If you would take your Bibles, please, Colossians chapter 2. We have been doing a study the last couple weeks on the First Steps Discipleship Guide that I have put together. Tonight's gonna be a little bit of a different message. It's going to be a message that basically is going to kind of challenge you a little bit, but it's also, I'm gonna just share with you an overview of what we are trying to accomplish here in our discipleship material. So Colossians chapter 2, let me read verses 6 to 9, we'll pray, and then I'll get into our message here tonight. The Bible says in Colossians 2 verse 6, as ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him, rooted and built up in him, established in the faith as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving. Beware, lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. For in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. Let's pray together. Lord, we just come before thee tonight. Thank you for the blessing. of this opportunity in Jesus' name, amen. Actually, you know what, I have something. I need Josiah and Ariel to come. I just remembered. So I can't go on with this message. Josiah and Ariel, come on up here. Join me if you will, please. Typically on Wednesday nights is when we do the birthdays and anniversaries. But Josiah is helping out with the teen ministry and various things. And so I didn't want this dear couple, mainly I wanted Ariel to be before you because, now, we talk about Josiah, we see him around, and Ariel is kind of behind the scenes. But you know what makes Josiah what he is? Is this girl right here, all right? And she is a blessing, she helps oversee our nursery ministry. Every time I see her, I'm just overjoyed. And how many years? five years of being married. She's put up with him that long, all right? Well, amen. Let's sing happy anniversary, ready? Happy anniversary to you. Happy anniversary to you. Happy anniversary, God bless you. Happy anniversary, love you both. Amen, God bless you. Amen, well they got away for the weekend here a little bit and praise the Lord and God bless them. Okay, now we can get on to the real stuff here, alright? Alright, Colossians chapter 2 verse 6 through 9, I want you to notice here verse number 6, As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in Him. How did you and I start the Christian life? We started it by faith. Didn't start any other way. It was faith in Jesus Christ. You look at the previous verse, verse number five talks about the faith that we have in Christ. And we came to the Lord Jesus, came into a relationship with him by faith. So we must walk by faith, not just the faith in being able to put our trust in Jesus, but to grab hold of the doctrine, the body of truth, which is the faith of the saints. But notice verse number seven, there are four analogies given to us to show the spiritual progress. I hope that you have grown in your Christian life. I hope that you're not still like a little baby. that if we were to take our church people and we were to rank them as far as their growth, would some of you still be in the spiritual nursery getting your diapers changed? Would some of you still be in the toddler room? Would some of you still be in the elementary school? How far have you progressed? Well, the whole aspect of discipleship is to help people grow in the things of God. Now, not everybody's gonna grow at the same rate as other people. Some are a little bit slower in growing. Some are accelerate. But it is important that we look at the spiritual progress, and verse number seven gives us four analogies to show the spiritual progress. First of all, notice a picture given from the agricultural world. He says, rooted. Now, you and I are to get grounded in the Word of God. Don't worry about getting grounded in some person's philosophies. Don't worry about getting grounded in this person's opinions and that person's pet peeves. You get yourself grounded in the Word of God. Why? Because Ephesians chapter 4 verse 14 says that you and I would not be blown away, taken away by every wind of doctrine that comes by. That we don't just kind of roll along like a little tumbleweed. We've got to get rooted. But then there's a picture given from the construction world that we're built up The day that you received Christ as your savior, your foundation, if you will, got laid. You were built upon the foundation of Jesus Christ. Now, as you learn about him, you're building the structure of your life, and you're getting built up. But now, a picture given from the educational world, established. That is that you are strengthened in the things of God. Why is it that you and I ought to be a part of the church services and hear the word of God? Why should we be in Bible studies and why should we be reading the word of God? So we can get strengthened in the things of word of God. We need to be established in those things but then we come back to the agricultural world again and it's the word abounding, abounding. There's a word picture given to this word abounding. It pictures a river that has its banks that are overflowing with water. And the idea that is given here is that you and I, I trust, are not little trickles of water. but that you and I would be a mighty