Come And See (John 1) by Houston Tucker

Embark on an exploration of the profound mystery at the heart of Christianity—Jesus Himself. Our series "Come and See" launches with a stirring invitation to discover not merely a historical figure, but the living embodiment of God's desire for intimacy with us. Through the Gospel of John, we traverse the landscape of divine love and truth, encountering Jesus as the Word, the ultimate communicator of the Divine. This revelation is not just for theological scholars or the spiritually adept; it's for anyone seeking a deeper connection with the essence of their faith, and for those just beginning to inquire about this Jesus who beckons us closer.

The narrative of Jesus doesn't stay in the realm of the abstract; it's as tangible as flesh and bone. We're reminded that following Jesus is a full-contact sport, demanding everything from us—just as His mission required everything of Him. From the stories of Andrew, Peter, Philip, and Nathanael, we uncover the monumental shift that occurs when ordinary lives are intercepted by an extraordinary call. As your host, I share insights on the intimate act of following Christ, a journey that is both ancient and urgently current, inviting listeners to walk this path of discovery and transformation.

Wrapping up, we tackle the privilege and the paradox of faith-sharing. Rather than arming ourselves with persuasive arguments or ready-made answers, we're encouraged to embrace the sacred role of introduction, bringing others into Jesus' presence and witnessing the unfolding of their personal encounters with Him. Like Nathanael beneath the fig tree, it is within these moments of divine meeting that hearts are stirred, lives are altered, and the true power of Jesus' touch is fully realized. Join me in this episode of "Come and See," as we set the stage for a series of encounters that promise to renew our vision of who Jesus is and what it truly means to follow Him.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:40

All right. Well, as you heard from Kinsey's long reading, she did a wonderful job. We are starting a new series today In the book of John. We're calling it Come and See, and so we're going to look through the book of John at a few significant passages. We're going to focus on just a few significant passages where we see Jesus telling us something big about himself, or Jesus doing something that is really big and shows us what he's about, and we want to do this for a couple of reasons.

Speaker 1: 1:13

Okay, first, arguably, jesus is the most significant character in history, the most significant person to have ever lived, and everybody has ideas about who he was and what he was about. But we thought, okay, the best way to get to know him, to really know what he's about, is to read the things that he said and to read about the things that he did. And this is key For those of us who don't know Jesus. There's no better way to get started in this whole journey than to read a gospel, and the gospel of John, in particular, was written for people in this situation, people who want to know more about Jesus, they want to know what he did, and so, if that's you, I want to invite you that this is a great journey to go on. This is a great first step. Listen to Jesus' words, consider what he did, and so, for those of us who do follow Jesus, I want us to hear that there's still really important things for us in this. So, whether you've been doing this for a short time or a long time, it's really important that we keep coming back to Jesus. Okay, it's important that we keep coming back and we keep learning from him. It's important that we keep coming back and considering him. It's important that we keep coming back and seeing what he did, and I'm sure you've heard us say this around here, but discipleship is really spending time with Jesus, being with Jesus, becoming like Jesus and then doing what he did, and so it's clearly important for Christians to keep considering Jesus, and we see that playing out in our passage today.

Speaker 1: 2:56

You know Jesus has some strange interactions here. If you heard of the end and throughout these interactions, you know a couple of guys. They hear about Jesus and then they go and they follow him, and then Jesus asks them like what do you want? And they say, hey, where are you staying? And here's what we know. We know that this question is less, where do you live? And more, hey, what are you about? And so Jesus responds the great line. He says come and you will see. And then a little later you know one guy. He follows Jesus and he goes and finds his friend and he's like dude, you got to see this guy. It's crazy, this is the one we've been waiting for. This is the guy. And the friend says, basically, jesus can't be all that you say that he is. The friend says come and see, come and see for yourself.

