How Jesus Deals with Us
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We are gathered as God’s family the day after the day of Christmas. We come to worship the Lord and hear his word. As you know over the last several months we have been studying the bible, studying particularly John’s gospel. I broke off from about the middle of John’s gospel and came back to John, Chapter 1, and we are going to end up with that today. Then in a couple weeks I am going to start back into John 8. But in John 1, we have seen, as Trace said the other night, the audacious claim of Jesus Christ, of who he is, and what he has done; that this is God in the flesh. In the last chapter of John we find Jesus choosing his disciples. It is a fascinating passage where we find, first of all, everyone sort of telling everybody else about Jesus. We learn something from that. We also learn some things, I think, about our lives, who Jesus is and how he deals with us. So as we read this, look and see what happens in the passage and what Jesus is doing and what his disciples are doing. (John 1:35-51)
35 The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, 36and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, ‘Look, here is the Lamb of God!’ 37The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. 38When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, ‘What are you looking for?’ They said to him, ‘Rabbi’ (which translated means Teacher), ‘where are you staying?’ 39He said to them, ‘Come and see.’ They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon. 40One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. 41He first found his brother Simon and said to him, ‘We have found the Messiah’ (which is translated Anointed). 42He brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said, ‘You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas’ (which is translated Peter).
43 The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, ‘Follow me.’ 44Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. 45Philip found Nathanael and said to him, ‘We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.’ 46Nathanael said to him, ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’ Philip said to him, ‘Come and see.’ 47When Jesus saw Nathanael coming towards him, he said of him, ‘Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!’ 48Nathanael asked him, ‘Where did you come to know me?’ Jesus answered, ‘I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.’ 49Nathanael replied, ‘Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!’ 50Jesus answered, ‘Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these.’ 51And he said to him, ‘Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.’
Would you pray with me?
Lord God, we have no business coming before you because of our sinfulness and who we are, but you have made it your business to bring us to Jesus because you have sent him and we have come and we have seen who he is. Because of the grace we have in him, we stand before you and we learn from you. Now be with us today, Lord, as we have celebrated once again the birth of Jesus. Help us now to live for him and learn a little bit more about who he is and what he does in our life. We pray in his name. Amen.
Well often what I have been doing lately is a little precursor to what the passage means and maybe an observation of what is going on. One observation is as you read the passage you notice that everyone is either pointing to or bringing someone to Jesus. We find that they are basically bringing someone to Jesus. John the Baptist starts it out by saying, “Look, there goes the Holy One. There he is.” And two of his disciples hear that, one of them is Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, and the other probably, maybe, is John himself. We don’t know that, but that is a good guess. They in turn, after they spent some time with Jesus, go and get Simon. Then Jesus himself calls Phillip, and Phillip goes and gets Nathaniel. They all basically give an invitation to come and meet Jesus.
Particularly I want to draw your attention to Andrew. Andrew is known as the bringer because the three instances in which we are told about him, most of the time he is known simply as Simon Peter’s brother, he is sort of an add-on, if you will, not well known, not an intellectual, hadn’t written anything; but John, as he writes his gospel a little bit later, notices that Andrew is sort of missing. Three times in John’s gospel, we find Andrew bringing someone to Jesus. First it is Peter himself, then the little boy in John Chapter 6; he brings the little boy who has the loaves and fishes, you remember? Then in John 12, he brings the Greeks who want to see Jesus to Jesus. So he is called the bringer.
Here is a man who really is kind of a nobody. I mean, he is an apostle but he really isn’t known that well. He is not that talented but he does do one thing well. He brings people to Jesus. We can learn from that. We can learn from that. I think a lot of us think: Well I couldn’t do this. If Andrew can do it, you can do it.
