John 1:35-42 Part 1

How about we pray before we get started. Lord Jesus, you know our weakness.

You know that we are but dust. Lord God, as we handle such beautiful texts you've preserved for us for thousands of years, your

Holy Spirit laid upon the Apostle John to write so that we could be encouraged, so that we could know that you are the

Messiah, the Son of God, and that these things were written so that we would have life. Holy Spirit, I pray that we would experience that life from your

Word. Holy Spirit, I pray that as I've prepared and as I preach that,

Lord, you would make these words go far beyond my human voice, that they wouldn't be ephemeral, that they wouldn't dissipate, but Lord, that you would take these words, that you would write them on our hearts, that Lord, as we study and learn together tonight what it means to be a witness and to be a follower of Christ, that Lord, we would be encouraged and that we would be motivated not to performance but to the cross in what you did and out of that,

Lord, I pray that we would follow you well. In Christ's name, amen. So, we're going to start.

I was telling someone earlier that I got to my eighth point in the outline and I decided to make this a two -part sermon because it would probably be a little overbearing once we got to point seven.

So, we're going to take this text over two weeks, but let's read the whole text in full and then we will only deal with half of it.

Again, the next day, John was standing with two of his disciples and he looked at Jesus and he walked and said, behold the

Lamb of God. The two disciples heard him speak and they followed Jesus and Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them, what do you seek?

And they said to him, Rabbi, which is translated, it means teacher, what are you saying or 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 that day for it was about the tenth hour.

One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, and he found first his own brother

Simon and 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. John three times gives us translations for the things that he's saying.

It gives us an understanding that John is talking to a worldwide audience and not just a

Jewish audience. There's nothing to do with this I just thought I would point that out because it's these little things in the text that are so good as we pay attention and as we watch.

Now, this text serves as a transition unit. This text is the text where we start to move away from John the

Baptist. We will no longer see, really, John much more after this.

This text is transitioning us away from John and his witness to Christ and his followers.

We're going to see over the next 20 chapters that's going to be primarily about Jesus and this group of 12 people who are called to follow him over the three years of ministry that Jesus does.

This text is the transition point away from John into Christ. So really what we're seeing here is that this text this week and next is going to be our introduction to Jesus and it's going to be our introduction to what it means actually to follow

Jesus. So we're going to look at it but before we do we have to deal with the transition part of it.

We have to deal with the middle part of it. What is it saying? And today I want us to give one last look of John the

Baptist. One last look at what it means that he was a witness for Christ and what it means that his witness actually grew.

Last week we made the observation that the more John the Baptist understood about Jesus the better his witness became.

And that doesn't just mean his public witness but that's where we saw that it started. Last week or two weeks ago we saw that John was witnessing publicly and he was preaching, he was saying things like,

I'm not the Messiah, I'm not the prophet, I'm not the Elijah, I'm just a voice. See John was speaking about what he knew from the

Bible. John was speaking about what he had studied about Christ. But then last week we saw after John met

Jesus face to face and after he saw him it wasn't no it wasn't any longer what

John read in a book. Although we know the Bible is true he saw Jesus face to face and his witness actually got better.

His witness was more clear, his witness was more precise and remember he said things like, behold the

Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. I myself have testified that this one is the Son of God.

How in the world did John say such an amazing astounding claim when it's not necessarily perfectly clear from the

Old Testament at least from the stories that that most people were sharing around that time.

They didn't have yet a concept for God coming in the flesh.

It says that the Spirit descended upon Christ and when the Spirit descended upon Christ that John the

Baptist understood who he was. You see as John met

Jesus under the power of the Holy Spirit John understood who Jesus was and we made a point last week that as we as Christians under the power of the

Holy Spirit see Christ we see Christ for who he really is. We cannot see Christ for who he really is unless we have the

Spirit of God. So we see John his witness is getting better.

John admits Jesus is higher than me, he existed before me, I'm so limited I can't even untie his sandals.

John actually was the very first human to declare that Jesus was the

Son of God not only in John's gospel but chronologically if you look at all the gospels and you line them up John the

Baptist is the first one to make that declaration that Jesus is the Son of God. The more

John interacts with Jesus the clearer his understanding of Jesus is and the better his witness becomes and the same is true for us today.