Speaker 1: 3:57

And so that's the key line for the gospel of John. It's really like the premise of the book See John's recorded an eyewitness account for those of us who couldn't be there and see Jesus. And so for 2000 years people have read this account and have had their own opportunity to come and see Jesus, who he is, what he's about, and they can just do it through these stories. And so that's what we're going to do. We're going to spend time with Jesus, we're going to come, we're going to see for ourselves who he is and what he's all about. And each week we're going to take from a passage a simple line, a one-liner. We're going to say Jesus is blank. And this week. We're starting diving right into the deep end of the pool, okay, and we're going to say this Jesus is the God who came to be known, jesus is the God who came to be known. And so we're going to look at that in three parts. We're going to see that Jesus is God, we're going to see that Jesus came to be known, and then we're going to consider these guys who had encounters with Jesus. We're going to see how they responded and then how we ought to respond to. So again, the three parts we're going to see that Jesus is God, jesus came to be known, and we're going to see how we ought to respond to that.

Speaker 1: 5:30

But first let's pray. Lord, I thank you for this day. I thank you for the sun shining and the negative degrees. God, I'm just reminded on this cold January morning how good it is to be with your people and to be warmed with good coffee, good company, good singing. And, lord, we pray for a good word too. I just pray that as we open your word and we see more about who Jesus is, that we'll understand what that means for us. I pray that you'll help us to wrap our minds around some of these bigger ideas today. And God, I pray that, first and foremost, that the words in my mouth and the meditations of our hearts would be glorifying to you, lord, our God and Redeemer. In some Jesus' name we pray, amen.

Speaker 1: 6:30

Okay, the first thing I want to look at is that Jesus is God. If you've got your Bibles or the bulletin, follow along with me. We're going to look at the first three verses. We're going to pull out sections from this passage. We won't go verse by verse through the whole thing. We'll look at the first three verses John 1, 1 through 3.

Speaker 1: 6:50

Okay, and there are a few foundational statements here, six by my count. We're going to read them and then unpack them. So it says in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him and without Him was not anything made. That was made. Okay, has anybody lost yet? Good, you guys are killing it. Great, it's fine if you are lost, because this is weird, it doesn't come through. But this is poetry, right, and poetry is weird. And he says the same thing and he goes back and forth. And it's because he's communicating big ideas here. Big ideas and, in particular, he's communicating about the nature of Jesus, and we have to understand these foundational statements in order to understand who Jesus is. And so let's break down these six lines.

Speaker 1: 7:52

First, verses one. In verse one we have three lines Okay, in the beginning was the word, the word was with God and the word was God. So we know from this passage we don't see it right here, but we know from later on the word is Jesus, and so let's just substitute there Jesus. We know that Jesus was in the beginning, we know that Jesus was with God, we know that Jesus was God. And then we have a summary statement Jesus was in the beginning with God, okay and so. Okay, this is weird. The language here is weird. It's actually intentionally weird.

Speaker 1: 8:33

There's tension here, because what we're getting here is we're getting a peek into the nature of God. This is a big thing, it's an infinite thing, right? Our brains are at least this small right, and so to grasp something infinite is a struggle for all of us. So that's where you're at right now. You're in good company. But what we're seeing here is a peek into the nature of God, in particular the nature of what we call the trinity. Okay, and this is difficult.

Speaker 1: 9:09

From this passage we're going to break this down, but from this verse, this is where we get the idea that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are three distinct persons, but all God. Okay, and so we see that, because the word was with God and the word was God. Distinct, but together. Okay, and this is weird, but John gives us a little help. Okay, he helps break this down for us in verse three. You see, it says all things were made through Him, through Jesus, and not anything was made apart from Him. I'll say it that way there's not anything made that he didn't make. So what does that mean? Well, it means that Jesus is not created. Okay, and that's significant, because it means that Jesus is God, fully God. Okay, he's not a made thing like you and me. He's distinct, he's different. Are we having fun? Is this great Right? So look, if you're having a hard time wrapping your head around this, you're going to be having this.

