John 1:35-42 Part 2

Hello everyone, welcome to the Shepherd's Church. Let's go ahead and pray and then let's get started with our text this evening. Father I pray that you would Bless the preaching of your word and that as I seek to deliver this message today Lord, would you allow it?

To go forth in power and. Would you allow it to do? More than I could have ever imagined. Lord, would you let me speak your words? Would you let me share your thoughts. And Lord, would you write them on each of our hearts as we seek to follow God?

It's in Christ name we pray. Amen. We're gonna be in part two this week of our look at John 1 35 through 42. I'm gonna read the entire text and then we'll get started again, the next day John was standing with two of his disciples and he looked at Jesus as he walked and said behold The Lamb of God and the two disciples heard him speak and they followed Jesus and Jesus turned and saw them following and he said to them.

What do you seek and They said to him rabbi which translated means teacher. Where are you staying? And he said to them come and you will see. So they came and saw where he was staying and they stayed with him for that day for it was about the 10th hour.

One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew Simon Peter's brother. He found his own brother first Simon and he said to him we have found the Messiah. Which translated 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 is translated Peter. Now last week we considered how the text of John 1 35 through 42 is this key unit where John is transitioning us away from the witness of John the Baptist and on to the witness of Jesus and his disciples and In this text we we zoom down into the very first interactions.

That Jesus and his disciples Had these are the very first men who laid down their nets in order to follow Jesus and from here on out. The narrative is gonna primarily focus on the ministry of Jesus and the men who committed their lives to following him.

Again, we're transitioning away from John the Baptist and on to Jesus. Now I love how John frames this text because he does two very interesting things he tells us things that are on the surface and then he tells us things that are also under the surface on.

The surface we get to see the first moments of Jesus's ministry the first interactions the first question that he asked the first answer that they give the titles that they attribute to Jesus and all of this is very interesting.

But under the surface what I also love about this passage. That's not only showing us who the men were who followed him, but also how they followed him. And as we said last week, there's there's roughly seven or eight different Characteristics of how these men followed Jesus in this narrative the rest of the book is gonna focus on their following him, but this passage focuses on how they followed him and If you remember last week We looked at the first couple examples of that first.

They had to leave the comfortable in order to follow Jesus. They had to number to understand why they were following Jesus and Then last week we wrapped up with they had to have a genuine desire to dwell with him.

And I'm like we said all three of these must be true. We cannot follow Jesus if we're not willing to leave the comfortable. We can't follow Jesus rightly if we don't know why that we're actually following him.

And we certainly cannot proclaim ourselves to be a follower of Jesus if we have no genuine desire to spend time with him. All three of these things must be true if we want to call ourselves followers of Christ.

Well this week we're gonna look at another indispensable Necessary quality of what it means to follow Jesus and we're not only gonna look at this attribute. But we're also gonna ask our question ask the question.

How does this apply to our lives and How can we repent when we fall short. So that we can follow our great King. Well. So with that if you will turn with me again to John 1 We're gonna start in verse 35 and we're gonna look at the quality of following Jesus.

That followers of Christ are disciples of Christ. That's the fourth quality. Verse 35 begins and the next day John was standing with two of his disciples and he looked at Jesus as he walked and he said behold the Lamb of God and the two disciples these are disciples of John heard him speak and they followed Jesus and Jesus turned and he saw them and he said to them.

What do you seek. And They said to him rabbi. Which translated means teacher, where are you staying? Rabbi as Jesus turns around and he asked them what they're seeking. They call him rabbi and John provides the translation of teacher.

But we need to go a little bit deeper than that because teachers a good place to start and and we would understand by that that Jesus is a teacher and if we want to be a follower, then we must be a learner, which is definitely true.

But if we don't go a little deeper than that We're gonna miss all of the beauty that is under this text that is cultural. That maybe we don't understand in the in the rabbi discipleship relationship. So for the next few moments, I want us to dive deep into the Jewish culture.

I want us to look at what it meant to be a rabbi. I want us to look at what it meant to be the disciple of a rabbi and As we do that, I believe that it will become very clear for us how this can apply to us today.

So the first question we're gonna ask this evening is what does it mean to follow Jesus the rabbi. At the time of Jesus Galilee was the center for Jewish learning. While it was not as urban as Boston or Rome.

