Disciples Are Found (John 1:35-51 Jeff Kliewer)

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Sermon Notes: notes.cornerstonesj.org Disciples Are Found

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♪ Worthy of all our praise ♪ ♪ You and I are made to worship ♪ ♪
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You and I are called to love ♪ ♪ You and I are forgiven and free ♪ ♪
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When you and I embrace, surrender ♪ ♪ You and I choose to believe ♪ ♪
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That you and I will see ♪ ♪ You and I will see you and I are made to worship ♪ ♪
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You and I are called to love ♪ ♪ You and I are forgiven and free ♪ ♪
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When you and I embrace, surrender ♪ ♪ You and I choose to believe ♪ ♪
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That you and I will see who we were meant to be ♪
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Praise you, Lord. And we just lift our hearts before you.
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♪ Lost are safe, find their way ♪ ♪
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At the sound of your great name ♪ ♪
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All coming down, feel no shame ♪ ♪
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At the sound of your great name ♪ ♪
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Every fear has no place ♪ ♪
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At the sound of your great name ♪ ♪
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The enemy, he has to flee ♪ ♪
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At the sound of your great name ♪ ♪
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Jesus, worthy is the lamb that was slain for us ♪ ♪
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Son of God and man, you are high and lifted up ♪ ♪
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And all the world will praise your great name ♪ ♪
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Although we find their strength, we will not fail ♪ ♪
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At the sound of your great name ♪ ♪
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Hungry souls receive grace ♪ ♪
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At the sound of your great name ♪ ♪
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The fatherless, they find their rest ♪ ♪
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At the sound of your great name ♪ ♪ The sick are healed and the dead are raised ♪ ♪
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At the sound of your great name ♪ ♪
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Jesus, worthy is the lamb that was slain for us ♪ ♪
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Son of God and man, you are high and lifted up ♪ ♪
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And all the world will praise your great name ♪ ♪
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Redeemer, my healer, Lord Almighty ♪ ♪
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Defender, my savior, you are my king ♪ ♪
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Redeemer, my healer, Lord Almighty ♪ ♪
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Defender, my savior, you are my king ♪ ♪
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Jesus, worthy is the lamb that was slain for us ♪ ♪
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Son of God and man, you are high and lifted up ♪ ♪
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And all the world will praise Jesus ♪ ♪
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Worthy is the lamb that was slain for us ♪ ♪
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Son of God and man, you are high and lifted up ♪ ♪
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And all the world will praise your great name ♪ ♪
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Your great name ♪ ♪
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All to Jesus I surrender ♪ ♪
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To him I'll stay, his presence takes me away ♪ ♪
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I surrender, I surrender all to thee, blessed
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Savior ♪ ♪ I surrender all to Jesus, I surrender ♪ ♪
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All to at his feet I bow, worthy pleasures all forsaken ♪ ♪
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Take me Jesus, take me now ♪ ♪
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I surrender all, I surrender all to thee, my blessed
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Savior ♪ ♪ I surrender all,
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I surrender all to thee, my blessed
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Savior ♪ prayer. God, as we come to you this morning, our
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Father in heaven, we recognize that we have no righteousness of our own.
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We have no right to come to you on our own, but we come on account of Jesus Christ, whose blood was shed on the cross, who rose from the dead, who ascended to the right hand of the
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Father. We come through Christ. He is the gate. He is the door.
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The curtain in the temple was torn in two from top to bottom, opening a new and living way that sinners like us can come into your presence through Jesus, our great
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High Priest. So we thank you, Lord, that you found us, that you sent
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Christ to find us, to seek and save that which was lost.
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Lord, you deserve all the glory, all the credit for any of us in this room who have been saved.
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Thank you for saving us, and Lord, you alone can save any who have not yet been saved.
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You alone can find the lost sheep, and so we pray that you would do that through the preaching of your word, that any who have not yet been found would hear the word and come to saving faith.
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In Jesus' name we pray, amen. I was a student at Dallas Seminary in the year 2004, and I had a class on Old Testament prophets and came back home to the room that I had been renting from another seminary student.
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He had bought a house on Globe Avenue, and when I came home from class that day, I was the only one in the house except for a little dog whose name was
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Peeve. You wonder why this dog was named Peeve? Because my seminary friend said he always wanted to have a pet
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Peeve, so he named his dog Peeve. Ridiculous. I don't know why
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I shared it, but crazy. But I was alone in the house with Peeve, and as I was just spending time praying, before long
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I really sensed the presence of God. Have you ever been in a spirit of prayer and the presence of the
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Lord was there with you? It was like Bethel. Surely the presence of the
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Lord is in this place. And I knelt before the Lord, and before long I found myself laying on the ground and interceding for those who didn't yet know the
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Lord. And I thought of this guy named Ken. I had only met Ken once playing basketball up at the local community college.