Speaker 1: 11:10

I know a lot of you have been around church, you've heard these things for a long time, but when we really consider it, it's paradoxical. It's inherently paradoxical in our estimation. If you're having a hard time wrapping your head around it. Good news you're in good company of the last 2,000 years of church history. Okay, so this is difficult because, again, we're talking about something infinite, talking about something big, bigger than us Like how many of us know how to handle all the things in our own life, right, let alone an infinite God? And so it's basically impossible.

Speaker 1: 11:41

And so the trick is that there is no illustration in the world that works to describe the Trinity. There's not one. Anyone that you've heard is a heresy, and that's the bad news today. Right, the best thing that we've got is the phrase 3-in-1. Okay, so that's what we're going to hold on to. We're going to hold on to. Our God is 3-in-1. There's 3 distinct persons, but he's one God.

Speaker 1: 12:09

Okay, and so why the crash course in Trinitarian theology? Who cares? Right, that's what some of you are saying. Some of you are pumped because you love this kind of stuff. Some of you won't name any names or just roll in your eyes. Who gives a rip? Okay, we care, because this sets the stage for knowing who Jesus is and really sets the stage for understanding what John is trying to do in this book, because I want to go back and you see what he calls Jesus.

Speaker 1: 12:45

In the first verse, he calls him the word Okay, and this is very important word. In the Greek, this is lagas. Okay, and lagas, you know it means word, but it means much more than that. It's got a very big meaning. It means, like, an evaluation of something, a reckoning of something, an expression, an idea, a study, and in fact, we get the word lagas in our language today in the ending ology, right? So if we are talking about biology, it's the study of life, the bio-lagas. If we're talking about genealogy, it's like the study of your lineage, it's the lagas of wait, we don't have to get on this Greek, but it's the study of your birth story, right, theology, study of God. So, like literally in the Greek, we're talking geology. It's a word on the earth, okay.

Speaker 1: 14:00

And so this is significant because when John describes Jesus as the word of God, the lagas of God, he's telling us something. He's telling us something really important. He's saying that Jesus is, in a sense, the word on God. Do you see what I'm saying? Let's say that you wanted to know more about rocks, love rocks. What are you gonna do? Are you just gonna think about rocks in your head? No, no, you're gonna go and you're gonna study geology, you're gonna look at the best word on rocks. There is right. And so the idea is that if you wanna know about God, we go to Jesus. Sure, we could look at nature, we could learn some things about him. There's gonna be limitations and in the same way, we could think in our own minds about how reality is, about what we think, about what we see. We could come up with some true things about God. But, again, there's gonna be limitations and, of course, the best way to know about God is to go to the word on God, the word about him. I think this is really interesting.

Speaker 1: 15:18

You see, the description of Jesus here, the one that John emphasizes, is not relational, inherently, right. He doesn't primarily call him the son, referring to his relationship with the father, okay. And also, he doesn't primarily refer to him as the creator, call him creator, god though he is. And you know what? He doesn't primarily call him savior, though again, he is. He calls him the word. This captures that Jesus inherently, maybe primarily, is a communication, a message from God, a word on God. He's the, as the author of Hebrews says, he's the clearest and ultimate communication of God. So again, we ask who cares? Right, why does this matter, houston? Is this just because you like to talk about these kinds of things? Yes, it is okay. No, no, there's a purpose. Okay, because here? Let me tell you why you should care about this. Let me tell you why you should care.

Speaker 1: 16:32

From this one idea, we get a lot of implications, but I'm just gonna tease out one. Okay, first of all, in many cultures in the world, including ours, we believe that if God is real, he must be unknowable. Okay, if God is real, he must be unknowable. You know, this is one of the foundational things that the men who started America, the founding fathers this is what they believed that if there was a God, he must be unknowable. But the problem is, even though this comes from some reasonable thinking, with Jesus, we know this is just not true. It must not be true Because God must, by definition, be knowable. If one of the primary things he does is make himself known, okay, and he does that through Jesus, and Jesus says this later in the book. But good job.