If we desire to grow in our witness to Jesus Christ and we spend time getting to know

Jesus Christ, we get to know him in scriptures, we hang on his words, we let his life, his words, and his gospel wash all over us so that as we get to understand who he is our witness for him will improve.

Our time in the word is not wasted, the Bible says that the word of God will not return void and it will accomplish the purpose for which it's set forward and that's not just preaching that's when you sit under the word of God and you allow the word of God to minister to you it will do what it's intended to do and it will grow us deep in Christ and deepen our faith in Christ.

See the point is that spending time with him makes us a better witness for him, that's the point.

Now again we say this is a transition text we get to see it in transition.

Last week we saw that our witness should grow over time and we just we covered that just a little bit right now but we didn't mention this our witness should be better than John's because we have the

Holy Spirit of God. Have you thought about that? John the Baptist saw

Jesus face to face and I'm saying that our witness should be better than his because Jesus said there's no man born of woman who's better than John but what's the second half of that phrase there

John as good as he is is least in the kingdom of God he's least in the kingdom of God because he died before the resurrection he died before the indwelling of the

Holy Spirit you and I stand in a better position to be a witness for Jesus than John because of the indwelling of the

Holy Spirit of God. Isn't that amazing? There's no Christian here who is actually less equipped than John the

Baptist one of the great men of the Bible and it's not because of you and it's not because of your talent it's not because of your ability it's not because of your pedigree it's because of the

Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit alone we stand in an amazing position because of what the

Holy Spirit has done. I think sometimes we just need to understand it and accept it instead of having all of the thoughts that I'm not good

I'm not equipped I'm not all of these things of course we're not he is his work us is the third thing

I want us to see in this is that all of us can have a witness this is where we get to today's text. See I think it's easy for us to get the wrong idea that a guy like John can be a witness because he's a public proclaimer he's speaking to large crowds he's speaking sermons as it were and none of us or most of us most

Christians that exist in New Testament times are not going to preach sermons most

Christians who exist in New Testament times are not going to stand behind a lectern or a pulpit and they're not going to they're not going to write out a five point or eight point or 15 point sermon yeah

I don't know someone who might do that sort of thing and if you get the understanding that being a witness for Christ is just about preaching sermons then you'll think that being a witness for Christ is totally irrelevant to your life but praise

God John doesn't stop with verse 34 praise God today we're going to look at verse 35 where he says again the next day

John was standing with two of his disciples and he looked at Jesus as he walked up and he said behold the

Lamb of God John comes out of the public proclaiming and into the private proclaiming where now he's just hanging out with two of his friends he's hanging out with two people who are looking to him for leadership but these are private relationships these are intimate and personal settings

John is demonstrating to us that the same man who could stand boldly and proclaim behold the

Lamb of God in public is also the same man who consistently proclaims behold the Lamb of God in private and that means

I think that all of us can have a private witness that all of us can listen to the word of God proclaimed all of us can listen to the word of God as we're reading it in our devotions and all of us can be armed with what it is content wise that we need to share as a witness of Christ all of us can have private conversations all of us can talk with our brother sister mother friend or someone else that we work with all of us can share the hope that we have in Christ it is not just limited to the public platform all of us are a witness for Jesus Christ all of us can share the good news of what he's done again the more we know of Christ the more our witness will grow and it's not just a public witness it can be done in smaller intimate settings as well now

I say all of this and I repeat all of this maybe often I don't I don't take a record of how often

I say these types of things but I say them a lot because the church culture in America today is dying the church is shrinking and I'm not talking about the church having influence

I'm not talking about us having candidates in the White House I don't care which like both parties miss it but evangelicalism as a movement has been dying for many decades and I think it's because Christians in general have forgotten that they are a witness for Christ and somewhere along the way the church has become convinced that it's the church that's the witness that if you want to participate in evangelism then all you have to do is invite your friend to church and instead of the church repenting and discipling and training people to be witnesses for Jesus because that is what the church's mission is to train missionaries to go and reach a dying culture instead of repenting of that instead of going back to the biblical method what churches have done is they've made churches increasingly more entertaining increasingly more sensate increasingly more emotional driven to attract worldly people but be less like the word

