Deployed Disciples

The book of Acts is about the deployment of the apostles and leaders of the early church. What do I mean by “deployment?” Well, to be deployed is to actively be on a mission. Deployment involves boots on the ground. Deployment involves being sent into a specific area for the purpose of liberating or defending people. It is about pushing back and silencing the enemy. A true disciple of Jesus is a deployed disciple.

Yes, reading the Bible is part of discipleship. Praying is part of discipleship. Attending church, worshiping and giving are part of discipleship, but all of those are training aspects of discipleship. They get us ready for the active phase of discipleship which is deployment. A true disciple isn’t simply someone who believes something and practices something internally, but true disciples are actively advancing the Kingdom of God by winning lost people to Christ. You can be a dedicated disciple through the training aspects of discipleship. You might be able to do more spiritual pushups than anyone else in the room. You might be able to recite more Bible verses than your friends. You might have a perfect attendance record when it comes to showing up for Church, but we are called to do more than show up for training. We are supposed to report for active duty.  We are trained to be deployed, to take what we learn and to actively take down our enemy, Satan, and to liberate captives, lost people.

It would be ludicrous for someone to join the military with the intention to only undergo basic training or even training beyond that, but never to expect to use their training, never to expect to be deployed to further any mission. Who would join the military and declare, “I’m just here for the personal exercise and free food?” No one. Why put yourself through the rigors of training, the mental challenges of learning about enemy tactics and ways to do combat if you never intend to get into the fight? An army in training should expect to be an army deployed one day.

Listen, without the deployment of those early believers, what happened on the Cross and on the day of Pentecost would have died out. Where would we be without the accounts of the witness of the early church and the instruction of Paul and the other New Testament writers? They didn’t keep their experience with Jesus to themselves. They were deployed for the cause of Christ.

I want to share some things we see from the book of Acts about being Deployed Disciples.

1. Deployed disciples go in the name of Jesus.

In Acts 3, Peter and John, apostles who had been filled with the Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, were going to the temple to pray. Let’s say they were headed into their base camp for another training exercise, and on their way, they passed a lame man who sat by the temple gates to beg for money. The lame man asked Peter and John for money. They didn’t have any money to give him, but they had something more powerful and more transforming than money. They had the name of Jesus. They understood there was power in the name of Jesus. Peter told the man in Acts 3:6 that he didn’t have money, but he told him to rise and walk in the name of Jesus.

Peter’s training had taught him there was power in the name of Jesus. He had done the drills in prayer. He had observed Jesus in action. He had spent enough time in training to know that the name of Jesus wielded authority and power. Friends, we come into this place and sing songs that declare His name is power, His name is healing, and His name is life, but are we willingly deployed to use His name on the outside?

Do you know that the world has no trouble using the name of Jesus? I hear His name daily come out of unbeliever’s mouths in a way that demeans and disgraces His name. I don’t think it is intentional by people who don’t know Him, but I assure you it is intentional by Satan who wants to make Jesus’ name common and profane by encouraging the name of Jesus in common and even cussword phrases.

Those who are deployed by God to bring transformation to the world will “Hallow” God’s name. They will use it strategically, reverently and in great faith that His name is above every name, every circumstance, every challenge, every trial, and every demonic stronghold.

American military soldiers who are deployed won’t be shy about taking territory in the name of the United States of America. They won’t hesitate to plant our flag, to make their identity known when they are fighting for freedom and peace. They are proud to be soldiers of the U.S. Why should we shrink from being in the Lord’s army? Why should we be quiet about who sent us to do His work? If we believe there is power in the name of Jesus to break every chain, we need to be slipping it into every conversation we can. We need to be boasting and posting about the name of Jesus. We need to pray with people in Jesus’ name.

The healing of the lame man IN THE NAME OF JESUS opened a huge opportunity for Peter to preach to a couple thousand people on the spot about who Jesus was. That created quite a stir. The religious leaders, those who hadn’t placed their faith in Jesus, those who were controlled by a spirit of religion, a system that had no power, wanted Peter and John to answer for their actions and to answer for the words they were preaching.

Acts 4:2 says they were greatly annoyed because Peter and John were teaching the people and proclaiming Jesus’ resurrection. They actually arrested them, but their arrest (because of their use of the name of Jesus) led to a couple thousand more conversions to Christ! Do you see it? Two people were incarcerated but two thousand more were liberated and found life in Christ!