Speaker 1: 17:31

He's talking to some guys and one of them says look, jesus, just show us the Father, show us God. And what does Jesus say? He says you've been with me this whole time. You've seen me, you've seen God, and so what that means is that if you wanna get to know God, if you wanna get to know what he's about, we look at Jesus. Do you wanna know what God's concerned about? Look at what Jesus did. If you wanna know who God loves, look at who Jesus loved. If you wanna know what God is willing to do to fix things, look at what Jesus did. Here's what I'm getting at here. Jesus, being the word of God, tells us that the primary way we're going to understand God and engage with God is through Jesus, and that is part of why it is such good news that he came to us. And so here we've considered that Jesus is God. Let's keep going. Let's think about why it matters that he came to be known.

Speaker 1: 18:45

And this next chunk of verses nine through 18, you know John talks about Jesus coming into the world. He says a lot of things. You heard them. We can't possibly pull all these threads, but one thing I want you to see. I wanna pull one thread here.

Speaker 1: 19:01

Look at verse 14. It says and the word became flesh and dwelt among us, literally pitched his tent among us. We have seen his glory, glory, as if the only son from the father, full of grace and truth. And then and then skip down to verse 18. And no one has ever seen God, and the only God, the one who's at the father's side, has made him known. So we see from these two verses that, yeah, jesus is God, and Jesus is God coming to us and becoming human. And the question is well, why did he do that? Okay, we're just coming off of Christmas season, we're thinking about the incarnation, we're thinking about Jesus' birth a lot, but John wants us to ask the question well, why did he do that? And there's many reasons, but among them, john emphasizes that Jesus came to glorify God and make him known. In other words, jesus came to make a big deal about God and to help us understand him. So we just talked about how Jesus is the word of God, and so that statement might not feel impactful, right? Like we just said, okay, he's a communication from God. Of course, he came to be known, but I want us to really consider that for a moment.

Speaker 1: 20:39

Has anyone ever kept a diary or a journal? Yes, two of us, great three of us, and Graham. Thanks, graham, for your honesty. Now let me ask you a question. Okay, you got your journal, your secret journal at home, that you don't want anybody to know about.

Speaker 1: 20:56

Say, someone comes to you and they say hey, here's the deal. We would love to publish your journal completely unedited for the world. Who's jumping on that ship? Nobody, absolutely not. Yeah, someone is changing their name and running to Mexico, right? Why Is it? Because we don't want to be known. No, we all want to be known. It's a core human need, right? And we know. If you've read a biography, any biographies that have diary excerpts, man, those are the best ones, right? It's the best way to get to know somebody. So why don't we want that? It's because it's not for them, right? It's not for the people out in the world to read. It's for us, it's private, it's intimate, right?

Speaker 1: 21:46

And in the same way, jesus could have been the word of God for God. Okay, it could have. He could have been for his own sake, his own purposes. He could have kept the word for himself, but he didn't. He chose to send the word, which means that not only is God only knowable through Jesus, but that God wants to be known. You see, see, that means that the way that Jesus reveals God is less like a leaked diary and more like a love letter. Here's what I mean. God chose to come, he chose to speak to us, he chose to become human and he chose to do all these things so we could know him and God. That's wildly significant. That is a big deal, because he became like us. He didn't just learn our language. He learned what it was like to have a developing brain and learn language Right. And Jesus didn't just ask us hey, what's your life? Like he learned what it was like. He learned what it was like to wake up on a Sunday morning at 6 am, negative six degrees out. Maybe he didn't know negative six degrees out there in Israel, but you know what I'm saying. Like he learned what it was like to try to do work, tired, sore. He learned what it was like to be hungry, lonely.

