Behold the Lamb

It's good to be here.

I know I'm a guest, but I think I found a home among the beards.

It is good to be with you.

I'm glad to be here.

As was mentioned, I I spent some time in the Navy as a chaplain, and we had some individuals in our lives as Navy chaplains who were influential and had some uh formative impact on us.

One of those individuals for me, uh, when I met him, he was Gunnery Sergeant Robert Foster.

Now his name has stayed, but his title shifted.

He retired from the Marine Corps as Master Gunnery Sergeant Robert Foster.

And so now we call him Master Guns, but when we met him, he was Gunny.

And Gunny was the best.

He walked with us, he did life with us, he led us without ever really having to talk about leading us.

He just did it.

He joined us in the things that were important and he showed us a way forward.

And for a lot of us as chaplains, our time with Gunny shaped the way we would go on and interact with the Marines we did ministry with.

Because we had a model, a pattern.

He gave us a way.

He called us to walk with him and walk alongside him.

He pointed us to the things that mattered.

He directed our attention to think about Jesus.

And Jesus in the presence of our Marines.

We were his last chaplain class.

And when we graduated, we all showed up to our last day of class with t-shirts that we had made.

And on the back of those shirts, there was a phrase that said, I'm a foster child.

We got to give Gunny his shirt.

It was a cool moment, with us, but his approach to the way he led us has sort of shaped me, my approach, to the opportunities I have to lead my students.

He gave me a sort of tangible way to think about the phrase of Scripture, which is follow me as I follow Christ.

Come and walk along with me.

Here's a way.

Let me walk with you.

Walk with me.

As maturing Christians, we're always looking for someone to walk with us, to point us to Christ, to say, walk with me, follow me as I follow Christ.

As maturing Christians, I think we should always be looking for someone else to be calling along with us and say, walk with me.

Follow me as I follow Christ.

Let's do this together.

Let's walk in this together.

But in all of that, the goal is to look at Christ, to behold the Lamb, like we read in this text.

There are two disciples in this text.

And their story in a lot of ways is a walk with me as we walk together toward Christ.

Want to read our text again and then dive into unpacking some of what is here and give us some touch points to walk out of here with.

Here's our text.

The next day again, John, John the Baptist, was standing with two of his disciples, and he looked at Jesus as he walked by.

And he said, Behold the Lamb of God.

The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus.

Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them, What are you seeking?

They said to him, Rabbi, which means teacher, where are you staying?

He said to them, Come, and you will see.

So they came and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day, for it was about the tenth hour.

One of the two who heard John speak and follow Jesus was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother.

He first found his own brother Simon, 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 will be called Cephas, which means Peter.

There are four key words I'd like to highlight and draw from in this message.

The first of them is the word behold.

In Greek, the word is edu, and it's in a lot of ways just simply look.

Calling our attention to something.

The words used all over Greek literature, but it's especially used in the scripture to call our attention to something that matters.

In a lot of cases, it's introducing something to us that is new or is unexpected, but there's a surety to it.

There's a guarantee in it.

There's assurance there with it.

So we're called to change and divert our attention from whatever else it is in front of us and to behold something that we haven't necessarily considered or we haven't considered in this way before, but it is guaranteed.

John the Baptist stands with two of his disciples and he says, Behold the Lamb.

Calls their attention to Jesus.

The second of our words is the word for follow.

In Greek, it's akolutheo.

It means to follow the one who precedes you.

In a lot of ways, it's used as somebody who comes along after someone else.

And so we would talk about the succession of kings like this.

Solomon follows his father, David.

But it's also used as those individuals who follow as an attendant to someone else, as an assistant to someone else, as a pupil of someone else, to join and accompany another, or to side with someone's party, to take up their agenda and walk with them according to that pattern.

That's part of what we're getting at with this word to follow.

So we have Andrew and this other disciple who are asked, told really by John the Baptist to behold the Lamb.

And as they do, the natural next step for them is to follow the Lamb.

We're told these two individuals are disciples of John.

And this is our next word as we consider this text.

The word for a disciple in Greek is methetes.

It's a learner, a pupil.

It's used of disciples in the New Testament.

It means to be an adherent of.

Someone who has joined and linked themselves to somebody else.

It's used in sort of teacher-student relationships, but more clearly in our apprenticeships.

Somebody who is taking up the work, the patterns, the habits, the life, in this case, maybe the ministry of the one who comes before them.

And they're going to follow in that footstep.

In the book of Acts, that word is used almost exclusively for those who confess and follow Christ.

Disciple.

Andrew's movement in the story is going to help us see clearly his shift from being a disciple that belongs to John to one who belongs to Jesus.

And a lot of that rests in our fourth term.

It's the one for abide.

