Well as we celebrate 50 plus years of faithfulness, the faithfulness of the Lord to us at Twin Lakes Camp and Conference Center, we are going to pause today from our expositions in the book of Galatians, and I want to invite you to turn with me to a passage chosen by the Twin Lakes team for this occasion that encapsulates in many ways the mission of this remarkable ministry. So take your Bibles in hand and turn to Deuteronomy chapter 6. We are going to be looking together at verses 1 through 9, and you can find that on page 151 if you’re using one of our church Bibles. Deuteronomy chapter 6.
This is an incredibly important passage. It contains the words of the Shema, that famous confession of faith that is repeated three times a day, even to this day, by observant Jews. It is supposed to be the last words on a Jewish person’s lips before they die. It also contains the first and great commandment that our Lord Jesus told the inquiring lawyer summarizes the whole of God’s holy Law – to love Him with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. An incredibly important text, but not only because of what it teaches us about God and what we are to believe concerning Him and what we are to do as we seek to fulfill our duty before Him, it’s also important because it insists that these central truths be passed on from one generation to the next. It is a call to discipleship. It’s not to be passed on merely like a formula learned by rote, but pressed home into the heart and mind and conscience in every context of life, as verse 7 puts it – “You shall talk of them,” the commandments of the Lord, “when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down and when you rise.” This is a passage about discipleship, about making disciples.
And that’s why it’s such a suitable text for a service of thanksgiving for Twin Lakes. It summarizes the heart of the mission of Twin Lakes which, let’s remember, is also the heart of the mission of First Presbyterian Church as a whole. Our mission statement says that, “We exist to glorify God by making disciples in our community, our neighborhoods, and the world.” And for more than 50 years now, along with the work of our wonderful Day School, Twin Lakes Camp and Conference Center has been at the very heart of our strategy to accomplish that mission. And so as we look at this passage together, I want you to consider it with me as something of a recommissioning, a fresh call from God placed upon this church to face the next 50 years of ministry in this place, and in particular at Twin Lakes, with a renewed dedication to accomplish the mission given to us with vigor and sacrifice and creativity and zeal for the honor of Jesus Christ. In just a moment, we’ll read all the way through verse 15, but as I say, we’ll focus on the first nine verses.
But first of all, if you’ll take a look at it with me, let me just highlight a few of the themes, three themes in particular, that I want us to learn. First of all, verses 1 through 3, I want to think about what we’ll call the pattern of discipleship. The pattern of discipleship. Then 4 and 5, the great dominating priorities of discipleship. And then finally, 6 through 9, the path of discipleship. The pattern, the priorities, and then the path of discipleship. Before we get to all of that, let’s pause and pray and ask for the Lord to help us and then we’ll read God’s Word. Let us pray.
Our Father, as we stop to give thanks for Twin Lakes and all that You have done by Your mighty hand and outstretched arm, we pray that You would again bear Your mighty arm in the midst of this assembly of Your people by Your Word and Spirit for Your glory and our everlasting good. For we ask it in Jesus’ name, amen.
Deuteronomy chapter 6 at verse 1. This is the Word of God:
“Now this is the commandment—the statutes and the rules—that the Lord your God commanded me to teach you, that you may do them in the land to which you are going over, to possess it, that you may fear the LORD your God, you and your son and your son’s son, by keeping all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you, all the days of your life, and that your days may be long. Hear therefore, O Israel, and be careful to do them, that it may go well with you, and that you may multiply greatly, as the LORD, the God of your fathers, has promised you, in a land flowing with milk and honey.
Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
And when the LORD your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you—with great and good cities that you did not build, and houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant—and when you eat and are full, then take care lest you forget the LORD, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. It is the LORD your God you shall fear. Him you shall serve and by his name you shall swear. You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are around you—for the LORD your God in your midst is a jealous God—lest the anger of the LORD your God be kindled against you, and he destroy you from off the face of the earth.”
