Today on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Thanks for joining us today as we begin another week of solid biblical teaching from Pastor J.D. Greer here on Summit Life.
I'm your host, Molly Vitovich. We're continuing the teaching we began last week by returning to John chapter one as Pastor J.D. explains how Jesus both asks and answers a vital question for all of us. What are you seeking?
Though people everywhere naturally crave love and acceptance, they often search for it in all the wrong places. Through Jesus' encounters with both Peter and Nathaniel, we see the beauty of being fully known and fully loved by the one we should devote our lives to. Remember, if you've missed any part of this Christmas teaching series, you can catch up online at jdgreer.com. Let's return to John chapter one now. John chapter one, if you got your Bibles this morning, and I hope that you brought your Bibles.
John chapter one. I don't know if you've seen all the hullabaloo around Harry and Meghan's new Netflix Tell All that is coming out this weekend. I have not watched it.
I do not intend to watch it, but it reminds me of one of my favorite stories about the British royal family. True story. One of the royal family members, a Lady Susan Hussey was her name. She was known to be pretty clumsy with her small talk. You know, the kind of person who was always making awkward observations or asking inappropriate questions at inopportune times, that kind of person. We all have that relative, don't we?
Maybe some of you are that relative. Well, back in the early 1990s, Buckingham Palace got asked at short notice if they would host a reception for an American delegation who was on their way home from a NATO summit. They wanted to stop into London and spend a little time with some of the British government. And so members of the royal household were scrambled to fill the room where they were going to have dinner.
And Lady Susan Hussey found herself sitting next to a rather charming visitor. After talking with him for several minutes, she asked, she said, well, what do you do for a living? And a slightly surprised George Bush replied, well, I'm president of the United States of America.
That's what I do for a living. I'm sure we've all had the experience of putting our foot into our mouths, but not recognizing who you are talking to or how you were supposed to be responding to that person can lead to some pretty embarrassing situations. In his gospel, the apostle John introduces us to Jesus, and then he shows us how to respond. The other gospels, Matthew and Luke in particular, give us the what of Christmas, all the facts about the Christmas, the angels and the shepherds and Mary and Joseph and the manger. John, the apostle John instead gives us the why of Christmas. In the first half of John one, he gave us Jesus's resume. If you remember from last week, Jesus is the word, he is the light, he is the life, and he is glory in flesh.
And now in the second half, he's gonna show us how to respond. He's gonna do so by asking us three questions or you could think of these as Jesus's first three questions for us. Number one, what are you really searching for? Number two, what is your name? And then number three, will you follow?
Will you follow? Here we go, let's begin in verse 35. The next day, John the Baptist, not John who wrote this apostle, but a different John, the cousin of Jesus, John. John the Baptist was standing with two of his disciples and he looked at Jesus as he walked by and he said, behold, behold the lamb of God. John the Baptist was like, let's just think of him as a religious celebrity in Israel. Everybody was flocking to hear him preach.
He was the talk of the town. Some were saying that he was the greatest prophet since Isaiah and Elijah. Some were even saying that he might be the Messiah himself.
And now, and now as Jesus walks by, he sees Jesus walking by and he says, behold, there, there is the lamb of God. The lamb of course was a central feature in Jewish worship rituals. It started really with the Passover.
The last plague that God had put onto Egypt when Israel was in captivity was to take the life of every first born in Egypt. But God had promised the children of Israel that if they would take a lamb and they would sacrifice it and they would smear some of the blood on the top of their doorpost and on the sides, that the angel of death that had come from God to kill the first born in every house, that angel, when the angel saw the blood would pass over their house and leave everyone inside alive. Well, every year thereafter Israelites commemorated the Passover by sacrificing a lamb and recreating the events of that final night. A few years later when God instructed them on how to set up their temple worship, he commanded that each family bring a lamb to the temple each year and offer it as a sacrifice on behalf of the sins of the family. The father of the family representing the family would carry that lamb up to the altar. He would lay that lamb down on the altar and as the priest cut the throat of the lamb, the father would lay his hand on the head of the lamb and confess the sins of the family.
The symbolism was obvious, pretty clear and straightforward. The sins of the family were being transferred to the lamb and the sins were being covered by the blood of the lamb. The lamb was dying in their place. That was called the ritual of atonement. John the Baptist now looks at Jesus and says, this person, this man, this is the lamb of God.
That is not what they had been expecting. They had never thought of the lamb as a person. But John says it's always been about him. Everything written in the Torah and the prophets about a lamb, that's all been pointing to that man right there. He was saying the lamb and the Messiah are the same person and all that would have blown their minds. The admonition that John gives is, behold him. Behold means look at him, recognize who he is, pay attention to him.