I would even say it like this the fastest way to offend the spirit of God as a church and the fastest way for a church to lose her witness in the world is to compromise on the gospel to compromise on the mission that God has called us to is it any wonder that so many people feel ill -equipped because the church is not invested in their development and instead of admitting that error so many churches today have doubled down on this philosophy of ministry that is not working and it is not producing disciples of Jesus Christ there's a horrifying example

I share this not to make light of it but just to illustrate the point there was a mother in Pennsylvania a couple months back who malnourished her teenage child over a decade he was 15 years old and he was 26 pounds when they found him my 16 month old is 26 pounds and he was so malnourished that he couldn't speak and he was just a bag of bones when they when they found him and of course we realize just how wicked and how awful that is of course we realize that that should never happen that every fiber of my being it makes me angry that things like this can still even happen in the world but this is exactly what the

American church has been doing for decades we've watered down the gospel we've watered down the only food that Christians are supposed to eat the living word of God and we've left people starving and we've left people mute and unable to share their faith and mute in their witness why am

I bringing this up because I think it's absolutely essential that every single

Christian who's a part of the blood -bought bride of Christ would be able to share their faith in Christ I think it's essential that the church in America owns its part in why this isn't happening if if you feel ill -equipped to be a witness to Christ and you feel like that the church has never discipled you or prepared you

I just want to say that I'm sorry for that that I'm sorry that that you have not been poured into and that you've not been invested in and that you've not been developed and you've not been discipled

I wasn't discipled either when I went to when I became a

Christian I started listening to R .C. Sproul because I didn't know even what discipleship meant I was watching renewing your mind on my computer

I still felt like even though I've never met R .C. Sproul personally he's the man who discipled me no man jumped up and raised their hand and said

Kendall I want to pour into you it's because I think we have a church culture that is so busy throwing events that they're not identifying what's the next generation of people that we're going to pour into and love and care and disciple that's our mission that should be our focus

I'm sorry if that's not happened to you I know how it feels but I want Shepherd's Church to be different than that I want

Shepherd's Church to be a place where people can be raised up and sent out this culture this region is not going to come to know

Jesus Christ if it's just about one church service a week and that's it we're the salt and we're the light we're the salt that's sent out into the world to to help preserve a dead and dying culture that's what salt is for we're the light that's sent out into a dark world because without Christians in this world no one will understand and see the gospel that's what

I want Shepherd's Church to be so I bring this up because it's really important and central to my heart that everyone here would feel equipped and would feel empowered to be able to be a witness for Jesus we're all called to be witnesses and as we grow in Christ I think it starts with the preaching of the word

I think it starts with diving into the gospel I think that's where we begin that's what

I hope that we're going to accomplish tonight but it also begins with having a culture of disciple making where where people are hungry to be poured into and people are stepping up saying

I'll do that I'll take my time I'll use a Saturday morning even though I've got other things to do and I'll pour into this particular person or that particular person

I know for me I prayed a prayer four years ago that God would show me who

I'm supposed to spend my time with who I'm supposed to pour into I didn't know how to do it

I didn't know how to disciple anyone I was hired as a discipleship pastor I felt like you guys ever heard the term imposter syndrome why are they paying me to do this and out of desperation

I was trying to figure it out and I just prayed and I said Lord who would you want me to spend time with and the very next day someone came up to me and said

I've never been discipled would you disciple me it was really easy I didn't even have to work really hard I guess my point is is that this is what

I want our culture to be here and if you have a desire to to step in and do that for someone else just pray

God will provide every year God has provided someone in my life for me to pour into every year and it and as we see that person start to grow in their faith and in their understanding of who

Christ is it is exciting to watch when you see them discipling someone and then the person they disciple discipling someone you kind of feel like a spiritual grandfather but it's really cool it's you're seeing it multiply so I bring all this up and I've gotten a little off topic or a little off script here but I bring all this up because I'm passionate about this and I want to see this for our church the fourth point about being a witness is that not everyone's going to accept what you have to say we we look at John the

