The Gospel of John: In Search of a Saviour - Jan 5, 2025 (Myles Holmes)

Hello and welcome to the Redemption Church Podcast.

We're a church in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada that exists to glorify God through the fulfillment of the Great Commission, the spirit of the Great Commandment.

Thanks for joining us today.

So good to be together.

If you have your Bibles, and I hope that you do, you can open them up to John chapter 1 as we continue to march through the Gospel of John together as a church.

John 1 · chapter mention

We're going to be in verses 19 to 51 this morning.

And if you don't have a Bible, see the ushers are making their way to their front.

You just flag them down.

They'd love to put a copy of God's Word into your hands.

And as you turn to John chapter 1, verse 19, just by way of announcement to begin our morning, I just want to let you know that in terms of offering, our last year final offer, the final numbers are in.

John 1:19

And we ended up, drumroll, please, uh,$34,000 over.

So we're incredibly thankful for what the Lord has done, incredibly thankful to you as you continue to worship the Lord through your faithful and sacrificial giving.

We're gonna read from God's word.

Now, why don't you stand with us in a spirit of worship as we hear what God has to say to us?

John chapter 1, verses 19 to 51.

John 1:19–51

And this is the testimony of John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, Who are you?

He confessed and did not deny, but confessed, I am not the Christ.

They asked him, What then?

Are you Elijah?

He said, I am not.

Are you the prophet?

And he answered, No.

So they said to him, Who are you?

We need to give an answer to those who sent us.

What do you say about yourself?

He said, I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord, as the prophet Isaiah said.

Now they had been sent from the Pharisees.

They asked him, Then why are you baptizing if you are neither the Christ nor Elijah nor the prophet?

John answered them, I baptize with water, but among you stands one you do not know, even he who comes after me, the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.

These things took place in Bethany across the Jordan, where John was baptizing.

The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him and said, Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

This is he of whom I said, After me comes a man who ranks before me, because he was before me.

I myself did not know him, but for this purpose I came baptizing with water, that he might be revealed to Israel.

And John bore witness.

I saw a spirit descend on him like a dove, and it remained on him.

I myself did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.

And I have seen and bore witness that this is the Son of God.

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

And 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 the tenth hour.

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, son of John, you shall be called Cephas, which means Peter.

The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee.

He found Philip and said to him, Follow me.

And Philip was from Beth Seda, the city of Andrew and Peter.

Philip found Nathaniel and said to him, We have found him whom Moses in the law and also the prop prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.

Nathanael said to him, Can anything good come out of Nazareth?

Philip said to him, Come and see.

Jesus saw Nathaniel coming towards him and said to him, Behold, an Israelite indeed in whom there is no deceit.

Nathanael said to him, How do you know me?

Jesus answered him, Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.

Nathanael answered him, Rabbi, you are the Son of God.

You are the king of Israel.

And Jesus answered him, 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 them, Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.

Let's turn to the Lord in prayer.

Father, we thank you for your word.

And God, I just confess, Lord, my own inadequacy to sufficiently, Lord, proclaim the message that you have for us.

And yet, Lord, we have great hope and that your spirit is with us.

And so, God, I pray that in every way you would empower your word, Lord, to be the two-edged sword that you promise it is that pierces to a place that human word can't pierce.

And to be the efficient word, Lord, you say that it comes from heaven and it gives growth where it needs to.

And so, Lord, we trust in you.

And God, as we hear your word, I pray that our trust in you would be complete so that we might be changed and transformed by your word.

Lord, change us, we pray.

I pray this all in the name of your son.

Amen.

Amen.

You can take a seat.

This isn't going to be news to you, but I need to inform you this morning that you have problems.

In fact, maybe turn to your neighbor right now.

Tell him, you've got problems.

You've got problems right now.

Now, some of you are too excited to say that.

I saw some husbands play the do the right move.

You didn't do it at all, and that's probably the right thing to do.

But as I talk about problems, I want you to know I'm not talking about you as a problemed individual.

That's could perhaps be true.

I'm more so talking about the fact that you have problems in your life that you are actively seeking solutions for.

Every one of us does.

In fact, the interesting thing would be for us to, if we could go around this room and sort of see everybody's different problems, the interesting thing would really be the plethora of problems that we face as humans and things that capture our hearts' attentions, attention as humans.

You see, each of us have these problems and we live much of our lives engaged to seek a solution to that problem.

Now, what we're saying, we could really give you know some Christian language to to say this that everyone, to be human really, is in search of a savior.

You have a problem, you're looking for a solution, and whether that solution is someone or something, we all believe that there is something out there that will rescue us from the hardships of our lives, from the struggles of our lives, and from the imperfections that we come to know in that life.

And so you and I then are engaged on this pursuit of a savior, whether we're Christian this morning or not.

