"Come and See Jesus"

This has been automatically generated, and therefore may contain some unintended inaccuracies.

So if you could turn in your Bibles to John chapter one, and we'll begin reading at verse 35 to the end. Well, not quite to the end. Oh, yeah. Yes. To the end.

Don't know what happened there. So it's on page 1,064. The next day, John was there again with two of his disciples. When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, look, the lamb of God. When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus.

Turning round, Jesus saw them following and asked, what do you want? They said, rabbi, which means teacher, where are you staying? Come, he replied, and you will see. So they went and saw where he was staying, and they spent that day with him. It was about four in the afternoon.

Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, was one of the two who heard what John had said and who had followed Jesus. The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, we have found the Messiah, that is the Christ, and he brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, you are Simon, son of John. You will be called Cephas, which when translated is Peter. The next day, Jesus decided to leave for Galilee.

Finding Philip, he said to him, follow me. Philip, like Andrew and Peter, was from the town of Bethsaida. Philip found Nathanael and told him, we have found the one Moses wrote about in the law and about whom the prophets also wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. Nazareth, can anything good come from there? Nathanael asked.

Come and see, said Philip. When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching, he said of him, here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit. How do you know me? Nathanael asked. Jesus answered, I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you.

Then Nathaniel declared, rabbi, you are the son of God. You are the king of Israel. Jesus said, you believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You will see greater things than that. He then added, very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending on the son of man.

Please keep the passage open in front of you. I'm bar... I'm pastor here at Hope Church. You feel like you're being stitched up by others at at times. John was gonna announce something for me to teach at What in the Word?

And David then might have read through the whole of the rest of the bible. Preach on that. Well, we're we're not gonna do that, but thank you for restraining yourself. We're gonna stick with that second part... Last part of John's gospel.

Is it John chapter one? Let me pray for it. Heavenly father, we pray, please, you would teach us now as we read, as we, look at this passage and see these people following Jesus. Father, as you worked in their hearts, would you work in ours this morning, we pray. Help us to see Jesus.

Amen. Well, I wonder who you would make a a point of going to see, celebrities, I mean. Is there someone that you would particularly make a point of going to see? Maybe if you heard someone was coming to Tollworth, you heard, oh, they're gonna be on the Broadway maybe or in the bowling alley. I don't know why they go there, but you know, if you hear, oh, they're coming.

Maybe if you knew they were coming, you'd go and see them. Maybe it would be for you a sports personality, maybe for some, a footballer or some cricketer maybe or or someone else, someone you would go, yeah, I wanna go and see them or maybe it's a comedian, maybe a singer, maybe there's someone you go, yeah, if they... If I know they're coming, if I know they're performing somewhere, I'll go and see them. Maybe it's royalty. Maybe for you it's someone who actually no one else really knows about.

Maybe for you it's a scientist. I know we've got quite a few scientists. Maybe it's someone you know of and you think, yeah, I'd wanna go and see them. Maybe it's a chef or maybe it's someone else. Yeah.

Yeah. I wanna get to see them. If they're coming, I wanna meet them. And maybe you would then go and tell others. You could probably see where this is heading, but maybe you would then tell others.

You would say, yeah. You know of others who've got similar interests to you. You'd say, yeah. Come on. Let's go let's go to the bowling alley.

They're gonna be there. We're gonna meet them there. Let's let's go together. Well, of course, then the question is, if it were Jesus coming to Toulmouth, if you heard on the news on social media that Jesus was coming to Toulmouth, Would you wanna get there? Of course, you'd wanna get there.

I think we'd all wanna... Even if you were to today say you're not a follower of Jesus, I think you'd still say, well, if he's gonna be there, I wanna get there. Find out about him. Meet him, and I think you'd probably tell others, you'd probably tell family, you'd tell... You'd say, come from a long way away.

Come on. Come and come and meet Jesus. Let's go and see what he's really like. Well, as we come to this part in John chapter one, we see this kind of thing going on. There's a magnetism about Jesus, an attraction.

