[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching from God's Word you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to Him. If you're ever in the Madison, Alabama area, we'd love for you to worship with us on Sundays at 8:30 or 10:30am if you have any other questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, find
[email protected] Be sure to also check out our Bible Study podcast, Madison Church of Christ Bible Studies. Thanks again for stopping by.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: Sometimes Distance can be a good thing. You maybe have heard the statement, like I have before, that absence makes the heart grow fonder. And I think the idea behind that is that sometimes when you haven't seen somebody in a really long time, it maybe makes you appreciate them and anticipate them a little bit more. And so when you finally get to see them, it feels so good. And so it kind of makes you appreciate who they are. And so, yeah, a lot of times distance can be a really good thing.
But more often than not, distance is a sign in a relationship that something is off.
That something in that relationship is not really what it needs to be or should be.
Take, for instance, what Kevin McAllister experienced. You might remember when he wished so bad that he didn't have any brothers and his family would just go away. And well, Kevin got that wish. He had the whole run of the town and Kevin had the whole run of the house. And what he thought he needed, which was distance, was actually the thing that was the most detrimental.
See, for him, distance allowed an opportunity for the enemy to come by.
See again, distance is a sign in a relationship that sometimes things are off.
I've seen in my own life where distance has been an issue when it comes to spending time with the people I love the most, my family.
I saw this on Instagram a while back when my wife sent it to me. Cause I'm one of those kind of people that everywhere we go, I walk really, really fast.
And I want you to know that the muscle memory that is in my body is directly connected to my father.
Some of you might remember this if you were around Faulkner, but my dad was a very fast walker. In fact, he had this reputation known as lightning bolt. He would bolt across the campus and he would be walking so fast that he would like, I don't know how, lean over and not fall because of his momentum and So I was used to keeping up with him. And so now I have a family of my own and we go to Disney and I remember we look at the app and you know, the app that it'll like, tell you the wait times at everything.
We'll be on, like, the other side of the park from the teacups. I'm like, guys, it says there's only a five minute wait at the teacups. If we can make it there in five minutes, we can get right on those things. And so, like, I'm high telling it. And then I get there and my family's like, you know, and they're so used to me walking ahead of them instead of walking with them.
And so the rule that Cruz came up with on that trip was this.
After the whole teacup thing, he said this, mom sets the pace.
Mom sets the pace. And so once mom was setting the pace, I was walking with them instead of ahead of them.
And see, that's a challenge in a relationship, is that a relationship cannot be what a relationship needs to be if you're walking ahead of somebody instead of with them.
I want you to think about this for just a second.
Would you describe the relationship that you have with Jesus? This is not clicking for some reason as following.
Now, I say that because I don't know if you're like me. I heard a lot growing up this phrase, oh, I follow Jesus. And I think now it might mean a little bit something different or could be than it did before, because, like, just with a click of a button, I can follow something, observe it, watch it, and look at it very closely. And I could tell you all about the thing I follow.
But what we're going to see today is that the life that Jesus invites us to be a part of is a following that is so extremely close that the way the early Christians actually described it, his disciples, was that the dust of the rabbi was landing on them.
It was this first century idiom to actually describe that they were following their rabbi so closely that as he walked in that dirt, in that sand, the dust began to pick up and land on the people.
And the idea was that you were following so tight, you were following so closely that their actions became your actions. That you imitated them so closely and did as they did, that their patterns and their way became your way.
And see, the beauty of following, as we're going to talk about today, Jesus, our rabbi, so closely, is that it helps us to understand that it gives less room for the enemy to come in.
But what we'll also start seeing is we will let Jesus set the pace.
And when Jesus sets the pace, instead of walking ahead of our rabbi or behind our rabbi, we actually walk with him.
You know, you might be thinking, well, why is this so important to just focus solely on following and being on this way?
Well, think about it for just a second. And so many things in life, you and I, who we follow, is ultimately who we're going to become.
