Dale Partridge - John 1_35-51 - The Simple Evangelism of the New Testament

00:00:00.000 Now, if you remember, we have gone through quite a bit of territory in John's Gospel.

00:00:13.040 It is stated in John chapter 20, verses 31, the purpose of John's Gospel.

00:00:22.480 And it's a great blessing to know the purpose of why the Apostle is writing.

00:00:27.160 and it says in verse 31 of chapter 20, these are written so that, there's your purpose clause,

00:00:35.500 so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have

00:00:44.220 life in his name. Now, John's gospel is a testimonial work of persuasion. It's a testimonial

00:00:54.440 work of persuasion. In fact, any time I have an opportunity to share the gospel with someone,

00:01:01.960 I say, oh, go read the gospel of John. It is a very effective tool for the work of evangelism

00:01:08.260 and the family members and friends and colleagues in your own life. That is what this book is

00:01:13.920 written for. Now, John has already told us that Jesus is the word and that the word was with God

00:01:22.620 and that the Word was God. We also heard that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We heard

00:01:31.280 that Jesus was light, and he was also the life of men. So these are massive titles of messianic

00:01:40.000 power that have been given to Jesus. And then we have John A. Tell us about John B. Right? John A,

00:01:49.580 John the Apostle, and John B, John the Baptist. And he is part of this testimony. So John A is

00:01:56.720 talking about John B being part of this great testimonial argument of who Jesus is. And prophecy

00:02:05.260 predicted that God would send a forerunner to the Messiah. And that is exactly what we see

00:02:12.460 in John the Baptist. Now last week we saw John the Baptist further this purpose of being a

00:02:19.680 forerunner when he looked at Jesus in front of the Pharisees, in front of probably hundreds of

00:02:25.380 Jewish people, and he said those famous words from chapter one, the Lamb of God, or behold the Lamb

00:02:32.660 of God that takes away the sins of the world. This massive statement. Now I explained last week

00:02:40.800 how confusing that statement would have been for the Jews. Because they were not looking for a lamb.

00:02:47.540 They were looking for a Messiah. And their understanding of the Messiah was not a sacrifice.

00:02:55.420 It was a deliverer. It was a ruler. It was a king. Someone that would take them out from the rule

00:03:00.940 of Roman power. Now the lesson was this. The Jews were, and I would say still are, 0.60

00:03:10.800 A self-righteous people.

00:03:13.560 They believed that their priesthood and that their sacrifices and that their temple were sufficient for salvation.

00:03:22.320 A massive, catastrophic, eternal mistake.

00:03:27.080 They did not understand that the entire Old Testament system was preparing people for and pointing people to Jesus Christ.

00:03:35.820 they were as i said last week the old testament is like a bunch of arrows and it's like the

00:03:42.820 pharisees were studying these arrows but they never looked to where those arrows were pointing

00:03:47.740 they missed the object of all of the substance they looked at the shadows but they couldn't

00:03:56.240 understand that when jesus was here it was talking about him i think about the uh passage that john

00:04:04.380 says in John chapter five, verse 39, it says, you search the scriptures. This is Jesus talking.

00:04:09.820 You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life. And it is they

00:04:15.660 that bear witness about me. They missed it. They missed the Messiah. And this is why Jesus

00:04:26.800 repeatedly said over and over that they had eyes, but they could not see that they had ears,

00:04:31.240 but they could not hear and all of this is setting up today's text of this

00:04:38.700 narrative of the redemption of these men now first remember that John is

00:04:47.380 building a case so that you might believe it's so that your children might

00:04:53.720 believe so that you people who think you're saved actually will be saved

00:05:01.240 He's revealing the true identity of who Jesus is.

00:05:06.140 Second, today's passage gives us a sharp contrast with last week.

00:05:10.340 So if last week was, watch how many people here and do not come to Christ, this week is the opposite.

00:05:18.000 Watch these people who do here and do receive Jesus as the Christ.

00:05:22.800 It is a contrast that is happening.

00:05:24.760 John is an incredible writer.

00:05:26.000 Now, last week, those who should have seen, the theologians, the Pharisees, the religious authorities, were blind.

00:05:37.080 This week, in this text, those who we might least expect to see, the average man, the fishermen, are the ones that actually understand.

00:05:49.940 And that is part of the counterintuitive nature of God.

00:05:54.560 in God's economy

00:05:56.360 up is down

00:05:58.160 and down is up

00:05:59.700 and rich is poor

00:06:01.460 and poor is rich

00:06:02.480 and being wise

00:06:06.500 in the flesh 0.65

00:06:07.220 is foolish in the spirit 0.94

00:06:09.520 and being humble in the spirit 0.99

00:06:11.880 is being wise in God

00:06:13.560 and it's why Matthew chapter 11

00:06:18.640 verse 25 Jesus says

00:06:20.000 at the time Jesus declared

00:06:21.180 I thank you Father

00:06:22.020 the Lord of heaven and earth

00:06:23.760 that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding

00:06:28.760 and revealed them to little children. 0.96

00:06:33.500 You've revealed them to those we think are foolish in the world.

