Great Expectations

How many of you were in the Army? One, two, well, Marines, Army.

Okay, so do you remember some of these Army slogans? I want you for U.S. Army.

I don't see these too much anymore. How about this one? Be all you can be in the Army.

An Army of one. These are some of the slogans.

The Army's recruiting pitch has been evolving over the years as the needs and

desires of the target population has changed, but Jesus hasn't changed his pitch at all.

In fact, Jesus made the same offer to the first disciples that he makes to us today.

This week, I want us to look at a recruiting pitch that Jesus uses.

What does he ask of us, and what does he promise in return?

I want us to take a look at the scriptural text this morning,

which is found in John 1, verses 35 to 51.

John 1:35–51

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 him and asked, What do you want? Or something like that.

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. Andrew, Simon Peter's brother,

was one of the two who heard what John had said and who had followed Jesus.

The first thing, the first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and

tell him, we have found the Messiah, that is the Christ, and he brought him to Jesus.

Jesus looked at him and said, you are Simon, son of John, you will be called

Cephas, which when translated is Peter, which means little rock or Petra.

The next day, Jesus decided to leave for Galilee, finding Philip.

He said to him, follow me.

Philip, like Andrew and Peter, was from the town of Bethsaida.

It doesn't say this, but I'm going to add the first thing Philip did,

which kind of goes in there.

Philip found Nathanael and told him, we have found the one Moses wrote about,

in the law and about whom the prophets also wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.

Nazareth, can anything good come from there? By the way, this is a statement

that was used very often because Nazareth was like on the other side of the tracks, okay?

It was not a town to be in.

And so it was a common statement in that time to say, Nazareth,

can anything good come from there?

Nathanael asked that. Come and see, said Philip. When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching,

he said of him, here truly is an Israelite to whom there is no deceit.

How do you know me? Nathanael asked. Jesus answered, I saw you while you were

still under the fig tree before Philip called you.

Then Nathanael declared, Rabbi, you are the son of God.

You are the king of Israel. Keep in mind about being under the fig tree,

okay? Because we'll refer to that in the message.

Jesus said, you believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree.

You will see greater things than that. He then added, very truly I tell you,

you will see heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.

Years ago, a very well-known theologian and biblical scholar—not.

Me—was speaking at a conference for laypeople in a very prominent mainstream denomination.

He spoke for many hours, lecturing on the inaccuracies that he found in scriptures,

and how many of the stories in the Bible could not be completely true,

but were conceptions of the,

authors and not really fact at all.

He continued to talk about the belief that Jesus was both God and human and

spoke that it was not necessary to believe in all of that.

That was spoken about Jesus. And as he concluded his highly intellectual speech,

he opened the floor up for questions, knowing that the conference would extend

well past the lunch hour.

Many of the participants in the conference had brought sack lunches with them.

One of the participants stood up and raised his hand to be acknowledged to address

a question toward the speaker. When he was recognized, he took an apple out

of his sack and began to speak to the speaker.

My dear sir, crunch, crunch, you have spoken for several hours,

crunch, crunch, about all the theories, crunch, crunch, that you have about

the word of God, crunch, crunch.

I have no reason, crunch, crunch, to doubt your scholarship,

crunch, crunch, nor your intellect intentions to be factual, crunch, crunch.

With that, the questioner threw the last bite of his apple.

He finished the last bite of apple and threw the core back into the sack.

Then he continued, My dear sir, my question is this.

That apple that I just ate, was it sweet and tasty or was it sour to my tongue?

The speaker angrily replied to the questioner, How can I possibly know whether

it was sweet and tasty or sour to the tongue?

I did not taste that apple. The questioner then replied, neither,

sir, have you tasted my Jesus.

Psalmist wrote, taste and see that the Lord is good.

And Jesus said to these first disciples, come and see. They asked for information.

Where are you staying? But Jesus understood that they wanted more than information.

They wanted to follow him and be with him in a relationship.

Come with me, be with me, find out about me.

When I was in college, many of my fellow students had grown up in Christian

homes where they were told what to think and believe without really understanding

why they were to believe what they were told to believe.

They were not even allowed to question what they were taught.

When they arrived at college where they were challenged to defend what they

believed, many lost their faith because they did not have the foundation of

a real relationship with God.

Their relationship had been with generational churchgoing and not really knowing

and experiencing Christ for themselves. They were churchians and not Christians.

But Jesus never expected his followers to believe something just because he said so.

His invitation now is the same as it was then and as always has been, and it is, come and see.

A few verses later, when Philip went to Nathanael with the good news about Jesus,

when Nathanael raised doubt, Philip repeated the words to Jesus, come and see.

In fact, the very same offer was made to shepherds on the hillside outside Bethlehem 30 years earlier.