The next day, as the religious leaders questioned Peter and John, they literally said in verse 7, “By what power or by what name did you do this?” They equated the name of Jesus with power!  Peter didn’t just answer their question. He started preaching again. Any opportunity to speak meant an opportunity to use Jesus’ name. He told them that Jesus had healed the man, the Jesus whom they had crucified, was the Jesus who was raised from the dead, and He was still healing people, but Peter didn’t stop there. He went on to say, ¹¹ This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. ¹² And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”

The healing of one man, led to the salvation of 2000 AND gave Peter an opportunity to talk to the very ones who had called for Jesus’ execution about His saving mission.

Listen, the world is using Jesus’ name casually, caustically. His name flows off their lips, but from calloused and corrupted hearts. Why are we, the ones who KNOW HIM, the ones who are called to SERVE HIM, why are we not living deployed to use His name in the ways that bring revelation about His healing and saving power. Let’s live deployed to honor His name wherever we find ourselves.

2. Deployed disciples live by the motto, “We must obey God rather than men.”

The apostles lived with constant threats from the religious leaders. In Acts 4, after Peter explained to the religious leaders who Jesus was and the power His name had for healing and salvation, they were charged, verse 18, not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus.

Listen, Satan knows if he can silence the name of Jesus, if he can get us to clam up about the relationship we have with the resurrected Lord, he can limit the expansion of God’s Kingdom on earth. Praise God for the bold determination of Peter and John to please God in all things. In response to the threats made to them, they said in Acts 4:19, “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge, ²⁰ for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.” They weren’t taking their marching orders from earthly authorities.

We know Satan doesn’t give up easily. The harassment and threats continued in chapter 5, but so did Peter and John! Miracles were happening on the regular, and chapter 5:12 says that the miracles were done by the hands of the apostles. People started following them in droves. More than ever, verse 14, believers were added to the Lord. I love that phrase. They were added to the Lord. They were taking His name! They were joining their lives to His life. Like a bride does at a wedding when she chooses to take her groom’s name, so the Bride of Christ, at the joining of our lives with Jesus, we take His name!

Sick people were being carried into the streets in hopes that Peter’s shadow would fall on them, and they would be healed! Listen, these miracles weren’t resulting from anything but Peter’s obedience to carry the name of Jesus wherever he went. Even people with unclean spirits were getting set free as Peter carried Jesus’ name.

But the religious leaders, filled with jealousy, arrested them again. Acts 5:19 tells us that an angel of the Lord opened the prison doors and brought them out and told them to go stand in the temple and to keep lifting up the name of Jesus. Let me just pause and say, “The name of Jesus is unstoppable!” They didn’t hesitate to obey.

Of course, their miraculous jailbreak was discovered. As the authorities were trying to figure out what happened, someone came and told them in Acts 5:25 that they were standing in the temple and teaching the people. The authorities, probably rolling their eyes saying, “Here we go again,” went and got them and brought them back for questioning yet again. And they said to them, “We strictly charged you not to teach in this name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching, and you intend to bring this man’s blood upon us.” ²⁹ But Peter and the apostles answered, “We must obey God rather than men. 

There it is. Deployed disciples have an allegiance to God alone. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks or threatens to do to a deployed disciple, that person is on a mission to carry out their Commanding Officer’s orders, and our orders are to speak and preach and teach the name of Jesus above all names!

3. Deployed disciples recruit others to serve.

In Acts 16 we read about how Paul tapped Timothy and asked him to start traveling with him to preach about Jesus. Timothy, much younger than Paul, agreed, and began a mentoring relationship with Paul that led to powerful Kingdom results. We read in Acts 16:4-5-⁴ As they traveled from town to town, they delivered the decisions reached by the apostles and elders in Jerusalem for the people to obey. ⁵ So the churches were strengthened in the faith and grew daily in numbers.

What a strategic partnership! When churches are strengthened in the faith and growing in number, you know leadership has been effective and Holy Spirit empowered! Paul starting equipping Timothy to preach the Gospel.

He taught him about fitting in with the Jewish audience to which he was preaching, how to meet them on their terms. One of Paul’s commitments was to meet people right where they were, to relate with them according to their customs and culture when possible. He did so because his goal was to win as many people to Christ as he could. He encouraged Timothy to do the same. He requested of Timothy that he become circumcised, even though it wasn’t spiritually necessary, he had him do so, so that he could identify with a greater portion of his Jewish audience. He wanted Timothy to succeed in preaching to the Jews. He didn’t want uncircumcision to be a reason they wouldn’t listen to him.