00:06:39.420 So today's text opens back in Bethany, a different Bethany,

00:06:44.940 the Bethany that's beyond the Jordan in the wilderness.

00:06:48.820 And it's where John is baptizing his disciples.

00:06:52.520 That's a very important distinction.

00:06:54.900 He's baptizing his disciples at this particular point,

00:06:57.840 and John breaks the text up into two sections.

00:07:01.000 He's talking about the conversion of Andrew and an unnamed disciple,

00:07:05.420 which almost every scholar on earth believes is John the Apostle.

00:07:09.080 So when we hear this unnamed disciple, it's Andrew and John,

00:07:12.720 and that's why he has such an incredible understanding,

00:07:15.800 even to the hour of what things occurred in this passage of Scripture.

00:07:19.780 And the second part is the conversion of Philip and Nathanael.

00:07:23.860 So you have four conversions that we're going to read about in this text of Scripture.

00:07:30.640 Another point you want to catch is that we're going to see six divine titles given to Jesus in just this short section.

00:07:40.020 So if the purpose of John is to prove the identity of Jesus, you better watch it,

00:07:45.160 because it's about to just go boom, boom, boom, over and over and over again.

00:07:50.620 This is who this man is.

00:07:54.340 Verse 35 says,

00:07:59.580 The next day, again, John was standing with two of his disciples, his disciples,

00:08:06.380 and he looked at Jesus as he walked by and said,

00:08:09.020 behold, the Lamb of God. The two disciples heard him and said that they followed Jesus.

00:08:16.920 Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them, what are you seeking? And they said to him,

00:08:26.100 Rabbi, which means teacher, where are you staying? He said to them, come and you will see. So they

00:08:33.920 came and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day, for it was about the 10th hour.

00:08:41.560 Are we getting feedback? Is that something else? Okay, there we go.

00:08:50.460 So first, I want you to notice a few things. Verse 35, these two men, again, are disciples of John,

00:08:57.660 but at verse 38, they become disciples of Jesus. They talk about John, but then they go, hey, Jesus,

00:09:02.840 rabbi, teacher. They've kind of shifted their alliances in the literary argument here. Now

00:09:08.960 outside of John, these are the first two New Testament recorded disciples of Christ. So

00:09:17.420 outside of John the Baptist, these are the first two recorded disciples of who Jesus is. You have

00:09:25.720 the cornerstone, which is Jesus. You have John who's pointing to the cornerstone. And then you

00:09:30.940 have these two men, John the Apostle and Andrew. And I want you to just like think about a cathedral

00:09:38.100 for a second, right? So you have a cathedral and you have like hundreds, maybe you have hundreds

00:09:42.960 of thousands of stones, depending on the size of the cathedral. And they're all being built up to

00:09:48.260 this beautiful structure that is the church. But this passage is about these first couple stones

00:09:54.840 that are wrapped around this cornerstone. These men that become apostles of Jesus Christ.

00:10:02.560 And what this made me think is that this passage is not just a passage about the apostles. It's

00:10:08.540 actually a passage about church history. It's the very beginning of the New Testament church

00:10:13.860 that's gathering here. And I love the simplicity of this section of scripture. It's narrative,

00:10:19.840 right? It's kind of just sharing exactly what happened. Now, we often imagine that evangelism

00:10:25.580 required some sort of like sophisticated argument. I have to think about Charles Spurgeon's

00:10:30.560 conversion. He came to Christ because the pastor was out and some other layman stood up and started

00:10:37.360 reading the Bible. And the one of the greatest, the prince of preachers comes to Christ because

00:10:41.820 he just hears some guy reading scripture. And that's the simplicity. It doesn't come from

00:10:50.820 sophisticated arguments. It comes from proclaiming the word of God. And here we see John gives a

00:10:56.440 simple testimony. Behold the lamb of God. Behold the lamb of God. Now, again, I'm sure that there

00:11:03.980 was far more conversation. I'm sure that John the Baptist was a significant preacher. I'm sure he

00:11:08.900 had greater discussions and conversations and argumentation that is not recorded in this

00:11:14.560 passage of scripture. And what's even more profound is that it's the same testimony

00:11:23.800 that he gave the day before, right? So he said, behold, the lamb of God that takes away the sin

00:11:28.740 of the world. Nobody heard. And then today he says, behold, the lamb of God. And we see somebody

00:11:34.220 convert. And that's important. That should teach us a few lessons. A few lessons. First,

00:11:41.900 preaching requires perseverance. Evangelism requires perseverance. And I suspect, again,

00:11:49.160 John preached Jesus, the Lamb of God, many times. But faithful proclamation means saying the same

00:11:57.040 glorious truth over and over again until God gives ears to those who hear it.

