Well, we want to welcome everybody who's here today.
It's a beautiful day and we have a great crowd.
We're happy to have everyone here, as was mentioned,
especially Brother Ray. What a great day to be together
and to worship God. I hope you still have your
Bibles open with you because we're going to be in John
chapter one for the entirety of our lesson.
As I mentioned, and as we go into this, I want to 1st, I
guess, get on the ground level, the same plane together.
And that is we understand that evangelism is a command.
Like what does evangelism mean? It just means to go to the world
to share the gospel, to spread the good news.
We understand that that is a command as much as anything else
Jesus said, anything else the apostle said that is a command
from God as we consider the, the, the value of Jesus final
words, Jesus, some of Jesus final words were what we've said
recently. He said come together and share
and commune and be one with the other believers and share in
around my sacrifice to be unified and together as
believers. That's important.
But you know what Jesus is very last words were before he rose
again or before he went back to the Father.
He said go unto all nations and baptize, make disciples.
That is such an important command that Jesus left this
world with those being his final words.
So I think we can all agree, I don't think there's really a
debate that being one who would reach the lost somehow is as big
of a command as any. And so may we take it as serious
as such, and may we take it as our personal responsibility and
not just the responsibility of the church that I go to to
evangelize. This is our responsibility.
And so here are some just introductory questions maybe we
can ask ourselves as we start this study.
Number one, am I or are you evangelizing?
Not anybody else, not anybody else around you, not anyone who
you're thinking about, who's not here.
Are you? Am I evangelizing #2 are you
successful? I think this comes with a lot of
qualifiers. We want to really defend this
one, right? We get really defensive and we
have a lot of explaining to do. But, and it's simplest for my
question for us is, are you successful?
Am I successful #3 is our growth our glory?
Or the flip side of that? Is our lack our fault?
I think a lot of times we begin with the premise and we, we
rightfully say that, you know, it's, it's not all on US.
Jesus had people who rejected him, right?
That's that's true. But that's not the whole
picture. Jonah was a horrible evangelist.
Well, we all agree with that. Jonah who was told to go to
Nineveh and hated the people there, did not want anything to
do with those people. There was not a good evangelist.
And so it's possible we have both extremes, right?
We we know that Jesus was 1 extreme where he was the perfect
one, got rejected, got spat in his face.
But you also have people who are clearly horrible evangelists in
spreading the good news. And so where do we sit?
Because it's not all, it's not all their other people's fault
if we're not successful #4 Is the goal important enough to re
evaluate your or my approach? Is the end goal of reaching the
souls of people who would have eternal consequences important
enough to re evaluate my current approach?
And #5 What are your symptoms of your evangelism?
What happens to you by the way you do or do not evangelize?
What does it change inside of you or not change?
How do you think or feel? How does it make you anxious?
Does it make you feel all the pressure?
How do you feel or what are your symptoms about your evangelism?
Maybe we'll see some some thought provoking things in this
study in John chapter 1. Now I want to 1st establish that
we read John chapter one for the first section which is
establishing the divinity of Christ.
It is it is one of the most famous introductions to a letter
where it was just full out in front of us.
He doesn't start with the genealogy of Jesus life.
He doesn't start with all these details about his birth.
He starts with his divinity. In the beginning was the Word.
And so we have this 30,000 foot view of what's happening here on
earth. That God became man, that divine
nature existed, created and intervened.
That's the big picture that we're flying over with in John
chapter 1. And then we get into human
involvement. So as you see the big picture, I
want us to see this flow of thought coming from the letter.
Divine nature reaches divine intervention and then brings in
human involvement. So what does that look like?
Here we go. In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.
You're like, what does this have to do with evangelism?
At the first, I was going to go to the end of the chapter and
talk about some of the evangelists of what they did,
but I realized that the very first verse gives us some clues,
some insights and perspective for our evangelism.
This is not going to be a complicated lesson.
It's right here. It's pretty straightforward.
What do we get from this? It didn't start with us.
If we evangelize like it's like it it's ours to deal with or
that we're the ones who started it, perspective is immediately
off the track. Our perspective has to be this
started with God. Who in the world are we to stop
it? Who in the world are we to claim
any kind of ownership over it that would do anything besides
what we are exemplified to do with it?
It did not start with us. Verse 3.
All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was
made that was made. What's the point?
We learned from this that we might be able to apply to our
evangelism, to our approach. He makes it all happen.