The angel said, come and see the child born to be your Savior.

Three years later, as two women named Mary went to the tomb of Jesus,

the angel said to him, he is not here.

He has risen, just as he said, come and see the place where he lay.

And after an encounter with Jesus, the woman at the well went back into town

and invited others to come to Jesus, saying, come and see the one who has told

me everything about myself.

Jesus' offer of invitation has always begun with the invitation to know the

truth by knowing him and to come and see. And so then he said this, follow me.

So the next day, Jesus decided to leave for Galilee. Finding Philip,

he said to him, follow me.

And so S.I. McMillan, in his book, None of These Diseases, tells a story of

a young woman who wanted to go to college, but her heart sank when she read

the question on the application blank that asked, are you a leader?

Being both honest and conscientious, she wrote no and returned the application

for college expecting the worst.

To her surprise, she received this letter from the college. Dear applicant,

a study of the application forms reveals that this year our college will have 1,452 new leaders.

We are accepting you because we feel it imperative that they have at least one follower.

In our society, everybody wants to be thought of as a leader,

and it truly is important to have leaders and to be a leader.

In fact, one way or another, we are all called to be leaders and we are all leaders.

It's just that we are called to be leaders in different ways and for different

reasons and in different places.

In the same way, at given points in our lives, we are all followers.

We cannot be leaders all the time in every situation.

There are certain times and circumstances is when we must follow where others lead us.

Several years ago, when we lived in Ottumwa, Iowa, I came across two ladies

in a moving truck, stopped on Elm Street near our church.

I stopped and asked them if they needed any help. They said they just moved

into one of the apartments right,

where they were parked on a neighboring street and needed to return the moving

truck to the station, but the road was closed for construction past their.

Apartment, and they didn't know, they couldn't figure out their way how to get

around the construction.

I knew where they needed to go, and I had the knowledge to be able to explain to them.

So I said, follow me, and I will lead you there. Have you ever done that?

You could explain it to them how to get there, but it's almost just as easy

to show them, just follow me, and we'll go Jesus didn't say,

sit down here and I'll teach you everything I know about eternal values.

He said, follow me and I'll show you.

You can find hundreds of books in any bookstore on the subject of leadership,

but you will find very few books on how to be a good follower.

The name that we use to refer to these group of 12 reflects this invitation.

We called them disciples. Jesus called them disciples, which simply means followers.

In the early church, this was the name applied universally to the believers.

It was not for several years that the name Christian was applied to them.

Discipleship also implies a level of a relationship.

A disciple is different than a student.

A disciple learns best when he or she is close enough to the teacher to see

what the teacher does as well as what he teaches. Relationship requires that

we walk in the same path. Christ doesn't call us to anything.

He calls us to something. He calls us not to nothing, but to something.

He calls us to be followers of his.

No longer are we to walk in the path of our own choosing, as scripture says,

and some did was right in their own eyes, but we are to walk in Christ's path.

This is what the Bible calls repentance, turning around.

It's not how we are saved, but it's how we respond to the good news that Jesus

has died to pay the price for our sin.

We don't simply say, Jesus, I ask you to forgive me. Now I'm yours.

We say, Jesus, I ask you to forgive me. Now transform my life into one of yours.

And we turn and we follow him.

We respond to the good news by turning away from our disobedience and living a life like Christ.

He calls us to come and see if he's trustworthy.

And those who trust him, he calls to follow. And then thirdly,

he invites us to bring our friends.

The next thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him,

we have found the Messiah, that is the Christ, and he brought him to Jesus.

Philip found Nathanael and told him, we have found the one Moses wrote about

in the law and about whom the prophets also wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.

Although it isn't explicit in this text, from the actions of Andrew and Philip,

it is clear that Jesus encouraged his first disciples to invite other friends who were close to them.

It's equally clear that they were excited to do so.

There was something about Jesus that made them say, I want to tell somebody else who this guy is.

So the good news that a Savior had come was too good to keep to themselves,

and they wanted to tell others. Before he left them for the final time on earth,

Jesus gave them what's known as the Great Commission.

We could call it instead, rule number one, go and make followers.

And notice how simply it's done. They simply said to their loved ones,

we've found the Messiah.

We've found the answer.

Come and see. Follow me as I follow Christ. The story is often told about a

young salesman who is disappointed about losing a big sale.

As he talked with his sales manager, he complained, I guess it just proves you

can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.

The manager replied, son, take my advice. your job is not to make him drink,

your job is to make him thirsty.

So it is with evangelism. We are called not to make people accept Christ. We are called.

To ask them to follow us, come and see Jesus, make them thirsty enough,

tell them the story, tell them your story, which is also God's story,

which is also his story or history.

Invite them to see the change in your heart and life.

Invite them to experience the presence of God when his people come together to worship.

