Clough John Lesson 9

A Transfer of Allegiance – John 1:35-42

From John 1:19 through its conclusion we have the theme of the presentation of Jesus Christ to the nation. The presentation of Jesus Christ to the nation follows the model laid out carefully in the Old Testament that occurs again and again and again. This is why all four of your Gospels do not begin with Jesus, they begin with John the Baptist. Why? Because John the Baptist is the king-making prophet. “Christ” is not Jesus’ last name, it is His title, and it means that He is the chosen or the anointed one; if He is the chosen or the anointed one somebody obviously must do the choosing and the anointing. Therefore the Gospels cannot begin with Jesus Christ, the Gospels must begin with the person who does the anointing, who does the “Christ-ing,” and that person is John the Baptist. So therefore all Gospels begin, not with Jesus but with John the Baptist.

John the Baptist’s ministry has been a ministry that has cut across the grain of traditional Israelite thinking. John insists that all Israel is not Israel. He insists that there are two parts to the nation, if you took the entire population of the nation Israel John insists there is a subset of that population, of those who have personally responded to the Messianic claims of Jehovah. It is those people and those people alone that form the godly remnant of the nation. There is a division between those who have accepted Messiah’s claims as given in the Old Testament and those who have rejected.

So all Israel is not Israel and therefore John introduces for the first time into Israelite history a phenomenon they had never seen and that is baptism for Jews; always baptism had been given to the proselyte, to the Gentile, who came to join Judaism but never before had it been given like this. Here was a man claiming that Jews ought to be baptized. Why they would ask; we’re already part of Israel, we’re already part of God’s blessing by virtue of physical birth. John said no, you are not part of spiritual blessing by physical birth; you are part of spiritual blessing by spiritual birth. And to that spiritual birth must be given a testimony and that testimony can only be given by baptism. Thus the baptism of John.

All during John’s ministry and this is an important principle that must be underscored, repeated and remembered, there in the nation many attitudes toward John the Baptist. These attitudes are the same attitudes that people have today toward the ministry of the Word of God. When the Word of God was being preached by John the Baptist there were people more interested in the person than his message. They were more interested in all of John’s idiosyncrasies than they were in the content of what John was telling them. Now that kind of attitude, which is obsessed with the messenger instead of his message is the attitude of pygmy people. It is the attitude of small people, the attitude of people who have never gotten their stuff together when it comes to the truth of the Word of God and they show it by their attitudes. If the building was burning down and someone came to you and said the building is on fire, what would matter most to you, the message the building is on fire or whether it was a creep who told you the building was on fire. Obviously the message, and so therefore people who are obsessed with the messenger instead of the message are people who are way out.

And Israel was filled with these people; they were worried about how John acted; he did act a little strange, he wasn’t the typical clergyman of his time. He used a very strong type of language and that didn’t go over too well. He spoke very little; he had his ministry in a very strange place; he didn’t wear the fine clothes of Jerusalem and he forced people, if they wanted to hear the Word of God to endure a journey some 20 miles long out into the wilderness walking, a good day’s journey, where there is very little water. And people would have to put up with all these inconveniences just to come hear an idiocentric person speak a very short message about Messiah. So John deliberately put obstacles in the way of people seeking out the Word of God.

Now in that situation all of us as believers must answer some questions. We have to ask ourselves in considering John why God deliberately chose a man that didn’t fit; now God never does these things by accident; there has to be a reason why God chose John. We have to ask why didn’t God pick a super salesman type. It would have been so much easier to pick somebody who dressed a little more conventionally; it would have been so much easier to pick somebody who was right in the metropolitan area where people wouldn’t have to go 20 miles out in the wilderness and eat sand. It would have been much easier, apparently, for God to pick a man who had a little bit more interest in people’s social lives. But God didn’t do that. He picked exactly the opposite. Why?

I think there’s a reason and it comes out often times in the Gospels and that is God wanted to blind the minds, deliberately mind the minds of people who are on negative volition toward the Word of God. And the best way to turn off these people and get rid of them is to cut across every prejudice they have, violently, suddenly, and without [can’t understand word]. And that way you sort out those who are really interested in the Word of God from the religious hangers-on. It is, therefore of interest before we study any further in this Gospel that we take a look at the land and take a look a little bit where John ministered so we can understand the oddness of John and understand that this man truly ministered under very unusual situations.

Again looking at our charts of modern Israel and this shows you where we’re going, this is Jerusalem, this is Jericho, this is the north end of the Dead Sea, the Jordan River. [He’s apparently showing slides or a film] A person on the way to see John out from Jerusalem would have to travel the road that is now there today, this one goes around the Mount of Olives, and there’s an old Roman section here, the modern highway drops south and they would have walked out all the way down here to wherever John was functioning, we don’t know where it was, whether it was up here or whether it was here, but people would have come from Jerusalem down through this wilderness, this whole area is wilderness. It is all descent until you get down here below sea level; it’s very hot and very dry. Here is the area of Qumran, the ruins of Qumran. That is the area where John ministered. Here we start from Jerusalem again, and this picture might remain in the imagination of your soul so that you understand, looking from Jerusalem, this is what the wilderness looks like. When the Bible says a “voice of one crying in the wilderness,” this is where he cried, this is where he taught, and people had to leave the comfortable surroundings and go to the uncomfortable surroundings to hear the message. There’s the road, not much change since those days. That is the wilderness in which John ministered. Here is the north end of the Dead Sea. It was somewhere within ten to fifteen miles from this point that John stayed most of his life and taught the Word of God. It was to this place instead of the comforts of Jerusalem that people came.

