Latest / Arrow Heights Students / Enter Christ: On Scary Eyes & Aslan’s Roar (John 1:19-51)
Transcript
- 0:00If you guys have ever experienced this situation or anything of the sort.
- 0:06I remember a time I was sitting in a classroom facing my friends behind me, talking, joking around, when suddenly they grow quiet.
- 0:19They start looking past me. They're looking not right at me, and they're looking kind of awkward. And I turn around and I see my English teacher. I can see his face even now, staring at me. Because it is time for class to begin. Now that is just one of those situations that honestly probably happened to me a ton, but I remember some more than others, or even worse. This one's a little more niche. Probably hasn't happened to you. Maybe some of you.
- 0:45My co workers and I were racing golf carts around the cart barn at the golf course I worked at in high school.
- 0:56We wet the inside of the barn with the sprayers that we cleaned it with so that we could drift through the barn.
- 1:03And after a few laps, we turned the corner and our boss was standing in there.
- 1:09Oh man.
- 1:10The look that my boss at River Oaks Golf Club and my high school English teacher that they gave me are what I like to call I'm about to mess you up eyes.
- 1:21They are eyes that just tell you get in line.
- 1:26I am here. The boss is here. The authority is here.
- 1:30It's time to act accordingly.
- 1:34If you're raised with any understanding or respect for authority, then there are few things in this world that can make you shape up quicker than these eyes, these looks that we see. And it's totally natural.
- 1:48When authorities enter the space, our behavior does, or at least it should change.
- 1:55When a police officer walks up to your window.
- 1:58If you know crazy enough, if the governor or the president visited your school, or even if an elderly person at church approaches you, your behavior should match the situation, right? It seems common sense, maybe for some more than others, you should act in accordance with what that person deserves in terms of respect.
- 2:21In John 1, 1951, Jesus, the Word made flesh, appears on the scene and things happen.
- 2:29They happen. They should happen. God put on flesh.
- 2:33And even if people didn't fully understand that right away, they could tell that by coming across him their lives had changed from significantly.
- 2:42Who is the Word?
- 2:44He is the one that affects change in us, affects action from us.
- 2:50We are responsible to respond in a way that fits Christ and His authority. Even if he doesn't give us such mean eyes, his presence communicates the same urgency.
- 3:03You can continue to do what you want to do, sure, chatting with friends or drifting through a cart barn. But he has all authority and demands your devotion.
- 3:14He has Appeared. The times of ignorance are gone. As we said last week, you have no excuse.
- 3:20So the main idea of John 1, 1951 is that Jesus arrival causes events to occur.
- 3:29We confess him, make preparations for him, follow him, and change for him.
- 3:38Let's read our passage. We're going to read all verses 19 through 51.
- 3:44Sounds like a lot, but it flies.
- 3:48And this is the testimony of John.
- 3:51When the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, who are you? He confessed and did not deny, but confessed, I am not the Christ.
- 4:01And they asked him, what then are you, Elijah? He said, I am not. Are you the prophet? And he answered, no.
- 4:09So they said to him, who are you?
- 4:12We need to give an answer to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?
- 4:17He said, I am the voice of the one crying out in the wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord. As the prophet Isaiah said.
- 4:26Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. They asked him, then why are you baptizing if you are neither the Christ nor Elijah, nor the prophet?
- 4:34John answered them, I baptize with water, but among you stands one you do not know Even he who comes after me, the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.
- 4:46These things took place in Bethany, across the Jordan, where John was baptizing.
- 4:50The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him. And he said, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. This is he of whom I said, after me comes a man who ranks before me because he was before me.
- 5:04I myself did not know him. But for this purpose I came baptizing with water that he might be revealed to Israel.
- 5:11And John bore witness. I saw the Spirit descend from heaven like a dove, and. And it remained on him. I myself did not know him. But he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, he on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.
- 5:30And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God.
- 5:36The next day, again, John was standing with two of his disciples. And he looked at Jesus as he walked by and said, behold the Lamb of God.