It was the center for education in the first century. It was a well-known Collegiate community far from just being fishing towns full of backwoods people. Galilee was like a hub for Jewish thinking and learning and while Jerusalem Which often is considered to be the main city of Israel. It's the capital city of Israel.

It's where the temple was that's where the Jewish religious elites gathered. But Galilee was where the learning happened. It's where the rabbis were taught is where they recruited new followers and where the the best schools were found.

It's kind of like Boston today people go to school here because it's the academic hub of America it's almost like the Athens of America and while New York and Washington DC are typical places where the elites gather Boston is an academic community and In some ways it was it was kind of like Galilee except far more rural and far more conservative.

Now the fact that Jesus was being called a rabbi in this region Would almost be akin to someone being a Harvard or MIT professor today. It would have meant that he would have been highly educated. He would have advanced through every rung of the Jewish education system.

And he would have made it to the highest places of Jewish learning after he finished all of the prerequisites. Then he would have been entrusted with some of the most promising students that the region had to offer.

To be a rabbi at this particular time and place was a huge deal. It would have been almost like having a PhD from one of these elite schools today. It was a massive deal and a very small Group of people who could call themselves rabbi now I want us to Explore this in a little bit further depth so that we can understand the expectations that Jesus had as a rabbi.

For his followers because if Jesus is a rabbi and if these men are calling him Rabbi, then they're pursuing a very particular sort of relationship that I want us to understand. So that when we are looking at how does how do we follow Christ?

We'll understand what that means for us. Now the Bible itself Does not shed a lot of answers on this topic because the Bible was written to people who understood this process. The Bible was written to people who understood what it meant to be a rabbi what it meant for people to follow the rabbi and The Bible as a result doesn't have a lot of text on how to make this clear for us.

So what we're gonna do now is we're gonna look at a popular Jewish document called the Mishnah for a moment. Because it actually sheds light on the Jewish education system. It sheds light on the traditions of the rabbis.

It sheds light on what it means to actually follow a rabbi and I think that this will be incredibly helpful for us today. Now according to the Mishnah Education begins at five years old for Jewish boys and girls and They would begin learning how to read from the Torah, which is the first five books of Moses Genesis Exodus Leviticus Numbers and Deuteronomy.

And The training would begin under the tutelage of a local rabbi who was hired to teach the children of various ages at the local synagogue. This was kind of like elementary school. But instead of it happening at a secular building in town, it would have happened at the most prominent religious building in town the synagogue.

The synagogue is where church gatherings happened on Saturday or where social events happen throughout the week or where your children were educated during the day and Almost every important event in your life would have happened at the synagogue.

To say that the synagogue was the epicenter of Jewish life and culture is a gross understatement and This is where the kids would have been educated in a thoroughly biblical education. Now while all the children would participate in this first stage of education Which ranged from age 5 to 10 years old the girls would then be separated out for secondary training in the home with their mother.

Their secondary education would be learning how to become caregivers or providers or future mothers to children and what I love about this is that the Jewish culture celebrated the essential differences between men and women and they carved out a specialized secondary education for each gender.

They understood the unique role and calling that a woman has in her family and they trained the women in preparation for that role. So the girls would enter secondary education with their mothers, which would prepare them for the arduous task of being a mom and the tremendous influence that they were gonna have one day in their home and Society at large.

You see while the men were working long hours outside of the home It was the mothers who were raising the next generation of children. So their secondary education was vital to the life of the culture.

It's not an understatement at all to say that the trajectory and the Sustainability of the entire Jewish society at the time of Jesus would have been more influenced by the state of health of its mothers than its fathers.

While both were vitally important the role of mother in the Jewish culture cannot be understated. Now it's worth noting that while their culture is Different than ours. It is a gross misconstrue of history to claim that the Jewish society was inherently misogynistic.

I Hear this a lot like From different scholars from different articles that that the ancient world was a terrible place for women. It's just not true. Especially of Israel like all cultures some men were morons and this is certainly true of the Jewish people at the time of Jesus but as a whole The Jewish society was one of the most pro women cultures in the ancient world and one of the best places on earth for a woman To live was Israel.

Their society valued their contribution and their society was healthy because they had healthy mothers. I Think that's an incredible point but we're gonna have to set that aside for a moment because Now we're gonna go back to the boys because this is the track of the rabbi that I want us to see.

