Our series is devoted to enabling you to place your faith in the Lord Jesus.
I invite you to find John 1 with me.
Remember, John’s gospel was written in order that you would believe in Jesus Christ. That you would trust in Jesus. The word “believe” appears more than seventy times throughout the Gospel of John. When the Bible repeats a word so many times in such a short space, it is doing this for emphasis.
Becoming a believer in Christ isn’t like voting on Jesus. Faith links you and unites you with Jesus Christ. Believing in Christ is more than casting a vote for Jesus as if you entered the voting booth. Instead, faith unites you with Christ. There is a vital life link between you and Christ, the Lord.
We pick up our story of John the Baptist and Jesus from a week.
Today’s Scripture
“The next day again John was standing with two of his disciples, and he looked at Jesus as he walked by and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God!’ The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. 38 Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them, ‘What are you seeking?’ And they said to him, ‘Rabbi’ (which means Teacher), ‘where are you staying?’ He said to them, ‘Come and you will see.’ So they came and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day, for it was about the tenth hour. One of the two who heard John speak and followed Jesus was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, ‘We have found the Messiah” (which means Christ). He brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, ‘You are Simon the son of John. You shall be called Cephas’ (which means Peter).
The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, ‘Follow me.’ Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathanael and said to him, ‘We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.’ Nathanael said to him, ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.’ Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, ‘Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit!’ Nathanael said to him, ‘How do you know me?’ Jesus answered him, ‘Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.’ Nathanael answered him, ‘Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!’ Jesus answered 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, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man (John 1:35-51).
1. It’s a Real Story
“The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, ‘Follow me’” (John 1:43). The Gospel of John introduces you to names that will be repeated as you read his story: Philip, Andrew, Cephas or Peter, and Nathanael. John tells a story when he lost two disciples, two of his followers to Jesus.
1.1 A Quick Rewind
The Bible says it is the next day in verse 35. Previously, John’s gospel tells about a group of low-ranking priests goes out in a trail-like fashion to interrogate John the Baptist. The second day, John tells everyone who is the Lamb of God in verse 29. So now, on the third day, is the story where John will lose two of his disciples as they follow Jesus in verse 35.
1.2 Time, Place, and Location
You may not have a lot of experience reading the gospels, but this is reporting real facts that happened on a certain day, at a certain location, and at a specific time. John gives you the day. John gives you the time. John gives you the location. This is the third day in the first full week of the public ministry of Jesus.
In verse 39, the Bible says, “for it was about the tenth hour.” Back in verse 28, John even tells you where all this took place: “These things took place in Bethany across the Jordan, where John was baptizing.”
John gives you the day. John gives you the time. John gives you the location. This is a real story in time, place, and location.
Why do I stress this is a real story that purports the facts?
1.3 Jesus the Disciple of John?
Reza Aslan is a professing Muslim who has received nominations for an Emmy Award and a Peabody Award.
He is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth. According to Aslan, Jesus was a disciple of John the Baptist until John was arrested. He takes some of the gospels as truth but discredits much of them as believes there are only two hard historical facts about Jesus – Jesus was a Jew, and Pilate crucified him.1
According to Aslan, Jesus was a failed Messiah with political aspirations.2 Aslan is one in a long line of people who pit the Jesus of history against the Jesus of the faith. The historical Jesus is taken to be the merely human person who was born and raised in Palestine and was crucified during the days of Pontius Pilate. The Christ of faith is assumed to be a mythical, supernatural figure invented by the early admirers of the earthly Jesus. The challenge with theories like Aslan’s is he has no facts to support it.
1.4 A Real Story, Continued
Again, John gives you the day. John gives you the time. John gives you the location. This is a real story in time, place, and location. A common perception is that Jesus’ resurrection is just a fable, a myth, that we tell ourselves to make ourselves feel better.
1.4.1 C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis is a name many of you are familiar with. Lewis departed from atheism to Christianity, so he does write as a believer. Yet, he was also a literary scholar and a professor at both Cambridge and Oxford. Lewis says ancient fiction was nothing like modern fiction.
