Ardent Church

John's last piece of advice for the church is this: hospitality is at the heart of following Jesus. To truly walk in the truth, in love for one another, is to model the hospitality that Jesus has showed us: making the stranger a part of the family.

John's second piece of advice was for believers to watch out for false teachers. As believers, we must be on guard for false teaching that creeps into the church. Anyone who teaches about Jesus and the Gospel outside of God's Word is a deceiver. In order to protect the church, we must be able to identify false teachers, how to deal with false teachers, and how community helps us fight against false teaching.

John wrote 2 John toward the end of his life. This is a letter from an old man looking back on his life, talking about what truly matters. Walk in the truth of the Gospel. Walk in Love for One another. Walk in Obedience.

Making disciples must lead to disciples who make disciples. Jesus modeled disciple-making for us. He went to all the towns of Israel, driven by compassion for the people, knowing that they needed a Savior. He then called for the disciples to go and do likewise.

Jesus was the ultimate good neighbor. When Jesus told the Parable of the Good Samaritan, He showed that to truly love one's neighbor was to take up the heart and struggle of those who are oppressed. Jesus took the oppression of our sin on Himself through the cross and as people made in His image, we are called to empathize and seek to alleviate the plight of those who are different than we are.

God calls for the church to take the Gospel to the nations, making disciples of all people. Why does God call us to the nations? Because He desires to be worshipped as Lord, as supreme above all. When we take the Gospel to every tribe, tongue and nation through missions it requires a heart that longs for what God longs for: His glory proclaimed throughout the earth.

In Acts, we see God calling together His church. In chapter 1 and 2, God calls together people from at least 17 different languages together. But it's not until Acts 10 that we see on "on-the-ground" working out of what that looks like. Peter was faced with cultural standards and ideals that separated him from sharing life with the Gentiles. The Gospel frees us to be culturally who we are while also being able to engage within other cultures as a new people living for the glory of God.

God's intention for His people was to call a people from all people. Through the work of the cross, Jesus has broken down the wall of hostility between us and God, giving us full access to God as redeemed people. An outworking of the Gospel is that the church become a multi-ethnic people because Christ broke down the walls that divide us.

What is discipleship? What is a disciple and how in world do we make one? Jesus called His Church to make disciples by first calling disciples. He called them to follow Him because of the good news that the Kingdom had come. Jesus called them to follow Him so He could lead them to increasingly worship Him as holy and worthy and would release them to go and do the same. The church today is called to be disciples who are increasingly worshipping Jesus who call others to follow Him and do the same.

We have been called together as God's people for the mission of making Him known. This goes beyond us as individuals making Jesus known but is lived out in a corporate commitment as the Church. As the local church, we rally around a common vision and mission to make Jesus known together by sharing not only the Gospel but our lives with others.