me? So here's the thing. Tonight I want us to think about this in terms of if we are going to be disciples of Jesus, and the invitation is to everyone in this room, if we're gonna be disciples of Jesus, followers of Jesus, who are learning from him, then we need to know how do we do that. We need to know what it means? What is he trying to teach us? Well, in Matthew chapter 5, and actually beginning in the end of chapter 4, I'm gonna jump around on you a little bit tonight in several of the passages in the Gospels because it's most helpful to kind of look at the life of Jesus, who was the ultimate discipler, the ultimate teacher, rabbi, the word they would have used during their day. And it says that as soon as he called his first disciples, um, at the end of verse 22, they followed him. Harley did a great job talking through a passage last week where Jesus says, Come and follow me, and they do. But notice this, in verse 23 of chapter 4 of Matthew, and if you don't have your Bible there, it's okay. Let me just read it to you. It says, Jesus was going all over Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, which would have been their place of worship, their house of worship. He was teaching in their synagogues, he was preaching the good news of the kingdom, and he was healing every disease and sickness among the people. Now, he gets disciples and he starts taking them on this journey, and he goes and he starts to teach in the synagogues. But he also is preaching, which is kind of like amped up teaching. He's really going at it, preaching and teaching. But then also it says that he is healing every disease and sickness. And so can you imagine what that was like to be called to follow Jesus? Here's our rabbi, we're gonna follow him, we're gonna learn from him. And the first thing he does is he starts healing people. He starts healing the sick. And they're like, the goal of being a follower of Jesus, the goal of being his disciple was to be like him. And he's showing us that what he does is he heals people, he heals the sick. That's pretty amazing, isn't it? Can you imagine what was going on in their minds? I can't because it's not the culture that I live in, it's not the way of life that I have, but when when you followed a teacher, whoever you chose as your teacher, like your goal was to ultimately be like your teacher. And Jesus is healing people. So I wonder if they ever thought to themselves, man, maybe one day we'll get to do that. And what's beautiful is we've looked in the book of Acts, and for those of you that came uh during our study through the book of Acts, guess what happens? Some of those apostles do get to participate in healing people. They do get to be a part of seeing people who are sick and lame and deaf and blind and all those things healed, and they become like their teacher, Jesus. They follow him, they learn from him. But what is Jesus specifically trying to teach them? Well, in Matthew 5, verse 1, it says, When he saw the crowds, and again his disciples are there, he went up on the mountain and he sat down, and his disciples came to him and he began to what teach. Began to teach them, to educate them. And so it says, What did he teach them? He starts out by saying this the poor in spirit are blessed, for the kingdom of heaven is theirs. And I believe it's important because what Jesus teaches for the next two chapters, well, really five, six, and seven, so three chapters in the book of Matthew, is he teaches a lot of practical teaching about life and things that they dealt with, things like possessions and things about prayer and things about loving your enemies and things about purity in your marriage, things about telling the truth and having integrity, things that we all need to learn and grow in, right? I mean, all those things are things that we need to continue to develop in and to understand the way of Jesus. But I want you to understand that what Jesus was saying in the Sermon on the Mount is not what the Jewish leaders were saying when they were teaching the rules of the Old Testament. And what I mean by that is this is that when Jesus was teaching the Sermon on the Mount, which is just the official or unofficial, maybe, I don't know, but official title of what his teaching was through Matthew 5 through 7, because he's up on the mountainside and he's teaching this group of 5,000 plus people. We know this is that he was saying things like this, you've heard it said, dot, dot, dot. And he would fill in a blank things like, You've heard it said, uh, do not kill. Well, they would have all heard that because it was teaching from the Old Testament, from the Mosaic Covenant, where Moses had received the Ten Commandments. And so they knew, don't steal, don't kill, don't lie, don't commit adultery, you know, honor your father and your mother, uh, don't have any other gods before you, right? Don't make any graven images or idols. Um, they knew the Ten Commandments. They were experts at it. It was part of, from the very time that they were born, they started learning these rules. And so Jesus would say stuff like, You've heard it said, blah, blah, blah. You know, you've heard it said, don't steal, don't kill, whatever. But then he would press into that and he would go far beyond just the external behavior to what? To