2 Timothy 2:2, 2 Timothy 3:10–11, Philippians 4:8–9
This 12‑part series on Jesus’ Prescriptions for Discipleship, the
first prescription is simple enough to write on a sticky note: Be disciplined
to make disciples.
If anyone modeled that prescription well, it was the apostle Paul. The
New Testament links Paul with seventy‑five different people he influenced:
taught, traveled with, corrected, encouraged, or entrusted with ministry. Seventy‑five.
Most of us struggle to disciple two or three.
Paul is out here running a small seminary everywhere he goes.
His story begins with Ananias (Acts 9:10–19), who restored Paul’s sight
and probably wondered what he had gotten himself into. He turned the hearts of
the people of Damascus that the people helped him escape from the hands of the
Jews by lowering him in a basket (Acts 9:25).
Then came Barnabas (Acts 9:26–27), the man who vouched for Paul when
nobody else would. He took Paul by the hand, and soon the team of Barnabas and
Saul became Barnabas and Paul, and ultimately, Paul and Barnabas.
On his first missionary journey, Paul traveled with John Mark (Acts
13:5), who famously quit early but later became one of Paul’s restored and
trusted partners (Colossians 4:10; 2 Timothy 4:11). There’s hope for all of us.
On the second journey, Paul gathered a remarkable team: Silas (Acts
15:22, 40), Timothy (Acts 16:1–3), Luke (Acts 16:10), Lydia (Acts 16:14–15),
and the ministry couple Priscilla and Aquila (Acts 18:2–3). They helped shape
Apollos (Acts 18:24–28), who became a powerful teacher in his own right.
The third journey added more names: Gaius and Aristarchus (Acts 19:29),
Trophimus, Sopater, and Secundus (Acts 20:4), and the Ephesian elders whom Paul
trained with tears and urgency (Acts 20:17–38). During his imprisonment, he
discipled Philip the Evangelist (Acts 21:8), Onesimus (Colossians 4:9; Philemon
10–12), Tychicus (Acts 20:4; Ephesians 6:21), and Epaphras (Colossians 1:7;
4:12).
And then there’s Romans 16, where Paul greets so many coworkers that it
reads like the credits at the end of a movie: Phoebe, Andronicus and Junia
(Romans 16:7), Ampliatus (Romans 16:8), Urbanus and Stachys (Romans 16:9),
Apelles (Romans 16:10), Tryphena and Tryphosa (Romans 16:12), Persis (Romans
16:12), Rufus and his mother (Romans 16:13), Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermes,
Patrobas, Hermas (Romans 16:14), Philologus and Julia, Nereus and his sister,
Olympas (Romans 16:15), Tertius (Romans 16:22), Gaius, Erastus, and Quartus
(Romans 16:23). And that’s just one chapter.
Other letters add names like Stephanas (1 Corinthians 16:15–17), Titus (2
Corinthians 2:13; 7:6), Epaphroditus (Philippians 2:25), Justus, Nympha, and
Archippus (Colossians 4:11, 15, 17), Onesiphorus (2 Timothy 1:16), Prisca and
Aquila again (2 Timothy 4:19), and Philemon, Apphia, and Archippus (Philemon
1–2).
In short, Paul didn’t just make disciples: he made disciple‑makers.
He lived a life worthy of replication and imitation, he entrusted
disciple-making truths in faithful people, and practiced the kind of character qualities
that not only multiplies, not only exemplifies, but also magnifies the ministry
of disciple-making.
Tonight we begin with Jesus’s first prescription Disciples should be
disciplined to make disciples, found in Matthew 28:19.
This prescription is of course seen best in the Apostle Paul
Pictures are used from Kenneth Wyatt Galleries
Copyright: © Timothy C.
McKeown (www.timothymckeown.blogspot.com)