Now, for some, as we think about this pursuit of a savior, it comes in the form of success.

And so you know what that's like.

You you chase achievements, you chase performance and promotions and recognition, believing that if you can just reach your way to the top, all your problems will be solved.

Maybe that's not your thing, and so you look at that and you say, Yeah, it must be tough to be those people, but but maybe for you, your savior is in relationships, thinking that if you can just get your relationships right, if you can just meet the right someone or you've met the right someone and you can just change them into the right someone, then you will feel like a whole person and you'll be understood and you'll be loved and satisfied.

Maybe for others it's materialism.

Maybe it's if I just have that new thing, that new phone, that new car, that bigger house.

It can be physical.

I'm feeling that once I get my mind right or my body right, then you know that will be the life.

Then I will have joy and satisfaction.

Well, we could go on and on on all the various things that we pursue as a savior, but I want you to understand that in all of these pursuits, there is a common thread, and that is that to be human is to have problems and to seek solutions to those problems.

We're all seeking something.

And we're not just searching.

The reality is that when we have a problem, we also strive after a solution for that problem.

Now, I don't know about you, but I don't like wasting hard work.

Anyone in here like that?

You like to just work hard for no purpose?

And so our reality this morning is that all of us are working hard to find a solution for whatever problem we feel we might have.

And the question that I want to ask us this morning is this does the effort match the reward?

Are you really finding a uh solution to your problems?

Are you really finding a savior to the challenges and hardships that you face in life?

Now it's funny, you know, it's often easier for us to see the vanity and the emptiness of other people's pursuits, isn't it?

You know, if business and work isn't your thing, you'll look at the person who's working 60 to 80 hour weeks and you'll say, Man, what kind of life are they living?

Or if you know fitness isn't your thing, when you drive around and you see people running, you're saying, listen, buddy, your life would be a lot better if you just went and grabbed a donut.

You know, run to the donut shop.

You that I'm telling you, there's there's a lot of joy there.

It's easy to look at someone else's pursuits that are not our own and scratch our head and wonder why they would give so much to it.

But if you and I are intellectually honest, isn't the hardest thing to look at our own pursuits and ask if it's really worth the solution that it provides for us.

It's hard.

This is what John wants to do for us this morning.

He wants to invite us to pause this morning and reflect on our lives and reflect the on the various saviors that each of us pursue, whether Christian or not, and ask this question if they're really meeting our deepest needs.

Now, in John chapter 1, as we just read, we we meet a number of individuals who are all similar to us looking for a savior, for someone who will meet their deepest needs and solve their greatest problems.

John 1 · chapter mention

And we find this morning that many are represented in these few short verses, that there are some who are striving, and there are others who are questioning Jesus, and there are others who are hoping that Jesus is who he truly says he is, and that they are he is all that they've been waiting for.

John wants us to see these people this morning and investigate our own lives and ask these hard questions.

And what we'll see this morning is this that this search for a savior, it's not just a religious pursuit, it's not just an ancient pursuit, it is a pursuit that each and every one of us live with every single day.

Here's the first thing I want you to see, then the first thing I want you to see is this that we're searching for a savior.

We're searching for a savior.

At the beginning of this passage, we started in verse 19.

We see John the Baptist, and he's confronted by a group of individuals who are sent by the Pharisees.

And I want you to understand that this is not a casual conversation.

These men were on a mission.

John had been boldly preaching a message of repentance, and he had been calling people to prepare for the coming of the Lord, and he had been baptizing people in the Jordan River, and his ministry, we are told in the Gospels, was stirring not only a great controversy, but a great popularity.

His influence was growing rapidly.

Meanwhile, there is a group of Jewish people who are called the Pharisees.

You know about the Pharisees, they were the religious elite of the time, and they prided themselves on having really authority and giving leadership to the Jewish people.

And we often look at the Pharisees as sort of like meticulous rule and lawkeepers, and that was certainly true of them.

But one of the things that we don't often think about the Pharisees is that they were actually the progressive ones of their day.

They were the ones who were saying, listen, you gotta you gotta get beyond just the rules of the Old Testament.

There's all these other rules that you also need to add to your religion as well.

And so it was progressive in that day.

Listen, here's almost a whole new religion, a whole new set of rules that will make your itself your life right with God.

And so you can you can imagine then when there is this new preacher with a new message who is amassing all of this attention through his message, then the Pharisees are very interested in what he has to say.

And so they send these priests and Levites to investigate.

And you notice the questions that they ask through verses 19 to 22.

They ask, Who are you, John the Baptist?

Are you the Christ?

Are you Elijah?

Are you the prophet?

And on one level, what this is revealing to us is the great confusion that surrounds who Jesus Christ is.

It is a confusion that lasts with us until today.