- 5:45The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus.
- 5:48Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them, what are you seeking? And they said to him, rabbi, which means teacher, where are you staying?
- 5:57He said to them, come and you will see.
- 5:59So they came and saw where he was staying. And they stayed with him that day. For it was about the 10th hour, one of the two who heard John speak and followed Jesus was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, we have found the Messiah, which means Christ.
- 6:16He brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, you are Simon, the son of John.
- 6:22You shall be called Cephas, which means Peter.
- 6:26The next day, Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, follow me. Now. Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathanael and said to him, we have found him, of whom Moses in the law, and also the prophets wrote Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.
- 6:45Nathanael said to him, can anything good come out of Nazareth?
- 6:49Philip said to him, come and see.
- 6:51Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, behold an Israelite indeed in whom there is no deceit.
- 6:59Nathanael said to him, how do you know me?
- 7:01Jesus answered him, before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.
- 7:07Nathanael answered him, rabbi, you are the Son of God. You are the King of Israel.
- 7:13Jesus answered him, because I said to you, I saw you under the fig tree. Do you believe you will see greater things than these?
- 7:21And he said to him, truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.
- 7:30Jesus arrival causes things to occur. We confess him, make preparations for him, follow him and change for him.
- 7:40What we see here is that Jesus is here. He's arrived. And things happen in the lion, the witch in the Wardrobe, C.S. lewis writes, wrong will be right. When Aslan comes in sight at the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more. When he bears his teeth, winter meets its death. And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.
- 8:04Jesus arrives in this text. He comes into sight of the people and his arrival is a roar. It's a baring of the lion's teeth and the shaking of its mane. So the question for all of us reading, how will you respond?
- 8:21How will you respond to Jesus? He's come and now he's ascended into heaven.
- 8:26You cannot wait until the next time he comes because it's too late. Then confess who he is, prepare the way for him, follow him and change for Him. It's point number one. Jesus causes us to prepare the way for Him.
- 8:43He causes us to prepare the way for him. And this sections, this kind of first section of this passage of opens with John the Baptist, who prophesied of Christ. And we see the contents of his testimony, his Witness, in verses 19 through 37. It's drawn out there.
- 9:00We see him confess openly. He is not the Christ. He's not Elijah, and he's not the prophet. All three of these were people, Jews, expected to come or to return, though Christ fulfills them all. But John was not these. He's clear about his his intent. John exists to push all attention away from himself and to the Christ. He is preparing the way of the Lord. He's making sure people are ready to hear and he's making sure people can identify that he is here. He knew what to look for and how to identify that the Messiah is here.
- 9:38And as I said last week, John fulfills prophecy himself as he prophesies of Christ. So look at verse 23.
- 9:47You see verse 23, he quotes the prophet Isaiah.
- 9:51And I'm going to read Isaiah 43, which says, a voice cries in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight in the desert a highway for our God. We see that he is quoting from Isaiah 40 here, the word made flesh and is for John, God himself. He sees God come and his mission is to prepare the way for him.
- 10:18The point for your life is simple.
- 10:21If God has called you, then prepare his way. Indeed, you will prepare his way. If you feel that he is calling you to minister where you are, even to minister to the world on his behalf in a greater way, you must not ignore his call.
- 10:37Now, this is probably for a select few. Many of you have not probably considered if God is calling you to something specific.
- 10:45Something specific like a ministry or to missions.
- 10:49And that's okay. If you haven't, you might not feel this inward pull now, or maybe ever.
- 10:55That's okay. But I want to encourage you now, regardless of who you are, where you are in life, where you want to go in life, to not shut that down, to always live your life willing to pick up everything, to follow Jesus, to prepare the way for him to take the gospel to people.
- 11:17Just be ready.
- 11:19Don't suppress feelings that God wants to do something, but seek them out now. Don't seek them out however you want or by yourself if you feel called in any sense of the term. In the future, here's what you should do. Just a couple of easy things. First, talk to one or more of your pastors.
- 11:38It's not groundbreaking. Talk to one of them.
