COME AND SEE | JOHN 1:35-46 | Pastor John Anderson | 9.6.26

Hello, this is Pastor Ryan Gerlock and Pastor John Anderson.

Welcome to the Resurrection Church Podcast.

Each week we bring you Sunday's message from Resurrection Church right here in Racing, Wisconsin.

So whether you're listening on a walk, driving to work, or just folding some laundry, or avoiding folding laundry, we hope this encourages your faith, challenges your perspective, and reminds you that resurrection isn't just something that happened.

It's something God is still doing.

Enjoy this week's message.

The next day, John again was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, Look, here is a Lamb of God.

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

When Jesus turned and saw them following him, he said to them, What are you looking for?

And they said to him, Rabbi, which translated means teacher, where are you staying?

He said to them, Come and see.

And they came and saw where they were where he was staying, and they reminded him, and they remained with him that day.

It was about four o'clock in the afternoon.

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

He first found his brother Simon and said to him, We have found the Messiah, which is translated anointed.

He brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said, You are Simon, son of John.

You are to be called Cephas, which translated means Peter.

The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee.

He found Philip and said to him, Follow me.

Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter.

Philip found Nathaniel and said to him, We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote.

Jesus' son, Joseph, from Nazareth.

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

Philip said to him, Come and see the Gospel of our Lord.

Good morning, everybody.

My name's John.

I'm one of the pastors here.

If you got your Bibles with you, we're going to be in the Gospel of John.

And today we actually hear about three different Johns.

We have John the author, John the Baptist, and then I wonder if any of you knew that Peter's father's name was John.

So we're going to get a whole bunch of John today, which is Pastor Ryan's favorite thing.

Just lots of John every day.

We are starting a new series.

And for those that have been perhaps in this tradition for a long time, you're used to what some people know as the lectionary, this cycle of readings that you can kind of count on every year.

And for the last uh three years, we've we've not followed that.

And instead, we've crafted our own series based on what we see happening here in Resurrection.

And we were in back to the basics this summer.

And as we journeyed through that, we had some devotions that were attached to it, a Bible reading plan, and we got some wonderful feedback.

Thank you for reaching out to us with stories, um, with encouragement.

That goes a lot further than you think, but it also lets us know about the health of this church.

And so we decided to continue with the way of Jesus.

Not a very creative sermon title, maybe even one you've heard before for a series, but essential to understanding what it means to be a Christian, to follow the way of Jesus.

And I wonder what it looks like to you to actually follow Jesus, not just to believe in Jesus, not just to memorize things from a book about Jesus, not even just to come to church and sing songs about Jesus, but what does it really look like to practice the way of Jesus in real life?

Because I think there's a difference.

And I think sometimes the church has lied to us about what we're supposed to be about.

We're so convinced that we have to make sure you believe the right things, that you believe the right things.

Yet our Savior modeled something very differently.

Jesus didn't run around Galilee.

He didn't enter the story saying, Hey, you and you, come agree with me.

I'm right and you're wrong.

Agree with me.

No, he says, Follow me.

And so over the next few months, we're gonna spend time in our holy scriptures and we're gonna look at the life of Jesus, the words of Jesus and his early followers, and we're gonna learn what it means to come and see, to follow, to stay with our Savior, to learn from our Savior, to love like our Savior, to serve like our Savior, to slow down like our Savior, to give and trust and to go like our Savior.

Those are practices.

They're not just ideas, they're a very way of life, and that's where we're headed together.

So let us pray.

God, you're so good and uh you're so patient with me, and I imagine all of us.

Help us to take a breath and to calm down on this beautiful day, to be attentive to your leading, Hol Spirit.

We hope you receive our praise today.

We thank you for the table and that promise.

Help us now as we enter your holy word to learn what it means to follow you.

As always, I pray the meditations of my heart and the words that pass through my lips are yours, O God.

It's in Christ's name I pray.