As we have gone through this gospel we have seen how we are called to be witnesses. There are basically three things that we need to do to be good bringers, if you will. First we must remember, as John the Baptist did, that it is never about us. Witnessing is never about us. What do I mean by that? Well, I get reminded on not a daily basis, but very often, the view of the Church in our era has changed dramatically over the last twenty-five years. And church, being involved in church, is seen largely, in many cases, as a negative thing. People look at church as something that is detrimental to your faith. There is almost this universal, it’s not universal, but a lot of people feel like church is not a good thing anymore. You know, the old saying, churches are full of hypocrites. You know, to some degree we can say, “yeah, I’m guilty.” After all, the churches are full of sinners and the church is supposed to be a hospital for sinners and not a showcase for saints. I think sometimes, though, when we want people to come to church, we give the impression that “Look at us. We are members of a church, you should be too.” I know we don’t really mean that, but sometimes I think people take it that way. I think we have to be careful what we are selling. We are not selling ourselves. And Lord knows we are not selling the building. Sometimes we bring people in and show them all the rooms and say what a great facility we have, and there is nothing wrong with that; but, first things first. We are selling Jesus. It is not about us. And people smell that. People smell it. They know what it is.
Secondly, we do remember that it is about bringing people to Jesus. It is not about bringing people to church, per se, though church is a great place and I want you to invite people to church, because people find Jesus there. Invite them to bible study, invite them to coffee and talk to them as long as they need to, but it isn’t about you or the church, it is about Jesus. We must remember to be Christ-centered in what we do.
And last but not least, not quite in this passage, but we find in John this undercurrent, if you will, of why people do come to Christ. It is because God is at work. Remember Nicodemus. When Nicodemus says, “How can I be born again?” And Jesus said, “The Spirit blows where he will.” The Holy Spirit is at work. God is always up to something, always up to something. He is always there. You didn’t get there first. God did. I find that tremendously reassuring, that if God is there, I can’t screw it up too bad. If I am just open, God will be there. God will be there. And he is there. He is at work changing hearts. We can’t change anyone’s heart. God can, but we can plant seeds. That is what being a bringer is all about.
Now what is this passage about? Well, it could be about a lot of things but I find in it this idea about who Jesus is and what he does for us. I think there is a great need, and I have said it many times, for people to see the real Jesus. There is a lot of ideas about who Jesus is and I mean over again, say the political Jesus, or the picture of Jesus in the Medieval Art that we see, or even in some of the Sunday school classes you know, “gentile Jesus meek and mild.” Jesus is meek and mild from time to time but as we have seen in John, he is very abrupt. He says, in this particular passage he checks out the motives of the disciples. Notice what he says. He says, when Jesus turned and saw them following (and that is Andrew and probably John) he says, “What are you looking for?” Another translation says, basically it says, “What do you want?” Doesn’t sound like a nice idea, I mean, somebody is following, “What do you want?” Well maybe he said it a little bit better than that, I don’t know. But, it is very abrupt. Well what is Jesus doing? Well people were always looking to Jesus for something. Some of them wanted to have Jesus fix their problems. Others wanted to debate with him. Other people wanted to use him, like the Zealots. They wanted him to join their group and become a revolutionary. There were all kinds of motives that people had for following Jesus Christ and he simply asked a very direct question of these two: “What do you want? What are you looking for? Do you just want to talk and satisfy your curiosity or do you want something real of me?”
I think Jesus deals with all of us this way because we all have motivations about following Christ, and sometimes they are not always great. Now, we hope they are, but sometimes we look at Jesus as sort of a spiritual butler. “Ring, please get me this. Do this for me.” Or we look at him as a spiritual Walmart: “I’ll choose this and this Lord, but I don’t want this and this.” What are our motivations for following Christ? Jesus asks us of that. You know, I have found in my own life and in lives of others that we tend to judge people by the amount, or in a direct correlation, how people will cooperate with our agendas for ourselves. We have an agenda for ourselves; we have a plan. Whether we actually articulate it or not, we have plans for ourselves. If someone comes along and says, “I don’t agree with your plan for yourself,” we write them off. And, we tend to think of God’s love that way too.
