Passing it On
Notes
Transcript
As I was preparing for today, I came across a short little story that made me cringe and saw ouch. Here it is and if you feel like I’ve stepped on your toes, maybe just maybe you needed to hear it today.
Nathan Williams told of two men who had been business partners for over twenty years. One Sunday morning as they were leaving a restaurant. One of them asked, "Where are you going this morning?" "I'm going to play golf. What about you?" the other replied.
The first man responded rather apologetically, "I'm going to church." The other man said, "Why don't you give up that church stuff?" The man asked, "What do you mean?"
"Well," said the other, "we have been partners for twenty years. We have worked together, attended board meetings together, and had lunch together, and all of these twenty years you have never talked to me about going to church. You have never invited me to go with you. Obviously, it doesn't mean that much to you."
There is a powerful truth there in what the man said. If we are claiming to be Christian and claim to have gotten a hold of the greatest even that has every happened. That is that God Himself came to us so that we could be forgiven and transformed into the very image of Christ. Why on earth don’t we talk about and invite others to come and experience what we have found?
I was talking with one of my patients the other day who has struggled with addiction off and on for many years. I was utilizing one of the therapy skills that helps people overcome distressing thoughts and emotions.
A acrostic is used to help remember the tool. The acrostic in this case was using the word ACCEPTS. The second C in that acrostic stands for Contributing. For the person struggling with distressing emotions, learning how to contribute to someone else or some cause is a way of redirecting their negative into a positive. This is not talking about contributing money.
When we contribute to others by an investment of our time, talent and resources we begin to diminish those negative thoughts or emotions.
As we were talking about that, my mind began to think about our faith. Many people often thing about faith as something personal that it just between them and God. Yes, faith is a personal faith, we don’t get into a relationship with God because our parents or grandparents were Christians. We get into a relationship with God because of that personal response to the Gospel.
As that concept of contributing ran through my mind that reminded me that as a Christian we are to be contributing to others. We see that in this passage this morning.
Jesus found Philip
Jesus found Philip
Nothing fancy happened, there was no alter call, no sermon, no emotional appeal. John writes:
43 The next day Jesus wanted to go into Galilee, and he found Philip. Jesus said to him, “Follow me.” 44 Philip was from Bethsaida, the hometown of Andrew and Peter.
Jesus found Philip and simply said to him “Follow Me.”
And he did!
I remember a young mom in a previous church. She had been praying for her husband to get saved. She had the church praying for him. He came to church on Sunday Mornings but did not really participate. One Sunday our Pastor gave and altar call at the end of the service and this young dad went to the altar and was born again into the family of God.
His wife was working in Children’s Church that morning and several ladies went to get her. Everyone thought she would want to be there with him to celebrate his coming to faith. She said to one of the ladies “he’s just making a show, it won’t last.”
Those of us who knew what she said were shocked and disappointed that she wouldn’t come and celebrate with her husband. I’m not sure to this day if she really wanted him to get saved or not.
Do we every act that way? We on one hand say we want people to get saved but on the other hand we don’t do anything about it?
Philip wasn’t searching for Jesus rather Jesus went and found him. Philip probably never imagined how his life was going to change that day when he got out of bed in the morning. The Messiah, the promised one that Israel had been waiting for was going to come and look for him.
In the Scripture text that was read to us from first Samuel this morning we heard again the story of how God called Samuel.
Samuel was a young boy he may be a teenager when he experienced this encounter with God. It’s interesting to read that he was sleeping in the house of the Lord where the Ark of God was. If you’ll remember from the Old Testament the Ark of God or the Ark of the Covenant was in the Holy of Holies, the place where the presence of God resided. Samuel was living very close to the presence of God but hadn’t yet been called by God.
Sometime during the night God called Samuel and Samuel thought it was the priest Eli who was calling him. Eli just told them to go back and lie down that he didn’t call him.
A second time God called Samuel and Samuel again went to Eli and asked what he wanted. Eli told him that he didn’t call him to go back and lie down.
The third time God called Samuel and Samuel again went to Eli and asked him what he wanted. This time Eli finally realized what was going on. He realized that it was God who is calling Samuel so he tells Sammy to go and lie back down and if God calls them again to say “speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” The same it goes and wise back down.
So on the fourth time God calls out to Samuel and Samuel replies to God “speak, for your servant is listening.” God came looking for Samuel and personally called him.
Not everyone is called in such a dramatic way as Samuel was, yet everyone who is a Christian was sought out by God the Holy Spirit. Out of all the Jewish men in Israel at the time Jesus sought out and found Philip and called him to follow him and to be one his disciples.