I have been reading poems, romances, vision literature, legends, and myths all my life. I know what they are like. I know none of them are like this. Of this [gospel] text there are only two possible views. Either this is reportage … or else, some unknown [ancient] writer … without known predecessors or successors, suddenly anticipated the whole technique of modern novelistic, realistic narrative.3
The genre of fiction has only developed within the last three hundred years. That is why if you are reading Beowulf or The Iliad, you don’t see characters noticing the rain or falling asleep with a sigh. In modern novels, details are added to create the aura of realism, but that was never the case in ancient fiction.4
1.4.2 John Says “This is Real”
Again, this is a real story in time, place, and location. My father read me Aesop’s Fables as a child. You may have read the stories of the Roman and Greek gods in your studies. You might as well go to the movies to watch an Avengers movie because anyone reading this knows none of that purports to be real. John’s story is clear: Jesus is real. Sometime later, John writes these words to a group of believers and skeptics scattered throughout modern-day Turkey:
“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— 2 the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us” (1 John 1:1-2).
1. It’s a Real Story
2. It’s a Real Start
“The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus.” (John 1:37). The Gospel of John tells how the Twelve Disciples around Jesus formed.
2.1 The Identities of the Two Disciples
In verse 40, we learn that one of the two disciples was Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter. While the identity of the other disciple is not known. Traditionally, this unnamed disciple is thought to be John himself, the author of the Gospel of John. We don’t know this for a fact, but this is plausible enough. We don’t know if John’s disciples were present the day before when Jesus first called Jesus “the Lamb of God.” But they are here and present on this day. No doubt, John the Baptist’s disciples had repeatedly heard him point to Jesus. Now, for two days in a row (once in verse 19 and now in verse 35), they hear their teacher describe Jesus as nothing less than “the Lamb of God.” Just as Jesus had disciples, John the Baptist also had disciples.
Here, two of John’s disciples take off to follow after Jesus. Certainly, some disciples remained attached to John even after his death, as Luke tells us in the Book of Acts (Acts 19:1).
Even today, there is a small group of people in parts of Iraq and Iran who claim to be his spiritual descendants. But these two switched from John to Jesus. They were just beginning the best part of their lives. As my grandparents would have said, these two men would experience things that “Would have curled their hair.” These stories they would tell later on. They would explain the hardship they endured. But they also shared the adventure they experienced by journeying with the Savior. They didn’t need a cruise or a vacation to generate excitement in their lives!
2.2 The Lamb of God
“The next day again John was standing with two of his disciples, 36 and he looked at Jesus as he walked by and said, ‘Behold, the Lamb of God!’” (John 1:35-36).
2.2.1 The Titles of Jesus in John 1
There are eight titles for Jesus in John 1:
1. Jesus is the Word and God in verse 1.
3. Jesus is called the True Light also in verse 9.
4. Jesus is called Christ in verse 17.
5. Jesus is called Rabbi in verse 38.
6. Jesus is called the Messiah in verse 41.
7. Jesus is called the King of Israel and the Son of God also in verse 49.
8. Jesus is called the Son of Man in verse 51.
2.2.2 The Lamb of God
But the Mount Everest of John’s witness is when he calls Jesus, “the Lamb of God.” John does so for a second time in verse 35, as he did the previous day in verse 29. Jesus is the sin remover offered to all of us. He will remove our sins by His blood, His sacrifice, His death on the cross. Long before anyone really understands it, John the Baptizer sees Jesus’ significance in His future death. Now, to be the “the Lamb of God,” Jesus HAD TO suffer. But it a nearly universally accepted assumption in Jesus’ day that the Messiah would only triumph. To think that the Messiah would suffer was as preposterous as thinking you could swim across the Atlantic.
2.2.3 Jesus Had to Suffer
Sometime later, Jesus will be explaining how the Son of God was to suffer and die for the sins of many.
“From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you” (Matthew 16:22-23).
Peter didn’t buy into Jesus’ line of thinking. You know, in Luke’s gospel, Jesus tells them six times that He is going to suffer and be rejected. Jesus knew He had to die. Jesus knew He had to suffer. Peter told Jesus that He didn’t know what He was talking about.
John the Baptist was one of the very few to get it. He understood at some level, not all the way just yet, but at some level, John knew Jesus had to die to erase our sins. Jesus is the sin remover offered to all of us. He will remove our sins by His blood, His sacrifice, His death on the cross. Two of John’s disciples followed after Jesus because John said, “Follow Him. He’s the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”
2.3 The Suffering Son of God
The Son of God has been made man.5 He has lived a life of perfect virtue and of total self-denial. He was rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. His enemies had been legion while His friends had been few, and those few friends were often faithless. He was finally delivered over into the hands of those who hated Him. He was arrested while in the act of prayer; He was arraigned before both the religious and government courts. He was robed in mockery and then unrobed in shame. Soon, He was set upon His throne in scorn and then tied to the stake in cruelty. He was declared innocent, yet He was delivered up by the judge who should have protected Him from His persecutors. He was then dragged through the streets of that Jerusalem which had killed the prophets, and the city would now add the fresh blood of the prophets’ Master Himself. He was brought to the cross, and then He was nailed securely to the cruel wood. The sun burns Him. His cruel wounds only increase His fever. Even God, the Father, forsakes him: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” While He hung there in mortal conflict with sin and Satan, His very heart was broken, and His limbs were dislocated. Heaven failed him, for the very sun was veiled in darkness. And then Earth abandoned Him, for “his disciples forsook him and fled.” He looked everywhere, and there was none to help. He cast His eyes around, and there was no human that could share His toil. On, on, He goes, steadily determined to drink the last dreg of that cup which must not pass from Him if His Father’s will be done. Jesus is the Lamb of God who was born to die on the cross and suffer for our sins. Jesus HAD to suffer.
