Elisabeth Elliot - What is a Disciple (English)

[Music] thank you so much it's such a privilege and a pleasure for my husband and me to be with you this weekend I always feel as though we are the major beneficiaries of the blessings that come and at the outset since I am speaking in a church thank you our sanctuary to a mixed group I would like to say at the outset that I I'm not in favor of women preachers I don't want to be a women a woman preacher and I think I know my place we women have the privilege of not being in charge of things and what a privilege and freedom and liberation that is I I come under the authority of Christ of course under the authority of his word under the authority of the church and I never speak in a mixed group in a church unless there is a man in charge of the meeting and of course under also the authority of my husband so it is a privilege and a pleasure to talk about a subject very close to my heart what is a disciple a disciple the word comes from the same word obviously as discipline it means learning a disciple is a learner and the definitive passage that I'd like to read is Matthew 16 verse 21 Jesus is predicting his death Matthew 16:21 from that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders chief priests and teachers of the law and that he must be killed and on the third day he would be raised to life Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him never Lord he said this shall never happen to you Jesus turned and said to Peter get behind me Satan you are a stumbling block to me you do not have in mind the things of God but the things of men then jesus said to his disciples if anyone would come after me he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me another translation uses the word disciple there If any man if anyone wants to be my disciple he must give up his right to himself and take up the cross and follow me for whoever wants to save his life will lose it but whoever loses his life for me will find it what good would it be for a man if he gains the whole world yet forfeits his soul or what can a man give in exchange for his soul so my question to you this morning would be do you want to be his disciple and Jesus makes it plain that this is a choice this is an opportunity to exercise the freedom of will that God created in us when he made us human beings and he's only one of many travelling rabbis in his day he simply says if you want to be my disciple these are the conditions if you don't want to be my disciple you can find plenty of others to follow plenty of others at whose feet you can be a learner but if you want to be my disciple the these are the conditions the first thing that you must do is to deny yourself give up your right to yourself leave self behind imagine trying to sell that idea in our present society I don't think it's sold very well in Jesus day I don't think it's ever likely to sell very well but I doubt that there's ever been a time when the disease of self culture has ever been so prevalent and so endemic as it seems to be today the world is telling us continually how important it is to examine ourselves and build up our self-esteem and all the rest of it Jesus starts with a startling imperative and it's interesting that he's not just talking to the disciples here he's talking to crowds he said this in several different Gospels in different places but essentially the same conditions were given whether it was the intimate group of his disciples or the crowds you must give up your right to yourself and then take up the cross and follow and I see the giving up the right to oneself as a no and the taking up of the cross as a yes and the following as just simple humble daily faithful obedience and obedience is the only valid test of the reality of our faith there really isn't any other valid test jesus said if you love me do what I say why do you call me Lord and do not the things that I say well if your answer is yes to the question you really want to be a disciple the enemy is instantly at your elbow with wise warnings seemingly wise warnings remember what Peter said to Jesus he said probably exactly what I would have said probably what you would have said no Lord that must not happen to you we can't handle this for you to go up there and suffer many things at the hands of the elders and chief priests and be killed we we can't stand the idea and Jesus retort was get behind me Satan you are not thinking as God thinks you're thinking as men think and that is our problem all the time isn't it that's our temptation constantly to think as men think and it's very difficult not to allow the world around us to squeeze us into its mold Paul warned the Roman Christians that they must not do that but they didn't have the mass media in those days if it was a tough job to fend off the thinking of the world then what is it for us now well it's an old problem it just may be exacerbated by the mass media but we need to learn to think as God thinks so the enemy is there immediately when you say yes I want to be a disciple and he says wait a minute you have things to deal with first a whole lot of things you need to deal with before you make any such rash decision as that and this reminds me of Jesus parable of the sower the seed falls on all kinds of ground some of it falls on the footpath and I see the footpath as representing the well-worn paths of the world notions which are generally accepted by the world then there are the rocks which give no staying power to the seed and there are the thistles the worries of this world or we would call them problems today wouldn't it wouldn't we we are problem oriented and everybody's got problems and Satan is there to remind us that we've got a lot of things to take care of before we can do anything so rash as becoming a disciple of Jesus and then there's a seed that falls on a good soil that is the man who hears the word and welcomes it and bears fruit now to me one of the simplest illustrations of what discipleship is all about is a college athlete or a high school athlete let's say I lived across the street from a high school in Massachusetts and I could not believe my eyes when I would look out there on a