- 11:41And step number two, do whatever they tell you to do.
- 11:45That's it. Talk to them and do what they tell you to do. I learned that from an old friend.
- 11:51You might be told to wait, to pray and to fast, to pursue Seminary or any other number of things, submit to their leadership and trust them. God has given them to us. And more broadly, God calls all Christians in a way to prepare the way for him, to minister in their daily lives to people by sharing the gospel with others, growing in holiness, and representing him with their lives.
- 12:17So that is the call for all of us. That is not just, if I feel called, I'm going to share the gospel. This is something that we all should be doing.
- 12:26We all should be preparing the way for Him.
- 12:31Now, point number two, Jesus causes us to confess who he is, we confess him.
- 12:39Now, if you're like me at your age, I always thought to confess really just meant admit that I've done something wrong. That's probably because that's how I most often did it. I was confessing that I had done something wrong.
- 12:51And it does mean that. But more specifically, to confess something means to admit one's belief you might be confessing, I believe I have done something wrong. That's what we do often. But it means more than that to admit one's belief.
- 13:07So see how John confesses Christ, how he confesses what he believes about him. First, he confesses that Christ is the Lord. Verse 23, you can see that he confesses that he is the Lord. He's saying, I am making straight the way of the Lord.
- 13:23Now, the word Lord, you know, that could just be.
- 13:27You might think of it as an authority figure, somebody who has the highest authority in the land.
- 13:33But the word Lord was adopted for Christ because he is God.
- 13:38In the Old Testament, the name Yahweh, have you guys heard that name? Yeah, that is God's name. It was not pronounced out loud, though. You know what they said? Instead, they called him Adonai, which is Hebrew for Lord. And so the word Lord became the title for God himself.
- 13:55And if you read Isaiah 40, you see Lord is in all caps. When the Lord is in all capital letters, it means it's the actual word. Is yahweh there?
- 14:05Isaiah 40 says, make straight the way of Yahweh. And John says, jesus is Yahweh. He is the Lord that has come. He confesses that he is the Lord. That is a big deal.
- 14:19Second, John confesses that Jesus is the Lamb of God. You see that in verse 29, he says, Behold the Lamb of God.
- 14:30A lamb was sacrificed in many cases, one to save the firstborn son of each family in Exodus 12.
- 14:37And Isaiah 53 describes the Messiah as being led like a sheep or a lamb to the slaughter. And so Jesus is fulfilling this kind of picture that the Old Testament paints. He is the pure Lamb of God that came to be sacrificed.
- 14:54A third thing that John confesses, he confesses that Jesus takes away the sin of the world. We see that also in verse 29.
- 15:02In his death, he. He covers sins.
- 15:05And not for Jews only, but for any person from any nation that believes in the name of Jesus christ.
- 15:12So even already we're seeing that John's confession of Jesus is very full.
- 15:17He says, behold, the Lamb of God takes away the sin of the world. That sounds nice, but there's a lot here. Fourth, he confesses that the Holy Spirit anointed Christ. See verse 32.
- 15:29God approves of and confirms that Christ is his Son and the Messiah by the Spirit resting on Him.
- 15:37He's saying, this is my Son. We see this picture when he's baptized. In other gospel accounts, the Spirit descends upon Jesus and the Father declares that this is my son.
- 15:49Fifth, John confesses that Christ is the Son of God. Verse 34.
- 15:55He is the only begotten Son. He has always been and still is begotten from the Father, because He has always been and will always be the Son.
- 16:06He is eternal. This is why John, who is physically born before Jesus, says he was before me.
- 16:14Christ is eternal. This is a very full confession from John. This is his testimony.
- 16:20Christians like John confess this Christ. We say, this is the man. This is the God in whom I believe, who he is. All that he has done, all that he is doing, is what we confess.
- 16:32So when Christ comes on the scene, those who love him, confess him. Those who can see him and recognize him, confess Him.
- 16:41Do you confess Christ?
- 16:44Do you believe Him?