At 10 years old the boys would continue going to synagogue and they would enter into their phase of secondary education. Which was helping them become good fathers. They would continue under the guidance of the rabbi.

But they would switch from learning how to read the Torah into learning how to study the Mishnah. Which is the book that we're currently referencing. That's giving us this data. They would study the book of rabbinic traditions and they would understand how to interpret the first five books of the Bible From some of the best scholars of their day and they would enter into this phase of education so that they could think biblically Speak biblically and eventually lead their family in family devotions.

You see for the Jewish male Their role was to learn how to be the spiritual leader of their home for the biblical female. Her role was to learn how to be the caregiver and the mother and this combination created a healthy society full of healthy nuclear families that actually thrived.

I Think our society could learn a tremendous amount especially in the raising up of boys. We have an entire generation today of men who are just boys. Especially when it comes to spiritual things. We need to recover and this is a tangential point to this message.

But we need to recover a generation of boys who are going to grow up and to become men who are going to lead their family spiritually and Take their family to the Bible and teach their family how to think biblically.

We need to recover that. This is what was going on in Israel from ages 10 to 13 for the boys. Now the result of this phase. By the time the boy was 13 he would have memorized. Most of them would have memorized the entire Torah again.

That's Genesis through Deuteronomy five books of the Bible and not short ones this accounts for about 25 of the total volume of the Bible they would have had memorized and this was the baseline expectation for Jewish males because if you think about it if no one at the time could afford books and Their only copy of these books was at the local synagogue.

Then to take that Bible with you would be to memorize it to teach your wife and your children the scriptures would mean to have the scriptures inside of you and Again many if not, most of these boys would by 13 years of age would have had the entire Torah memorized now.

The average and below average male student would graduate from their biblical education in the Torah around the age of 13 and Far from being finished with learning. They would actually leave the Academy and they would enter into the labor unions because the third phase of male learning After you finished your academic education would be to learn how to do a trade.

Because you're not only gonna bless your family with this being the spiritual head of the home. You need to also bless your society by entering into the labor force. So after they finished with their education They would pick up fishing poles chisels hammers and things like that and they would leave the academic world and they would enter into Apprenticeship training almost like a tech school today.

They would learn to become masters of a trade and it was usually the trade of their father now. There were some students though who were chosen to continue on in the academic track. So at 13 years old instead of Throwing down the books and going into the big wide world to get a job.

They would have been the ones who impressed the adults and the rabbis who were over them and they would have went on to a third phase of education. Now if you remember Jesus in the story of Luke was 12 years old.

He was in this phase of secondary learning and If you remember he gets separated from his family. He stays behind in Jerusalem and and when they finally go back and find him which was a couple of days later He's speaking with the religious leaders in the temple and he is demonstrating his education in the Mishnah.

He's demonstrating his ability to reason through the scriptures and speak like a rabbi to think deeply about the Mosaic Law and We learn that the Jewish leaders were deeply impressed with his advanced learning.

So either Luke is mentioning this just to show that Jesus at 12 years old was an extremely gifted student or He's picking up on a cultural theme that others would have noticed. Jesus is not gonna at 13 years old probably put down his books and and enter the labor force.

He's a gifted student. He's gonna move on in the track of the rabbis. He's gonna go into that third level of education. And I think I think the reason why this is the only passage mentioned about Jesus's Adolescence is to give the reader the understanding of which direction he was gonna go.

He was either gonna go to the labor unions at 13 or he was going to go into the track of the rabbis. And I think that's why Luke brings this up. I think it's why he shows us that Jesus Impressed the Jerusalem elites because Jesus was on the track of the rabbis now this third phase that they would have entered into moved beyond the intensive dive of the Torah but also included now the study of the prophets and This was also done at the local synagogue.

You see the Torah was central to the life and heartbeat of the Jewish people. The second text as far as priority for the Jewish people were the Prophets in the histories so they would now take a Two-year intensive dive from age 13 to 15 into those particular sections.

Now this would be the most intensive and most rigorous season of learning. That they would do in their hometown and it would take them up until the age of 15. Some would Continue on in their education after that if they continued to be excellent students some would stop there with an extra Education.