sleeting or raining or snowy day in November let's say the most miserable month in Massachusetts and here would be this bunch of kids flinging themselves face down into the mud or throwing themselves at each other which with tremendous force obviously painful and there was a man out there yelling and screaming his head off at these kids and I thought now if this were not a voluntary activity that these kids were indulging and that man would be arrested for child abuse I mean it is absurd the tortures that they voluntarily put themselves under but the great thing the great difference about that and child abuse is that these kids choose to do this now why do they put themselves under that kind of pain simply because they want to play football and football is somebody else's thing there's a rule book and there's a coach and there is a particular size field with particular kind of goal posts in a particular shape ball and nobody is going to play it his own way if you go out there on that field to do your own thing you're not gonna play football that's all there is to it you are going to do exactly what the coach says and you're going to do it when he says and you're going to do it the way he says or you won't be playing a football in other words the athlete comes to the coach essentially with an empty Cup he says Here I am I'll do anything you say I don't know anything I don't have anything I am nothing but here I am I want to play football and he becomes a disciple he is a learner he comes with no private agenda and Jesus asks us to give our right to ourselves and these kids are giving up their right to comfort to the freedom of after school hours to grueling Saturdays voluntarily my second husband Addison leach was the Dean of a college of one college and the vice president of another college and had a lot of experience with college kids and he used to say that the happiest kids on any campus were always the athletes and the musicians why well because they are kids who have put themselves voluntarily under severe discipline nobody has to be in the marching band of the orchestra but if they want to be in the marching band of the orchestra or on the football team they put themselves voluntarily under somebody else's tutelage and they do what he says the orchestra is a harmony they are playing somebody else's music and they are playing under somebody else's direction and nobody does his own thing except in a very limited measure there are positions on the football team and there are instruments in the orchestra but very severely disciplined and limited in what they're allowed to do they come and they say show me I'll do it whatever you say now Jesus calls us you and me in the 1990s on this particular Sunday morning in 1991 his call comes to us as it has come for more than 2000 years 2000 years or slightly less he says leave self behind I don't think we need a revision of that gospel but Satan comes along with the same old time worn and successful suggestions and says be careful be very careful and that was Peters wisdom wasn't it Lord we've got to stop this somehow let's not go to Jerusalem if this is what it's going to mean be careful and what does Jesus say whoever wants to save his life will lose it but whoever loses his life for me will find his true self that's what Phillips translation says will find his true self we've all known young people who have put on a backpack and some waffle stompers and some blue jeans and have gone off to try to find themselves and they end up in Katmandu or someplace and usually it's dead-end street they haven't succeeded in finding themselves or much of anything else and you remember the people that Jesus tells about in the parable who were called to a dinner party and one of them had bought a field and he couldn't come the other one had bought the yoke of oxen and he had to go and check on them and somebody else had gotten married and then there was a rich young man who came to Jesus and asked what he must do to be saved and Jesus told him he must keep the commandments and he said well I've done that what else do I need to do and Jesus told him the one impossible thing sell everything you have and then come and follow me and the story is that he turned away sorrowful because he had great possessions in other words he was too rich to follow and then it was the man who said to Jesus I will follow you I want to follow you but let me bury my father first now there is nothing intrinsically evil about owning a field or a yoke of oxen or getting married or having a lot of money and certainly nothing wrong with burying your father all of these things are completely legitimate things wise counsel is met for Satan to offer to us it's very appealing be careful don't go overboard got to keep balanced it's always balanced isn't it which 90 99 times out of 100 for us Christians when we're talking about spiritual things means compromise now these are all Satan's Wiles these are barriers obstructions to obedience to Jesus Christ to becoming disciples and if you want to be a disciple then the imperatives are categorical give up your right to yourself take up the cross and follow well but I've got property I've got a field I've got work to do I've got a livelihood I have a wife I have children I have responsibilities I've got money I've got to be a faithful steward of all this or I must go and bury my father bury my past perhaps there's a whole lot of things back there in my past that are just recently coming up to the surface and I've got to deal with these I've got to dredge them up and examine them and chew over them and work through them and deal with them and and perhaps I'll be in a position to take up the cross well just yesterday I happen to be in the bookstore here in town and I saw a whole shelf full of things which could be ways of evading the clear and simple call please don't misunderstand me here but the things that we have to deal with today are much more complicated aren't they than property and work and family responsibilities and money and burying one's father and there they were shelves and shelves and shelves of those A's abuse abandonment alcohol addiction adultery denial dysfunctional and