what's going on inside of you. The part of you that no one else sees. The part of your life that even when you're doing the right thing, there's a motive in you that many times is off, right? Here's the point I want to make is because what Jesus was teaching his disciples and all of the crowds who would listen to him was he was teaching them a way of life, a kingdom way of life, that was more than just rules, more than just a religious exercise, and more than just a way that would make us feel like we were better people. He was teaching them that they needed a savior. And that teaching is still true today, isn't it? Because many times I go to church or have gone to church in my life, hopefully not these days, but in my life I've gone to church and I've walked out the door very discouraged. I walked out the door very beat down and feeling like there's no way I can do what they just said. And you know what? I'm right. I can't sustainably do good things because I'm broken. I'm messed up. And so even on my best days, when I get 99% of the things right, which has never happened, but if I can get 99% of the things right, I will still blow something because I'm messed up. And Jesus says, even when you do the right thing, your heart is still messed up. You need a savior, you need a redeemer, you need someone to bring salvation to you. And so the point that I want us to understand is that Jesus didn't just teach a religious system or even his interpretation of how to make the rules a little bit better so that you could obey them better. Jesus flips everything on its head and he gives us a whole way of life that's a kingdom way of life that says when Jesus is king, everything changes. You see what Jesus was teaching them before he even went to the cross is that they needed him to go to the cross because they could not live up to the standard that God had put out, and even the standards that they were in, you know, increasing the number of rules and regulations to follow. They couldn't do it. And as a disciple, let me just tell you something tonight. When Jesus says in Matthew chapter 11, he says, My yoke is easy and my burden is light, he's not talking about when you're struggling with your life that you just go to him and that you get your burdens lifted and that's all better. He actually, when he uses the word yoke in Matthew chapter 11, yoke is the common word they would have used for their rabbi's teaching. So the word yoke was actually synonymous with what that rabbi taught. Are you with me? And so when he says, my yoke is easy and my burden is light, he is telling his followers, he's telling his disciples that when you follow my teaching, it's not just more rules heaped on you that you can't meet up to, that you can't do. He says, My teaching is that you need me to save you and to rescue you. Isn't that awesome? I mean, I just get fired up when I stop and think about that, that he didn't come to make us feel more guilty. He came to bring to save us, to rescue us, to set us free, and to give us hope. The law makes us feel plenty guilty. Our moral conscience that's going on in our life makes us feel plenty guilty if we're honest. We're convicted. But he comes, even as it says in 1 John, not as an accuser, but as the one who stands and says, He's forgiven. She's forgiven. He's our advocate. Isn't that awesome? And so if we're in Christ tonight as his disciple, we need to learn that we have an advocate. Let me let me just make this even more tangible because we've said that being a disciple means learning how to apply, and this is not a blank on your page there, but learning how to apply the gospel to all of life.

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Learning how to apply the gospel to all of life. Now, if you're like me and you grew up in church where you heard the word gospel as kind of a way to get people into heaven, that's how I heard it, was you do the ABCs. Admit that you're a sinner, believe that Jesus saved you, and commit your life to Christ. Okay? ABC, right? That's how we did it. Not wrong, just incomplete. Because that's how you get to heaven. But listen, if you want to be a disciple, a follower of Jesus, it doesn't stop when you get to heaven. When you get to that part about gold in heaven, and one day you get to get there, right? It only begins when we cross that line of faith. Just begins in a whole new way. And here's why. Because when you think about it this way, that the gospel really has the four parts that Harley gave us last week and we've talked about multiple times, just hang with me that when we understand how to apply the gospel to all of life, it changes everything. For example, the fact that there is a good creator God who is sovereign over all of life. That the fact that there's a creator God that when he created the world, he didn't create the mess that we're dealing with. He didn't create the sickness, he didn't create the suffering, he didn't create the hardship stuff that we're dealing with. He didn't create that stuff. He created it beautiful and perfect and with everything in harmony. He created everything where relationship with him was right, relationship with each other was right. And let me just tell you, there are a lot of people who are angry at God. They're bitter and frustrated with God