flowing river. That God has done tremendous things in our lives that you and I could be moving for him. But now notice verse number eight, what we're to watch out for. Why all of this Bible study and discipleship? We're hopefully getting rooted, built up, established, overflowing with these things. Why? Because there are false teachers out there who want to deceive you. Notice here, he says in verse number eight, beware. That is, don't get your head caught in the sand. Don't always be looking down and look up. Get into the word of God. Why? Because false teachers are going out there and snatching people. Can I say to you that false teachers do not go out and win the lost like you and I do? You and I are getting out doing door-to-door visitation. We're getting out and following up on people. We're giving the gospel. We're out winning the lost. False teachers don't do that. They're out to capture people who are naive in their faith. There are more people, I would say if you're a preacher in here, you've been involved in the ministry, you know this as well as I do, there are so many people that are in the cults today who have been taken out of good churches like Calvary Baptist Church. You know why? They've not been grounded. They've not been strengthened in the things of God. And so I challenge you that if you're still a baby, if you're still spiritually sucking your thumb, get into the word of God, get into a discipleship, and get grounded in the things so that way when false teachers come by, your little antenna goes up and you go, that's wrong, that's wrong, I'm not following that, this is the book that I'm following after, amen? That's the way it ought to be. Now, notice here these false teachers. Why is it important for us to not be ignorant of God's truth? Because of the false teachers and he says here their philosophy. Now what is philosophy? Philosophy is an understanding or study of a particular experience or a particular knowledge of something. Not all philosophy is wrong. I shared with you a couple weeks ago the philosophy of how we do discipleship. I believe there's a philosophy of education. There's a philosophy of a worldview that we're going to have. But the false teacher's philosophy is described in verse number eight. First of all, it's empty. Notice, we looked at this word this morning. It is the word vain. Philosophy and vain deceit. But then notice here, their philosophy is after the tradition of men. Now, there's nothing wrong with tradition. Tradition is passed down from person to person. We have family traditions that are passed down. Maybe some of you have particular dishes at a particular holiday. It's a tradition that's passed down. Something passed down from man to man. Now, in the spiritual realm, nothing wrong with a tradition, but you always gotta look at the tradition. Is it man-made, or is it based in the Bible? If it's man-made, let's go ahead and put it aside, and let's get back to the Bible, and what does the Bible say? But you know what the tradition of the philosophers, the false teachers are? It's their things. It's their made-up traditions. It is their things that are not of the Bible, and so you've gotta be careful of that, but then notice the rudiments of the world. Now, I'm not gonna take a long time about this. There's a lot of things about this word, But there's a reference here in essence to the spiritual realm. And the idea is that people get caught up in the worship of angels and spirits in the sense that they are the ones that control our doings and our being. And with this could be an attachment to things like astrology, horoscopes, and other types of spiritual practices that were very prevalent in this day. But this is why you and I are to study the word of God and be involved in discipleship. Every Sunday that you come, when you come Sunday morning, when you come Sunday night and come on Wednesday night, you know what you're doing? You're being discipled. You're hearing the preaching, the teaching of the word of God, and you're strengthening your spiritual life. You're getting rooted in the things of God, and we need that. Now I wanna go on and just explain to you what it is that we are trying to accomplish with the First Steps Bible study that I have developed. And I've developed this for the sure purpose of helping people grow in the things of God. Tonight I'm gonna just briefly share with you three phases of the discipleship curriculum. There are two phases that are fully developed. There's one phase that the skeleton has been given to it, and Lord willing, in the next couple of months, will be developed. But I want to give you the first phase that we have already been running, and I want to just show on the screen here, first of all, phase number one. Phase one. Phase number one is what I like to call basic development. Now I've already been conducting this on Sunday mornings, 10 o'clock, during our Sunday school hour, I do the First Steps Bible study, it is done in a classroom setting. We do it in a classroom setting and we go ahead and take it during this time because I want new or young believers. Now, we have sometimes some people that say, you know what, I just need to get into that. I just need some of that. I need to get