victimization now there there were books on all of these subjects words that we hear every day we can't escape them I don't know what your problem may be what you may think stands between you and this life of discipleship but none of those things are new to God and all of those things are spoken of in Isaiah 53 he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows all of them he poured out his soul unto death in order to save us and whatever salvation takes that is what he is prepared to do and he's he's there and so often when I speak when I received mail from my radio listeners I'm asked to give them some kind of wisdom about all these awful things that I never have experienced I didn't come from a dysfunctional family now of course if I tell you that I have never been abused as a child I was not abandoned my father was not an alcoholic as far as I know I'm not addicted to anything I haven't committed adultery I have not been victimized then I know what they're going to tell me next you're in denial right and that is the worst thing of all well so be it when these people write to me and ask me questions and meetings all I can say is I'm not a psychiatrist I'm not even a psychologist I'm not even very wise I'm just an ordinary woman who reads her Bible wants to love God and wants to help other people to love God in any way that I can but if you're asking me these questions you're not going to get a psychological answer I'm ignorant I can only give you the answer that I find in the scriptures and sometimes it comes through rather clearly in the letters that I get that people really are not looking for holiness what they are looking for is solutions now we can't we can't always have both a lot of things in life that God is not going to do anything about because he wants us to do something with them and so I can ask people do you do you want solutions or do you really want holiness do you want to be his disciple or do you want to be comfortable and to have no nothing more to worry about as far as all of these things which people seem to forget were taken care of on the cross do you want answers or do you want orders and Jesus does not always give us answers he gives us orders if you want to come with me this is the way you must walk the way the cross are you willing to understand if understanding may mean that you were going to have to rearrange your life are you willing to be healed you remember the story of Jesus at the Pool of Bethesda where there was a man who had been lying there for 38 years and Jesus asked him what seems a very strange question a paralyzed man lying for thirty-eight years by this healing pool and Jesus goes up and says do you want to be healed a piercing question a penetrating question because the man's reply gives us an indication that he really didn't want to be healed he started with excuses he didn't just say yes he said well I've been here and I don't have anybody to put me into the pool and when the angel comes down always somebody gets there before I do handing and hauling and finding refuge from the Son of God and we have many ways of finding refuge from obedience to him do you want to be a disciple it's going to mean that you will have to completely rearrange your life it may mean that you are going to be healed of something which will deprive you of the sympathy that you have been enjoying some of us don't really want to be healed because there is a certain aura about the pain that everybody knows about and all of a sudden you're not the center of attention anymore well we must give it all to God we must strip ourselves of every excuse every vestige of self-will and become a little child and I'm not saying anything new today the Mystics the Saints throughout all the ages not to mention our master himself said these same things in Philippians the second chapter we read let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus we have a hard time turning pages of this relatively new Bible here didn't put a marker in the right place verse 5 Philippians 2 your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus and that goes on to describe what his attitude was being in the very nature of God he did not consider equality with God something to be grasped but made himself nothing the word is annihilated himself taking the very nature of a servant being made in human likeness and being found in appearance as a man he humbled himself and became obedient to death even death on a cross and that is the very reason why he is now highly exalted therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow as Richard Baxter wrote the 17th century Christ leads me through no darker rooms than he went through before and so he says do you want to be my disciple give up your right to yourself as I did and of course he was telling the disciples is before he had gone to the cross Paul has a fuller revelation the disciples were such fools and slow of heart to believe just like you and me and again and again Jesus had explained to them that he was going to be killed he was going to rise again and right up to the night of the crucifixion they did not know what was happening but Paul knew in the being in the very nature of God he made himself nothing just think the one who flung the Stars into space the one whose voice creations sprang at once to sight all the angel faces all the hosts of light Thrones dominions kingdoms all that those hands had made were submitted surrendered into the hands of wicked men and he was annihilated nailed to a cross but it was a voluntary surrender a voluntary surrender and Jesus makes it clear that to follow him is a voluntary choice but it involves surrender sacrifice and daily obedience taking up the cross and following he humbled himself and became obedient unto death and Jesus on that last night when he's ate supper with the disciples remembered that the Bible says in order to show the full extent of his love he rose from supper and took a towel and washed the disciples feet now wouldn't you think that going to the cross would be sufficient proof of the full extent of his love he washed feet in order to show his disciples that he was not talking about heroics the taking up of the