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We had shot hoops together, and I tried to share the gospel but didn't have much of an opportunity. And that was the last time
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I had seen him. Months before, having met him only once. So I began to pray for Ken, and I felt like the
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Lord led me. I don't know, it wasn't audible, it was some kind of just feeling, just a thought that I had in my own head to go to the corner of Globe and Shiloh and meet
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Ken there. Now when I had that thought, I immediately began to doubt myself, because I should doubt my own heart, right?
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What if it's just me having, you know, maybe I had taco salad and I had indigestion or something?
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How do I know that God's speaking? So I got up and I thought, you know what,
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I'm gonna go there and see if this is actually the case. As I started to walk out the door,
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I almost turned around. And halfway up the block, I started to turn around when
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I felt the Lord just prodding me. It wasn't that I was filled with faith, He was basically using
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His goad to move me along and saying, it's hard for you to kick against the goads. And so as I walked to that corner,
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Globe and Shiloh, two blocks up from Tom's house where I was staying, I saw the corner ahead of me and there was no
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Ken. But as I walked on and approached that corner, the minute
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I set foot in that corner and looked up the street, Ken was riding his bicycle toward me at 90 miles an hour.
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Full speed! Not that fast, but as fast as he could. And he went and slid to a stop right there.
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There was Ken, who I had been praying for just five minutes earlier. And I just was flamboozled, bamboozled, whatever word you use when you don't know what to say.
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That's what I was. And I began to just try to explain to him, I was just praying for you and you're here.
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And then all of a sudden I just calmed down and I said, the Lord Jesus sent me to tell you the news about how
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He died on the cross and rose from the dead. And he suddenly began to listen. I said, Ken, where's your friend
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Tony that we played basketball with? He said, I think he's at his house. I said, would you be willing to go get him and we'll go see the movie
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The Passion of the Christ? And he said, we're not doing anything. So he met me back at the house, 30 minutes later.
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We went and watched that movie, which was in the theater at the time, called The Passion of the Christ.
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And Ken and Tony believed the gospel that day. We talked about it on the way home and talked about the meaning of his death.
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Why Jesus had to die that gruesome death on the cross and rise from the dead for our sins and to justify those who believe in Him.
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This encounter that I had with Ken and Tony, I would call a divine appointment.
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Anybody here ever had a divine appointment? You knew that God sent you somewhere to tell someone the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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Or maybe when you yourself came to faith, it was by some divine appointment. For me,
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I had a divine appointment to kneel at my parents' bedside when I was about 10 years old, terrified in the middle of the night, the thought of hell.
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And for them to tell me the good news of Jesus again. And it was that night that I knelt and accepted
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Christ as my Savior. It was a divine appointment in the middle of the night. Divine appointments.
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That's what we're gonna talk about today. Turn with me to John chapter 1 verses 32 -35 through the end of the chapter.
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Here's what we need to see. We need to see that there is no human will, no power within us to save anybody.
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But Jesus himself finds his disciples and he uses us to go and do that.
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Instruments of his finding. Let's read
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John 1 35 to the end. And notice the word finding, found, as I read.
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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
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Lamb of God. The two disciples heard him say this and they followed
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Jesus. Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them, what are you seeking?
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And they said to him, Rabbi, which means teacher, where are you staying? He said to them, come and you will see.
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So they came and saw where he was staying and they stayed with him that day for it was about the 10th hour.
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One of the two who heard John speak and followed Jesus was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother.
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He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, we have found the Messiah, which means
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Christ. He brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, you are
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Simon the son of John. You shall be called Cephas, which means Peter.
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The next day, Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, follow me.
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Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found
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Nathanael and said to him, we have found him of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote,
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Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. Nathanael said to him, can anything good come out of Nazareth?
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Philip said to him, come and see. Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, behold an
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Israelite indeed in whom there is no deceit. Nathanael said to him, how do you know me?
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Jesus answered him, before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.
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Nathanael answered him, Rabbi, you are the Son of God, you are the King of Israel.
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Jesus answered him, because I said to you, I saw you under the fig tree, do you believe?
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You will see greater things than these. And he said to him, truly, truly,
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I say to you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the
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Son of Man. Amen. Let's look through this passage and take it verse by verse to understand that disciples cannot be made by our human will.