tonight. Today, right now, there are people on this planet, as we spin around and we're moving around the sun, they are angry and bitter at the God who made these things. They believe that there is one, but they're just angry. Let me just remind you again tonight, God is not responsible for the mess that's going on down here. He is a beautiful, amazing, holy, awesome creator. And I know that that's sometimes hard for us to believe because, and we're going to wrestle with this in weeks ahead, so I don't want to get ahead of ourselves. But listen, when I think about the gospel's reminder that God created everything perfect, it just kind of sets me back in my place. That I've got a God who is awesome, who is good, who is kind. But the second truth is so key and it changes everything. And that is that I and you, we are bent towards rebellion. That we are broken and we choose. We could blame Adam and Eve all day long in the garden. You go to the Bible, they get three chapters in. I mean, three chapters in of the Bible. This is a big book. Three chapters in and they screw it up. Alright? They're not even far that far into it. It's like, isn't that supposed to happen a little later, but they screw it up, right? And if it was us, we would do the same thing. The point I'm making is this is that we have to come to grips with the fact we're broken. It changes everything because here's what I want to do. I want to say everybody else is broken but me. I want to say Jada's broken, the kids are broken, and that's why I'm acting like I'm acting. That's the easy answer, right? You know, it's the guy that cut me off. It's my boss, it's my this, it's my that, it's whatever. You can come up with all these things and you can say, well, they're broken. They're messed up. It's not me. But see, the gospel says no, we're all. It's not a I, it's not, it's not a them problem, it's a we problem. We're all messed up. And so we can come to God and we can know that we're broken. And so we come from that place. Guess what? I can then begin to like see people in the same way that I have to understand and see myself that we have an issue that has to be dealt with. It changes everything. Because the third truth is so incredibly important, and that is that in our brokenness we have a Savior, Jesus Christ, who has come to redeem. Who's come, he's pursued us. Now, this always is helpful for me, but think about it. When somebody wrongs you, how often do you pursue them to see if you can get it to make it right? When they offend you, when they hurt you, I mean, maybe on a really good day, right? But it says in Romans 5 that while we were sinners, while we had created this big mess and all this offense before God, that he pursues us. And that he is pursuing us. In fact, the reason that you are in this room tonight, you may not know this. You may have think it was purely by your choice, but the reason you're here and the reason I'm here is because he pursued us and is pursuing us. Because he wants us to hear this, he wants us to learn that he is a pursuing God. And so we know tonight that that truth changes everything. But the final truth is this. The final truth is that one day all of this broken mess will be made right. And there won't be pain and sickness and suffering because that's what God wants. He wants to fix it all. He wants to get it all back to the way he intended it to be in the beginning, and then we screwed it up. And so tonight we can come with hope and peace and with a belief that there's a day coming when it will be made right. When relationships won't be messed up like they are right now. When the guilt and the suffering and the pain and whatever it is that's got you down, the fear will no longer be there. And it's an awesome day, and it changes everything. You see, a disciple, a disciple's learning how this affects things, learning how to do life in this paradigm rather than the paradigm of it's everybody else's problem. And God, you did this. And God, you haven't pursued me, I've pursued you, and you haven't answered. You see, that's all part of our brokenness that has messed this thing up, and we see it through the backwards lens. We need to see it rightly. And it changes the way that we interact with others. So the question, if that's what we've learned tonight, if we've learned the Jesus way of living, if that's what we should be learning as we're following him, then how do we actually learn it? That's the question I have. If we're going to be a student of Jesus, a student of Jesus, they need three things. Okay? Jesus was the master teacher. He was so gifted at teaching. Um, he told amazing stories that captivated attention of all the people that were there. And he he um was able to, I mean, think about it, sitting up on a hillside and teaching. And I don't know if you guys understand this, but because they didn't have a sound system, uh, the way that when he taught, uh, it was passed on kind of through the crowd, like that game you play where uh you kind of pass it on down the line. What's that called? Telephone, yeah. What's a telephone? Um, uh with a line, yeah. But, you know, you're basically like passing it down, and so they would pass the teaching out as far as they could and get it out to the crowds. And Jesus is teaching them, but notice this the first thing that a