Speaker 1: 23:25

The book Blue Like Jazz, donald Miller, tells the story. I love the story. He talks about hearing a testimony from a Navy SEAL and the SEAL's team were going and rescuing some hostages in some dark place in the world. So they clear the path and they get to the room where the hostages are being held and he describes it as just horrible living conditions and these people are just terrified and trembling. And what the SEAL's expected is that when they got there they would shout in the people's language you know, come on, we're here to save you. And they'd be ecstatic and they'd run out. But these people had been so beaten down, they were so afraid that when these Navy SEAL's bust in, there's just another dangerous, scary group to them, right. And so it doesn't matter how much they shout. You know, come on, we're here to save you, come on, it didn't matter, they're terrified.

Speaker 1: 24:26

And so one of the SEAL's you know he realizes this and so he like takes off his you know, sets down his gun, takes off his gear and he crawls into like the muck and he huddles up next to one of the people and starts like rocking and trembling. And he does that until the other people start to calm down and they see that these guys are not a threat, in fact they're good, they're rude guys and eventually the hostages are clear enough to hear the direction to get up and get out, and then they save everybody, right, friends, in the same way, the same way Jesus came to us like he didn't just shout in a distance hey, fix your life. Hey, this is what I'm about. Hey, this is who I am. He came, he got in the muck and mire of life and lived with us. He huddled in a corner with us. He showed us that he was trustworthy, that he was safe. Why? Because he wanted us to follow him and to know him. He knew that was the only way that we were going to be able to do it.

Speaker 1: 25:43

See, it's so significant that Jesus is the God who came to be known. So significant and we have to see is that the journey to the cross is all part of that. See, we read a little bit about John the Baptist and John, when he sees Jesus, do you remember what he says In verse 29,? John the Baptist sees Jesus and he says behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And this might feel like a different direction to go, like we've hopped off the being known training and we're going down somewhere else. But what I wanted us to see is this is all part of it. What I wanted us to see is that Jesus' mission to die on the cross is the same as his mission to be known.

Speaker 1: 26:36

Okay, because in the Old Testament we see a lot of interactions between God and people, and in one particular interaction, jacob Jacob has this wild encounter with God. He's out in the desert, he's running for his life and he meets God and he wrestles with him all night. He's trying to get a blessing out of him. And it's a wild story. Read it yourself. It's crazy. And when he comes out of it, jacob's had an encounter with God unlike anyone else who's ever lived.

Speaker 1: 27:08

You could say that Jacob knows something about God that no one else knows, like he knows what it feels like to try to put God in a chokehold. You know like Jacob has a unique experience and still Jacob doesn't trust God, and still Jacob's a liar and a cheat, and still Jacob's a terrible father. So here he's, had this incredible experience with God, he's heard from him, he knows him unlike anyone else, and still broken, messed up. So what we could say is that even still, there was a barrier. There's a barrier between us and God. Despite speaking to Jacob and revealing himself so clearly, there was still a wall between them and so clearly all of us are in the same situation. We need something to happen to that wall. We need someone to break it down, and that's why Jesus came and that's how Jesus' life, death and resurrection are all a part of his mission to be known. Okay, because when Jesus lived, when he died, when he rose from the grave, it's like he took a sledge hammer to that wall and tore it down. Because, for so long, like trying to talk to God was like trying to talk to someone through brick wall. It doesn't matter how loud you shout, it's so muffled, it's hard to hear, and Jesus, through his death, just destroys the wall, breaks it down completely. And so here's what I want us to do We've thought about how Jesus is God and we've thought a little bit about how Jesus came to be known. What I want to do is I want to end by considering the right thing to do with this information. I want to do this by looking at how these guys interacted with Jesus, because, you know, it may be too simple, it may feel too simple, but the truth is, the proper way to respond to a God who wants to be known is to follow him and get to know him. Maybe that feels obvious, but we can't miss it. We can't miss it At the end of our passage, starting in verse 35,.

