What Do You Want - John 1:35-51
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
We are going to be in the book of John this morning. John 1:
Last Christmas we took our little boys to Cabela’s for a picture with Santa. COVID made everything so strange and this whole scene was very un-enchanted you could say.
Plexi glass barriers and face shielded Santa.
No kids in line waiting just odd. But as Santa walked up to the boys, I knew I would hear the same classic question and warmth. We all know the question “What do you want”
I was wrong. This Santa began to tell the boys to make sure they left him a large pepperoni pizza, and 100$, and a king size Reese's cup. I was uncomfortable and just started telling the boys to tell Santa what they wanted.
Even if this experience wasn’t traditional, that time of year is still saturated with the question “what do you want?”
While we hear it and ask it all of the time at restarants, birthdays, or around Christmas, I want us to see how incredible this question is
It is one of the most powerful and soul-searching questions anyone can ask you.
And it is the first Question Jesus asks His first followers.
He could have said anything…John could have recorded anything.
Yet the best way for him to convince us that Jesus is worth giving our life for is to ask us all....
What Do You Want
We are going to listen to Jesus ask us 3 Questions and through them tell us why he is worth any cost he asks us in our life.
What do you want
Will you come and see
Will you follow
What do you want
What do you want
The next day John was there again with two of his disciples. When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, “Look, the Lamb of God!”
When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus. Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, “What do you want?”
They said, “Rabbi” (which means “Teacher”), “where are you staying?”
They are told by the man they have followed (John) that this Jesus is the ONE.
The one they have read all their lives about and the one who John ushered the way for.
You have to know what the expectations were for these guys.
Israel was the great kingdom. A powerful nation loved by God.
They rejected God after Solomon the last decent king and they were conquered.
Sent into slavery and even when they returned home it was under occupation.
Rome occupied with an Iron fist.
So the Old Testament promise of the Messiah was going to solve their sin problem once and for all…and restore them to the kingdom they once were...
To Jews even today the restoration of Israel is Everything
So with this expectation John the Baptist tells his followers…the One is Here .....There he is
And what does this one DO according to John…Takes away sin!!! The one who is the Messiah they have longed for is here !!!! Bomb shell dropped
To show them and Us what sin really is, what our need of saving is rooted in is he asks a question.
What does Jesus ask them…” what do you know”? NO, “What have you done”? NO,
To show the Sin that needs God alone he asks what do we want”?
SIN that needs a Savior is not a mind issue it is a heart issue.
Sin is a love issue. it is a worship issue and Jesus want them to see it wants us to see it.
What is this sin?
Its having wants and longings and hearts that reject our maker and King and instead build rival kingdoms with wrong longings hearts and wants.
We don’t want His Rule we want our own.
We don’t want His Kingdom we want ours.
We don’t want his gifts how he wants them used we want money and food and sex and freedom how we want
This is sin. This is what began in the garden.
The serpent basically asked Adam and Eve what they wanted and they wanted to be lovers of self as supreme and ultimate instead of God and so has every human who has ever lived since
You graduates, those of you in college or those who have been know the dreaded philosophy class.
Is the chair in the room if i leave and stuff like that.
You will come across a man named René Descartes
He famously concluded about mans existence “I think therefore I am”
He believed that he existed because he was a thinking thing.
Sadly the church treats us a thinking things. That a transfer of knowledge will change us....
Jesus knows better.
Jesus knows that we are not thinking things first. we are beings who long, who love, who hunger and thirst not from our bodies but from our hearts.
Have you ever done something yet “known better”.
Those things show our drive from our wants not our minds.
The wisest man who ever lived, Solomon knew this.
Guard your heart above all else,
for it is the source of life.
James K.A. Smith says “To be human is to have a heart. You can’t Not love. SO the question isn’t whether you will love something as Ultimate; the question is what you will love as ultimate. You are what you love”
We bet our life on some savior. We want something to bring our version of the good life to reality.