Paul empowered Timothy’s ministry by speaking into his life. He revealed that Timothy was called by God to be a minister. He highlighted that Timothy served as an example of what it means to be one of God’s workers, and he would remind Timothy of his ministerial goals. We all need people who will highlight the ways they see God could use us, to champion the gifts that would make us effective as we share the Gospel. Paul’s life-giving words would help Timothy keep going when things got tough.

Paul spoke well of Timothy to others. He said in I Thessalonians 3:2 that Timothy was a brother in Christ and that he was God’s fellow worker in the spreading of the Gospel of Jesus. He endorsed Timothy and mentioned Timothy’s credentials as God’s servant to various congregations.

He told the Philippians that he was sending Timothy to them and that he was a one-of-a-kind minister who was genuinely concerned about the welfare of all he encountered. He described Timothy to the Philippians as one who was selfless, one who sought to promote not himself but Christ. He said that Timothy had proven himself as he had worked alongside Paul. He was always building Timothy up.

There is a lot more I could say about Paul’s mentoring of Timothy and the ways he deployed him to do the work of ministry, but I’ll finish this point by saying they had a close, personal relationship. Paul consistently described their relationship like a father and son relationship or like two brothers. Paul understood he wouldn’t be on the job of spreading the Gospel forever. He would need to pour into others and deploy them to lead.

4. Deployed disciples are led by the Spirit of God.

Acts 8 tells the story of a disciple named Philip who encountered the angel of the Lord. The angel of the Lord spoke to Philip and told him to go south on the road that went between Jerusalem and Gaza. It was a desert area. The Spirit was going to take Philip off the grid, off the beaten path, for a special assignment. Philip took off and encountered a man who was in charge of the treasury of the Ethiopian Queen. It “just so happened” that the man was reading from the book of Isaiah at the moment Philip drew near, and he was reading out loud.

The Holy Spirit told Philip to go over to the man’s chariot, so Philip did, and he interrupted the man as he read and said, “Do you understand what you are reading?” to which the man replied, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” The man invited Philip to jump up in his chariot and explain the Scriptures to him. The very passage he had been reading was Old Testament prophecy about Jesus and what He endured. Verse 35 says, Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this Scripture he told him the good news about Jesus. Acts 8:35

Guess what happened next? As they road along, they came to some water, and the man asked to be baptized. They stopped the chariot and both of them climbed out, got into the water, and Philip baptized the man. But wait, it gets even better! When they came up out of the water, Holy Spirit carried Philip away!  I am telling the truth! The man saw Philip no more, but he went on his way rejoicing.

Philip was a deployed disciple, ready to move out at the command of the Spirit, and after Hell lost another one in that desert on the road to Gaza, the Holy Spirit picked Philip up and transported him to another location. I’m not making this up! Verse 40 says, “Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he passed through, he preached the Gospel to all the towns until he came to Caesarea!”

That is the only place in Scripture where we read of someone being supernaturally transported from one earthly place to another. A few others were supernaturally extracted from earth. They were Elijah who was taken to Heaven in a whirlwind and Enoch who one day just disappeared from the earth, avoiding death altogether as he went straight to Heaven in Genesis 5:24. Philip was truly living by the power of the Spirit to the point where he not only obeyed, but was whisked away and move to his next preaching assignment by the Holy Spirit’s power! Amazing, right?

In Acts 20:22, Paul talked about how he was going to Jerusalem even though it was dangerous for him to do so, and the reason he was going was because the Holy Spirit was leading him to go. There are other times in the book of Acts where the Holy Spirit prevented Paul from traveling to certain places. See Acts 16:6. Peter was directed by the Holy Spirit in Acts 19:19 to go to some men who were looking for him. In Acts 13:4, Paul and Barnabus were sent out by the Holy Spirit to the areas of Seleucia and Cyprus.

When you read the book of Acts, it is clear that those being deployed were being sent by the Holy Spirit.

What would it take for us to move from being people of God in training to active duty? How could we move from simply being disciplined disciples to deployed disciples?

• Can we become intentional about taking and proclaiming the name of Jesus everywhere we go?

• Can we die to the opinion of man and resolutely live to obey God in all things?

• Can we call up and train up others to be deployed with us? ‘
• Can we cultivate a sensitivity and obedience to the voice of the Holy Spirit?

We must be more than dedicated to our training. We must be determined to be deployed. If we truly want to be like Jesus, we will seek to live sent, just as He was. We will seek to bring salvation to the lost, just as He did. Soldiers, God is calling each of us to active duty. Will we answer the call?