- 16:49Confess him boldly.
- 16:52Boldly. Do not fear what others think.
- 16:55Not Pharisees or your friends, not your teachers nor your bosses. If you believe in him, you should confess who he is. Proclaim your belief.
- 17:07Confess Him. Often when he is revealed as the Christ John proclaims to all who can hear. And even on another day, every time Jesus shows up, he seems to say, hey, behold the Lamb of God. He's back. He's here yesterday. He's here again.
- 17:22He's back. Behold him.
- 17:24The Lamb of God has come.
- 17:28Confess him to yourself.
- 17:30Remind yourself of your belief.
- 17:33When he enters your heart and calls you to himself, what do you do? Well, if you're a believer, then you've had this experience before.
- 17:40What happens is sin becomes horrible to you. As you're convicted of your sin, Christ becomes your chief, your highest desire. And you love Him. And you are then drawn to pray to him, to confess him as Lord. And live your life for Him.
- 17:59That is what God does in our hearts when he changes us. You are unable to do this because Christ has first confessed his love for you before the Father.
- 18:11He gives you the eyes to recognize him as he does John.
- 18:15And he makes you worthy of God's presence by confessing that you are his to the Father. That is a wonderful thing.
- 18:26He becomes your advocate. He sends your spirit into your heart to give you a new heart. He. He applies his redeeming blood to your account and presents you as blameless to God. So it becomes natural to confess Christ.
- 18:40This is like breathing for Christians. It is natural.
- 18:45Now, there's a lot we could talk about here.
- 18:48Don't have time.
- 18:50So in your small groups, I encourage you if you have time.
- 18:54You who are believers discuss how you can do this, how you can confess Christ in your actual everyday lives. I'm sure it looks 10, however many. 50 people, 40 people. That's how many different ways it can look. Let's think about how we can live this out.
- 19:11Point number three. Now, Jesus causes us to follow him, causes us to follow him.
- 19:18Look at verse 36.
- 19:23See how the two disciples were, one of whom was Andrew. They follow Jesus as John declares that this is the Lamb of God. As Jesus arrives, they seemingly drop everything and follow him.
- 19:40Jesus is magnetic.
- 19:42He draws people to him.
- 19:44It's like what I said or what I saw a few weeks ago when I was working in the extended session nursery.
- 19:54I remember I saw one of the older girls, we were in the gym. One of the older girls was riding around the gym on a tricycle. And this girl, I don't know what happened before, she had an entourage of other slightly smaller little girls following her around.
- 20:10They clearly thought she was the coolest person on the planet. She was magnetic.
- 20:17These girls felt compelled to follow her.
- 20:20And Jesus came, as we said last week, to reveal the Father, to make him visible, to make the invisible God visible. We see to Andrew and this other disciple, maybe John. He's unnamed.
- 20:36Jesus is magnetic. They must follow him. And they do. And Jesus says to them, come and you will see.
- 20:44So, students, Jesus has entered. He is here. Come and see. Now, here, he's saying to come and see his house. He welcomes them in that they can live life with him and see.
- 20:57So John, the author, is kind of just saying, here's my friend Jesus. Get to know him. Be transformed. He loves you, you know, sometimes you see Christ work like this, and that draws you to him. You might see Christ working in other people or in the world or even in your own life. And that draws you to Him.
- 21:18Other times he might call you directly as he does Philip. Look at verse 43, where he calls Philip, and then Philip too calls Nathanael and begs him to come see the Christ.
- 21:34We found Him. He is here.
- 21:37And here we see what happens that causes someone to follow Jesus. Verse 50. Because I said to you, I saw you under the fig tree. Do you believe you will see greater things than these?
- 21:47So what does this show us? Well, Jesus first reveals Himself to you. He reveals Himself to Nathanael, that he has knowledge of Him. He knows Him. He says something that Nathanael is compelled to say, wow, you are the Son of God, the King of Israel. With just a few words, he is able to convince Nathanael. Like that. That's pretty incredible. And second, he calls you to come and see.
