Come and See

Playing it safe

It can be nice to stay in your comfort zone.

We all tend to have the parts of our lives that are safe and familiar. Move beyond that, and it can be scary.

I remember about a year ago now, my eldest daughter wanted a part time job. It required a big move out of her comfort zone to go up to a potential employer and hand them her resume.

Actually, when you’re a teenager or a young adult, there are a lot of times you need to step out of your comfort zone.

I remember when I was at University, I became friends with this girl called Fiona.

She was part of a young adults bible study group that I went to, and we got on really well.

Now, I know some people are really good at this sort of thing, but I was not the type of person that was quick at trying to change a friendship into something more.

You see, things as they were were comfortable. They were known. There was no danger in doing nothing… in carrying on as I were.

As I’m assuming you’ll all have guessed, I did eventually do something. She is now my wife. But it took me going out of my comfort zone.

Sometimes it takes a step out of our comfort zone before we see the changes that need to occur.

Following Jesus can be like this.

Now, I recognise that as I stand here before you today, there will be significant variation in where you’re at regarding following Jesus.

I know some of you have been following Jesus for much of your life and you know what it means to follow him through the ups and the downs of life.

Others of you might be on that journey with Jesus, but perhaps you still feel quite early in that journey.

Others still might be looking at the potential road ahead and, well… you’re just not sure.

Wherever you are at, there is an ongoing call to follow Jesus. And sometimes, this will involve going outside your comfort zone.

Having said that, I just want to clarify something. You see, some of you may be coming from a vulnerable situation. Whether it’s some form of abuse, or mental health issues or just some really trying circumstances.

If that’s you, know that I’m not asking you to make yourself more vulnerable. In God’s kingdom you feel find comfort.

God is reaching out to you, and although I’ve been describing it as stepping out of your comfort zone, in one sense, it is actually about accepting the comfort that God is bringing to you.

But this is what I want to think about this morning. You see, we’re all on this journey, and we all want to move forward. I want to explore what this looks like.

And we’re going to do that by looking at the start of the journey of some of the disciples of Jesus that we saw in the passage that was read earlier.

John’s Gospel

Now, we’re going to spend pretty much all of the period that is going to lead us to Easter in John’s Gospel, so at the start of this series, I just want to orient ourselves with this book.

Well, as many of you will be aware, the New Testament starts with four books that we call the Gospels. We call them the gospels because they tell the gospel story - that is, the good news of Jesus coming to earth, setting up his kingdom, breaking through the hold of death by Jesus dying on the cross and rising on the third day.

If you read through Matthew, Mark, and Luke, you’ll see that there is a lot of similarity between them. Many of the same stories are recounted and often told in a very similar way.

The fourth one, that is John’s gospel, well… it reads quite different. While it does recount some of the same stories, it also tells of many different ones, and includes a lot more stories of Jesus in Jerusalem.

This book gets it’s name as it is traditionally held that the apostle John wrote it. Interestingly, the author only identifies himself as the disciple who Jesus loved. I have heard an interesting argument suggesting this self-identified disciple that Jesus loved, is actually someone other than the apostle John, however, for the purposes of these messages, I’m going to assume the traditional position that it is John who wrote it.

And just for clarity, be careful not to confuse this apostle John with John the Baptist who features quite a bit in this first chapter.

Now, while I’m orienting us in the gospel, one more quick thing that I think is worth noting, John actually tells us why he wrote this book, albeit, in the second last chapter of the book. In John 20:31, John says “but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

In other words, there is an agenda in this book - it’s so that you move towards a belief in Jesus.

The start of the journey

Okay, so let’s dive into this first chapter.

John starts his gospel with an amazing prologue. I actually explored that prologue back on the first Sunday in January, so I won’t go over it again, but it gets us excited for this new light that has come into the world.

From this prologue, the focus shifts to this character called John the Baptist. Here was a rather eccentric character, someone who lived out in the wilderness, ate strange things and wore strange clothes.

Nevertheless, he was getting people ready for the one to come.

And that was the essence of his message. He made it clear, he was not the one to come, but that promised Messiah would be coming.

Well, John the Baptist gathered a number of disciples. Remember, the word disciple literally just means someone who follows the teaching of. But these disciples, being eager to learn, would hang around John, because they sensed something big was going to happen.