refreshed or I need to, I've never been discipled and so they're gonna start. Maybe they've been saved for a while. So any new or young believers, they get established in it and the reason we do it during a church time is two reasons. Number one, we get to take advantage of the children's program in nursery. You may have a new believer. In fact, I'll name, I don't mind naming tonight, Brian and Stephanie Bentley. They have their two children and they were able to take full use of the nursery And so that way they could sit in the class in peace and they could listen. And so that's why we do it. You know, many of you that have been saved for quite some period of time know that many times discipleship was done on a lot of different nights. And today people's schedules are so busy. So to be able to take advantage of the times that we already meet, plus you know what I want to do? I want to get people used to coming at the times we already offer services. I want people to be accustomed to coming to Sunday school. I want them to be accustomed to coming to Sunday morning at 11 o'clock. Now I want to give you the six areas that we go over in phase number one. They are the six, what I believe, the six most basic things that any believer ought to have. In fact, I have a couple of sheets in our room back there. If you ever want to take it, you're welcome to look at it. But you look at different curriculums, some of them may differ, but these are the six that I came up with. We're going to put them on one at a time. First of all, step number one. Now, I call these steps, first steps. There are steps because, literally, what do we do as a baby? We're taking steps, we're growing towards the things of God. Step number one is understanding my decision to receive Christ as my Savior. Do you know how imperative it is for people to get a strong grasp of what they have in Jesus Christ? I take two aspects in this lesson, I go through them. Number one, I review the decision that people made to receive Christ as Savior. I go through the gospel. I talk about the fact you've got to acknowledge you're a sinner. You have to abandon your efforts. You have to acknowledge Jesus Christ died for you. You have to accept Christ as Savior. I review all that. because it could very well be that someone comes in who thinks that they're saved, as you review the gospel, they say, you know what, I'm not settled on that, I want to go ahead and do that. In every lesson I have an application. I ask a question, I don't receive it from them, but I look at it and I ask them, Have you trusted Jesus as your savior? They have three boxes that they can check. Yes, I have. No, I have not. Or I am unsure. And I tell them, if you check the box that no, you're not saved or you're unsure, come see me sometime this morning and I'll sit down with you and show you how you can receive Christ. Now, the second aspect of this first lesson is this, assurance of salvation. I don't know about you, but the first few years of my Christian life, you know what I wrestled with? Assurance of salvation. There was times that I didn't feel saved. You know one of the great things that I throw out as a truth to people? The salvation that I have in Jesus Christ is based on fact, not feeling. I'm not saved because I feel saved. I'm saved because Jesus Christ said, if you accept my son, you have eternal life. That's the truth of the gospel. So that's what we'll review in step number one. Thank you, you're pushing me along. Step number two, here we go. Getting my new life started right by following Christ in baptism. You know what we do here in this lesson? We talk about everything about baptism. Why should we baptize? How is a person baptized? And then I go ahead and knock some of the things. I talk about, I have sometimes many people who come in, they got saved, they say, well look, I was baptized as a baby. Well, I was too, but you know what? I don't remember it. The only reason I know I was baptized as a baby is because my mom and dad said, you were baptized as a baby. That's all I remember. But truthfully, I had no decision in the matter. And we go through examples in the scripture about baptism. Step number three is this. It is finding comfort in a meaningful relationship with God. You know what we cover in this area? We cover Bible reading and prayer. Bible reading and prayer. What is a relationship all about? What's the basis of a good relationship? Communication. What's a relationship we have with God without communication? How do we communicate with God? Well, God communicates to us through his word. As we read his word, he talks to us. As we pray, we then communicate to God. And so we go through those two disciplines of the Christian life in this area. Step number four is this. It is gaining victory over sin and temptation. Boy, what an important lesson. We talk about what sin is, we talk about what temptation is, and we challenge them about staying right with God. Number five, step number five, very important lesson here. Realizing the importance of the local church. You know what I stress with them? I talk about the church, its leaders, I define the church, I define their part in the church, but I help them understand one thing, Lord willing, when they