2.5 There Are Two Kinds of People
No doubt you have heard the phrase, “There are two kinds of people in the world.” This is one of the most often quoted sayings in conversations and movies. You have heard some of these:
There are two kinds of people in the world: those who follow the rules and those who make the rules. Abigail Van Buren stated, “There are two kinds of people in the world – those who walk into a room and say, ‘There you are!’ – and those who say, ‘Here I am!’” Bill Murray’s character in the movie What About Bob? says, “There are two kinds of people in this world: those who love Neil Diamond, and those who don’t.”
“There are two kinds of people in the world: those who love chocolate and communists.” The one I like the best is this: a nine-year-old boy said, “There are only two kinds of people in this world: those who pick their noses and liars.”
But more seriously, there are but two kinds of people in the world: people who follow Jesus Christ and everyone else. Here were two men setting off to follow Jesus, and their lives were just starting.
Has your life begun by putting your trust in Jesus, my friend? I tell you, anybody in this building who wants to know the truth about God can know it. Anybody in this building who wants to know the truth about Jesus Christ can know it.
1. It’s a Real Story
2. It’s a Real Start
3. He’s a Real Savior
Jesus says one of the most profound and shocking things He’ll utter: “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man” (John 1:51b).
Had you woken up in the middle of the night to find that your house had been swallowed up in a sinkhole, you wouldn’t be any more shocked than the people who heard Jesus say this. If Jesus doesn’t shock you here, you may not fully appreciate what He’s saying.
3.1 Nathanael
Jesus and Nathanael are about to meet for the first time. Nathanael has a friend named Philip. Philip says to Nathanael, “I think we found the Messiah! I think we found him. The Messiah of Israel!” Nathanael is skeptical about this. Before Nathanael gets face to face with Jesus, Jesus calls out, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit!” in verse 47. Jesus says, “Oh, I know you.” Nathanael says, “Uh, pardon me? Come again? I don’t think we’ve ever met. How do you know the first thing about me?” Jesus says at the end of verse 48: “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you” (John 1:48b).
Christ, by His omniscience, knew all about Nathanael. Nathanael said, “He knows my race. I’m an Israelite.” Nathanael says, “Oh, He knows my heart. I have no deceit.” Then, Nathanael says, “He knows my past. He knows I was sitting under a fig tree just a little while ago. He knows all about me. How could He know this? How could He know these things?”
That’s all it took to convince Nathanael. He looked at Jesus and said, “How could you have …? How could anybody have …? You are the one!” “Nathanael answered him, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” (John 1:49).
We’ll hear more from Nathanael in the days to come, but our young friend has taken a prodigious step forward in faith. Nathanael learned something that would have peeled the paint off the wall!
Nathanael says, in effect, “You’re the One we’ve been looking for. My ancestors talked about the promise of you. Now, here you are in front of me.”
3.2 Jesus and Amen
Watch how Jesus responds. Jesus says, “So you think that’s something?
Jesus then says, “Truly, truly,” which is “Amen, Amen.” 100 times throughout the gospels, Jesus will preface an important truth with the words, “Amen.”6 When Jesus uses Amen, He’s calling on you to come to a full stop (pause for effect). For when Jesus says, “amen,” the next words out of His mouth are crucial words for you to digest. I hope you realize that no other person, not even another early church apostle, followed Jesus’ example by saying, “Amen, I say to you.” You don’t find other people running around the countryside saying, “Amen, amen, I say unto you.” No one else felt the liberty to copy Jesus’ practice of doing this.7
It’s because everyone after Him recognized that no one had His authority, His weight. Jesus is in a class by Himself.
