John 1:19-51 - Part C

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That's connectwithskip.com. Now let's get into today's teaching with Pastor Skip Heitzig. They knew each other. They grew up going to the feast together. John knew that cousin Yeshua's coming to town.

We're going to play and have a blast. They were familiar with each other. He knew him, but he says, I didn't know him. What he means is I knew him as a cousin, but I surely didn't know all this time that this was the Son of God, the Savior of the world, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

I grew up not having that awareness. And now this dove alights upon him and tells me that's him. That's the one.

The one you know as a cousin. You didn't know he would be the Savior, but he is. That's what it means. So Jesus and John were familiar. They were second cousins.

Now there's something else. It is believed that Jesus' mother Mary and John the writer, John the apostle, not John the Baptist now, John the author's mother, Salome is her name, were sisters. Making John the author, the first cousin of Jesus, John the Baptist, the second cousin of Jesus.

Make sense? Okay, I'm belaboring that point for this reason. It adds to the credibility of the witness of John the Baptist and John the apostle to say, this Jesus is the Lamb of God, the Son of God, God in a human body, which John affirms over and over and over again and highlights in this book. Why does it affirm that? Why does it understate that?

Why does it add to the credibility and authenticity of the narrative and the testimony of John? Well, think about it. You have cousins. And the ones that know you, I remember growing up, my family reunion with some of my cousins, and I remember the Dower boys, Peter Dower, John Dower in Minnesota. We had a blast in the summer, but I'll tell you this, my cousin would never say, Skip is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. My cousin Skip, he's God in a human body. Cousins know they're cousins. But these cousins, John the apostle and John the Baptist, their testimony, and it adds to the credibility because of this familiarity. Said this is the one.

This is the one. I have seen and testify that this is the Son of God. Are these testimonies important? Well, sure they are. These are eyewitness testimonies.

And under the circumstances, they're vital. Because you see, there's a whole lot of people who want to say, well, you know, Jesus was a good man, a good teacher, a good example. We'll even say he worked some miracles. But the Son of God, he is not. The Lamb of God, he is not. God in a human body, he is not.

But according to those who knew him best and saw him most, it's exactly who he was. Now Israel didn't want a lamb. He came into his own, we read last week, his own did not receive him. They didn't want a lamb. They wanted a lion. They wanted the lion of Judah. They wanted somebody to set up the earthly kingdom now. But first he must come as a lamb to take away their sin.

Otherwise, they could not enjoy that kingdom. He will come again as the lamb or as the lion of the tribe of Judah. But first he comes as the Lamb of God to take away the sin of the world, because sin is the impediment between the world and God. Again, the next day, verse 35.

John, this is J the B, stood with two of his disciples. So he's down, down to the Jordan River, down by the Dead Sea. It's very hot down there. We were down there just in the end of February, beginning of March, and it was in the 90s already. If it's the summertime, it's in the 120s or so.

So I'm guessing, I'm hoping for their sake, it's in the milder time of the year. Again, the next day, John stood with two of his disciples, and looking at Jesus, as he walked, said, Look. That's what behold means, look. Check it out.

Check him out. Look, the Lamb of God. The two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus.

I love that. They heard John's testimony, and they said, Okay, okay. See you, John. We're going. See you. Bye.

I'm going to follow him now. And Jesus turned, and seeing them following, said to them, What do you want? Well, it says, What do you seek? What do you want? Same question.

What do you want? They said to him, Rabbi, which is to say, when translated, Teacher, Where are you staying? Now, in John's Gospel, these are the first words that he records Jesus speaking.

The first red letter in the book. And it's interesting, the first words out of Jesus' mouth, recorded by John, is a question. Why did Jesus ask this question? Because he didn't know the answer. No, he knew the answer. He wanted them to think about the answer they were going to give. You know, many times, God will ask the questions. And he doesn't do that because he doesn't know the answer.