He is the driving force. He deserves the credit.
He is the one that we need to go to for the source of these
things. He needs to be the one who we
direct. All of it goes through Him.
Point #2 verse 4. In Him was life, and the life
was the light of man, and the light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness did not comprehend it.
I believe we have three points here.
Number one in Him was the life as we seek to save the lost.
If we look at it like we ourselves are the life, like we
ourselves carry the burden of evangelism, like we somehow have
to give enough life out of us to get other people to have life,
it's not going to work. You're going to be burdened,
you're going to be overstressed, you're going to misplace your
identity because that life was the light of men.
Similarly, He is the source of the light.
What is light? Light is guidance.
Light is direction. Light is the opposite of what we
are trying to counteract, which is darkness.
So who is that? That's Him.
He is the life, He is the light. Our God, our Savior,
specifically he's talking about here is the light of men, and
the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did
not comprehend it. There's the third one.
There will be darkness that does not comprehend.
As we wrestle with all the results, the byproducts of what
we try to do with our faith, with the world, we have to
accept the fact that this was true from the beginning.
And it will be true, and it doesn't make sense, but it's a
fact of life. There will be darkness and it
will not even understand it. No matter how hard you try, no
matter what words you use, no matter how far you go, the
times, there will be darkness that simply cannot comprehend
it. This is all just in the
introduction of this letter, and it's from these first 4 verses,
1st 5 verses. We lay these foundations.
And like we said, if we don't lay this foundation for our
evangelism, if we think that it started with us, if we don't
realize that it did not start with us, it will likely stop
with us. Why?
Because we're going to think it's ours.
We're going to think we have a choice.
We're going to think that maybe we are the one who's at the
forefront. We're the tip of the spear.
It's not true #2 if we don't realize he makes it all happen,
we may over inflate our failures and our successes #3 if we don't
see him as the life and not us, we will have a misunderstood
role in this process. It's exhausting to try to do
your job and somebody else's job.
If you have one of those jobs, some of you have at work where
you've had to try to pick up slack for three other people and
your boss expects you to do this, this and this.
And you're like, we have we need 3 positions for this job.
God did not give you a job that's his to carry.
That is his job. He is the life.
And from such we should be drawing ourselves and directing
people to. He is the light, He is the
guide. And so if we don't realize that
he is the one who ultimately guides, you may feel really
hesitant. You may feel really hesitant to
evangelize. You may feel a lot of pressure
because you feel like you're the guide, you're the light.
No, he is the light is literally going to say the next in the
next couple verses as we read, John was sent, but he was not
the light. And we may even get pride.
We have to realize He is the light, not us.
And if we do not realize that darkness is simply not going to
comprehend You accept that at face value.
You walk in the door knowing that if you don't realize that,
you're going to have confusion, you're going to overthink,
you're going to be self centric in your evangelism, and you're
going to have misplaced energy. And we must have these
foundational principles from the beginning of the letter before
it'll all work. Now enter human.
This is all God so far. Now let's enter the human.
Remember, we're looking at this from a 30,000 foot view.
God's doing this great stuff. God is very involved in the
world. Now you've got this puny little
person come on the scene. What happens?
There was a man sent from God whose name was John.
This man came for a witness to bear witness of the light that
all through him might believe he was not the light, but was sent
to bear witness of that light. Now this says John the writer,
John is not, is not the same person as the John he's talking
about. This is John the Baptist who's
going to prepare the way for Jesus.
So he's saying this man was sent from God and what was his job?
Was his job to carry the burdens of all the sinful people around
him and to feel like it was all his job and pressure to fix
everything. He was sent to be a witness.
What does a witness do in court? The witness is the easiest job
in the courtroom. The witness stands on this and
on the on the witness stand. And they say what they know.
They say what they've been shown, and they say they can
testify on behalf of somebody. That is the role of the man sent
from God. This man, John, and I believe in
this. We have a pattern for our role.
You might say, well, John was way more important than me.
John was one of the men sent from God.
So you think that John's ability to speak to people and to be a
witness for Jesus, yours is less important than of being a
witness for Jesus? Now, is it less important that
now that Jesus is not here to have people who would testify
about him, who would be a witness to his glory and his
power and his life changing abilities?
I'd say it's just as important. Yeah, sure.
He was the first one. Maybe he was chosen as the one
who did this role in paving the way.