3.3 If You’re Shocked by This, Wait Till…
When Jesus says, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man’” (John 1:51b), Jesus is taking the Disciples back to a story they would have learned in the synagogues. Jacob had this God-sent dream where angels were going up and down a ladder from Genesis 28. They would have known the story immediately. Jacob woke up and said, “Surely the LORD is in this place…” Jacob calls the place Bethel, meaning “House of God.” Jesus says, “I am the ladder. I am the connection between heaven and earth. I am Bethel. I am the House of God.”
3.4 Jesus Is Special
There is something so appealing about Jesus that few wish to dismiss Him outright. Children sing about Him while scholars sit around in hound-tooth sport coats, waxing eloquently about the appeal of Jesus. Muslims revere him as a prophet of Allah. Just up the road at Denton, Eric Meek told students, “If Jesus were here, he’d be a Muslim.”8
While Hindus consider him a holy teacher or one of many incarnations of god, like Krishna. Some years ago, the former president of India made this statement as Spalding Professor of Eastern Ethics at Oxford University, “Jesus is not exceptional but typical.”9
Buddhism teaches that he is an enlightened man like the Buddha. Mahatma Gandhi said, “I cannot ascribe exclusive divinity to Jesus. He is as divine as Krishna or Rama or Muhammad or Zoroaster.”10
Mormons answer Jesus’ question by saying that Jesus is the spirit brother of Lucifer. While Jehovah’s Witnesses answer Jesus’ question by saying that Jesus is the archangel, Michael. Mohammed, Moses, Buddha, and Confucius never walked around talking like that. They walked around pointing people to God. They walked around pointing people to the pathway to God. They never walked around talking like this.
3.6 Can You Imagine?
Can you imagine if you had a professor, and after three years of classes with the professor, the professor finally said, “Okay, class, I want you to know the main thing I’ve been trying to get across to you all three years. It all boils down to one thing. I am God Do you know who I really am?” You would want your tuition back. You would want him to be put away. That’s what he’s doing here. He’s saying, “I’ll tell you what it’s all about. Let me tell you what ultimate reality is all about. What do you think of me? How do you relate to me?”11
3.7 Do You Believe?
Earlier, I spoke about two kinds of people: those who follow Jesus and everyone else. What kind are you, my friend?
And before you answer that, hear this: You aren’t ready to live until you are ready to die. You are not ready to die until you are ready to meet God. You are not ready to meet God until you know Him as your Father. You do not know Him as your Father until you become His child. You do not become His child until you are born again into His family. You are not born again into His family until you receive His Son, Jesus Christ by faith. Simply, God becomes your Father when you become His child, but you only become His child when you receive His Son.12
The cross and resurrection are designed to save you. Jesus’ death is not an award for your hard work or your religious nature. The cross isn’t a payment for your good deeds. Instead, Jesus’ death and resurrection is a free gift for you.
EndNotes
1 Overall, he presents the gospels as being written in the second century, approximately half a century later than the most popular date for Luke’s gospel. F.F. Bruce is among those who date the writing of Luke’s gospel in the early to mid-60s. F. F. Bruce, The Book of Acts, New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1988), 6-13. See, https://www.rezaaslan.com/home-1/zealot; accessed March 5, 2024.
2 This is taken from an email discussion (dated February 4, 2014) with Mark Spence who read the book and from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/06/books/reza-aslans-zealot-the-life-and-times-of-jesus-of-nazareth.html?pagewanted=all; accessed February 4, 2014.
3 C. S. Lewis, Christian Reflections, Walter Hooper, ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967), 155.
4 Timothy Keller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism (New York: Riverhead Books, 2009), 110.
5 I am grateful for the words of C. H. Spurgeon, “‘It Is Finished!,’” in The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons, (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1861), 7:585–92.
6 Matthew has thirty-one occurrences of the word “amen” while Mark has thirteen (fourteen times if you count Mark’s longer ending), Luke’s gospel has six usages, and John’s Gospel contains fifty uses of the word on twenty-five occasions.
7 G. F. Hawthorne, “Amen,” ed by Joel B. Green and Scot McKnight, Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1992), 7.
8 http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=22566_CAIR_VP-_If_Jesus_Were_Here_Hed_Be_a_Muslim&only; accessed February 9, 2014.
8 Dr. Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan
9 Mahatma Gandhi, Harijan (March 6, 1937): 2; as quoted in Driscoll and Breshears, 15.
10 Illustration is from Tim Keller’s message, “Do You See Anything.”
12 This entire section is from Pastor James Merritt: https://www.sermonsearch.com/sermon-outlines/124320/in-gods-hands-7-of-7/#; accessed April 6, 2022.