get done, and that is this. I may not always have that teacher around, I may not always be connected with my mentor, but I need a local church because that's where I'm gonna grow. We need the local church. It's sad today how many downplay the local church, but my friend, I'm doing all I can to upplay the local church because it is imperative in our life. Step number six is the last step in this first phase, and it is this, taking the gospel to my friends and family. Taking the gospel to my friends and family. That's what it's all about here. And we go through about soul winning. What is it about witnessing? Who are some good examples of witnessing in the Bible? How can we witness? How can we get the gospel out? And so we share all of those things in these six lessons, and you've seen it from time to time. When we get done with those lessons, we'll bring them up on a Sunday night, we'll give them a certificate, and we'll say so-and-so has completed phase one of first steps. Now, the beautiful part is, is what I want to do is then get connected with, get this person connected with somebody who can mentor them. Now last week I talked about the two people of discipleship. I talked about the disciple and I talked about the mentor. Some of you came up to me and said, you know, I'd like to help mentor some people. Some of you said, I'd like to be discipled. And I've taken those names down and I've listed them because we need mentors through Calvary Baptist Church. As we get new people in who need to be discipled, we need to place them with strong believers. So I need some of you to come up. at an invitation time or after the service and say, mark me down, count me in, I'm ready to disciple. I wanna invest my life in somebody else. And so when we move to phase two, I want you to put phase two up here on the screen. Here's what phase two is. This is a study of Bible doctrines. Now some of you that have been studying coming on Wednesday nights, we've been doing a big study on Bible doctrines. And we've been going over all the major doctrines of the Bible and we're gonna quickly just review what these are in just a moment. But here's what's important about this phase. We move from the classroom setting to one-on-one. You know what that does? That gets people connected with someone personally. We might put a lady, we'll put a lady with a lady. We'll put a man with a man. We'll put a couple with a couple. We'll try to get them connected with similar interests close in proximity of age. How important that is to get all that connected. But here's what we do in phase two. Some of the people in here are going through this. Lesson number one, the Bible. What is it all about? We talk about inspiration. We talk about the Bible's free of errors. Number two lesson, God, what is he like? Let's just keep putting these out. We'll go ahead one after. Jesus Christ, why is he so important? The Holy Spirit, what does he do? Sin and Satan, what is my position of the enemies of my soul? All right, next one. Salvation, what does it mean? Man, what is his makeup? The church, what is its function? The end times, what will happen in the future? So every one of those lessons people go through, what we've developed is we have a student booklet for the disciple, we have a teacher booklet. And we try to encourage people. Now, again, you say, Pastor, why are you sharing all this tonight? Because I want you to see what we're trying to accomplish here. We need Colossians chapter two. Do not people need to be grounded in the faith? Do not people need to be established? Do not people need to be rooted in these things? Well, every one of these areas, these are the basic doctrines that can help get people rooted and grounded. Now, I'm gonna move to phase three. I'm shortin' this. I've got a lot more notes, but I'm lookin' at your faces, so I'm shortin' it real big, all right? I wanna take you to phase three, phase three. Phase three is something I call beneficial direction. Now, phase one, basic development, the basics of Christianity. Phase two, Bible doctrines. Phase three, beneficial direction. You know what we do? We do a different format here. Instead of classroom setting, phase one, instead of one-on-one every week or every other week with your mentor, what we do is we give a, we will be giving a student guide to every new person that gets to phase three, and they will begin to work and study the word of God for themselves. Now, they'll still have the mentor. They'll have the opportunity to ask questions. They'll have the opportunity to get with them, to pray with them every once in a while. But you know, there's two things that come up in my mind in phase number three, and that is that people need to be immersed in this, and they need to become independent. Let me give you a biblical example for just a minute. Jesus spent three years with his disciples, did he not? Did he not teach them everything that they needed to know? He prepared them. But all of a sudden came the day when Jesus left, and the disciples were like, where did you go? You know what, he was preparing them. I'm leaving, I'm gonna be gone soon. He's getting them prepared. You've gotta be independent, you've gotta grab these things. And then all of a