He asked the question so that the one he's asking will have to think about the question and will lead that person to a logical consideration. In the garden after Adam's sin, God said, Adam, where are you? God wasn't, like, he didn't, like, miss him on the GPS. And I can't find Adam anywhere. He knew exactly where Adam was. He wanted Adam to think about how far he had moved from God.

Adam, where are you? Jesus said to his disciples, who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am? He knew the answer to that. He wanted them to answer it and to consider what people were saying. And then he said, who do you say that I am?

He wanted to hear their confession. In John chapter 5, Jesus will ask the paralyzed man, the paralytic who's at the pool of Bethesda, an interesting question. It's probably not a question you would ask somebody who's crippled. Imagine walking up to a crippled person in a hospital room and asking them the question of Jesus, do you want to get better? What kind of a question is that? Hey, crippled person, you want to get better? Anybody listening to that question who didn't understand what was going on would think that's a very cruel question to ask.

I was going to say, try that, but don't try that. The question was meant to probe that. Are you sure you want to get better? It's going to mean some changes in your life. You've been living off of the graces of people who are giving you things and giving you money and sustaining you on the dole of the charity of the people or the government. All of this time, are you sure you are ready for a lifestyle change?

That means you're going to have to go back to work and struggle, etc. I know you're in suffering and pain. You don't want this, but are you sure you want to get well?

Are you ready for this? So sometimes God will ask the question to provoke the answer to get us to think of our motives. What do you want? What are you seeking?

It's a good question. What are you seeking? You here tonight, us here tonight in this place, what do you see? Why do you come to church? What are you seeking? To give God the glory, to further your relationship with Him, to spot young girls that aren't married, young guys that are married.

There's a number of reasons people can do things. And so these questions, when you find them in the Scripture, it's good to meditate on them and apply them to yourself. What do you want? What are you seeking? I love their answer. They said, Rabbi, now they asked a question, where are you staying? We just want to be where you are. There's something about you, Jesus. There's something we're noticing right now. John pointed you out.

There's something compelling about you. We want to find out where you're hanging out because we want to be there with you. It's like David, he said, one thing I will desire of the Lord and that will I seek after that I might abide in the house of the Lord all the days of my life and behold His beauty. They didn't say, well, we want some information or we want a course on theology with a degree or we want a miracle of healing. We want food.

Where are you staying? We want to hang out with you. And he said to them, again, I love these statements, come and see. Come and see.

He doesn't give them information. He gives them an invitation. Come and see. Explore for yourself.

Let it be a personal exploration. They came and saw where he was staying and remained with him that day. Now, but it was about the 10th hour, which means it was 4 o'clock in the afternoon by this time. I'm guessing it's the winter time. The sun would be going down soon. The reckoning of time among the Jews began with 6 a.m. That was the first hour of the day.

So the 10th hour of the day is 4 o'clock in the afternoon. One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. The fisherman from Galilee is down. One of them is down with John the Baptist. That's Andrew.

Now, watch this. He first found his own brother, Simon, and said to him, we have found the Messiah, which is translated the Christ. Now, this is the text that the Billy Graham Organization has used for the past, I don't know, 40 years or so, 50 years, called Operation Andrew. You know, before a crusade comes into town, the Graham Organization will say, okay, let's, we're gonna teach you Operation Andrew. It's all about identifying and writing down the friends that you are going to invite to the crusade that Dr. Graham is gonna preach. You start praying for those friends, you invite them early, you invite them perpetually, you pick them up and bring them on that night or that day of the crusade.

You're listening to Connect with Skip Heitzig. Before we return to Skip's teaching, we wanna tell you about this month's resource titled The Holy Spirit Then and Now, which comes with two books by Chuck Smith. The Book of Acts commentary will help you understand how the Holy Spirit worked in the early church, and Power, a biblical balance on the person and work of the Holy Spirit, will help you see how He works in you. You'll be inspired as you discover that the same Spirit who worked in Paul, Peter, and the early church is active and involved in your life today. We'll send you the Holy Spirit then and now as our thanks for your gift of $50 or more to reach people with God's love through Connect with Skip Heitzig.