It'd be like an associate's degree today. They would stop there and they would enter into the labor force but again, if you distinguished yourself further as Apparently Jesus did since he was called rabbi.

Then he would have had the privilege of leaving his hometown Under the direction of a regional rabbi and I don't understand or I don't know the the particular percentages here. But this would have been a very rare honor that most children were not have afforded.

This is a fourth level of education to become a rabbi. We'll call this like the bachelor's degree. For Jesus to become a rabbi he would have needed to have completed a three-year training under a regional rabbi in Galilee.

If you were gonna become a rabbi you would probably forego marriage. Which we know Jesus did and at 18 years old upon graduating from this three-year studying abroad with a rabbi. Then he would have taken on his father's trade at 18 years old.

Which we know Jesus did he became a carpenter and he started working with his father. Now if you were gonna become a rabbi You would have to not only enter into the trade because the Jewish Society was was very Adamant that there was no such thing as full-time students who didn't contribute to society.

So if you wanted to continue on getting your master's degree or PhD as it were I Know they didn't have those titles back then. But if you wanted to continue in your education after the age of 18 Then you would need to do so independently and by vocationally.

So Jesus would have done this three-year study under a rabbi he would have graduated from that and then he would have entered into the work of his father as a carpenter and he would have worked as a carpenter while he continued to study while he continued to learn and He would have done that until he was about the age of 30 years old.

30 years old is when you could be commissioned as a rabbi. Now is it really all that surprising then if this is what the missionist says was normal at the time of Jesus is It really that surprising that at 12 years old?

He surprised the Jerusalem elites with his knowledge meaning he would have went on to further study. Is it really that strange that at 30 years old is When he began his public ministry when he was commissioned as a rabbi, which was very normal in this custom.

He had to be 30 years old to be a rabbi. Is it is it really all that strange that Jesus Entered his ministry at 30 years old. Is it really all that strange that that his ministry lasted three years when that was from 15 to 18 when young boys?

Would be wanting to study with a rabbi. It was a three-year program. So already you'll you'll see we've learned some answers to some questions. We've learned why Jesus's ministry began at 30 years old.

We now have learned why his ministry Lasted exactly three years with his disciples because he was a rabbi teaching students. We also learned a little bit about Jesus. He would have been instantly one of the most highly sought-after rabbis in the region.

He was a brand new rabbi, but because of John the Baptist affirmation John was also a rabbi because he had disciples that he was training and Because of John the Baptist's affirmation that He wasn't even worthy to tie his shoes that he was the Lamb of God that he was the Son of God these this trifold affirmation of who Jesus is.

Many people would have longed to follow Jesus. So here we are Jesus's public introduction in these passages and immediately You have people following him. Immediately you have Andrew and John Leaving John the Baptist who was their rabbi so that they could follow Jesus and John is okay with this.

John is actually probably the one who led them to make this decision. So now we've learned a few things culturally underneath the text now I want us to switch our focus a little bit from understanding who Jesus the rabbi is.

Now I want us to ask the question of what would it have been like for the disciples to follow a Jewish rabbi. Because this is a critical question. We've established that Jesus was a rabbi. But now to understand what it would have been like to follow Jesus the rabbi is a critical question.

Again, this season of your life would have been from ages 15 to 18. You would have been an excellent student. You would have been one who was ready to take on the rigor of a three-year intensive training.

Where you would have left your home left your family left everything with no pay in order to follow an expert rabbi and the whole point of this season Was so that you could learn how to think and speak and recite the scriptures just like him.

You see the goal of the rabbi was to produce himself in you and in order to do that you would need to come under his program of Advanced biblical teaching which he called his yoke. So when you see Andrew and John calling Jesus rabbi, their expectation was that he would yoke them.

That he would train them that he would take them under his wings and he would develop them. Now you may be wondering what is a yoke? I'm not talking about things related to breakfast here when we talk about a yoke.

It's it's The it's a metaphorical term that that the rabbis would use a very common phrase in the rabbinic world. That today we might call a curriculum or a degree program. The yoke was the entire body of learning.

That a rabbi would lay on top of a young man For three years so that he could learn how to Think like the rabbi and speak like the rabbi and do everything just like the rabbi and the reason I say this is Metaphorical is because this word actually came out of the farming community it would be when a farmer would lay a yoke or a harness on top of an ox and This would have been a heavy burden for the animal that they would have Connected two oxen together side by side together as a team of oxen and they would be synced up to pull the plow.

