Talking To A Skeptic, Part 1

Today on Fellowship in the Word, Pastor Bill Gebhardt challenges you to become a fully functioning follower of Jesus Christ. Prejudiceism is often born in the context of pride and prejudice. You see, well, how do I know that? Nathaniel said to him, can any good thing come Nazareth? Come on.

Wow. He's prejudiced. He has a disdain for Nazareth.

It's not in the text, but I really believe at that moment he looked at Philip and he rolled his eyes. Thank you for joining us today on this edition of Fellowship in the Word with Pastor Bill Gebhardt. Fellowship in the Word is the radio ministry of Fellowship Bible Church located in Metairie, Louisiana. Let's join Pastor Bill Gebhardt now as once again he shows us how God's Word meets our world. There is a verse in the Bible that has guided my ministry all these years. I remember writing in the margin of my Bible while I was in seminary. After I looked at that verse, I simply wrote the words, my mandate. In 2 Timothy 4, 2, the apostle Paul wrote to a young pastor named Timothy, preach the word.

Be ready in season and out of season. Reprove and rebuke and exhort with great patience and instruction. To put it another way, as a preacher and teacher of the Word of God, it's my job and it's my great desire to help people see the beauty of Jesus Christ and to see what he has done.

Often, though, I feel completely inadequate for the task. My words simply can't measure up to the greatness of our Lord and Savior. And so with great excitement and a little bit of relief, I've decided to preach a series on the conversations that Jesus Christ had with the people that he encountered.

In other words, let Jesus speak for himself. Quite cleverly, I've entitled the series Conversations with Jesus. You see, we often study his discourses. We study what the apostle Paul teaches as the implications of his life and death.

We look at his miracles, but rarely do we spend a lot of time just in his conversations that he had with people. And so the place to start is the beginning and his conversation with a skeptic. Would you open your Bibles to John Chapter 1? The Gospel of John Chapter 1. This gospel is unique in a lot of ways.

The other three are called synoptics. They're very similar. John's not writing around the same time. He's writing 30, 40 years later.

Much later than them. He's writing in the 90s. The world is changing. There's a lot of things going on, including sort of some interesting forms of Gnosticism. Sort of a mystery way of coming to spiritual knowledge.

And John plays off of that. To the Greeks, by the way, they believe that the universe sort of had a rational and moral order to it. They believe they called it the order of nature.

And from the Greek point of view, they decided to call this what life is really about or the order of nature. They called it the logos. Now, what's interesting about that is the Greeks then went on, if you read their philosophers and they said, if you want to live life, then you've got to know the logos and you've got to sort of contemplate the logos. And then you have to live your life conformed to the logos.

And that's why John starts his gospel that way. In the beginning was the logos. You see, in beginning was the word.

He's playing off of the Greek culture. In the beginning was the logos. Notice the order of nature, the reason for life, the answer to all the questions. In the beginning was the logos. And he says in the word was with God and the word was God. So the two things he says in the first verse is the logos is eternal and the logos is God. And he says he was in the beginning with God and all things came into being through him. And apart from him, nothing came into being that has come into being. He's not only eternal in God, but he's the creator of all things in him was life. And the life was the light of men.

He is the giver and the source of life, spiritual life, as well as physical life. He says the light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not comprehend it. And then he introduces John the Baptist.

Then he says, there came a man sent from God whose name was John. And he came as a witness to testify about the light so that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but he came to testify about the light. And there was a true light which coming into the world enlightens every man. He was in the world. The world was made through him.

The world did not know him. He came to his own and those who were his own, they did not receive him. But as many as received him to them, he gave the right to become the children of God. Even those who believe in his name. Notice the whole thing that he's saying is the importance of life comes down to how do you relate to the logos.

And then he says. Who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor the will of men, but of God. And the logos became flesh and dwelt among us. And we saw was glory, glory as the only begotten from the father, full of grace and truth. And so now the logos becomes flesh. The logos reflects the glory of God. He is the one who brings grace and truth to the world. And he says, John testified about him and cried out and saying, he says, this was he of whom I said, he who comes after me has a higher rank than I, for he existed before me for of his fullness. We have all received the grace upon grace, for the law was given through Moses and grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ.

