John 1:35-51 - Following The Leader
Main Idea: Accept the invitation of Jesus to become His follower each day.
YOU’RE INVITED TO FOLLOW JESUS (vs. 35-39)
Jesus invites you personally.
Jesus invites you through other people.
Jesus invites you permanently.
YOU’LL BE TRANSFORMED AS YOU FOLLOW JESUS (vs. 40-41)
You will become a representative of Jesus and His Kingdom.
You will experience the real life Jesus made you for.
YOU’LL BE ASTOUNDED AS YOU FOLLOW JESUS (vs. 42-51)
God will reshape the mundane and evil into good.
God will restore and renew your life.
God will reaffirm the truths and promises of His Word to you.
Sermon Transcript (Auto-Transcribed by YouTube)
We are continuing our study in John 1-4, the study entitled The Word Became Flesh. The Gospel of John is an account written by one of Jesus' 12 closest disciples or followers from when Jesus was on earth.
And John is describing to people several decades after Jesus' life. He's describing what Jesus was like, who he was.
He tells us at the end of the Gospel that the entire reason that he wrote this book was so that we would know that Jesus is God and that we would believe on his name and follow him.
And today, as we're in John 1, verses 35 through 51, John details Jesus' first disciples following him, and he emphasizes not the disciples themselves, but the leader. Today, we're going to be looking at following the leader.
We're going to read first John 1, verses 35 through 51. If you have a copy of God's word today, I would encourage you to open it up, and I would also encourage you to keep on looking at it throughout all of the sermon.
If you maybe aren't looking at the passage, you might get a little bored of what's happening. But as we interact with the words of God, we want to be strengthened and grow as we see what God has for us this morning.
If you don't have a physical copy of scripture and maybe don't have a Bible app or something on your phone, in your bulletin today, there is a small handout that's got some sermon notes on there.
On the flip side, where on the back of the outline, it has all of the scripture for today's passage and would encourage you to read along as we go through.
John 1.35-51 says this, The next day, John, not the writer, the baptizer, John was standing with two of his disciples. When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, look, the Lamb of God. The two disciples heard him say this and followed Jesus.
When Jesus turned and noticed them following him, he asked them, what are you looking for? They said to him, Rabbi, which means teacher, where are you staying? Come and you'll see, he replied.
So they went and saw where he was staying and they stayed with him that day. It was about four in the afternoon. Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, was one of the two who heard John and followed him.
He first found his own brother Simon and told him, we have found the Messiah, which is translated the Christ, and he brought Simon to Jesus. When Jesus saw him, he said, you are Simon, son of John.
You will be called Cephas, which is translated Peter. The next day, Jesus decided to leave for Galilee. He found Philip and told him, follow me.
Now, Philip was from Bethsaida, the hometown of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathaniel and told him, we have found the one Moses wrote about in the law, and so did the prophets, Jesus, the son of Joseph, from Nazareth.
Can anything good come out of Nazareth? Nathaniel asked him. Come and see, Philip answered.
Then Jesus saw Nathaniel coming toward him and said about him, here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit. How do you know me? Nathaniel asked.
Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you, Jesus answered. Rabbi, Nathaniel replied, you are the son of God. You are the king of Israel.
Jesus responded to him. Do you believe because I told you, I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than this.
Then he said, truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the son of man.
Today, as we see these initial disciples follow Jesus, Andrew, John, Philip, Simon, Philip and Nathaniel, we're also going to look at what their stories tell us about following Jesus in our own lives.
And we'll see the call for you and I today to accept the invitation of Jesus to become his follower each day. Let's pray. Dear Jesus, we pray that you would bless this time in your word.
God, I pray that you would help me to only say what you would have me to. Lord, may you encourage our hearts through realizing your incredible abundant love for us. God, we ask that you would bless everything today.
Lord, if there's someone here today that does not know you as Savior, I ask that today would be the day that they find you, that they name you as their Lord and Savior. We love you. Pray all of this in your name.
Amen. So we're going to see three things today that we will interact with as far as following our leader, following Jesus. And the first of these is that we are invited to follow Jesus.
We can see this in verses 35 through 39, where as John the Baptizer proclaims to his disciples that are by him, this is the Lamb of God. This is the one who takes away the sin of the world. These two disciples, one is Andrew.
The other one, though unnamed, most believe, is the actual writer of this account, John the Apostle.
And as Andrew and John hear that Jesus is the one that John has been preaching about the whole time, the whole point of the Old Testament scriptures, John and Andrew go to follow Jesus. And they start following him. They don't even ask him at first.