In fact, one of the first questions that you should ask someone in your evangelistic conversations is this Who is Jesus?

Who is this person?

We know that there is a historical Jesus of Nazareth.

What do you make him to be?

Is he who he said he was?

Is he the Son of God?

Is he was he really resurrected and brought to new life?

They were asking these same questions, and there's great confusion that lasts to today surrounding who he was in his earthly ministry.

But I want you to understand that this confusion was not limited to this group of people or the Pharisees.

In fact, during Jesus' time, there was almost nobody who understood who he was and what he was there to do.

In fact, really the only glimpse you get of it is of when Peter confesses that he is the Christ, the Son of the living God, in Matthew chapter 16.

Matthew 16 · chapter mention

But then what does Peter do right after that?

When Jesus says that he must suffer and die at the hands being crucified, Peter jumps in the way and says, There's no way.

And Jesus has to look at him and say, Get behind me, Satan.

See, nobody understood Jesus' message, not even his closest followers.

There's greatest confusion around who he was and what he was there to do.

And so these questions, they highlight the confusion that remains with us today that was alive in Jesus' day, and yet they, on the other hand, show that John the Baptist had really stirred their hopes for a Savior so that there is a sense in which they come wondering if he is the one that they have been looking for.

There's a sense here where their heart is exposed, and you see that the clarity and assurance that they were looking for, and someone to deliver them was at hand.

They wanted someone who could deliver them from the Roman oppression, from the uncertainty that they constant constantly faced in their lives.

And so they wonder that maybe John the Baptist is this someone, maybe maybe he is someone who can really solve our greatest problems.

Here's the problem that we would find over the course of Jesus' ministry with the Pharisees is that they did not approach Jesus on his terms.

Instead, what they did was they sought the Messiah on their own terms.

They had a vision of who they wanted the Messiah to be.

And you see here that their questions really reveal this.

Not that they're wondering who Jesus is and what the message is, they're wondering if John can fit into their system.

Could John enhance their influence as Pharisees?

Could John bolster their authority as Pharisees?

They were searching for a Savior, but they missed the Savior.

Because what they were searching for, and what they were searching for, they were caught up in their own striving and their own expectations.

Same thing we do today.

In fact, I can tell you of countless people that I have met with who have come to Jesus with their own problem that they want him to solve and have turned away from Jesus because he didn't come to solve that problem.

So that there are many who come to Jesus as a financial savior.

To say, Jesus, I'm gonna follow you because I see other people following you, and they're they're really doing well in life.

And you're providing financial means for them and material means for them.

So if I just follow you, then then maybe you'll do the same for me.

There are other who others who come to Jesus as sort of a genie and a bottle savior who, God, I'm gonna follow you because I I just there's some things that are seriously wrong in my life.

And if you can just, I know you have the power to do it, and so just do it, God, and I know you can do it, and so I'll pray to you, I'll come to church for you, I'll live for you.

But we need to evaluate this for a moment.

What if the problem that you are coming to Jesus for?

What if the problem that you are spending all this effort trying to solve isn't actually your greatest problem?

Listen, I can tell you this.

If you have like fundamental problems with your engine in your car, the last thing that you need is a car wash.

And yet so many of us do that in our lives, don't we?

We have this tiny little problem that in the in the grand scheme of eternity means nothing at all.

And we are willing to forsake even eternal life, reconciliation with God, our sins being dealt with so that we can solve this minuscule tiny problem.

And we're turned away from Jesus because he doesn't solve the problem that we desire him to.

Think about that for a moment.

That means that you and I culturally are but swimming in the waters of culture that will naturally turn us away from the call that Jesus makes on our life.

We live in a culture of comfort and convenience.

Is that not true?

I mean, think about how pervasive uh like Uber Eats and grocery delivery is, and like everything is being made so easy so that you almost have to do no work at all.

You don't, you can watch Netflix, you don't even have to lift your arm to click to the next show.

Everything's so easy.

We revolve around comfort, we revolve around convenience.

And listen, if your savior is comfort and convenience, I want to let you know it will be very difficult to hear the words of Jesus.

They will hit you like a mack truck every time because his words aren't often comforting.

He calls these same disciples that he calls in these verses to pick up their cross, this instrument of death, and follow him.

And so the question for us today is this: what are we truly searching for?

Are we seeking Jesus for who he is and what he has promised, or are we trying to take Jesus and fit him into our own box and into our own system of living, trying to take him sort of as like a vitamin to boost our productivity or to boost our happiness?

This is what John wants the Pharisees and the disciples and in turn us to see.

But I want I want you to also see this that not only are we in a search of a savior, John wants us to know that no other savior compares.

This is what I love about the Christian worldview.

You know what I love about Christianity is that you can take the Bible and the Christian worldview, and you can take it to every other worldview and compare it.

