[Read John 1:35-51]
I heard a great story this past week from someone who disciples young adults. He had been discipling a young man for quite some time. A ways into their discipleship relationship, he had the young man over to his house for a study. After they had studied for a while, he had to take a quick break from the meeting to help put his kid to bed. He picked his little girl up, gave her a kiss on the cheek, tickled her, and took her off to bed. He tucked his daughter into bed and prayed with her. As he walked back to meet with the young man, his wife stepped into the room and gave him a quick peck on the cheek and said, “Thanks for putting her down, hon. I love you.” and then went back to folding the laundry. The guy sat down next to the young man and said, “Sorry about that. Where were we?” and the young man looked at him and said, “How do I get that? How do I get what I just saw that you have? I want that.”
Now, in all reality, it’s a pretty normal scene, isn’t it? A dad putting his little girl to bed. A wife folding laundry late into the evening, trying to get caught up. For many people with young children, it’s a typical day and a typical evening. But, as that young man looking in on that scene, he saw something and it stirred his heart. I think he saw beneath all of the external stuff, and he saw the joy of the Lord underneath everything they were doing. He saw the joy of the Lord in the dad putting his daughter to bed. He saw the joy of the Lord as the wife folded laundry. He saw the joy of the Lord in the interaction between husband and wife. And he longed for it.
Here’s what’s interesting about that story. How effective would that have been if the guy had just told this young man about his evening? He put his kid to bed and prayed with her while his wife did laundry. Sounds normal and maybe a little boring and mundane. The only way this young man could experience the beauty of this moment, was to be there and see it all unfold. He couldn’t learn it from a conversation. He had to be there. He had to come and see.
We get a little glimpse of that in this morning’s passage. Again, our passage begins with “The next day…” (John 1:35) The first day, John the Baptist had his conversation with the religious leaders and explained who he was and why he came and why he did what he did. The second day, John the Baptist saw Jesus and pointed out to everyone that Jesus is the reason he came and that Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Now, it’s the third day, and guess what happens? John the Baptist is hanging out with a couple of his disciples and sees Jesus walking by. So, John looks at his disciples and says, “Behold, the Lamb of God!” (John 1:36). When John’s disciples heard him say this, they left him to follow Jesus—or at least to ask some more questions of Jesus.
Here’s something interesting to notice about this story. This is one of the only times we hear about John the Baptist’s disciples, and what happens? They leave John to follow Jesus. That’s the point. This is another story to show that this story is not about John, it’s about Jesus. It’s another story to point out that Jesus is greater than John the Baptist. It’s another story to show that the purpose of John the Baptist’s ministry was to lead people and direct people and point people to Jesus—to be a witness.
Here’s another thing I want us to notice about this brief moment. We’re told that there were two disciples with John the Baptist. Eventually, we’re told that one of those disciples was Andrew, but we’re never told who the other one is. Now, there’s some speculation to this, but I think this stands on pretty firm ground, most likely the other disciple with John the Baptist is John the Gospel writer. John the Gospel writer, never refers to himself directly, always in a round-about way. And it makes sense, because John the Gospel Writer, knows this story isn’t about him. Remember, he’s a witness, he’s always pointing away from himself to Jesus Christ. So, when he tells this story, he was there when this all happened, but he doesn’t place himself directly into the story, just in the background so that Jesus shines forth more clearly.
As these two disciples begin to follow Jesus they ask him, “Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them, “Rabbi” (which means Teacher), “where are you staying?” (John 1:38, ESV) and Jesus responds “Come and you will see.” (John 1:39, ESV). Come and See. That’s one of the main themes of this entire passage. Come, follow Jesus, and see with your own eyes who he is.
Here’s what’s amazing about what we read in this story. When people come and see Jesus, they immediately recognize who he is—in some ways. When Andrew sees Jesus, he runs to Peter and says, ““We have found the Messiah” (which means Christ).” (John 1:41, ESV). When Philip sees Jesus, he runs to Nathanael and says, “We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” (John 1:45, ESV). Interestingly, Nathanael is not impressed with Philip’s testimony and responds sarcastically. What does Philip tell him? “Come and see.” (John 1:46, ESV). Come and see for yourself, Nathanael. And when Nathanael comes to Jesus and sees him, what does he see? He says, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” (John 1:49, ESV).