He's just walking along, and they see John the Baptizer going, hey, there's the Lamb of God. And they're like, oh, great, okay, awesome. We're following him.
And Jesus is walking for a little bit, and then turns around and sees them following him, and goes, hey, what are you guys looking for? Like, what's the purpose of you doing this?
And they say, hey, Rabbi, teacher here, John's translating for his Greek audience some Aramaic terms.
So there where he says Rabbi later in the passage, where it says Messiah, even later where it says Cephas, John's letting his Greek audience of his book know about these Hebrew terms, Aramaic terms.
So they ask him, hey, Rabbi, where are you staying at? We want to be where you are. And Jesus says, come and you'll see.
And I want you to realize today that just as with John and Andrew, that Jesus invites you personally. You are not just a part of a generic group to God. Who you are individually is wanted and valuable to the Lord of the universe.
Isaiah 43 says this. Now, this is what the Lord says. The one who created you, Jacob, and the one who formed you, Israel, do not fear for I have redeemed you.
I have called you by your name. You are mine. In the Book of Revelation, we would hear that God even places a new name on you.
I have no idea if that's just like belongs to Jesus. You know, for some of the kids, Toy Story, where they write Andy's name on the foot. I don't know what that new name looks like.
There's an old hymn. There's a new name written down in glory, and it's mine. I don't know what that new name looks like, but God knows you individually and personally, and has called you to himself.
Psalm 139, in talking about our individual relationship to God, that God doesn't just care about the cosmos and keeping everything together. He doesn't just care about the state of nations and his care for individuals.
David proclaims to God, it was you who created my inward parts. God created your gallbladder. God created your intestines.
He cares about every iota of you. David says, you knit me together in my mother's womb. I will praise you because I have been remarkably and wondrously made.
Your works are wondrous, and I know this very well. God has known you from all eternity past. He knew every difficulty that you would encounter.
He knew every question that you would ask. Scripture tells us he even knows how many hairs are on your head. He knows you personally, and he invites you personally to be his follower.
If you're here today, God is inviting you personally. If you hear me speaking, God is offering you salvation through Jesus.
If you turn in your heart from your way and turn to Jesus and choose him as your Lord, your master, the one charge of your life, and if you believe what the Bible says that he is God, that he died in your place for your sins so that you would never
be condemned, and that he rose from the grave 2,000 years ago, you will be saved. You will become a child of God. God will place his own presence, his Holy Spirit in you.
You will be forever and irrevocably moved from the path of destruction and sin and condemnation to the path of God's love and forgiveness and new life in Christ. If you have never accepted Jesus, Jesus is calling to you personally today to answer.
And secondly today, Jesus invites you, not only personally, he invites you through other people. So we've read through the whole passage. John is the one telling John and Andrew, hey, here's the Lamb of God.
Andrew is the one that's telling his brother Peter, hey, this is the Messiah. As Jesus invites Philip to himself, then he tells Nathaniel, hey, we found the one that Moses and the prophets talked about. God invites you through other people.
God normally gives his message through people, not through supernatural means.
Sometimes we expect as people that if we're going to hear from God, then maybe we're going to turn the shower onto hot water and wait and see if any words are written in the fogged up mirror.
We're expecting, okay, God, if you're really there, I want you to send like a flash of lightning. But that's not how God normally operates. First Thessalonians chapter two, the apostle Paul writes to a new church plant.
He says, this is why we constantly thank God. Because when you received the word of God that you heard from us, you welcomed it not as a human message, but as it truly is the word of God, which also works effectively in you who believe.
Expect to hear from God. Expect to hear God's working in your life through other people. One way that you might determine, okay, is this God's word or is this just this random person's advice?
Know what God says in his word. Be in the Bible every single day so that when someone says something to you, you can know, oh man, like that lines up perfectly with what I'm hearing from God in his word.
Yeah, that must be God's will for my life because I'm not just hearing it from people. I'm seeing it in the word and the Holy Spirit is confirming, yep, this is God's will. Expect to hear from God through other people.
Expect to be invited into faithfulness and not just salvation at large as any that are here today that are not saved. You're being invited through me speaking to say be saved, accept Jesus.
But for you here today that are Christians, you are also called to follow Jesus each and every day. And some of the ways in which you are called to follow Jesus require you interacting with other believers.
That as other believers say, here is this need, here's this opportunity to witness or to evangelize.
As other believers are saying, hey, I have this need, I need some prayer requests, I need some discipleship work, that then we are able to follow the will of God. We are invited into daily walk and action with Jesus through other people.