Why did God pick this place? Why of all places pick a place that was so inconvenient to get to. It would have been simply, if we thought like many modern evangelicals, what God should have done was to set up a ministry in the heart of Jerusalem. Here’s the Jordan River in another place but it gives you an idea of what the river looks like, it’s an oversized brook most of the year.

Now this is a model of the city of Jerusalem and the point that we raise at this point, this model built by Professor Aviona [sp?] of Hebrew University is a one-quarter inch to the foot model of the city of Jerusalem at the time of about 66 AD, or roughly the time of the Lord Jesus Christ. That is looking southwest over the city of Jerusalem, you see the temple complex.

Now the question is this and you have to ask this question as you study the text of the Gospel of John. Why didn’t God have John minister here, the surroundings have far more people, far easier to get to, there would have been great illustrations available in the temple. South of that temple looking northward is the old city of David, here on the right. You can see it was a very compact city, lots of people, small area. So you would have a maximum effectiveness of your message over a very short time span. Moreover, just to the west of the city of Jerusalem is John’s home in Ain-Karim, here the hills are denuded because the Arabs had a tree tax in 1500 that depended on how many trees you had on your property you were taxed, so everybody cut the trees down, so the soil became eroded, but in the Bible times these hills were all forest covered. That is Ain-Karim and that is the place traditionally where John lived as a young boy. That’s where he was born. If that’s the place where he was born, and that’s just to the west of the city of Jerusalem, then obviously this would have been more comfortable for him to minister; close at home in these nice surroundings. But instead of these nice surroundings, plenty of water, plenty of people, good scenery, God chooses the wilderness.

And that’s the background for John 1; this is the question you must see as we approach this area of the text. God has a reason for having the ministry of His servants in this wilderness area and if we’re going to study the Scriptures correctly we have to answer that question. So as we go through the text keep that scenery in mind. We must understand why, of all places, this.

John 1:35, we come to, it says the next day; [“Again the next day”] this is the third day that we have seen in our study of John. Remember he is looking at an entire week; this day is Shabbat, the first day we saw was Thursday; on Thursday was the investigation committee from Jerusalem. Finally, even the officials had to leave the comforts of the city of Jerusalem and make that journey down that 20-22 mile long road, all the way out to the wilderness area. On Friday the Lord Jesus Christ shows up and John and his disciples stand there as Christ emerges, also from the wilderness, the deep wilderness, behind Qumran, that last picture we saw. That was where Christ spend His forty days, being tempted by Satan. And Christ emerges from the wilderness down to the Jordan River; John introduces Him. And now we come to the next day, Saturday, the Sabbath, or Shabbat. No one is traveling this day, everyone is confined to their locality, the blue laws are heavy on Shabbat.

John 1:35, “Again the next day John stood, and two of his disciples; [36] And looking upon Jesus as he walked, he said, Behold, the Lamb of God! [37] And the two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus.” Now in the original language there are details here that enable us to fill in the picture of what was going on. It wasn’t just that John was out teaching a class and Jesus happened to sit in the back pew. That’s not the picture. The picture is that John is standing there and two from among his disciples happened to be standing with him. The idea is John, then, does not have the rest of his disciples with him; the rest of his disciples are off enjoying Shabbat. They’re getting some R & R, because the teaching has been intensive and they’re just relaxing, probably sacked out most of them. But somewhere near the Jordan River that afternoon, or this time period, depending on the time involved, sometime during that afternoon John was walking or he was just kind of stopped in one place and he was standing, apparently talking to himself as the text suggests, and around him were two disciples. We know who these two disciples are from the text that follows, Andrew and the Apostle John. So we have three men: John the Baptist, Andrew, Peter’s brother, and John the Apostle. And with verse 35 comes the theme of this section of John 1 and that is this is a demonstration of what positive volition looks like.

Positive volition, what’s that? That means a positive choice to be interested in God’s revelation, to seek God’s character and to get to know Him better. That’s positive volition. These two disciples, Andrew and John, have chosen not to go along with the rest of the disciples on the usual Shabbat R & R but they have chosen to get every pearl that their teacher… and remember, at this point their teacher is not Jesus; their teacher at this point is John the Baptist. And so these men, because they are so hungry to know truth, they are so hungry for every point of doctrine, that they do not go with the rest of the disciples; they’re dismissed for Shabbat. These disciples stay with their teacher because maybe he might teach something, he might say something that would mean something for us. So there’s an expression of positive volition. So John has been standing there, it’s pluperfect in the original language, John has been standing there for some time. We don’t know what John was looking at; he wasn’t looking at Jesus because Jesus hadn’t showed up yet. But John had just been standing there, maybe he was thinking. But certainly at this time he was also muttering something under his breath. Remember John is a loner; this fits his character, he didn’t like crowds, he had to be by himself, and so therefore he was by himself until joined by Andrew and John.

John 1:36 however shows what happens as these two men stand there and John has been standing there fore some time, and the disciples have been standing there for some time with him, along comes Jesus again, just like yesterday, just like on Friday, the day before when Jesus came. “And looking upon Jesus as He walked,” John, Andrew and John the Apostle are standing still, Jesus is walking. Apparently he’s walking under trajectory that goes right in front of their position and beyond them, and John sees Jesus coming toward him again. And the original language says “he looks upon Jesus,” it’s an aorist tense, he focuses his whole examination of Jesus Christ and his conclusion to that examination, and the original language uses strong words to say “to look upon,” emblepo, it means to gaze intently and to study.