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Look back with me at John chapter 1 verse 13. Speaking of those who believe in him, whom he gives the right to be called children of God, John makes the point, these were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man.
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That word will is thelema. It refers to the desire, the will, the decision.
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The decision is not of man, but of who, according to our verse?
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Of God. The new birth comes from above. It is a spirit birth that is not determined by us.
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That is to say, if I make up my mind that a certain friend of mine is gonna get saved, let's say it's a next -door neighbor, and I make up my mind this person is gonna meet
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Jesus, and I decide I'm gonna pray every day for this person. Maybe I even do some kind of ritual thing to try to intensify my prayers and to convince
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God to save this particular person. If I do that day in and day out, I cannot affect his salvation.
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My will cannot overcome the will of God or convince him to do anything.
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Ultimately, his will determines who will be saved. He is the free and sovereign will in the universe.
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Now, does that mean I shouldn't pray? Does that mean
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I shouldn't go witness to Ken and Tony on the corner, having prayed for them?
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Not at all. Let's look in our passage, and we need to understand something. As we go through this passage, we see that Jesus himself, the sovereign
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Lord, who's better than we are, is finding disciples for himself.
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Finding, which indicates he already knows them. He knows
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Nathanael under the fig tree before Nathanael ever meets Jesus. He knows
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Peter as Cephas before any such name is given him. He knows him.
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He knows his own. We're gonna see that in the text, but we also see that there is an instrument that God uses to save.
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There is a means that God uses to bring people to himself, and that is the means of testimony, of preaching.
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Faith comes by hearing, hearing by the Word of God. How will they believe unless somebody preaches to them?
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And so Romans 10 teaches that as well. Let's look now at the four disciples who are found that day.
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Andrew, and then Peter, Philip, and then Nathanael. Those four. That'll be the outline as we go through this morning.
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So first, we have Andrew. Verse 35 says, the next day again, John was standing with two of his disciples.
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So who are the two disciples of John? Well, in the text, we're going to learn that one of them is
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Andrew. Do you see this in verse 40? One of the two who heard
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John speak and followed Jesus was Andrew. Who is the other one? Anybody have a guess?
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Well, most scholars, I think all scholars, pretty much agree that this is John himself. John's the other one.
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He doesn't name himself, but rather what he does in chapter 13, he leaves himself unnamed as the character in his own gospel.
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So in chapter 13, the unnamed disciple is leaning against Jesus's shoulder. Remember that?
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And then in chapters 19, 20, and 21, he does it again. The disciple whom Jesus loved, who ran ahead with Peter, who was he?
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He's unnamed in the text until you get to the last two verses of John. Flip there real quick with me.
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Sword drill, got to get there quick because you can't spend time here. The last two verses of John say, this is the disciple who is bearing witness about these things.
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Namely, John, the gospel of John. John is the unnamed disciple here in our text.
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He's written these things and he goes on to say, verse 25, if everything that Jesus did were written down, even the whole world couldn't contain the books that would be written about him.
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So John himself is the unnamed disciple. As we go through, in verse 37, the two disciples hear him say this and they follow him.
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Hear who say it? John the Baptist. John the
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Baptist is giving testimony, this is the Lamb of God. And a couple of John's disciples, namely
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Andrew and John, they leave John and follow the Lamb. That's a good decision.
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The greatest decision that any of you can make in this room today, or listening online, is to follow the
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Lamb. The Lamb is the good shepherd. He is the sacrifice who lays down his life for his sheep.
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And here we have Andrew following. It's kind of interesting because Andrew sort of lives in the shadow of his big brother
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Peter. After this story, it's pretty much Peter in the limelight and Andrew's the forgotten fourth.
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There's Peter, James, and John, and Andrew is kind of the fourth one in that group. He doesn't get to go up on the
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Mount of Transfiguration and then Peter leads the church and Andrew kind of falls back into obscurity.
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But John is actually reminding us of something here. It was actually Andrew who believed first and he went and got
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Peter. So here the big idea is that there needs to be a testimony in order for someone to believe.
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The book of John is written that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the
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Son of God, and believing you would have life in his name. John 20 verse 31 is the point of the book.
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And John the Baptist was introduced as the star witness. Now you have the first disciples following.
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They believe the testimony. So Andrew is the first and he goes to get who?
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Peter. Let's look at that. Andrew's testimony finds
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Peter, verses 41 and 42. He first found his own brother
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Simon and said to him, we have found the Messiah.