No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten God who is in the bosom of the father, he has explained him. That word explained in English, the Greek word is exegesis. The idea of taking the text and explaining through the grammar and syntax. One of the things I never liked hearing was a Greek professor saying the exegetical assignment you'll have tonight is.

And then you would have to take the Greek text and you would have to use all the word studies, all the grammar, all the syntax, put it in its context and explain the passage in Greek. John says that's what Jesus Christ did to God. He's the explanation of God.

And so the logos here is amazing. It's an astounding start to this gospel. And then you see in verse 19, he says, this is the testimony of John.

This is day one. John is out there and he is preaching and he is preaching at the east east of Jerusalem in the Jordan south down in Judea. And he's preaching. He's he's preaching, repent, repent. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. In other words, what he's telling them is Messiah is coming.

I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness. He paraphrases Isaiah, the prophet, that the Messiah will be here. The Jews, meanwhile, don't like what John is doing because he called them a lot of names that they didn't like at all.

And so they sent in emissaries to them and try to explain who John was. Are you the Messiah? And he said, no. Are you Elijah?

No. You see, I'm simply the voice of one crying in the wilderness. And so on that day, John is interacting with them. And in verse 20, he said, I baptize in water, but among you stands one whom you do not know. And I think what's interesting here is I'm convinced Jesus Christ was standing there. He was in the group.

There are a lot of people listening to John. And Jesus Christ is standing there and John understands that, but he doesn't know who he is yet. And so consequently, he said, there's one standing right in your group who you do not know. Now, notice verse 29 says the next day, day two. He sees Jesus coming and he said, behold, the lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world.

There's the guy. Here's the Messiah. This is the anointed one. John spots him. Now, that's kind of interesting because when you get to verse 35, it's day three.

These days happen right in a row. And again, the next day, John was standing with two of his disciples. And he looked at Jesus as he walked and he said, behold, the lamb of God.

There he is again. Now, what's interesting is these two disciples of John are becoming will become two disciples of Jesus. In other words, they become part of the disciples, but they're simply disciples of John.

And it's astounding when you think about it, because these are common men. These are fishermen. They're from not just Galilee, but they're from North Galilee, from the Sea of Galilee to the North Shore. And they have walked all the way from there down to hear John's ministry. And they are followers of John.

You'll know them because they're pretty famous. The two disciples heard him speak and they followed Jesus. And Jesus turned and saw them and said, what do you seek? And they said to him, Rabbi or teacher, Rabboni, where are you staying?

Now, notice they're now walking. They know what John's ministry is. John's ministry is to prepare them for the Messiah. They now know that he's the Messiah.

So they seek Christ out and they want to know where he's staying. And he said, come and you will see. And so they came and they saw him staying and saw where he was staying. And they stayed with him that day for it was about the 10th hour.

It was four in the afternoon. So they spent this day with Christ. And then they're going to spend that evening, the next night with Christ.

Now, unfortunately for us, we don't have anything about that discussion. Could you imagine what that's like? I mean, this is the first day of Jesus's ministry, his first day of public ministry. And so they're their disciples of John the Baptist. They've got to be saying, hey, tell us all about where you came from. You see, tell us how the Old Testament pointed to you.

Tell us what you're going to do, whatever it is. We don't have any of those conversations, but he stayed with them for a long time. And one of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. Now, Andrew is one of the disciples. And he found first his own brother Simon. And he said to them, we have found the Messiah, which translated is the Christos, the Christ, the anointed one.

We found him. You have to understand there would be nothing on earth today that would equal that if you were a Jew in the first century. First of all, you have the Roman yoke on you, and it's been quite oppressive.

Secondly, you have heard for generation after generation after generation back for a thousand years. Messiah's coming. Messiah's coming.

And now they say, look, we just found them. We just found our Messiah. Now, their thinking is and he's going to become our king and he's going to throw the Romans out. And we're going to set up a messianic kingdom and rule the whole world.