Philip didn’t just up and leave everything to follow Jesus, he did what we should do and that was:
He had to tell somebody
He had to tell somebody
Philip knew that this Jesus was the Messiah. This news was much too exciting and much too important to keep to himself he had to go and tell somebody. In Philip’s case he went and he found Nathaniel. Where they brothers or where they just good friends? We don’t know the answer, but we do know found Nathaniel and he told him:
45 Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law and the Prophets: Jesus, Joseph’s son, from Nazareth.”
I do believe that there are a lot of similarities between our time in history and the time that Philip lived on this earth. In Philip’s day people were looking for the Messiah. The Messiah had been foretold by the prophets going clear back to Moses and even further back to the very beginning in the Garden of Eden. Philip would’ve grown up hearing the rabbis teach about the coming of the Messiah. There was a very strong desire for the Messiah to come and to reestablish the throne of David.
In our time in history people are looking for answers. They’re not necessarily looking for the Messiah, but they are looking and in many cases they’re looking for spiritual answers to the problems and challenges that our world faces.
So many people that I see during the week are looking for hope, they’re looking for comfort, they’re looking for someone who has the answers. There are looking for something to take away the pain of emotional damage or abuse. They are looking for someone or something who can provide them the answer to their struggles.
We’re not too dissimilar to the people like Philip and the Jews who were looking for the Messiah.
When Jesus came and found Philip all that expectation was fulfilled in that moment and Philip had to go and tell somebody. Philip couldn’t keep this news to himself so he went and he found Nathanael.
Nathanael’s first response is to scoff at Philip and say:
46 Nathanael responded, “Can anything from Nazareth be good?” Philip said, “Come and see.”
Nazareth was a little town that if you were to blink you would’ve missed it on your way through. It wasn’t a place that people traveled to unless they had a specific purpose to be there. Just the way Nathaniel responded to Philip it might be that Nazareth had a bad reputation or that it was such and insignificant place that he couldn’t imagine anything good coming from there.
Philip didn’t try to engage Nathanael in a discussion about Nazareth. Philip didn’t try to explain how he knew that Jesus was the Messiah, he simply told him that they had found him. Philip simply told Nathaniel to “come and see”.
Come and see, that was the simple invitation that Philip gave to Nathanael. That is the simple invitation that each one of us can give to someone else to come and see, to come and check out this Jesus.
A lot of people think that they can’t witness to someone else because they don’t have all the right words to say or that they might not know how to answer all the questions. We see from Philip that he only gave a very simple invitation to come and see.
Do you remember when you were in elementary school? Did your class ever have show and tell? Show and tell was always fun because you could bring something from home to show your classmates and then tell him all about it. Sometimes it was a learning experience.
It is through the lives of real people that we get to see and hear the story of God's redeeming grace.
There was a little girl who had a brief line in a Sunday School Christmas program. All she had to say was, "I am the light of the world." She rehearsed it until she knew it by heart. As the program approached she was confident, but her mother was nervous. When the little girl saw all of the people the night of the program she became nervous and forgot her lines. Her mother, who was seated in the front row, tried to prompt her. Carefully and slowly the mother's lips formed the words, "I am the light of the world." The little girl straightened and with a loud, confident voice announced, "My mother is the light of the world." Everyone laughed, but there is a lot of truth there.
We are to reflect the light of the world, Jesus
When it comes to witnessing as Christians it’s a lot like show and tell. We must live lives that reflect the very presence of God within us. We talk a lot about Jesus, we talk a lot about living holy lives but all that talk is meaningless if we don’t show it by how we live our lives. It is vitally important that we live as salt and light in our world. We have to show others that were Christians before we earn the right to tell them about Jesus.
So when it comes to witnessing we have to make sure that we’re living what we believe when we invite someone they’ve already seen that we live differently. Every one of us can do that and in reality every one of us should do that. As Christians we have the good news and we can’t keep it to ourselves we need to go and tell somebody.
Facebook and other social media has brought us closer to others that we may be separated by many many miles. People post just about anything about their lives. Some of the stuff they post leaves me scratching my head because they over share their lives with the rest of the world. If they have good news to share, they posted for the whole world to see. It has made it easy to keep up with family and to learn what’s happening in their lives.
If Jesus really has made a difference in your life because he’s redeemed you, you’ve been forgiven then wouldn’t you want to share that good news with everyone around you? You need to be like Philip and simply invite them to “come and see.”