Amen.

So the Gospel of John, we think was written by John, who Jesus often referred to, or at least according to John, often referred to as his beloved disciple, which I think if I wrote that gospel, you know, I don't know.

The beloved disciple, the only disciple that stayed at the cross, a number of women stayed, but the only disciple that stayed at the cross, the beloved disciple.

And here's how it starts Jesus doesn't begin teaching discipleship with some sort of theological exam.

He doesn't have a list of rules that you have to sign off of.

No, he begins in a different way.

And it's curious.

John the Baptist, who had uh we meet him by the way, in the early chapter of uh first chapter of the Gospel of John.

If you don't know who that is, you'll hear about him around Christmas time again.

But John the Baptist, he was the cousin of Christ, and he had gone out into the wilderness and he was preaching that the Messiah was coming, the anointed one.

And he was baptizing them.

And so some religious leaders came and they said, What are you, what are you doing?

Who are you?

What is this?

Are you the Messiah?

He says, I'm not the Messiah.

They said, Are you Elijah the prophet?

He said, No, no, no, no, no.

Who are you?

He said, I am simply one that points to the one who will save us.

And then we get to this scripture where John says, Look, here is the Lamb of God.

And for any Jewish person in the first century to hear that kind of language brings them all the way back to the time of slavery for the Israelites in Egypt.

Moses had come and told the Pharaoh to let his people go.

The plagues, maybe you know the stories, it didn't happen.

Moses pleaded with the Pharaoh.

The Pharaoh said no.

And so God told the Israelites, when they would sacrifice this small lamb and prepare the meal, to take this blood and put it over the doorposts of their home as a reminder of God's protection and safety.

And so, this language, look, here is the Lamb of God.

He is saying to everybody within earshot, this is the one who will save us forever, which is a wild thing to say about someone that no one really knows.

But two guys who are with John, they listen.

And so, what do they do?

They begin to follow him.

And that story, by the way, you can laugh a little bit at scripture.

That story is kind of creepy.

Like they just begin to follow him.

And what are the first words that our Savior says?

The first words that Jesus ever says in the Gospel of John is, What are you looking for?

And I think that all of us are looking for something.

Searching for something.

You might even profess Christ as your Lord and Savior and still feel as if you are searching for something.

And so Jesus looks at these two humans who he was a part of creating, and he looks at them and he says, What are you looking for?

And they respond with the oddest response.

Where are you staying?

Which is an odd response.

If one of you were to receive that question from me and then ask for my address, I'd have a lot of follow-up questions.

You know?

Where are you staying?

Jesus says, What are you looking for?

The first words ever recorded by our Savior, what are you looking for?

I wonder why you're all here today.

Really?

And I'm I'm so encouraged that you're here today on a weekend where a lot of people are traveling or just relaxing before it gets busy, especially parents with kids today.

I'm so proud of you.

And I mean that.

I'm so dead serious.

My folks, my family's up north, by the way.

Uh, they're not uh playing hooky.

Uh, but uh I will make sure they sit down and listen to this sermon.

Um what are you hoping that God might do?

What brought you through these doors?

Maybe you don't even know.

Maybe it's like Pastor Ryan joked.

Maybe you were tricked into coming here or told you had to come here.

Um why are you here?

Are you here because you're you're you want peace, purpose, forgiveness, community, healing?

What is it?

All of us are hungry for something.

And I bet all of it has to do with some sort of restoration or comfort.

And so Jesus says, What are you looking for?

And they say, Rabbi, where are you staying?

And that word staying, listen, I'm only gonna do uh two quick Greek things today.

The first one is staying.

The word in Greek is meno or meno.

Everybody say meno.

Very good.

And meno staying, it actually means to abide, to dwell, like almost like a permanent fixture within.

And so they're not just saying, hey, what's your address?

They're essentially saying, hey, wherever you are, we we want to know where that is so we can be there.