You have you don't need to fear that the Christian worldview will fall short of every other worldview.

Likewise, you don't need to fear as you think about the many things you could pursue, whether it's success, whether it's people's praise and affection, whether it's control, whatever your thing is, you can take all of those pursuits and line them up with Jesus and find that Jesus, that they cannot compare with Jesus.

No other savior compares.

Pharisees came then seeking clarity.

And their questions really revolve around what John is doing.

You see that here in verses 25.

They say, Why are you baptizing if you are neither the Christ nor Elijah nor the prophet?

In one sense, they're saying this what gives you the authority to do this?

Now, baptizing for the Jews in John's day were it was not foreign to them.

In fact, we have in Jewish writings a lot of record of.

Many who would practice as sort of a personal act of purification this their own personal baptism, which you could probably just call taking a bath.

I think that's probably what it seemed like.

But before they entered into the temple, they would do that as a spiritual act.

They would cleanse themselves through a personal baptism, baptizing themselves so that as they came before God, they would be cleansed.

You can understand then that as what John is doing is unprecedented.

And so there's this curiosity that's stirred in the religious people of his day, but not only a curiosity, really a concern.

Now, John will use this to help them understand something much deeper.

That the fact that he baptizes others proves that his ministry isn't about himself, it is about Jesus.

So look how John answers them in verse 26.

I baptize with water, but among you stands one you do not know, even he who comes after me, the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.

And John wants us to understand that it is this one, he says later on in verse 31, this one that who they they do not know, who has told him to baptize with water.

So that he says in verse 31, I myself did not know him, but for this purpose I came baptizing with water, that he might be revealed to Israel.

And John bore witness, I saw the Spirit descend from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him.

I myself did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.

What John wants them to understand about baptism is that it is a sign that has been given to him by God Himself, and it is a sign that is given to us this morning by God Himself to show us that there is no Savior as great as the Savior that is Jesus Christ.

So that John says he comes in the ministry of Isaiah to say, make straight the way of the Lord, and he comes so that we may know the one, verse 27, whose the strap of his sandal, John is not even worthy to untie.

John's ministry, we have much to learn from this so practically this morning.

John's ministry is to point beyond himself to Jesus Christ.

John would be most happy.

Listen, loved one, we're taking practical application from this for our own lives.

John would be most happy if he could die and be forgotten in order that the name of Jesus Christ might be made great.

And in this moment, we take time to reflect on our own life and ask this question: how am I doing at that?

Am I living for my own praise?

Or am I doing what Paul commissioned the church of Corinth to do when he said, do all to the glory of God?

Listen, your life and my life is to be like a mirror, which through our actions and our attitudes, while we do those actions, we point to God, and by doing that, God's glory then shines on us and reflects out to the world.

We live for the glory of another.

This was the ministry of John the Baptist.

I hope you know this morning that the ministry of redemption new market carries on in the tradition of John the Baptist.

Our greatest hope is not for redemption new market to save you.

We have no care for that.

Our greatest hope is not that you become a disciple of Redemption New Market.

Our greatest hope is not that we build up the kingdom of redemption new market.

We care nothing for the name of Redemption New Market if it forsakes the name of Jesus Christ.

Our greatest hope each and every Sunday in each and every ministry, it's happening in kids' ministry right now.

It happened in worship this morning, it's happening right now.

Our greatest hope is that you see through what's happening here to Jesus Christ.

This is what our lives ought to do.

This is what our ministries need to do.

Because as soon as we make our goal anything else, we have not offered the world the greatest thing, Jesus Himself.

And so listen, new people come into our church, they they ask me, What's this church all about?

Or I ask them, What are you looking for in a church?

And the answer is always Jesus.

It is Jesus.

We are all about Jesus.

When you come here and worship, you will be worshiping Jesus.

When you hear the sermon, it will be about Jesus.

Over and over and over again, we will talk about Jesus because the moment we stop proclaiming Jesus, we are we are giving you something that is subpar.

There is nothing better that we can offer.

So then, think about this.

So then, the very thing we need to do as children of God is to seek to get under the teaching of Jesus Christ, to hear the gospel proclaimed, to rub shoulders with brothers and sisters in Christ who will then preach the gospel to us.

We need Jesus.

There is nothing new here.

There is nothing new here.

And so long as you can be a person who, when others look at you, they see through you to Jesus, and surround yourself with people who, when you look at them, you see through them to Jesus, you will be a person who is growing in Christ-likeness.

We need to point to Jesus.

There's nothing else.

There is nothing else.

This is exactly what John the Baptist is getting at.

That in Jesus we find one, he says in verse 27, whose the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.

Now it's I think it's hard for us to really culturally understand what's going on here because we as a people are pretty clean throughout the if you were to compare ourselves to the people of history.