This is the Word of the Lord and we give thanks and praise to Him.
My first experience of Twin Lakes Camp and Conference Center took place about 8 years before I became the senior minister of First Presbyterian Church of Jackson, Mississippi. It actually took place only a few years after my ordination to the Gospel ministry while I was serving as the pastor of London City Presbyterian Church in London, England. I was invited very kindly by my predecessor, Ligon Duncan, to attend the Twin Lakes Fellowship and the elders of my congregation in London, concerned to support and encourage me, sent me to Twin Lakes Fellowship. There, surrounded by the beauty of that incredible place, I met other pastors, many of whom have since become my dearest friends in the world. There, the Lord dealt with me in His grace. He taught me many of the most vital lessons I continue to depend upon almost every day as a minister of the Gospel. Twin Lakes Camp and Twin Lakes Conference Center itself therefore hold a cherished place in my life and heart. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that without it might not have made it as a minister. I would have burned out long ago. And so I can’t begin to express my own sense of gratitude to this church for that work or my sense of privilege to be preaching a message like this on this occasion.
If you would have told me fifteen or sixteen years ago after my first visit to the Twin Lakes Fellowship that one day I would be senior pastor of the church that operates that vital ministry and would in fact become the convener of the Twin Lakes Fellowship, I would have laughed in your face. I owe Mark Magee and his team, Ligon Duncan, and the Session and members of this church an incalculable debt, and I want you to understand that whatever blessing comes to you from my ministry here over the years comes in no small measure as a result of the impact of Twin Lakes and the people and the ministry that happens there.
Of course that story I know – and Mark Windham, earlier, gave some indication of that and the testimonials in your bulletin give further evidence of it – that story could be multiplied in different ways and with countless variations. Whether in the stories of faithful Christians serving Jesus around the country and all over the world who came to faith as children, as campers, at one of our summer camps, or of young people who served as a counselor or a leader in training one summer who, after that, resolved to devoted themselves to Christian service, or whether it’s the story of pastors who have been refreshed and encouraged to persevere through our annual pastor’s fellowship – God has done indeed exceedingly, abundantly above all that we could ask or imagine in and through the ministry of Twin Lakes.
The Pattern of Discipleship
But now as we give thanks for that extraordinary past, we also need to set our eyes firmly on the future. The Lord has called us to use everything we have, every asset He has given, every ministry tool at our disposal – not least among them the Twin Lakes Camp and Conference Center – to make disciples. And to that end, I want to direct your attention to Deuteronomy chapter 6, and in the first place, to look with me at verses 1 through 3 and the pattern of discipleship. The pattern of discipleship. In the chapter prior to this one, chapter 5, Moses has rehearsed, he has reiterated for Israel the Ten Commandments. And the opening verses of chapter 6 do not mark a transition to a new subject but instead they call the people of God to the kind of loyalty to the covenant and to the commandments of God that will lead to their blessing one day once they enter the Promised Land. You see that very clearly, don’t you, in verse 1? Would you look there with me please? “Now this is the commandment—the statutes and the rules—that the Lord your God commanded me to teach you, that you may do them in the land to which you are going over, to possess it.” So the context is the gracious promise of a homeland, a land flowing with milk and honey; a land redolent with echoes of Eden that God is going to give to His beloved, covenant people.
And this is crucial to understand. The commands of God – just summed up previously in chapter 5 in the Ten Commandments, and even more succinctly in the verses that will follow the one we are considering right now – the commands of God are not offered here as the condition upon which the Israelites will inherit the land. If they keep the commands, then they may enter the Promised Land – no. Remember, we read later in verses 10 through 15 of how God was going to lavish upon them cities and vineyards and houses and homes and cisterns that they did not build and did not construct for themselves; they did not plant those fields or grow those vines. They were all given to them freely and not by the work of their hands. In other words, entering the Promised Land was a gift of free, extravagant grace. And having received such grace, they are now being called to live a life of grateful obedience expressing their thanksgiving to the Lord.