cross rarely looks like heroics he was talking about the humblest dirtiest most demeaning job that a slave in an Eastern household had to do and he said this is what I your Lord and Master and doing for you and you must do the same for each other it's going to take death annihilating yourself and when I read that passage let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus I wonder how in God's name how can I help people to see this what this means how often I hear the phrase what am I supposed to be a doormat and I read that he made himself nothing not even a doormat and he got down on his knees and Peter said just what you and I would have said again he said Lord you washing my feet he was their Lord he was their master and he said if I your Lord and Master wash your feet you call me Lord and Master you say what well your it's right it's true I am your Lord and Master this is what a Lord master does and so he he was not giving them all the privilege of going to a literal cross and being nailed up there he was giving them the privilege that every single one of us for the rest of human history is permitted and privileged to do for somebody else a humble hidden menial task for which there will be no bronze plaques or honorary degrees do you want to be his disciple now this death business can it possibly ever have been popular then of course not the kind of death Jesus was to die was a cruel form of torture and it bore with it the most abject shame what is it we think we're getting when we take up the cross something comfortable something fun it cuts absolutely across our human will and as someone has said when the will of God crosses the will of man somebody has got to die well somebody already has somebody with a capital S but you and I have got to die all those thousands of little deaths that it takes to say no to ourselves now we're not talking about morbidity or mutilation or suicide but about abandoning the proprietorship of our cells of ourselves someone has called it expropriation of the self a total abandonment just as that what I saw out there on the playing field in the mud and the rain and the sleet a total abandonment of themselves in those high school kids for one shining object the glory of being a football hero a very remote possibility for most of them but it was worth the effort it was worth throwing themselves face down in the mud well what is it that Jesus offers us something infinitely greater than the glory of being a football hero what is your refuge this morning from the clear and simple imperative the categorical imperative you must give up your right to yourself and take up the cross and follow me now it comes right down to very ordinary and very humble things my friend Terry became a Christian when she was a teenager and she had always had more or less of a tense relationship with her mother and she said you know it wasn't anything big it wasn't any big deal but teenage girls against their mothers it was that kind of thing and I was always arguing anything my mother said I had an argument for and she said when I became a Christian I started to read my Bible as I was instructed to do and she said I came across the verse in the Bible that was going to be very inconvenient Bible has a way of being extremely inconvenient and the verse said honor your father and your mother and she said I sat there in my room and I thought what does this mean how am I supposed to honor them well this girl was in earnest about following the Lord and so she prayed that the Lord would show her what it meant and not very long after that she was invited to a party and her parents being loving responsible parents asked where the party was going to be and when they found out her mother said no you're not going to that party and guess what Kari said okay and she said you know I went into my room and I sat down on my chair and I said my mother just told me I can't go to this party and I said okay I guess God's answering my prayer I'm honoring my mother now she had to give up her right to herself that was the thing Terry wanted but she voluntarily surrendered and it gets right down where we live doesn't it the husband who decides that he wants to take up the cross and follow he has a clear directive in Ephesians 5 of how he is to love his wife it doesn't say anything about feelings in that passage it doesn't say anything about looks it says nothing about contingencies if the wife is a nice loving lovable submissive sweet soul then you are to love your wife in the following way no it says nothing at all about that to the husband it says husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the church now what shape was the church in when Christ loved us well pretty miserable and it says that that love is got to be sacrificial is there a husband who finds that easy who in ordinary little daily humble things for which he is not going to be praised in the newspapers he lays down his life for his wife that's what it means to be obedient acceptance of responsibility to make her holy how many of you gentlemen have thought seriously about the fact that God is going to hold you responsible for making your wife holy that was the responsibility that Jesus took for his bride the church you wives we are not told to submit to our husbands because they are so brilliant and so handsome and so strong and so much more spiritual than we are because they're always right now those of you that saw my husband yesterday know that he is handsome he's tall he's a whole lot bigger than I am he's physically much stronger than I am he's a lot smarter than I am in a whole lot of ways but he is not always right every now and then he makes a mistake but my Bible says wives submit yourselves to your husbands wives respect your husbands now what is it that I am to respect the office that he holds my husband holds an office I didn't give it to him he didn't achieve it it is an assignment a divine and inescapable assignment he is my head it doesn't say you ought to be doesn't say you ought to try to be it doesn't say off to confer upon him the honor of being my head it says he is my head I can like it or I can lump it but if I am going to be a disciple I have