Now you're looking at your teenage boy right now, thinking, like, no way, there's absolutely no way.

I'm telling you, could you imagine living in the desert wearing sandals and walking around all day in those sweaty, dirty sandals?

So that among disciples and their teachers, or students and their rabbis, there was sort of this tradition that as a student, you were like this intern, you would do anything for your teacher, but there was one thing that was off the table.

You would never ask of one thing.

It was an act of service that was only reserved for the lowest of servants in the household, and that was that you would remove the sandals of your teacher or rabbi.

I mean, I tried to think of like the most the closest equivalent.

It would be like if I asked, you know, like, could I disciple you?

And the first thing in our discipleship, I said, Hey, listen, come with me to the gym.

And you watched me work out, and I got like for 45 minutes or something, got incredibly sweaty, like dripping sweaty.

And I said, Here, listen, your first task is to carry my sweaty clothes outside of the gym in public.

That is the closest cultural equivalent I could think of, and I can tell by the way you're looking at me, this is very disgusting.

And that's the feeling you're supposed to get.

Like, really?

That's what you're asking me to do?

And this is exactly what John says.

Like, culturally, it is like this.

Those people who hear John, when they hear that, they're like, ugh, really?

But what is John saying?

Well, he's telling me this: that Jesus is the only savior whose greatness is so profound that no act of service will ever leave you in regret.

You see, this is the issue with every other savior that we might turn to.

It will always leave us in regret.

Every savior we turn to, it requires us to serve them.

But the reward that it gives for the service is not only neutral, it is negative.

I think C.S.

Lewis illustrates this so powerfully in Chronicles of Narnia.

In the lion and the witch in the wardrobe, there's a boy named Edmund who comes before all of the three other siblings, and he meets with the white witch.

And if you've read the story or seen the movie, you will remember this that the white witch sort of magically creates this Turkish delight and gives it to Edmund, and it's the most delicious thing that he's ever eaten.

It's one of those, he just can't stop thinking about it.

And not only does the white witch give Edmund these Turkish delight, she also makes them these profound promises that if he returns and brings his siblings back, that he will be put on the throne, that he will be made powerful in the new kingdom that she is going to one day win.

Now, when Edmund returns, what he finds is that the white witch has no Turkish delight for him.

Instead, he is enslaved, he is cold, he is miserable, he is bound up.

And not only that, his siblings are put into jeopardy because of him, and eventually Aslan would have to give his life because of him.

And I think the principle that C.S.

Lewis is so helpfully illustrating here is that when we turn to these false saviors, they demand more and more and more and more until they leave us in destruction.

Think about it for a moment.

Think about people pleasing.

If you think your greatest problem is having the affection of your, is not having the affection of your partner, or the praise of your superior at work, then the way that you serve that savior is you work either really hard to perform in a way that will please them, or you try to change yourself to be something that you're not so that other people will like you.

It's the service you give to the savior of people pleasing.

But there is a problem.

You may work hard enough to satisfy your superior, you may have moments where you please that person and you get their affection in return, but the problem is that it's only temporary, and so that you are stuck on this endless treadmill of performance in order to get the reward.

And it's never enough, you always need something more, and the joy that you are promised is always just around the corner.

That's if you're lucky, because you may not get it at all.

You may work hard for someone's affection and serve and serve and serve, but get nothing, so that what happens then is that your heart is sort of shaped into this bitter resentment towards them.

Think about money.

If you believe that financial security is your biggest problem, then you pour yourself into earning money, into saving money, and into investing money.

But the problem is that the money never brings the peace that you thought it would.

In fact, when you invest it, what you find yourself is you're looking at the market constantly saying, I'm losing all my money.

And the more money you have, the more painful it is when you lose it.

And the bigger house you get, the bigger house you want.

So there's this endless treadmill.

The more you serve, the less you really have.

We'll be honest for a moment and ask ourselves about the things that we're pursuing.

Has it really brought you the peace that you thought it would?

That you think it will?

What about control?

Many of us think if we just manage every detail of our life, our health, our family, our future, that everything will be fine, but there is always something that will cause everything in our lives to spiral out of control.

And the savior of control, it demands time, it demands energy, it demands constant vigilance, but it never guarantees anything.

And what John the Baptist wants us to understand about service to Jesus is that when you serve Jesus, when you give your whole life to him, when you say all of life for all of life to Jesus, you will never have a single regret.

There will never be a moment wasted, there will never be an investment that is lost.

What's the application for us here then?

It's simple.

It's simple.

Serve it.

Serve it.

Everything you do in life, do for the glory of God, even when it doesn't feel like it's the right thing to do.

And if you follow God's word, if you live according to his will, you'll never have a regret.

Use your time to serve him, use your talents to serve him, use your treasures to serve him.

And what happens?