And as we read of people here, there are several here in this passage who see Jesus and start following him. And I think as we see Jesus here, we'll be drawn in. What we've had so far in John's Gospel, we've had the avalanche of wonderful theology about Jesus right from the start, that that in the beginning was the word, that Jesus has always existed, that he was both with God and was God, that Jesus made all things and that he came and lived among us and that people saw his glory. And now we see, after having seen John the Baptist last week or John the witness, we now see Jesus interacting with people and people are drawn to him and draw others to him. And like I say, as we see them do this, I think we'll be drawn more to Jesus as well.

So we're gonna have three points as usual, three points, and we'll... Let's go through the passage. First off is see and follow. See and follow verses thirty thirty five to 39, see and follow. Now there's a beautiful simplicity actually to the way these first disciples start following Jesus.

We're told, verse 35, it's the next day, and John was there again and he... With two of his disciples, and he says, verse 36, about Jesus, look, the lamb of God. Verse 37, when the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus. It's nice and simple, isn't it? It's very quick actually.

These two disciples who've been with John the Baptist, following John the Baptist, hearing John the teaching, and presumably John the Baptist has been teaching them about the coming of the Messiah who's gonna come, who's gonna come and be with us, and then he just says to them, look the lamb of God, and they go, okay, I'm gonna follow him. I'm with him now, not with John anymore, following Jesus. Like train with the engine and the carriage, the train pulling it along. The disciples have been with John the Baptist, now a different train comes along, takes that carriage, takes it elsewhere, They're now with Jesus. They follow him.

It's simple, isn't it? You really didn't need an illustration of that, did you? They were following John. They now follow Jesus. It's that simple and it's that quick.

Now I don't want to overplay this. It's certainly not how it always happens for people and of course as we know, as you look at other... As of the gospels, you know that the disciples have a long way to go. They've got a lot that they've got to understand and a lot they've got to believe, but there is something beautiful here about Andrew as we see he is, and it might well be that the other disciple is John, which is why he doesn't give his name because he's the one who's written the book, but they just here see Jesus and follow him, and just sometimes, of course, are other examples in the Bible where people starting to follow Jesus is much more complicated or more difficult, and it's it takes something far more dramatic. Paul on the, so it was Saul, who was persecuting the church and then has the road to Damascus experience, the blinding light and the voice of Jesus, and then he starts following Jesus, but it takes a big dramatic moment, and you have those examples, and there are people who are like that, who maybe need something dramatic, something big to happen, but then you also get people like Andrew who just hear, well, he's the one.

Jesus is the one. And we start following him. And when that happens, I found in the past, it didn't happen very often, but it can throw you a bit. You know, you said to someone, you know, explain the gospel to them. Tell them about Jesus, about sin, and about, our judgment, and about Jesus coming to die for us, and that you need to put your trust in him, and who Jesus is, and the lordship of Jesus, and they just go, yeah, that sounds good.

I'll go with that. You think, no, come on. It's gotta be more complicated than that. Let me explain it again. You go through it again, or you you start going through the gospel with them.

Go through one of the gospels, Mark's gospel, and you go through it with them and at every point where there's a moment of sort of decision, do you believe this, they will go, yeah, yeah, no, do. That sounds good. I'll go with that. Is it really that simple? Well, for some people it is, and you know what?

That is just as much a miracle as when it takes a blinding light or a big conversion moment. And actually, this is what we want, this is what we'd love to see in the children, hope kids. They hear about Jesus as they're growing up and they go, yeah. Sounds good. I follow him.

That's what we want, isn't it? And it's wonderful when it happens, and we need to pray that it does. Sometimes, it's relatively simple. And then they start following Jesus in verse 38, Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, what do you want? Which, as we'll see as we keep going through John, John does have different layers of meaning to what he's saying, but it's a good question to ask.

I mean, might well have just been saying, what do you want? You're following me now? Why are you following me? What do you want? But of course, there's a deeper level there, isn't there?

And it's a good question to ask us, yes, as we look at Jesus, and maybe maybe there are some here who you've... We're only not even at the end of John chapter one, maybe you've been at both sermons so far in the series and you've looked at Jesus and you've gone, yeah, actually, you know, I want to follow him too. I finished chapter one, but yeah, want to do that. It's worth just asking, what do you want when you come to Jesus? Even if you've been coming to Hope Church since we started, maybe you've been a Christian many years, but what is it you want in coming to Jesus?