John had lived out in the wilderness for some time; he was not a near sighted individual. He had good vision, and so he could see Jesus coming for some time, and all the time, because of the present tense in the participle to walk, as Jesus walks and He comes, approaches him slowly, John stands there and he looks; he says nothing, he just looks. And for a long time all he does is sit there and look at Jesus’ walking. The disciples don’t know what to do so they stand there and they look too. And then finally John mutters something; it is not said to Jesus, [can’t understand words] he said to anyone else because no one else is there, so we have to conclude that when John is talking he’s talking to himself. And so he says in verse 36, he says to himself, look at that, “the Lamb of God!” So it tells us how John thinks, as a loner, as one who talks to himself very frequently, the two disciples, maybe one standing on one side and one standing on the other hear him mutter to himself, “look, look at that,” that’s the word “behold,” “Look at that, the Lamb of God!” He is a person occupied with Jesus Christ.

“The Lamb of God” he calls Him. He called Him that the day before when Jesus had come down to Jordan, and then John went into details as to why he called him the Lamb of God. He said the Lamb of God is the one who takes away the sin of the world.” And in so doing John borrowed very much the imagery of the Old Testament. And in particular he borrowed a doctrine and used the doctrine that we have studied, a doctrine therefore which we must review and that is the doctrine of judgment/salvation. Going back to our divine viewpoint framework and recalling that we have certain things in this divine viewpoint framework that are necessary for us to understand, we see that each doctrine is limited or attached to an event. One of those doctrines is called the doctrine of judgment/salvation. You can call it by many terms; in technical theology we’re dealing with soteriology. But we use the two words, judgment/salvation, because I want to train you to think of those two words coupled together.

I want to break down in your souls and in your mentalities the idea of salvation that is divorced from some sort of judgment; for in the following a fallen universe there cannot be salvation apart from a prior judgment. And learn to think of these words always in that order: judgment first, then salvation. Whatever change is made in the Christian in the line of sanctification it is always a judgment against the sins that are obstructing our growth and then a release to grow spiritually. Whether it’s the cross of Christ when judgment happens on the cross, then we experience the outflow of salvation. On the chart we have two color keys, blue and orange; that refers to the two key events of the Old Testament; we studied that.

So we have the flood; the flood is a picture of judgment/salvation. That picture should be rooted in your mentality so you can mentally see the flood happen in your head. And every time someone comes to you and talks to you about judgment/salvation you should well up from your subconscious almost automatically that picture, captured by your imagination of the flood. Why? Because the world had to be destroyed and all people in that world in order to grant salvation to Noah and his family. Salvation was granted, by grace, yes; but at a cost of destruction. The flood is a picture of judgment/salvation. Again, the other event that pictures judgment/salvation; the Exodus. Exodus, besides the flood shows the same principle. Before Israel could be saved and released from sin, bondage, captivity, Egypt had to be crushed. All her natural resources had to be destroyed; the stranglehold upon Israel had to be smashed before you could have salvation.

Now if you will train yourself to think, and train your children to think in terms of something they can easily picture, a flood, massive catastrophe, wind, fire, storm of the Exodus, then they will have correctly imbedded in their souls what real salvation is from, and they won’t have this tendency to drift into a psychological salvation—accept Jesus into your heart and be saved because Jesus is a bigger and better psychological aspirin than Buddha, this kind of thing. It isn’t said quite that way, but it means the same thing. Salvation in most people’s minds means salvation from my mental pressure; it means salvation from my bad marriage; it means salvation from my lousy job; it means salvation from something but never the real thing that salvation was intended to be, salvation from, salvation from moral damnation before a holy God. People think of everything except that. So locking down to these two events put content into the word of salvation; judgment/ salvation.

And under that doctrine of judgment/salvation we review the five points, five principles, five things that you ought to remember. The first thing about the doctrine of judgment/salvation is that God is always gracious before judgment. Before that judgment comes men always, ALWAYS have a chance to respond. God was gracious before the flood; for 120 years He gave warning. That warning went unheeded. God was gracious in the Exodus; Moses went time and time again to ask, through the channels and chain of command, the proper chains of command, for release and those requests went unanswered. Now in John the Baptist’s day we see judgment/salvation operate again. God is being gracious before His judgment; God is giving the nation warning time, through this man, in that wilderness. Yes, it’s inconvenient to get out there and hear the warning but the warning is being given and all in the nearby city of Jerusalem are within traveling distance of the warning signal. And so grace is again coming before judgment upon the nation.

A second principle of the doctrine of judgment/salvation is always there is discrimination, perfect 100% perfect discrimination between those who are judged and damned and those who are saved and delivered. Two classes, and God does discriminate and all men are not equal under this condition of judgment salvation. So therefore in the flood the entire world was discriminated against except 8 people; the Exodus, all those who refused to put blood on their door were discriminated against. And now in John’s day all Jews who refuse to accept the baptism of repentance, who refuse to change their minds about Jesus Christ and the Messianic claims, they’re judged, they’re rejected, they aren’t there when Messiah shows up at the Jordan River for the inauguration of His ministry; they missed out.