Again Smith says this so well “You cant not bet your life on something. You cannot be headed somewhere. We live leaning forward, bent on arriving at the place we long for”
We sit here 2000 years later the same beings as these 2 disciples with the same question from our creator before us
WHAT DO YOU WANT? WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING FOR?
WHAT WILL YOU LOVE AS ULTIMATE? IT IS ALL THE SAME QUESTION
The church has gotten this all wrong. Satan and the world have not.
The enemies of your soul know it is a war for your heart.
What defines the good life to you is what you will live bent for....no matter how many lessons you listen to in Youth Group
This is a war for your heart....Jesus knows it....That is why he goes right at the heart of every man and every woman with the question. What do you want as ultimate?
How you answer that will shape the trajectory of your life.
Parents …what have you modeled for 18 years in your house as ultimate?
Is it the American Dream Monday to Saturday then some cultural Jesus for an hour or so hoping the pastor tells your kid not to drink and sleep around?
What are we showing those around us is the place where flourishing and resilient joy is found in a world of pain and break up and loss and funerals and dark nights of the soul?
Before you do anything ask…what do i want…then answer with how the gospel informs your longings and begs you to find your longings satisfied in their creator
There were a lot of people who wanted Jesus for the wrong reasons then and there are today.
Many wanted a political military Jesus to kick Rome out and make Israel great again.
Many today want a get out of hell free card with no concern for the mission of God or a life of obedience.
There’s alot of churches selling a different Jesus to fit your desires
There’s one Jesus. He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords and He demands and commands all worship wants and submission.
What is amazing is that He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords and He wants you. He wants your wants to be made right again.
He wants you to want what you were made for. Him and life in glad obedience in His Kingdom.
This question is the most loving thing Jesus can ask. It is the most crushing question to answer because it exposes our heart right in front of Him but it leads us to freedom.
Later John will show how Jesus is the light of the World.
He takes His perfect light and takes us by the hand and walks us into the basement of our hearts where we don’t want to go and shines the light.
You see in the light of the One Who Is Light that you have wanted a rival kingdom.
We see what sin is and how we are made to love and live for Him. You and I are made By and For Him
St. Augustine puts it this way “You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you”
Cornelius Plantinga says “We must place our life in the very hands of God and trust what those hands might do to it. We must shun emotional and religious junk food that might spoil our appetite for God and our hunger and thirst for righteousness… Because the Point of our lives ... is to discover God’s purposes for you and make them your own”
These 2 in our passage know they need more than what sacrifice offered. They needed the Savior.
They don’t know how much they need it. And we don’t know until we are face to face with our heart. And Jesus exposes it with a question.
“what do you want”
What do you work for, what defines the good life to you, a life well lived? what is your deepest love. “What do you want”?
Here is the awesome part…he asks another question and doesn’t leave us there busted up…he invites us to see where to find our deepest longings satisfied in Him....he asks Come and See
Will You Come and See
Will You Come and See
Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, “What do you want?”
They said, “Rabbi” (which means “Teacher”), “where are you staying?”
“Come,” he replied, “and you will see.”
So they went and saw where he was staying, and they spent that day with him. It was about four in the afternoon.
In the question What do you want our hearts are exposed.
If sin is not just some wrong behavior we do but the overflow of our wrongly ordered loves....
Then our wants need rehabilitation
We have to be shown where to truly find the good life we were made for.
We have to be shown ways of life that lead to the flourishing we truly want
This may come as a suprise to many of you but God is infinitely concerned with your happiness and joy.
It is not that hungering, thirsting, longing, are bad. He made you that way....
He is infinitely concerned that you come and see that in a busted up world you can only find joy and hapiness when your wants, and longings are in the right order.
He wants you to enjoy the world he has made. Its ok to want to be loves, to be comforted, to not want pain, to not be alone, to have a life that matters.
What he asks you to come and see is that He is the satisfaction you long for.