This is what Paul tells us in Ephesians chapter 4, that God invites us to even our weekly or bi-weekly spiritual life and actions through our pastors, our deacons, our fellow church members.
Ephesians 4, 11 through 13 says, Jesus himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers. And what was the purpose of these spiritual leaders?
To equip the saints for the work of the ministry, to build up the body of Christ until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of God's son growing into maturity with a stature measured by Christ's fullness.
Sometimes people get the idea that the church is a bunch of programs, or that the church is perhaps the staff that make up the church. The church is made up of individual people.
If the church is going to do anything, then it's going to require people like Jen and like Mary that join together in accomplishing God's work. It's going to be individuals like Ron or Zach that are praying for others.
It's going to be people like me that would try and meet the needs of others when I can or to encourage them or to send them Bible verses. If God is going to work through his church, he's going to work through the individual parts of the church.
So Jesus invites you through other people, not just to salvation. Jesus invites you to what you're supposed to do in your daily or weekly or monthly walk with him through other people.
So have meaningful relationships with others in the body of Christ so that you might be able to hear what is it that Jesus is inviting me to do this week. Then we can see that Jesus invites you permanently.
That though here as Jesus invites these initial disciples, they didn't really know what they were signing up for.
John, as he follows Jesus at this point, he didn't know that maybe 60, 70 years later, he would still in a sense be following Jesus and telling other people about him. Jesus invites you permanently.
Scripture tells us that when you are saved, you are permanently his, seated in his presence with his eternal plans for you.
Ephesians 2 says, God, who was rich in mercy because of his great love that he had for us, he made us alive with Christ even though we were dead in trespasses. You are saved by grace, God's loving favor.
He says, he has also raised us up with Jesus and seated us with him in the heavens in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might display the immeasurable riches of his grace through his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.
When God saved you, he didn't just save you for this life. He didn't just save you so that you would live a moral life while here on earth.
He saved you so that for eternity, century after century, millennia after millennia, he can show you his kindness and his grace and his riches through what Jesus has done.
What a wonder you are not just going to maybe enjoy life with Jesus a little bit. Jesus has invited you permanently. And man, if that's true for our salvation at large, then in our day to day walk with Jesus, let us be permanent in our walk with him.
Permanently be a part of God's family, his local body of caring for one another. Hebrews chapter 10 says, let us hold on to the confession of our hope without wavering, without falling away, without leaning away since he who promised is faithful.
And let us consider one another in order to provoke love and good works, not neglecting to gather together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging each other and all the more as you see the day approaching.
God's permanent call on your life is a permanent call to love and to be in community with his family. You're gonna be with them for all eternity, might as well get in a little bit of practice of that community today.
Today, will you turn from your way and believe in Jesus as your Lord and Savior? And will you actively make decisions today and tomorrow to follow Jesus? You are invited to follow Jesus.
Secondly, not only are we invited to follow Jesus, but as we can see from the story of Peter, we are transformed as we follow Jesus. Verses 40 through 42, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, was one of the two who heard John and followed him.
He first found his own brother, Simon, and told him, we found the Messiah, the anointed one, the one set apart by God to do amazing, miraculous, kingly things in Israel. And he brought Simon to Jesus.
And when Jesus saw him, he said, you are Simon, son of John. You will be called Cephas, which is translated Peter. Both Cephas and Peter mean about rock.
So it might be a little weird if for like one of you kids in the back person. Yeah. What's your name one more time?
Shout it out. Yeah. So if I was like, hey, Robert, your new name is Steve, you might be like, okay, like who are you?
Why do you get to tell me what my name is? Here, Jesus is saying your identity Simon is going to change.
You are going to be transformed, which as we read throughout the rest of scripture, you can see that take place drastically that this brash fisherman who in every instance possible was open foot, insert, open mouth, insert foot.
In every instance, he was like that. He ended up becoming a pillar of the early church, someone that people went to when they had spiritual considerations.
I know we've got a few people that fish in here, and I don't know if many of you fishermen would be like, oh yes, I'm definitely like a pillar of the church, but that's what Jesus did for this fisherman.
As we are transformed, that wasn't just true for Peter. It wasn't just that his life changed. The same is true for us as we follow Jesus.
And as you follow Jesus, you will be transformed to become a representative of Jesus and his kingdom. You'll no longer be defined by your old job, your political standpoint, your hobbies. Those things won't define you.