Think a 90s room, for example. I don't know if any of your rooms look like this in the 90s where you had poster boards all over the place. And so what happened was, is that a lot of guys cut their hair like Jonathan Taylor Thomas or Leonardo DiCaprio, because that's what they saw.
And the ladies that are laughing, a lot of you crimped your hair because Britney Spears did. What I'm saying is what we put in front of our eyes was what we became. And for those that look at that and like, that's ridiculous that there was a generation that would do something like that, I want you to understand you had your time too, as you reached towards Ringo Starr. And for those of you that are laughing at that generation, I also want you to know you also had your time where you were crying at the feet of a guy named Elvis. And you guys that are laughing, a lot of you made the choice to grow out sideburns, hoping you would get the same reaction that he would receive.
But the reason why I'm saying all this is there is no such thing as not following something or someone.
The question in our life isn't who are you know, am I following somebody? Am I not following somebody? The question we have to answer is, who?
Who is it that I am following? What is it that I am following? Because if we answer that question, what we'll find is that future Andrew Itson is going to be just an exaggerated version of what current Andrew Itson is surrounding himself around.
I think about this text, Matthew 6:22. It makes it clear, right, that the eye is the lamp of the body. So what you and I choose to put before our eyes is what's going to impact what is in our life and what ultimately we become. What I'm saying is this.
The world right now is constantly forming all of us. The world is constantly forming our kids.
The world is constantly forming us as adults.
There is no such thing as neutrality. In fact, I'll give you this example. Maybe yesterday you were on the interstate, and as you drove down the interstate, you saw a billboard.
When you see that billboard, what you and I think is, that's a what an advertisement. When you go to Walmart and you see, like, a big stand where they're advertising Coke or Pepsi Cola or whatever it is, you see that and I see that, and we say that's an advertisement. You go on social media and you're trying to, like, see what your friends are up to, but all in between, you see what advertisements? What you and I define as advertisement. You know, what the advertising companies call it?
Behavior modification.
We see it as something simple. They see it as something invasive. They understand that what you and I put before us, what we're looking at, what we're seeing is actually molding our behaviors and molding what we're going to become. And so whether it's intentional or unintentional, we are constantly being shaped and formed.
But we have to ask, what am I being formed to?
And would we say that the one that is, the one that I'm keeping before my eyes, the thing that I'm doing would be directly connected to the one that I'm serving?
We'll put it this way. Who would you describe as your rabbi, the one that's leading you?
Who would you ultimately say is teaching you? Who would you say that is constantly in your ear, directing your thoughts, your steps, you know, as you ponder that question?
I want to go to John 6 because Peter says something that I would love to say, that I would say, but I don't know if I would. And here's where I want to set the stage. In John 6, if you remember, Jesus had this big crowd around him, and he had just fed the 5,000. And all these people love that miracle, that. What did they do? Well, they came back. They wanted to see a whole nother miracle. And Jesus can understand, like, listen, they're here just for the physical food. They're not here because they understand that I'm the way to true life.
And so he understands that a lot of the crowd's there for just, you know, the physical part. And I get it. Maybe some of us are attracted to just that aspect of our walk, just the physical part, but not actually the walk itself. And so then on top of that, he's like, all right, so I'm going to divide this crowd. Unless you eat my flesh or drink my blood, you can have no part with me. I am the bread of life. I am what makes you full. And it says in the text that a lot of the crowd was like, we're out.
And so then after that, he gives them Another hard teaching. You see what he's trying to do.
He's trying to really assess who is really wanting to walk on this way. And so he looked at his own disciples and looked around and noticed a lot of them have gone. They were no longer walking with them. And this is what Jesus said.
Do you guys want to go away, too?
Now, I would love to think that if Jesus asked me that after giving me a really hard saying and asking me to go places that I would not normally be comfortable going, that I would say, well, absolutely.
I mean, Jesus, where else would Andrew Itson goes? But the more I think about it, I also think, and maybe you feel this way, too.
We have a lot of places to go.
We have a lot of things vying for our attention, but we have a lot of things pulling at us.