learner needs is they need knowledge. So information is not bad. We need content. We need to understand truth. Like I said a while ago, we've been learning since the time we were born. The question is, is what we've been what have we been learning? Who have we been learning it from? I mean, what information are we plugging in to our daily life to actually feed the way that we live? To feed the way the things that we value, things we invest our time and energy and worth in. You know, I'm convinced, I'm convinced that for many of us, for all of us, not many, just many, all of us, that we are applying information that's not true in our life, and we're getting the result from it that we should get from it because it's not true, and we're wondering what the problem is. Um when we when we look at the way that the world values certain things and we adopt that as our idea, there's gonna be consequences if it's not biblical, if it's not true to what Christ has called us to. You know what I'm saying? Um maybe this isn't your struggle, maybe this is just my struggle, but um I've talked about this before, but let's say you go to the mall, and you go to the mall or to the outlet mall or whatever, and and you see all the messages that are coming at you saying that you're not um you're not beautiful, uh, you're not good looking, you're not worth anything if you don't wear these certain things. Right? That's just a common thing we see. And then you buy that lie. Let's say you buy into that. Well, I'll be nice, and just say you buy into that idea. And then you begin to pursue to make that your reality, and so you start buying the clothes that you should wear. What's the problem that you just created? Huh? Okay, you're not good enough? Okay, material things. What's the problem with material things? What's the problem with clothes? They don't last. You go back to the mall a week later and the mannequin's got a different outfit on. And you're like, I don't have that outfit. Right? And it works at the car lot the same way. And it works in life in all these different arenas that you go and you get you get sold that this is what you gotta have, and then you get it, and then guess what? There's something else you gotta have. And there's something else you gotta have, and there's something else you gotta have. And it's a no-win situation. I mean, that's an easy one to pick on, isn't it? But when you take a truth or an idea that's not true, but an idea from the world and you you put it into your system and you try to apply that, you're gonna get frustration and it's gonna bring destruction in your life. But what happens when you take something good? What happens when you take the truth, like one of the truths from the Sermon on the Mount, where he says, Don't worry about tomorrow. For tomorrow will worry enough about itself. Got enough things to worry about later, right? He says, What don't worry about tomorrow. What happens when you start applying that? What about the the the passage where he says, don't worry about what you're eat or what you're drinking or what you're wearing? Like, God takes care of the birds of the field, the birds of the air and the beasts of the field. He'll take care of you. What happens when you apply that truth? Does that change your world a little bit? It does, doesn't it? Because God's truth is life-transforming, it's life-changing. And we need information. We need knowledge. Jesus taught, I mean, all the gospels, so much of it is red. And mine, mine's the red version, and all the red words are the words of Jesus. And I just go through and it's just red, and it's he's teaching, teaching, teaching, teaching. And he's telling his disciples, he's telling the three, he's telling the twelve, he's telling the seventy-two, he's telling the crowds, multitudes. He's teaching them good information. He's teaching them good truth from the Old Testament and from his wisdom as the Son of God. He's teaching them. And we need that. We need um we need good teaching, and hopefully that's what happens here. But listen, here's what I know to be true knowledge alone is not enough. In fact, I would say to you that many people, their walk with God stops at this place. Many people stop at knowledge alone. Now, the hard part is, you know, once you absorb an idea, take an idea in, make that idea your own, you begin to apply it even though you don't know it. But most people will say, I'll go to church, I'll get some good teaching, and that's what I need is just good teaching. Listen, if all you do is just hear information, you're missing out on what it means to be a disciple. Because learning is not just about getting good information. All right? Learning is much bigger than that. And here's why. Because the second thing that we need is we need coaching. Apprenticing is a word we don't use in our culture much. But we need on-the-job coaching. We need some training from our discipler. And again, we're saying we're following Jesus. Let's look at his example. In Luke 9, you don't have to turn over there, but in Luke 9, verse 37 through 43, we get this story where there's a man and he has a demon-possessed son, and basically it tells us that they bring the son to the disciples. This is what it says. It's really um pretty interesting uh to read. It says that um they tell him