That he alone can show you how to want him first then be able to rightly enjoy relatioships without being needy or a facebook stalker or a black hole of selfishness.
There is a classic hymn that says that the things of earth will grow strangely dim the light of his glory and grace”
I think Jesus is pushing back on that in this passage.
He is saying to these disciples let me show you how I am Immanuel God with you right here on this earth.
We think of our christian life as a hunt for the next big event…where we are emotioanlly taken out of this world as it grows dim
Jesus is asking to come and see that it is in the mundane and every day of life that he alone can change your wants and free you from bondage to toxic longings
In an afternoon over snacks and good conversation these 2 men encounter God…and it wrecks them
We have such a G rated view of God yet he is God With Us in every dark place of life and is willing to go there” however busted up that dark place is you are in.
It is exposing our neediness that we see how great he is.
How great the ways he teaches are
He doesn't shy away from our broken wants He asks to see them to fix them.
The author of Hebrews says in Hebrews 4:16
16 Therefore, let us approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in time of need.
He showed them how needy they were. They needed sin forgiven not a politician or military leader.
They had a greater problem than Rome. We have a greater threat then Washington or culture
Sin
He asks us to show him the mess we have made to show our great need.
A pastor i love uses a parenting example to show the gritty mess God invites us to show him.
“If a child believes that her parents cannot handle wht she actually questions or feels, she will pretend all is well, or constantly tantrum about. But she will not reveal her true heart in all of its nobility and ugliness, needy for help, longing to try, rotting with secrets. But show her a parent who has the capacity for her, and she will risk, argue, ask, laugh, learn, and cry in the presence of Love”
Jesus came to be the ultimate presence of love. He asks because He wants all of you …to make all of you what you were made to be
He asks them to…come and see how over dinner, bread, making food and good conversation I can reorient your heart to want how you were made too.
James Smith again says what Jesus is doing here “You wont be free from your hearts deformation with new information”
Jesus asks us to come and see not come and listen to a seminar.
A a pastoral hero of mine says “ways teach more than words”
What are the ways of the story you have bought into?
How are they subconsciously shaping your wants away from the ONE who made you?
Jesus is asking these disciples to Come and See the beautiful ways of life when you see your life in the Story you were made for.
For these 2 disciples it was to show them that God with Us was more than a military political leader to get the glory days back. He came to restore every inch we lost in Eden
For us today he asks us to come and see a better story for your life.
Our culture holds self actualization as salvation. Becoming who you feel you are inside is the point of life.
There aren't many Netflix shows that don’t have this self actualization as the theme.
This is the air we breathe. Its the point of tik tok and instagram stories and facebook.
We define ourselves and demand every person institution and God himself serve our quest for salvation in becoming our true self.
How is that working out? That story stinks
Jesus is saying to us today Come and See a better story.
Come and see how much better it is when i tell you who you are.
Were the creator defines you, why you are here, what is truly wrong in the world and where the only place is it can be fixed for good.
And he does it over an unseen, unspectacular afternoon with good food and good conversation.
I can only imagine that scene.
That unseen afternoon with the blind world bustling outside that room unaware that two men were seeing for the first time in their life
Like they hear a voice they have always deep down known but never had found.
I watched a video of a young kid at a boxing gym. He is blindfolded and told it is part of his training.
The kid doesn’t know that the sparring partner he is fighting blindfolded is his dad who is surprising him returning home from combat in the Army.
The dad speaks and the blindfolded boy stops swinging and lifts his head up.
You can tell he isn’t sure so he swings a few more times and the dad speaks again and tells him to keep his hands up.
Unsuspecting. Blindfolded the boy heard his dads voice and new it.
He rips off the gloves and blind fold and melts in his dads arms.
We are blind in our rebellious wants.
Our misplaced destructive loves and longings. We are blind to how lost we are the damage we have done and still do.
But we are His.
Love has come to call your name.
