“Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit…” (Matthew 28:19)

The key phrase in this vision is: ‘make disciples.’ The rest elaborates what that means. Disciples are to come from all nations and be given a new identity through baptism as those who belong to the God who is now known as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They are to be taught to obey all that Jesus had taught and they are to know that Jesus will always be with them. Whatever our vision is, it must have making disciples at its heart.

As recorded at St. Luke’s

Biblical Vision 5: Disciples (Matthew 28:16-20)

The Top 3 Influencers Today

Who or what influences you? Do you know? Do you care? Does it matter? And if it does matter, why do you allow that person, people or organisation to influence you?

We live in a world of social media and social influencers.

The main platforms that influencers operate on are Instagram, Tik Tok, X (formerly known as Twitter) and YouTube. These platforms enable anyone to write or share video content potentially with vast networks of people around the world.

For example, we will upload this sermon to YouTube and anyone in the world will be able to watch it. But the truth is very few will watch it online. The St. Luke’s YouTube channel has around 219 subscribers and the sermon with the most views has around 250 views.

Compared with the top social media influencers, these numbers are miniscule.

Top of the list is footballer, Cristiano Ronaldo, who has over 800,000,000 followers across all platforms, including over 600,000,000 on Instagram.

Next up is Selena Gomez, a singer song writer, who has over 580,000,000 followers across all the platforms, but mainly on Instagram.

In third place overall, but with the largest number of YouTube Subscribers, is MrBeast, who has 320 million subscribers on YouTube! In case you are wondering what makes MrBeast famous, well it’s not because he is a great sportsman like Cristiano Ronaldo or an amazing singer like Selena Gomez, it’s that he is very, very good at creating YouTube videos that hook you in!

And that is increasingly, how we are fed information and entertainment through the internet. We are led to watch and read that which catches our attention and draws us in. And as we watch all this information we are influenced.

Companies pay the influencers to push their products, so that we are influenced to buy them. But we are also influenced by the people we watch. We aspire to want to become like them, to have their talent, their fame, their wealth. We increasingly think these are the things that matter in life.

To have influence is to have power. MrBeast has even talked about the possibility of running for President of the USA.

Discipled or Influenced?

In the baptisms earlier on we urged both Alby and Pippa, to ‘fight valiantly as disciples of Christ.’  In our reading, Jesus’ great commission to his disciples and by extension to the church is to go and make disciples.

But is to be a disciple to be merely someone who is influenced by Jesus or does it mean more? Is being a disciple of Jesus a bit like being a YouTube follower of Ronaldo, Gomez or MrBeast? Is baptism just like clicking, ‘Subscribe’ on the internet? Or is there more to being a disciple?

First Century Internet?

A related question is about the scope of Jesus’ vision. Just as influencers today, seek to grow a massive worldwide subscriber base, Jesus’ tells his disciples to go and make disciples of all nations.

Except Jesus had to do it without the internet. Now information travels at the speed of light, then it was at the speed of a horse. To become a worldwide influencer today is challenging and only a handful manage it. Then it was impossible.

How could a man in his early thirties living in an occupied country on the edge of the Roman Empire, with no wealth, power or army and just a handful of uneducated followers hope to influence the whole world. Humanly, speaking this was perhaps the most ridiculous vision ever shared.

Yet, today, if being baptised is the equivalent of being a subscriber, then Jesus does not just have 100s of millions of followers, but billions. In fact, it is estimated that there are 2.5billion Christians in the world today, that is over three times the social media followers of Cristiano Ronaldo.

How was it possible for Jesus to create such a vast number of followers with no internet, no army, no money and no power?

The answer was that his disciples were to be the network and to build the network. If they the eleven disciples were to go and make disciples, then the disciples they made were also to be those who would make disciples and so on, until the network of disciples spread throughout the world and the message and influence of Jesus transformed the world.

For this to work, to be discipled had to mean more than to be influenced. You may choose to watch videos of Cristiano Ronaldo, you might even subscribe to his YouTube channel and encourage some of your friends to do the same, but you will probably not see your mission in life to be a part of growing Ronaldo’s internet following.

So, what is different about being a disciple of Jesus? How is it that Jesus’ followers could build a network to share his message that has lasted 2,000 years and created more followers than anyone else in history?

Disciples Recognise Jesus’ Authority

For any normal human being, Jesus’ vision was ridiculous. But Jesus, although, he was fully human like you and me was unique and special in so many ways.