And as they obey, the Lord promises them yet further blessing. And so the blessings of grace are to result in a life of obedience that will in turn receive yet more of the blessings of grace. And so verse 2, “These are the LORD’s commands,” Moses says, “so that,” verse 2, “you may fear the LORD your God, you and your son and your son’s son, by keeping all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you, all the days of your life, and that your days may be long. Hear therefore, O Israel, and be careful to do them, that it may go well with you, and that you may multiply greatly, as the LORD, the God of your fathers, has promised you, in a land flowing with milk and honey.” And so grace brings them into the land and propels them into obedience which in turn becomes the basis of yet further blessedness and grace.
The blessing of free grace is the context for their obedience and their obedience becomes the condition of still more grace. If they obeyed, it would go well with them. They would multiply, they would enjoy a land flowing with milk and honey. That is the pattern of discipleship that we need to get clear. We do not obey our way into the kingdom of God, rather, grace brings us there freely. The Lord Jesus taught us, remember, in John chapter 3, “Truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Entry into the realm of God’s dominion is the work of the Holy Spirit alone. He gives us new hearts by His grace. Just like entry into the Promised Land for Israel was a gift of unearned, free grace. “By grace you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works lest anyone should boast.”
But having become a child of God by grace through faith alone in Christ alone, there is a life of discipleship such grace now calls us to and empowers us for. Our continued possession of our status and place in the family of God is not in any doubt. Once you are a child of God by grace you will always be a child of God by grace. But the sweetness and the blessedness of our lives as His children is very much contingent on our faithfulness to His commandments. And so the Lord Jesus taught us precisely this point. John 14 verse 15, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments. And I will ask the Father and He will give you another Helper to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth.” And John 14:21, “Whoever has My commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves Me, and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.” A fresh endowment of the Holy Spirit in your life is conditioned, Jesus says, upon our faithful determination to keep His commandments. A deepening fellowship with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ, by His Word and Spirit, manifesting themselves to us by their grace is ours as we keep their commandments, as we obey and love them and do what they say. Do you see the pattern? The pattern of discipleship. The blessing of grace calls for obedience that brings yet more of the blessing of grace.
As we reflect on 50 years of blessing at Twin Lakes, we ought not to congratulate ourselves. That’s not why we are here today. We are not here to boast in the work of our own hands and point to our own achievements and say, “Look what we did.” Instead, we should say, “Grace has worked wonders in our midst. The Lord has done it and it is marvelous in our eyes.” And then, seeing afresh the richness of those blessings, we should hear lacing every one of them a renewed call to press on, to redouble our dedication to obedience in His sight, to renew our efforts in His cause. We should pray and work and give and go to advance Christ’s kingdom knowing that no sacrifice we could ever make in obedience to the call of Jesus Christ will ever leave us impoverished. But rather, when we keep His commandments, He and His Father come to us and love us and manifest themselves to us. He gives us His Spirit in fresh measure. It goes well with us. We multiply. We enjoy a land of milk and honey. That is the pattern of discipleship. It was then; it is now.
The Priorities of Discipleship
Then next, let’s look at verses 4 and 5. First, the pattern, and now secondly, the priorities of discipleship. The priorities of discipleship. If someone were to ever ask you to sum up in a sentence the message of the whole Bible, I wonder what you would say. There’s various ways to answer that question wonderfully, but listen to the excellent answer of the writers of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, shorter catechism 3, “What do the Scriptures principally teach? The Scriptures principally teach what man is to believe concerning God and what duty God requires of man.” That’s the message of the whole Bible – what man is to believe concerning God and what duty God requires of man. Now look at verses 4 and 5. “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORd is one” – what man is to believe concerning God. “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” – what duty God requires of man. That’s the message of the whole Bible in these two verses, isn’t it? What are we to believe concerning God? “The LORD our God the LORD is one.” The catechism actually goes on in question 5 to ask, “Are there more gods than one?” and it replies, “No, there is but one only, the living and true God.” He is one simple, singular, indivisible, divine being, subsisting from all eternity in three persons – the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. As the catechism says, “The same in substance, equal in power and glory.” Our God is one. We are not tri-theists. We don’t worship three gods. We are not unitarians, worshiping only one person, much less are we modalists, worshiping a solitary monad, an undifferentiated blob of divine stuff who merely manifests himself occasionally as a father and now as a son or now as the spirit. No, as the Athanasian Creed puts it, “We worship one God in trinity and trinity in unity.”