- 22:09He reveals Himself, calls you to come and see. And that invitation is open to you. He has come. He has revealed Himself to the world. He has given us His Word. And the testimony of His Word is come and see. Believe, follow me. I am the real deal.
- 22:29So come and see what Christ has done. Come and see what he can do in you. He can radically transform you. In fact, he will if you come to Him.
- 22:40And as a consequence of this, those who see Jesus are then compelled to follow him naturally.
- 22:48And they call others to follow Him.
- 22:51They come to follow and they call others. We see this in the text. Verse 41, 42, Andrew goes to his brother Simon and calls him to follow Christ. In verse 45, Philip goes to Nathanael and calls him to do the same.
- 23:05So I think this is instructive for us.
- 23:08If you've seen the Lord, you should help others follow him too.
- 23:14Christ has appeared. He's arrived. So go tell the good news to all who will hear it. Your friends, your family, even strangers need to have faith in Christ to receive eternal life.
- 23:26And the Word has come and he can give them eternal life.
- 23:31You and the people you know don't need to search.
- 23:35We're all really searching. If you think about it, right? We all naturally look for God.
- 23:41We look for purpose in our lives. That's probably more often what you hear people talk about. We look for something to satisfy our hearts. We look for something to give us peace, to give us rest, to give us meaning, to give us an identity.
- 23:54We long to have joy that lasts forever. No one likes to suffer. Everyone is looking for something to fill that void.
- 24:02Different shapes and sizes. We all do it. You might find yourself searching for these things with friendship, with being Liked by others, or with some identity that makes you more interesting or unique than other people, makes you stand out. You might be searching for things in other ways. Drugs or alcohol or some other behavior.
- 24:24Maybe you do these things to numb yourself, because you really know none of this is going to fill the void you, even as a teenager, maybe you've done all of these things enough that you know it's not so good. But what could be better?
- 24:38We search and search, and when we get tired, we give up, crawl into our shells and wait to die.
- 24:48That's the life of many people in this world.
- 24:52That is our destiny. If we have not Christ, I hope you're not at this point. Maybe you are.
- 25:00But students, there's an answer.
- 25:04The wait is over. The King has come. The word put on flesh to save you from the punishment you deserve and also to save you from the meaninglessness, the futility of this world.
- 25:18All of those negative feelings, he can rescue you from them.
- 25:22Even if we endure the shocks through our whole life, he can take you into eternity, away from all of that.
- 25:30So follow him. Take up your cross and suffer with him, because he suffered it all for you. If you trust him.
- 25:40This is how Jesus causes us to follow him.
- 25:44Then point number four. Jesus causes us to change.
- 25:48He changes us related to Jesus, causing us to follow Him. He affects change within us. Verses 37 through 40, we see the first two disciples.
- 26:00You know, their background, their occupation is conspicuously missing here.
- 26:05And even the name of one of the two is not there. It's omitted.
- 26:10Whatever they were doing in life became utterly unimportant when they came across the Christ.
- 26:17They could have been doing something important. We could historically piece it together, I think. But whatever they're doing, it's utterly unimportant now. They had a new vocation.
- 26:28In other words, they had a new calling.
- 26:30And that calling was to follow Christ, to learn from their teacher, this rabbi.
- 26:37In verse 41 through 42, we then see Simon.
- 26:42Simon too, drops everything, and he hasn't even seen him. He hears from his brother Andrew, he drops everything and comes to see Jesus. And Jesus does something to him.
- 26:53He changes his name, says, hey, Simon, you are Cephas now, actually, which means Peter.
- 27:00Same name, same meaning. They both mean rock. One in one language, one in another.
- 27:06Historically, names are closely related to one's reputation, their identity. That's still true, right? Your name. People know you by your name. You have a reputation among people, you know.
- 27:20And so this was true for Simon, this is true for Peter. So for Jesus to say To Simon that he's now called Peter is effectively to change his identity.
- 27:30At least that's what it's representing to us, I think. He is no longer just Simon.