sudden, here it is, he's in the garden, he's all of a sudden whisked off to the trial, the crucifixion, and the disciples are left to themselves. They had to learn all the things that were given of Bible doctrines all the basic development they had to begin implementing and they were immersed in the ministry for themselves. That's what your disciple needs. You see your disciple doesn't need to be attached at your hip. I'm not looking for people as a preacher to constantly have a people attached to me and say, well, wait for my every little word. Let me tell you. No, you know what I want? I want people that independently study the word of God and have grown for themselves. And when I'm taken out of the way, when you as a mentor pass away or move away, you know what happens with your disciple? They're right in on it because they've grown for themselves. That's important. And you have to immerse them into it. I love to give this example. In fact, I put this in the book that I have put together. My daughter, she loves when I use her as an illustration. You know, the danger about living in a preacher's home is you're a suspect for always being used as an illustration. But my daughter was learning how to drive. She has her driver's license now and she does a great job. But she always loved to drive my wife's car because my wife's car was smaller. It's a Jeep Compass. I have a Chevy truck. Every time I used to get in the truck with her, I'd say, you wanna drive? Nope. You wanna drive? Nope. So one day, we're leaving somewhere, and I gave her the keys, and she said, I'm not driving. I said, you're driving. Well, you know, she ham and haw and everything, but she got in the driver's seat, and I said, oh, and by the way, We're not taking any back roads, we're getting on 776. And I've gotta stop at Home Depot, which means she had to park in a parking spot near other vehicles. The look of fear on her face was Kodak moment. But you know what I was able to help her do? I was helping her to gain some independence on driving. That's what your disciple needs. As you mentor someone, you don't want them constantly being attached to you. You wanna have them become independent and be able to grab the things of the word of God, and then they can in turn teach others. Isn't that what 2 Timothy 2.2 talks about? Now I want you to notice this word. I did not spell this wrong, okay? But I've taken the word fruitful. And I want you to notice here something And in this whole passage, we take the passage of scripture here, and I wanna find it in my notes in just a moment, just be patient with me. The main verse in Colossians chapter one, I want you, you're in Colossians, look at verse number 10, if you will. Colossians 1 verse number 10. This is a theme verse for the third phase that ye might walk worthy of the Lord all pleasing being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God strengthen with all might according to the glorious power His glorious power and all patience and long-suffering with joyfulness. Notice the word fruitfulness. You know what the desire is of this phase? Is that people will become fruitful in their Christian life. And we take the word fruitful and we add an L to it because what phase three does is it links together with the doctrinal study. Now those of you that have been here with us on Sunday mornings, Did we not see in the book of Ephesians the first three chapters was all doctrine? Every bit of it was laying out what we believe, what God has done for us. Now we're in the beauty and the richness of Ephesians where he's applying every bit of scripture and he's drawing from those three chapters to show us why we live this way. So phase three is all this. It is helping them be fruitful in their Christian life, but it's linking it together with the doctrines. I'll put these up one right after the other. Actually, just wait for my cue here. So the word fruitful, first of all, the first lesson is this. It is flourishing in your Bible reading. So you know what we're gonna do in this particular series of lessons for the disciple? We're gonna help them with how to immerse themselves in the word of God and get all they can out of the Bible. Now don't show hands tonight, but let me ask this question for you to answer in your heart. How many of you struggle with your Bible reading? You say, man, I wish somebody could help me. I wish I could get more out of it. Lord willing, I want this curriculum to help people get all they can out of reading the word of God. And that corresponds with the Bible doctrines. All right, next letter, the letter R. Notice this, relating properly to fellow believers. Oh, isn't that a big help once in a while? Relating properly to fellow believers. Notice here, springing out of the doctrine of the study of man comes a lesson on relating with other fellow believers. You see, when you and I can understand that man's been created in the image of God, but he is sinful in practice and by nature, it's important to realize the relationships that we have in the context of the local church. We'll talk about in this series of lessons what it means to join the local church, We'll talk about what it means to properly maintain relationships. We'll talk about what it means to live