And because that is who He is, because this is our one God in all the beauty and glory and profundity and mystery of that great truth, He claims – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – He claims the exclusive devotion of our hearts. Since this is who God is, there are enormous implications for us. The Scriptures principally teach concerning God that He is this one glorious, exalted deity. And they call us to duty. “What duty God requires of man” – verse 5 – “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” “This is the first and great commandment,” Jesus said. Because there is only one God there is only one object worthy of your worship and devotion and love and fealty and trust and service and obedience, because there is only one God, we may not give our hearts to idols, certainly not to a graven image but not even to the subtler secret idols of our age – money or power or reputation or comfort or sport or pleasure or family. He alone claims the final heart allegiance of your life. These are the priorities of faithful discipleship. As Jesus puts it in John 17:3, “This is eternal life – that they know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” Priority number one for First Presbyterian Church, for First Presbyterian Day School, and for the Twin Lakes Camp and Conference Center – priority number one is to know God and make Him known. To proclaim the excellencies of Him who called us out of darkness into His marvelous light. And priority number two, is to call and equip people to yield their whole selves, their hearts and lives in trust and obedience and praise and adoration, to Him alone as He comes to us in the Gospel. It is to summon men and women, boys and girls to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.
There are a thousand things Twin Lakes could give itself to in the next 50 years, and creativity and innovation will be needed to face the challenges that lie ahead, no doubt, but let’s never stray from this one simple mission. Whatever else we do, let’s stay on mission. Priority number one – know God as He truly is, as He has revealed Himself in Jesus Christ in the pages of holy Scripture, uniquely and clearly, and make Him known. And priority number two – be true worshipers and make true worshipers. Be captured and captivated by His loveliness and glory and worthiness to be praised and then seed that glorious infection of worship in other hearts also that more and more might join us in adoring Him who alone is worthy of our praise. The pattern of discipleship. The priorities of discipleship. Do you see them?
The Path of Discipleship
And now finally, look at verses 6 through 9 and think with me about the path of discipleship. How do we do this exactly? What is the basic model for the accomplishment of this mission entrusted to us? Look at the text. “These are the words that I command you today. They shall be on your heart, you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” It’s actually really very simple, isn’t it? No gimmicks, no tricks. Be quiet! This demonic intrusion of technology! Well that was horribly embarrassing! Okay, how do you make disciples? The text tells us with simplicity and clarity you teach the Word of God. You teach the Word of God.
We need to become like John Bunyan; you know, the story about John Bunyan. It was said of Bunyan that if you prick him anywhere his blood is “Bibline” – he bleeds Bible. It just sort of comes out of him. He’s soaked in it, saturated by it. It’s in his bone marrow. It shapes how he thinks. His mindset is governed by the Word of God. And Moses is saying it’s a person like this who is a true disciple who makes disciples. There’s no use us having a grand vision for the future of our church, our school, or the next 50 years at Twin Lakes if we will not give ourselves to becoming people like this – people who bleed Bible, shaped by the Bible, who think in Bible terms. What will make Twin Lakes prosper? Well yes, we need financial resources. We need bold, creative programming. We need wise, administrative procedures. We need passionate, dedicated staff. We need a facility that is modern and fit for purpose. We can have all that, however, and still fail in our mission. And if we fail, and we will fail in our mission if we don’t make this our highest commitment – we must be people shaped by and ruled by the Word of God. We must be disciples ourselves and then we must resolve never to waver from our commitment to teaching that Word to everyone who will listen.