Many years ago, in another town, in another place where I pastored, I remember visiting a man who had just retired and he was really angry, because he just retired and then found out about three days after that that he had a terminal cancer and he was angry. To some degree, I don’t blame him. On the other hand, he had plans for himself and God, or somebody, had interrupted those plans. You know there is something I think we need to learn about how we deal with God. A lot of anger and a lot of disappointment could be alleviated if we would remember that we don’t belong to ourselves. We belong to God. It is not about our agenda, it is about his because God doesn’t sell that in his store. That isn’t how God deals with us. God is God. God will always be God. Now in his grace, he allows us to go our own way sometimes. But you will always be missing something. You will always know something is wrong.
I had another friend in seminary who was about in his forties when he got there. He had been a fighter pilot in Viet Nam, and as we talked one day, he said, “You know, twenty years ago I knew I was supposed to go into ministry and I finally gave in.” Now, he had done a lot of amazing things. He flew a jet in Viet Nam; he had done this; he had done that. It wasn’t as though God was punishing him or doing anything like that, but something was missing. He knew it. And only when he surrendered to what God wanted him to do did he finally find his place.
Sometimes we come to God wanting him to bless our own mess, our own agenda. God may let us go on, but he doesn’t bless it.
As God deals with us we have to remember that God is bigger than any doubt we might have. You know, it is very interesting, these two come to Jesus and he says, “Come and see.” They saw where he was staying and they remained with him that day until about 4:00. So basically they spent the night with him. What a night it had to be. Have you ever spent the night with someone just talking? Asking questions and doing this…? That was what this night was all about. Now I realize, this is kind of a guess, but I think it is a very good one. They spent the night with Christ getting their questions answered. You know what? God doesn’t mind you asking questions. God does not mind you asking questions. In other words, these two were checking him out and after they checked him out and asked their questions, Andrew, the next day, immediately goes and finds Peter and says, “We found him. Come and see him.” God doesn’t mind you asking questions because in a sense God wants you to have questions. He wants you to have doubts and uncertainties because only uncertainties lead to the door of faith. In a sense there is only through uncertainty and doubt that we begin to ask questions and then we begin to get answers. You know a lot of us are afraid to have doubts because we are afraid whatever we doubt, God won’t show up; if we have a question, God can’t answer it. God can answer every question, eventually. He doesn’t always do it immediately. Sometimes he makes us wait. But he will answer our questions.
Many years ago in my early Christian life, I fell in love with a writer named C.S. Lewis and I probably read everything he has written once or twice or three times. He was just that great. I remember, I don’t remember the book, maybe it was a series of books, but I remember thinking, as he was speaking, about the relationship of faith and science. Again, I don’t remember the book, maybe it was several books, but as he talked about the relationship of faith and science, it dawned on me, something that is very, very simple. It is easy. That is simply the fact that God invented science. God invented physics. God invented biology. God invented geology. He invented the whole deal. So why was I worried about any conflict between faith and science. Science leads to faith. God invented it. So there is no truth in science out there that we should be afraid of. At the same time, all of the science that we know, or maybe I will put it this way, all of the science out there is like a thousand chapter book and we in our humanness have read about two chapters of it out of a thousand chapter book; and there is still a lot to learn out there. So sometimes people make these definitive statements about this, that and the other and they don’t know anything yet. They know some. They know a little piece. It is like the illustration I gave you three or four weeks ago about the man who owned a big house in the mountains that had a huge view but he had a little window about like that and he couldn’t see much of it. But one day he got the bright idea, I will just make my window bigger and I can see more of it. Well right now, our knowledge is kind of like that little window and we only see just a little bit.
One of the great things about going to heaven is I believe we are getting a new body and an improved brain. I look forward to spending lots of centuries in the heavenly library or maybe in a practical sense traveling around and seeing how things work. I think that’s fun. Now you may not think that is fun, but I would think that is fun.
Yes, we have real knowledge but it is very limited. There is no reason why things should destroy your faith out here and we should be afraid of knowledge or questions or doubts. God will always look on your inside rather than your outside. Now I find this sounded funny, actually. Andrew brought Simon Peter, Simon who came to be called Peter, or Cephas, to Jesus who looked at him and said, “You are Simon son of John but you are to be called Cephas” (which is the Aramaic word for rock, and then John is always translating things for his Greek audience, and he says “which is translated Peter.”) Now can you imagine Peter in his early days who had to be at best a diamond in the rough. A rough guy, with rough language, knew bars very well, and, suddenly meets Jesus and he says, “You’re going to be the rock.” All the other guys are standing around going, “You have got to be kidding. Him! Look at him. Him! You have got to be kidding.” But Jesus knew something about Peter because he looked at other parts of his life that others couldn’t see.