As you follow Jesus, you will become defined by his ownership of your life and by his family. You'll be known as a Jesus follower, a Christian, one who is with your local body of believers. 1 Peter 2.9 says, but you are a chosen race.
And here he's not speaking to white or black or Asian or anything else. He's saying, you that have come to know Jesus, you are now set apart. You are part of God's family.
That's your new lineage. He says, you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his possession, so that you may proclaim the praises of the one who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
God wants to transform you, that you're no longer about this world's kingdoms. You're no longer about what you can do and what your plans are, but that you are concerned with his kingdom.
And I promise you, as you pursue his kingdom, you will find again and again and again that if we delight ourselves in the Lord, he will give us the desires of our heart, even as David would say.
In being a representative of Jesus and his kingdom, you will live your life in a way that is different than those around you, including your family, your friends, your co-workers and your neighbors. Why?
Because this Jesus that you serve, his kingdom that you're a part of, he is coming back again. And you're supposed to live in the same way, with the same morals as you will have when he returns. So you're living like his kingdom that is returning.
You're living like you are already there. Titus chapter two says this, for the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people and God's grace, his favor, his loving kindness towards us.
It instructs us to deny godlessness and worldly lusts and to live in a sensible, righteous and godly way in the present age while we wait for the blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.
He gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to cleanse for himself a people for his own possession, eager to do good works. So you'll become transformed to be a representative of Jesus and his kingdom.
Then you will experience the real life that Jesus made you for. Your life was made to show those around you what God is like. You are made to image God.
As he is generous and creative and working and kind, so you are called to be the same. It is a super human way of existence that you cannot manufacture on your own ability.
You need Jesus' spirit, his presence, to be with you and to give you the wisdom and emotions and strength to do what you are not able to do in your own power.
This kind of life is what Jesus called us to in Matthew 11, where he said, come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.
Even as earlier we saw many of the hands of those even in this room that are currently burdened down with life, Jesus is calling you to come to him, and he will give us rest.
He says, take my yoke upon you and learn from me because I am lowly and humble and heart.
Come to God genuinely with who you are, with your failures, with your inadequacies, with your doubts, with your questions, because Jesus is humble in his dealings with you. He will not cast you out when you come to him, no matter how imperfectly.
He says this, for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. The burdens that we get from this world are heavy.
The burdens that we get from Jesus, the promptings that we have to follow him and to live life the way he wants us to, those are not burdensome to us.
Jesus said in John 10, 10, I have come so that they might have life and that they may have it in abundance. Jesus has an abundant life that he has intended for us.
Today, will you choose to let Jesus' spirit and his word change how you live your life this week? He wants to transform you. Will you let him?
Will you find out from his word this week what that transformation looks like for you? Then very lastly today, you will be astounded as you follow Jesus. So, Jesus invites you to follow him.
He transforms you as you follow him. And then he astounds us as we follow him. From verses 43 and on, it says, The next day Jesus decided to leave for Galilee.
This would be kind of his home area. You might say home state or home region. He found Philip and told him, follow me.
Now, Philip was from Bethsaida, the hometown of Andrew and Peter. So now Jesus has three disciples from this same hometown. A couple of them are fishermen.
This was from one, this city, Bethsaida, was one of the cities in the Galilean region. It wouldn't have been terribly far off from where Jesus grew up in the town of Nazareth.
Only about maybe a day or two of walking, depending on how fast you walked. I think when I looked it up earlier this week, it's something like 26 miles or so.
So you have two pretty good 13 mile days, or if you're really fast, if you're in the Olympics, you might be able to make it in just a couple hours time. And so these guys are from the same state, if you will.
And Philip found Nathaniel, verse number 45, and he told him, we have found the one Moses wrote about in the law, and so did the prophets.
So he says, here's the promised coming Messiah, the one who's going to be king of Israel, the one who is going to take away our sins, the one who is going to institute God's rule on earth. And then he says, Jesus, the son of Joseph from Nazareth.
And Nathaniel in verse 46 asked a question that many people asked during that time rhetorically. Can anything good come out of Nazareth?
I don't know if you know many kind of hoity-toity people in your life, and maybe they're living over in, I don't know, Glenburnie, Mount Airy, something like that, some place where maybe they've got a little bit more land and they're kind of more set
up. And they might ask, can anything good come out of Essex?
And this is the question that Nathaniel asked about this little town that was kind of on top of a hill, very, very, very small population, kind of more identified as a little bit of a Roman outpost at times throughout history.
