Today we will, among other things, look at the first words of Jesus in the book of John. We see it in verse 38. Jesus looks at some of the interested followers and he asks them a question. It's interesting, it's the first thing he says. Turns out to be one of the most important questions of anyone's life. These people have seen Christ, they have heard about Christ, they've anticipated his coming, and they're considering Christ. And Christ looks them in the eye and he asks them this question, what are you seeking? What are you seeking? First notice that he does not ask who are you seeking? No, it's what are you seeking? You and I are seeking a seeking kind of people. We're all seeking kind of people, everyone is. Everyone deep down wants things. The question is, what are those things that you want the most? Because what you want the most will determine your life's path. We learned yesterday in the counseling class that we do what we do because we want what we want. We do what we do because we want what we want. Is it earthly treasure? Is it earthly pleasure? Is it comfort? Is it safety? Is it wealth? Is it status? Is it security? We could go on and on. We're all pursuing something. We're all pursuing something, believing that it will complete our life in some way. It'll make us happy. It's an important understanding indeed to know what our heart is really after. Watch what you do and you'll see it. Now in this case, these men are following after Christ. But even here the question is important. Why? Why are these two men following Christ? What is it that they really want from Christ? What is it that you're seeking? The reason you're following Christ will determine if you keep following Christ. We see in scripture that lots of people follow Christ for the wrong reason. What they're seeking is not the salvation of their souls. What they're seeking is not a right relationship with God sometimes. We see that some people followed Christ later on because he was a fish and bread machine. He would provide them fish like God provided the Israelites man in the wilderness. That's what they were thinking. That's what he says about what they were thinking. Judas followed Christ in order to plunder the coin bag and probably to be on the right side politically when Christ kicked the Romans out of Israel. Today, some people follow Christ because they promised that Christ will grant them wealth and heal all their illnesses. They think he'll grant health, wealth, and worldly happiness. So they put in their orders waiting for God to fill them. You can see the point. The question is an important one. What is it that you want from Christ? What is it that I want from Christ? So what is it? What is the water you want? That's how Christ described it to the woman at the well. What is the food that you want? That's how Christ put it to the disciples who were coming back from Samaria. The food and the water are meant to be seen as the driving desires of people's lives. What is it that you want from Christ, really? The difference between eternal tragedy and eternal ecstasy is found in that answer. What do you want from Christ? There are two ways of going about this. One comes looking for a life improvement. This approach retains the ownership of one's life when one comes to Christ. You can come to Christ saying, I'm expecting you to do this thing for me. That's why I'm here. I'm coming to you because I'm expecting for you to meet this felt need I have. Maybe it's to bring me peace. I'm restless. I want peace. I'm coming to you Christ for that. Give me direction maybe. Give me a mission. Give me a purpose. Make me feel loved. Free me from my addiction. Provide me income. Save my marriage. But in all of this, it's me who still sits in charge of my life. And it's me who's still making the decisions how to best live my life from him. We think, Lord, I'm inviting you into my life as long as you to improve my life, as long as you make my experience more pleasant, more desirable, whatever it is that I have in mind. The other kind of follower, the real follower, comes looking for a savior. This person doesn't retain ownership to give up all of his or her rights, including the right to rule. This person says, Christ, I want you. I want my life to be yours. I want my identity to be in you. Because you alone are worthy of living for. And you alone can make me into what I need to be. You alone have the words of life. You alone are true. And you alone can cause me to be able to live forever. And deep down, I know that what I need is not for my precious self to be improved. I need to be rescued from myself. I need a new heart. I need to be a new person. And giving myself to you is a small price to pay in that process. Giving up the rights to control my life is no big deal in light of the blessings that you will bring to me. Sometimes early in our salvation, it's the process of God moving us from being the first kind of follower to being the second kind of follower. Sometimes he gives us a lot of rope that we have to get to the end of before we realize that what I really need is not what I thought. What I really need is to submit my whole life, my whole being to King Jesus. That is Christianity. That is following Christ. So we see we're dealing with a very important question. What is it that you seek? Which person are we this morning? Are we seeking Christ to add things to our life and we're continually evaluating how Christ is doing at providing those things to our lives? Or have we surrendered our lives gladly to our Savior, utterly grateful for who Christ is and what He has done in my life to bring me into His family? Do you see the difference? Do you understand the difference? Only one of those people is a Christian, at least how it pans