Because we all come with our own agendas. We all come with things maybe that we want to see Jesus do for us. Are you aware of what that might be for you? Maybe you come to Jesus with something you're going, actually, I want this fixed. Maybe it's health.

Maybe it's family. Maybe it's marriage. Maybe it's work. Maybe it could be all kinds of things. You go, actually, I've come because I want this dealt with.

What do you want as you come to Jesus? And they give a really interesting reply. They say, verse 38, second half, rabbi, which means teacher, where are you staying? Now, I think the significance there is in the first part, the first word, rabbi. We're given the translation, it means teacher, and I think that's their reply.

I think they're saying, we want you to teach us. We want to hear from you. We want you to set the agenda. We want to learn from you and be with you. I think that's the significance then of them asking where are you staying.

I I don't think they're sort of saying, we just want to look around your house, kind of Jesus. I mean, he says he takes them and shows them where he is. It's not like he is just going on this is the lounge, this is the bathroom, this is the, do you like what I have done to the player? Oh, yes, very nice. Very nice.

No, I don't think that's why he is doing that. I think it's more a case of, I think, maybe speculating, but I think it's we want to follow you now. So we need to know where you are, where you live so that we can find you again. They didn't have social media, they didn't that kind they need to know where he was so they can find him, follow him, be with him. We want you to be our teacher.

And again, as we see Jesus and as we say, I wanna follow Jesus, this is the kind of posture we need to have as well, isn't it? We may come with our wants, with our, yeah, Jesus, I want you to fix this, I want you to sort this out, and actually, first and foremost, to be a disciple of Jesus is to follow him and say, actually, need to learn from you. You set the agenda. You teach me. You teach me what's important and you go and I will follow you.

Where you go, I'll go. You lead the way. I'll follow you. See and follow. That's the first thing we see in this passage.

Relatively simple, isn't it? Second thing, come and see. Come and see. As you go through the passage, what you find is that as these disciples first meet Jesus, they they see him and they decide to follow him, and then, of course, they are then going and telling others and saying, you need to come and see him too. You need to come to Jesus.

We found the one. This seems to be the kind of common refrain, isn't it? We found the one, the one that the Old Testament talks about. We found him. You come and see as well, and we see this with Andrew verse 41.

Well, verse 40. Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, was one of the two who had heard what John had said and had followed Jesus. The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, we've found the Messiah. That is the Christ, and he brought him to Jesus. Again, simple, but it's beautiful That Andrew is saying, look, I found the one.

Now I've got to go and find others. I've got to tell others about this. I've to bring my brother to find to Jesus to meet him, and this is an... This is what Christians want to do, isn't it? That when we've seen Jesus and seen who he is, seen something of something of his glory, you've got to go, I wanna tell others about this as well.

A bit like, you know, when you've seen something, a film or read a book or something, and you just go, you know, that took my breath away. There's part of the excitement about it is in sharing it with someone else and to say, I think you'd love this too, And as we see Jesus and see his glory, so the Christian's instinct is to go, I wanna tell someone else. I'm very thankful that my, eldest brother was a was a bit Andrew like here. I'm not saying I'm putting myself in the position of Simon Peter, my brother was a bit Andrew like. My eldest brother, Kit, who lives up in Durham, so he came and visited, you might have heard him, but I'm very thankful that he, in my teenage years, he started going to a good church in Cambridge, the Round Church, and he heard the gospel message proclaimed.

And he said to me, you've to come along. He invited me to a carol service at the church, and I went along. And he encouraged me to go to the youth group. And one time, he said to me, do you wanna open up the bible together? I was like, yeah, We can do that.

And I don't remember much about it, but I do remember he opened it up at Psalm a 139. I don't know why that Psalm particularly, but he opened it up and we went through it together. And I'm very thankful that he wanted to do that, that he, Andrew, like, was like, I wanna bring my brother to know Jesus as well. And it's not just Andrew who does this, we see it later on as well. So verse 43, it says, the next day Jesus decided to leave for Galilee, finding Philip, he said to him, follow me.