Baptist John the Baptist it could be very easy to think that he had only two disciples and that both the two disciples just left and followed

Jesus but all throughout the gospels we see John had a lot of disciples it was later on in the gospel of John his disciples are arguing with Jesus's disciples so apparently some of them didn't go with Jesus some of them didn't think that it was important enough to leave

John and follow the savior of the world not every time that you say or share the gospel it's going to be understood not every time you say or share the gospel it's even going to be welcome

Jesus went throughout his life and he's preaching and teaching the word of God and many people rejected him they put him on a cross the apostles in the book of Acts they go all throughout the non -roman empire preaching and teaching the word of God and they weren't universally accepted either most of them were killed most of them were murdered you see we have to have an expectation that it's not about success it's about faithfulness sharing the gospel is not about success

I don't want you to get the idea that you have to go home and read a book on the 10 -step plan on how you share your faith so that you can become more capable and have a better acumen no it's just about faithfulness it's just about willingness it's just about will you share the truth of the gospel or not when people reject the gospel they're not rejecting you when people reject the word of God they're not rejecting you our goal and our role in this is just to be faithful we might share the gospel like jared like jeremiah our entire life and no one ever come to know christ would christ still be enough for you would you still be willing to do it if that were the case you know it's it's kind of humbling when you think about it when we share the gospel it should not be about us it should not be just because we're a compelling speaker or that we're really good at wooing people to our point of view it should be we should walk away and say man

I really butchered that but look at what God did that should be what it's about I mean who are we boasting in when we share our faith and we see

God move we boast in him it shouldn't be about performance it shouldn't be about what we can do and all of that stuff again we're not called to success we're called to faithfulness just skipped a lot there so again

I bring all of this up because I want all of us to grow in our ability to witness and I bring this up because this is a transition paragraph and we're fading away from John now we're gonna now we're gonna dive into the purpose for this text and the purpose for this text is what does it mean to be a follower of Christ now this is a pretty interesting text because I would say if you could find one particular text that covers what it means to be a follower from start to finish it would be this text it's kind of like if you could have a systematic theology on what it means to be a follower of Jesus I would pick this particular text because it explores what it means to be a follower of Jesus from beginning to end and it covers all of the vital aspects and again

I had eight points tonight we're only going to cover three next week we'll cover the other five.

John says, The first point about what it means to be a follower of Jesus the very first point is that we've got to be willing to leave the familiar in order to follow the

Savior. We've got to be willing to to leave everything that we know behind in order to follow

Jesus where he's willing where he wants to lead us. Now when we look at these men there's two of them here in this picture there's four of them total there's

John who's the gospel writer there's Andrew there's Philip and there's Peter in this text all four of them are from the town of Bethsaida and all four of them most scholars agree that they are disciples of John.

Now Bethsaida was a small little insignificant town kind of like the town I grew up in I grew up in a town of about 800 people it's called

Culumi you've probably never heard of it this town was about seven eight hundred people it was a fishing town on the

Sea of Galilee and it just so happened to be very close to where John was baptizing in the

Jordan River. Now I don't think that you could have been from a more insignificant town in this region than Bethsaida it had no social influence whatsoever the only thing that it had was that it was a fishing town where some of the better towns would come to buy their meat.

Boys would grow up in this town and they would grow up to be adults and they had no aspirations whatsoever of moving out of their town and finding the big world and going to college and all of these things they grew up to take over their dad's fishing business.

That was what these men did again very much like the town I grew up in when I moved and I said

I was going to New England people said well Kendall I haven't lost anything there that's what people would tell me and I'm like what does that even mean you haven't found anything there either because you're so closed -minded you won't leave this 800 person town that's what

I said I shouldn't have said that. But no one would have ever thought of leaving the town they would have been totally insular and stuck in this place.

They would have never thought of putting down their nets they'd have never thought of chasing around a Jewish rabbi all across the country because there was bills to pay there was food to catch.