out. God may start that process and He's still, thankfully, at work in us. but only one is defined as a Christian. So what is it that you see? The next day, again, John was standing with two of his disciples. Okay, the first day, John the Baptist talked with this group that was sent by the Sanhedrin, and the second day, John baptized Christ. So this is the next day. We're in the third day when John fulfills his ministry and sends followers of John after Jesus. John the Baptist was standing with two of his disciples and we find in verse 40 that one of these was Andrew, Peter's brother. The other could hardly be anyone else but the writer of the book, John himself. This is helpful because it lets us in on the fact that both of these guys were followers of John the Baptist. God was clearly working on these guys' hearts before they found Christ. And they found themselves in the middle of the most significant ministry of their day. If you were hungry for God and you had the opportunity, you were gonna make that trek into the desert. They followed John when that's all there was to follow. That's where you went when you were really serious about God. John was the Jesus is coming soon convention. That's the one you would have gone to. Verse 36, and he, John the Baptist, looked at Jesus as he walked by and said, behold, the Lamb of God. So Andrew and John understood that John the Baptist meant that Jesus was the Messiah that they were looking for. He called the Messiah the Lamb of God. We talked about that last week. John is such a great example of pointing to Jesus, and we talked about that last week. You can't talk about John without talking about that. John would pay any price to point people to Jesus, even if it was the price of giving to Jesus everything that he had built up through his ministry. That's a wonderful trait. Verse 37, the two disciples heard him say this and they followed Jesus. Now, given how matter-of-fact this is said, without any further explanation, I think we're to understand that the disciples of John were doing exactly what John the Baptist has already prepared them to do. He wasn't preparing them to be a disciple of John, he was preparing them to be a disciple of Jesus. Follow Jesus, don't look back. That's truly the ministry of every Christian minister. and all of us, really. We're all to point to Christ, and those people should follow Christ as directly as possible. When we disciple a person, we are discipling that person to follow Jesus. Now, in the New Testament, we follow Christ within a church community. But we should do nothing to stand in anyone's way to hinder them from following Christ, even when it means leaving this community to go to another or to go to a mission where there is none. Remaining with us is not the goal. Following us is not the goal. Sometimes we have to send those beloved people out to follow Christ elsewhere. And that's a mixed bag. You know, that's an ambivalent feeling. We love our people. We hate to see them go, but we love to see our people follow Jesus. Our end goal is for everyone to have an intimate relationship to Christ, whereby they are communicating with Christ directly in prayer, and are being communicated from Christ through the Word. Now, where it says they follow Jesus, this does not mean they were full-time disciples from that point on. But on this day, at this time, they followed Jesus. Lots of people did. Later on, Jesus had called them to full-time discipleship. So we can't confuse those two events, or it gets confusing. Verse 38, Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them, what are you seeking? Now, why would Jesus even ask a question? Didn't he know? We know that can't be the reason. He didn't ask because he didn't know. He knew exactly why these men were doing what they were doing. Jesus knew the hearts of all men, but it's important that they know and that they say it. It's important that they tell the truth because that means they know the reason. I've often said that we need to be careful not to buy into everything that's called psychology. We were talking about that in Sunday school. But it's always important that we understand why we're doing what we're doing. And sometimes it's not as simple as we think it is. Christ was never hesitant to ask probing questions. Christ was never hesitant to ask why. questions about motives that we may have to think about for a while before we can answer them with truth. Carla often asks me why questions. And certainly our kids ask us lots of why questions. In fact, sometimes we have to kind of defer those. But I find that the faster I answer a why question, the less sure I am of the truth of my answer. Sometimes I honestly don't know why. Sometimes I can't remember why. Sometimes I don't want to go where that why question's gonna take me. Sometimes it would be easier for us to give the most plausible and defensible answer we can, because there's usually a defensible answer. Might not be the truth, but it gets us off the hook right away. But we may give those kind of answers when we have no idea if it's true or not. We won't get to the bottom of it until we search our hearts, till we ask ourselves. When we start saying, well, I must have done this because we might as well not even finish, that's ends. If we give a theory as an answer for our behavior, we're highly likely to be telling a lie that we tell to ourselves about ourselves, and we're happy to share that with somebody else. That's not a real answer. Jesus asked hard questions, and he expected his disciples to answer the hard questions. And they said to him, they answered his question, not exactly like we would expect, but in a pretty wise way. Said, Rabbi, which means teacher, where are you staying? It's like, you know, being