Go to connectwithskip.com slash offer or call 800-922-1888 and request your copy when you give. Now, let's get back to Skip for more of today's teaching. So here's Andrew going out to find his brother to introduce Jesus to him and him to Jesus.

That's always a sign of love. If you're really following Jesus, I believe you're gonna wanna find other people that you know and love to bring them to Jesus. A true disciple is someone who is not content to go to heaven alone.

If you're good with just getting to heaven all by yourself alone, you don't wanna invite anybody else, you don't wanna mention Jesus to anybody else because they may not like you, they might marginalize you or scorn you, it's a very sad and narrow life to live. I remember when I gave my life to Jesus. It was the summer of 19... And I was up in the San Francisco Bay Area.

I was living with my brother, 1973 summer. I had watched Billy Graham on television and I remember being gripped with, I've gotta tell my family what happened to me, they've gotta find out. They've gotta hear this.

They've gotta hear about Jesus. So I decided I have to go back home. Now I'm living up in the San Jose, San Francisco area and I drove my motorcycle eight hours south to Southern California because I was so eager and anxious to tell my family first. They didn't get too excited about my conversion. My friends, they weren't all excited about my conversion but eventually some of those came to know Christ.

And what I loved is when I went to a friend to tell him about Jesus, the reason he came to see me is to tell me about Jesus, not knowing that I had given my life to him. So we both had the same idea, we were both Andrew, looking for our friends to invite them to Christ. So Andrew does that, finds Peter, brought him to Jesus. Now Jesus looked at him and said, you are Simon, the son of Jonah. You shall be called Cephas, which is translated to stone.

The Aramaic word is petros, Peter. I'm giving you a new name. I'm not gonna call you Simon, hearing, because you're not all that good at hearing, Peter. I'm gonna call you rock.

Now those that knew Peter probably laughed at that name. Ha ha, rock. This guy's shifting sand. He's anything but rock.

He is impetuous and unreliable. But you know, I've discovered as I read through the Gospels that the people that Jesus names, I believe he names them based upon what he's going to make them into, not based on their present character. You may be shifting sand, but I'm gonna make you a chip off the old rock. I am the rock, Peter, but I'm gonna make you rock man. And Peter became that. Who preached that great message on Pentecost and 3,000 souls were baptized that day?

Peter, who wrote two New Testament letters as a leader of the early church, Peter. I love that about Jesus. The following day, Jesus wanted to go to Galilee. It's up north now, Sea of Galilee. And he found Philip.

And he said to him, follow me. Now Philip was from Bethsaida. That's a little fishing village on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee. The city of Andrew and Peter, Philip found Nathanael.

So Andrew went to Peter. Now Philip finds Nathanael and says to him, we have found him of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. We found the one everyone has been searching for and talking about and anticipating what you hear about in the synagogues by the rabbis, the coming Messiah.

We found him. His name is Yeshua. He's from Nazareth. And Nathanael said to him, can anything good come out of Nazareth? And Philip said to him, come and see. He'd been hanging around Jesus with that question, with that answer, come and see.

I like that. He's just, I'm going to do what Jesus did, come and see. Nazareth, an out-of-the-way village. Now Nathanael, we are told, and you won't be told till John chapter 21, but you will find out in John chapter 21 that Nathanael was originally from Cana of Galilee, not far from Nazareth. Now nobody liked the Galilean cities in Jerusalem. All the Jerusalemites thought the Galileans were hicks. It's how you and I would view people from other states that have certain accents. We go, oh, they're just kind of like country bumpkins. They're hicks, man. Galileans were unsophisticated, but of all the Galilean cities, Nazareth was like lowest on the totem pole, so unsophisticated. Can anything good come out of there? Now keep in mind, the village that Nathanael's from is Cana.