That part they haven't learned yet, but they are so excited. And notice he finds his brother. He finds his own brother, Simon. That's exactly the way, by the way, the kingdom of God has advanced even today.

So it's from day one, it's been the same. Somebody finds the Messiah and then they go tell somebody they found the Messiah. Would you like to find a Messiah? Somebody finds the savior and then we tell someone else, would you like to find a savior? You see, the whole idea of being witnesses for Jesus Christ or as has been said in the past, you know, we're simply beggars telling other beggars where to find bread. The idea of it is that's the way the kingdom advances.

What's interesting to me at this stage is Jesus Christ is the logos, eternal, God, creator, giver of life, all of these things. And notice how he puts his original team together. Is he looking for the best of the best? I mean, you always see that recruiting in America.

We're looking for the best of the best. Jesus is looking for two guys who happen to be there. They're just two fishermen. That's all they are. There's nothing, nothing about, nothing. In fact, the whole group that he puts together are a bunch of nobodies from nowhere.

That's who they are. You know what Jesus said? I don't need anybody. I can make a nobody a somebody.

And in fact, these men change the whole world. You see, Jesus isn't looking for that. Jesus is looking for someone who believes. And so he starts to put his team together. Now, what's interesting is when he brought Simon to Jesus, Jesus looked at him and said, you are Simon, son of John. Now, he may have been told that or he just may have known that.

But then notice the first sentence. You shall be called Cephas. You just meet a guy. Your brother tells you he's the Messiah.

He goes, oh, by the way, you're built? Yep, yep, son of Bud, yep, yep. Your name's going to be John.

Really? Yep, changing your name right off the bat here. Cephas is Aramaic. His name becomes Petros. He becomes stone.

And so he's going to change his name. First thing he says, by the way, tells you a little bit about his authority, doesn't it? Because you notice, is Peter hard-headed? Yes. Is he vocal? Yes. Does he say anything?

No. The next day, notice now we get to the next day, the day four. The next day, he purposed to go into Galilee, and he found Philip. And Jesus said to Philip, Philip, follow me. Now, Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter.

Now, that's quite interesting. Philip is from Bethsaida, the house Beth of fishing. It is a tiny little fishing village on the northeast corner of the Sea of Galilee. It would be very similar to Manchac or Bucktown.

It would be very similar. It's just a little fishing village. But notice, Andrew's from Bethsaida. Peter's from Bethsaida.

Philip's from Bethsaida. These are all fishermen who happen to go the whole way down to Judea to hear John the Baptist preach, and who believed in what John the Baptist is saying. And so he finds them, and he says, follow me. Now, Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter, and Philip found Nathanael.

Now, we're zeroing in on our conversation. He finds Nathanael. Notice, the same way Andrew went to Simon, Philip goes to Nathanael.

Just one person going to the next. But there's something different about Nathanael. Nathanael's like a lot of you were in the past, or some of you still are, and I certainly was. He's a skeptic. He's skeptical. I'm not sure I believe this.

How do I know? You'll see in a moment here. Philip found Nathanael, and he said to him, we have found him, of whom Moses in the law and also whom the prophets wrote.

This is phenomenal. From Nathanael's point of view, what? Yes, we have found the prophet that Moses spoke of. We have found the Messiah that Isaiah and Jeremiah, you see, and Zechariah and Zephaniah, all the prophets spoke of. We found them.

We have them. That's pretty exciting. But then it gets very unexciting for Nathanael. It says, Yeshua, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. Skepticism, first point, is often born in the context of pride and prejudice. Skepticism is often born in the context of pride and prejudice. You see, well, how do I know that? Nathanael said to him, Can any good thing come Nazareth? Come on.

Wow. He's prejudiced. He has a disdain for Nazareth. It's not in the text, but I really believe at that moment he looked at Philip and he rolled his eyes. Really, Nazareth?

Really? That's what skeptics do. You see, what we learn here is that Nazareth is a city of disdain. Judeans look down on those from Galilee. You're just a Galilean. You're from the wrong place.