I mean, I pray that that's what I would say, Lord. I mean, where else would I go? You are the one that has the true words of life.
See, we're all following something.
And even as you see that, you might think, no, I'm doing my own thing.
And maybe what makes you think that is, you know, one of the major words of 2025. What it was individualism.
It was this belief that I'm just doing my own thing.
I want us to understand that's not true.
There is no, I'm just doing my own thing.
We're all shaped by something. We're all becoming something.
John Donne says this. No man lives on an island, and there is no such thing as even a free thinker.
I remember when I was going into preaching, I met with my preacher that I had growing up, Randy Medlin. I said, randy, I am absolutely terrified about preaching because I don't know how you come up with all these original thoughts for lessons and come up with things like, how do you do that every week? Like, how do you come up with these original thoughts? And he said, oh, I don't. And then he made this statement.
He said, in fact, in my opinion, there is no such thing as an original thought.
Everything that I say and do is because of what I've put in front of me. He said. So, like, for me, it's the books that I read that shape the way I preach. And it's the tapes for us would be podcasts that I listen to that impact the way I preach, that it's the things that I put before me. But also think about this. Your past experiences, the things that you've seen, your failures, all of those things have shaped who you're going to be one day and who you are now. And so here's what I'm. I guess I'm getting at. If you and I are going to follow someone, why not make it Jesus Christ?
And so, as we think about that, today, we're going to kick off this brand new series called the Way of Jesus.
And I mentioned this to the early crowd, and please understand, this is just Andrew Itzen's opinion, this doesn't have to be yours.
That in my opinion, this has the potential to be one of the most important series that we do at Madison since maybe the culture of prayer.
And if you don't remember the culture of prayer, basically our shepherds and the ministers, we talked about how our goal for that year was not just to be a church that talked about praying together, but to actually model the way we see in scripture of people praying together.
And it's been so cool to see that. In fact, that's partly why I keep my office unlocked, is I walk in there, there's people praying in there all the time. I'm like, oh, you're good. You know, it's wonderful to see that this, to me, again, this is just my thoughts that it has the potential to have that kind of impact, because the way we think of following, if we can kind of rethink it or really think about it, the way Jesus instituted will change us.
And so that's the goal as we start this series today, is to look at our walk to say, yeah, the dust of my rabbi would definitely be landing on me now. I always like to try to go about this from the standpoint of the why.
So, like, what is the why? Like, why do I need to follow Jesus so closely? Well, one of those things is, yeah, it's commanded, you know, in Matthew 28, it says to go make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. And he said, he's gonna be with us as we do that. But it takes a disciple to make a disciple.
So there is the command portion.
But I also want you to go Back to John 14:6.
Do you all remember what Jesus said in John 14:6?
He said, I am the what, the way, the truth, and the life.
Nobody can get to the Father except through me.
I want us to say that again. He said, first, I am the what, the way, then the truth, and then the life.
It is so important for us to make sure we know that he listed that first.
And the reason why that's important is lists during this time were a clue to Say, hey, let's look at what's at the beginning. In fact, y' all remember in the fruits of the Spirit what is listed. First love, then joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. It's not that love is more important than the others, but the idea in the way these lists would be in Scripture, if you loved, it was a lot easier to be peaceful and to have joy and to be patient. Kind of like that love was that first part. When he mentions the way here, what he's basically saying is, if you can live out this, then you'll be able to handle the truth. And if you can live out this, you'll actually experience the life. And take, for example, we've all known people that knew the truth, but they didn't know how to handle the truth. You know why?
Because truth is handled much differently when it's walking in the way of Jesus.
We've known a lot of people that experience an awesome life, but yet you look at their life and it's like missing something. And what it is is you've noticed, yeah, they have a great life, but they're not living that life with Jesus on the way.
And so if we can understand that he is inviting us to a way first, then we'll be able to understand what to do with the life, and then we'll be able to understand what to do with the truth.
He was the way. First the way, the truth, and then the life.