00:12:05.300 It's not about changing the message. It's not about getting creative. It's about being faithful

00:12:10.900 and consistent, preaching the same thing over and over again. If you listen to anything about Ray

00:12:16.820 Comfort, you've heard him say the same thing. If you've heard him once, you've heard him every time

00:12:20.180 he's spoken because he says the same thing over and over and over again. Same with Billy Graham.

00:12:25.300 When you listen to these great evangelists that God has raised up for the salvation of many,

00:12:30.060 it is the same message over and over and over and over again.

00:12:33.320 In other words, your job is not to constantly find something new.

00:12:36.320 It is often repeating something very old.

00:12:39.260 You repeat the same thing over and over again.

00:12:42.420 You don't need to learn every in and out of theology to be a good evangelist

00:12:46.560 to your own family and to your own children.

00:12:49.200 You need to know the gospel.

00:12:51.060 You need to be able to present it faithfully.

00:12:54.300 Second, God will use your ordinary testimony to save people. I'm not saying your personal

00:13:02.180 testimony. I'm just saying the testimony of the gospel. In fact, this is the ordinary way

00:13:07.540 that the kingdom grows. We've gotten out of the world of covenant children. And so as a result, 1.00

00:13:13.040 what we do is we look for extraordinary salvation. All these people that had these

00:13:16.680 incredible testimonies, people that were drug dealers and sleeping around and adulterers and

00:13:21.300 had this really rough life, and all of a sudden now they're saved.

00:13:24.860 No, the reality is that the ordinary way that people are saved is that they heard the gospel

00:13:28.500 from their parents. They never knew a time in their life in which they were not saved.

00:13:32.340 That's ordinary salvation.

00:13:38.620 And the way that the kingdom grows, God uses evangelists, he uses public preachers,

00:13:42.660 but far more often than that, it's simple. It's parent to child. It's child sometimes to parent,

00:13:49.100 Right? It's friend to friend. It's neighbor to neighbor. It's colleague to colleague.

00:13:55.400 One person says, come and see. And then God does the work. Come and see.

00:14:03.120 God does the work. Third, never judge the strength of the gospel by the response that people give to

00:14:10.060 it. Never judge the strength of the gospel by the response that you receive from your own evangelism.

00:14:18.280 Christ himself preached perfectly, and many still walked away.

00:14:23.120 Think about that.

00:14:24.460 Judas heard all of Christ's sermons, as Richard Baxter, or maybe it's Thomas Watson, once said.

00:14:31.900 The seed is good, but sometimes the soil is hard.

00:14:36.480 We know that. We know that.

00:14:39.500 In other words, never measure the truth of the gospel by the percentage of people who receive it.

00:14:44.200 Fourth, in the reform world, it's easy to talk about theology and sacraments and liturgy and all the deep parts of the faith and morality, but none of those things are the object of evangelism.

00:15:04.900 And that is often what we get confused here.

00:15:09.520 We are not converting people to the church.

00:15:13.060 We are converting people to Christ.

00:15:18.320 We're calling them to Christ.

00:15:20.980 Tell them about Jesus.

00:15:23.180 Tell them about their sin.

00:15:24.700 Tell them about the gospel.

00:15:27.400 Tell them that Christ saves sinners.

00:15:30.440 And then when the conversation goes into politics,

00:15:33.000 And when the conversation goes into morality, if it's an evangelistic conversation, bring them

00:15:37.200 back to the cross. That is the duty of any good evangelist.

00:15:47.500 And evangelism is so simple. It's so ordinary. It's often taking your kids to church.

00:15:56.460 One of the great failures of men is to not take their family to church.

00:16:01.220 I drive into church and I watch my neighbors spraying their driveway,

00:16:05.900 hanging out on their horses, doing things. I'm just going, you're just on your way to hell. 0.98

00:16:11.980 You're sending your family to hell, your wife to hell, your kids to hell. You can't even do the 1.00

00:16:15.880 basic fundamental reality of taking your own family to heaven. It's amazing to me.

00:16:23.720 It's regular prayer. It's regular devotion. It's basic fundamentals. Oh, the folly and the

00:16:30.300 foolishness that they're going to feel on Judgment Day. I wanted to ride my horse. Idiotic. I had

00:16:38.320 things to do. I had travel plans. Foolishness. Long-term faithfulness is the ordinary way

00:16:51.760 that the Lord builds the kingdom.