That admonition is still relevant. You, you have a sin debt that needs to be covered. That's where the Christian message begins. Jesus is the lamb that was sent for you. John would say to you and to me, behold him, look at him, recognize who he is and consider what his coming and what his life and his death, what it means about you.
Behold him. Verse 37, then two of the disciples who were standing there with John, two of John's disciples heard John say this. And so they began to follow Jesus. Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them, what are you seeking? Or the way it's written in Greek, where are you trying to go?
Where are you trying to go? These are Jesus's first words in the gospel of John. If you underline stuff in your Bible, and I would encourage you to do that, you should underline that question because this is our first question. What are you seeking?
These are Jesus's first words in the gospel of John and they have profound significance because this is going to be the question that undergirds a lot of, of Jesus's encounters and the rest of the gospel. What are you really looking for? What are you really looking for? And what do I have to do with that? In fact, I might ask that of some of you this morning. What is it that you are really looking for in life? And what does Jesus have to do with that? You made a decision to come here this morning.
Why did you do that? You see all of us, whether we recognize it or not, all of us are on some quest in life to obtain whatever it is we think will make us happy. And for many of us, Jesus is part of that equation. What is that thing for you? What is it that you most desire?
What are you really searching for? And those quiet moments when you're all alone and you're not distracted, when you're not crazy busy, what is it that you most yearn for? Some of you, by the way, don't let yourself get alone. It's like you hate silence. You keep the radio on in your car. Use any spare moment you have to scroll through your phone, TikTok, Facebook, or checking your score, the scores or whatever, because God forbid you think real thoughts or feel real feelings and actually engage your soul for half a second. You think our society had designed itself to keep us from any silence or reflection.
That was the South Point Mall the other day. And in between the outdoor stores, there is music coming out of the bushes because God forbid that in the 20 seconds that I'm walking between stores, I have a few moments of silence to think about my life choices. Look, if that's you, if that's you, if you hate silence, look, I'm not judging you. I just want to say that maybe you are searching for something, but you haven't found it for so long that now you're just crowding your life out with noise so you don't feel the longing anymore. You never think about real questions anymore. You're just, you're consumed with daily trivialities.
So what Jesus says to these first two would-be disciples is as relevant as ever. What do you really seeking? What are you really seeking? Look at your checkbook. Look at your calendar. Look at your browsing history.
They'll give you a hint of what you're seeking. Look at your secrets. There's parts of your life that you keep hidden from others. The alcohol, the drugs, the cheating, the pornography. That'll tell you.
Or look at your obsessions, your work, finding a boyfriend. What is it that makes you jealous or sad or mad? What is it that you're really looking for? And what does Jesus have to do with that? Their response, verse 38, we need a place to stay tonight. That's what we're looking for. They think Jesus is literally asking them what they're looking for at the current moment.
What are you guys really looking for? I need a bathroom. A recurring theme in John's gospel is how Jesus often talks way up here on one level while everybody else is thinking way down here on this level. For example, John 6, Jesus says, I am the bread of life. And they respond, yum, bread.
Some hot yeast rolls sound amazing right now. Or in John 3, Jesus says, unless you are born again, Nicodemus, you're never gonna see the kingdom of God. And Nicodemus responds, well, how exactly am I supposed to crawl back up into my mommy's tummy and get born a second time? And Jesus says, Nicodemus first, gross.
Have you ever heard of a metaphor? I'm talking about a different kind of birth, a heavenly birth. In John 4, Jesus tells the woman at the well, I got this water, living water. And lady, you could drink from this water and never be thirsty again. And she responds, oh yeah? Well, where's your bucket to draw this water? Jesus is talking about his spirit.
She's thinking he's talking about the well. By the way, a few years ago, I was sitting with some college students at an outdoor restaurant on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill. I'd just spoken at this campus event. A couple of the guys went out to dinner with me afterwards. And as the three or four of us are sitting there, a homeless guy comes up and he says, hey, could I have some money?
Well, I mean, they're college students, so they're dead broke, of course. And I just didn't have any cash on me. So I asked the guy if I could buy him something to eat. And he said, he had just eaten.
He didn't want anything to eat. He just wanted some cash. And all of a sudden, one of those college students just pipes up and says, hey man, what if I told you we had food we could give you that you could eat of once and never be hungry again? And the guy just stared at him for a minute and gave him this totally bewildered look and then turned and kind of ambled away. And the college student looked back at me and said, I don't understand. That intro totally worked for Jesus when he used it. I said, yeah, I get it. I don't know.
I don't know. But the point is, Jesus was often talking way up here and his disciples are thinking way down here. That's what you got going on here in John 1. Jesus is talking about what they're really seeking in life, where they're really trying to go. And they think he's asking them where they're headed at the moment.