The way I kind of think about this is when I was at Faulkner. Some of you know this, but I actually got a double major. And my other major, other than ministry was education.
And so I was a PE major and I had to do a student teaching, which is like the last thing you do before you graduate.
And I was placed at a junior high in Montgomery.
It was a rough school, okay?
But before I went into that school, I had my lesson plans of what I was going to do at that junior high school for all boys pe.
And I was going to do a throwing and catching curriculum for like six weeks.
And so I walk in there with my notebook.
And when I walk in there, by the way, that very first day, there was a fight. Like it was happening in there.
I thought, this is not part of the lesson, but I thought I was supposed to break it up.
And the PE guy was like, uh, stop, it's. And we just let him finish. I was like, oh, okay, all right. So just to give you the atmosphere there, okay? And so I walk in with my notebook and like, excuse me, Excuse me, guys. We're going to do. Excuse me. We're going to do. Excuse me. We're going to. Throwing in. Excuse me. No. Okay. No one is listening at all. And so, like, I had all my plans. I had all these things laid out. It went terrible.
And so what? He let me know. He's like, hey, so I understand that that's what you want to do, but we have a way of doing things here.
And so what happened for me, once I understood the Way, then I was able to handle those things that I felt like they needed to do.
That's why he partly mentions. But please understand.
One of the biggest compliments to me of the early church disciples was that they were called the Way.
In fact, we don't talk about this a lot, but Brandon's gonna mention it a lot next week.
But all throughout the Book of Acts, it says this. Saul was trying to kill a bunch of Christians, right? A lot of disciples. Excuse me. He went to the high priest and asked for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so if he could find anybody who belonged to the Way who was a threat to Saul.
The Way.
You all know how we talk about people, man, he's got his ways, and she's got her ways.
And the reason why we say that is there's something that we very obviously notice about how they interact with people, how they handle themselves.
The group of people that were the threat were people that were walking in the Way.
See, the Way in Greek was this idea that it wasn't just about what you believed.
The idea behind the Way is that this is a way of life.
Another reason I think we should do this is I do think, and I'm not gonna say this is everybody. Some of us may be comfortable where we're at, but I would say a large majority of us, partly maybe because we are here today, we do want, to some degree, our faith, to take that next step.
Like, we're not satisfied with where we're at. We want to grow in our relationship with God.
We want to be spiritually formed to live on purpose, not on accident.
I think another reason why we want to maybe do this, we love transformation. It's kind of like why the show Biggest Loser was so popular.
People love to rally around seeing these people that normally couldn't walk with their kids or go do activities with their kids or all of a sudden because they lost weight, can do all these things. We love to see that transformation. And so we have this picture of this life that we long for.
Jesus is the answer to the life that we long for, he is that answer.
But I also think what we'll start to see is that when we are with him and become like him, what will start to happen is those truths that we know, we're going to handle them in the way that Jesus does.
And they're not going to be just a bunch of facts that we know, but are actual practices.
In Mark 1, there's a text that probably, like a lot of you, I've heard a lot, but I want us to look at it maybe from a little bit of a different angle.
Keep in mind that when Jesus is about to invite these men to be his disciples, they were living at a time when where Rome was in control. And because Rome was in control, it was basically like, hey, you do your job. You be quiet and go back the next day and do your job. And then what your dad did, just do what your dad did, do that job, and you don't say a word, Be quiet and just do your job. Okay? That's the pattern that they thought, that's the only thing that my life can be.
And so then Jesus shows up and it says this, that he was passing along the Sea of Galilee. He saw Simon. He saw Andrew, the brother of Simon, he casting a net into the sea. It says, and they were fishermen.
And notice what it says. He said, follow me and I will make you become.
It doesn't just say, follow me, and you're instantly going to figure it out. He said, I want you to follow me and you're going to become. It's this process of transformation along the way.
Fishers of men.
It says this immediately. They left their nets and followed him. Why in the world would this group of men, two groups, by the way, if you keep reading, leave the family business that had been going for years, that all that they had was connected to that business, all the money that they had was connected to that business. Why would they leave that for him?