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You notice all the finding going on here? He found and said we found.
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That's the point of the text. Whenever you're studying a passage of Scripture, the idea is not to grab one verse as a proof text for something you're already thinking about, right?
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That's called eisegesis. When you're reading into the text what you wanted to see there. No, the idea of going to the text of Scripture is exegesis, to draw out of the text what the author is thinking about.
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And the way you follow a train of thought, the flow of the text, is to look for repetition and how ideas unfold one verse after another.
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Make sense? So what we see happening here is the finding of disciples.
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And it was Andrew who was found by John the Baptist's testimony. Now the one who gets found becomes a finder.
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Have you been found this morning? Do you believe that Jesus is the
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Christ, the Son of God? Well, you've been found to become a finder.
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To go find those whom the Lord would save. It's his sovereign will to do it, but you're sent on the mission to find them, seek the lost.
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That's what's happening here. Simon, it's natural, isn't it? Anybody gotten any amazing news recently?
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From time to time you get great news, right? Something good is happening. The first thing you want to do when you get great news is tell somebody you love.
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It's completely unnatural to get this amazing news and not tell anybody. The first impulse that Andrew has is to find his closest friend, his brother,
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Simon. They would fish together every day, spending time talking about the things of God.
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His first impulse, having been found, is to go tell Simon.
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And he says, we have found the Messiah, which means Christ. Now look at Jesus in verse 42.
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Jesus looks at him as they come to him and right away says, you are
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Simon, you shall be called Cephas, which means
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Peter. So in the Hebrew Cephas, in the Greek Peter, just like in the verse prior, it says
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Messiah, that's the Hebrew, and the Greek would be Christ. He gives him the name
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Cephas, or Peter. What does it mean? It means rock.
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And here's what I want you to see from that. It's kind of odd, right? The first thing he does is give him kind of a nickname.
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Why does he start there? It's because Jesus knows him outside of time for who he is and will become.
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Jesus knows him as the rock who will stand up on the day of Pentecost and preach the gospel and 3 ,000 people will be saved in a day.
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That's how Jesus knows him. But that's not who Peter is now. Jesus sees him outside of time.
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Peter in time is a little bit more like a jellyfish than a rock.
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When Jesus goes to Jerusalem to be crucified, it was Peter who jumped in his way and said, no, no,
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Lord, don't do that. And Jesus actually had to rebuke Peter and say, get behind me,
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Satan. And once Jesus was on trial, Peter was watching from afar and shaking in fear.
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He refused to confess Christ, but denied him three times. He's a jellyfish.
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He's not a rock. But what Jesus knew is he was calling him to be saved.
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And on the day of Pentecost, he would pour his Holy Spirit into Peter and Peter would boldly, without fear, proclaim the gospel to the very people that crucified his
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Lord. He would be a rock. He would be born again. He would be filled with the
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Spirit, baptized in fire and power, and he would preach. And Jesus knew it from the beginning.
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He knew him. That's the point of the text. Now, a little side note we need to talk about.
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There is a tradition that has developed, especially from the second, third century on, that the
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Bishop of Rome is an apostolic successor of Peter.
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The idea here is that Peter is called rock because he's the first Pope and that Peter would pass the baton to another guy and another guy and another guy so that we have
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Francis sitting in the papal seat today. Our text denies the validity of that this morning.
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Here's why. Because born -again Peter was a rock.
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He was not a jellyfish. The so -called Pope in Rome took a statue of Pakamama, a
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Native American Indian goddess that they refer to as Pakamama, meaning
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Mother Earth, and Pope Francis put that on display in the
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Vatican, an idol in the presence of what should be the house of the
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Lord. The people took that thing and threw it in the river, recognizing that it was not of God.
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And down through history, from Gregory VIII, who celebrated the massacre of the
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Protestants in the year 1572, coining a mint to celebrate the massacre of tens of thousands of Christians in what was called the
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St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre.
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Anybody heard of it? Today we're about to study St. Bartholomew. That's Nathaniel.
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The Popes have opposed the genuine gospel of God. Council of Trent anathematizing what it is.
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So listen. Here is what it meant when Jesus said, you are
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Peter, and on this rock I will build my church. Matthew chapter 16. He was referring to Peter as a rock, but he used a different word when he said, upon this rock
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I will build my church. Did you know that? That different word refers to the confession that Peter made.
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Peter had said, you are the Christ, the Son of the Living God. And Jesus said, you are
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Peter, and on this rock, your confession, I will build my church.