00:16:55.740 Verse 40.

00:16:58.340 One of the two heard John speak

00:17:00.280 and followed Jesus.

00:17:03.640 His name was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother.

00:17:08.460 He first found his own brother, Simon,

00:17:10.440 and said to him,

00:17:11.380 we have found the Messiah,

00:17:14.000 which means Christ.

00:17:16.600 He brought him to Jesus.

00:17:19.800 Jesus looked at him and said,

00:17:21.080 you were Simon, the son of John or son of Jonah. You shall be called Cephas, which means Peter.

00:17:33.520 I want you to first look at verse 40.

00:17:37.640 The text assumes, just look at verse 40 for a minute. The text assumes that the reader is going

00:17:44.080 to know who Simon Peter is. One of the two who heard John speak and followed Jesus was Andrew.

00:17:50.420 Simon Peter's brother. He just enters into the narrative. You're like, who's Simon Peter?

00:17:55.960 So what this tells you is that John assumes that everybody knows who Peter is. At this point in

00:18:03.060 the church, everybody knows who that guy is. Alexander McLaren says, this is evidence that

00:18:14.000 Peter was already so well known in the church that John could identify the lesser known Andrew

00:18:20.400 by reference to him. That is just a fascinating point to recognize. Second, I want you to notice

00:18:28.420 what the apostle John is attempting to do here. Now, over the next 11 verses, we're going to see

00:18:34.980 those six titles, those six messianic titles that are very important to John's argumentation

00:18:42.380 as we saw that this is the purpose of this gospel. And so he's already said that Jesus

00:18:49.660 was the word, the light, the life, the lamb, the savior. But now he introduces the first

00:18:55.180 of these six titles. He is the Messiah, right? The Messiah. Now, I just want to point out

00:19:03.920 again, that this chapter is about highlighting the counterintuitive economy of God. If anyone

00:19:12.360 was going to tell the people about the Messiah, who should it be? Well, the priests. It should

00:19:18.580 be the high priests. It should be the Pharisees. It should be the religious elites. That's what

00:19:24.620 you would think, right? If you were just reading the story, you'd think, well, if the Messiah is

00:19:28.320 going to be here, you know who's going to tell us? All of the religious authorities, those are

00:19:32.940 going to be the people that let us know. Certainly, it was going to be them who did that. No.

00:19:40.780 again the counterintuitive nature of God

00:19:44.560 in the same way that Jesus was born in a manger

00:19:48.080 and not a palace the gospel would go forth from fishermen

00:19:51.620 and not the religious elite

00:19:53.380 completely upside down expectations

00:19:56.260 now the word Messiah means the

00:20:02.000 anointed one and Andrew's use of that title

00:20:04.400 is remarkable because it shows

00:20:08.020 how biblically informed these early disciples were. We sometimes picture the apostles as like

00:20:15.060 these ignorant fishermen. Just look at those idiots over there with their boats. Just they're 1.00

00:20:22.060 so uninformed about the realities of theology. That's not the picture that the New Testament

00:20:28.720 gives us. They may not have belonged to the religious elite, but they were devout Jews

00:20:34.080 of men. There were men who knew the scriptures, true Israelites, as we're going to see the name

00:20:40.900 that Jesus gives to Nathanael. In fact, we see that the same devotion, even if I was thinking

00:20:48.180 about Acts chapter 10, Peter is sitting on the roof and it says to Peter, kill, arise, kill, eat,

00:20:56.320 about basically everything becoming available for you for food. And Peter responds, he says,

00:21:01.560 By no means, Lord, for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean.

00:21:06.360 What does that tell you about Peter?

00:21:08.940 This is a very devout man.

00:21:10.340 His diet is even organized by the Mosaic law.

00:21:14.940 This man is very religiously astute.

00:21:18.160 He understands the standards of the righteousness of his life.

00:21:23.540 So these men were ordinary in occupation, but they were very serious in devotion.

00:21:27.300 And lastly, I want to point out that Andrew's immediate inclination was to share the good news with his brother.

00:21:36.320 How many of you have siblings that do not know Christ?

00:21:41.500 When was the last time you told your siblings of Christ?

00:21:47.960 When was the last time you told your siblings about other positions around Christ?

00:21:52.860 the normal and natural flow is this. You have something that you understand to be true,

00:22:00.300 you go tell the people you love most. If you don't tell your siblings, it's because you don't love

00:22:04.580 them. That's the truth. Do you not care that they're maybe on their way to hell? Do you not

00:22:18.400 care that they do not know the positions that you hold that might bring fruitfulness to your life

00:22:24.640 or to their life. The natural response to salvation is to tell those you love. That is

00:22:32.420 something you see thematically through this passage of scripture. This person found this

00:22:36.660 person, and this person found this person, and this person found this. There's five founds in

00:22:40.060 this passage of scripture. Over and over and over again, we found him, and he found us, and we found

00:22:46.520 this brother and that person found this friend. Over. Is that

00:22:50.640 what you do?