But is yours any less important? Can you not be a man or woman
sent from God to be a witness of the light, to claim that another
is the light and it's not you? We have a role that is equally
important today. In a world where Jesus is not
here. Jesus was there.
He could have told people about himself.
That would have been pretty good.
Jesus is not here today, and so it's just as vital that we would
be a witness for him on earth. You're not a dime a dozen.
Even if you think you're a dime a dozen.
There's plenty of people out there and say Jesus is real,
yes, but your witness matters. Your testimony of his glory and
His truth matters to the world around us.
Our job today. Jesus says blessed are they who
do not see and yet believe. John saw and he believed.
You see or you believe even though you have not seen.
Verse 9. That was the true light, which
gives light to every man coming into the world.
He was in the world and the world was made through Him, and
the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and His own
did not receive Him. What do we learn from this
verse? We're picking up little Nuggets
along the way. What do we learn from this one
verse #7 expect failures that do not add up.
As we are hopefully being equipped like soldiers in an
infantry room getting ready in the barracks to go out, May we
realize in our pursuit that we should expect failures that
don't add up. Does it add up that the people
that knew Jesus best in his entire life didn't accept him
for a long time? Does it add up a bit?
Does it does it make any sense that he would come to this world
and his own family would reject him?
Makes no sense. It says his own did not receive
him. A prophet is without honour in
his own country and that's what happened with him.
So we may we expect failures that don't add up.
But the flip side, verse 12 but as many as received him to them,
he gave the right to become children of God to those who
believe in his name, who were born out of blood, nor the will
of the flesh, nor the will of man, but of God.
What's our point of evangelism from this statement?
What if you were to read the Bible for the first time read
this sentence. But as many who did some
fascinating work of their own power and might right as many as
received him, to them he gave the right to become children of
God. That doesn't add up either.
We've got two things that don't add up.
People know Jesus, they see his whole life, they're raised with
him. They don't believe.
Then you got these other people who do very little.
You could claim almost nothing. They believe they receive Him
and they follow Him, and all of a sudden these people are
children of God. That doesn't add up.
So what do we learn from this? Believe in and hope for
victories that don't add up. This may be the most important
one on the list. Be very careful.
May I and may we be very careful in our attempt to reach people
that we don't look for what adds up.
It seems like in the scriptures, that's the thing you can
guarantee won't happen is if you're looking for what's adding
up, that's human wisdom. That's human reasoning.
And that is not usually what God works through.
He works in ways that are beyond us.
And if we don't hope for victories, it's one of the
things to believe that can happen.
But if we don't hope for them and go every day saying no, I, I
hope for the best, love, hopes, all things.
First Corinthians 13 says if we don't have that hope, we're not
evangelizing, right? If we don't reach people and go
toward them as if something could happen here that I have
not seen before. And if we think we're smart
enough that our past experience is the truth about what's always
going to happen, we are sorely mistaken.
If we only learn from our past and don't have hope for future
that God can bring. That's the definition of faith,
having hope for a future we have not seen, especially with
people, especially with people who deserve it, just like we did
not deserve it, he says. It's not of the will of flesh
nor the will of man. How is that true?
There's a lot of people who for a long time did ran away from
God, who didn't want God. There's a lot of people who were
rejected by others. There's a lot of people who have
done a lot of bad things and most men would not want them to
see the Kingdom of God. We've said it before, we may be
surprised if we see in heaven because there's a lot of men who
want to see punishment and judgment for what's done wrong.
And so in many sense of the word, it's not the will of man,
it's not from our will. Then it happens.
God's will is stronger, it is more powerful because people can
be born again from God himself and become children of God.
It's not what many would say we deserve.
And ironically, you guys have probably heard of the the crab
scenario where crabs you can, you can put a bucket of crabs
with a lid open and they won't get out.
Many of you know why? Because if one crab tries to get
out, the other ones will reach up and pull it back in.
So you don't even have to contain them.
They'll contain each other. Why?
Because our will is we pull each other down.
We want to judge, we want to be rude sometimes we want to pull
people down. And may we have belief and hope
for better, both for ourselves and for the people around us,
that we would not pull them down.
And we're going to skip a big chunk in the middle because
we're going to get to more about evangelism.
But he goes on to say, and we beheld his glory.
And that's the song we just sang.
And they beheld his glory. The people who saw him beheld
his glory. OK, So what have we learned from
that section right there? Internalize our role, both the
limitations of our role and also the value of our role #7 expect
failures that don't up, add up, and believe in and hope for
victories that don't add up. And so in this section, this is
where a kind of a study reaches its most specific point.