Now I can imagine all of these guys moms and dads being upset when they decided to follow

John the Baptist. He was local they would have to do their work but when they got off of work they would go and they would learn from John this is what you would do with a rabbi you could you could have part -time rabbi hours where you would where you would learn and what's interesting about these men we often think of the disciples as like 30 year old guys because that's the way the movies portray them they were probably teenagers.

At 13 years old if you were not a bright student you would become a fisherman. These guys are fishermen so what does that tell you they they weren't the student type.

So you can imagine their father or their mother saying why are you going messing around with John the Baptist why are you trying to further your education you tried that already you failed at that you're a fisherman.

Fair enough okay as long as you get your work done I'll let this continue but then imagine when they come home with the news that they're going to be following this messian figure this rabbi named

Jesus who was going to take them all over the country who what meant they were going to have to put down their nets dad you're going to have to take care of the business on your own every single one of them when they accepted the call to follow

Jesus left the fishing business and never went back except for a few short periods where Peter at the end of the gospel goes back to fishing that's the only exception most of them completely leave the industry forever.

You can imagine what dad is saying what are we going to do how's the business going to continue why do you want to go and follow this rabbi why do you want to go and study only the bright students would go and follow rabbis only the brightest most brilliant students would make it to that point and then of that selection only the smallest majority of people would actually become rabbis it would be like an

MIT degree in South Dakota you just don't see it very often so these men they would have been looked at as fools by their parents they would have been looked at as as fools by everyone around them even and while you and I are not leaving a fishing business to follow

Jesus there's many things that when we decide to follow Jesus that we're going to have to leave that the world is going to find us foolish and for instance a relevant example around here is if you're

Catholic and you decide to follow Christ if you're a die -hard Catholic your grandma's going to think you're going to hell that's what

I've been told think about Islamic religion if you leave that you could be killed for your faith you're going to be considered utterly foolish you think about entertainment

I remember when I first became a Christian I had this was back when we still had lots of CDs and I had notebooks and notebooks and notebooks of CDs and and I went and drove past a dumpster at a behind a restaurant and I was just chucking all my

CDs because they were you know CDs I didn't want to listen to anymore as a Christian and my friends were like why did you throw them away are you going to give them to me and I was like oh no

I don't want you to send and they were like you're such a fool you stop watching the same movies that you used to watch and people think you're crazy you start doing things that are different and they think oh you're so judgmental you see being a

Christian means leaving what's comfortable and familiar in order to follow Christ where he's wanting to take us and that to the world looks pretty foolish at times when you have a passion and a conviction for Jesus in this culture you'll be looked at as obnoxious have you noticed that anyone who's filled with passion and conviction for Christ consistently gets told be quiet shut up stop talking put your head down follow the status quo when

I first became a Christian I was so excited and and at the time someone who was really close to me said well

Kendall you should do all things in moderation settle down and I was thinking to myself how is it possible to have a moderate position with Jesus he's the only thing that you can't over abuse feed too much you'll have a heart attack if you do too many uh tylenols you'll have kidney problems if you drink too much water it'll kill you if you breathe too fast you'll hyperventilate everything that you can do in excess is bad for you except for Jesus why would you tell me to have a moderate position when it comes to the savior of the world but that's what happens when you become a

Christian you become passionate about your faith you become obnoxious to the world you become foolish to the world you see being a

Christian is about leaving what is familiar behind and following Jesus where he's called you to go the world's not going to understand that they're spiritually incapable of understanding that like we talked about last week when the

Holy Spirit descended upon John or on Jesus and that was when John actually finally understood who Jesus was if the world doesn't have the spirit of God we shouldn't expect that they would understand what's going on inside of us when we do when the world doesn't have the spirit of God we should not think that they're going to get it they are going to think we're foolish that's okay we haven't lost anything we've gained everything when we have

Christ being a follower of Jesus means leaving your former comforts to following him it means stepping not into a better life right now it means preparing for the eternal life that is to come

Jesus never promised us comfort he never did but he did promise us there would be trouble in this world and if we follow him we will experience many pains but we can have hope because he's overcome the world being a