If you look at verse 29, John the Baptist sees Jesus, and he has insight about him. He says “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”

We of course, knowing the whole story of what Jesus is going to do, this makes sense to us, but imagine hearing this at this point in time - it would have been quite a strange thing to hear.

Well, in verse 35, we get to the next day, and John is with two of his disciples and Jesus comes by again. And John again says: “Look, the Lamb of God!”

Now, I want you to place yourself in the shoes of these two disciples.

Something must have twigged in their head that John the Baptist was worth following.

It kind of reminds me of Lewis Caroll’s Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland.

Alice sees a white rabbit.

The white rabbit is intriguing. It’s different.

The rabbit goes down a hole.

Alice has a choice. The safe choice is to ignore it. The safe choice is for her to stay where she is, where she understands the world around her.

Curiousity

The two men we’ve just met. They too are in a world in which they know. It was first century Judaism, and this is the world they’ve lived their entire life.

It’s not a rabbit that goes past, but rather talk of a lamb. Not just any lamb, but a lamb of God.

What does that even mean.

Their choice is a bit like Alice’s. They could say “huh, that was interesting”, but carry on in the world in which is familiar. Or they could go down the proverbial rabbit hole.

In verse 35, this is their chance… do they go down the rabbit hole, or stay where it’s known?

They choose the rabbit hole.

Just like Alice just followed the white rabbit, these two men just start following Jesus.

Of course the story goes a little different here.

In our story, Jesus turns around. “What do you want?” he asks.

What do they want? They want to know where this rabbit hole leads.

They’re curious.

Curiouser and curiouser.

I just think of what Alice says before she falls down the hole - “curiousity often leads to trouble”.

It’s that thought that often kills off our search. But not for these men.

They refer to Jesus as Rabbi, and ask him “where are you staying”.

They want to follow this Lamb of God. They don’t know what it is, but they are curious.

I love how Jesus responds. He actually encourages their curiousity.

“Come” he says, “and you will see”.

It’s four o’clock in the afternoon, and these two curious men spend the rest of the day with Jesus.

Now, here’s what I find interesting in all of this… so we know the name of one of these men. While they are nameless initially, verse 40 identifies one of them as Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother.

What’s interesting is that if you read Matthew, Mark and Luke, they tell of a different story in which Andrew and Simon Peter become disciples of Jesus. Now it can sometimes be a little tricky trying to reconcile all of the accounts, however, a basic reconstruction would suggest, this incident happens first. That is to say, they have this encounter where they spend an afternoon with Jesus, but then they go back to their daily business, which we learn from those other gospels is fishing, and then at a later point, Jesus calls them to stop what they are doing and follow him completely.

What John seems to be showing us here, is there willingness to be curious.

And this is the first of four points I want to make this morning.

Encouraging curiousity

I want to encourage you to be curious.

Now maybe that might sound strange. After all, we claim to hold absolute truth. And I’m going to suggest that at the centre of your curiousity, you will find a rock solid truth, but yet the expanse of this truth is beyond our comprehension.

There is something about curiousity. It helps us step outside our preconceived ideas.

The thing about curiousity is that we don’t need things to be certain straight away.

It help us to do what Jesus said to the two - come, and you will see.

Change

Now there is more I could say about being curious, but I want to introduce the next person in this narrative.

Andrew’s curiousity has taken him to the point that he sees something special in this person.

And so he goes to his broth Simon and he tells him - we’ve found the Messiah.

Now that is actually an incredible statement to make, particularly if you understand the full implication of what it means to call someone the Messiah.

It actually is incredible, however, it would seem that Andrew doesn’t really fully appreciate the implication of this - but it does show that his curiousity has shown him that this is someone very very special.

Well, Simon goes along with Andrew. Now Simon, who is about to get the name Peter, is someone who is familiar to anyone who has read through the gospels. He’s known for being outspoken and speaking a lot. Interestingly here, he doesn’t say a word.

Jesus just looks at him and says: “You are Simon son of John. You will be called Cephas (which, when translated, is Peter)”.

Just for clarity, Cephas is the Aramaic word for “rock” and Peter is the Greek word for “rock”.

Being willing to be changed by Jesus

What I want to highlight in this section is the willingness to be changed.

You know, somehow when we picture ourselves moving forward in the world, we think about the changes we want to make to other things. If we can effect change in other people. If we can effect change in system… then we will be moving forward.