00:22:54.740 Verse 43. The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee.

00:22:59.760 He found Philip

00:23:01.620 and said to him, follow me.

00:23:06.560 Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter.

00:23:12.580 Philip found Nathanael, there's the other

00:23:14.520 found, and said to him, we have found him of whom Moses in the law, and also the prophets wrote,

00:23:24.540 Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.

00:23:28.900 Okay, I'm just going to give you some geography real quick. So Galilee is not a city. Galilee is

00:23:35.600 a region. And all around the Sea of Galilee are a bunch of tiny towns. And one of the most,

00:23:41.700 like the tiniest towns is Nazareth, but you have towns like Cana, and towns like Bethsaida,

00:23:50.340 and they're all within about a 25 to 30 mile radius of one another. And so that's kind of

00:23:56.280 the geography that's going on here. And unlike the conversion of Andrew and Peter,

00:24:04.820 sorry, unlike the conversion of Andrew and Peter or Nathaniel, Philip is converted directly by

00:24:16.080 Jesus himself. It says that Jesus found Philip and said, follow me. It's an amazing statement

00:24:26.160 to be found by the shepherd and say, follow me. And so these four men,

00:24:36.360 okay, including John the Apostle, who's writing this, they had traveled from Galilee,

00:24:41.220 the Sea of Galilee, those areas, to hear John the Baptist preach, and they encountered Jesus there.

00:24:47.540 That's kind of the cultural, contextual, geographical narrative that's going on here.

00:24:51.540 They've come down together. They know one another because they all fish on the same sea.

00:24:56.920 They're all in that same world. They're all about 30 miles apart from one another.

00:25:01.520 And then Jesus travels with them back to Galilee where they, again, if you're walking with Jesus

00:25:08.860 for, it's about 20 miles from where John was back to Galilee. It's about a day and a half walk.

00:25:15.780 And so if you're walking with Jesus for a day and a half, I'll tell you what I'm doing.

00:25:21.240 I'm interrogating that man, okay?

00:25:23.880 I'm asking him so many questions.

00:25:26.500 I don't even know if I'm going to be able to sleep that night.

00:25:29.200 I'm going to be laying with my head down and say,

00:25:32.240 Hey, Jesus, I got a question for you, right?

00:25:35.240 Over and over and over again.

00:25:37.680 And that is exactly what was happening.

00:25:39.880 These men are walking with Jesus, and they're interrogating him,

00:25:43.180 having conversations with him.

00:25:44.380 And by the time they get down there, they have so many of their answers given.

00:25:51.240 and it allows them to be very bold. And so what does Philip do? Philip finds his friend,

00:25:58.360 Nathaniel, who is from Cana, it tells us later in the Gospels, to tell him the news.

00:26:06.040 It's very natural to tell people the good news when you love them. Now, Nathaniel was his personal

00:26:13.960 first name. We know him also as the Apostle Bartholomew. And the reason, so you may have

00:26:22.720 heard Simon Bar-Jonah, right? Bartholomew is Bar-Tolmai, right? It's a patriarchal society 0.54

00:26:31.980 that's using these terms son of, son of, son of. And so Bartholomew is his Aramaic surname.

00:26:40.520 name. Now, one thing I want you to catch, again, is this term found. It's used five times,

00:26:48.980 four by the men, and once by Christ. There's a lot of finding going on in this section of

00:26:54.080 scripture. And in verse 41, Andrew says, we have found the Messiah. We found him.

00:27:01.400 now in verse 45 it says we have found who moses in the law and also the prophets wrote

00:27:10.680 jesus the nether jesus of nazareth the son of joseph we found him

00:27:15.500 now i love this because one of the great joys of maturing into christ

00:27:19.960 is realizing that christ found you and you did not find christ that christ finds you

00:27:27.260 and makes you think that you found Christ.

00:27:30.480 It's an amazing thing to mature and understand that reality.

00:27:34.260 Does the sheep find the shepherd or does the shepherd find the sheep?

00:27:40.300 We know the shepherd finds the sheep.

00:27:44.820 Understanding your salvation is kind of like a child saying,

00:27:48.160 look what I found.

00:27:49.280 I found this great treasure.

00:27:52.220 It's like discovering this treasure in your backyard

00:27:54.400 only to realize that your dad deliberately planted a treasure

00:27:58.460 exactly where he knew you were going to look.

00:28:01.260 Like, did you really find it?

00:28:03.760 Or was this all kind of set up for you?