opposed to the flesh. We'll talk about issues of the church. How to respond to a weaker brother. What are some actions I ought to have when brothers treat me wrong? What's my relationship to those in authority? What about my family relationships? All those things are right here relating properly my fellow believers. Letter U, notice this. Uncovering the disciplines of holiness and prayer. Now all of this comes out of the doctrine of God. So two major disciplines are here. First of all, will be a study on separation, what it means to be holy, living under God, and then the whole aspect of prayer. Again, just like Bible reading, many of us are weak on prayer, but hopefully we can challenge people about prayer. Letter I, increasing in faith. You know what this links to? Salvation. How did salvation start for us? Faith. How do we live the Christian life? Faith. That's all it's about. So we're going to go ahead and tackle the subject of faith in this particular lesson and help people in this regards. Salvation is a valuable doctrine. And so is the Christian life a lesson all about faith. We're gonna talk about what faith is, we're gonna look at examples in the Old Testament, look at some of the hardships and struggles of life that people go through, all of that. The letter T is tapping into wisdom and righteousness, Jesus Christ. Does not the Bible say in 1 Corinthians 1, I think it is, verse number 30, but of him ye are, in Jesus Christ, wisdom and righteousness. So stemming out of the doctrine of Christ is going to help us to gain the wisdom that we need and to live righteous lives. Next one is the letter F, finding victory over sin. Again, this corresponds with our lesson on sin and Satan. In these series of lessons, we're going to look at some Bible characters and their sin. The sin of David, what does that teach us? About life term long effects in our lives. The sin of Samson, how we need to listen to authorities in our life. The sin of Achan, how sin is always destructive and harmful. But the chapter ends on a good note because we can see what God will do when sin is confessed. Letter U, the next letter, understanding my spiritual gift. Now, we've already gone over some of this in our series on understanding spiritual gifts, but this links together with the Holy Spirit. Who's the distributor of the gifts? The Holy Spirit. So out of this doctrine of the Holy Spirit, we learn what it is about the spiritual gifts and these things are given. The letter L, learning to give joyfully, this links together with the doctrine of the church and how all that applies to our lives. The last letter is the letter L again, living with the sense of eternity amidst trials. And really, as a result of our study on prophecy, looking ahead, we want to talk about preparing ahead by how we live right now. What's some of the biggest things we wrestle with is the troubles of life. How do we deal with the struggles? How do we deal with the things of the now and now? Well, all those things will be covered in this lesson. I complete that tonight and I say these things to you. Maybe tonight you say, preacher, I've never really been discipled in some of these things. Maybe you might want to be discipled in some of them. No problem. Let's get you linked in. Email me this week. Call me. Talk to me. Maybe make it known to somebody right up here as you pray and yield yourself to God and say, God, I've never been discipled. I need to jump in phase one. Maybe you need to jump in phase two. You need to get strengthened in the doctrines. Whatever it is, start getting strengthened and built up in the holy faith. But then, as I did last week, we need mentors. We need people who will say, I'll take somebody. I'll help them. I'll challenge them. I'll be their mentor. I'll be their accountability factor. I'll go through some of these lessons with them. I'm telling you, we need, folks, a healthy, growing church. As I said two weeks ago, it's not just a church that goes out reaching the lost. It's not just a church that goes out reaching the law, sees them get saved and baptized, but it is a church that fulfills all three points of the Great Commission. They go and teach all nations, baptizing them and teaching them to observe all things Jesus said whatsoever I've commanded unto you. Would you rise up and help Calvary Baptist be a church that disciples people? that we would be a disciple-making church, that we'd be energized to not only outreach the lost, not only fill the baptistry and see people follow the Lord in that manner, but also see people get discipled. You know what I look as a pastor? It actually makes my job easier as a pastor when people are discipled. As a pastor, actually let me put it this way, You ever helped out in a busy nursery? Think about it. You ever been in a preschool room with 20 preschool children? I have. I never got out so fast because Sometimes you're dealing with crying children, fighting children, all sorts of little problems, and sometimes it makes it a little difficult. But as a pastor, when people are strengthened, and rooted, and grounded, and established in the faith, wow. Makes for a healthy body of believers, doesn't it preacher? What a great thing. May the Lord help us. Let's pray together.