And Philip, like Andrew and Peter, was from the town of Bethsaida. Philip found Nathanael and told him, we have found the one Moses wrote about in the law and about whom the prophets also wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. So Jesus finds Philip and says, follow me. Philip does, and Philip then says, I'm I'm gonna go and find Nathaniel and says, Nathaniel, you've got to come and find out about this guy as well. This guy Jesus, he's the one that the Old Testament was pointing to, and Nathaniel does these little...

It's it's quite funny. In verse 46, Nazareth, can anything good come from there? I I think, where the region they were in was Galilee and that sort of looked down on by everyone else, but Nazareth, it seems, was looked down by everyone in Galilee. It's kind of them them. There's always somewhere where, you know, people from one area will look down on another area, where Tollworth looks down on it.

Cheshington maybe? Maybe. I don't know. I don't know where it would be actually, which makes you wonder that if you're in a place where you've got nowhere else to look down, maybe that's because everyone else looks down on you. Well, Nathaniel is saying of Nazareth, can anything good come from there?

And I think Philip does a really great move here. He just says, come and see. That's a lovely move, isn't it? Come and see. I don't know.

Yeah. I'm not going engage in that. I want you to come and meet him. If you come and meet him, you'll see. You'll see what I've seen.

Come to him. And therefore, I think what he's doing is he's trying to say, look, I'm gonna get out of the way for you, Nathaniel. I'm gonna get out of the way. I I want you to meet Jesus. I'm not gonna...

It's not gonna be about you and me discussing this thing and that sort of Nazareth thing and all that kind of... No. I'm gonna get out of the way. I want you to meet Jesus because he's so great. I'm gonna get out of your way, and I think that's what we are to do too, is to say, come to Jesus.

Meet him. Not me particularly, and I I don't have all the answers to all your questions, but come to Jesus. And any of us can do that, I think. It's daunting. It's scary, but actually, that's what we're to do, isn't it?

And do you notice that everyone in the passage ends up having a relationship with Jesus? They come to Jesus, so you don't end up with, you don't end up with Simon saying, well, Andrew, you go and meet with Jesus and then you just tell me what he says. You don't have Nathaniel saying, well, I'll follow Philip and Philip follows Jesus. You don't have that. There's no second hand sort of disciples here.

They all each come to Jesus and follow him. They kinda get out of the way and say, no. It's him you need to follow, and that's what we're to do, bring people to him. Now how do we do this? We've already thought about this.

Edmund helped us in the all age slot about proclaiming Jesus. How do we go about doing this? Be yourself. I love that. I'd like thought for tomorrow to say, what are you gonna say when people ask you, what did you do at the weekend?

I like that. I thought, you know, you you could do the, oh, yeah, no, I... We had lunch. I mean, we do it every day, but we had lunch or, you know, we went this place, we visited that place, we visited friends and family. You could say, yeah, we went to church.

You could just say a little bit more, can you? We heard about Jesus and about people following him. We heard about people who love Jesus so much. They said, come and see him. I'd I'd love you to come and see as well.

Could you say something like that? How can you use that little conversation just to say a little bit more and to invite people to Jesus, to come and see him? You can invite people to Sunday service, any Sunday, invite people along. You can invite people to Christmas services, to other things that we put on. One thing you could also do, now this will scare you, but one thing that you could do is you could say to someone, how about we open up the bible together?

Because some people I think might find the prospect of coming to church maybe is a bit of a bit of a hurdle, but they know you maybe, and maybe you could say to them, look, can we open up the bible together? Now I think that seems scary partly because I think we think in order to do that, I need to be trained in being a one to one discipler, but I think that's probably laying too much emphasis on on on you and me, isn't it? Our job is to get out of the way, and and do you think you can trust God's word? Can you trust Jesus? Can you entrust them to Jesus?

Can you just say, actually, we're going to open this up. Let's look at this together. I may not have all the answers. There's loads of... I don't have all the answers, but I think Jesus is great.