A voice you know deep down is your creator.He lets them see the One who made them and how beings who were made to want only find joy when we want what He wants the way he made it to be enjoyed.
He tells them the Story of reality they are in…and shows them the ways that lead to flourishing.
He shows them the point of life
“The point is to discover God’s purposes for you and make them your own”
And it changes the world.
Will You Follow
Will You Follow
One of the two who heard John speak and followed Jesus was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which means Christ). He brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, “You are Simon the son of John. You shall be called Cephas” (which means Peter).
Andrew was one of the two who heard what John had said and who had followed Jesus. The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother and announce, We have found the Messiah. He thus became the first in a long line of successors who have discovered that the most common and effective Christian testimony is the private witness of friend to friend, brother to brother.
Do you see the love of God for the mundane everyday?
In the everyday of a regular day. Over dinner these 2 became the most fortunate jews in history up to that point in time.
They met the long awaited long prophesied HOPE of Israel.
He didn't invite to hear a professional tell the fire and brimstone at some event
I see churches market their Sunday mornings as a “worship experience”
Here is our God.
Telling us that the only way to rehabilitate our messed up wants is through God with us in the unseen everyday.
No event
He wants your everyday…to change the everyday of those as lost as you were.
His questions make us contemplate, ponder, wrestle and expose us.
His ways make us new as we follow Him.
It is His promise to those who follow.
“Behold I make all things new”
The Gospel according to John 3. Jesus Gains His First Disciples (1:35–42)
When Peter is brought to him, Jesus assigns a new name as a declaration of what Peter will become. This is not so much a merely predictive utterance as a declaration of what Jesus will make of him.
The Gospel according to John 3. Jesus Gains His First Disciples (1:35–42)
the focus is much less on what this name change means for Peter, than on the Jesus who knows people thoroughly (cf. vv. 43–51), and not only ‘sees into’ them (cf. 47–48) but so calls them that he makes them what he calls them to be
To become what he created you to be.
To have the wants you can only have satisfied in Him.
To have a daily apprenticsehip with the One who came to rescue you with His blood.
To have the mission to spread His fame to the ends of the earth.
That is the great endeavor of the human experience.
Will You Follow
The call is to total abandonment. Not partial.
Not the parts you are willing to give up but demand are off limits to God.
To Follow is to lose your life in HIm and that is the only way to truly find it.
Jesus says this to any brave enough to follow…broken enough to risk.....
For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life because of me will find it.
On an unremarkable day, in an unremarkable town, with the bustle of life around them....these men were asked questions by their creator and sustainer that changed their life.
In this man asking questions they heard the voice they always knew
David Platt summarizes the result of that mundane day this way:
“In Jesus these men found someone worth losing everything for. In Christ, they encountered a love that surpassed comprehension, a satisfaction that superseded circumstances, and a purpose that transcended every other possible pursuit in the world. They eagerly, willingly, and gladly lost their lives in order to know, follow, and proclaim him. In the footsteps of Jesus, these first disciples discovered a path worth giving their lives to tread.”
Conclusion
Conclusion
We find ourselves today on a day not much different than that one.
It is a normal day full of mundane things and a world unconcerened about a few people here in this building
But the Creator of the universe is asking us here the same questions he asked on that day
What do you want?
Will you come and see that his ways are better?
Will you lose yourself to truly be found and follow him?
It was an unremarkable day 2000 years ago that changed the lives of 2 men.
This normal day can change yours forever too
I want to enter our time to respond.
Danny is gonna come play some music. Ryan and Emily will be back in the back right corner to be available if you need to talk more privately and i will be down front.
Let the questions of Jesus pierce to your heart.
IF you have wanted the wrong things and need to run to him and be forgiven do it today
If you have never wanted His ways but your own and need to know how to follow him we are hear to help you learn
If you need to decide today to follow the voice you have always needed and hear today from Jesus come repent and beleive today
I will give us some time to respond and then close us in prayer