Which would of course bring about a great harvest. So one way of looking at this was the rabbi was going to put a great burden on you like an ox so that as you are pulling this great burden of teaching and Learning that your life would eventually produce a harvest for the people.

Now that burden that harness was his body of doctrine. It was your degree program, which was not entirely academic. It was academic, but it also included your expectations for behavior. It also included opportunities for service when Jesus sends out the 70 disciples to go out and do ministry.

He's doing rabbinic things and with the yoke of a rabbi upon you. It would not only add to your burdens. But it would teach you how to serve God. It would teach you how to plow the intellectual landscape of the nation so that your life would be a blessing to the people.

Now the Bible uses this term yoked a couple of different ways and I think it'd be interesting if we If we look into those for a second when when married couples become married, the Bible says do not be unequally yoked.

What does it mean for a married couple to be unequally yoked? It simply means do not be married to someone who's hitched up to a different wagon. Someone who has not come under the yoke of Christ. Do not marry someone who is not pulling with Christ.

Think about an ox. You've got two ox one is on one wagon and one is on the other one is pulling the wagon of Buddhism or the wagon of atheism or the wagon of materialism or the wagon of Agnosticism or whatever wagon you want to you want to say and then the other oxen is is pulling a different wagon.

It's pulling the wagon of Christ. And when life gets hard you pull yourselves apart. Because you're not yoked. Equally to the same cart, that's what that means. Now what it doesn't mean is that you're gonna have both oxen be at the exact same ability and aptitude.

A marriage may have one person who's a little bit further along than Christ than the other. One may be stronger in their faith than the other one may be weaker. One may be the spiritual leader of the home like the the husband and and one may be the caregiver and provider.

So so they're not equal in a sense of sameness. But they're equal in the fact that they're connected to Christ. That's what it means when we think about not being unequally yoked in a marriage. It means that biblically both People must be believers of Jesus for it to be a biblical marriage.

Now I say this because There's another biblical metaphor that's incredibly important and it's it's even more important to the topic that we're discussing today. It was a common practice in agrarian societies to break in a new ox.

By pairing it with a stronger adult animal. See it would take a younger and weaker animal. That might be nervous and anxious and would have no idea how to actually plow a field and they would harness them to a More mature adult animal so that when that animal was fighting the harness kicking and panting and resisting the yoke with all of their might.

Then they would look over to the more mature oxen that was paired up with them and they would see how to behave as an ox as They were kicking and panting they would have looked over and they would have seen off.

I'm not supposed to be kicking and panting as that other ox was pulling and and this ox was Resisting they would have worn themselves out to the point to where they would have given up and they would have realized no I need To be like this other ox.

Now when you plow a field you would have need to have two oxes of similar strength, but this in this training scenario. You would have had two oxes of unequal strength so that you could teach this the younger ox how to actually plow like the older ox and the Bible compares this To discipleship in some really beautiful ways.

Much like a new believer spends a season resisting Jesus. Being anxious and trying to do everything in their own strength. Not wanting to put on Jesus's yoke and Jesus is teaching kicking and panting and causing a scene.

But eventually Jesus wins us over. Eventually, we've become tired of resisting and we and we look up to Christ and We watch him Pull. We watch that. He's not freaking out. We watch that he has peace that he has calm under these burdens and we look to Christ.

And we begin to imitate that peace when he pulls then we start to pull. When he stops we stop and as the Metaphorical sense as the younger animal would become accustomed to wearing the yoke. He would learn in intimate details what was expected from him simply by staring at the older animal and in the same way.

Those who would follow the rabbi in the Jewish culture would look to him. They would take on his yoke. They would take on his burden and they would look to him and they would imitate him. The whole goal of their life was that they would resemble him in every single possible way and this three-year program was meant to Reproduce the rabbi into them so that they would walk like him and talk like him and read the Bible like him and follow God like him and is it any wonder?

With this metaphor that it's when Jesus comes to his disciples and he says come to me. All of you who are heavy laden and I will give you rest. My yoke is easy. My burden is light. Jesus is speaking like a rabbi here.