And this word abide, if you don't know me well, if you haven't been in our community, I love the gospel of John.

Um, and and not as a funny thing.

I I for me, it is it is the gospel I go to time and time again.

And in the Gospel of John, unlike any of the other gospels, that word meno shows up over and over again.

In fact, near the end of his life, with the Last Supper, Christ is with his disciples, and he's gonna be betrayed.

And he says, Meno in me, abide in me, and I will meno with you, I will abide with you.

And so they say, Meno, abide.

And that's huge.

There's something deep.

Jesus, where do you abide?

And he says, What does he say?

He said, Come and see, follow me.

When I was a freshman at Stephen's Point, many of you have heard my testimony.

Um, but I I was radically changed and saved by Christ in my freshman year of college, due in large part to the testimony and witness of Pastor Ryan, who had been pursuing and following Christ much longer than me because, well, just because he's Pastor Ryan.

And I remember right away he was inviting me to this campus ministry, if you know part of my testimony.

And I'm like, I don't want to go to this thing, man.

Like, if in my mind I was thinking like church growing up, which I didn't connect to.

He's like, No, you gotta come.

And I went there and there was hundreds of people, and they had their hands in the air, and they were singing praises to God, and there was joy on their faces.

And I thought, these people are so weird.

This is so weird.

And they they shook my hand and they like looked at my eyes, like, man, super nice to meet you.

How are you?

Like they really cared, and I'm like, this is weird.

And we went back to our dorm room, and and I had all these questions, and and Pastor Ryan answered them, or he was honest enough to say, I don't know.

Oh, that we would say that a little bit more in the church.

And then he went to a Bible study, and all he said was, Hey, do you want to come?

And this continued for months and months, just a gentle invitation, constant listening, no judgment, just come.

And in these words, when Jesus says come and see, by the way, the Greek here, here's the last bit of Greek today, the Greek there is erkesthe, ready?

Erkesta.

And it actually means come and you will see.

So he's he's promising you if you follow me, Jesus is saying right now, if you follow me, if you follow me, if you follow me every day, if you follow me, if you wake up and I'm your first thought, and that's hard, isn't it?

Well, you slept in, maybe, you got a list of things to do.

I don't care where you are, what season of life you are in, the world is overwhelming.

And too often we give so much time to it and not nearly enough time to our Savior, so much so that we we decide to carve out a few minutes for devotion and then go about the rest of our day as if we've done our God piece, where God should be a part of all of it.

Follow me, Jesus says, and you will see.

You will see.

There's a movement involved.

You're gonna have to come, you're gonna have to move, experience it, and then you'll see.

There are there are things about Jesus that we just can't learn from a distance.

Faith cannot just be discovered in a book.

It has to be a lived experience, grace and forgiveness, community, generosity, all the things that Jesus would model for us.

We have to practice them.

We have to keep following, we have to keep inviting others or accept the invitation when it's given to us.

The way of Jesus is beautiful and hard sometimes, but it is the only way that gives life.

And that's what this sermon series is about.

I've decided as a project, as I'm, I think I'm having a midlife crisis, uh, which is fine.

Um, and I just I all these things, the more and more I spend time with people, especially in this church, the more I'm aware of all the skills that all of you have.

And all my degrees are just in talking.

And and I'm like, oh, what do I have to offer?

And so I've just I've decided I'm gonna build my son a room in my basement.

Um, and if there's anybody from the village of Waterford here, I'll work on the permits.

But we are we can probably edit that out in case.

But the um, but I I I'm I'm building it, so I've got the walls up and I'm and I'm running electric, and I have a don't lay the and I have and I I brought some carpenters in and I've been I've been I've been reading and I've been I've been sketching plans and I've been watching videos.

I've had people, professionals come in, show me what they would do, and I've watched them.

But I tell you what, that first time I put up a wall, that first time I replaced a breaker on my panel, was terrifying.

