WEEKEND Edition 06/07 March 2021 “Come and See”

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Hello my ‘Walking with Jesus’ friends,

We’ve begun our ‘journey to Easter’ following Jesus over these next few weeks, toward the most significant, life changing weekend in human history… Easter.

Yesterday we looked at Matthew 3, Jesus’ Baptism which was His public introduction by God the Father as God’s voice from heaven was heard to say “This is MY Son whom I love, with Him I am well pleased.” (Matt. 3:17)

We also looked at Jesus’ 40 days in the desert during which time Jesus was attempting solitude with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit, but also Satan was tormenting Jesus, disrupting His mission focusing time with God, and tempting Jesus to turn away from the Redemption mission which He had come to earth to accomplish for the rescue of humanity.

Today, let’s look at John’s account of Jesus, and Jesus’ encounters with a few of the men who became His first disciples. John the Baptist evidently had some followers who were considered his ‘disciples’. It meant they spent considerable time listening to John, seeking to learn from him. In John 1:35-39 two of these followers of John meet Jesus for the first time and they were invited by Jesus to spend the day with Him.

Who are these two disciples of John? Well, verse 40 says “Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, was one of the two who heard what John had said and had followed Jesus. The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, ‘We have found the Messiah.’ And Andrew brought Simon to Jesus. Jesus looked at Simon and said, ‘you are Simon son of John. You will be called Cephas (which when translated is Peter).” (John 1:40-42)

The Scripture doesn’t tell us where they spent that day with Jesus, nor what they did or what they talked about. All we know is that after a few hours, Andrew was convinced this “Jesus” was in fact the long awaited Jewish Messiah. So much so that he went and brought his brother Simon to meet Jesus. As far as we know this was the first time Jesus, Andrew and Simon had met, and Jesus calls Simon by name, identifies his father’s name, and gives Simon a new name… Cephas in Aramaic, translated Peter in Greek.

Please don’t miss the significance of this moment, my friends. It was the first glimpse into the miraculous nature of Jesus as He both identified Simon by name and family heritage but predicted who Simon would become… Peter, a close friend and follower of Jesus who eventually became one of the Apostles and great pillars of the first century Church and martyr in the missionary movement which took the Gospel of Jesus across the Roman empire.

The second disciple of John the Baptist who spent that day with Jesus is not named, but we suspect he is the author of this account of Jesus, John the “beloved disciple”. In fact later in his record of Jesus, John refuses to use his own name but refers to himself 5 times as ‘the disciple Jesus loved’. We’ll look at those in the last days before Easter. So please don’t confuse John the Baptist with John the Beloved disciple of Jesus. Both men are very important in the story of Jesus.

Jesus had been baptized in the Jordan river, then spent some 40 days in the desert being tempted by Satan, then evidently returned to where John the Baptist was baptizing, met Andrew, Peter and John, and in John 1:43 we learn Jesus headed north to the Galilee region. That was His home area. Nazareth, where Jesus grew up and the Sea of Galilee with several towns on its shoreline. This was also home to Andrew and Simon Peter, as well as John the one who would become the beloved disciple. John tells us:
“Finding Philip, Jesus said to him, ‘Follow me.’ Perhaps there was much more to this conversation, but the most important part was those two words.

Jesus spoke those words often, and when He did, usually someone’s life was changed. If they followed Jesus, they learned from Him and experienced miracles in their life. If they refused, they apparently lost interest in Jesus and their heart grew hard toward God. Philip responded YES, and like Andrew, soon he went to find a friend Nathaniel saying “We have found the One Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote – Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”

We don’t know how long it had taken for Philip to come to this conclusion, and he got most of it right. But over the months to come Philip would learn he had spoken some very wrong statements. While much of Jesus’ earthly growing up years had been in Nazareth, those few years were a drop in the bucket of eternal time that Jesus had spent in heaven as God the Son! And while it appeared Jesus was the son of a carpenter named Joseph, Jesus was God who had miraculously taken on human flesh without any involvement of Joseph or any other human male.

I love Nathaniel’s response: “Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” (John 1:46) The truth is we would assume that if God was coming to live for a while on our planet, He would make a grand entrance with pomp and circumstance, arriving in one of the great cities or our world, not a little known village like Bethlehem! If God were coming here, wherever He chose to make His entrance would spare no expense in preparing the most opulent accommodations, yet Jesus was met with ‘sorry, no room in the inn, but there is a stable with animals.’ If God were coming to live among us, the most powerful, most popular, most important people in the world would gather to welcome Him, certainly not smelly shepherds or soldiers slaughtering all the babies in town in hopes they will kill unwelcome God also!

If God came here to live a while, what shocking news that He would spend his very first years as a refugee baby in Egypt, or His young years in Nazareth of all places! For Nathaniel, it made no sense! If “Messiah” was here, living somewhere in Israel in Nathaniel’s time, surely He would not have chosen Nazareth as ‘home’! My friends, may I ask you. . . are there things about the story of Jesus that don’t make sense for you? What have you done with those questions?

Philip’s answer to Nathaniel’s question was simple… “Come and see for yourself”. Have you learned it is virtually impossible to debate or argue someone into belief in Jesus? A true, life changing relationship with Jesus is the result of an encounter with God in which your mind and heart are opened to believe the most amazing reality in the history of our Universe.

God came here to planet earth that He had created, to live among a human race that He had created. But both then and now, most people simply can’t grasp the wonder of this miracle, so they ignore God and this preposterous story!

What has been your journey to Jesus my friends? What has been for you the most life changing aspect of the miraculous story of Jesus? Are you ready, in these days, for a fresh encounter with Jesus? I wonder what Jesus has planned for you and me in our journey to Easter, over these next days in 2021?

For Nathaniel, as you see in John 1:47-51, it was his encounter with Jesus, his conversation with Jesus which convinced him of the truth. “Nathaniel declared, ‘Rabbi, you are the Son of God, you are the king of Israel.’ Jesus said to Nathaniel, ‘You believed because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You will see greater things than that!” And that was certainly true. Nathaniel, Philip, Simon Peter, Andrew and John… five ordinary men who would see amazing things as they ‘walked with Jesus’ over the next several months, beginning the very next day, as they attended a wedding and experienced Jesus’ first miracle as He transformed ordinary water into the best wedding wine they’d ever tasted!

We’ll look at that event tomorrow.. for today, what most amazes you when you think of the miracle of God coming to live on this planet for a few years, in the person of Jesus? Here’s a song that might help you express your astonishment when contemplating Jesus, the Creator of the Universe, come to live among us on planet earth…

Today’s Scripture is John 1:35-51.

Choose below to read or listen.

Bible images provided with attribution to www.LumoProject.com.

Have a comment or question about today’s chapter? I’m ready to hear from you, contact me here.

Pastor Doug Anderson 262.441.8785
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)

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