- 27:36He is a rock, a strong voice. He will become a foundation for the church.
- 27:42And this is what Jesus can do for you. If you believe in him, if you receive him and follow him, he gives you a new, meaningful identity, a purpose in your life.
- 27:55Finding your identity has become a modern crisis.
- 28:01And with new emerging ways to identify, being a regular person can honestly socially seem boring.
- 28:11You don't stand out if you're just. I'm just a regular person. I go to church.
- 28:18In fact, research indicates, because a lot of times these identities are related to LGBT identities, research indicates that the rate with which women were identifying as lesbians has decreased because it seems far more interesting to be bisexual.
- 28:36Genuinely, they have swapped places in the last decade, decade and a half, let alone trans or other identities that give people something to make them stand out in the world.
- 28:49This may not be your struggle. Maybe it is. They may not be yours. But there are other ways we do this. We look for ways to make ourselves stand out.
- 28:57There are countless ways that people want to identify.
- 29:01So if you feel the pull to have some identity that makes you stick out from the crowd, I can show you a better way.
- 29:11There is a better identity for you, a truer one.
- 29:15Rather than finding some new thing, something novel, new, you can find yourself in a continuous line of believers, a whole family of God that stretches generations, centuries, millennia, all over the globe.
- 29:33How significant that you can be adopted into that family that goes really far back and really wide and will go into the future.
- 29:44To be part of that is far more significant than creating or finding something new.
- 29:50And when you trust in Christ, he gives you your new identity.
- 29:55Child of God, coheir with Christ, recipient of eternal life, recipient of joy, new creation.
- 30:05You can choose a family that will be together for eternity and. And blissful happiness.
- 30:11And that's so much better than anything some modern theology has to offer.
- 30:18You can have an identity that is historical and yet will last forever.
- 30:25And then finally, in verse 46, 51, we see Nathanael.
- 30:31He initially doubts the word of Philip because he doesn't think anything significant, much less the Christ can come from Nazareth.
- 30:39But though slightly doubtful, he does still come to see for himself.
- 30:45Jesus knew Nathanael.
- 30:47He's seen him. He knows him already.
- 30:50Which we understand because we've established that Jesus is the Word who is God, who was God, who was with God. He is the creator of all things. All things were made through Him. We've established all this. So he knows Nathanael. He is His Maker.
- 31:07And notice what happens to Nathanael's doubt when he encounters Jesus. We touched on this a little bit ago. Verse 48. Nathanael said to him, how do you know me? And Jesus answered him, before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.
- 31:21And Nathanael answered him, rabbi, you are the Son of God, the King of Israel.
- 31:28Nathanael was transformed from skeptic to gospel proclaimer in an instant.
- 31:37Transformed. Jesus affects in him an impulse to declare that Jesus is the Son of God and the King of Israel.
- 31:47Students, if you know the Lord Jesus christ, then He has transformed you. Like that, to resist changing, to be holier, to resist fear. Following him, to resist confessing him is actually pushing against your new nature that he has given you, and that is resisting the work of the Holy Spirit.
- 32:10And sadly, too often, we are good at resisting what God has already made real to you. So trust him and give your life to Him. If you have faith in Christ, trust, obey and live for Him.
- 32:25And then just watch as he makes you more and more like him. As you trust Him, Jesus arrival causes things to occur in you, in others. So follow Him. He's here. He's arrived. He has roared. He has bared his teeth and shaken his mane. So submit to Him. Love him, follow Him. And if you trust Him, he, he will draw you into this changed life.
- 32:52Let's pray.
- 32:55Father, we praise you that Christ has come.
- 32:59Lord, help us in our unbelief to believe even more.
- 33:05Give faith to those who have none.
- 33:09Strengthen the faith of those who do.
- 33:12That we can love you and follow you. That we, we would be changed by you for you.
- 33:19That we would not resist your work in our lives, and that we would be eternally satisfied, as we are confident we will be by being identified with you.
- 33:29Lord, we love you. We pray this in your Son's name. Amen.