Share the story about the one who died for our sins and rose again,

about the one who called you to follow him.

Make them thirsty for what Jesus has to offer, and then invite them to come

and see. How do we do that?

We live a life that is worthy of the calling of being called Christian in such

a way that when we say, come and see, people will look at us and say,

there's something about you that I.

Want to find out why you exist, why you do that.

Live your life in such a way, speak in such a way, love in such a way that they

will be thirsty to taste what you have.

The final phrase of Jesus's recruiting pitch is most exciting of all.

Jesus said to Nathaniel and to us, kind of like,

in one of my old business conferences, international conferences,

this was a song that was played, and you'll remember it.

You ain't seen nothing yet. And that's kind of what Jesus is saying to us and to them.

You ain't seen nothing yet. When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching,

he said to him, here's a true Israelite in whom there is no his seat.

How do you know me? Nathaniel asked.

Jesus answered, I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you.

Then Nathanael declared, Rabbi, you are the son of God. You are the king of Israel.

Jesus said, you believe? Because I told you, I saw you under the fig tree.

You will see greater things than that.

And so we see that his fourth statement is, you ain't seen nothing yet.

I'm told that it was customary. And this goes back to that, why he was sitting

on the fig tree. It was customary in those times for devout Jews.

To go and sit under fig trees to pray.

We don't know, of course, why they had to be under a fig tree,

but they would go sit under a fig tree.

And we don't know, of course, if that's exactly what Nathaniel was doing when he was called by Philip.

Certainly, we don't know what he might have been praying about,

but we can have a guess. It's not impossible that he was praying for the coming

of the Messiah, as they were often doing in that times.

It seems like they were almost a daily prayer by the Jews was praying for the coming Messiah.

Whatever he was doing, he was startled and amazed at Jesus's revelation of his knowledge about him.

It's like, who are you that you could see I was sitting under a fig tree before Philip called me?

And Jesus responds as we would today, hey, if you think that's something,

wait until I get warmed up.

Just seems like the woman at the well, when she spoke to him,

he said, bring your husband. And she says, I don't have a husband.

And he says, you're right. The fact is you've had five husbands and the one

you're with is not your husband. How did he know that?

And yet this was marvelous to her. She went on and said to her neighbors,

she said, come and see the man who knew everything about me. Thank you.

Isn't that interesting that God in the person of Jesus keeps doing that?

In fact, three years later, just before he went to the cross,

he made an even more shocking statement. He said, I tell you the truth,

anyone who has faith in me will do what I am doing.

In fact, he will do greater things than these.

A life that's spent following Jesus is meant to be an exciting life,

a life of miracles. Some of those miracles are happening all around us,

and we just need to open our eyes to see them.

The providence of God that we often dismiss as coincidence.

Others are there for the asking. The greatest of all is the miracle of grace that saves us from sin.

It's the miracle of grace and mercy that God himself and the person of his son,

the word of God made flesh, would choose to pay our side of the covenant by

dying for our violation of.

That agreement when we disobeyed.

So God setting up the ravine, we are to cut the animals and lay them on either

side of the ravine like Abraham did.

And then as part of the covenant, both parties of the covenant would walk through

that ravine through the blood, signifying, if I violate our contract,

may this be to me like is done to these animals.

May I suffer with the blood of my own life.

And yet in this situation, in this covenant that God has made with us to be,

his people, he has taken the covenant for us by the blood of his own son.

It's Christ who paid our penalty, and that's the most amazing miracle.

It's the miracle that the slave trader turned pastor by the name of John Newton

wrote when he penned these words.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.

I once was lost, but now I'm found.

Was blind, but now I see. As Nathaniel discovered, life with Jesus begins amazing,

and it gets even more amazing every day.

I began with the proposition that Jesus' recruiting pitch, his invitation,

has always remained the same.

He says to us, come and see, experience him in relationship,

his presence is to power.

Then he invites us to follow him and to invite others to follow him in what

he promises will be a supernatural journey.

And that simple invitation to come and see continues all the way through the Bible.

In fact, we see in the last chapter of the Bible, Revelation 22, verse 17, it says,

Revelation 22:17

the spirit and the bride say come and let him who hears say come,

whoever is thirsty let him come and whoever wishes let him take the free gift,

of the water of life and still for us.

And for all people everywhere Jesus is calling to us come and see follow me,

bring your friends and you ain't seen nothing yet.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, as we close this time of worship,

we give you thanks and praise.

Father, we praise you for who you are and what you've done.

But Father, you have called through the word of God made flesh,

you have called to us to come and see, to follow you, to bring our friends and

to experience a life that's beyond anything we could ask or imagine.

And so Father, we ask that you would be with us as we go and show our friends

and neighbors a Jesus that they need to see.

In Jesus' name, amen.