But it was also exhilarating because all those people who had patiently taught me, all the time I had spent learning about it, none of it would have really mattered had I not tried it.

And I think sometimes in the Christian faith, that's all it is.

Try, just try it for one week, spending the first five minutes of your day in prayer.

Try it, try it for one week, and then add five more minutes in Scripture.

Or if you don't like to read, listen to it.

The more you learn the way of Jesus, the easier it will become to practice and do the things that our Savior has equipped us to do, yet we think we are incapable of doing.

Practice this with me, Christ is saying, Walk with me.

Try forgiving someone, try praying right now out loud in front of people.

I used to have this great bet I've shared before where a buddy of mine, uh, he was a Vikings fan, still is, and uh, when we pray for him, and the uh when the Packers would play the Vikings, whoever would lose had to buy the other person lunch, and then they had to invite everyone in the restaurant to stand and pray with us.

And as a Packer fan, he prayed a lot.

But I'll tell you what, you know, we we joked about it, but he he reflected once on how the first time he did it, it was terrifying.

And I hadn't thought about that as someone who obviously prays in public, gets paid to pray.

And I thought, wow, but it became easier.

And I think that's part of it.

Jesus is calling us to so much, to slow down, to sit at a table with someone who has a different perspective from you, and not try to debate them.

To just listen.

Not agree, maybe, but listen.

Try trusting God when you don't know what comes next.

There's this great story in the Old Testament.

Many of you know it.

I'm gonna give it to you quick, but there's this guy named Samuel.

Anybody ever hear of Samuel in the Old Testament?

Samuel in the Old Testament.

Samuel who wrote, we have one and two, Samuel.

Uh Samuel was the last judge of Israel.

They had judges that would help settle things, and he was also the last priest.

As a young boy, he was uh committed to the temple.

He was raised in the temple, and the the man over him was Eli, a priest in the temple.

One day, uh Eli, one night, Eli was sleeping, and uh and Samuel came running into his room and he said, What?

What?

You were calling my name.

And Eli, and I love anytime you hear Pastor Ryan does a great sermon on this, but anytime you, you know, imagine parents, it's 3 a.m., you know, and your kid runs in and says, What's up, what do you need?

And you say, Go away from me.

Um, I but and so he says to go back to bed.

I didn't call you.

And again, Samuel hears his name, Samuel, and he goes to Eli, Eli, what do you?

I didn't call your name.

Go lay down again.

Samuel, he runs in, Eli, and finally Eli says, Samuel, I'm not, I'm not calling your name.

Here's what I want you to do.

Next time your name is called, I believe it is God speaking.

I want you to say, Lord, here I am.

I'm listening.

And so he does this.

And there's something beautiful about the story because Samuel, he doesn't recognize God's voice immediately.

And this is what we need to think about as a church because Samuel, he had to learn God's voice, he had to pay attention to it.

He needed somebody to help him recognize who God is and why God is worth following.

And I guarantee all of you have somebody like that in your life.

And I bet many of you are that person in someone's life, and you might not even know it.

Most of us don't wake up one morning subtly knowing exactly what God sounds like and exactly what we're supposed to do.

No, we got to rely on Christ, trust the Holy Spirit, the power.

By the way, the Holy Spirit, the power.

That is, this is this we should do a whole sermon series in the Holy Spirit.

It is the ability to go beyond yourself to truly abide in Christ.

And in that moment where you want to say those words that hurt, or throw that fist that hurt, or end that relationship just so you can win, the Holy Spirit says, No, that is not the way of Christ.

And so we need Eli, we need Andrew to teach us, we need Philip, we need each other.

The way of Jesus is dependent upon the church trusting one another.

So back to John 1.

After this invitation, this manual, this something awesome happens.

They spend the day with Jesus, and we learn nothing about that.

And I feel like that's not fair.

I kind of wish I would have known what they talked about.