These words of Jesus come at the end of Matthew’s gospel. If you want to see how special Jesus is, you need to read the whole gospel. When you do so, you will see that Jesus was the one that the Jews had been promised by God would come. He was the culmination of God’s plans, not some random bloke who cropped up and said a few interesting things. You will also see that his teaching was powerful, memorable, radical and unique. Not only that, but he performed miracles that showed both amazing compassion for the sick and power over sickness. You will find a man who had such a clarity of vision, that to the incomprehension of his closest friends he allowed himself to be arrested and crucified, stating that his death would be for the redemption of the world and the creation of a new relationship with God. Then most powerfully of all, he did not stay dead, but on the third day rose again and appeared to his followers.

Not surprisingly, at the start of our passage, the eleven disciples are face to face with this Jesus, trying to come to terms with this series of events and particularly His death and resurrection. They didn’t know what to do. Should they worship or doubt that this could all be true?

Then Jesus makes the boldest claim of all:

“All authority on heaven and earth has been given to me.”

Such a claim would be outrageous, if it was not for the fact that Jesus had just risen from the dead! In the mouth of the resurrected Jesus, however, it makes perfect sense.

And not only that it changes everything. If Jesus is the ultimate authority, then it makes sense not just to become a follower in a social media sense, but to dedicate your whole life to him, indeed, to risk your whole life for him.

And this is what his disciples did. Despite the threats and commands of human authorities, the imprisonments, beatings and ultimately executions, they carried on telling people about Jesus and inviting them to become his disciples too. No matter what they sought to obey Jesus’ command.

Disciples Obey Jesus’ Teaching

The word disciple means to be a learner. It is more than being vaguely influenced by someone, because you are interested in them or what they have to say. Rather it is a desire to find out, understand and live out what they teach. It means to orient your life by the direction that Jesus gives.

In today’s world we have so many potential ways to be told how to live and think and what to say. We watch youtube videos, read online article, books, newspapers or listen to podcasts. The internet algorithms can quickly lead us down a rabbit hole of radical ideas that seem to be backed up by one video or article after another.

But do we stop to think, why am I listening to, believing or even obeying this particular person that I am watching? What makes them special? Why should I aspire to be like them? What makes their advice better than anyone else’s?

Jesus’s teaching may be hard to obey – whoever said loving your enemy was easy? But, if Jesus truly was the one who was God’s promised king, the one who loves us so much he died for us, the one who has defeated death and the one who has been given all authority on heaven and earth, then doesn’t obeying him make more sense than obeying anyone else?

And unlike all the modern gurus and philosophers, his teaching has stood the test of time and been accepted by people from all cultures around the world. Surely, it makes more sense to obey him than anyone else? Surely, being his disciple is the best way to go.

Disciples Know Jesus’ Presence

So, disciples recognise Jesus’ authority and obey his teaching, they also know his presence.

In the last verse, Jesus makes a promise. He says,

“And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Jesus is not just a historic character. A good teacher whose words are preserved in the Bible. For those who are his disciples, he is with us now, by His Holy Spirit.

Just like the first disciples, we can pray to him and seek his help in this life, both to live for him and cope with life’s challenges. Being a Christian is not just about obeying 2,000 year old teachings, it is about a relationship now with the living God, who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Jesus’ vision was laughable

Jesus’s vision to reach all nations, with a bunch of uneducated powerless men, was laughable then and at times the idea of being a true disciple of Jesus can seem laughable now.

But, when we come to see who Jesus really is, how important his teaching is, and that we can have an ongoing relationship with him now, we can begin to understand why his vision was achieved and is still being achieved and I hope you might also want to become part of that vision.

Perhaps there are some here today, who now realise that in a world full of influencers trying to make you a follower, even though they have nothing worthwhile to offer you. Maybe now is the time to look again at Jesus as the only one worth being influenced by and more than that becoming a disciple of.

“This is the covenant that I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the LORD. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God and they will be my people.” (Jeremiah 31:33)

This week we return to our theme of Biblical Visions and look at Jeremiah’s prophecy of a coming ‘new covenant’, which will bring forgiveness and transformed hearts and minds.

As recorded at St. Luke’s

Biblical Vision 4: New Covenant

A hell of a life…

None of us want life to go badly. Most of us hope for a peaceful life, a happy marriage, a successful career, a healthy retirement, happy families and so on.

But, sometimes, life can be hell. We find ourselves embroiled in conflicts, marriages falling apart, being made redundant, struggling with ill health and seeing our families estranged.

We might ask, where is God in all that? Is this really part of his plan for my life? Surely he would want me to have an easy life?

We’re going through a series on Biblical Vision, looking at key moments in the Bible, when God reveals his big plans to key people. Today we come to a really important passage in Jeremiah, where God lays out his plans.