But get this. Galileans look down on Nazareth. You see, Nazareth was right next door to Sepphoris. Sepphoris is a military establishment of the Romans. It's a garrison. Roman soldiers there.

The business of Nazareth is the business of keeping the soldiers of Rome entertained. So you know exactly what kind of town Nazareth is. That's the town. It's a nowhere town in a no place.

And what's interesting is Nathanael doesn't like it, and it's because he's prejudiced. You see, we find out that Nathanael is from Cana. Now, I know you say, well, Cana must be a nice place. I mean, there was a miracle in Cana. It comes in the next chapter. Yeah.

No. Cana is no place. Cana is so no place that even the scholars aren't even sure where Cana was. But the best answers, the best scholarship points that Cana is a little town about nine miles from Nazareth. Now, that's close, and there's nothing in between.

So, he is from Cana. It reminds me of like two rural towns with two high schools. Like, your arch rival is the town that looks just like your town down the road, but everything about it's bad. You see, they're your arch rival. And so you have, in this case, Nathanael making his statement. He said, this is a bad place. By the way, it's not unusual.

It stays that way. Hold your place there and go with me to the book of Acts chapter 24, the book of Acts chapter 24. Now, we're talking about Paul much later in time, and he's in the middle of his ministry. And he's gonna have to stand before Felix, the governor.

But I want you to see something here. Acts chapter 24, verse 1, it says, after five days, the high priest, Ananias, came down with some elders when an attorney named Tertullus with him, and they brought charges to the governor against Paul. And after Paul had been summoned, Tertullus began to accuse him, saying to the governor, now watch this typical lawyer speech here. Watch how this starts. He says, since we have through you attained much peace, and since by your providence, reforms are being carried out for this nation, we acknowledge this in every way and everywhere, most excellent Felix, with all thankfulness.

They hated their oppressors. He's just giving a lawyer talk. He's buttering them up. He says, but that I may not weary you any further, I beg you to grant us by your kindness a brief hearing. Then he says this, for we have found this man, and this is a great translation, a real pest. Just seems kind of funny in the word of God to be called that, doesn't it? We have found this man a real pest and a fellow who stirs up dissension among all the Jews throughout the world, a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes.

It's a bad word even then, Nazarene. What good can come out of Nazareth? You see what pride and prejudice does? That's the way it works.

We can go back to John now. You see, a typical skeptic starts with ridicule and disdain. There are still skeptics with us today.

You might be one. Christianity. I grew up with that.

I went to church when I was 11. I ain't getting out of that. Really? Yeah. You see that kind of skepticism? Christianity is still from Nazareth.

It's amazing when you hear that kind of disdain. You've been listening to Pastor Bill Gebhardt on the Radio Ministry of Fellowship in the Word. If you ever miss one of our broadcasts or maybe you would just like to listen to the message one more time, remember that you can go to a great website called OnePlace.com. That's OnePlace.com, and you can listen to Fellowship in the Word online.

At that website, you will find not only today's broadcast but also many of our previous audio programs as well. At Fellowship in the Word, we are thankful for those who financially support our ministry and make this broadcast possible. We ask all of our listeners to prayerfully consider how you might help this radio ministry continue its broadcast on this radio station by supporting us monthly or with just a one-time gift.

Support for our ministry can be sent to Fellowship in the Word, 4600 Clearview Parkway, Metairie, Louisiana, 7006. If you would be interested in hearing today's message in its original format, that is as a sermon that Pastor Bill delivered during a Sunday morning service at Fellowship Bible Church, then you should visit our website, fbcnola.org. At our website, you will find hundreds of Pastor Bill's sermons. You can browse through our sermon archives to find the sermon series you are looking for, or you can search by title. Once you find the message you are looking for, you can listen online, or if you prefer, you can download the sermon and listen at your own convenience. And remember, you can do all of this absolutely free of charge. Once again, our website is fbcnola.org. For Pastor Bill Gebhardt, I'm Jason Gebhardt, thanking you for listening to Fellowship in the Word.