00:28:06.900 And he actually knew he found you.

00:28:09.440 No, he found you.

00:28:11.460 That's why Jesus says in John 15, verse 16,

00:28:13.900 you did not choose me, but I chose you.

00:28:19.580 And second, Philip says,

00:28:21.540 they found him who the law and the prophets

00:28:25.600 wrote. This is just, again, so when you say the law and the

00:28:29.560 prophets, this is Old Testament phraseology of

00:28:33.680 basically, the law and the prophets basically means the whole Old Testament.

00:28:39.420 And these men know their Bibles.

00:28:42.600 They know it well enough to go,

00:28:45.200 I'm going to ask you important questions. The answers that you give to me show that you're fulfilling

00:28:49.040 these anticipated prophecies. They probably knew passages like Deuteronomy 18, 15 through 18 that

00:28:57.660 says, quote, the Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you,

00:29:03.560 from your brothers. It is him you shall listen. And again, these men were theologically literate.

00:29:11.880 They were anticipating the fulfillment of these particular passages. This is not, just because

00:29:16.580 they're fishermen does not mean that they are not intelligent.

00:29:20.980 And so this is the second

00:29:22.560 of these six

00:29:24.460 messianic titles.

00:29:26.480 Right? The first was the Messiah. This is the Messiah.

00:29:29.380 The second is whom the

00:29:30.560 prophets and the law

00:29:32.440 wrote about. So you have two of them now.

00:29:35.400 John's establishing his

00:29:36.680 case. Okay, so stay with me here.

00:29:39.220 In verse 46 through 49

00:29:40.840 we get the third and fourth titles.

00:29:43.440 Verse 46.

00:29:44.440 Verse 46.

00:29:46.580 Nathaniel said to him, can anything good come out of Nazareth? I love the honest question,

00:29:52.020 right? It's just like, it just brings you into some sort of cultural context that you're like,

00:29:55.680 okay, so we know what's going on here. Can anything good come out of Nazareth? Philip said to him, 0.67

00:30:00.240 come and see, come and see. Jesus saw Nathaniel coming toward him and said of him, behold,

00:30:07.760 this is Jesus talking, behold, an Israelite indeed. He's pointing probably to Nathaniel

00:30:13.140 and whom there is no deceit. Man, what an incredible thing for Jesus to say about you.

00:30:18.900 There's Dale, a man with no deceit. I'd love that. I know it's not true, but that would be

00:30:24.900 great to hear. Verse 48, Nathaniel said to him, how do you know me? And I wish I had more time

00:30:32.640 to preach on this because the idea that, you know, Jesus says, there are many people that

00:30:37.740 will say things in my name and do these many miracles in my name. And he will say, away from

00:30:41.500 me? I do not know you. Knowing Christ is very important. Christ knowing you is

00:30:48.580 very important. We know that the same phrase that it says that Adam knew his

00:30:53.740 wife Eve. There's an intimacy there that Jesus knew Nathanael. And the question

00:31:02.800 is, does Jesus know you? It's a very important, probably the most important

00:31:06.360 question that you could ever ask. You do not want the words, I never knew you.

00:31:17.120 But Nathanael said to him, how do you know me? How do you know me? And Jesus answered to him,

00:31:24.580 before Philip called you, when you were sitting under the fig tree, I saw you.

00:31:29.140 And Nathanael answered him saying, Rabbi, you are the son of God. There's the third title.

00:31:35.920 You are the king of Israel.

00:31:37.540 There's the fourth title.

00:31:40.940 Now, just to give you a little geography again,

00:31:44.000 these people, well,

00:31:45.940 these people knew each other.

00:31:49.320 And I'm always so shocked about,

00:31:52.040 did they not know if Jesus had to have been living

00:31:54.040 in great obscurity to not know,

00:31:58.540 or maybe they did know of him, son of Joseph.

00:32:01.540 Maybe there was some sort of relationship.

00:32:02.760 We don't know the exact dimensions of their childhood here.

00:32:06.460 But it would basically be like, if we lived in Williamson Valley, Jesus lived in Mare.

00:32:12.460 It's not that far apart.

00:32:15.500 And imagine a big sea in between us that we'd all be fishing on.

00:32:18.880 It's just shocking to me that there's Jesus living in obscurity, and these people have this relationship.

00:32:23.820 I just wonder, what is the relationship there?

00:32:28.340 And we know Nazareth was a despised little town. 0.93

00:32:32.760 Had Philip said, we found the one born of Bethlehem, that would have been better, right? 0.87

00:32:40.980 Bethlehem was the city of David.

00:32:42.520 There would have been some sort of like royal lineage there.

00:32:45.920 But he's like, Jesus of Nazareth, son of Joseph.