See, there was also a secular reason more than just, well, it's Jesus.
See, during this day, one of the highest honors you could ever receive is to follow a rabbi.
In fact, that was like the goal of every person was to have this opportunity.
See? In fact, during Jesus Day, do you know there was a guy named Rabbi Khalil and Rabbi Akiv. One of them. Rabbi Khalil, I think had 80 followers.
There was another one, Akiv. He went from five to like a thousand people that were following in his footsteps. Saul followed a guy named Gamaliel.
What I'm saying is this was A thing that was popular during this time to follow a rabbi, because they were the ones that you felt like had the vision, the picture for what is really true life. And so keep in mind, when Jesus comes to these guys that are so used to living in Roman oppression and think that that's just the cycle of what they're going to keep doing, and he says, listen, I want you guys to understand that I'm going to give you something that has so much meaning. That's why they're like, yeah, we're out.
Because what he is offering is so much better than what I've had before.
See, these rabbis, what they would do is they would have what is called a yoke. And a yoke was like a set of sayings or idioms that were unique to them. It was kind of like their quotes.
And so they would walk around and share those. And people would be enamored at what they would do.
They were like the spiritual masters in Israel. But what you'll notice about these rabbis is that they would have this big group of people that would follow them. And the way that they would follow them was kind of like, you know, you've ever seen, like, those superhero movies, and there's the villain, and the villain's got the sidekick, and he's like, yeah, boss. Like, you know, that kind of guy. That's kind of how the relationship was that they would follow this rabbi, and they would have, like, pen and paper, and they would bump into him, and they would, okay, he walked five steps, and then he talked about this to this person, and he saw this person that was going through something. This is what he said, okay, so I need to do those same things. That's how they saw it.
And there was this long process to get into it. It started even at the age of five years old.
At five years old, there was something called Betsephir. And what this basically was was the House of the Book, where they would start learning the different things.
Then by the age of 12 to 13, they would have the entire Torah memorized. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
By the way, parents, didn't that tell you what our kids are capable of if they can do that by that age? And then by the age of 17, there was this part of the rabbinic school that was connected but disconnected at the same time from that building that was called the House of Learning, where they would try to memorize the whole entire Old Testament.
Then once they got through that, and here's what's important, they would then Take that information to the streets.
They would take that information and bring it to people.
What I'm saying is rabbi school was not just about their information.
Rabbi school was about their transformation, that they were becoming like their teacher.
In fact, the word disciple is defined as a student or an apprentice, the teacher or philosopher, not just a learner, but a practitioner of an embodied way of life, one who diligently is working to become like their master.
And by the way, have you ever wondered why Jesus never once described his followers as Christians, but only disciples?
In fact, Brandon's going to talk about this more next week.
That there's only just a small handful of times he the Bible uses the word Christians.
I think there's several reasons.
And by the way, I'm not saying that the word Christian is wrong, but doesn't it tell you a lot that the main thing he calls us his disciples?
See, the idea of Christianity, that word can be kind of a nominal term. And what I mean by that is you can go to your census and check Christian, but do you think you could also go to your census and check disciple?
The word Christian can be designated just a title.
Disciple implies a way of life, actions.
But also, I think part of the reason why we choose Christian over disciple more often than not is because Christian, maybe from that title, doesn't require as much as disciple, because disciple, at its root, the etymology of it is that it's a discipline that you have a thing that you do every day. You wake up in prayer. You, you, you wake up in Scripture. And because of that scripture, in that prayer, you start to see the people at Walmart different. You start to see the people at the gym different. You start to see everybody you bumped into different.
Because you've had this discipline, this pattern to your life. It's not just about that. The information is transforming it into actions.
But I also want us to think about this, that when you look in the Great Commission, it says, go out and make disciples. It does not say, go and make Christian converts. It does not say that.
And I love what was focused yesterday at our, what we call Air Day.
Jordan and Brittany did such a good job with this.