Jesus then takes you off this performance treadmill, this treadmill that never gets you anywhere, that can never lastingly satisfy.

And he deals with your greatest problem, your sin.

And he offers you your only hope for redemption.

And so this morning, in a spirit of honesty and vulnerability, you and I need to do the work of pausing in this moment and asking ourselves this question have the things that we've turned to actually changed our situation?

You know, like I can think about the things that I pursue that are not Jesus, and I can look over the history of my life and say, no, for as long as I have pursued it, I still am not there yet.

And is that not true of your pursuits?

And if it hasn't brought it to you yet, do you think that it will?

Or is it possible that God's love for you this morning is to reveal the powerlessness of the Savior that you are pursuing and show you that there is only one.

And his name is Jesus.

So how does Jesus do this?

Well, John the Baptist wants us to understand this.

So in verse 35, he tells us something profound about Jesus.

In fact, he says it in verse 29 as well.

It says, The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him and said, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

Again in verse 36, he looked at Jesus as he walked by and said, Behold the Lamb of God.

Now, as modern-day readers who likely, if you've been at this church for any amount of time, and especially if you followed Christ for a number of years, you read this through the lens of Christ's death and resurrection.

But like we said earlier, there was almost no one, including John the Baptist, who believed that Jesus would be a suffering savior.

They believed that Jesus would be a political savior, that he was here as a king to establish rule in Israel.

In fact, we see evidence of this struggle in John the Baptist himself in Matthew 11, verses 2 to 3.

Matthew 11:2–3

He when he's imprisoned, he sends messengers to Jesus and he says, Are you the one who is to come?

Or should we look for another?

You see, John, he didn't fully grasp what it meant for Jesus even to be, in the sense that we read it, a Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

He didn't fully grasp that the Savior came to die and to remove sins from our lives.

And so we need to ask ourselves then, what does John the Baptist mean when he says, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world?

And it's likely rooted in another Jewish expectation.

If you read the historical writings of the Jewish people at that time, you find an image of a warrior lamb who will return one day to deliver God's people, Israel.

Now you look at me and you say, What is a warrior lamb?

And I say, I have no idea.

However, I've read the scriptures and it's not the autist symbol that we run into.

Lambs don't seem too fierce for me.

Whatever the case is, for the Jewish people, there was this expectation that a warrior lamb was coming in the end times, and through his power and his might, he would deliver God's people.

And so, as John the Baptist calls Jesus the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, it's likely that he envisions a mighty deliverer who will confront the forces of darkness like David through military might.

Now that day is coming, and so John the Baptist certainly sees something that is true.

But I think John the gospel writer here understands this to be a double entendre, so that those, you know, John reading writing so many decades after Jesus' death and resurrection would know exactly what it means that Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

John the Baptist proclamation is recorded by John the Gospel writer with this profound understanding that Jesus, he is the sacrificial lamb.

He is the ultimate atonement for sin.

He's the savior who can actually solve our great problem.

He's the savior who doesn't leave us longing for more.

Here's the application then.

If Jesus is the one, is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, do you know what you and I need to do this morning?

We need to drop our sin, our insecurity, our inadequacy, our shame at his feet.

Because when you drop those things at the feet of Jesus, he takes it away.

You know, I used to work at uh at Zellers.

You guys remember Zellers?

I um this wasn't like you know last year, this was when I was a kid.

And um I missed those uh that restaurant.

Was it called restaurant?

I think I can't remember, but I missed that Zellers restaurant.

At the back of Zellers, by the way, I worked for there for three months and I have no idea what I was supposed to do.

I just walked around and and moved things to the front of the shelf, and so it was seasonal.

I didn't get hired back.

But at the back of Zellers, there was this giant machine, and you threw everything into it.

Like anything that you know was garbage or it needed to be written off or it was returned and couldn't be put back on the shelves, you threw that thing into the machine, and there were these giant claws.

It was like it was the best part of the job because you just watched these giant claws would come down and crush those things into pieces.

And that to me was the most fascinating thing.

Whatever you throw in was just destroyed by this machine.

And you know, this is what Jesus came to do for you.

He came quite literally for your sin, for your garbage.

Isn't that fascinating?

Listen, loved ones, some of you need to let the gospel confront you this morning because you think that Jesus came for your righteousness.

And you truly believe.

You never say it, but you believe in the depths of your heart that Jesus only loves you when you perform.

And I want to tell you this morning that Jesus is not the Lamb of God who came for your good works.

He doesn't need your good works.

He's got enough of those on his own.

Jesus is the one who came for your sin.

So listen, you feel like you're not enough?

You feel like you're inadequate?

Jesus came to this world.

He was a missionary from heaven to take your inadequacy.

You you got secret shame in your life?

The thing you just cannot stop thinking about, that when when you're not distracting yourself with other things, it comes flooding into your mind that you're just not enough, that you did that thing.