There is a time to try and bring about change in other things, but I want to suggest that our journey forward should actually start with a willingness to allow Jesus to change ourselves.

But notice what I said… this is not a self-help idea. I know that self-help books and self-help regimes can be very popular. This is actually about submitting to Jesus and allowing him to change us.

Now, let me just be clear, the change that Jesus has spoken on Peter is something that is unique to him. He is called the rock, something that Jesus is going to expand on later when he talks about building his church on that rock.

This is not the change that Jesus is going to make with us, but he is still ready to transform each of us. He is going to gift us in unique ways. He’s going to give us what we need to do various tasks. We just need to be willing to allow him to change us.

Willingness to Share

Okay, so our first two showed us a willingness to be curious. Peter showed us a willingness to allow Jesus to change us.

Verse 43 takes us to the next day.

A decision is made to leave for Galilee.

Jesus comes across a man named Philip. Now, this part of the story is very brief and gives us very little information. We’re not told any of the circumstances around this meeting, but like Andrew before him, he comes to a quick conclusion that this is someone special.

Now I want to highlight what appears to be Philips first action upon his realisation of who Jesus is.

He goes straight to his friend to tell him the good news. “We’ve found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote”.

It’s interesting that when Nathanael asks whether anything good can come from Nazareth, which was a bit of a burn on the poor town of Nazareth, but Philip tells him to come and see. There’s that invitation to be curious again.

But the point I want to make in this section is that our journey is not something we do alone. Our journey is something we share with other.

Now, here’s the thing. There’s this word that many Christians kind of gets scared by. Its the word evangelism.

But what if we think of it as being excited by what we’ve discovered on our journey and that we just naturally want to share it with others.

You see, this should be one of those really natural things. We share because we can’t help but do otherwise.

Willingness to believe

Okay, well so far, we’ve seen in this passage, a willingness to be curious. We’ve seen a willingness to allow Jesus to change us. We also seen a desire to share the journey with others.

I’ve got one last point to share, and we see this in the final conversation between Jesus and Nathanael.

Well, after Nathanael just dissed the home town of Jesus, Jesus is the first to speak as Nathanael approached Jesus.

Jesus says of Nathanael: “Here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit”.

Something in that statement makes Nathanael feel seen. I’m mean really seen. I mean… known.

“How do you know me?” Nathanael asks.

Now, answer Jesus gives is not the one I was expecting, but he says “I saw you while you were still under the fig-tree before Philip called you”.

There’s a lot that could be unpacked there, particularly if we think about the symbolism of a fig-tree.

But I want to go straight to Nathanael’s response. Because with this simple statement, Nathanael declares: “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the king of Israel”.

Nathanael believes.

Even Jesus seems almost astounded by his belief.

Open your heart to believe

And so this is my fourth encouragement for you today. Open your heart to believe.

I’m not saying just be gullible and believe whatever is in front of you. This is a belief of what we discover through our curiousity. It’s a belief based on reason, historical evidence, testimony, experiences… It’s a belief in what is real.

Jesus goes on to say to Nathanael - “You will see greater things than that”

“Very truly I tell you, you will see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man”.

Now you might ask - what in the world does that mean.

Actually, Jesus is quoting a part of a story found in the book of Genesis, specifically Genesis 28:12. Time won’t allow for a full description of this episode, but it’s where the expression Jacob’s ladder comes from. Jacob sees a staircase with angels going up and down on it.

For Jacob, it was accompanied with God re-establishing his promise with Jacob. For Nathanael, he is going to witness the opening up of God’s kingdom into this world.

While this is a promise that Jesus is making to Nathanael, it is something that extends to us as well.

You see, this is definitely where my earlier analogy of Alice chasing a white rabbit ends. The white rabbit was something fanciful. The chase was a chase away from reality.

For us, what we find is something more real than we can ever really know in this life time.

It takes an open heart to see this. But when you do, it is truly incredible.

Conclusion

This chapter really is just the start of a journey.

As we go through this series through John’s gospel, we’re going to be on this journey, one where we’ll make lots of discoveries along the way.

But as we do, I want to encourage you to be curious. Come and see. See for yourself.

And as you allow your curiousity to take you on a journey, to be open to Jesus changing you… to have a desire to want to take others on the journey with you… and to open your heart to believe and see the great things God has in store for you.

Let me pray...