Jesus knows us
Jesus knows us
Jesus knows you. He knows all about you. He knows the problems that you’re facing right now. He knows about the temptations you struggle with. He knows the answers to the questions that you have in your life.
He knows you.
Apparently Nathanael was intrigued by Philip’s invitation and he went with Philip to meet Jesus. John writes:
47 Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said about him, “Here is a genuine Israelite in whom there is no deceit.”
Apparently Nathanael was close enough to Jesus to hear what Jesus said about him. Nathanael asked Jesus: “how do you know me?”
The prophet Jeremiah wrote:
5 “Before I created you in the womb I knew you; before you were born I set you apart; I made you a prophet to the nations.”
Let those words sink into your mind. God said to Jeremiah “before I created you in the womb I knew you”.
I don’t believe that those words were just for Jeremiah, I believe they apply to each and every one of us. Before God formed us, he knew us. That is one of the foundational beliefs behind why as a church we are pro-life. Each life matters, because each life matters to God. When we take on the role of determining who lives or who dies we’re usurping the role of God.
Just as God told Jeremiah that he knew him, he knows us today. Jesus said what he did about Nathanael because he knew Nathanael. He knew what Nathaniel had said when Philip told him about Jesus. When Nathaniel question Jesus on how he knew him Jesus said:
Common English Bible Chapter 1
“Before Philip called you, I saw you under the fig tree.”
Jesus told Nathaniel that even before Philip came and called him he knew him and he saw him under the fig tree. So apparently when Philip found Nathaniel he was underneath a fig tree. To some people that might be unnerving that God knows us that well, yet I believe that it’s out of his love for us that he knows us to that depth.
Some people live like they can hide from God. They live like the sins that they commit in secret are not only secret from their friends and family but also from God. But we can’t hide from God. We learned that from Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The Scripture tells us that God came down to walk with them in the cool of the evening and when they heard the voice of God they hid themselves from him.
As much as people would like to try to hide from God they cannot. As Christians we can’t hide from God and someday we will give an accounting to God for what we’ve done or not done.
Notice Nathaniel’s response to Jesus. He didn’t need any demonstration of power other than the fact that Jesus knew him. Nathaniel said:
49 Nathanael replied, “Rabbi, you are God’s Son. You are the king of Israel.”
You see when we have an encounter with God, we recognize him for who he is. It’s in that moment of time that we realize we are in the very presence of God. Some people may have a very emotional experience when they first encounter God. Others may have a very quiet encounter with God. However it was that a person first encounters God, we recognize him in that moment that he is God.
Nathaniel didn’t need to have any questions answered, he recognized that Jesus was the Messiah because he knew him. Jesus next says to Nathaniel something that may leave us scratching our heads. He says:
50 Jesus answered, “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these! 51 I assure you that you will see heaven open and God’s angels going up to heaven and down to earth on the Human One.”
There are a lot of important things that Jesus is saying in those few sentences. One of the important things that I believe that Jesus is saying to Nathaniel and to us is the reality of the spiritual world around us. When we come to saving faith in Jesus I believe that opens our eyes to the spiritual world that Jesus is talking about here.
When Jesus was baptized by John we read about the Holy Spirit descending upon him. That’s a spiritual reality. On the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came upon those that were gathered in the upper room the Scripture says that it was like tongues of fire. It’s not that it was real fire but that’s what it appeared to be like. That was a spiritual reality.
When the Holy Spirit comes upon us it’s a spiritual event. It’s hard to put into terms that are easily understood because of the spiritual reality of the event. Look at the greater events that Jesus spoke of to Nathaniel. The disciples witnessed incredible healings. They witnessed demons being cast out of people. They even witnessed a person coming back from the dead when Jesus raised Lazarus. They witnessed the risen Christ, they watched as Jesus ascended into heaven. Those of the greater things that Jesus is talking about.
Jesus wants to do greater things in and through us.
Jesus wants to do greater things in and through us.
Just prior to this encounter with Nathaniel on the prior day to of John the Baptist disciples began to follow Jesus. Andrew was one of those disciples. They asked Jesus “Rabbi, where are you staying?” Jesus said to them “come and you will see.”
Jesus is issued them an invitation to discipleship, to begin following him. That’s the invitation that has been issued to us. We’ve been invited to be disciples of Jesus. There are a whole lot of implications that are derived from that invitation. One of the key implications is that we’ll go and make disciples.
After Philip entered into a relationship with Jesus and became a disciple, following Jesus, he went to his friend Nathaniel and invited him to come and see. He invited him to come and see Jesus.
That is our calling, to go and to make disciples. Were called to invite people to come and see. We are called to pass it on.