Listen, Jesus came for that.

He is the Savior who came to take away the sin of the world.

So listen, if you want to give him your performance, that's something he does not care for.

You want to give him your good works?

Doesn't care for it.

Okay.

You want to give him your works right works righteousness.

You're a good person, you come to church, you want to give him to that.

He does not care for that in terms of your salvation.

He came for your sin.

So what We do.

We drop our sin at the cross.

Listen, some in the boldness of the Holy Spirit, you need to be told this morning that you gotta stop carrying around the shame.

You gotta stop carrying around the sin that weighs so heavily on you.

Drop it at the cross, he takes it away.

This is the third third thing that John wants to see, for us to see, that we're all searching for a savior, that no other savior compares, and that Jesus is the Savior who searches for us.

So at the end of this passage, we're introduced to five people who either they were sought out by Jesus or sought or sought him out and began following him.

And it all begins really in verse 36 when we read that that John the Baptist looked at Jesus as he walked by, and we need to just take a moment to pause on this verse because of the astounding reality of what this verse means.

John looks with his eyes and he sees in the flesh everything that we just celebrated at Christmas.

This is the Son of God in the flesh, so that John is able to finally declare the one that he's been preaching about for forever, he declares, behold, the Lamb of God is here.

Very word of God that became flesh and dwelt with among us, John told us earlier in chapter one.

What a profound reality.

That Jesus would come from heaven and stand in the presence of John the Baptist.

You know, when we think of working for salvation, we often think of religion.

We think of works righteousness, we think of different religions.

Maybe we even think about Christianity like that.

If, you know, this sense that Christianity is this religion that if you just work hard enough, the big guy in the sky is gonna be happy with you.

I don't want you to understand, not what we're seeing this morning is that religion is not the only thing that's like that.

Every pursuit is like that.

Every pursuit has its religious works that you need to do in order to appease the God of that pursuit.

So that materialism makes you work for materials.

Control makes you work for control.

Every one of this, every one of these things, it makes us go up the mountain of work in order to meet the God that we want to meet there.

Christianity is the only worldview in which God comes down the mountain of works to meet us where we are.

And this is the very heart of the gospel is that the savior that you are searching for is actually has actually come to this world in flesh and blood, in time and space to search for you.

Martin Lloyd Jones says this there is no better test of our understanding of the Christian gospel than this.

Are you amazed by the fact that God came to you?

That God sought you out when you could do nothing to reach him.

Loved one, are you amazed?

Are you amazed?

Is there the sense of worship and awe in your heart right now?

Are you amazed at the gospel?

Five individuals would stand in awe of the work that Jesus did in coming from heaven to search them out.

And I want you to see see, to learn some things about how Jesus searches us out as we think briefly about these individuals.

I want you to notice that Jesus is actively in the work of preparing you.

The first disciple that he calls is Andrew, and an unnamed disciple who many believe and likely is the John the Gospel writer himself.

These first two disciples heard Jesus.

They were followers of John the Baptist, but they immediately left John the Baptist.

I'm sure you can imagine John the Baptist.

He spent all this time pouring his energy into these disciples, and as soon as they see Jesus, they leave.

And John's standing, you know, you know you'd expect he's standing there thinking, what the heck?

I just put so much time in these guys.

They just leave as soon as they see Jesus.

But remember, John the Baptist's ministry is not about himself.

In fact, the evidence is in the fact that Andrew and this unnamed disciple, as soon as they say Jesus, what do they do?

We gotta follow him.

Why?

Because for years John the Baptist was saying, I'm preparing the way for another one who's coming who is gonna be greater than I am.

And isn't that how God reached so many of us?

I know personally so many of your testimonies, and there are not many testimonies where there's like one hero who introduced us to God.

For so many of us, it was a team effort of people that God used, maybe to place a pebble in our shoe, to preach the gospel here, to be a testimony of salvation here, to nudge us this way here.

Maybe it was circumstances.

It wasn't even people that sort of slowly guided us toward God.

That is how God works.

And so listen, loved one, in your evangelistic efforts, you've got to take some of the pressure off yourself because sometimes we feel like, you know, it's it's all our responsibility, but you must understand that in most cases, you are just a piece of the puzzle that God is putting together as He saves lost people.

Let that give you hope.

You don't have to hit a home run every time you share the gospel.

If you share the gospel with someone and they reject you or they just don't care about what you say, that mission accomplished.

Because you are not the whole picture.

You are just a piece.

And your faithfulness in evangelism, in reaching the lost, even the invite to church that you give to that person who rejects you awkwardly, it's all a piece of the puzzle that God is using.

He is preparing you.

I want you to secondly see that he invites us to him.

When Andrew and the unnamed disciple see Jesus in verse 38, they say this, where are you staying?