The third point or proposition to the content of the doctrine of judgment/salvation is that salvation’s way of deliverance is one way only; one way! One way, not two ways; not the victory symbol, not the peace symbol; Jesus was going to be it. In the flood it was the ark. There weren’t arks, plural; there was only one ark. In the Exodus there was only one way to be saved, the blood of the lamb, and John is insisting there is only going to be one way to be saved from the coming catastrophe upon the nation and that is through this carpenter from the north who’s coming down here, the son of Joseph, the Son of God. One way of salvation. And with that John rejects the alternate ways of salvation that were being offered is his time. One way of salvation was the Sanhedrin’s way of salvation; compromised politically with Rome, so we can coexist. Be careful what you say and what you do, you might disturb détente with Rome. We mustn’t have these John the Baptists out there crying because they’re threats to détente. That was one way of salvation and knowing John he probably said to hell with that.

And then there were other ways of salvation that were being offered. The Zealots way of salvation, this was the extreme unregenerate super patriot answer, not that we are against patriotism but autonomous patriotism is just as sinful as liberal compromise. And so the Zealots argued that the only way to save Israel was to conduct a campaign, a guerilla terrorism against the Romans, to kill people on the road, to destroy, destroy, destroy, destroy was their theme. And John said no, that is not the way of salvation either. Then other ways was the Qumran sect way of salvation. The Qumran sect, people who lived in that cave that we showed in the last slide. All those ways were destroyed for the one way, only one way.

Now the fourth point, the fourth principle in the doctrine of judgment/salvation. Always the way of salvation must be appropriated by faith. In the flood people had to exercise faith in God’s provision to build the ark. Did you ever think of that? Can you think of helping Noah but the lumber and think of whether we should make it this long, or that long, or maybe we should adjust God’s plan a little bit, and I think we could improve the model of this ark; if you want to see what the ark looked like we have a model in the library, it doesn’t look much like a sea-going vessel, no real pronounced bow or stern, now don’t you think we could modify this? No, Noah said we will trust that God knows what He’s going when He’s offering these set of blueprints; we will not modify those blueprints, we will trust the design. And then after the whole thing was built and God closed the door people could have bailed out the top window but they didn’t; they stayed inside, they rode it out, because even though they could hear the screams of the people outside as they took their last breath, gurgling under the water, as they heard the earthquake destroy, some people had the kind of scream that comes when you are scalded to death because there was undoubtedly at that time volcanic activity and they were sprayed with live steam and that’s a beautiful way to go and they heard that. Now while all the screaming was going on they had a choice; what’s going to happen to this ark, as the first water hit the thing and it started lurching, they could have panicked or they could have stayed on board. They chose to trust, so the flood provides an illustration of the fourth point that whatever the way of salvation is that God provides it’s always trusting in His character.

Exodus is another one, you don’t have to be that much of an anti-fundamentalist movie goer to have Cecil DeMille’s Ten Commandments and the spooky green glob come through the streets and the scream as this glob went into the doors without any blood on them. Now we don’t know, the Bible doesn’t mention any green glob, it just says the angel of death, but that was good imagination on DeMille’s part to put that there, it made it more concrete. And so in the situation the people could have panicked; do I trust the blood on the door or not. Always by faith, and here was John’s day in his time; same message, appropriation by faith. Now John doesn’t know all that’s going to happen but this title, “The Lamb of God,” that title, “The Lamb of God,” tells us something. John knows somehow that Lamb of God is going to do what the blood did back in the Exodus and what the ark did back in Noah’s time. He doesn’t know all the details, but he does know that something will happen, we must trust Him.

And finally, the fifth principle in the doctrine of judgment/salvation is that judgment/salvation always involves man and nature; God does not just judge man. Man is the lord of the physical universe, contrary to the modern ecologist. Man is the lord of the universe and therefore when man is judged the world under his feet is judged; the biological world is judged, plants are judged, animals are judged, inorganic matter is judged, as for example at the Exodus. In the Exodus what was judged? You had nature wracked by catastrophe after catastrophe. In the flood you had nature destroyed by catastrophe. And so here John is saying listen, I baptize you with water but there is coming one after me who baptizes with water and with fire. So John says He’ll baptize both ways and when John says that Jesus will identify you with fire, he is talking about Jesus’ judgment encompassing not just man but also nature.

So the doctrine of judgment/salvation, all five points illustrated by the flood, illustrated by the Exodus, again rises to the fore in John 1. That’s the background for this muttering utterance of this man, as they stand there and he says “Look at that, the Lamb of God!” The doctrine of judgment/ salvation is on John’s mind at that point.

So it says, John 1:37, “And the two disciples,” remember these are John’s disciples at this point, not Jesus’; “the two disciples heard him speaking, as he was muttering,” they were within ear shot of John, they heard him say, maybe that was the only word he said, maybe for a long time, half an hour or so John had been quiet, just standing there, thinking, looking off into the Jordan Valley, and then Jesus comes up and the disciples wait there, wait and wait and wait, I wonder what he’s going to say, and as Jesus comes closer he says “look at that, the Lamb of God!” And so that’s enough for his disciples; yesterday they had heard him describe Christ; forty days before apparently they had heard him describe Christ, so that’s enough. “And the two disciples heard Him speak, and they followed Jesus.” And at verse 37 you have a transfer of allegiance from one teacher to a greater teacher. And this is again a testimony of John’s meekness. John was a man who knew his place in the chain of command. He was a man who acted his rank; he didn’t over-use his rank but he also lived up to his rank. John realized that his job was to train men for coming Messiah. Now John, from the human point of view and I know how he would feel in this situation, John from the human point of view wanted to hold on to those two disciples; after all, they’re the two that are getting the point. Even the rest of the disciples who had studied all day Friday, the day before, who had seen Jesus forty days before, just like John and Andrew, all those guys were off on R & R, and here were his two top students, right within arms length of him, and what happens? He makes one utterance and they take off, bye-bye baby, see you around.