This is the first time that these disciples, we think Andrew and John, had met the Savior, three years of their life ahead of them, ending in what they thought was tragedy, and then the beauty of resurrection.

And then after that, what happens?

What's the first thing that they do after meeting Christ?

They tell people about the Messiah.

How many times last week did you tell people about Jesus Christ?

Not said with judgment, and I'm not even saying in words.

But by the way, you surprise them with your action, refuse to engage in debate.

And then Philip meets Jesus.

And what does Jesus say?

Follow me.

And then what does Philip do?

He goes and finds Nathaniel.

And Nathaniel is skeptical.

Actually, he's more than skeptical.

He says in scripture, Philip says, Hey, we found the Messiah, and he's from Nazareth.

And Nathaniel says, Can anything good come out of Nazareth?

I remember when I was your intern, Mark Henkel said, Can anything good come out of Kenosha?

And I thought that was unfair.

But he says, and he says it with some disdain.

No way God would send the savior of the world to Nazareth.

And what I want you to pay attention to as we near the end here is that what what happens?

What does Philip do?

Right?

Nathaniel's arguing with him.

Now Philip has met the Messiah.

He believes, he doesn't even know what that means.

And then Nathaniel says, nah.

And many of us we would want to argue or debate, or we want to pull up the scriptures and be like, no, no, listen, this is the fulfillment.

You want to go back to the time the prophets prophesied this.

He's who John the B.

He doesn't do any of that.

He doesn't get defensive.

He just says, What?

Come and see.

Come experience what it's like to be here at Resurrection, to be at one of our small groups, to be in one of our men's or women's ministry, to be in some of our adult eds, to work with our youth and to be a part of our Bible studies, to be a part of our service.

Just come and see.

Just come and see what this community is about.

And so he does.

And I think we can learn something from Philip.

Christianity has been so become so, I think, obsessed with winning arguments.

Every denomination is the right denomination.

Every liturgy is the right liturgy.

Pastors with hair, pastors without hair.

It's this constant debate within the church.

And it's not healthy.

No, we're allowed to have questions.

I think a big reason, and I and I and again I'll stop.

I'm gonna I just made a joke, now I'll be nice.

One of the one of the reasons the Holy Spirit was able to work on my heart in the way I believe the Holy Spirit did is because Pastor Ryan and others were so patient with me and allowed me to have questions and to struggle with my faith.

The most honest pastors will say, I don't know a few times in their ministry, but I know God.

So Jesus says, What are you looking for?

As I was preparing for this sermon, and I'm gonna invite our very small band up today, by the way, uh but large in heart.

Uh we just we love Herc and Jim and Dee.

Um I I was I was listening to a wonderful teaching by Pastor Stephen Furtick, and he he helped me see something I'd missed.

I so often I think about this come and see and to abide and be with our savior.

But he also showed me something else.

You see, what happens when we are called to follow Christ is we're also called to pay attention to where our Savior stays.

Where does Jesus stay?

And then I started reading through John again.

And right away after this, Jesus is at a wedding and they run out of wine.

And his mom asks him for a miracle.

Jesus doesn't.

He that's not my time, but you know what he does?

He sees that they need a provision and he stays and he offers provision.

Just after that, he's in the temple and he sees the sacrifice, the very one that he would be for the world, being corrupted.

And so he flips tables and he says, Stop it.

Because we have a God of provision and we have a God of correction.

But he stays where he needs to.

You keep going, though.

You get to chapter four in John, and they're in Samaria, a place they shouldn't be.

They should have gone around it.

But our Savior goes there and he's at a well, and it's around lunchtime.

And the disciples get some lunch, and Jesus says, I'm gonna stay.

And then a woman shows up, a Samaritan.

He shouldn't even be around her, especially not a woman from Samaria.

But then he tells her all the things about her life that she thinks prevents her from being loved by God.

And he says, It's not true.

I offer you living water.

And he stays with her.