Speaker 1: 29:40

You know, jesus has these wild encounters with these guys. You know, first I just want to pull something out. You heard it read Just want to pull something out. Jesus has encounters with five different guys. What I want us to see is that all five of them end up doing the same thing as following Jesus On. All five of them have wildly different encounters, but still the end result is all following Jesus. And so let's break it down. So first, in verse 35, john's standing with two of his disciples and these two guys excuse me, they hear what John has to say about Jesus. So they get up and they go and they follow him. And one of these guys his name is Andrew, and he brings his brother Simon to meet Jesus. So you gotta meet this guy. He's wild, this is the guy we've been waiting for, the Messiah. And Simon meets Jesus and Jesus changes his name to Peter Wild. It's weird.

Speaker 1: 30:52

And then in the next section, starting in 43, jesus goes to a place called Galilee this is where he's from and he finds Philip and he says follow me. And so Philip follows him. And then, a little while later, we know Philip's like I gotta go tell Nathaniel about this. And he goes and he tells his friend. He says dude, you gotta meet this guy, this guy we've been waiting for. He says wild, you'll never believe who he is. Nathaniel doesn't believe it. And then he meets Jesus and then we have just the strangest interaction in the Bible, where Nathaniel's like look, how do you know me? He said I saw you under the fig tree and Nathaniel pledges his life to Jesus. It's weird. This is a weird section. There's a lot of moving pieces here, but at the core, I want us all to see the common thread is they all followed Jesus.

Speaker 1: 31:44

Okay, now, in the first century that didn't just mean that you walked behind somebody. It means that you walked with someone. You did life with them. You learned from them. Whatever he did, they did Wherever he went, they went. Whatever he ate, they ate Wherever he stayed. You get it Is that they're in the trenches with him, doing everything together, and this was the way that they trained in the first century. This is the way you learned from somebody is you do everything with them. So he was their teacher and the belief was that by following him and seeing all of his life, they were gonna learn from him.

Speaker 1: 32:25

This is an important relationship. It was a relationship of trust. You had to really trust that this guy knew what he was talking about. You had to trust that he was safe. You were gonna spend all your time with him. You had to trust that he was good. He wanted you to learn good things. You had to trust that he was competent and able to teach you. You had to trust that he was not going to lead you in the desert to die and, most of all, you had to trust that this teacher had your best interests at heart, because otherwise he's gonna tell you to do something and it's gonna feel wild and scary. But if you really believe that he's who he says he is, that he's good, he's wise, that he's got your best interests at heart, even when it's scary, even when it seems bad, you can still do it and you can trust him. You can know that it's gonna end up being good.

Speaker 1: 33:32

So I wanna end with this. Here's what that means for us today. Okay, if you're not a follower of Jesus, you should hear this. Jesus is the word of God. Okay, if you wanna know more about God, you gotta look at Jesus. You gotta see what he did, see what he said, and it's interesting that the primary way that these people come to learn more about God, more about Jesus, is by following him, by spending some time with him, by learning from him, and what that means is that getting to know Jesus is not a one-time event. If you're interested, if you're curious, you come along, see what he's got to say, see how these things sit with you. See, it's a journey, you know, and whether you're new, whether you're wondering about Jesus, whether you've been here for a while, the idea is you should spend some time following him, listening to him, and come and see for yourself. And so, for those of us who do follow Jesus, I want to give us a reminder of two things, okay. First of all, we have to remember that the primary thing that Christianity has to offer is not a worldview, it's not a set of beliefs, it's not a set of behaviors, it's not, primarily, a ticket to heaven. It's all those things. That's not the core of what Christianity is. Okay, the core of Christianity and what we have to offer, first and foremost, is Jesus, and that means that we need to keep reminding ourselves of that. We have to keep coming back to Jesus.