Now for a man to be able to do that without getting hostile to God Himself is a mark of a relaxed grace oriented individual, a meek one, one who knows his place in God’s plan. So John, without any protest, lets John the Apostle and Andrew leave and they follow Jesus Christ. One reason we know John was a meek man is John 1:27; he had the attitude that we explained from the Mishnah, that in those days the student of a rabbi couldn’t pay the rabbi money to teach him; he would do menial tasks for the rabbi, but there was one task the student would never do for his rabbi and he was protected by the Jewish oral tradition at that point. He would never undo the shoe latchet of the rabbi; he could never do this, this is part of student’s rights. But when John confesses what he confesses in verse 27, that I am not worthy to even undo His shoe lace, John is saying my status before this coming rabbi is lower than a student would be to a rabbi; I am a slave. A slave is the one that undoes the shoe latchets, and he says I am less than a slave when it comes to the person of Jesus Christ. So obviously this man who was placated by the people because he didn’t wear the right clothes, who was ridiculed because he had his ministry in such a strange place, whose language was crude, isn’t it strange this man has such a fantastic attitude to the person of Christ. And he beats every other man hands down at this point because Jesus later says among women there has never been another man born like John the Baptist. Precisely the compliment that the people of Jerusalem would have thought Messiah would never have made about that kook out there in the sands of the Jordanian wilderness but that’s his attitude and that’s what the Lord likes.

And notice something else in this text; do you notice the complete absence of Jesus talking with John. Wouldn’t you have thought that as Jesus walks by their position He would have stopped and talked to John. There’s not a record of Jesus’ discussion with John; only one conversation in the entire Bible did Jesus have with John and that was when He was being baptized by him, a very short conversation. Now that’s also strange, isn’t it. You’d think at least Jesus and John, they’re related, you’d think they’d have something in common, something to discuss, but John is just kind of a loner and Jesus doesn’t see any need, this man has done his work and he goes on. There’s not that evangelical gooey slurpy fellowship that goes on between Jesus and John. They’re men, both of whom acknowledge their position before God and understand their job they have been given; both the men are too busy doing their job to get involved in the slurp.

So in John 1:38, as these men leave John the Baptist and they go and they follow there’s a very interesting. Remember, keep in mind as you read this, to read John very slowly; this book is just loaded with all sorts of things; just like you squeeze water out of a sponge, read John the Apostle’s writings that way, because he’s trying to paint a picture for you to see what’s happening here. Remember, the man who was eyewitness to this is the one that’s writing it; he’s the writer, the writer was involved here, he’s that second man. So in verse 38 he says this is what happened, we started to walk after Jesus, He walked by our position, and we started walking after Him, and Jesus turned, and He saw them following Him, so they’re walking behind Him. They apparently had some indecision as to whether they ought to do it or not, they’re very indecisive at this point, they’re kind of at that deal where they want Him but yet they’re kind of embarrassed to say anything about it. That’s their reaction to the person of Christ when they first see Him. And so they hesitate, you know, I wonder if we should follow this guy, [Cough whispers something], and then they start following, so they’re a little way behind him. But Jesus knows they’re there. He, of course, in His omniscience knew ahead of time what would happen.

He wanted this day, Shabbat, to begin his ministry. And He knew exactly the two men He wanted for his first two disciples. And so this was His way of calling them, He walked by them, and so “Jesus turned and He saw them following, and He said unto them, What are you seeking?” Now that’s a very interesting question, a very loaded question. Notice Jesus does not say “Who are you seeking?” The grammar just indicates “What are you seeking? “ Now why didn’t Jesus ask them “Who are you seeking?” Well, of course, everyone knew what they were seeking, that’s why they were down in the Jordanian Valley in all that wilderness, they were seeking Messiah, that’s who they were seeking. So Jesus doesn’t ask the obvious question, He asks another question: “What are you seeking?” Now this is a sign of the way God works with us, and from this point forward now, because we’re going to be interacting with the person of Christ in His incarnate ministry, here is an opportunity for you to see how God acts in a face to face situation with us, and this will explain a lot that happens in our prayer life, this will explain God’s response to you in whatever situation you’re in. You can almost predict His response to you by watching carefully Jesus’ response to these situations.