And I built kind of three points around these.
The first point of the study is people come to Jesus through
relationship, not sales pitches. So we're all the way down.
In verse 35, it says again the next day, John, this is Speaking
of John the Baptist stood with two of his disciples.
OK, we're big picture, right? All of a sudden you have this
man and then he through relationship has two other
people with him. Do you see this is like a
multiplier. We're supposed to see
multiplication here, 1 turned into two and he's got 2
disciples and what happens? And looking at Jesus as he
walked, he said, behold the Lamb of God.
What can we learn from this pattern?
John does not build dependence. He doesn't build these people to
depend on him, He builds relationships that he uses to
then direct toward Jesus. We're pretty simple guys.
I hope we see that at this point there's not going to be anything
life changing necessarily in this lesson.
But we have to 1st build relationships and have
disciples. Maybe is what John's context
was. He had people who who understood
his teachings, but he wasn't about John.
John directed them to Jesus. Behold the Lamb of God.
And we got to be careful because it's easy for us to build people
who depend on us for everything spiritually, and pretty soon
they realize their foundation is not in the right place and
they're right if we're not careful.
The two disciples heard him speak and they follow Jesus.
Verse 38. Then Jesus turned and seeing
them following said to them. So here's here's the evangelism
started. We have evangelism by one man
who directs people to Jesus. Now when Jesus starts the
evangelistic process, we need to learn from what the Master does.
The Master is going to teach. So how does the Master
evangelize? I'm ready pen, pen and paper
ready to go. What does he do?
He says, what do you seek? That was his opening line.
What do you seek? What can we learn from this?
We're going to stop a lie. We got to ask good questions.
Jesus was a master of this. He asked good questions.
Why is that so important? When we leave with statements,
we call attention to our ideas and our thoughts in our ways.
But, and that's not necessarily a bad thing, there's a time for
that. But we're talking about
evangelism this morning. We're talking reaching people
that we don't know that that we're not involved with.
When we lead with questions, we foster connection with others.
We show a value for them. We want to listen to them, we
want to talk to them, we want to learn them.
That was Jesus first instinct to learn the people and to build a
relationship and a connection with the people.
And when they speak and find safety, they pursue further.
People are scared to ask questions.
People don't want to look dumb. They don't want you to challenge
them. They a lot of things.
And once they ask, when they get a chance to speak and they
answer your question, they can find safety when they realize
this person's not out to get me. This person's not thinking, oh,
they're better than me. This person is a safe person.
And Jesus started with a question and how did they
respond? They said to him, Rabbi, which
is to say when translated teacher, where are you staying?
So they respond with his question with a question.
So it's almost like the brilliance of the scenario is
that he causes them to seek even more and he identifies what they
really need. Maybe we identify needs, not
slam people over the head with stuff.
And So what happens? Well, I think this question
itself is very deep. The book of John has a lot of
heavy, simple questions in it. You read throughout the book of
John. For example, in John chapter 3,
we studied not long ago Nicodemus, where he said, can a
man be born again when he is old?
He's asking a simple, practical question.
But really it carries a lot of spiritual depth.
It carries the depth of, I mean, even an old person.
It's hard for older people to learn new things, to accept new
ideas when they've had a serious way of thinking their whole
life. It's hard for him at this stage
in his faith to to learn something new again and to
ultimately have a spirit that is reborn.
And we talked about that. That's a loaded question.
But he didn't even realize maybe the depth of what he was asking.
Simple questions, deep, deep meaning In John chapter 4, it's
everywhere. The woman at the well says,
where can I find water that will make me never thirst?
She's asking a practical question at the well, not
wanting to keep walking out in the middle of the day in the
heat to draw water, but we see a very deep spiritual question.
Where can I find living water? We're starting to see the
pattern. John 5, the man at the pool of
Bethesda came to Jesus and and Jesus asked him the question.
He said, do you want to be healed?
Simple question. You might think a lot of loaded
meaning there. Do you really want to be healed?
Do you really want to come out of sin?
We might ask ourselves, do we really want what God brings to
our life or do you just want the blessings?
Do we want the challenge? There's a lot of loaded meaning
there when he says, do you want to be healed?
John 6 How can this man give us his flesh to eat?
The Pharisees said, Wolf, they were like weirded out by that
statement. They just said, how can this man
give us his flesh to eat? This spoke great spiritual depth
about what we would do later on, how we would need His body and
his blood and eventually commute around his body and His blood.
