Come and See

A Sermon preached Sunday, January 20, 2008

by Pastor Terry Davis

First Presbyterian Church, Hartford, CT

Assuming that John’s account is accurate we see in our Gospel passage that the Jesus movement began even before Jesus came into Capernaum and began to preach.  According to John’s Gospel there was a period of time between the Baptism of Jesus and his retreat into the wilderness where he was tempted by the devil, and in this period of time a band of followers began to gather around Jesus.  It wasn’t a Church, it wasn’t an organization, but a movement of people; people who had gathered around John now began to be attracted to Jesus. 

One might think that John would be jealous of this new leader who began to attract his own followers, but to the contrary he encouraged people to leave him and to instead give their loyalty to Jesus.  He had seen the spirit come upon Jesus at his baptism and had understood he was the one for whom John was preparing the way.  He had said from the beginning that he wasn’t the messiah but he was the voice in the wilderness crying out, prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.  John didn’t come into the world to begin a Baptist Church or a Baptist movement, but to prepare the people to receive the one who God was about to sent, for the messiah, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. 

We see how Jesus movement grew right here in this early look at its growth.  Jesus didn’t take out an ad in the newspapers, he didn’t do commercials for his movement on the radio or television and he didn’t have a web site or send out emails or instant message.  Did not rent a storefront and start holding services.  For one thing newspapers and broadcasting didn’t exist, much less the internet, but if they had I am not sure that that is how Jesus would have begun.  His movement was a very personal one; because he was bring people into personal relationship with him, and with his heavenly father.  At this point in his ministry he wasn’t doing mass meetings and preaching and teaching the crowds; he would do this later, but not here at the beginning.  

The movement grew by word of mouth, by personal outreach.  John started it, he saw Jesus walking toward him soon after John had baptized him and John said, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”  He went on to share with his followers how he had seen the spirit and how he had known that he was the one he had been preaching about, the one who came after him who was destined to take his place.  He testified that this one was the son of God.  What we are seeing is the power of personal testimony, personal one to one referrals.  As I said, this takes a tremendous strength of character to submerge one’s own ego in order to build up your successor.  On another occasion John said, he must increase and I must decrease.  The next day John again saw Jesus, and again he pointed him out and said, look, here is the Lamb of God! 

This time he got a reaction, two of his followers left him and began to follow Jesus.  Jesus saw that they were following after him and asked them what they wanted.  It sounds like they didn’t know how to respond; they asked him where he was staying, and his reply was to invite them to come and to see.  In other words he invited them to come home with him, where ever he was staying and to discover who he was and what he was all about.  We see this again and again in the gospel, instead of one person making great claims for Jesus, people were more likely to invite others to come and see for themselves what was going on. 

Jesus himself repeatedly invited other people to come and experience for themselves what was happening in his ministry.  At a later time when John had been imprisoned he began to have his doubts whether he was right about Jesus being the one.  Perhaps he had expected that Jesus would quickly bring in the kingdom of God about which he had been preaching, but instead here he was isolated in prison and the kingdom still had not come, so he sent some of his followers to ask Jesus personally, are you the one who is coming or should we look for another, and Jesus’ answer was to ask them what they saw.  Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. 

So they stayed with him that day, and by the end of the day Andrew, one of the two, had become convinced that Jesus was the messiah, the coming one, God’s king, called and appointed to restore the kingdom.  This was certainly what John had been preaching about when he said, repent for the kingdom of God is at hand, it is close. So we see what Andrew did, he went and got his brother Simon and brought him to Jesus, and before they had been introduced Jesus called him, Simon son of John – I have a new name for you, I will call you Cephas, or Peter; and from that time on Simon was called Peter the rock. 

If we would read on beyond where we stopped this morning we would see the same pattern of growth occurring, Jesus calls Phillip, another acquaintance of Peter and Andrew, and Phillip finds Nathaniel and invites him also to follow Jesus.  When Nathaniel is hesitant, saying can anything good come out of Nazareth? Phillip invited him to come and see for himself. 

What I want to suggest to you this morning is that we need to get back to this basic pattern of outreach.  This is what brings people to Church and what brings people to Christ, the one on one outreach.  One person invites another.  I know that you can take evangelism training and supposedly learn to convert people, to get them saved.  You can memorize certain scriptures and supposedly convince other people that they are sinners headed straight to hell unless they come to Jesus before it is everlastingly too late.  I have learned all these lessons myself, and have taught them to others, but I have never personally seen the success of this kind of evangelism. 

What I have seen is that when people are getting something out of Church and go and invite others on a personal, one to one basis, invite other people to come and see what is going on, come and see what makes me come back week after week, that this kind of outreach works and the Church grows just as the Jesus movement grew from the beginning. 

What I have seen is that when people are excited about the good news of forgiveness through Jesus and tell others what they have experienced, and invite them to come and see for themselves, that at least some of those who respond will see for themselves and join the movement. 

What I have seen is that when people are excited about participation in the mission of Christ and invite others to come and see what is happening, either at the community meals or on the coast of Mississippi that others want to get involved.  On our first trip to do hurricane relief we had more people involved who were not members than were members, and looking at the list of who is going this year I see the same pattern.  This didn’t happen by putting an advertisement in the Courant or sending out flood of emails, but people have become involved in this ministry because of personal testimony and one to one outreach. 

If we want to see our Church grow, if we want to see the mission of Christ expanded, if we want to see people’s lives made richer through a relationship with Christ then we need to pay attention to how the Jesus movement began, by personal invitation and by inviting other people to come and see for themselves what is happening.

The Servant’s Mission

Isaiah 49

¹    Listen to me, O coastlands,

    pay attention, you peoples from far away!

    The LORD called me before I was born,

    while I was in my mother’s womb he named me.

²    He made my mouth like a sharp sword,

    in the shadow of his hand he hid me;

    he made me a polished arrow,

    in his quiver he hid me away.

³    And he said to me, “You are my servant,

    Israel, in whom I will be glorified.”

⁴    But I said, “I have labored in vain,

    I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity;

    yet surely my cause is with the LORD,

    and my reward with my God.”

⁵    And now the LORD says,

    who formed me in the womb to be his servant,

    to bring Jacob back to him,

    and that Israel might be gathered to him,

    for I am honored in the sight of the LORD,

    and my God has become my strength—

⁶    he says,

    “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant

    to raise up the tribes of Jacob

    and to restore the survivors of Israel;

    I will give you as a light to the nations,

    that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

⁷    Thus says the LORD,

    the Redeemer of Israel and his Holy One,

    to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nations,

    the slave of rulers,

    “Kings shall see and stand up,

    princes, and they shall prostrate themselves,

    because of the LORD, who is faithful,

    the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.”

John 1:29 - 42 ²⁹The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!  ³⁰This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’  ³¹I myself did not know him; but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel.”  ³²And John testified, “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him.  ³³I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’  ³⁴And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God.” ³⁵The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples,  ³⁶and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!”  ³⁷The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus.  ³⁸When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, “What are you looking for?” They said to him, “Rabbi” (which translated means Teacher), “where are you staying?”  ³⁹He said to them, “Come and see.” They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon.  ⁴⁰One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother.  ⁴¹He first found his brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which is translated Anointed).  ⁴²He brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said, “You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas” (which is translated Peter).

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