So here you have two men coming after Him, seeking the truth, positive volition; Jesus doesn’t beg them to come, He just notices they come, and as they come Jesus then responds to their positive volition. And He says to them, “What are you seeking?” Well what is Jesus getting at, what do you mean what are you seeking? It’s not a “what,” isn’t it a person. No, it’s a “what.” What Jesus is asking is what truths do you want to know? Jesus is focusing on the content of what they are supposed to be learning. He doesn’t approach with this existential sort of fifth dimensional experience; if these two men were Neo-orthodox people and most the modern clergymen I would add our new orthodox, people that talk our words and use unbeliever’s language. And if they were new orthodox people they would have said well, we don’t have any “what,” you know, we just know the person, that’s all. But Jesus, unfortunately for them is not a Neo-orthodox person, he’s interested in content. What is it you’re looking for men? The question itself is to promote and increase their positive volition because you know, really these guys don’t know what they’re looking for. They just, as we all are in our infancy spiritually, we know there’s something missing and we want to find it, “it,” we want to find it but we don’t know what “it” is, we can’t really put our hands on it, it’s not something this big or that big and it’s not red, blue, pink or purple, but yet we know there’s something missing. This is how you come to know Jesus Christ; you finally decide in the eddies and chaos of life that you don’t have it, something’s missing from your life that you know somehow should be there. Like, you’re made for two arms and you don’t have one, you just know there’s something missing but you don’t really know what it is that you’re missing, you just know something’s missing.

And God approaches us that way; so these men start out on their positive volition and God responds and He guides their positive volition to define it, to make it specific. So here they have kind of a question mark, they know something’s missing, and Jesus wants them to be specific, what is it that you’re after men? Jesus will give it to them, but He wants them to ask the right question before He gives them the right answer. And this is a cardinal principle of spiritual growth. In all Scripture and throughout your entire Christian life you will grow spiritually only to the degree that you ask the right question. And some Christians will ask enough so that here they become Christians at this point in their life, and they’ll grow a little bit, and then somewhere along is an older Christian and they stop asking questions, they no longer are concerned with asking questions that go beyond the questions they’ve already come to know. And they faze out and then they wander all around and start blaming everybody else for their problems. And they’re just spiritually tubed out people. And they’re tubed out because they’re not asking questions any more, they’re not saying God, why is this that You’re doing in my life? Or, what is the divine viewpoint view of this, or that. Or how is this matter of sovereignty reconciled with human responsibility? Or what about the details of Christ’s substitutionary atonement? How does that apply to my specific sin? People stop asking questions and when you stop asking questions you are dead spiritually. God wants you to ask Him questions. And all the evidences of the text, all the evidences of the text of the Bible as far as I’ve been able to determine point to the fact that God gives answers only after questions are asked.

I’ll give you one situation right in front of our face in the area of prophecy. You know for years we’ve said that Christ was going to come back and we’re going to have a big world government, millennial kingdom and so on. Now isn’t it interesting that theoretically that could have happened in the first or second century, but it didn’t. It could have happened in the Middle Ages but it didn’t. It could have happened prior to the Reformation but it didn’t. It could have happened when the Puritans came to this country but it didn’t. It could have happened in World War I but it didn’t. Why is it that God has postponed the Second Advent so long? Using this principle we can guess, because the millennial kingdom is going to be an answer to a question the human race is going to raise, and the human race hasn’t raised the question yet; hasn’t raised it enough, hasn’t raised it specifically.

The question is, how can mankind have a global government of peace on earth that will be righteous? Men are starting to ask the question, Kant was the one who started asking the question. World War I was the first war fought that was a world war because no more are men geographically exploring the planet. Something significant did happen in 1900 because we had a collapse of all the frontiers of the world. So since 1900 there has been developing in the world, all the way to our present hour, what we’ll call a global consciousness. You see it in the papers. You wouldn’t have seen this in the papers a hundred years ago, about famines considered from a global point of view, food, medicine, suffering, disease, considered from a global point of view, so in front of our eyes very slowly God is cultivating the right question. What are you seeking? I’m not giving it to you until you ask for it, and you’re not going to ask for it until your experience and the Holy Spirit working through history forces you to ask the right question. When you ask that question, I’ll give it to you. Now do you know why God does this? Because you don’t appreciate a gift unless you’ve seen a need for it, and therefore God does not bestow His blessings of this sort unless we ask the right question. This is why I really believe that fundamentalism is so far behind in its scientific apologetics. The Christians never ask scientific questions of Scripture, so they never got any scientific answers based on Scripture. Just had, again, just fossilization of the mind, just didn’t function in this area. Fundamentalists have a blind spot the last hundred years.

But notice here, the two disciples follow and Jesus immediately begins to lead them on. [38] “What are you seeking for?” Now they don’t know, so they say unto him, and this is not an answer, it’s question, which shows you didn’t know the answer to that question. They hadn’t really defined what their need was, they just knew that this is Messiah and somehow He’s going to deal with our needs but I don’t even know my own needs that well, so they said, “Rabbi,” and this is indirect conversation, “where are you dwelling?”

Now what would prompt them to ask that question? Well, vivid imagination. What they’re really asking for, and I think you can read it through the text here, what they’re asking for is hey, you know, we really don’t know what we’re asking, we don’t even know how to ask the question, we just want to be with you so you’ll teach us. So we know we can be with you if you just tell us where to go and then we’ll just go right own with you; we want to spend time with you. And we know that if we spend time with you the first question will be answered,” What are you seeking?” We’ll know how to ask the question and we’ll get the right answer for it. And verse 38 is another very important verse because this is the first time in the Gospel where the Greek word meno is used; and that’s the word used in John 15 for “abide,” “Abide in Christ.” We’re going to have a whole problem of interpretation when we get to that passage, but just remember, here is your first picture of how John uses the word meno. John thinks of that first day he met Jesus Christ as a disciple, the day he made his decision to follow Christ. And that day He said to me meno, we stayed with Christ. For what reason? Not one evidence in this text, verse 37, 38, 39 do you see any text there that tells you how they feel about Jesus? No. That isn’t the issue, he never even bothers to report what he feels about Jesus. All He communicates to us is that they must know something and they can’t know something unless they come to where Jesus is—positive volition.