asked the question, they're thinking, it's going to take a while. I think John and Andrew knew that this conversation was going to be for a while, so they approached it as respectfully and politely as possible. But they were not trying to avoid the answer. They were essentially saying, where can we have an extended conversation about this topic? Because for us to tell you what we're seeking and to find out whether you're it or not, it's going to take a while. Verse 39, he said to them, come and you'll see. I can't recall a time in scripture where Jesus didn't make time for a sincere seeker. He's a good example for us. We've long been taught that people are not interruptions. Those are events. Those events are often God making appointments for us. When people show up, unannounced, unexpected, we should treat it that way. We do well to train ourselves that when people contact us and would like to talk to us, our first thought should be, this might be a God-ordained opportunity for us to minister to somebody. God may have just reached into our appointment book and put one there. This doesn't mean that we can always do it at that moment. Sometimes we gotta say, I cannot right now, but let's talk later. There are conflicts, there are time constraints, and a matter of priorities, and there are also people who will abuse the privilege. But this should be our first instinct. It's not the only information, but it should be our first instinct. When Jesus saw these two guys following him, he invited them into his life. So they came and saw where he was staying. They stayed with him that day for it was about the 10th hour. If you were old enough to remember, if I were to ask you where you were on 9-11 when the towers fell, you probably know. And if you're very old like me, you can probably remember when you heard that President Kennedy was shot back in the 60s. It's a vivid memory. Well, I believe this event of meeting Jesus was etched in John's memory just like that. I think it's the reason for the time of day being mentioned. I can't think of any other good reason. John etched the time in his memory when he met Jesus. From that hour on, his life was different. That was the hour. Now, the 10th hour would be 4 p.m. by Jewish time or 10 a.m. by Roman time. And we have no way of knowing which John was going by. That's what leads me to believe that time isn't so important for us to know, it just represents what John knew. So these disciples stayed and probably had many of their questions answered, and they were able to more fully answer Jesus' question. They weren't trying to avoid it. What do you seek? Well, let us tell you, because we know. Verse 40, 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. Now, there are several interesting things in these verses. First is Andrew. Some preachers point to Andrew's name and make the point that his name describes what he did. He met people and drew. He drew people to Christ. It's what he always did. When Andrew is mentioned, it's usually in reference to him drawing someone to Christ. Now, his is very much a behind-the-scene ministry, drawing no attention to himself. He never acted like he was all that special, but he loved people enough to bring them along to experience what he was experiencing. It's not complicated, but he was excellent at it. Andrew brought Peter to Christ. Andrew brought the kid who had fish to Christ. Andrew brought the requests of the Greeks wanting to see Jesus to Christ. You don't have to be good at everything to be good at something. You don't have to know a lot to love people enough to want them to have what you have. Andrew was great at what he was good at. He used the giftedness that God gave him. And think about it. Look at the importance of what Andrew did. He ended up bringing the head of the disciples to Christ. It'd be a shame if the New Testament had none of the Peter stories in it. I think we'd all miss them, because at least it gives us hope. My point is the smallest faithfulness in doing what we can do may often be used by God to accomplish much larger things based on what God plans to do through others. Do your part, no matter how small it seems. You never know what great effects it may have in the long run. Notice too that Andrew started his ministry on those closest to him. He went and found his brother and he told him about Christ. He didn't need to do anything dramatic or earth-shaking. He just did what was kind of natural. He just told people he loved Christ. He told the people that he loved about the Christ that he was coming to love. Now, we're not told everything he said, but this was the crux of it. We have found the Messiah, which means Christ. Now, Messiah is the Aramaic term, and Christ is the Greek term, and so that's why it's worded like this. John was pretty considerate in writing of his book, because he often does this. He gives both interpretations. Messiah and Christ both mean anointed one, anointed one. This is usually used of kings and prophets. So Christ is not part of Jesus' name. When we say Jesus Christ, we could just as truthfully say Jesus the Christ. It's the same thing. It'd be like saying Jesus Messiah or Jesus the Messiah. The Jewish people would have understood this as the anointed one coming. They would have understood that as the man prophesied in the book of Daniel. And we studied this back in Daniel. Daniel 9, 25, and 26. Know therefore and understand that from the going out of the word to restore and build Jerusalem to the coming of an anointed one, a prince, there shall be seven weeks. Then for 62 weeks, it shall be built again with squares and moat, but in a troubled time. And after the 62 weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing." So it's the anointed one who is the Messiah. It's