John Chapter 9, they asked Jesus, where's your Father?
The Pharisees were coming after him like asking where he came
from, and they didn't realize he was asking the Son of God to do
to identify his heavenly origins.
The book of John is loaded with heavy, simple questions that
hold a lot of spiritual meanings.
So what is here? What is this question?
Where did they ask him? Where are you staying?
Does John and the theme of this letter have a bigger theme he's
calling out? I think so.
When they're asking him this, we have the context of God being
Incarnate in the world. For so long God was distant, and
it may have seemed God was far away.
But God came down, John chapter 1 says, and now he's dwelling
among his people and these men are looking for a place to dwell
with him. They're looking to abide with
him and connect with him and live with him.
And ultimately true discipleship means spending time with him.
And that's the recipe. That's what is good to come out
of this. This is almost a model of what
we should see happen. And he said to them, come and
see. That's what Jesus says.
Jesus answers with relationship, not a lecture.
He answers with presence, not proof.
He answers with experience and experience to be with him and
not explanation immediately. Is there room for those?
Absolutely. But we're talking about
evangelism, reaching out initially.
Our words can be so aimed at conquering, defeating arguments,
proving our point that we never have a chance to to connect.
And Jesus offers. Just come along with me, join
me. So what do we learn from that
invite? This lesson I hope you should
see by the end of it, is a call to invite people.
Don't try to always bash people over the head.
Don't try to tell people why they're wrong all the time.
Invite them to come alongside. Because if you are seeking God
and seeking to follow him, when your invitation goes to them,
it's an invitation to seek with you.
It's not an invitation to listen to you as your disciple now.
It's not a it's not a pyramid scheme in which you now have
disciples who feed into you. No, it's an invitation to seek
alongside me. And when we say come and see, we
invite to come alongside verse 39.
He said to them, come and see. They came and saw where he was
staying and remained, which means to abide or to stay or to
dwell with him that day. Now it was about the 10th hour.
These people wanted to spend time with them.
They wanted to continue the conversation.
They're moving from curiosity to relationship.
And this opens up a theme that John uses heavily.
Abiding with Jesus, revelation or learning through revelation
with him. So being with Jesus and learning
from the Master in the process and the incarnation of God
living among them. Verse 41 of the two who heard
John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother.
He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, we have
found the Messiah, which is translated Christ.
So now we're switching to somebody else.
One of those people was Andrew, and now we have this branching
out. So John had two people and then
that person went and told somebody else.
This is the pattern. It was Andrew.
We know a lot about Peter, but there's no Peter without an
Andrew. Don't show favoritism with who
you seek. All this person's going to be so
good for us. This person's going to be so
good #1 because it's not about us.
We're don't show partiality. But number two, you don't know
what might come out of it. You might bring an Andrew and
get a Peter out of it for the God's glory and for God's
purposes. Don't show favoritism with
evangelism. So hopefully we're starting to
see we have a divine side of our roles with evangelism.
And then there's a human side. The divine side is created,
bringing life, bringing light and welcomed into a family.
Our side is John says there he is.
There's the Messiah. Andrew says I found him.
Philip says come and see in just a minute.
And Jesus says come and see. Jesus models the human side
here. There is a human side that Jesus
does. Our side is very simple.
Don't overthink our side. Don't overwhelm yourself with
our side. Come and see.
Invite verse 42. We're going to move along
quickly. We're finishing up.
And he brought him to Jesus. Now when Jesus looked at him,
Speaking of Peter, he said you are Simon, the son of Jonah.
You shall be called Cephas, which is translated a stone.
Our second big point in this section is come and see is
better than Let me tell you why I'm right and you're wrong with
evangelism. Verse 43.
The following day Jesus wanted to go to Galilee and he found
Philip and said to him, follow me.
Philips already wrote his disciples.
He says let's go, let's do this now Philip was but was from
Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter.
Philip found Nathaniel and said to him, we have found him of
whose of whom? Moses in the law and also the
prophets wrote Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.
There's the pattern again. You have this one guy who brings
one other person. We can do that.
Philip's invitation and
Nathaniel says to him, can anything good come out of
Nazareth? There's some criticism, there's
the there's the push back. And what does he say?
He says come and see. Does he correct Nathaniel?
Well, you don't understand because the prophecies say out
of the out of Jerusalem this is going to happen, or out of out
of Nazareth this is going to happen.
