Sermon Tone Analysis

You might be forgiven to think that we have already read these words about John the Baptist before, but you would be wrong!

In previous passages the words of John the Baptist are those we heard before Jesus was baptised.

Now we are hearing from him after the Baptism and temptation of Jesus.

With that said we are not going to revisit the questions about the purpose of John the Baptist and his response to the questions concerning his calling except to say that he plainly said he is not the Christ and had come to point to the One who is.

The next day after repeating all this…John roots Jesus into the historical: He is alive in our temporal time and space having limited Himself to them in bodily form.

This was no mystical, spiritual living but actual day-to-day life here on earth in the little area called Israel.

Then John points to Jesus and says: “Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”

This reminds us of what we have already read in

Abraham was taking his son, after being commanded by God to sacrifice him, to Mount Moriah which is thought to be the hill upon which Jesus died.

God will provide Himself a lamb as a sacrifice, His own son.

God had not told Abraham to do something He Himself was not willing to do.

Abraham was prevented from doing so for it was a test of His loyalty and faith but there was no one to stop God from sacrificing Jesus on the very spot God had asked Abraham to do so.

And, of course, the lamb would also remind the readers of what was required of the Jews to escape the hand of the Egyptians.

We will read about this in August when we get to Exodus 12.

A lamb had to be killed and eaten and its blood spread on the doorposts and lintels that when the destroyer was going to kill all the firstborn of Egypt that it would pass over the Jews and not kill them too.

It was this which wrought a great deliverance for Israel.

The picture for us is of the lamb of God who was sacrificed and His blood poured out on us so that we too would be passed over from judgement and death and be delivered.

Jesus was the ultimate fulfilment of the annual Passover sacrifice: As Paul said:

And a fulfilment of prophecy in:

In fact we are always being delivered for the words ‘takes away’ is a present tense.

He is always taking our sin away.

The hope that this gives us because we are ever in need of our sin being taken away.

When John points to Him two of John’s disciples literally follow Jesus tough only Andrew is mentioned by name.

The other is thought to be John, the writer of the Gospel for the fact he knew this little detail.

Andrew, though, goes and gets Simon first, who we find out to be Peter, whom Jesus calls ‘the stone’ - probably everyone knew he was fickle and weak but he did, in time, become the stone man through whom over 3000 people came to faith in Jesus.

Andrew is in no doubt that they had found the Messiah but it took almost 3 years for Peter to truly come to this realisation when eventually he declared it to be so in Mark 8.29 near the end of the ministry of Jesus.

This is very much how it is in the world.

Some people immediately realise the truth of the Gospel but others, even with continued influence take much longer.

I’ve said before about how it was for Irena who came to faith almost immediately but someone else who had been witnessed to at the same time took about 7 years to come to faith.

We never know how long the seed will take to come to fruition and maybe long after we are gone or they have moved.

I can speak of my own conversion taking 11 years from the time my curiosity was first peaked about there even being a God to the time He became my God.

Let’s keep showing to people that Jesus is Lord and, in due course, fruit will be borne.

Andrew and Peter and the anonymous disciple then spend the remainder of the day with Jesus.

The next day Jesus calls Philip to follow him on his way to Galilee which is where Jesus was from.

Then Philip goes and finds Nathanael, whom we assume to be a friend or possibly a relation of his and says that they have found the One the Scriptures talk about, you can sense His anticipation and excitement.

He could not but help himself in going to get Nathanael.

Nathanael knew the Scriptures too and said what good had ever come from Nazareth.

Philip does the only thing he could - gives him an invitation to find out for himself - come and see.

Philip was not about to have a theological argument with Nathanael - he said it is better to find out for yourself!

Oh, it is the simplest of invitations: come and see! Isn’t this easy?

You speak to your friends, family, your neighbours, your colleagues, and say: come and see.

In three weeks’ time we will be looking at John 3, God willing, where we have the most famous verse in all of Scripture:

and I want to preach a proper Gospel message to those who have not yet come to faith, will you invite everyone you meet to come to the morning service, and simply say to them: Come and see.

If need be offer them a lift!

Surely this is something we all can do!

We could double the number of people here for the morning!

Can we commit to this?

Will you commit to this?

Philip, you know, became a great evangelist in Acts and whole places became Christians on the basis of saying ‘come and see’.

Well Nathanael is on the way to find out about this Jesus and before he says a word Jesus speaks of him as if he had known him for years.

Ah, yes!

Here comes a true Israelite who has no falseness, no deceit, no Jacob about him.

That’s right!

Hang on a minute!

How do you know me?

What you say is true but as far as I know I have never met you before.

Well, this is where it gets interesting: I saw you when you were under that particular tree before Philip came to you.

Hang on yet another minute!

I was on my own, no-one saw me, how is this possible?

Only God could have seen me there.

Whoa!

That can only mean that you are God.

So full of confirmation is the Scripture that Jesus is God that we have no excuse when people come along and say He was only a good human teacher whom they respect.

What nonsense they speak!

C.S Lewis got it right when he said:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.”

That is the one thing we must not say.

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.

He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell.

You must make your choice.

Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a mad man or something worse.

You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God.

But let us not come up with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher.

He has not left that open to us.

He did not intend to.

(Lewis, MC’52, 40, 41)

Nathanael recognised that Jesus must be who Philip said he was, the One foretold in Scripture, the Messiah, the Son of God and immediately confessed it out loud.

He had total faith in Him at his very first meeting.

Jesus marvelled at His simple faith because that was such a simple thing for Him to do; to reveal the whereabouts of Nathanael - you will see much greater things than these!

For Nathanael that first greet and meet left its mark on him because it was directly personal and he sure did see some truly amazing things including seeing Jesus after His resurrection.

Indeed Nathanael was an Israelite with no Jacob.

Remember that Jacob, whom we have read about in Genesis, was a deceitful man but his name was changed to Israel.

Jesus alluded again to him again when he was running from his brother and when he slept he dreamed and saw angels descending and ascending into Heaven upon a ladder.

Jesus was saying: I am that ladder for the angels were subject to Him.

And only through Him can you have access to Heaven and in Him we must all put our trust.

In the course of 2 days Jesus has 4 disciples: Andrew, Simon Peter, Philip and Nathanael.

There is the possibility that Nathanael’s other name was Bartholomew for his name is always associated with Philip in the other Gospels but this is conjecture.

We need to always be careful not to assume more than we are told in Scripture for that is how we go into error.

Either way, even if he was not of the 12 he was still a disciple as we are told in John 21.

Jesus is the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

He came to live in our world, in the flesh, in time and space.

We have to decide whether Jesus is who He says He is and worship Him only and become His disciple and leave behind the life we’ve lived to live a life full of Him.

He demands it simply by being who He is for we owe our all to Him.

And then we are to be those who give the invitation to all whom we meet: Come and see! Well? since we owe our all to Jesus, the reason why we are here right now, will we invite others to taste and see by telling them to come and see?

Bibliography

Barry, J. D., Mangum, D., Brown, D. R., Heiser, M. S., Custis, M., Ritzema, E., … Bomar, D. (2012, 2016).

Faithlife Study Bible.

Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.

Bromiley, G. W. (Ed.).

(1979–1988).

In The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, Revised.