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CALL TO OBEDIENCE is a monthly letter to challenge you to live a godly life. Subscribe today to receive your free monthly copy, and don't forget to click to our archives to read past issues of the Call to Obedience. Below is our current issue for this month.

Jesus said: “Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all nations” Matthew 26:19

Disciples vs. Prosperity

     A very common theme among television preachers relates to money: instructing Christians how to get more of it and how to get out of debt. The prosperity message is dominant in much of the West (which is already prosperous). However, before Jesus left the earth He said to His followers, "make disciples," and not, "be prosperous." He commissioned them to be witnesses of Him (Acts 1: 8).The word “disciple” occurs 205 times in the four Gospels. It is unfortunate that the teaching on prosperity has crowded out the Great Commission.           

     Any honest reader of the Word knows that the overwhelming teaching of Jesus regarding money is this: prosperity reduces one's chances of getting to heaven. The more a man has in this world, the lower his chances for salvation (Matt. 19:24, Luke 12: 18 - 21). The apostle Paul says: "if we have food and raiment let us therewith be content," (1 Tim.6:8) and, "godliness with contentment is great gain" (1 Tim. 6:6); and, "the love of money is the root of all evil" (1 Tim. 6:10). Too many things of the world make many a Christian spiritually lean: How many prosperous people do you know who are faithful at prayer meetings, who have a passion for the lost, who visit the prisoners and are actually making disciples?

Jewish Disciples

     So, let us look at the word “disciple” as it was understood in the days of Jesus . In the Greek in which the New Testament was first translated the word for disciple is mathetes.  But for the root meaning of  the word disciple we need to go to the Jews and their word for disciple is talmid, because Jesus came to the Jews.

     Now, here is how a Jew became a talmid. It was a gradual process. At the center of a Jewish community was the synagogue. The synagogue was the most cohesive force in the community: it is where people worshiped and prayed, it is where the word of God was read and explained and where rabbis debated. Next to the synagogue was a school. At the elementary level (Beit Sefer), children up to age 12 or 13 learned to read using the Torah, the five books of Moses. They memorized large portions of those books.  Then at about 13, most children stayed home to learn housekeeping or the father’s trade.  However some of the boys who wanted to learn more about the Torah and about God continued their education in the word of God at the middle school (Beit Talmud ) until they were about 15, before they pursued their father's trade.

     And yet there were a few of the boys who had developed such fire for the Lord and the Scriptures that they went further in scriptural training to become talmidin (disciples). They eventually ask a rabbi to join him. The rabbi would examine the applicant and give him a probationary period to check him out. If a rabbi agreed to accept a boy, he would say:  follow me, become my talmid.  The student would forsake all – his family, his trade, his life plans, to follow this rabbi for two to four years with the goal to diligently imitate and become like his master. Then eventually the rabbi would say to his talmid:  you have become like me, now go make your own disciples. 

Remember the words of Jesus: "It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master" (Matt.10:25). In the West, we think of a disciple mostly as a student. But the focus of the talmid in Jesus’ time was a combination of knowledge and likeness: knowing the word of God thoroughly and becoming like the rabbi.  This becoming like the rabbi is what Jesus stressed far more than education.  Look at the lack of confidence Jesus expressed in reference to education when it comes to knowing Him: "O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes: even so, Father; for so it seemed good in thy sight" (Luke 10:20). Paul adds these words "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent” (1 Cor. 1:19 and Is. 29:14). In the Amplified Bible this passage reads: “I will baffle and render useless and destroy the learning of the learned.... and the cleverness of the clever. I will frustrate and nullify them, and bring them to nothing.”READ MORE >  

#353 "TO BECOME AS HE IS"

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