Now, although the vision we are looking at is positive, it is worth remembering that Jeremiah’s message was often much more about the struggles that God was going to bring. In fact, for Jeremiah, life was hell. He lived through the complete destruction of his kingdom and city and found himself hated for a message that proved to be true. Yet, God used him powerfully and his message is one that as we will see is fundamental to understanding the story of the whole Bible and even the Christian message! His was a hell of a life, but he was certainly part of God’s plan!

Jeremiah in Biblical History

To my shame in nearly a quarter of a century of regular preaching I have never preached on Jeremiah 31 before. In fact, in looking through my notes, I’ve only ever preached on Jeremiah once before! This is quite shocking, when you consider how big a Biblical book Jeremiah is, and how important this passage in Jeremiah 31 is.

To understand Jeremiah and this passage, we’ll need a quick recap of what we have looked at in our series on Biblical Vision so far as we have gone through the Biblical history looking at God’s vision statements.

The Gradual fulfilment of God’s Vision:

 We started with Abraham and God’s promise that he would bless him and his family and through him bless all nations. This would happen by making his family into a great nation, a fulfilment that moved forward by stages:

First, he would have many descendants, then they would settle in the promised land, then they would be ruled by a victorious king and his dynasty. Once all this was fulfilled after 100s of years, Israel was a great nation under David’s son Solomon. In fact rulers of nations would come to be blessed by his wisdom!

But alongside this plan for Israel to be a great nation and intricately connected to it was God’s plan for them to be his people. This was to be expressed in a special covenant relationship.

This was made clear to them on the way from being slaves in Egypt to the promised land, when God told them through Moses:

“”Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” (Exodus 19:6-7)

What did it mean to obey God fully? Well, the Ten Commandments set out the basic ideas of obedience.

What was a covenant? A covenant is kind of relationship plus promise. So, a marriage is a covenant relationship, that comes about when a man and a woman in a special ceremony promise to remain committed to each other for the rest of their lives. And at Mount Sinai, Israel ratified their covenant relationship with God, by agreeing to be loyal to him and to obey his commandments. This was all sealed by a special ceremony, which involved animal sacrifices and the sprinkling of the blood of the sacrifice on both the people and the altar to God.

So, by the time of Solomon, who built a temple for God, the covenant relationship and promise to become a great nation was all in place. 

The Disintegration of the vision

But from this high point, things went downhill. Why? Because the kings failed to be loyal and obedient to God and the people followed suit. God had kept his side of the covenant, but the people were consistently disobedient and disloyal.

Even Solomon, led astray by his many foreign wives, allowed the worship of foreign gods. So, God, declared that most of the kingdom would be taken from his family. And in his son’s time the kingdom split in two. A Southern kingdom around Jerusalem, still ruled by David’s descendants and a Northern kingdom ruled by other kings.

The kings of both nations were often wicked, oppressive and idolatrous. God was patient, but in the end, he punished them for their wickedness by sending first the Assyrian empire to exile the people of the northern kingdom, then the Babylonian empire to exile the people of the southern kingdom.

This second exile happened was forecast by Jeremiah and happened during his lifetime. Indeed, much of Jeremiah’s book is taken up with warnings to Israel to stop sinning and to turn back to God before it was too late. But his warnings fell on deaf ears and Jerusalem and the temple built by Solomon was destroyed.

Many of them probably thought it was all over. The covenant, the promises, the vision of God for a people through whom he could bless the nations all destroyed.

But although, Jeremiah’s preaching had mainly forecast this destruction, it also contained a message of hope, that the covenant, the vision of God was not over. In fact, in the midst of this tragedy, God proclaims through Jeremiah a significant vision of a brighter future.

A Different Future (31:28)

Most of Jeremiah’s book is about destruction. Verse 28 echoes the key theme of the book, but notice, that although destruction is the focus, it is not the end of the story:

“And it will be just as I watched over them,

to uproot,

to breakdown,

to overthrow,

to destroy,

and to bring evil,

then I will watch over them

to build,

and to plant!”

declares the LORD. (verse 28)

If you take on a house with a garden full of weeds, you need to start by uprooting all the weeds, before you can plant a beautiful garden. If you take on a derelict site on which to build a new house, first of all you need to demolish the house before you can build something better. If you are a doctor looking after a patient with cancer, first you need to cut out the cancer, and punish the body with chemotherapy and radiotherapy before you can bring about a healed and renewed healthy body.