00:32:51.020 It's like the most ordinary, it's like Dale of Mare, son of James.

00:32:56.440 It's like, who?

00:32:57.440 What?

00:32:58.440 What does that even mean?

00:33:02.760 And John the Baptist, if you contrast,

00:33:04.900 like John had, he comes from a priestly line.

00:33:07.300 He's a Levite, his father was a priest

00:33:10.300 that had a good reputation.

00:33:12.260 There was some power and strength there,

00:33:13.940 but Jesus doesn't even have that.

00:33:19.380 Which is why Nathaniel asked,

00:33:20.520 can anything good come out of Nazareth?

00:33:23.820 We'd go, can anything good come out of Mare?

00:33:26.540 There's like 29 people that live there, right?

00:33:29.420 That's what we'd be saying.

00:33:33.480 Now we know Andrew and Peter and Philip had their questions answered on this travel home,

00:33:39.060 but now Nathaniel wants his answers, his questions answered. So he's coming up to Jesus. And this

00:33:44.860 is why Philip says, come and see. Imagine your friend comes in and tells you all of these great

00:33:49.060 things and how Jesus fulfilled all of the Old Testament. And you're like, can anything come

00:33:55.060 from there? And he's like, just come and see. And you're like, okay, I'm coming and I'm going to see,

00:34:00.340 and I'm going to have questions that I want answered.

00:34:02.760 You already had a whole day to walk with this man.

00:34:05.320 I'm going to have some questions for this man.

00:34:10.220 And then Jesus gives Nathanael this spiritual appraisal.

00:34:15.460 Behold, an Israelite indeed, and whom there is no deceit.

00:34:20.640 Now again, according to Scripture, a true Israelite is someone

00:34:22.740 not just that is circumcised of the flesh, but is circumcised of the heart. 0.73

00:34:27.700 Now it reminds me when the Lord says to Samuel,

00:34:31.200 Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.

00:34:37.620 And so this right here is a little divine moment

00:34:40.720 that reveals that he does what man cannot do.

00:34:47.760 He sees the heart.

00:34:49.780 I have a man that can see my heart.

00:34:52.660 That's what Philip's got to be, or Nathaniel's got to be thinking.

00:34:54.720 But then Jesus moves from the inward world to the outward world.

00:35:01.240 He not only knows Nathaniel's heart, he knows Nathaniel's location without his eyes being there.

00:35:09.400 He said, before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.

00:35:15.360 Now this isn't a miracle, but this is a manifestation of omniscience.

00:35:22.120 And I'll tell you what, if someone said something like that to me,

00:35:27.160 I guess prior to flock cameras, I'd probably be like, wow, that's incredible.

00:35:36.680 It was enough not only to break through Nathaniel's skepticism, but it was enough to awaken faith in

00:35:44.180 him. And we know this because he gives us two more messianic titles. You were the son of God.

00:35:49.380 you were the king of Israel. Now again, son of God is both messianic and it's a Hebraic

00:35:56.440 patriarchal term. Very important. Pay attention here because I want you guys to be smart Bible

00:36:01.940 interpreters here. Again, we have Simon son of Jonah, right? We have Bartholomew. We have the

00:36:06.800 term of son of, son of throughout the scriptures. And so a son bears the name and the nature and

00:36:16.020 the likeness of the Father. So when Nathaniel says, you are the Son of God, he's saying that

00:36:24.440 you bear the resemblance of God. That's an incredible statement in a patriarchal society.

00:36:34.420 And you might be asking, how did he go from meeting Christ to confessing him as the Son

00:36:40.320 of God in what seems like minutes? Well, let me tell you the answer, because there's an answer

00:36:44.880 in the scriptures that gives you the spiritual appraisal of the moment. It's 1 Corinthians

00:36:50.260 chapter 12, verse 3. It says, therefore, I want you to understand something that no one speaking

00:36:56.700 in the spirit of God has ever said that Jesus is accursed and no one can say Jesus is Lord

00:37:02.780 except by the Holy Spirit. So what you see here is this is not just revelation, right? This is

00:37:12.880 regeneration. This is understanding. This isn't persuasion. This is revelation of regeneration.

00:37:21.680 This man has been born again at this particular moment. Boom. You are the son of God.

00:37:27.080 Said by the power of the spirit. Verse 50. Jesus answered him, because I have said to you,

00:37:34.780 I saw you under the fig tree. Do you believe? I have a sense that maybe Jesus is smiling.

00:37:41.180 Was he saying this?

00:37:41.880 Maybe he's chuckling.

00:37:43.160 Like, that's all I've had to say, is it?

00:37:45.760 And you believe?

00:37:49.700 He says, you'll see greater things than this.