It's the Am I ready? And the idea behind it was this, Am I ready not to get baptized? That was not the question. The question was, am I ready to give my life to Christ? That was the focus.
And the reason why I love that is that as a parent, I have to remind myself that my goal for my kids is not to get my kids baptized. The goal for my kids is to raise baptized disciples.
That's the focus.
That's the goal. Because I can get them in the water. But that doesn't necessarily mean they're going to be a disciple.
It's not about just putting names on a roll and checking those names off.
It's trying to reproduce what we are, followers of the way of Jesus Christ. So here's how we're going to organize this series.
We're going to organize it from the standpoint of being with your rabbi, becoming like your rabbi, doing as your rabbi did. Here's why we're doing it that way. That's how they did it. Then we're going to focus for a while on being with Jesus. And then once we've been with him, not just two days a week, not occasionally, 365, 24, 7, then we'll start to become like Him.
And then we become like Him. We'll eventually do as he did. Put another way, nowhere in Scripture is disciple used as a verb.
It's a noun every time. And the reason why that's important for us, this is an identity issue.
Discipling is not what we go and do. That's Disciples is who we are. That's how we've been shaped by. We've been designed and we've been made.
It's not about gathering facts, but it's about walking in the way.
So I want to give you an action step.
I highly encourage you this week. You can do it this afternoon, you can do it in the morning. I want you to read Luke 6. And I purposely picked this chapter because Jesus Day looks like this.
I mean, it's crazy, all the interactions, the people he's dealing with.
But notice his ways and notice how he handled people and situations.
And I want you to try to put it into practice this week. And the way I decided to put it was like stepping on the back of his sandals.
Do y' all remember when you were in school, or at least when I was in school, when people would be walking in front of you, like your buddies, you would step on the back of their shoe and you would call it a flat tire? I don't know if some of y' all remember that. You'd give them a flat tire and she would pop off. Like, that's kind of what I want. I want to give Jesus some flat tires. I want us to follow him so closely that as we read Luke 6, we try to apply Luke 6 because it's not just about my information.
It's about transformation, taking what I'm Reading to the streets over the week, next few weeks, we are going to dig into again what this looks like to truly do what Jesus did.
But maybe you're at a point right now that you're trying to consider this way that you've been trying to find meaning in life.
Well, it's found in Jesus. In fact, Dallas Willard made this quote, and I loved it. He said that being a disciple of Jesus is the answer to every question.
To be with him, to become like him and to do as he did.
But I also love. There's a scene in the Chosen. Y' all might remember this when the Roman guard comes up to Matthew the tax collector. And when he goes up to Matthew, he's basically saying, you know, I'm struggling, I've got all these pressures on me, is trying to lead all these people.
And he's even considering following Jesus.
And so he asked Matthew, because Matthew was a guy that left a very lucrative career to follow Jesus.
And so he's like, well, like, what went into that? And he said, oh, please understand, man. I have my fears, I have my uncertainties, but this is what he said and I absolutely love this. He said, but here's what I do. I do one thing every day, and that is follow Jesus Christ.
And the rest of the takes care of itself.
Maybe you're here today and you've never made that decision to follow Jesus Christ.
What our hope and prayer is is that you will give your life to him and you will be a disciple that makes disciples.
Maybe for some of you, you might only define your life as a Christian, but not a disciple.
Listen, I'm just like y' all that I think about it all the time. Like, I wish I could say that the dust of the rabbi was always on me, but sometimes I'm walking so far ahead of Jesus that it's not even possible.
So maybe you want to come forward today or find one of the shepherds in the back and say, hey, I want to walk with Jesus. Now maybe for some of you, what it is, is that you would describe your life more of kind of knowing about his teachings, but not walking with him in the way kind of like you mentioned Matthew did in that video.
Wouldn't it be such a simple but yet life changing way to live? To literally say, I wake up every single morning and I know when I wake up I have one thing to do and that is follow Jesus Christ.
And everything else is going to take care of itself.
So if you're here today and want to give your life to him, and be a disciple Please come forward while we stand and we sing this song.