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He was not establishing a successorship from Peter on down. He was saying that where this gospel is preached,
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Peter preached the gospel in Acts chapter 2, and people came to saving faith. So we need to understand something.
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When Jesus said, you are Peter, he is referring to Peter as a nickname for the man
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Simon, but he is not establishing a papacy to flow from him.
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That's an unnecessary step, and it's one that leads many people astray, because what we're gonna see at the end of the text today is that Bartholomew, Nathanael, is a
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Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile, no deceit. So two things we've seen so far.
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One, related to Andrew, the testimony of John the Baptist brings him to faith.
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Two, relating to Peter, the very one who came to faith became the finder. Andrew found his own brother, so the testimony of Andrew brought
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Peter. But notice the third point today, Philip. How does
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Philip come to saving faith? Let's look at the text. It says, the next day, this is verse 43, the next day
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Jesus decided to go to Galilee.
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He found Philip and said to him, follow me. Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter.
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Now notice here how Philip is found. Who's the instrument that God uses?
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Jesus himself. He doesn't use another, but Jesus himself decided, and this is an important point, because ultimately salvation comes from the will of Jesus himself.
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How do I know that? It says here in verse 43, the next day Jesus decided, in the
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Greek that word is aetheleson. It comes from thelema, which means will.
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The idea here is Jesus willed. He decided it was his sovereign choice to go where he was sent by the
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Father. He knew exactly where he was going. Look what it says, the next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee.
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He found Philip. The idea is he's finding someone he knows, and this will become even more clear in the next passage with Bartholomew, because he knows him under the fig tree, but the idea is he found his child.
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He found his lost sheep. He found the seeker, Philip.
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Jesus found Philip, and that's the big idea of the text, believe it or not.
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As you go through John, this will come out. John 637, John 644. If you want to turn with me to John chapter 15 verse 16,
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I love that sound. You guys are turning pages. Of course, the cell phone doesn't make that that crinkly sound, but it's still just as good.
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You're getting there, right? Yeah, trying to get there. John 15 16, it says, you did not choose me, but I chose you.
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Look also at John 17 verses 6 and 7.
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Listen to what Jesus says as he's to his father. I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world.
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Listen. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word.
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Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you.
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See the concept there? Philip, even before, look at verse 6.
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We're in John 17 verse 6. Philip belonged to God.
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Yours they were, and you gave them to me. They're gifts from the
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Father to the Son, and Jesus just found Philip. So back with me to John chapter 1 verse 43.
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This language of the will. Jesus willed to go to Galilee.
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It's not like he got to Galilee, and there he sees some guy named Philip in the market, and he says, that guy will do.
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You know, he'll do. Anybody will do. That's not the concept here.
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It says he found Philip. This John 17 concept that it was given, that he,
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Philip, was given to the Son by the Father. He found the gift that his father had for him.
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He found Philip and said to him, follow me. And just like that,
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Philip from Bethsaida and the city of Andrew and Peter, that's all we know. Philip, that's all it took.
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So now we go to the last point, and what we have here, I've said that a passage builds, right?
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It's not just, it's not to be just atomized one little piece at a time.
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It's rather to be a flow. You have to follow the flow of the text.
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What the author is doing with what he's saying here, right? He's showing us how Jesus finds disciples.
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He found Andrew through the preaching of John. He found Peter through the preaching of Andrew.
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He found Philip himself to indicate that it's his sovereign will that does the finding.
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But notice, it all culminates here at the end of chapter one in the story of Nathanael, because Jesus does the finding, but he uses instruments of preaching, usually those who themselves have been found.
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So the gospel goes around the world person by person. Someone who's come to believe in Christ goes and tells his own brother, our brother
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Rich here in the church, Rich Ventura, telling his brothers and his sister that he's found the
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Messiah. It goes to family members and to friends one by one.
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Sometimes it happens in a big room like this, filled with people, and a lot of people come to believe, but the ordinary and normal way is one person at a time.
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And even in this, there's the preaching of the word. Okay, so here's what I'm saying. Jesus is doing the finding.
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He uses an instrument and that instrument, follow this, itself has an instrument.
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Are you thoroughly lost at that point? I'm a preacher, but if I stand up here with my own ideas and thoughts,
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I am worthless to you. You go to your next door neighbor with your opinions and you have nothing to offer them.
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Might as well just bring them a plate of cookies, bring them some sugar. But if you go with the sword of the spirit in your hand, the instrument of salvation, faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of God.