Speaker 1: 35:21

I don't know about you, I've been a Christian for a minute. It is really easy to get into this rut where Christianity is things I believe, things I say, things I do. It's really easy to forget this person that I'm in a relationship with. I mean, if you're married, you know this right, you know this is like it's really easy to do married things. It's really easy to spend a lot of time with somebody and essentially forget that you're married, right. And so the way that we fight this is through intentionality. You know, in your marriage, if this is the spot you're in, what do you do? You carve out times, you go on dates, you do things together, you have conversations with each other, and it's the same thing with Jesus. It's the same deal. We carve out time to spend with him, we talk with him, we learn from him. We have to be really intentional about spending time with Jesus, about still, however many years in following him.

Speaker 1: 36:34

The other thing I want us to see as Christians is the example of Andrew and Philip. Okay, both of these guys met Jesus and they followed him and their lives were changed. And both of these guys went to a loved one and brought them to Jesus. And here's the deal Andrew, you know, he brings us brother Simon. He tells Simon you got to meet this guy. He's wild, he's a messiah. And Simon meets Jesus and he is literally transformed by the process. He comes out with a new name and what we know is that Simon, who's now Peter, goes from nobody fisherman to leader of the church. This is a wild transformation and it all starts because Simon has an encounter with Jesus and then Jesus does his work, his life changing, transforming work.

Speaker 1: 37:33

And in the same way you know, philip he goes to Nathaniel, his buddy. He says the same kind of thing hey, look, this is the guy you got to come see him. And Nathaniel does the thing that we all fear most when we're talking to our friends about Jesus. Nathaniel asks Philip a question that he cannot answer. Right, and is it just me or are you just terrified that they're going to ask something you don't know the answer to? And Nathaniel or Philip, he knows the ultimate, the ultimate hack, right? He says I don't know. Come and see, let's find out. Hey, what you? Nathaniel says, like how can this guy be the messiah? He's not from Bethlehem.

Speaker 1: 38:12

And Philip basically goes that's a good point, why don't we try to figure this out together? You come and see him for yourself and then, when Nathaniel gets face to face with Jesus, he has this wild encounter. He says Jesus sees him and he's like here's a true guy, this guy is a straight shooter. Nathaniel is like you're right, but how do you? You don't know me. Jesus says no, I saw you the day before Philip got you, when you're under the fig tree.

Speaker 1: 38:42

And here's the deal. We don't know what that means, nobody knows what that means. But what we can guess is that Nathaniel, under the fig tree, he's alone, he's having some kind of encounter, some kind of experience with God. Maybe he's just praying that God would show him the way. Maybe he's just in this moment of desperation where he's like Lord, my life is a wreck and I need you to do something. Who knows what it was?

Speaker 1: 39:08

But what we do know is that Jesus knew that and that's exactly what Nathaniel needed to hear to change his life. And here's the deal, guys. Nathaniel's life did not change because Philip convinced him that he had all the right answers. And same deal with Peter. Peter's life did not change because Andrew said hey, you got to get your life together, dude. Hey, if you want to be someone big, you got to do this. Both of them just had encounters with Jesus and then Jesus did his work of transforming.

Speaker 1: 39:45

So what that means for us as Christians is that, guys, it's so I know it's hard, it's so hard to talk to people about Jesus. We think we got to have the answers, we think we got to know how their life means to change. We think we got to you name it. But what we see from this passage is that these guys, they knew what they didn't know, but they still brought them to Jesus. And that's what we do. That's what we do. And look, maybe it looks more like us bringing Jesus to them.

Speaker 1: 40:17

But that's our job, that's our role. Your role is not to change people. Your role is not to convince people. Your role is not to fix people. That's Jesus's work. Your role is just to get him at the table, so to speak, get him a meeting, a face to face. So I would encourage us, as we're going through this book, as we are coming to see who Jesus is and what he's about, I just want to encourage us that, guys, this space that we're in of following Jesus, of learning more about him, this is the space that our nonbeliever friends need to be in. Right, you don't need the answers. We just need people to encounter with Jesus because we believe that that is life changing to meet Jesus. So let's do that. Let's meet people who bring our friends to Jesus. Producer for that On Australia espaço.