Let's let's look at him together. Can we read a little bit of John's gospel together maybe? And you could do that, read a little bit and go, what did you make of that? What did you think? It doesn't have to be more complicated than that.

All you're trying to do is say, come and see Jesus. He's great. Yeah. Bring your questions to him. Could we do that?

Maybe you find that really daunting. Maybe you... Maybe just having that initial conversation is enough to begin with, but maybe some here, you could go. Yeah. Actually, I could open up the bible with someone.

Come and see. That's our second point. Third point is you will see greater things. You will see greater things. For all of these disciples, of course, this moment when they start following Jesus is just the beginning.

It's not the end point. This is just the start. As it is for anyone who becomes a Christian, it's just the beginning, and we see it that that Jesus then will do more for them and in them. Would you just have a look have a look back to Simon? We kind of skipped over him a little bit, but when Simon, Andrew's brother, comes to Jesus, verse 42 it says, and he brought him to Jesus, Jesus looked at him and said, you are Simon, son of John.

You will be called Cephas, which once translated is Peter, which if you look at the footnote, both of them mean rock. Now Don Carson in his commentary on on John says, this isn't just a prediction. It's not just a prediction of what's going to happen, you'll be called this. It is rather Jesus saying what he's going to make Simon into. I'm gonna transform you.

I'm gonna change you into the rock. You see, it's not just you just start following Jesus. There's more. There's always more. God had a plan for Peter to...

For Simon to change him. Jesus was gonna change him. And we see this with Nathaniel as well. I love this interaction with with Nathaniel. Let's just have a look at him again.

So he's done the bit about saying, can anything good come from Nazareth? Verse 46, and Philip says, come and see. Verse 47, when Jesus saw Nathanael approaching, he said of him, here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit. Now what Jesus is saying, I think what he, you know, what he's saying there is, he's a kind of simple guy in in the sense that what you see is what you get. What what he says, there's there's no deceit, there's no cover up, he's, yeah, he's the kind of guy who just says what he means.

He's that kind of guy. Nathaniel says, how do you know me? He seems to say, yeah, that's the kind of person I am, but how do you know? Jesus answered, I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you. Now we don't know much about that.

In fact, we know very little. All we know is that he was under a fig tree, but we don't know what he was doing under the fig tree, what experience he was having under the fig tree, but it obviously meant something to Nathaniel for Jesus to say, I saw you there. And Jesus is showing some of his divine this divine knowledge that he's got, that he knows what was happening there, reveals it to Nathaniel and that's enough for Nathaniel. He then immediately goes, verse 49, Rabbi, you are the son of God. You are the king of Israel.

That's enough for me. You are the one. You... I mean, he declares Jesus' divinity and his kingship. He says, you are the one.

He believes. Jesus then says, verse 50, you believe because I saw you under the fig tree, you will see greater things than that. Now you could read that as being Jesus being a little bit sort of sarcastic in a kind of, is that all it took? Surely, it should have needed a bit more than that. But you don't need to read it that way.

It can just simply be that's why you believe. You believe because I said I saw you. That's a good thing. But he says, you will see greater things than that. And then he says, and it's really intriguing, verse 51.

He then added, very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending on the son of man. What's he talking about there? Why does he refer to that? Well, it's a reference to Genesis chapter 28, and I won't make you look it up, but you could read it another time. In Genesis 28, let me just tell you what's going on there.

Jacob is the main character in in Genesis 28. Jacob who is the deceiver, and it's interesting that he refers to Jacob, that may be why he says of Nathaniel, here is a true Israel... Here is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit. In other words, you are not like Jacob. Jacob was a deceiver who was called Israel in due course.

You're an Israelite in whom there's no Jacob. You're not a deceiver. Anyway, Genesis 28. Jacob is a deceiver. He is...