So they say, “Rabbi,” they acknowledge Him as a teacher. We don’t know how much they knew about Christ, we don’t know how much John the Baptist knew about Christ, all they know is somehow He’s Messiah, somehow He’s the Lamb of God, somehow like Noah’s ark and the blood on the door He’s going to solve their problem, so they call Him “Rabbi,” teacher, where are you staying, we want to join up.

Now at this point critics of the Scriptures always argue that we’ve got a conflict in the text. Critics will tell, if you turn to Mark 1, that there is a decided conflict, a conflict so obvious and so crucial that there is a mistake in the Bible; therefore we moderns of the 20^th century can’t accept an inerrant text. Mark 1:16-20. These are the kinds of things that the professor always loves to hit the class with on the first day of the semester, to show how stupid he is. Mark 1:16, “Now as he walked by the Sea of Galilee, He saw Simon and Andrew, his brother, casting a net into the sea; for they were fishes. [17] And Jesus said unto them, Come after Me, and I will make you become fishers of men.” Aha, say the critics, two calls, one in Galilee, one down in Jordan; didn’t He call Andrew down back in Jordan? What’s this about calling Andrew up in Galilee? See, conflict; there’s two traditions in conflict here and we have to weave our way through these two conflicting traditions to get behind them to the truth, whatever that it. Well, there’s a very obvious answer to the problem. Both Mark and Matthew, who has a parallel passage of this, are talking about these men’s call to the office of apostleship, that’s the theme of those two Gospels; not call to be disciples, but calls to be particular disciples, disciples who will lead and become fishers and leaders of men. So the call in Mark isn’t the same call as the one in John; John is calling to discipleship, these others are calls to apostleship.

Now out of this is a very interesting point. You know every time I find someone objecting to a criticism of the text, I don’t just say well, that’s human viewpoint and drop it. I ask all right, what is the answer to this question. Let’s be honest with the text, if this is God’s Word we’ve got to have an answer to it. And I have always found the Lord has blessed that approach because in asking a question forced upon my by a critic my eyes have been opened to truth they wouldn’t have been opened to before. So in asking this question we come across another little Bible point. John’s Gospel is going to focus on fellowship, not apostleship. The other Gospels deal with the organization, deal with the seventy going out and preaching and so on. But it’s John’s Gospel that talks about the intimate personal relationship between Jesus and His followers which is lacking in Matthew and Mark. Two different portraits, two different calls, but not a conflict.

Let’s turn back to John; this is the call to be My disciples; they’ve already become believers under John the Baptist, they are already regenerated, but now they are shifting their allegiance to Rabbi Jesus, and they must have been overjoyed to hear Jesus’ response, John 1:39, “He said to them, Come and see. They came and saw where He dwelt, and abode with him that day; for it was about the tenth hour.” They abode with Him, they stayed with Him, meno. The tenth hour, if we are to accept the time of the Jews and to accept that also the Roman sundials of this period seem to agree with this, this would be the tenth hour from sunrise; sunrise is 6:00 a.m. so you have 6:00 a.m. plus ten, sixteen hundred hours, or 4:00 p.m. So it was in the afternoon, so they went there in the afternoon and they spent that day. Verse 39 is the mark of a personal participant; verse 39 provides you with one of the evidences that John truly did write his own gospel. See, only an eyewitness would have remembered a little detail about what time was it when we saw Jesus first; John, writing this Gospel as a very, very old man, can remember way back into his youth to remember they day, it was the Shabbat, he can remember the time, 4:00 in the afternoon, and he can remember the place, Bethabara on the east side of Jordan. That’s where I first met Jesus Christ. So “they came and saw where He dwelt, and they stayed with Him,” it doesn’t go into what He told them, but it goes on and describes something interesting.

John 1:40, “One of the two who heard John speak, and followed Him, was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. [41] He first findeth his own brother, Simon, and said unto him, We have found the Messiah, which is, being interpreted, the Christ. [42] And he brought him to Jesus.” Now there’s a syntactical problem in verse 41 of the word “first,” whether that is an adverb or an adjective. It could be, as it’s translated and often taken in verse 41, as the first thing that Andrew did was to go find his brother, Simon. That’s one way of taking it. But I don’t take it that way, I take it another way; he was the one who found his brother first, adjective; that is, John also found his brother. There are two teams of brothers, John and James, Andrew and Simon. And what it’s saying here is that Andrew was the first one to bring his brother to Christ. That’s interesting and I point this out because it shows balance in Scripture. Of the two disciples, Andrew and John, who was the most profound teacher? Obviously John, you never hear about Andrew again. John is the one who goes down in history as the student of Jesus Christ. So he is the one who has the glory as far as the teacher, but notice, Andrew is the one who has the glory as an evangelist. Andrew is the one who goes out first and gets someone else. So each man has his own place in life, his own thing. And we get this wrong to ram, cram and jam John into an Andrew type of evangelical calling as it would be to take Andrew and his evangelical calling over and make him into a John, the teacher and author. Both men are made in God’s image, both have been saved; saved to do two different things. Yes, John does a little evangelism and Andrew teaches but in the main John in is the teacher and in the main Andrew is the evangelist.