But you know that's okay. Jesus didn't turn them away. Verse 39, he very patiently says to them, come and you'll see.
with a transcript available for study with each. You'll also find Pastor JD's blog with an archive of more than 10 years of content for you to learn from. You can also find links to Pastor JD's podcasts, his social media accounts, and you can sign up for our daily email devotionals all for free. And while you're on our website, be sure to check out jdgrier.com slash donate to learn more about how you can be a part of helping this ministry grow and thrive, enabling us to reach more people with the gospel of Jesus.
Once again, all of that is available for you at jdgrier.com free of charge, thanks to our generous supporters. So browse away and consider whether you might like to be a part of the Summit Life giving family as well. Now let's get back to today's teaching on Summit Life. Once again, here's Pastor JD.
Good news y'all. Throughout the gospel of John, we're gonna see Jesus receive people with all kinds of mixed motives. He just starts with where you are.
That's good news for you, isn't it? You just gotta be prepared for him to transform those questions that brought you to him. Maybe you're here this weekend because you think Jesus can help you with some felt need. You're in a marriage crisis, a singleness issue, a parenting issue, problems with your kids, a financial crisis, a health crisis.
Maybe you're just scared about what's going on and what's gonna happen to you when you die, or maybe you're just troubled about the future. Y'all, Jesus can help you with all of those things. But the questions he has for you ultimately are bigger.
A lot of times you're thinking down here and he's gonna start talking way up here and he's just gonna start doing some things to take your eyes off of this and put it onto that. Jesus said, come and see. So they came and they saw where he was staying and they stayed with him the rest of that day for it was about the 10th hour or about four in the afternoon because they started counting the hours at 6 a.m. Verse 40, one of them was Andrew, Simon's brother. He went and found Simon and said to him, we have found the Messiah. He brought Peter, that's gonna become Simon's new name here in a minute. He brought Simon Peter Jesus.
Jesus looked at him and said, you are Simon the son of John. But from this point on, you're going to be called Cephas. Cephas is the Aramaic version of the name Peter. Peter is Greek. Cephas is Aramaic. Both of them mean the same thing.
They both mean rock. This is where Jesus first meets the apostle Peter and it's our second major question. What's really your name? I want you to notice that in the first meeting, Jesus gives Peter a nickname. Y'all, I love people like this who find some admirable quality about you and then name you after it. Do you got any friends like that that do that?
I've got a couple of them. One of my favorite episodes of Big Bang Theory is where Wallowitz is trying to get the nickname Rocketman from the other astronauts on this new team that he's joined. So he sets his ringtone to the song Rocketman and has it go off when he's on a Zoom call with them to try to trick them into giving him that nickname. But just as that happens, his mom calls up to him and asks him if you want any more Froot Loops. So the other astronauts give him the nickname Froot Loops instead. Or George Costanza on Seinfeld who wants the nickname T-Bone and ends up with the nickname Coco the Monkey. By the way, y'all see what I did there?
Something for the younger people, something for the older people. I'm trying to be a pastor for all of you people, okay? Peter was not jockeying for a nickname, but Jesus gave him one that prophesied his future. In verse 42, Jesus goes through three iterations of Peter's identity. Simon, that's his current name. Son of John, that's his family identity.
You could almost think of that as his past name. And then Cephas, which means rock, that's a picture of what Jesus is going to make him into. Y'all, that was all in our first conversation.
What an introduction. But there's an important lesson there for you and for me. See, when you come to Jesus, you cease to be defined by your past, who your parents were. You also cease to be defined by your present, what you've accomplished or your mistakes and your failures, and you start to be defined by who Jesus is making you into and the plans that he has for you. He knows who you are. He knows who you were.
Most importantly, he knows who he is shaping you into. So let me just ask you, what name, what names have defined your past and present? Maybe they've been put on you by people who did not care about you. Maybe they've been put on you by people who did not understand you.
Maybe they've been put on you by your enemy himself. Stupid, unloved, a failure, unattractive, difficult, a problem, a burden, not enough, addict, broken, damaged goods, failed father, criminal. That might be accurate based on who you were. It might even be who you are, but Jesus will no longer call you by those names. He calls you by a new name and says, this is what you will be. I have given you a new name, beloved, chosen, adopted, redeemed, restored, a rock for my church, a fountain of blessing, a co-heir and a co-ruler with me. One who shines like the stars in the sky, pointing many to righteousness. That's your new name.
And that's what I'm calling you immediately. Verse 43, the next day, Jesus decided to go to Galilee. And there he found Philip and said to him, follow me.
All right, let's review what we've seen thus far. Jesus appears before us as the Lamb of God, who alone can take away our sins. He asked us what we're really searching for in life. He gives us a new name, and now he extends to us the essential invitation of the gospels, follow me, or in Hebrew, leacharai, which to me just sounds cooler than follow me, doesn't it?