that often a spirit seizes the man and he streaks, and and so he throws him into convulsions and he foams at the mouth. I mean, this sounds like a pretty crazy story, right? Never seen anything like this. And he says, I begged your disciples to drive it out, but they could not do it. And Jesus replies, He was very sweet here. Listen, listen to the words of Jesus. This is when he was very kind, very loving. You unbelieving and rebellious generation, how long will I have to put up with you? Bring your son here. How many of you think Jesus is like just always this nice and tender, you know, person? He just says, You unbelieving and rebellious generation. I love this. Not that I want him to say it to me, but it's really funny he says it to them in the context, right? You rebellious and unbelieving generation, how long will I be with you and put up with you? You ever say that to your kids? How long am I to put up with this? He says this to them, but he says, Bring your son here. And what happens? Jesus casts the demon out. That's the basic, that's the short of it. He cast the demon out. And his disciples later go, wait, wait, wait, wait. How did that work? How did you do that? And Jesus says to them, he says, they only come out through prayer and fasting. So he teaches them. He shows them. And we know that they learned how? We know that they learned because in a minute, he's gonna do something to them that's even more significant than just simply giving them that opportunity because he's gonna send them out. But before I get there, I want to say this. In our life, are you letting other people coach you and teach you in your life, in your marriage, in your parenting, in your work life? One of the prayers I pray over my children, specifically one of them, and I won't point them out, but I pray over my children is I pray that they would have a teachable spirit. That they will be coachable. I say that to a lot to the kids in baseball. I told you guys I coached little league baseball. I'm like, okay, guys, you've got to be coachable. You gotta like let us instruct you. If you'll listen to what we're saying, you're gonna get better. If you don't, you're just gonna be bad for a long time. It's gonna be not gonna be good. Okay? We try to teach them that. But we pray they'll be teachable. And you know why? Because I know in my life I was not very teachable for a lot of my life. I wouldn't let other people speak into my life. I get really offended. And listen, you can't grow if you won't let others speak into your life. You've got to invite others to say, hey, would you tell me if I'm out of line? Would you encourage me and would you challenge me? Would you give me some if you see something in my life that's not matching up with what I say I believe, would you, would you help me with that? Or if you see something in my life that just you have some wisdom to speak into, would you speak that into me? How many of you do that? I mean, that is not normal for human beings to invite somebody else to speak into their life in that way. But we need it, don't we? And Jesus was masterful at it. He was masterful at speaking the things that needed to be said, whether they wanted to hear them or not. What's cool is that the disciples learned, man, when we have a question, we have an issue, we need to ask Jesus. They come to him and they say, How did you get this demon out? Like we couldn't do it. Another place it says they said, Jesus, teach us how to pray. Coach us, teach us how, show us how. And he gives them an example. He doesn't say, No, I'm not going to teach you how to pray. You know how to pray. He teaches them, he shows them, he gives them an example. So in your life, in my life, are we teachable? Do we let others speak? Because we need coaching, we need instruction in that way. But the third thing he does, and the third thing that we need is to be a student of Jesus, is we need experience. Experience through immersion. Now, um I enjoy going to Mexico and uh any of the places where they speak Spanish because I know a little Spanish. But I know very little Spanish. And so I know enough to be dangerous. That's the problem, right? And so we've gone to Mexico several occasions. But you know, it's funny because I took two years of Spanish in a classroom. And I sat there and heard our teacher, you know, teach us how to say things and give us homework assignments and work on it, and we had to do these dialogues in class. But you know what? It wasn't until I went on my first mission trip to the border town of Acunya that I began to learn how to really speak Spanish. Because when I went in, what happened? I wanted to talk to the people that we were working with, and they all spoke Spanish, and there was no chance of me getting through to them, communicating with them using English words because they didn't get any of it. And so what did I have to do? I had to start speaking Spanish. And I just, and even though I had to mess it up and, you know, like several times, said some things that I'm not proud of, and it was really, really bad, you know what? I just kept trying because I was immersed in Spanish. In any culture you go to. I've been so proud of Chin back here. I mean, coming to the United States and having to learn English and just being immersed in it. But when you get