Verse 7 – “You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” The rabbis took those last words very literally and you may have actually seen Orthodox Jews at prayer today with what are called phylacteries, little leather boxes strapped onto their foreheads and wrapped around their wrists on the back of their hands that contain this text in them. And on the door of an observant Jewish home, there is a mezuzah with a text of scripture, another little box on the doorframe. This is where they are getting it from but they are really misunderstanding the point. The point of this passage is not that we should wear the Bible or Scripture verses or decorate our doorposts with them. The point is, Scripture is to be on our lips, before our eyes, in our homes, governing the work of our hands. The Word of Christ is to be our great preoccupation when we get up in the morning, when we lie down at night, and we are to talk about them with our children. We are to nurture and catechize and train and disciple them in the Word of Christ. When you go on a journey, when we go to work, when we come home at the end of the day, we are to fill our hearts, our mouths, our relationships, our family life with the Word of the Lord. That’s what discipleship looks like. That’s how you make disciples.
Is that how you live? It’s a very straightforward thing to make a disciple, isn’t it? You do it by opening your mouth and talking out loud the truth of God. You make disciples by preaching the Gospel. That’s what Jesus said, isn’t it? “Go into all the world and make disciples, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe whatsoever I have commanded you.” So here’s what to pray for and strive for and give ourselves to. Here’s the path of discipleship. It’s Colossians 3:16 that we used as our call to worship – “Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another in all wisdom.” That’s it. “Teach them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” Teach your children, speak of them when you walk in the way, in every program, in every new endeavor, in all our creativity, in all our ministry. We need to be asking, “How do we get the Word of the Lord out and into their hearts and into their lives?” There’s no other way to make a disciple than this. Francis of Assisi was wrong. He was flat wrong when he said, “Go into all the world and make disciples and use words if you have to.” You always have to. The Gospel is a message and we need to speak it.
Listen, Twin Lakes is my happy place. I try to get down there, as the staff know, for a couple of weeks every year for personal retreat and study. Invariably there, the Lord meets me, I am refreshed and encouraged. I love Twin Lakes. But I love it not just because it’s beautiful, and it is. Not just because Mark Magee and his team, Andrew Vincent and the team are so very capable, and they are. I love it because it is a place devoted to knowing God and making Him known by the proclamation of the Word of the Gospel. It is a Bible place. And so we praise God for 50 years of His grace at Twin Lakes, but as we do that, will you join me in praying that He might yet give more grace, that Twin Lakes might grow in that most basic commitment so that many more people will yet rise up at the last day to say, “Jesus Christ met me and made me a new creature because I heard the Gospel clearly, urgently, compellingly proclaimed at the Twin Lakes Camp and Conference Center.” May God make it so, for His great glory.
Amen. Let us pray together.
Our Father, we bow with gratitude to praise You for how You have worked by Your Word and Spirit in the lives of almost everyone here through the ministry at Twin Lakes and in countless others around our city and state and all over the world. You have done mighty things. You have taken the vision of our fathers in the faith, all those years ago, and exceeded it for Your great praise and glory. You have taken the five loaves and the two fishes and so multiplied them that there has been an abundance – more grace than ever we could have anticipated flowing to us. And we are truly blessed. Help us, O God, by that very grace to be wise and good and faithful stewards of it, that generations yet to come may hear the glorious good news of Jesus Christ, and hearing Him call to them in the Gospel, respond in repentance and faith and in a life of dedicated service and discipleship. Do that work, we pray. Provide every resource necessary for its accomplishment as we rededicate ourselves and the ministry of the Twin Lakes Camp and Conference Center to Your praise and honor. For we ask it in Jesus’ name, amen.