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You go in the power of God. You trust that God will save those that belong to him. So what
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I'm saying is you need to hold these doctrines together. Sovereignty, Jesus does the saving.
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He's seeking and saving that which is lost. And yet he's using us as instruments, means to that end.
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Does that make sense? And we don't go in our own strength. We go in the power of his word as authoritative representatives of God.
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And we declare the truth of God. It all comes together in Nathanael. You guys ready to see it? All right.
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I like the enthusiasm. So it says, verses 45 to 51, Philip found
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Nathanael. You see that finding? And he said to him, we have found him.
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Now here's the answer as to why Philip believed so quickly. Him whom
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Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.
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Philip had been reading his Bible. He had been reading the law. He had read the first five books and had been waiting on the prophet of Deuteronomy 18, 15.
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And he heard John the Baptist, I'm sure preaching in the wilderness. And he had been searching the scriptures.
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Who is the Christ? He's been waiting on what the prophets had foretold. He had been in the word.
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And so when he met him, he knew him. Continue on.
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It says, Nathanael said to him, listen to this reaction. Can anything good come out of Nazareth?
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Kind of a bit of a prejudiced attitude there, isn't it? Maybe living in Mount Laurel, some people might look out and say, can anything good come out of Camden?
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Can anything good come out of Kensington? Let me tell you, I lived in Kensington for a number of years and there are many, many people of faith living in Kensington.
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And what's interesting here is that people in Jerusalem would have looked down on the Canaanite villagers who lived in Bethsaida.
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Did you notice that? Bethsaida means house of fishermen. It's a small dinky little town on the north part of the
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Sea of Galilee. But they're looking down on the other dinky town called Nazareth. Can anything good come out of Nazareth?
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Listen, here's what we understand about God's providence in choosing.
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He chooses apart from any merit in us. There's nothing good in us.
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In fact, he often chooses the weak things of the world to shame the strong and the foolish things to shame the wise.
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Can anything good come from Nazareth? I think that's part of the point. God was pleased to confound their pride by having his son grow up in the least place in Israel, in a place called
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Nazareth. So this Jesus who grew up, what color was his skin?
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It doesn't matter. I'll tell you this, it wasn't as white or red as my skin.
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And it wasn't as dark as someone from sub -Saharan Africa. It was Middle Eastern.
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Jesus grew up in the confluence of three continents, Europe to the north, Africa to the south,
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Asia off to the east. He was Middle Eastern. And I wonder if there was some providence in the situation of where Israel was fixed at the very center point of the world that Jesus would grow up there so that all the world could look to him and without reference to skin color, say, this is my savior.
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Jesus doesn't look at the color of people's skin. It doesn't matter.
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Jesus doesn't look at where you're from. Maybe you grew up Muslim in the Middle East from Saudi Arabia.
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And someone might say, well, this guy, he's a jihadi. He will never come to believe in Jesus. Guess what?
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Jesus saves jihadis too. They have to repent and believe the gospel like anybody else.
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But what I'm seeing here in the text is his sovereign plan can't be put in a box. You don't know who he's going to save.
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Do you have a wicked neighbor that you won't even share the gospel with him because you think can anything good come out of that house?
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Jesus could save every person in that house. And maybe sometimes it's our hearts that need to change that we would actually go and believe in the power of God to save sinners.
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Because guess what? Every one of us was dead in our trespasses and sins before Jesus saved us.
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Here's the point. Go. Don't worry about who he's going to save. Your job is to preach the gospel and know he is a good
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God. He saves whom he wills, but who he wills to save. But you must go in the power of the spirit with the word of God.
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So it says in verse 47, Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said to him, behold, an
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Israelite indeed in whom there is no deceit.
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So much in there. First of all, to say an Israelite indeed means that there are
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Israelites who are not indeed. Romans 9, 6 says not all
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Israel is Israel. What does that mean? Not all who descend from Abraham are genuinely children of God, but only those that have faith.
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Whether you descend from Abraham or not, you're a Jew or a Gentile. To be an
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Israelite indeed in this sense means the inner conversion of the heart. Nathanael not only descended from Abraham, so that made him an
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Israelite. He's an Israelite indeed because his heart has been converted. He's been reading the law and the prophets.
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He believes in Yahweh. In the Old Testament, before Jesus died, a person needed to look to Yahweh for salvation, expecting the promise of Messiah to come true.
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So they're looking to Christ in faith, but it hasn't yet been fulfilled. Nathanael was one of those true
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Jews, someone who had been looking, believing the promises of the word. And so he's an
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Israelite indeed. Notice that word, and maybe mark it in your Bible, in whom there is no deceit.