And so he goes, oh, I didn't realize like the messiah, the promised one could come from a little no nothing place. And Philip answers him, come and see, come and find out if anything good can come from Nazareth.
Verse 47, then Jesus saw Nathaniel coming toward him and said about him, here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.
At first look, we might go, oh, man, like Jesus is really complimenting this guy, like in maybe a wicked time where lots of people were coming and repenting and being baptized. Here was a person that he didn't have a tricking bone in his body.
He just said what he thought and he was real. That is certainly possible. It might also be that Jesus is making a little bit of a play on words here for a couple of reasons that we're gonna go over.
Number one, the name Jacob. So, Old Testament, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the patriarchs. Jacob, he was known as a trickster.
His name is basically trickster, joker. And all of his life, he tricked his father, he tricked his brother, he tricked his father-in-law. And the whole way through, he's tricking everybody.
And then finally, one night, he interacts with God. He literally physically wrestles with what we would assume from scripture to be the pre-incarnate Christ. And he demands that God bless him.
And God says, okay, you're no longer Jacob, you're no longer the trickster. He gives him a life transformation. Says, you're not the tricker anymore.
Now you are Israel because as a prince with God, as a prince, you have wrestled with God and lived. And so here, as Jesus is telling Nathaniel, here is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.
He says, here's one of the descendants of the tricker in whom there is no trickery. And Nathaniel responds to him, I can think almost with a chuckle that he would say, Rabbi, you know, teacher, where do you know me from?
Yeah, you know, there's no trickery in me. He says, where do you know me from? And Jesus tells him, before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.
Well, today, wherever you are in maybe your lowest moments, in your most mundane moments, God has seen you. You are not absent from his view. He realizes where you are.
One other aspect of this is you look at some of the things from the first century is that many people, when they spent today, what we might call devotions or Bible reading time, they would go out to maybe trees or areas set apart from some others and
that's where they would do their Torah reading, where they would read one of the scrolls of scripture. And some people have assumed that it might have been that Nathaniel was reading through the scroll of Genesis and reading about Jacob.
And for this reason, that as Jesus tells them, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you, as you were trying to interact with God through his word, I was present with you. You didn't see me, I wasn't physically there.
But as God, as omnipresent, that Jesus is wherever he wants to be, whenever he wants to be there, he says, I was with you even while you were under that fig tree. Then Nathaniel says, Rabbi, you are the son of God. You are the king of Israel.
Hey, what Philip said is true. You knew where I was, what kind of tree I was under. You knew what I was doing.
Yeah, this has to be God. No just random person can know this. And Jesus responded to him, is that all it took?
He says, do you believe because I told you, I saw you under the fig tree, you will see greater things than this. Then he said, truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the son of man.
Maybe those of you that have been around church a while, what kind of picture from the Old Testament do you think of when you think of the angels of God ascending and descending from heaven to earth?
Just shout it out if there's a particular story that comes to mind. Yeah, Jacob's ladder.
And that's one of the reasons why people assume that this might have been the very portion of scripture that Nathaniel was reading, that as trickster Jacob was trying to accomplish his own way and go about his own thing, that he tricked his dad into
giving him a blessing. He had tricked his brother into giving him a blessing. His brother was upset with what had transpired. And so Jacob had to run for his life.
And as he's running, he comes to this place, Bethel, the house of God, and he sleeps with a rock as his pillow. And God comes to him in a dream. And there are angels descending and ascending.
The word ladder, we might today use the word staircase. It's what you'd use to go up into your house or into a temple or into a palace. And Jesus is telling Nathaniel here, I am this access to God.
I am the one that gets you from where you are into relationship with God. That just as Jacob experienced 1,000, 1,200, 1,500 years before, he says, you are going to experience. More incredible things than even what you've read in the word.
So here, I want us to see 3 things as we close. Number 1, God will reshape the mundane and the evil of your life into good. That God transformed what was mundane and ill thought of in Nazareth into the place that Jesus was from.
And God transformed just a little Bible time under a fig tree into something that convinced someone of who Jesus truly was. And God will do that in your life.
That the things that seem small and insignificant and inconsequential to you, He will transform into things that He can use. Genesis 50 and verse 20 says, You planned evil against me.
God planned it for good to bring about the present result, the survival of many people. That God will move even evil occurrences.