So he was the first one to find his brother, and notice what he says in John 1:41, this text tells us about witnessing and about evangelism, he says, “We have found the Messiah.” “We have found the Messiah!” That is the content of his message, it is a statement of truth, it is not a statement of experience. We have come to the conclusion of who Meshach is, the man who everyone down here is looking after, we found out and I want to take you to meet Him. Again, he does not approach his brother and say Simon, today this man was walking by and as He walked by there was a spooky feeling that crept up my legs from my toes and I was slain in the Spirit. None of that stuff; this is a strict statement of fact based on Old Testament prophecy, “We have found Christ,” and it comes to a strict conclusion. Not that emotions are wrong, but you don’t mess emotions with the gospel.

I hope some of you take advantage of the Billy Graham Crusade to train yourself as counselors. Some of you need the experience; now you think I get up here and make up this stuff, I want you to be a counselor and I want you to have the opportunity of using some of the doctrine you have taken in and use it in a real combat experience where you’re going to be dealing with spiritual principalities and power and you will have to explain the gospel issue to somebody who doesn’t know Christ from a tent post; and you’re going to have to start from scratch; it’ll be a fantastic experience. If nothing else, it’ll teach you to be more observant with the text of Scripture. Now I don’t want to scare some of you off because really, you can’t go that much wrong so go ahead and be a counselor, particularly if you’ve never had a witnessing type experienced put right in your doorstep. This is an easy way get that kind of break-in to what evangelism is like. And you will also have the opportunity, many times of leading someone to Christ. You may have to operate under the rules a little bet, and stretch the person a little bit to get the person, after they have accepted Christ into the proper church, but…

So we have Andrew finding Simon and he gives the simple gospel message, stating it in objective facts, truth. John 1:42, “And he brought him to Jesus.” Now here’s something else about coming to Christ that is probably one of the most significant things that an early young believer can know about. “And when Jesus beheld him,” now the word “beheld” is in blepo again, just like John the Baptist beheld Jesus walking to him, all right, Jesus beheld Simon. He stares at him, he looks at him, and Simon must have felt like he was being taken apart by Jesus stares. Jesus stares at him for a while and then He says, “Now you are Simon, the son of Jonah;” He describes his natural position in life, but Simon, I see something about you, and I’m going to give a prophecy about you and your personal destiny. “You will be called,” do you see the difference in tense, “You are now Simon,” but because I am God and I am omnipotent and I have plan for your life, I’ll tell you something about your future, and I don’t tell it to you out of a crystal ball, I tell it to you out of My sovereign will, “You will be called Cephas, [which is, by interpretation], A stone.”

Now if you’ve studied the gospel text, Peter is anything but a stone in the Gospel, anything but a stone. And the point is that when you come to Jesus Christ, at this point in time Jesus Christ has a complete plan for his life and Jesus Christ is going to tell him what he eventually be in eternity future; He’s saying Simon, when I get through with you, you are going to be a rock. And all during the Gospels Peter falls and falls all over himself, up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down. He is unstable, he is not stable, he is not a rock. Eventually Peter becomes a rock… eventually, it takes time but from the very time he becomes a Christian Jesus gives him a new name. And the new name, the giving of a name in the Bible is not just pinning the tail on the donkey; giving a name in the Bible means God defines the nature of the person.

Turn to Revelation 2:17 and see where you are named. We hope you are among those who have the name, the same principle, the same Lord, Jesus Christ. “He that has ears, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches: To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knows except him who receives it.” Do you know what He’s saying there? He’s saying that each one of us has a name before God, and even in eternity somebody else won’t really realize that name but you will. If you have personally trusted in Christ every experience you have had, the heartbreaks and the happiness, all through life, all wrapped up in one package, is suddenly going to make sense when you learn what your name is. Just like here, Peter knew in advance what his name was, and when he looked back on his life and saw the cock crowing incident, and he saw how he goofed there and then he saw what the Lord did to him, it all suddenly jelled because in his epistle, 1 and 2 Peter, he talks over and over about the stone, Christ being the stone and so on. He’s perceived something, I am Cephas, I am the rock, and every one of these experiences all fit together into a pattern that will culminate in my character being this name. Now the point is, none of us at this point know our name but the Gospel says, Revelation 2:17 says that if you are a believer in Christ, Christ has already given you a name; you don’t know it yet, you will see it according to this verse and when you see it everything will jell together.

Let’s finish with John. He says “you will be the stone,” not yet, you will be. All of this has taken place wherever this place was in verse 39, where Jesus stayed. We can draw a conclusion because we are now at the end of the day. Verses 35-42 are one complete day, Shabbat. By the end of that Sabbath there were at least three, possibly four wiser men; wiser because they had gone to where Christ taught, and our conclusion is, as 1 John 1:1-3 says, you cannot come to know Christ apart from coming to know where His teaching is. And that teaching, in our age, is the New Testament, it’s the Old Testament, it’s the entire canon of Scripture. That is where Christ is and He is teaching this Scripture through His church, made up of those who have trusted in Him, whatever their earthly labels may be. And wherever you find people in submission to the Word, there you find Jesus walking in their midst, as He says in Revelation 1. So if you want to know about Christ you’ve got to go where He is. These disciples had to exercise effort to go where Jesus was; it might have been a five to ten mile walk where Jesus was. Jesus did not give them roller skates and pull them along for a tow, they had to use their own ten little toes, left, right, left, right, left, right, to go where Jesus was, and then they found out the truth. Father, we thank You….