Christian is hard and I think that there's an evangelical error in the way that we present the gospel come to Jesus and he will take away all of your problems until your life gets harder until he starts sanctifying you and taking things from you come to Jesus and he'll heal all of your wounds okay until he causes some of them because he wants to sanctify you and grow you into the image of Christ I told some

I told some friends this week that being a Christian is a lot like my brother Chris my brother -in -law

Chris Chris was a healthy man he had a family he had everything we would go over to their house and they had family meals together they they played the

Wii back when that was popular and we would play rock band in the house and it was everything it felt like from the outside that they had everything going for them and one day

Chris was outside mowing his yard and he tripped and he fell and he broke his arm mowing the yard and it wasn't even really a bad fall and he went to the doctor and they sent him immediately to the hospital and they found out that he had stage four cancer and he didn't even know it no one knew it it was it was multiplying underneath the surface and no one had any idea that it was there less than six weeks my brother -in -law was gone

I would have never known no one would have known here's what

I mean by this being a Christian is not waking up into victory it's waking up on the operating table and the spirit of God with a scalpel ready to cut the things out of you that needs to be cut out of you it's realizing finally that you're sicker than you ever realized all of your life you thought that you were basically okay you were basically good you were basically well and when the

Holy Spirit comes upon you you realize finally no I'm sick if if God doesn't help me

I'm inoperably sick and I need his help in order to be healed from all of these things but it's gonna hurt surgery is not comfortable it might be the very best thing for you but you're in pain from it you actually have to be cut open and things pulled out of you it's wrong for us to tell people that come to Jesus and he's gonna make your life better that's there was things that were toxic in my life that needed to come out of my life and the only way that they were going to happen is through the sanctifying loving hand of God he he caused me pain because he loved me we have to tell people and help them understand what it means to follow

Jesus and it is not that you're going to have your best life now it's just not that wasn't

Jesus's story that wasn't Paul's story that wasn't most anyone in the whole Bible story their story was a story of pain because our hope is not in this world our hope is in the next where we meet

Christ face to face we have to have an understanding of what being a healthy follower of Christ with proper expectations is like these first two disciples that we're talking about their life didn't get better when they left their homes most of their families would have been estranged from them or frustrated at them they left to follow a

Jewish rabbi who didn't pay money for their services they were living off of donations they were sleeping without a bed these men's life did not improve whatsoever when when they followed

Jesus the only reason that they followed Jesus because they knew who he was and the surpassing value of having him we have to have healthy expectations of what it means to follow

Christ that's the first point the second point is we need to understand why we're actually following him

John says the two disciples heard him speak and they followed Jesus and they turned and they said and he saw them following and he said to them what do you seek

I love we're going to see this all throughout the gospel of John the questions that Jesus asked people are brilliant he turns around and they've been following him for about five steps and he says huh what are you doing here why are you seeking me what are you trying to get out of this these are the types of questions that he's that he's asking them the point of his question is not to be curt or to be rude or anything like that the point of his question is to examine their motivations why are you following me what are you seeking in this relationship these are all vital questions that they need to wrestle with and understand because if you're going to follow

Jesus you have to understand that it's going to cost you Jesus said later that you have to count the cost in order to follow him because you have to pick up your cross and walk with him to the cross and lose your life in order to follow

Jesus everything that you thought you were hoping in is gone when you follow Jesus now you have a master when you follow

Jesus you are now a slave and he is Lord when you follow Jesus you're not control of your life anymore when you follow

Jesus we have to understand why that we're actually following him because if you say things like I'm following Jesus so that I can be more successful or I'm following Jesus so that I can have more comfort

I'm following Jesus so I can get out of hell because no one likes the idea of an eternal conscious hell or I'm following Jesus for x y and z then you're not yet understanding of why we actually follow