One of the things that stands out in this passage is that when people come and see Jesus—when they encounter him, experience his presence—they see that he is worthy to follow and worthy to lay down your life for. It happens every time one of these men comes and sees Jesus. It’s not something that they can always experience through words—or comprehend through a story. They just had to come and see.
Yet, there’s another theme throughout this passage that is much clearer and much more explicit. When people come to Jesus and see Jesus, they immediately go and tell others about Jesus. When people come to Jesus and see that he is worthy, they go to tell other people that they have to see for themselves that Jesus is worthy.
We see it right away at the beginning of this story when John the Baptist sees Jesus and proclaims, “Behold, the Lamb of God!” (John 1:35). He sees Jesus and has to tell his disciples who Jesus is, and encourages them to leave him to follow Jesus. Then, we read this about Andrew: “He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which means Christ).” (John 1:41, ESV). Before he went to spend the day with Jesus, Andrew ran off to find his brother, Peter, to tell him about Jesus. Before he followed Jesus, he found someone else to tell about Jesus. Later, what do we read about Philip, after he begins following Jesus? “Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”” (John 1:45, ESV). Before we hear anything about Philip following Jesus, we read about Philip telling someone else about Jesus.
I even think that one of the disciples went and found Philip, although you don’t get that from many English translations. The ESV reads, “The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.”” (John 1:43, ESV). However, here’s a literal translation from the Greek, “The next day he wanted to go to Galilee and find Philip. And Jesus said to him…” Now some translators are assuming that the “he” at the beginning of this passage is Jesus, but that doesn’t have to be the case. One commentator thinks this “he” is Andrew. I think it’s Peter because we just heard how Jesus renamed Peter. I think it makes sense to then understand that Peter went to Galilee to find Philip and tell him about Jesus—just like Andrew came to Peter to tell him about Jesus. It also makes sense because this passage tells us that Andrew, Peter, and Philip all lived together in the same city—Bethsaida. So, it would make sense that they knew each other and wanted to tell each other about Jesus. It also creates a beautiful story line of witnessing from one person to another: Andrew tells Peter, Peter tells Philip, Philip tells Nathanael.
Once again, this passage is all about witnessing. When people come and see Jesus, their immediate reaction is to tell someone else. They come, see, and tell.
We can also see this in contrast to every other gospel’s story of Jesus calling his disciples. Every other gospel tells the story of Jesus coming to the disciples, saying “Follow me” and they immediately drop everything and follow Jesus. That’s the emphasis, that Jesus is worth dropping everything to follow. In John, the emphasis is in a different place. When the disciples come and see Jesus, we’re not told they immediately follow him, we’re told they immediately go and tell someone else—they witness.
Now, if that bothers you, if you feel like I’m trying to say that the Gospel writers are telling different stories about the way Jesus called his disciples, you’re hearing me wrong. I think the gospel writers are telling the true story of Jesus’ calling his disciples, but each is focusing on a different part of the story to emphasize a different response to Jesus. And to make sure we all understand how these two different presentations fit together—and don’t contradict each other—I think John is talking about the disciple’s first encounter with Jesus and the other gospel writers are talking about an encounter with Jesus that happened later. And that makes a lot of sense. When these disciples dropped everything to follow Jesus—left their jobs and their families behind—they were not encountering Jesus for the first time. They had already come and seen Jesus—they were prepared. Then, when Jesus came to them and said, “Follow me,” they were ready to leave everything behind and follow him.
And here’s what I love about this entire interaction. It ends on such a powerful note. Remember how this whole thing began? It began by Jesus telling the disciples “Come and you will see.” (John 1:39, ESV). So, they came and they saw Jesus and they were amazed. They told others to come and see Jesus and THEY were amazed. Then Jesus says, “Because I said to you, ‘I saw you under the fig tree,’ do you believe? You will see greater things than these.” And he said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” (John 1:50–51, ESV). Now, there’s a lot in this passage that I could unpack, and I don’t have time to do that this morning, but I want to make sure we don’t miss the main point of what Jesus is saying. It’s that little phrase in the middle, “You will see greater things than these.” (John 1:50). Jesus is speaking to Nathanael when he says this, but the “you” is plural. Even though he’s speaking to Nathanael, he’s talking about all of the disciples. He’s saying, “You guys will see greater things than what you’re seeing right now.”