Here, this is Joseph speaking, a man that had undergone slavery and false accusations and unjust imprisonment and in all of this, the hatred from his family and all of those things went together into his life that he could have just like cursed God
and wanted nothing to do with him, but he stayed faithful to him. And by the end of his life, God had used all of those terrible things to put him into a place where he was then second in charge of Egypt, that he was able to store away food, so that
when a terrible famine came, then he was able to save his family alive, his dad, his brothers, all of his sister-in-laws and their nieces and nephews, they were able to live because God had transformed what was evil in Joseph's life into good. And if
God did that for Joseph, what might he do in your story and in your life? Then we can see that God will restore and renew your life, that just as he had done for Jacob, that the trickster who had always been at odds with everyone because he never did
right by anyone, that he was always treating others poorly, trying to always spend the art of the deal, that God transformed him and God wants to restore and renew your life as well. That who you were, you are no longer.
Isaiah 40 in verses 28 through 31 says, do you not know, have you not heard, the Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the whole earth. He never becomes faint or weary. There is no limit to his understanding.
He gives strength to the faint and strengthens the powerless. Youths may become faint and weary and young men stumble and fall, but those who trust in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles.
They will run and not become weary. They will walk and not faint. In St.
Corinthians, the apostle Paul says, we have this treasure, the gospel, in clay jars, so that this extraordinary power may be from God and not from us. He says, we are nothing special, but what God is doing through us is amazing.
He says, we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed. We are perplexed, but not in despair. We are persecuted, but not abandoned.
We are struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry the death of Jesus in our body, so that the life of Jesus may also be displayed in our body. Therefore, we do not give up.
Even though our outer person is being destroyed, our inner person is being renewed day by day. For our momentary light affliction is producing for us an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory.
God wants to renew and restore and strengthen and bless and fortify in your life. It does not mean that your circumstances will be great. I read all the, you'll be perplexed.
We will be struck down. We will be persecuted. But throughout all of that, God renews us.
Our inner person, our inner man is restored day by day. Then very lastly today, God will reaffirm the truths and the promises of his word to you.
Here, Jesus, as he recounts to Nathaniel, and he says, hey, you're going to see what you were reading about, that what you read in the Old Testament, it was real.
And you are going to experience the reality of God's truths and promises in your own life. In 2 Timothy 3, Paul writes that all scripture is inspired by God.
It's breathed out by God, and it is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
That as God works in your life, one of the biggest ways in which he's going to do that is not simply through emotions. It's not just going to be through circumstances going right.
That's not going to be the primary way in which God blesses you and encourages you and renews you. It will be as you realize that what he has said is true and that he's faithful to it. So turn to it in every circumstance.
When you don't know what you ought to do, turn to the word of God. When you are downhearted and you just need encouragement and you need to know, like, is there hope for my tomorrow? Is there a future for me?
Turn to the word of God and find out that his truths and his promises are eternal. They weren't just for people 2,000 years ago or 3,000 years ago. They are for you today.
David wrote in Psalm 119, he says, my life is down in the dust. Give me life through your word. I told you about my life and you answered me.
Teach me your statutes. Help me understand the meaning of your precepts so that I can meditate, think about constantly again and again on your wonders. I am weary from grief.
Strengthen me according to your word. Keep me from the way of deceit and graciously give me your instruction. I have chosen the way of truth.
I have set your ordinances before me. I cling to your decrees. Lord, do not put me to shame.
I pursue the way of your commands for you broaden my understanding. Will you learn what God's word says so that you can learn his promises and his truths?
And will you take time today like Nathaniel to step back and to appreciate everything that God has done for you?
Are you wowed by the fact that though you were a sinner, that Jesus died for you, he took the payment for your sin, and he gave you all of his righteousness so that you can be forever reconciled to God and be a part of God's family and have an
eternal hope and a future in heaven and have the Holy Spirit living in your life now and have the word of God to guide you each and every day as you walk through. Are you amazed by that? Are you astounded by that?
That God sees you, He cares about you, He knows you, and He has a plan for your life. Today, will you follow the leader? He invites you to follow him.
There will be transformation of your life as you follow him. And may we be astounded as we follow Jesus. Will you turn from your way and believe in Jesus as your Lord and Savior?
Will you choose to let Jesus' spirit and His word change how you live your life this week? Will you take time today to step back and appreciate everything that God's done for you?
And will you accept the invitation of Jesus to become his follower each day? The story doesn't stop with your salvation, with you accepting Jesus. The story of you following Jesus is every single day along the way.
Okay God, what do you have for me? What do you want me to do? Who do you want me to interact with?
Who do you want me to hear from? Who do you want me to speak to? How do you want me to interact with the world around me?
Find that out through the word of God. As we follow the leader, the following is good.