Jesus John Piper says it this way this is a convicting convicting paragraph he says the critical question for our generation and for every generation is this if you could have heaven with no sickness and with all of your friends that you've ever had on earth and all of the food that you've ever liked and all of the leisure activities that you've ever enjoyed and all of the natural beauties that you ever saw and all of the physical pleasures that you've ever tasted no human conflict no natural disasters could you be satisfied in heaven like this if Christ was not there he strikes right at the heart of the question could you be happy if you had all of Jesus's stuff but you didn't have him could you be happy if you had his treasures and he wasn't your treasure you see are you seeking the blessings and following Jesus are you seeking him do you want to know him and him alone and I ask this question in a variety of ways not to insult our intelligence here but because we are prone like we sang earlier in the song we are prone to wonder the man who wrote that song abandoned his faith at the end of his life we sing this awesome song about about God and yet this man who wrote this song lost it why are we following Jesus is it for the things that he can give or is it for him for him alone because when we have a tough week this is very convicting for me personally when we have a tough week when someone we love hurts us when we lose our job when we get sick when someone that we're meeting with is sucking the life out of us and we just are gasping for air dear lord when will they stop when our kids don't act grateful for the things that they have when someone else that we know doesn't see and appreciate all of the sacrifices that we've been making for them when we feel misunderstood what do we do we complain we cry we get frustrated we turn to things instead of Christ we have to ask ourselves the simple question why are we following him why are we seeking him because if it's for him alone then none of all that other stuff matters if it is for Christ and Christ alone that we follow him it doesn't matter if you're you have

Christ if we're following him for Christ and Christ alone it doesn't matter if your mortgage is late it doesn't matter if you lose your house it doesn't matter if someone abandons you or rejects you it doesn't matter if you get sick with cancer

I know those are horrifying things that I'm not trying to make light of them but if you have Jesus and if you understand truly who

Jesus is you have everything he is all we need that's why

Jesus asked what do you seek I'd say it like this he must be everything to us or he will actually be nothing

Charles Spurgeon says it this way if Christ be anything he must be everything you see the reason why we get upset and the reason why we get angry when life hands us a bad hand is because in that moment we have forgotten that Christ is everything our our home has risen to the level of ascendancy to where that now is the

God that's looming over top of us or that relationship or that child or whatever else it is that thing has become more important to us than Jesus Christ and we have forgotten why we're following him we have confused ourself to think that we follow him in order to be happy or we follow him in order to have stuff we all do this we are all prone to wonder and I think

Jesus asked the question not to shame them who could answer the question honestly and say yeah of course

Jesus is everything to me all the time no we all fall short Jesus doesn't ask the question to shame

I don't bring this up in this setting in order to shame any of us I'm inviting the light of the word of God to shine on our hearts and to see where does our hope come from what are we currently hoping in what is the real cause of our unhappiness and we must answer right along with the disciples this question what are we currently seeking are we seeking

Christ are we seeking something else and if the answer to that question is anything other than Jesus Christ in this moment that you're currently in right now you have an awesome opportunity to to repent of that to turn to Christ to reorient your heart around him and his sufficiency and he will satisfy you that relationship doesn't define you that person can't hurt you ultimately that sickness that whatever else it is that is looming over top of you cannot steal your joy unless you let it if Christ is anything he must be everything and he is satisfying when he is in that place in your life and you are miserable when he is not the final point

I want us to make is that followers dwell with Christ and this is a great answer to the second point why are we following Christ because he's everything well if he's everything what will you do about it he'll dwell with him

John says it this way they said to him rabbi which translated means teacher we'll talk more about that next week where are you staying and he said to them come and you will see and they came and they saw where he was staying and they stayed with him that day and it was about the 10th hour notice how the disciples respond

I think this is absolutely beautiful the disciples respond with I don't want prestige

I don't want honor I don't want a paycheck I want you it's one of the moments where they get it right the disciples are so relatable because they're just like us they get it wrong so much but here they get it right

I want you where are you staying they don't even answer his question they ask him a question and say where are you staying it's almost like that they can't even get past themselves for a moment they're so excited they're like just tell us where you're staying we'll talk about all of this later followers not only leave the unfamiliar followers not only try to understand why they're following followers understand that their life is about dwelling with Christ everything about them is about spending time and dwelling with him followers of Christ spend time with Jesus because they understand that there's something different about this man something utterly unique about this man something awesome about this man that nothing else in the world can ever satisfy us like this man the solution to every problem in their life and our life is to rest with him to recline at the table with him to dwell with him and while we're not invited to Jesus's living room today that would be an awesome thing but because of the