And Jesus' response is, Come and you will see.

See, what Jesus invites us to is a personal relationship with him, to come to him, to walk with him, to see and experience his goodness firsthand, to taste and see that the Lord is good.

And that invitation is for you this morning.

Jesus is calling all to himself.

He does not demand that you have your life together.

He does not demand that you have the answers.

He says, Come.

I want you to see thirdly that Jesus searches for us by changing us immediately when we come to him, so that when Simon Peter comes to Jesus, immediately his name is changed in verse 42.

Simon's name is changed to Cephas, which we are told means Peter, which which means rock.

And later on in Jesus' ministry, Peter had no idea what this meant at the time, but Jesus would look at Peter and say, Peter, you are on the rock on which I will build my church.

As soon as Peter is called by Jesus, he is changed by Jesus.

And loved one, you need to know that about yourself.

When Jesus calls you into salvation, he changes you immediately, so that you are a new transformation, so that the work is as good as done.

And as you are on this path of sanctification and growth, Paul tells us that God is even working in you now, so that so that all that all every ounce of will you have to grow for him, all the work you are putting in is really a product of his work in you.

It's all God.

It changes us.

I want you to see fourthly that Jesus seeks us personally.

Look at Philip in verse 43.

It says, The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee, he found Philip and said to him, Follow me.

And I'm so thankful that Jesus sought you.

I'm so thankful that Jesus sought me.

I know that there's no way I ever could have followed Jesus apart from him putting his finger on me and saying, It's time to follow.

It was his call of irresistible grace.

Finally, I want you to see that Jesus knows us completely.

Verse 47, Nathaniel approaches and Jesus says, Behold, an Israelite indeed in whom there is no deceit.

You can imagine Nathaniel's shock to be known by this Messiah that he is coming to investigate.

And Jesus replies to his shock, before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.

Jesus knew Nathaniel's heart.

And he knew his circumstances.

Love one, you know there are things in your life that are keeping you away from God.

Maybe it's shame, a sense of inadequacy that just keeps you, you know, from really pursuing God.

And I want you to know that He He already knows.

You know, when you make this grand confession to God, he's not shocked by it.

He's not in heaven saying, You did what?

He says, I gotta call one second, you know, I'm gonna put you on hold.

I gotta call someone about this.

This is crazy.

That's not Jesus.

He knows you perfectly, so that if there are things in your life that are keeping you from coming to him, you need to know that he already sees it.

And you can confess those things to him with this understanding that the grace that he has is sufficient for you to be covered.

He knows you.

You know, Jesus is not distant.

He comes to you, he changes you, he invites you, he seeks you out personally, and he knows you completely.

The question is this can any other savior do that for you?

Is there anything you pursue in this world that can do that for you?

Every savior that is not Jesus demands for more and more.

Jesus looks at us and he says, It is finished.

So we turn to him to declare that only he is enough.

That we've left behind the striving.

And in this moment we're doing it right now.

We are leaving by behind the striving, the chasing after things that cannot save, to fix our eyes on the Lamb who can.

I'm gonna pray in a moment, but we're gonna close our service after that.

We start a little late and we want to bless the kids, ministry workers who are uh working right now with the kids and don't want to leave them in there too long.

So let me pray and then we'll uh wrap up our service with a few words.

Father, we bow before you and God, we thank you.

Lord, that each of us are in search of a savior.

And if we if we have the intellectual honesty to consider what the saviors we pursue could win for us, Lord, we will know that they're never sufficient.

So thank you that we have in Jesus one who is sufficient.

God, we pray, Lord, that your word would continue to drive itself deep into our heart, that this week we might live in pursuit of you and strive after you, knowing, Lord, that there is no act of service that is that we will ever regret that is done in to the glory of your name.

So, God, we give you praise and thank you.

We pray this all in the name of your son.

Amen.

Loved one, as you leave, there are a few things we want you to know.

Uh, we are meeting, not this Wednesday, but next Wednesday, I believe it's the 15th for our worship and prayer night here at um ANOVA.

So want you to put that on your calendar as we trust we'll be blessed as we lift up the worship to God together and seek his throne of grace.

As you go, there's a few ways that we'd love to serve you this morning.

You can scan the QR code on the back of your chair, go to rcn.church, type that in your browser, find a whole bunch of information.

If you're new here, um, we would love for you to go there.

You can leave for us a prayer request.

We'd love to pray for you this morning.

There's a number of uh leaders who will be up at the front.

We'd love to pray for anything you have on your heart.

You can also find all the information about giving as you continue to worship God through your faithful giving this year.

And if you're new here, we're so thankful that you're here.

We'd love to meet you at the Connection Center where Kivon, we'd love to put a small gift into your hands.

Church, have a great week.

Military loved.