into it every day, you just have to learn it, right, Chin? Because you have to use it so that you can communicate with the people around you. Here's the thing. For many of us in this room, we know about God, and we know things about the Bible, and we know things about living on mission, like sharing the gospel with others, we know things about discipleship, but none of us have ever practiced it. A lot of us have not practiced those things. You know what I'm saying? And here's the thing. If you want to get good at being a disciple follower of Jesus, if you want to grow, if you want to develop and maturity, you need to jump in and do something about it. You can't just assume, again, you can learn it in a classroom. I've been so encouraged, and again, I'm not going to point anybody out today. I've been so encouraged by hearing conversations about people who've stepped out to try to have spiritual conversations with people in their neighborhood. And like at first, it's awkward. I mean, it's weird because it's not natural. But what's amazing is to watch that when you step out, God meets us in that and we learn. We learn how to be like Jesus, how to say things Jesus would say, how to do things Jesus would do. We could talk about it theoretically all day long. The question is, are we going to do anything about it? Are we actually going to apply it? Are we going to begin to put into practice these things? And next week, Eric is going to talk us through what it looks like to obey, to imitate the one who is our discipler. But Jesus, notice what he does in chapter 10 of Luke, it says that he appointed 70 and he sent them out ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself was about to go. I love it that he's sent them out in pairs because they needed an encourager to go with them, right? But he sends them out and he says, here's what you need to do. He gives them specific instructions, and they go out and they do it. When they come back, they say, listen, they say things like, We got to see the work of God. We got to see that we cast out demons. The dark powers, they listened to us. Which again says that they learned from Jesus about how to do that. But they just had to go do it. They had to learn. In your life, in my life, we just got to learn to practice these things, to be immersed in it, to put ourselves in it, to be a learner in that way. Like I said earlier, and I'm not picking on anyone specifically in this room, okay? I'm just telling you, all of us here struggle with this. For many years, um, I've watched people come to church year after year after year, and get smarter about what's in the Bible, but never actually do what it says. Um, I had the gift of getting to go to seminary where I was taught the Bible daily at a depth and a level that I'd never experienced before and probably and won't ever probably have an opportunity to do that again. And there were people who knew the Bible so well. They could tell you all these things about Jesus, they could tell you all things about the culture of the Bible, the language of the Bible, all these things. But their love for God was pretty much non-existent. I'm telling you that because, listen, being a disciple, a follower of Jesus is not just about knowing a lot, but it's about following Jesus and being like him. I want to close out with this thought. Because more than learning about him or from him, more than learning about him or from him, we get to know Jesus. We get to know him. More than just learning about him or from him, we get to know him. Catch this. Um the goal of our time when we come together on Sunday nights or whenever we get together to talk about God's word is not simply so that you guys will be smarter and more intelligent. Okay. The goal is not to simply know the Bible better. The goal is to know the one who wrote the Bible. Listen, there's no life in the Bible by itself. In fact, Jesus says in John chapter 5, he says to the leaders, the spiritual leaders of his day, he says, you pour over the scriptures. You pour over the scriptures and you're looking for life in them. But he says to them, you won't find it there. Because they all point to me. He's talking about himself, Jesus. What am I trying to say to you tonight? I'm trying to say that if we want to be learners, if we want to be disciples of Jesus, and the invitation is to come and follow, our goal is not just to simply learn about Jesus, but to actually know Jesus because he is life. He is life. He's the one who brings life. And here's what's awesome. When we trust him, when we follow him, when we choose to obey him, when we choose to give our life to him, he doesn't just say, come and follow me anymore. He actually comes and lives inside of us. And he leads us from the inside out. Isn't that awesome? He leads us to be like him because he's doing a work inside of us where nobody else can see it, but outwardly we begin to change. Our desires change, our values change, our relationships change, our life begins to be transformed. And it's not because we know a lot about him as much as we know him. And that's what I want to pass on to my kids. I don't want my kids just to know the Bible. I want my kids to know Jesus. And I think the Bible helps us get there. It's very, very important, but it doesn't stop there. Let me pray.