Jeremiah lived through a time of uprooting and destruction. It wasn’t pleasant, but the nation that was meant to be great, and a blessing had proved to be corrupt and a curse. Uprooting and destruction were needed, before something better could be planted and rebuilt.

A Different Covenant (31:32-34)

But how will things be better?

The old covenant had just not worked. Israel kept breaking it. Jeremiah makes this point in verse 32:

“…the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt — a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband,” says the LORD.” (Jeremiah 31:32)

Over generations Israel had consistently failed to live up to their side of the covenant relationship, if they kept running after other gods, and created a society of oppression rather than justice.

Things seemed impossible. How could the covenant work, when Israel would not change? How could a leopard change its spots?

Actually, that phrase about leopard and spots, comes originally from Jeremiah!

“Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard its spots? Neither can you do good who are accustomed to doing evil.” (Jeremiah 13:23)

Of course, Israel was not unique in this regard. Evil seems ingrained in all humanity. Despite the many great technological, philosophical and societal advances in recent history. Evil and wickedness at every level continues to destroy lives. What hope is there?

Well God has a solution. It is a new covenant. Look at verse 33:

“This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after that time,” declares the LORD. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.”

The great vision for Israel was that God would be their God and they would be his people. That could only work, though, if they are changed on the inside. A law on their minds and writing on the heart talks about a radical inner transformation. A true winning of hearts and minds. One that would also involve God’s forgiveness for sin as verse 34 makes clear:

“For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”

Jesus and the New Covenant

So, how could this happen? The first covenant at Sinai was ratified by animal sacrifices and blood. But it had failed. A more powerful sacrifice and blood was needed.

At the last supper, with his disciples, Jesus prepared them for his imminent death by giving them bread and saying, “This is my body.” Then he gave them a cup of wine and in the words of Luke 22:20, he said:

“This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.” (Luke 22:20)

The only place the phrase, ‘new covenant’ is used in the Old Testament is this passage in Jeremiah. Jesus was declaring that his imminent death on the cross, would be the sacrifice that would make possible the new covenant, not just a call to try and live by God’s rules, but the promise of a deep forgiveness of sin and an inner transformation of heart to enable us to truly become God’s people.

As Christ himself was torn down and uprooted by the sins of the world on the cross, God raised him up to become for us the means of entering into a new covenant with God, where we can be enabled to lives of loyalty and obedience to God.

What about our vision?

So, what has all this to say about our vision as church today?

Firstly, we need to accept that God’s plans can include destruction and judgement. Sometimes things need to be uprooted for something better to be planted. Sometimes things need to be destroyed for something better to be rebuilt. If we want to be part of something better, like Abraham we may need to leave some things behind, like the Israelites in Egypt, we may need to leave one home to travel through the wilderness to a better home, like Jeremiah, we may need to witness destruction in our time in a hope of God building a better future.

Even the Christian call to each individual is a call to repentance, that will often mean letting go of things we value in order to let go of someone whose value surpasses all. Are you willing to do that in order to grasp Christ?

Secondly, our vision needs to be about inner transformation of people. We want to see God at work transforming people from the inside out. Becoming a Christian is not primarily about taking up new habits, like prayer, Bible reading and coming to church (important as those things are). It is not primarily about joining a community of like-minded people (crucial as that is to faith). It is primarily about coming to know God as your God, Jesus as your saviour and the Holy Spirit working in you to bring about fundamental inner transformation. Creating in you a heart eager to live for God.

If our aim in growing the church is just to attract a crowd, then we will not really have achieved anything. We need to be about the new covenant, calling people to accept God’s work in their lives for a radical inner transformation. Anything short of that is failure. Not that we shouldn’t welcome people to join us as a church family and encourage them to pray, read the Bible and come to church, these are all the means to the end of inner transformation – but we must not mistake them for the end!

Thirdly, Jeremiah lived through a terrible time to be a prophet and a member of Israel. His experiences would have not been too dissimilar to the kinds of experiences of those living in some of today’s war zones. Sometimes for us today it can feel like life is falling apart, that we are living through a time of uprooting and destruction. But, although that may be God’s plan for now, it is not his ultimate goal. As Jeremiah could see, the ultimate goal is always to plant and to build.

‘But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.’ (Matthew 6:33)

In this time of harvest, we are first reminded to seek the Kingdom, trusting in God completely. Then, we are called to BE the Kingdom to others around us, showing hospitality, love, and mercy in the face of scarcity, anxiety, or fear. As Jesus said, can any one of you, by worrying, add a single hour to your life? Instead, let’s trust in God’s provision and show love to those around us.

As recorded at St. Luke’s