Make sure you don’t miss the progression that just happened in this passage. Jesus begins by telling the disciples to come and see for themselves who he was. They came and saw that he was glorious. Then Jesus basically says to them, “You guys think this is glorious. You ain’t seen nothing yet. If you guys stick around me longer, you will see some glorious things that you will never imagine, that you can’t explain.”
There are a couple things happening here. First, Jesus is foreshadowing things that will happen in the future, glorious things that are going to happen, things that will blow the minds of the disciples. Yet, there’s more going on here. Jesus is also showing the disciples that they don’t quite understand things as well as they think they do. He’s correcting them a little bit. Sure, they saw him and recognized his glory and worth and told others to follow him and followed him themselves, but they don’t fully understand what they’re seeing. So, Jesus is letting them know that there is more for them to learn, more for them to see, more for them to understand about him. They just need to keep close to him and keep their eyes on him and they will eventually see things greater than they’ve ever imagined.
I think there’s a solid example for us in this passage about what it looks like to live the Christian life and what it looks like to be witnesses in the world. If we want to be a Christian in the world and if we want to be witnesses in the world, we first need to come to Jesus—really, truly come to Jesus. We need to be near to him. We need to study him in God’s Word. We need to walk with him and talk with him. As I’ve been saying the last few weeks, we need to grab hold of Jesus Christ by faith.
Second, we need to see that Jesus is completely and totally worthy for us to lay down our lives and follow him. We have to believe this deep down in our heart—we have to REALLY believe this. We can’t fake it or manufacture it. And, unless we actually believe this, our faith will be weak and our witness will be ineffective. How can we tell people to lay down their lives and follow Jesus when we don’t really believe he’s worthy? Why would they listen to us? Why would they care if we don’t care?
Yet, when we truly believe—deep down in our soul—that Jesus is completely worthy of laying our lives down and following him, then we also realize that we don’t need to do much convincing and arguing to try to get people to follow Jesus. We can simply respond like the disciples did. When Nathanael responds skeptically to Philip about Jesus, Philip simply responds, “Come and see!” Come and see this Jesus who is worthy. I’m confident that once you meet Him, once you experience Him, once you get to know him—once you come and see—that you too will see that He is worthy to lay down your life and follow him.
The third thing we can learn from this passage is that we need to talk to our friends and our family and our community about Jesus. I say this to emphasize that we don’t necessarily need to talk to strangers about Jesus—although I’m not saying that’s always bad. However, I am saying that we have a special responsibility to our families and friends and close neighbors to tell them about Jesus. That’s what the disciples did, isn't it? They didn’t run to complete strangers right away, did they? Andrew found his brother. Peter found a friend. Philip found another friend.
Why is it so important for us to tell our family and friends about Jesus? We already have a relationship with these people. We have already gained trust and credibility with them. They are ready to listen to what we have to say. But more importantly, they are living with us—they are connected to our lives. They can Come and See our lives. They can actually see the way Jesus has been working in our lives. They can see the way we love and trust Jesus. They are being prepped and primed for the gospel simply by being connected to our lives. So, I want us to understand that these people are our primary place of influence and impact. We must not neglect our families and friends in the name of “doing ministry.” They ARE your ministry. Show them Jesus.
Finally, I think we need to do all of this with the understanding that we haven’t seen anything yet. We need to live the Christian life with the understanding that Jesus is WAY more glorious that we can even imagine. We need to be witnesses in the world, understanding that Jesus is WAY more worthy than we’ve ever known. We need to keep on following Jesus, knowing that the more we follow him, the more we can be confident that we will see even greater things and a greater glory in Jesus Christ than we could ever imagine. So, keep your eyes on Christ, see his glory, tell others about it, and live in hope and expectation of greater glories to come.