Leacharai. What does it mean to become a Christian? What's it mean to become a Christian? According to the gospels, very simply, to become a Christian is to begin to follow Jesus.
It's not start being perfect. It's not to know every answer to every theological question. It's not to get perfect church attendance.
It's not to change your life in a bazillion different ways. Simply, it's follow Jesus. Jesus invites people everywhere, anywhere to follow him.
Now, I just want to acknowledge a lot of people don't know exactly what that means. I mean, back then, when Jesus said, follow me, it was pretty straightforward. You literally just followed him. He went that way.
You went that way. But today, he's not physically here anymore. He's invisible. So what does it mean to follow him? What does it mean to follow him in college? What's it mean to follow him in your career?
Great question. Back in those days, when you wanted to follow a rabbi, you would go and sit at the feet of that rabbi, and that rabbi would begin to examine you with questions and put you through a series of tests to see if you were worthy of being their disciple. If you passed all those tests, they would invite you to follow them, at which point, you would literally go everywhere with them, listening to everything they taught, watching all the ways that they interacted, and then trying to imitate their every move. A guy named Ray von der Laan, who is a historian who specializes in first century Israel, said that in those days, the greatest praise that you could give to a talmid, which was the Hebrew word for disciple, the greatest praise you could give to a talmid, a disciple, was the dust of your rabbi is all over you. That did not mean, dude, you're dirty.
Go take a shower. It meant you have followed your rabbi so closely that you have heard everything he has said, you've seen everything he's done, and everything he has stepped in has splashed up on you. Now, all that should give you a picture of what it means to follow Jesus.
In fact, here's Ray von der Laan's definition. He said, a talmid, a disciple, is somebody who seeks not only to know what his master knows, he also wants to do whatever his master did. Two elements there.
You see them? The first is learning. You want to know what your master knows.
Listen, I don't know any other way to say this. If you want to be a disciple, there's a lot of learning involved. If you're serious about being a disciple, your life is going to be filled with a lot of learning, a lot of listening to messages, being regular in church, reading books, participating in small groups, some leadership cohorts, and seeking to grow in your knowledge. You say, but I'm not really an academic kind of person.
Look, you don't have to be. I'm just saying that if you're in love with somebody, you're going to learn all about them. And that's a big part of the Christian life. But see, that's just half of the discipleship formula.
The other half is doing. A disciple does not merely want to know what his master knows. He or she also wants to do what his master does. How did he live? What were his priorities?
What was his general agenda? When I was in high school, this bracelet became really popular. I still see people wearing them today. In fact, this first came out in 1989 when I was in high school and I told people that WWJD stood for Women Want JD. That was high school JD's sense of humor. But of course, what it really stands for is what would Jesus do? It comes from an old book written in the 1890s by a guy named Charles Sheldon. The book's called In His Steps.
It's a fantastic book. You've never read it, but it's the story of a really wealthy young adult who took this invitation to imitate Jesus really seriously. And so he began to ask himself in every situation, if Jesus were in my place, what would he do right now? What would Jesus do in this conversation?
What would he do if he had my resources? What would Jesus do if he were presented with these alternatives that I have now right in front of me? What would Jesus do is not the only consideration in the Christian life, but it's a great place to start.
Following Jesus means seeking to know what he knows and also do what he does. So what are you seeking in life right now? An important question to answer, especially at this time of year. This is Summit Life with Pastor JD Greer. So JD, we have so many folks asking how they can partner with us as we look for God to do even more in 2025. What would you say to them?
Great question, Molly. What I would say is you could help people get a grasp on what God wants to do in their lives by sharing our daily devotional with your friends and family who want to go deeper with God. Just forward it to them. Or maybe you could start a Bible study in your home using some of these monthly resources that we created Summit Life. Or maybe you could go to jdgreer.com and look at some of these church plans that we partner with and pray for them. You could join us as a gospel partner so that we can share Summit Life broadcast in more, not just more states, but more countries around the world. However you want to grow your faith this year, why don't you go to jdgreer.com so that you can be equipped or just to let us know what you're doing and how we can be praying for you.
We love doing that here. We love hearing from our listeners and praying along with them for what God is doing in their lives. Thanks, JD. As God has blessed you this past year through the teaching of this ministry, will you extend that gift to someone else by donating today? Your support right now is critical to help us continue in the coming months, and we'd love to have you partner with us.
As our way of saying thanks for your support, we'll get you a copy of our exclusive resource, the 2025 Summit Life Day Planner. Ask for a copy when you donate today at the suggested level of $45 or more. Call 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220 or give online at jdgreer.com. I'm Molly Vidovitch. Be sure to listen again tomorrow when we conclude today's teaching called Jesus's First Three Questions. We'll see you Tuesday for Summit Life with JD Greer. Today's program is produced and sponsored by JD Greer Ministries.
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