He's just tricked his brother Esau out of inheritance and blessing, and Esau, his brother, now wants to kill Jacob. So Jacob is on the run for his life, and he gets to evening time, gets to the... It's getting dark, he gets a stone and lays it down as a pillow, which is a slightly odd move, but there you go. He sleeps with his head on on a stone and he has a dream and in that dream, there's a stairway with its bottom resting on the earth and its top in the heavens. And it says in Genesis 28, I should have turned it up, It says in Genesis 28 that at the top, that the Lord was at the top, but it could be translated that the Lord was beside him, and I think that's more likely that in this dream, Jacob is seeing this stairway, angels ascending and descending, and that the Lord God himself stands next to him.

And that's significant because God then says to him, hang on. I've got to find it. Yeah. Verse 15. Thank you.

It says, the Lord says to him, I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go. I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised. So God says to him, I'm with you wherever you go. And Jacob then says, when he wakes up, surely the Lord was in this place and I was not aware of it.

He was afraid and said, how awesome is this place? This is none other than the house of God. This is the gate of heaven. Isn't that great? Jacob's saying...

Jacob's being told the Lord is with him and that this place, he says, is the gateway of heaven where heaven and earth touch. Now what's Jesus saying when he says, you will see angels ascending and descending on the son of man? What's he saying? Because Jacob doesn't... I'm sorry.

Nathanael doesn't actually see that. He never sees angels ascending and descending on Jesus. What's he saying? He's saying, just as Jacob saw that God was with him, so you're gonna realize God is with you, and you're gonna realize just as Jacob said, this place is the gateway to heaven because the angels are ascending and descending on the son of man, Jesus said, not on the earth, but on Jesus himself. He's saying you're gonna realize that the gateway to heaven is Jesus, and you're gonna realize that, and you're gonna see that.

You're gonna see greater things. I think the application for that for us is then to go read on. Don't you wanna see more about this guy, Jesus? Jesus is saying you're gonna see wonderful things, that you're gonna see that God himself is with you, in me. I am I am the I am.

You're gonna see that. You're gonna see wonderful things, and that I'm the gateway to heaven. We go, well, we wanna read on, find out more. But can I also suggest that there is an application for us to say that actually we too, for us too, we will see greater things? We will see greater things.

You see, coming to Jesus, starting to follow Jesus is just the beginning. It's just the start. That's not the high point of the Christian life. It's a wonderful moment when you start following Jesus, but that's not the high point. There is always more to see because there's always more of Jesus' glory to see as we read more in his word, as we say to Jesus, be our teacher, be our rabbi, I I wanna follow you.

You... Jesus says, you will see greater things, greater things of him, and, you know, one day, the Bible promises us, we will see Jesus face to face. That's a promise. One John three verse two says this, dear friends, now we are children of God and what we will be has not yet been made known, but we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him for we shall see him as he is. We will see Jesus.

We will see him. And what a moment that will be. How glorious that will be to see Jesus. You will see greater things when you see him. And that vision, that seeing Jesus, when we see him face to face, it will be so great.

Some sights change you, don't they, as you see them? This will transform us. John says, when you see Jesus, you will become like him. It will be that greater moment. We will see greater things than we have seen so far.

Well, I wonder, have you been drawn into Jesus as we've seen these early disciples start following him? I wonder if you heard he was coming to Tollworth. Would you wanna go there, meet him? I would. I I I think you would too.

Now without being corny here, every week, Jesus is here in Tollworth. Every Sunday morning, we open his word and we see more of his glory. And every day you can meet with Jesus as you open his word, you can see more of his glory. And as we do so, will we say to others, come and see. Come and see this man.

Find out more of him. Keep coming along Sunday by Sunday. Keep thinking, who can you invite? And if at times you're feeling drained with that and you're feeling, I have invited people. I've tried.

Can I encourage you? First of all, look back at Jesus. Remember who he is. See him again. And that's what will move you and me to go to others and say, come and see.

Let's pray. Father, we pray, please, that you would help us to see Jesus afresh as we keep going through John's gospel. Help us to see his glory, to be in awe of him. Help us, father, to be so joyful at seeing Jesus that we would want to go to others and say, come and see. Come and see him.

And father, we thank you for the truth that there are greater things that we will see as we keep studying your word, as we keep seeing Jesus, and that one day we will see him face to face. Help us to keep looking forward to that day. Amen.