He doesn't give a long explanation.
He doesn't correct him. He doesn't argue geography or
prophecy. He doesn't shame him.
Just come on, come see, come see.
He shows restraint. This is important because
oftentimes if you talk to people, they don't talk about
not liking Jesus or his teachings or what he's about or
what he gives to the world. They don't like Christians
attitudes. They don't like pressure
tactics. They don't like arguments that
feel dismissive. And maybe you get some people
who feed off of those. Maybe some people cave to
pressure and they like that. They, they feel like, OK, if
they're pressure me, they might be right.
But maybe there's a lot of people who don't like to feel
pressured and people reject our tactics a lot of times more than
they reject Jesus. They don't like arguments that
feel dismissive. And so my question for us is,
what is our priority got cut off up here?
But is our priority to be correct and to prove it to
others? Or is our priority seeking him
and welcoming other people to seek too?
You don't need to overcome every objection.
Philip did it. You don't need to.
You don't need perfect perspective.
You just need authenticity and courage to invite because what
happens? What happens?
Nathaniel said to him, oh, OK, I'm getting ahead of myself.
We'll see what happens in just a minute.
But at this point, I've said you don't need to overcome every
objection. You don't need perfect
perspective and all that. And there may be some objections
out there. People may be say thinking well
in Second Timothy 4 verse 2, it says convince, rebuke and
exhort. How am I supposed to hear this
call to welcome and not be so pressurizing and like telling
people here all is all the truth?
How can I compare that though with what second Timothy says?
Well, great question. I'm glad you asked.
We have a context for this letter.
Peter or Paul is writing this letter to Timothy telling the
young man Timothy, how to lead a congregation.
He's going to work with a congregation to evangelise and
to establish an eldership, to lead a congregation.
That's not evangelism at its core.
The responsibility of Timothy is in the church to rebuke and
convince and exhort. It's not saying every person you
walk up to on the street try to evangelise, tell them how the
wrong rebuke them. That's not the context.
What about Acts chapter 2, one of the greatest sermons ever?
Peter stood up and said you killed the Messiah.
That's pretty convicting. He's coming at those people,
right? Context.
He's writing to people, the Jews who already believed in God, who
knew the scripture, who believed in the Messiah concept, who had
just witnessed the supernatural events of the day of Pentecost.
This isn't seeing somebody on the street you don't know, it's
talking to a Co worker. This is a lot of stuff that
already happened that we can't just pull out of context.
It's not cold evangelism, casual conversation, or outreach to
spiritual outsiders. This is people they were in a
different scenario. And by the way, his sermon in
Acts 2 spends way more time talking about Jesus life, his
death, his resurrection and his exaltation.
And then it ends with you killed him.
So that's not the whole context. Yes, there's a place for
conviction, but it starts with Jesus.
It starts with him. And maybe your objection beyond
those scriptures is the world already knows that story.
The world, the world already knows who Jesus is.
The world already knows this stuff.
What what we're about is or what I have to skip to is, and that's
not going to win. That is converting people to
something that's not first. Jesus.
If we skip the core, it's going to be hollow.
And you know what's wrong with a hollow Peach?
It doesn't reproduce anything. There's no seed in there.
It's not going to keep growing. You take the core out of it.
Tastes like Peach, looks like Peach, feels like a Peach,
smells like a Peach. But it's not going to produce
another Peachtree. You leave the core in there
first. That seed grows another
Peachtree. I'm not saying it's always our
fault why we don't grow, but I am saying it is sometimes our
fault when we don't grow. May we not take out the core.
In an event to skip to what we think matters, we can't skip the
foundation or you'll miss the point altogether and people will
see that and people are not dumb.
People are going to see that. We haven't talked about any
doctrines. This is just the beginning.
Come and see. Jesus meets people where they
are, not where we wish they were.
Verse 47, Jesus saw Nathaniel coming toward him instead of
him. So here's what happened after he
said come and see. Phillips part was simple.
Come and see. And why is that such a good
thing? Well, here's what happens.
He goes and talks to Jesus and Jesus says, behold, an Israelite
indeed, in whom there is no deceit.
What did Jesus do? Jesus identifies Nathaniel.
He didn't even know him, but he knew him and he showed him that
he sees him, He shows him that he values him.
He shows that personal connection to him.