It's not like great. And probably Nazareth and Cana were rivals growing up. I'm sure their high school teams played each other in basketball and things like that. So he was familiar with that. Oh, can anything good come out of there? Come and see. Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, Behold, or look, an Israelite indeed in whom there is no deceit. Now, you notice when Jesus meets these people, he already knows about them. Oh, you're Simon, son of Jonah.

Well, I'm calling you this now. So they on a normal, natural human level are being introduced to him, but it's as if Jesus was anticipating them. Now, I don't have time now, but in a study I did finding the God who finds you in our Believe 879 series on the Gospel of John in depth, I go into this in depth in detail. The whole idea of you choosing versus God choosing, Arminianism versus Calvinism, pre-election, predestination versus personal volition.

I go into all that using this text. So suffice it to say now, Jesus said, Hey, it's like I know you, an Israelite indeed in whom there is no guile. Now, why would he say that? Because he sounds like a wiseacre.

A wise, oh, can anything good come out of Nazareth? He had the kind of personality, he wore his heart on his sleeve. If he doubted something, he'd say, I doubt that. Sort of like Thomas.

We don't know where you're going, how can we know the way? He's that kind of personality. Thomas wasn't the only doubter on the team. Nathaniel was the other guy.

Can anything good come out of that place? But that's what he felt, that's what he said. He said he was honest, and Jesus knew that about him. He said, you don't hide your feelings.

You're not covering up anything. You're a man in whom there is no guile, no deceit. Nathaniel said to him, how do you know me? Jesus answered and said, before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you. Evidently, there was some personal place that he was praying, hanging out.

He thought, nobody knew this little special hideaway that I have except for me. Jesus said, I saw you there. Look at his response, and Nathaniel answered and said to him, Rabbi, you are the son of God.

Wow, that's quite a turn. You are the king of Israel, that's all it took. The fact that Jesus told him, showed him that he knew even the secret parts of his life. Jesus answered and said to 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 him, most assuredly I say to you, hereafter you shall see heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man. You thought that fig tree thing, statement I just said was cool? Stick around, dude. You're gonna see no less than 37 miracles recorded in the Gospel of John, the first being in your hometown next chapter, in the town of Canaan turning water into wine.

You think that's great? Hold your horses, you're gonna see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man. Real quickly, that's a reference to Genesis 28.

Jacob runs away from his brother Esau trying to kill him after he stole the blessing. And he sees a vision of God that night, he camps out, puts his head on a rock, he's in the city area of Bethel, and he sees a dream, a vision of angels, heaven open and a ladder from heaven to earth and angels, God's angels, up and going down. And I believe what Jesus is telling him is you are gonna see that I am the ladder between heaven and earth. You're gonna discover in looking at me and following me, not only can I tell you cool things about you hanging out under a tree, more than a tree, I'm the ladder, man, that connects God and man. I'm the bridge that connects heaven and earth.

And you're gonna see that displayed in the days ahead. Now, in our chapter, we noted last week that Jesus came into his own and his own did not receive him, but as many as did receive him, he gave them the right, the power to become children of God. In those verses, you have what people thought about him and, in fact, what people think about him. You have two responses, the majority response, the minority response. The majority response, they didn't receive him. The minority response, a few did receive him. And those who did, God gave them the right to become his children. The majority was wrong. The minority was right. Don't let your spirituality be governed, be dictated by a finger to the wind.

Find out what everybody else is thinking and I'll do it because they do it. I'll do it because everybody else does it, because you will be wrong. If you want to discover who Jesus is based upon what your friends or what your co-workers think of him, you'll be wrong. The minority report is the accurate report. He is the son of God, the savior of the world, the lamb of God.

That's the accurate report. And therefore, you receive him. And if you receive him, you will become a son or daughter of the living God, because you believe in his name. That's all it takes for salvation. You believe in his name.

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