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Who in the Old Testament was the deceiver? Which major patriarch was known to be a heel grabber, a trickster?
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Jacob. Jacob, his name actually comes from the
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Greek, in the Septuagint, is the same word that we have here for deceit. Guile.
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Jacob. In verse 48, Nathanael said to him, how do you know me?
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Jesus answered, before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.
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And this is a big point that the author is making. Do you see it? Jesus, in the flesh, is still
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God. He's still omniscient. He knows everything. He sees Nathanael under a fig tree when
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Nathanael was off by himself. And that means he sees you when you're by yourself.
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He sees me. You want to know what character is? Who you are when no one's looking.
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That's what character is. And Jesus sees your character. He sees who you are when no one's looking.
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He sees you all the time. He saw Nathanael when he was alone under the fig tree.
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Now, there's a little bit of an image there of the fig. Do you know that the fig tree represents
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Israel? Remember how Jesus cursed the fig tree and it withered?
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Because they rejected him, they were rejecting the Messiah. He cursed the fig tree and it withered.
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But ever since 1948, the Israelites have gone back into the promised land.
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And after it being desolate for all of those hundreds, thousands of years, fig trees in Israel are once again blossoming everywhere.
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Did you know that fig trees blossom twice a year?
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The first time around the time of Passover and the second time in the fall around the time of Rosh Hashanah, two blossoming.
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Jesus comes twice. At his first coming, the fig tree should have been ripe and ready, but they rejected him.
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And yet, there's coming a time in the end days when
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Israel will be ripened and the fig tree will blossom and they will look upon the one they pierced and mourn for him.
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There will be a great revival among the Jewish people. Jewish people coming to the very
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Messiah that they rejected at his first appearing. And then he comes again.
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That's just a free aside about fig trees there. But the big point here in the text is
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Jesus saw him and knew him even before they met face to face.
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49, Nathanael answered, Rabbi, you are the son of God. You are the king of Israel. Jesus answered him, because I said to you,
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I saw you under the fig tree.
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Do you believe? You will see greater things than these.
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Isn't that awesome? Just that one sign was enough for Nathanael to believe.
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But he's going to see a lot bigger things than that. Because I said to you that I saw you under the fig tree, you believed, you will see greater things than these.
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You will see the son of man walking on water. You will see bread multiplied and feeding 5 ,000.
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You will see blind eyes open. You will see deaf ears unstopped. You will see dead
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Lazarus in the grave for four days, come out and get unwrapped and set free.
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You will see the son of God die and you will see him rise. All of these signs
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Nathanael would give witness to, but how much did it take for him to believe the first sign?
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At first sight he believed. Why is that? Because his heart was pure before God.
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His heart had been converted through Moses and the prophets to believe in God. And so when he saw the
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Messiah, he simply believed. And now look at the clincher in verse 51 and then we're done.
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He said to him, truly, truly, I say to you, watch how this all comes together.
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You will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the son of man.
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Remember what Nathanael and Philip used to do? And what Nathanael was probably doing under that fig tree, reading the
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Torah, praying, communing with God. He was familiar with Genesis 28 where Jacob the deceiver lay down to sleep and he used a rock as a pillow.
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Some of you use Mike Lindau's My Pillow. Jacob used a rock. And as he slept, he had a dream.
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And in Jacob's dream, he saw a stairway from earth to heaven and angels were ascending and descending on the stairway.
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And when he woke up from that dream, he could hardly catch his breath. He knew this was more than just a dream.
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He said, surely the presence of the Lord is in this place.
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Bethel, house of God, the presence of the Lord was in this place.
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And so Jesus, knowing that Nathanael knew that scripture, he said, do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree?
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You'll see greater things than that. You will see angels ascending and descending on the sun.
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He claims himself to be the son of man of Daniel 7 and Daniel 9, the son.
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But he's claiming so much more than that. What is he saying? You're in the presence of God.
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Jacob the deceiver, he became Israel that day or just shortly after. His name changed to Israel.
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He began to relate to God. He knew him. He experienced the presence of God at Bethel.
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Nathanael was having a divine appointment with the son of man who is the son of God.
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Now listen, there is a holy God in heaven and here we are on earth, sinners.
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And angels can ascend and descend because they've never fallen into sin, but we are sinners and we cannot reach to the glory of the father.
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But here's what God has done. He has built a staircase, a stairway, a bridge.
