Theological term
Discipleship
11 sermons · All terms
The One Thing Needful
Luke 10:38–42 presents two sisters whose contrasting postures before Christ expose a perennial danger for the people of God: the distraction of much serving to the neglect of the one thing needful. The sermon works through Martha's fourfold complaint — impugning Christ's care, demanding he redirect Mary, mingling grumbling with service, and collapsing into self-pity — before turning to Christ's gentle double-named rebuke and his commendation of Mary's humble discipleship. The passage does not condemn service, family, work, or daily necessity, but it does condemn the disordering of priorities that allows lawful things to crowd out devotion to the word of Christ. The lasting and untakeable benefit Christ promises to those who sit at his feet is the governing application: seek first the kingdom, receive the word with a noble heart, and trust that all other things will be added.
The Great Commission
Christ's Great Commission in Matthew 28:18–20 provides the church with her complete marching orders: go, make disciples, baptize those disciples, and teach them to observe all that Christ commanded. The authority behind the commission belongs to the risen and exalted Christ, who possesses all authority in heaven and earth; the assurance sustaining it is His promise of perpetual presence to the end of the age. The sermon treats the specific focus of the commission in sequence, defending believers' baptism by immersion as the pattern demanded by the text and the order it establishes — make disciples first, then baptize — against both baptismal regeneration and paedobaptism. The Trinitarian formula of baptism occasions an extended treatment of theology proper, including divine simplicity, impassibility, and the unity of essence in three persons, with warnings against tritheism, modalism, and subordinationism.
The Blessing of Spiritual Liberty
John 8:31–36 confronts every person with a diagnosis before offering a cure: whoever commits sin is a slave of sin. This sermon expounds Christ's words under two heads — the reality of spiritual slavery and the blessing of spiritual liberty — drawing on Romans 1–3, Galatians, and Acts 26 to demonstrate that bondage to sin is universal, that it is not political but moral and spiritual, and that freedom is granted by the Son alone through the truth of His Word. The occasion of the Lord's Supper grounds the application: believers examine themselves against the marks of true discipleship (abiding in the Word) and receive the supper as a joyful remembrance of redemption from sin's penalty, the law's curse, God's wrath, Satan's dominion, and sin's reigning power.
The Effects of Jesus' Mission
Matthew 10:34–42 confronts a persistent misreading of Christ's mission: he did not come to establish immediate social peace, but to divide — along the precise line of the enmity God announced in Genesis 3:15 between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. The sermon traces two effects of apostolic mission: the division that the gospel necessarily produces in families and societies whose hearts are at enmity with God, and the reception that God's elect show toward Christ's messengers. The exposition draws out three demands of genuine discipleship — loyalty to Christ before family, before physical life, and before any earthly security — before closing with the encouragement that even a cup of cold water given in the name of a disciple is an act God rewards, meaning every believer participates in the mission.
The Appointment of the Twelve
Matthew 10:1–4 records the formal appointment of the Twelve as apostles — a commission distinct from their earlier call to discipleship. This exposition examines the authority Christ delegates to the Twelve, the striking ordinariness of the men he selects, and what their diversity, sinfulness, and ultimate faithfulness (or treachery) reveal about the sovereign grace of Christ. The sermon closes with an urgent call to sinners to hear the gospel these apostles were sent to proclaim, and to find in Christ the righteousness that answers condemnation.
Christ and the Storm
Matthew 8:23–27 presents Christ stilling the storm on the Sea of Galilee as a revelation of his divine identity and unrivaled authority over creation. The sermon traces three movements: the real danger confronting the disciples on the sea, Christ's rebuke of their little faith and his sovereign command over the wind and waves, and the disciples' resulting awe. While discipleship themes run through the passage — the inevitability of trial, the displacement of fear by faith, and the call to pray 'increase our faith' rather than simply 'make this stop' — the primary burden is Christological: Matthew is unveiling the God-man, Israel's Messiah, whose word over the sea echoes the divine prerogative of Yahweh throughout the Psalms and Prophets. The sermon closes with a direct appeal to flee to this Christ, the only one able to address the far greater crisis of sin.
The Cost of Discipleship
Matthew 8:18–22 presents two case studies in discipleship: a scribe who too eagerly volunteers to follow Jesus without counting the cost, and a disciple who hesitates, asking to bury his father first. Working through the first case, this exposition presses the meaning of Christ's self-identification as the Son of Man — drawing on Isaiah 53 and Daniel 7 — to show that discipleship entails not earthly prosperity or ease but rejection, deprivation, and willing loss of temporal goods. The sermon closes by locating the ground of discipleship in the indicative of the gospel: God accepts sinners through Christ, and it is from that acceptance that the costly call to follow flows.
The Priorities of Discipleship
Matthew 8:21–22 presents the second of two discipleship case studies: a man who asks permission to bury his father before following Christ. Jesus' reply — 'Let the dead bury their own dead' — is not a dismissal of filial duty but a radical assertion of the absolute priority Christ claims over every legitimate and illegitimate concern. The sermon traces this demand of total allegiance across the Decalogue, the Shema, Joshua 24, and Matthew's own Gospel, demonstrating that undivided devotion to Christ is not a new imposition but the consistent heartbeat of biblical religion. The call is to repent of the 'let me first' attitude and to pursue Christ as the supreme priority, sustained by the surpassing value of His kingdom.
The Narrow Way
Matthew 7:13–14 confronts every hearer with a binary reality: there are only two ways, and every person is already on one of them. The broad way is the default condition of fallen humanity — wide, well-populated, and apparently pleasant — but it ends in conscious, eternal destruction from the presence of God. The narrow way, by contrast, is the life of Christian discipleship entered by grace through faith alone, marked by difficulty and tribulation, yet terminating in everlasting life and the immediate presence of Christ. The sermon presses this text as both an ethical directive to professing believers to walk in decisive discipleship and an evangelistic summons to the unconverted to flee to the Savior, while insisting that the Sermon on the Mount rightly read exposes every hearer's need for an alien righteousness found only in Christ.
The Arrival of the Messianic Kingdom
Matthew 4:18–25 records the arrival of the Messianic Kingdom through two decisive acts: Christ's sovereign call of four Galilean fishermen to discipleship, and his healing of multitudes throughout Syria, Galilee, and beyond the Jordan. The passage resists the expectation that kingdom advancement demands spectacular instruments — four local fishermen casting nets are the nucleus of a world-overturning apostolic ministry. The theological weight of Christ's healing ministry is not mere spectacle but the attestation of kingdom power; teaching, preaching, and healing together define the Messiah's work. Hearers are pressed to respond to the gospel call with the same immediacy as Peter, Andrew, James, and John, and to pursue faithful, determined, and patient witness in whatever station God has appointed.
The Great Commission
Matthew 28:18–20, the Great Commission, grounds the church's evangelistic and discipleship mandate not in human strategy but in the universal authority of the enthroned Christ. The sermon traces three interlocking realities: the authority behind the commission (Christ's sovereign rule over all things), the activity the commission requires (making, baptizing, and teaching disciples), and the active agent who sustains it (Christ himself present with his people to the end of the age). Believers' baptism is expounded as a visible sign of union with Christ, remission of sins, and public covenant commitment — an ordinance reserved for disciples, not infants — and the entire commission is set within a robustly Calvinist framework in which God alone adds to his church by sovereign grace.