You know, I think we look at others that way, of course. It is very natural for us to judge on the outside and as human beings we have to be aware of what we look like, or what the outside presents. One of the things I had to get used to in the Army was that when you walk up to a commander or someone, the first thing they do is look at you and then they look at your uniform. First thing. First thing. That is why I am not really obsessive about how I look, but when I am in Army uniform I usually am, because I want it to be right and even then I get it messed up half the time, but… Commanders almost have to do that because they have so many people to look at they have to make an instant judgment, but sometimes it is really wrong. I think we judge ourselves by the outside, too. We go, “Well I can’t do that for God, I am no good. I am not worth this. I am not worth that.” You know, we do not have a right to say that. You do not have the right to say that you are worthless if you are in Christ, because you don’t belong to yourself. You belong to somebody who thinks, in Christ, you’re O.K. Sometimes our unwillingness to follow God’s call is more about “I won’t” than “I can’t.” I am here to tell you that God looks on your inside and, none of us are perfect, we all know how we fail. I don’t really need to stand up here and tell you that you are a sinner. You already know that. But in Christ, through his grace, he makes us something much better than we can ever be.
Last but not least and there is probably a lot more I could say, I think God is just great at math. A wonderful story, Nathaniel meets Jesus and he asks, “How did you know me?” And Jesus had apparently seen him in his mind’s eye before he met him and said, “I saw you under the fig tree,” and Nathaniel goes, “How could you have know that?” He realized he couldn’t have known that. Wow! This must be somebody. And Nathaniel says, “My Lord and my God. You are the Messiah. You are the King of Israel.” And Jesus said, “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than this.” This is the theme throughout the Scriptures. “..If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can move mountains.” “I can take two fish and a couple loaves of bread and feed thousands.” If you have just a little bit of faith, I can make something of it. I can make something of you, if you will but give it to me.
There is a man who wrote about Moses, and if you go back and read the story about Moses, Moses, you know, the movie is a little bit wrong. Charlton Heston is just this ummph guy. He does everything right. Even when he does something wrong, he does it right and he is very handsome. But Moses was a little bit of a coward. Now he became great. He became brave. But when God shows up, Moses sort of runs the other way. I don’t blame him, truthfully; I would have done the same thing. But Moses has this staff, it’s his shepherd’s staff, and God says “Take the staff and throw it down.” It turns into a big snake. Moses starts going the other way. I don’t blame him. Big rattle snake, whatever, I don’t know what kind of snakes they had, but I imagine it is a big rattle snake. Then God calls him back and then God says, “Pick up the staff.” “O.K.” If you are like me, I am going to pick it up by the head where the business end. No, he says, “Pick it up by the tail.” “But Lord if I pick it up by the tail, it is going to bite me.” But he picks it up and it becomes the staff again and in that moment, because Moses is willing to do what God says, he becomes transformed. He becomes somebody different. We are so used to holding back of ourselves and our stuff from God, we hold on. We need to save this. We need to save ourselves. We need to save our time. We need to reserve this for us. God I will give you a little bit but not very much. Imagine what God can do in this place and in this city if we had a few of us who would just throw down the staff and pick it up, who would give to God even a little bit, I think we would see God doing great math with you and me.
As we think about the New Year, think about these things, how God deals with us, how God deals with you. And most of all God deals with you and me through grace but he wants us to be powerful witnesses in this place and in the world. Would you pray with me?
Lord God, I thank you for this church, I thank you for these people, I thank you for Christmas and for the good time we have had, for most of us. We pray for those who are sick and those who not doing as well. We thank you for the celebrations though, Lord; and as we begin a new year Lord, we pray that you will give us the will to say yes, the will to be available, the will to turn all that we have, especially ourselves, over to you and see what you can do with them. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.