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And that gate from earth to heaven is none other than Jesus himself.
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That's what he's saying. I am the door. I am the gate. Angels can ascend and descend, but they're not the issue.
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Notice angels are ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit eternal life. There's angels in this room right now.
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Notice that's why they ascend and descend. They spend most of their time here doing their job. From time to time, they ascend to report as you see in the book of Job and check in with the command center.
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And then they come back down to keep watching over you because you're about to get in a car accident.
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Angels ascending and descending. But the issue here is that Jesus is claiming to be the staircase.
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He is the way. There's no other way but Christ himself.
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So how will anybody know this? In closing, here's the application. Jesus is the way and he will find, he will come and seek and save that which is his own.
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That which was lost, he'll find that coin. Like the woman who searches for it till she finds it.
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The sheep that goes astray, Luke 15, the good shepherd will go after that sheep and he will find his sheep.
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The prodigal son who's wandered off into sin, he'll be found.
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And the father will rejoice and throw a party. Jesus will find his own and here's how he does it.
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He sends ordinary John the Baptist and Andrew, later Peter.
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He sends Philip to Nathaniel. He sends you, brother. He sends you, sister. We're the instruments and we go out with a very simple message, not our own.
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We take the word and declare that Jesus is the Christ and we show from the Old Testament, from Jacob's ladder to the
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Passover lamb to Isaiah 53, Psalm 110, that Jesus is the promised
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Messiah, the King of Israel. That's our commission.
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You guys ready to do it? There are divine appointments waiting for you outside of that door.
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My son and his buddy, Carmine, went to the park yesterday and they were selling lemonade, doing a lemonade stand, but they had tracks to give to anybody who buys or would be interested to have it.
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Why? Because there's some divine appointment that some little kid who took that track will read it, maybe tonight, and believe the good news.
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You have divine appointments that God will use you to bring the good news to those who are lost.
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That's what our text is about. The witness is going out and Jesus is drawing to himself those who would believe.
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It's his sovereign work, but we're the instrument, we're the means. Amen? Start with your family.
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What did Andrew do? The first person he told was his own brother. Do you have a brother who doesn't believe?
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Do you have a sister, a parent, a grandparent? Start with your family.
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Notice they were all from the same village. Go to your own town. We have a responsibility to reach these neighborhoods with the good news of Jesus Christ.
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Let's close in a word of prayer. So, Father, we thank you so much for your word this morning. We're seeing the disciples gathered, but we take the message of the text to heart.
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And Lord, my heart right now is for anybody listening to this message that hasn't yet been found.
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Lord God, you alone can save. We pray that you would open their eyes to see that they would believe that Jesus is the
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Christ, that he died on the cross and rose from the dead, and that by believing they would have life in his name.
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Thank you, Jesus, for dying on the cross. Thank you for rising.
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And Lord, how could we help but tell people? We pray that you would light a fire in every heart in this room this morning to pray for divine appointments, to pray for the lost, to go out seeking, to give out tracks, to open up conversations while walking the dog.
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Jesus, we know you are seeking your own. We pray that you would use us to find many.
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In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Let's stand and sing. For the
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Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. You make it easy to love you.
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You are good and you are kind. You bring joy into my life.
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You make it easy to trust you. You have never left my side.
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You've been faithful every time. All I want is you,
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Jesus. All I want is you.
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You are the refuge I run to. You are the fire that leads me through the night.
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I'll follow you anywhere. There's a million reasons to trust you.
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Nothing to fear for you are by my side. I'll follow you anywhere.
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Jesus, you came to my rescue. You took my place upon that cross.
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You redeemed what I had lost. Now my whole world revolves around you.
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You're the center of my life. You're the treasure your love provides.
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All I want is you,
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Jesus. All I want is you.
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You are the refuge I run to. You are the fire that leads me through the night.
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I'll follow you anywhere. There's a million reasons to trust you.
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Nothing to fear for you are by my side.
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I'll follow you anywhere. I'll follow you anywhere.
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Wherever you lead me. Whatever it costs me.
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All I want is you, Jesus. All I want is you.
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Wherever you lead me. Whatever it costs me.
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All I want is you, Jesus. All I want is you.
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All I want is you,
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Jesus. All I want is you.
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You are the refuge I run to. You are the fire that leads me through the night.
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I'll follow you anywhere. There's a million reasons to trust you.
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Nothing to fear for you are by my side.
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I'll follow you anywhere. I'll follow you anywhere.
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And Jesus said to them, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
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Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the
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Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.