Our text talks about these two individuals asking where Jesus is staying.

The word to stay is the same word in Greek as the word to abide.

Where you stay is where you abide.

Where you remain is where you dwell.

So here we have Andrew and this other disciple asking Jesus where he's going to abide.

They have followed.

They have beheld.

They are going to abide.

But Andrew will become a disciple as he links all of that up with his movement to go and get someone else.

Behold the Lamb.

Follow the Lamb.

Abide with the Lamb.

And now Andrew takes a moment.

He first found his own brother Simon and he brought him to Jesus.

This is the life, I think, in miniature of a disciple of Jesus Christ.

One who has their attention fixed in every facet of their life on Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God.

We've joined his party.

We've taken up his agenda.

We're walking in his program and way.

We are following the Lamb because He's the center of our attention.

We will accompany Him where He goes.

We will abide where He abides.

We will stay and make our home with Him.

He will make His home with us.

But we also need to be bringing others along in that movement to behold the Lamb.

To follow the Lamb and to abide with the Lamb.

This sort of had an interesting image attached to it last summer.

We got a new puppy in the Miller House.

Puppy's name is Bailey.

She is a wonderful ball of energy, who my wife refers to as the tiny terrorist.

She's cute, but she will destroy things if left unattended for too long.

We got her when she was three months old, and she was this big and fluffy and precious, and my wife thought she was the cutest thing ever.

And she showed up at our house and was sort of nervous, and you could tell she didn't know what was going on, and she sort of latched on to my two-year-old at the time, Grayson.

And everywhere Grayson went, Bailey just tagged along as a shadow.

Everywhere she sat, Bailey sat.

I've got a picture of Grayson laying on the living room floor, like this, and Bailey right next to her.

And then Grayson would get up and run into the kitchen, and here would come Bailey.

This is, I think, an innocent but simple picture of what it looks like to follow Jesus.

To have those individuals we walk with as we walk toward Jesus.

Bailey learned the rhythms, the ins and outs of the house by following my daughter.

We've all got those individuals, like a John the Baptist who points the way for us and says, Behold the Lamb.

But being a disciple is a bit more than our innocent puppy following my toddler around the house.

It's to follow in the footsteps of Jesus.

It's to have him as our central focus.

To pick up what he has handed us, to walk in it.

To have those who walk alongside us follow me as I follow Christ.

And to call others to follow with us, follow me as I follow Christ.

To take up this manner of life, to live with Christ, to let go of our way, agenda, and program and pick up his.

Philip protests, there's not enough money to feed a crowd this size.

And Andrew simply comes to Jesus with a little boy's lunch and says, Here, how about five barley loaves and some fish?

And Jesus feeds a multitude.

The life of a disciple in John's gospel is the life of one whose not going anywhere, the Lamb isn't going.

The other piece to this is that movement of Israel in the wilderness, when the pillar of cloud and fire led them at every turn.

Where the pillar settled, Israel set up camp.

They lived, they dwelled.

They were intentional about being connected to the presence of God as it led them through the wilderness.

And when that presence picked up, they picked up camp.

And they moved.

It's the movement of the life of people who live with the Lord at every turn.

It's the life of a disciple, committed to beholding the Lamb in every possible aspect of our life, to follow that Lamb wherever he may be going.

Andrew and the other disciple do not know where Jesus is going.

And he doesn't answer it very clearly for them.

Where are you staying?

Come and see.

And here the invitation from John to behold the Lamb has become an invitation from Jesus.

Not to have everything figured out or have all the answers, but to trust him and find out as you go.

And then we need to walk and then follow and abide with the Lamb.

Some of us need an Andrew or a disciple to walk with us toward Jesus.

Probably all of us.

Some of us are Peter being brought by someone else to the Lamb.

For all of us at some point in time, we're going to be any one of those characters in this story.

For all of us at some point or space in our own life right now, we're one of those characters in this story.

Will we, like Andrew and this other disciple?

Behold the Lamb.

Follow where he's going, even if we don't know where that's leading.

And be committed to stay where he stays, to abide with him, to pick up camp when he moves and to stay where he stays.

The Lamb of God has come.

He's died, he's risen from the grave for our salvation, for our life with him.

The challenge in this text, or part of the challenge in this text, is will we behold him and follow him and abide with him?

Be a disciple devoted to him and bring others along with us as we go.

My question for us this morning is what are the spaces and places of our lives that need to follow that movement of a lamb as central focus.

Following that Lamb and abiding with the Lamb.

The invitation of Jesus this morning is to come and see.

Even if we don't have it all sorted, even if we don't understand it, even if it's going to cost us something.

To behold the Lamb, follow and abide with the Lamb.

And bring others along with us as we do?

I hope so.

Let's pray.