00:37:53.440 And he said to him, truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened

00:37:56.420 and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.

00:38:01.800 And we know that Christ's divinity and his miracles functioned as an apologetic.

00:38:09.980 We know also that the angels are involved in these miracles.

00:38:14.280 We know this is obviously a reference back to Jacob's ladder.

00:38:18.560 And the angels coming up and down.

00:38:20.500 And we know that the miracles of all around Jesus' life, what do you see?

00:38:24.280 Angels.

00:38:26.760 Angels with Mary. Angels with Joseph.

00:38:29.140 Angels at the tomb.

00:38:30.820 Calling down potentially a legion of angels.

00:38:33.620 Angels around his miracles.

00:38:35.360 There's something to do with angels and miracles that is happening here.

00:38:39.160 and what his miracles do, and the angels are a part of, is this revealing and confirming,

00:38:47.440 again, his identity. Who is Jesus? Well, you can look to his miracles,

00:38:51.480 and you can see and you can confirm this is who the man is, and Jesus essentially tells

00:38:58.740 Nathaniel, you believe because of this, that's good, but you're going to see far greater things

00:39:03.520 than these. Now, I think there's a bit of an application for us here as I close out.

00:39:12.420 When you first come to Christ, you experience regeneration. For some of you, you remember it.

00:39:19.540 For some of you, you don't. Again, some people's salvation is like a sunrise and some is like a

00:39:27.840 lightning bolt. Now, for those that had the lightning bolt, regeneration, you could kind of feel

00:39:33.000 that miracle you know CS Lewis talked about getting on a train or getting on a 0.62

00:39:39.940 bus as a pagan getting off the bus as a Christian you could feel the 0.62

00:39:46.040 transformation one day you loved sin and the very next day you hate it 0.69

00:39:52.620 something happened something's been awakened in your soul and

00:40:03.000 we can see that change. But God does not leave us only with that one miracle.

00:40:12.260 And I thank the Lord for that. Over the time, we begin to recognize his providence,

00:40:17.600 his sanctifying work, his answers to prayer, the inward testimony of the Holy Spirit,

00:40:23.240 strength, wisdom, understanding over and over and over again. And so that your born again moment

00:40:29.700 is very, it's vital. But you start stacking moments as you've been walking with Christ that

00:40:36.100 God has answered that prayer and God has walked you through here. And there's actually like a,

00:40:41.220 there's a pictograph for the word faith. So the Hebrew world has kind of some, often there's some

00:40:45.900 images that associate with this old way of speaking. And the pictograph for faith is a man

00:40:52.560 in a rowboat who is, who is rowing that way, but facing that way. And what you can see is that

00:40:59.180 you're pushing this way. You can't see that way, but you actually have faith because you can see

00:41:04.500 what you have done. And so God has carried me through many seasons. And so I have faith going

00:41:11.540 forward because I have seen the past and a God's providence in my life. And you get to have these

00:41:17.980 more and more miracles. Yes, you were saved. Yes, you've been born again, but you're going to see

00:41:23.640 more. You're going to see more. You're going to see more. In a sense, you will see greater things

00:41:33.140 than these in your own life. So John, as I close here, has taken us through a series

00:41:40.000 of eyewitness testimonies and confessions concerning the identity of Jesus. He is the

00:41:49.760 lamb of God. He is the Messiah. He is the one whom Moses and the prophets wrote. He is the son of

00:41:56.180 God. He is the king of Israel. And then finally, in this last verse, Jesus gives his own preferred

00:42:02.240 title, which he uses over 80 times in the gospels is son of man, son of man. And so John is stacking

00:42:12.380 witness upon witness

00:42:14.760 title upon title

00:42:16.700 until there is only one

00:42:18.820 reasonable conclusion

00:42:20.080 that Jesus

00:42:22.000 is the Christ.

00:42:25.000 Amen? Let's pray.

00:42:27.420 Father, we thank you

00:42:28.460 for the

00:42:31.040 blessing

00:42:31.460 of the Apostle John

00:42:33.860 for his work and faithfulness by the pen of the

00:42:36.780 Holy Spirit. We ask that you would give us

00:42:38.400 a way that these

00:42:40.780 words would be implanted to us, that we might remember

00:42:42.800 it, that we might apply it to us, that it might give us

00:42:44.880 a burst of sanctifying

00:42:46.540 grace.

00:42:50.560 Lord, we ask that you would help us learn

00:42:52.220 the simple

00:42:53.700 evangelism

00:42:55.420 of the New Testament.

00:42:58.600 Lord, we ask that you would bless us with

00:43:00.560 grace and mercy. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

00:43:10.780 Thank you.

Dale Partridge - October 03, 2026

John 1_35-51 - The Simple Evangelism of the New Testament

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