Holy Spirit we're invited to recline with Jesus in prayer we're invited to fellowship with him in his word we're invited to dine with him at his table in the

Lord's Supper we have a meal with Jesus every week here at the Shepherd's Church we're invited to spend time with his people and he promises that he will be with his people when they gather when we come to church

Derek was saying this earlier the church is a big deal and it's not just because that we have events no it's the gathering of the people of God I saw this week you know you know the passage where two or more are gathered in his name there he is in their midst do you know what that word gathered is that word gathered

I was shocked by this I'd never even thought to look the word gathered comes from the word synagogue when two or more are synagoguing in his name there he is in their midst that's a

Jewish way of saying when two or more people are churching together gathering together that Jesus is in their midst

Jesus is here with us because we are gathered together together as the people of God in a special way that we cannot imitate in our living rooms we are coming here together in faith and in love for Christ and he is responding by the

Holy Spirit giving us a special dispensation of his presence here is the gathered people of God isn't that amazing if you're a

Christian you get to dwell with the living God in his word and in his church and in prayer it's actually abnormal to be a follower of Christ and to not want to dwell with Christ it's antithetical to your new nature to wake up and have no desire to be in the word to have no desire to be involved in church to have no desire to dwell with Christ it is against our own nature that the

Holy Spirit has given us to have that posture and if this is you if your walk with Christ has grown cold and if you're no longer feeling convicted about spending time with him or participating in the church or if you become so busy in life that the flame has died down and if you're simply just cold to the warmth and the love of Christ and I would invite you to look at what

John says or Jesus said to these disciples they said where are you staying where can we find you where can we get to know you better where can we fellowship with you those are the types of questions that they're asking what does

Jesus say come and see two verbs it means that you actually have to if you want to reignite your heart if you want to have joy in your relationship with Christ if you want to have the flame actually fired up and not just a glowing little ember you actually have to come you actually have to do something about it you have to get up and run to Christ you have to sit with him and recline with him and dwell with him and you have to stop prioritizing all of the other stuff in your life that that like weeds choke out your relationship with God and you have to make time for him you have to make time to sit with him and when you come you will see that's the promise you don't see unless you come but if you come you will see today we got to see the first half just imagine if we had five more points today

I know you're already thinking me today we got to see that followers of Jesus leave the comfortable to find him they understand that they're seeking him for him and for him alone and then finally followers of Christ understand that we won't have a relationship with Christ unless we come to Christ unless we experience him by dwelling with him let's pray father

I know how easy it is for me in my life to grow cold I know how easy it is for me to feel distant from you

God I know how easy it is for me to despair in my own heart that you feel distant and miles away

Lord I pray that there would be in me and in us a holy dissatisfaction with that Lord I pray that we would not settle for spiritual distance from you

Lord I pray that we would fight and that we would get up and that we would run to you and that we would dwell with you and that Lord when our hearts are are burdened and broken and downcast that we would run to your word that we would run to prayer not out of some sort of legalistic duty but because we want to meet you there we want to get to know you and we want to sit with you and we want to spend time with you and Lord I pray that as even as your

Holy Spirit does that in our life that Lord we would find you Lord I pray the promise of your scriptures would be true that if we would come that we would find you that we would get to know you

Lord I pray that as we're examining what it means to be a follower of Christ that if there's someone here tonight or if there's someone listening in the future who does not know who

Jesus Christ is that they would understand that they have to leave the comfortable position that they're currently in and they have to run to Christ and they have to treat him as Lord and King he's their new master and that all of their allegiances are bound up in him and Lord I pray for us as Christians that that sometimes it's easy to do that in the beginning but sometimes

Lord we go back and visit the old villages that we used to live in Lord I pray that we would stay on mission and that we would stay on journey with you that we would not as older Christians or more mature

Christians that we would not grow weary of chasing you that we would not grow weary of looking for you that we would not grow weary of trying to find you that we would not grow comfortable with comfort

Lord I pray that everyone in this room would not only grow in being a follower but Lord we would grow in being a worshiper and a witness