the anointed one who is the Christ. Verse 42, he brought him to Jesus, Andrew brought, Cephas, or Peter, to Jesus. And Jesus looked at him and said, you're Simon, the son of God. You know, it's an odd first statement. He doesn't ask for his name, he gives him a name. That's a bit odd. You shall be called Cephas, which means Peter. The second interesting thing in this text is the fact that Jesus gave Peter a new name. I think in the Chosen series, they get this very wrong. This was the first interaction that Jesus had with Peter. They place it later in his discipleship with Jesus. Here he looks at Jesus, and this is the first thing he says. You are Simon, the son of John. You shall be called Cephas, which means Peter. Again, John does a kindness and translates the Aramaic name Cephas to the Greek name Peter. Now, Simon was a common name. It was an interesting name, had an interesting history. Simon or Simeon was Jacob's oldest son, who with his brother massacred a city because their sister was raped by one of them. This act was rash and impulsive. Who else do we know who is rash and impulsive? Peter. Well, I like how John MacArthur describes it. He says, by nature, Simon, this is Peter, was brash, vacillating, and undependable. He tended to make great promises he couldn't follow through with. He was one of those people who appeared to lunge wholeheartedly into something, but then bails out before finishing. He was usually the first one in, and too often, he was the first one out. When Jesus met him, he fit James' description of a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. Jesus changed Simon's name, it appears, because he wanted the nickname to be a perpetual reminder to him about who he should be. I think there's something beautiful about this and encouraging to us. You and I see spiritual reality through a dark glass. We can't see the clear spirituality or the spiritual reality. When we look at ourselves, our vision is clouded by the effects of our old natural self. We see failures. We see frustrations. We see challenges. And unfortunately, those around us see that too. But we rarely have raging successes on all fronts. I hope this year, I hope that we are doing, we are making progress on fronts, but we're never gonna have it on all fronts until Christ comes. So when Christ looks at us, he can see what he will make us. He can see us as we can be, not what we are just yet. When Simon came to Christ, he saw anything but a rock. Anyone who knew Simon may have laughed when Jesus called Simon the rock. They knew Simon. And Simon may have tried to give him a big fat lip if they did laugh out loud, because that was the kind of guy he was. Impulsive, rash, proud, self-confident. But he couldn't be depended upon to end there. That is not the Peter that Christ called Simon to be. That is not the Peter that what Christ would make of him. That was not the new identity that Christ would give to him by new birth. Christ could see the reality of his identity apart from the effects of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Peter would become that rock in Christ as he grew to fight the world, the flesh, and the devil in his life, and that is what sanctification is in our lives. It's a continual fight against the world of flesh and the devil's influence in our lives. He would put off the Simon, his old man, and he would put on the Peter, the new man. That is the beauty of the new identity that we have in Christ. If you want to know your new identity, don't read your journal. Read your Bible. If you want to know what you would make of you apart from Christ, look at the worst of your history. That's helpful. That'll tell you. That's you apart from Christ. But when you are in Christ, that's something different. For now, you can't trust the mirror and your track record to display your true identity. You can't do it. Sometimes only Christ can see it. But if you're in Christ, it's there. His Word says so. So if you want to know what your own flesh would make of you, Look at your worst history. If you want to know what Christ has made you in him, read what salvation accomplishes in scripture. Read the identity chapters in the epistles. That's the name that Christ gives you. Do you see yourself as weak? Christ might give you the name strong. Do you see yourself as fearful? Christ might give you the name courageous. Never define yourself by your failure. Define yourself by your faith. If the devil can get you to define yourself by your bad behavior, he can keep you doing your bad behavior. You'd have no reason to change, and you'd have no power to change. Change begins when you call the devil a liar and believe, I am who God says I am. no matter how I feel about it. Change begins when you call the devil a liar and believe that you are what God says you are. Start putting on the traits of the new self like you would put on a shirt. It's not hypocritical when God says that is who you are. In fact, it's obedient to do so. So a couple of applications. Why are you following Christ? What is it that you are seeking? Are you following Christ so that Christ will add improvements to your life, this life that remains in your control? And you are picking and choosing what you want to add and what you want to take out. Are you continually evaluating his actions toward you to see if he's really worth following? Or have you come to him as the Lord and Savior willing to give everything just to have him? What is it that you're seeking and what name would Christ give you? You can pretty well bet that it's the name that's opposite of your most consistent failure. Can you believe that this is what you are by new birth? Well, that's what the epistles say. What identity will you choose to believe? Let's close in prayer.