He acknowledges the good in him. And Nathaniel said to him, How
do you know me? Jesus answered and said to him,
Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I
saw you. Some people say this was a
coincidence or just he saw him off in the distance but because
of Nathaniel's reaction, I don't think that's the truth.
Verse 49 says Nathaniel answered and said to him, Rabbi, you are
the son of God. You are the king of Israel.
Was he saying you have 2020 vision that could see me across
the field. I personally think that was a
quiet place of respite and he went under the fig tree and was
my opinion he was praying there in a quiet place by himself.
I don't know that for sure. It doesn't tell us for sure, but
I think that's a lot more likely than he saw him always off
because he turned and said you're, you're the Son of God.
Only God could see me when I was praying alone.
Why is this significant? Jesus does the teaching.
Jesus leads him. Philip brings Nathaniel to Jesus
and Jesus leads him and he provides this beautiful evidence
for him. When verse 50, Jesus answered
and said to him, because I said to you, I saw you under the fig
tree. Do you believe?
Like, is that that big of a deal?
You will see greater things than these.
What do we learn from that point #15 We got a long list of
points. When the invitation is accepted,
God reveals what is needed in given time.
This time He needed this. God gave it to him.
Next time he says you're going to see more.
What does he say verse 51 and he said to him, most assuredly I
say to you hereafter you shall see heaven open and the angels
of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.
That's where this chapter closes.
That's the thing that he says he's going to see.
He needed this right now, but God he but Jesus tells him
you're going to see more. What specifically is it?
It's this scene of heaven opening and angels of God
ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.
What is he talking about? This is a reference that he
would have known back to Jacob's dream in Genesis chapter 28
where he sees this in his dream. He's laying on a rock.
He falls asleep and he sees this vision of angels walking up and
down on this ladder. And John is putting up this
powerful point right at the beginning of the letter, saying
when Jesus quotes and says, I'm going to show you a sign.
That's me. I am the ladder.
I am the ladder that's going to come between heaven and earth
and bridge the gap. I'm going to be the one who
causes people to ascend and descend between heaven and
earth. I'm going to be the bridge.
I am he. And you're going to see that
happen. So when heaven is now touching
Earth, God is reaching humanity. The broad overview of the 1st
chapter of John is man and God and God makes the connection and
God builds the bridge. He builds the the ladder out of
his son Jesus Christ. A God who felt distance now says
come and see. He says dwell with me, live with
me, be together with me. And if you come you will see
more. You're going to see this, that I
am the ladder. John 1 teaches God's glory in
His work, and it teaches our simplicity in our human side of
our work. May we seek Him, may we follow
Him, and may we invite and don't get too far over our toes,
taking on responsibilities and places in our work that's not
ours. It will crumble, it'll be
unsustainable, and we will fail. May we follow his example and
may we treat evangelism maybe more like a living room in the
courtroom. May we have a living room that
is door open. This shows hospitality,
conversation and relationship rather than a courtroom that
puts people on trial that requires evidence, arguments and
proving wrong. Are there?
Is there a time for speaking for truth and correcting error?
Clearly the Scriptures say that, but may we in our evangelism
learn the difference? So what shall we do?
That was the question in Acts chapter 2 that they asked on the
day of Pentecost. We talked about Acts chapter 2
earlier, what they said, what do we do?
They were actually given an invitation.
They were given an invitation. He says repent and be baptized.
After the long sermon, they asked the question and he says
repent and be baptized. What is that?
It's an invitation to forgiveness.
It's an invitation to restoration and to participation
in God's promise. Our part's always an invitation.
It's not a conviction. Conviction happens in the heart
through the word of God. And it might happen like this.
You might say. It is a very simple way of
explaining it is you have to have belief.
Acts chapter 2. Yeah, they believe they realized
what they've done and he tells them to repent, which is
corroborated in Luke chapter 13, verse 3.
And they had to confess Jesus. It wasn't some nameless entity
of a God, it was the man Jesus Christ who died to save them and
they were told to be baptized, repent, be baptized for the
remission of your sins as quoted in all these, in all these
passages, we have a great opportunity to invite and you
are invited today. If you have not already started
this process, you can start, you can follow Him.
And yes, our part is receiving him.
And that looks like a lot of different things that will come
with time. But if you haven't started that
walk, this is the process. And if you have started and you
need to get back on the right path, we offer the opportunity
today for prayers, for support. We are, as we're about to see in
Christ, unified, ready to help one another.
And so please come while we stand and sing the song of
invitation.