He's saying stop trying to carry the burdens of yourself. He's saying your shoulders can't support that load. Why don't instead? Why don't you connect yourself to me and Come under my teaching and let me pull the load.

Let me carry the burdens of this life. The ones that have been weighing you down and and frustrating you. And just like that baby calf. That's doing nothing in the beginning that the adult ox is the one who's pulling the load.

Jesus is looking at you maybe and saying I don't even want you to pull in this season. I just want you to stare at me. I just want you to look at me. I just want you to have that my peace. I want you to notice my joy.

I want you to notice my righteousness. I want you to look at the way that I think in the way that I talk in the way that I walk in the Way that I praise and I want you to look at every possible thing that I do.

And I want you to settle down and I want you to stop resisting God and I want you to let me pull your life Instead of you struggling every single day to pull it yourself. I Want you to look at me and I want you to imitate me.

And I want you to mimic me. I want you to walk when I walk. I Want you to keep in step with me. When I move you move when I stop you stop when I pull you pull and What a wonderful metaphor. This is if you're not a Christian and you're listening to this and you're overly burdened by the world and if you don't know Jesus abandon what you're hooked up to and Let go of all the burden that you're currently pulling and yoke yourself up with Christ.

And if you're a Christian and If you're feeling burdened, I want you to remember That you're yoked up with him. He may be struggling so hard right now. You may be pulling so vigorously. You may be burned out and expended with life.

I get it, but you're hooked up to the one who is burying the burdens and he's right beside of you turn and look at him. If you would just let go he is still going to be pulling. He is still going to be leading.

It's kind of like that poem that says in the good parts of life. There were two footprints in the sand and when things were hard There was only one footprint of sand and the question was did Jesus abandon you during the hard times?

No, he was the one who was carrying you and Just like that baby ox if you would stop. The cart still gonna be moving because he's still gonna be the one pulling all of your burden. Contribution that you're trying to add to the equation is actually not helping.

It's not improving your life to be so frustrated the real power in your life is right beside of you and it's pulling you and Your job is to just simply rest in him. Now this kind of learning. This yoke that we're talking about Would last three years.

It would be three years of the disciples Intimately looking at Christ so that they could learn how to be just like him so that they would no longer be anxious little cows. But when he ascended into heaven they would know how to be like him and they would know how to take his message to the ends of the earth.

You see the whole point of discipleship is when people See them they would actually be seeing him and For us today the point of discipleship is when people see you they're actually seeing Jesus. That's what successful discipleship looks like now in our text today.

John the gospel writer says these two disciples of John heard Jesus speak and they followed Jesus and Jesus turned and saw them following him and he said to them. What do you seek? What are you looking for?

What's your what's your goal here? And they said to him rabbi, which is translated teacher. Where are you staying? How can we follow you? Please let us be yoked up to you you see they knew Jesus was a preeminent rabbi and they wanted to follow him and In this text we get to see the very beginning of that three-year process that Jesus is gonna take them through now.

Before we continue I do want to I do want to highlight a couple of points that might not be Explicit in the narrative. I Think it teaches us two interesting cultural details about these disciples. Because that's the question that we're asking is what does it mean to follow Jesus?

Well, let's look at these disciples and find out what it meant for them first. We learned that if the age That people followed a rabbi is roughly 15 years old. Then all of Jesus's first disciples in John 1 except for Peter were probably 15 or 16 years old.

Again, according to the Mishnah which teaches us which is what is culturally normal. Then we're looking at teenage boys. Who are signing up to follow Jesus and isn't that so encouraging? Because when we think about disciples we think about men who had it all together.

We think about men who were spiritual Giants. We think about men who were standing in front of the community and acts and they were preaching these amazing sermons. What we're looking at is teenage boys, I Don't know if you remember the story where John and James are fighting over who's gonna be the greatest in the kingdom and then their mother has to get involved.

It's because they were teenage boys. They were hormonal teenage boys that were following Jesus and I find that so comforting that Jesus was choosing to train them as the start of the kingdom of God on planet Earth because That gives me hope that no matter what phase of my life. I'm in right now.

I can follow Jesus. There might be a 14 or 15 year old boy or girl listening to this message right now. And I want you to know That you don't have to wait until you become an adult to follow Jesus. You can follow Jesus now just like these disciples and you can have a world-changing impact.