got to take up the cross of submission now can you imagine maybe some of you who have only been here this morning may imagine that I am a shrinking violet type I think any of you who hear were here Friday night and Saturday would by this time realize that I really am NOT a shrinking violet type who wants to be told what to do a woman who can't make up her own mind and loves being told what to do it has nothing to do with my temperament it has nothing to do with competence let's get that straight ladies submission is not an admission of inferiority it is a command that I am to respect the office that my husband holds which is headship and one of the ways in which I have to say no to myself every day is keeping my mouth shut one of my mottos is never pass up an opportunity to keep your mouth shut and there are a lot of those opportunities and I pass up most of them I'm afraid singles do you want to be a disciple well the severus test in my life came over this whole issue of singleness I would say that that is the place where the cross cut into my heart deepest piercing pain and I believe that for most young people this is this is true if Jesus Christ is not Lord I have your love life he's not Lord and it was when I was a college student that I found myself falling madly in love with the man that I had absolutely no reason for thinking would ever look at me twice this man was what we used to call a BMOC a big man on campus or a BTO a big-time operator I mean this guy Jim Elliot was everything you know he was handsome he was smart he was a campus clown the kind of guy that could stand up and do comedy at a moment's notice he was president of the foreign missions fellowship so he was a spiritual leader on the campus he was a champion wrestler won a championship of four states in his weight class and he graduated with highest honor in classical Greek quite a guy you know a dreamboat as we girls thought I don't know what the word is now I guess hunk has been outdated but I found myself falling in love with this guy just at the point where I had said to the Lord if you want me to be single for the rest of my life Lord I'll take it because I wanted to be a disciple I really did I still do and I had sung a hundred times where he leads me I will follow and it's great to sing missionary hymns over mountain and plane and sea but the chances are that God's not gonna ask you to go over mountains and plains and seas he's gonna ask you to start being a disciple in the hidden place in the place where nobody's looking except maybe your wife or your husband and so I had said to the Lord yes I want to do what you want me to do I want to take up the cross is the cross permanent singleness and the Lord didn't give me an answer to that he just said would you be willing for that well Lord it's not my idea of what I'd like and you certainly know that I would love to have a husband and a family and children as well as to be a foreign missionary which I was thrilled to believe God had called me to be but Lord if that's what you want then yes my answer is yes you'll have to give me the grace and then I fall in love with this man and then undiscovered just before I graduated from college just a few weeks before my graduation that this man had fallen in love with me which blew my mind that was a stunning piece of news but I was even more thunderstruck when he followed that piece of news with the announcement that he believed that God was calling him to be single perhaps for the rest of his life and so in fact he's saying yes I love you yes I'd love to have you for a wife but you go ahead and go to Africa I'm going to South America see you around one much chance I would see him around I was graduating he wasn't I lived in New Jersey he lived in Portland Oregon I was going to Africa he was going to South America but years before I had prayed the prayer Betty Scott stam a great missionary to China Lord I give up all my own plans and purposes all my own desires and hopes and except thy will for my life I give myself my life my all utterly to thee to be thine forever fill me with thy Holy Spirit use me as thou wilt send me where thou wilt work out by whole will in my life at any cost now and forever and so it's a long story I won't tell you the rest of it but as you know since my name is Lizabeth Elliott we did end up together Jim and I but it didn't last very long Jim died after 27 months of marriage and discipleship is always a death which is experienced and freely undergone a daily and hourly no to the self but it's not morbidity it's not suicide it's not mutilation it is joy and ladies and gentlemen I am here to testify with all my heart as a woman who is taught to follow the Lord for more than 50 years every single time I have ever said no to myself and yes to God it has without exception led ultimately to joy doesn't mean that I Eve aid the deep waters and the hot fires and the valley of the shadow of death but it does mean that beyond those there is joy and in the midst of the deepest waters and the hottest fires and the valley of the shadow of death I have known peace peace I leave with you Jesus said my peace I give unto you not as the world giveth yes to God in a humble honest faithful carrying out of what God has given me to do that's what following means do you want to be a disciple the first condition is to say no to yourself the second is to say yes to God and from there on the course of your life is a daily hourly following which will involve the yes and the no everyday of the world but the end product is joy the end product is joy we give up ourselves that poor ragged disreputable whining offended bankrupt self and what does he give us himself my life first that the greatness of Christ may shine out at me whether it be by life or by death for to me life is Christ and to die is gain god bless you

Channel: bibelchannel

Views: 36,525

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Keywords: Love Has a Price Tag, elisabeth elliot, elliot ecuador, jim elliot, under the shadow of the almighty, elisabeth and jim elliot, elisabeth jim elliot

Id: 7PbD7CjRGPA

Length: 45min 27sec (2727 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 16 2013