And she runs back to her people.

And what does she say?

Come and see.

You go to John 5, and Jesus, who's busy, he's going from one place to the next.

He's at this pool of Beseda.

And he sees a man who is crippled and can't walk.

And people are ignoring him.

And the disciples are saying, We gotta go, we gotta go.

But what does Jesus do?

He stays and he bends down.

You got to pay attention to where your savior bends down to where your savior stays, and he heals this man.

You go to John 6, and there is this crowd, thousands, they think, and Jesus is teaching them.

And the day is long and it gets late.

And the disciples say, We gotta go, man.

There's no food.

Everyone's hungry.

We don't have enough.

Peter's not gonna share.

We gotta go.

And what does our Savior say?

He says, I'm gonna stay right here and I will provide.

John 7, it's the Sabbath.

Another man in need of healing.

He's blind since birth.

And Christ heals him.

And the leaders of the day, they say, What are you doing?

And Jesus stays and he receives their criticisms because sometimes we need to go against the world to practice justice in the name of Christ.

And we need to sit in criticism and stay with those who Christ stayed with.

The stories continue.

We get to John 8, and by the way, you gotta read your scriptures.

You get to John 8, and there is a woman who's been accused of adultery, and then these men have gathered around her.

They're gonna stone her to death because that is the law that they were trying to follow.

And Christ gets down and he writes in the stand and he stays next to her.

And he says, You without sin, cast the first stone, and they go away, and he sends her away, telling her to follow.

He stays.

And then we get to the scripture, and band, I'm wrapping it up.

Then we get to the scripture that I have preached on more than any other scripture ever in my years as a pastor, John 11.

Jesus and his disciples, if you have your Bibles with you, he's getting near to the end of his life before his resurrection, and Jesus and his disciples, they were away.

But they found out that there was a man named Lazarus in Bethany.

He had sisters, Mary and Martha.

They were all very close to Jesus.

In fact, scriptures say that Jesus loved them deeply.

He finds out that Lazarus is sick, and you would think this is the savior.

He's healed everybody.

He's gonna rush there.

He might even fly there and he's gonna heal him.

But scripture says he stays for two more days.

And the first time I read that, I was irritated.

Why didn't he go?

And I have to imagine there might have been a conversation with a disciple where they said the same thing.

Jesus, what are you doing?

We got this is Lazarus, man.

We gotta go.

And I have to imagine Jesus said in some way, they've seen me heal.

They've never seen me do what I'm about to do.

And he goes there.

And he says, Lazarus, get up.

And he's resurrected because our savior chose to stay, but it goes on because our savior would eventually be condemned and betrayed and mocked.

And through all of it, he stayed, and then he'd be nailed to a cross and he stays there too.

But then on Sunday, he bursts forth from the tomb and he says, Now, when I say follow me, I've given you all the examples I possibly can.

I have defeated death, which means that my way is the only way where death cannot win.

Follow me.

And church, that's what we're called to do.

That's the way of Jesus.

We're gonna unpack it.

We're gonna go through some incredible figures in the early Christian church.

We're gonna learn more about the life of Jesus, maybe be reminded of the good news of Christ, but we must practice the way of Jesus.

See the people that Jesus saw, stoop low, stay with those whom Jesus stayed with, and trust that God has equipped us to do that work.

Amen, church.

Now we're gonna sing to God.

And as we do so, when we sing praises, this is for God's benefit, not for ours.

So when we sing, come thou found, it's a real prayer.

God, fill me up.

Help me to be like you.

And I pray, church, that we can be for each other, Christ, in those moments when we so desperately need Christ.

Let us pray.

God, your way is the only way.

I believe that.

You are Lord.

And you are a God who humbled Himself to be with us, to go to the cross for us.

Hear our praises as we sing to you today.

God, help us this season to learn more about what it means to follow you, to stay with those whom you stayed with.

It's in Christ's name we pray.

Amen.