1.
Please
pray with me. May the words of my mouth
and the meditation of our hearts be pleasing in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock,
and our Redeemer. Amen. The message from God’s Word this 2nd
Sunday after Epiphany is taken from John 1.43-51 and is entitled, “Come & See…There’s Hope.” Dear
brothers and sisters in Christ.
2.
Cynical,
skeptical, disbelieving, hopeless. The English dictionary describes a cynical
person as one "who is doubting, even
contemptuous, of human nature, or the motives, or goodness, or sincerity of
others." It's an attitude that often takes some time to develop, but
once it roots itself in the human heart, it can be almost impossible to
overcome. Cynicism and hopelessness can look at a wonderful gift right in the
face and find something wrong with it.
There are a lot of people out there who fit this description. I know
that there have been times when I've felt that way too. Just look at the world
in which we live.
3.
Cynical,
hopeless attitudes abound today, don't they? Even though we’re living in the
most prosperous time in human history, with gadgets that satisfy our every
whim, with entertainment devices that seem so endless, one could describe the
modern world as a place where people are entertaining themselves to death! But the irony is that people are more cynical
than ever. Why? You see, in our quest
for control of our lives, we’ve neglected God, the One who created and redeemed
us. As sinful human beings, we’ve reduced life to what we make of it. For many
today, life is about what I decide, what I seek to do, taking whatever I can
get as long as I can get it until I can't get it anymore.
4.
Did
you notice a theme through all of that? "I, I, I." Life is what I
make it. That's a recipe for cynical, hopeless despair, for eternal separation
from God. The cynical view of life might be an honest look at the failures of
sinful humanity, but it sinfully misses God's offer of eternal life and
salvation through His Son Jesus Christ.
That’s why God's hope is different from what
you expect. We use the word hope all the time to mean different things. In
fact, much of what we call hope could fall into two categories: wishful thinking and blind optimism.
5.
Wishful thinking is when we try to hope
things in or out of existence. It's when we blow out the candles on our
birthday cake and say to ourselves, "I
hope I stay healthy for another year." It's when spring training
begins and we say, "I hope the
Brewers don't disappoint me again this year." Wishful thinking is a kind of hopeful feeling
that somehow things will go the way we want them to.
6.
Another kind of hopeful attitude is
blind optimism, like the guy who fell off a 30 story building and yelled out as
he passed the 15th floor, "Well,
so far, so good!" While it’s
good to have a generally optimistic outlook, some optimists see everything
through rose-colored glasses. To them, everything's just fine all the
time-never mind the facts. It's like the
joke about the parents of 2 young twins. One of the boys was a depressed
pessimist; the other was an incessant optimist. The parents were getting
worried because each child's personality was becoming increasingly extreme. So
just before Christmas, the father said, "We need to do something to break them out of their molds." The parents decided to put dozens of shiny
new toys in the pessimist's room, and to fill the optimist's room with a pile
of horse manure, hoping this would change their attitudes. The children went to their rooms for a couple
of hours, and then the pessimist came out. "Did you play with your new toys?" the father asked. "Nah,"
moaned the pessimist. "I never even
opened the packages. I was afraid that if I touched them, they'd just break,
and then I'd be disappointed." That's
when the optimist came bounding out of his room that had been filled with horse
manure. He was all smiles. "How come
you're so happy?" asked the dad.
The little boy smiled and said, "I just know that if I keep digging long enough, I'm going to find the
pony!" Do you know people like
that?
7.
But, Biblical hope is different. For
most people, hoping is something that they do, but the Bible talks about
hope as something they can possess. We can actually grab hold of it. For
someone who follows Jesus, hope is the secure expectation that He’s both
willing and able to make good on the promises He’s made to us. The Bible refers to this as "living hope," because it's linked
to the resurrection of Christ. The apostle Peter wrote in 1 Peter 1:3-4: "In [God's] great mercy he has given
us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from
the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in
heaven for you."
8.
In
our text for today from John 1:43-51 we’re called to Come and See…there’s hope in Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. The
Apostle John tells us that Jesus finds a cynic, overcomes his hopelessness, and
calls him to faith and life in Him alone. And, Jesus didn't just want to
find Nathanael and give him abundant life in Him, He wants that for you too! That's the joy that brought Philip to say to
Nathanael, "We have found Jesus of Nazareth" "Nazareth!
Can anything good come from there?" Nathanael asked. Philip said,
"Come and see."
9.
Nathanael
encounters Jesus! Are you ready to
encounter Jesus with me through Nathanael's eyes? Let's do it. Let's first give Nathanael some credit! He
wasn't a modern cynic. He hadn't closed his eyes to all the things that God had
done in history for his life and salvation. In fact, he was still looking for
the Messiah. He just couldn't believe that the true Messiah was this Jesus from
Nazareth. Think about it. Nazareth was a town of Galilee and Nathanael himself
was a Galilean. Even to him as a Galilean, it was off the beaten path, known for
being a place behind the times.
10.
Come
and see…there’s hope. The truth of the
matter is this, God does things much differently than any of us can imagine. He
didn't just bring something good out of Nazareth, He brought His good things to
Nazareth too. And just like cynical Nathanael, Jesus came with an offer of life
and salvation in Him alone for all who believe in Him as their Lord and Savior. The
Bible says that all sinful people are at the place of need when it comes to the
things of God, and yet Christ comes all the way to those places. Jesus comes to
the Nazareth places of life with His grace and joy just for you and for me.
11.
John
tells us that Jesus saw Nathanael. Jesus saw right through him. The sins, the
sorrows, the broken hopes, dreams, He saw it all. The Bible is clear that the all-knowing God
sees right through you and me too. He sees right into the you that no one else
knows, deep in your heart. He knows if you are skeptical, if you are scared,
hopeful, or hopeless. He knows. Thank
God that His good news of salvation doesn’t depend on your efforts to find Him,
but on His efforts to find us! Like Nathanael, we need to see God's big
picture on our life.
12.
Jesus
sees Nathanael, sees you and me, deep in our hearts and souls. He's telling us
I see you as you are. I know that you are seeking for things that matter, but
somehow are disappointed, let down, or overwhelmed. Well, the only way those desires
will be fulfilled is when you realize that all those things are fulfilled in me.
"I," Jesus says, "am the
Way, the Truth, the Life.(John 14) I'm here for you right now, put your faith
in Me." Jesus has come for you
right now. Come & See…there’s
hope!!!
13.
Take
Philip's challenge to heart when he proclaims, "We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, about whom the
prophets also wrote-Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. Come and see."
Even better. Come, see…there’s hope in this Jesus our Lord and Savior.
14.
When
Jesus is the center of your life, hopelessness has to flee. You can't despair
of the future because He holds your future and death couldn't even hold Him.
Whatever He promises is true. When Jesus says that your sins are forgiven, they
are. When He tells you to have hope, to be confident in the future, you can. When
Jesus says that you’ll live eternally with Him, you will!
15.
Where
are you today? Endless joblessness, maybe you've failed at marriage, failed at
parenting, or even made a mess out of your single life. Maybe you've run with
the wrong crowd and now have been run over by the life you've been living. Jesus
sees it, He knows it, and He's here for you right now. Come, see, and believe
in Him!
16.
In
fact, I think Philip wants you to have a eureka moment right now! When he talks
about finding Jesus, the Greek word is "eurisko." Sound like
any English word you know? Yes, eureka! We found it, that which we were
searching for it's here. Eureka,
incredible joy in the fact of finding what we desperately were seeking.
17.
Philip
isn't playing religious games with Nathanael or with you and me. He’s just
pointing us to the One who can truly deliver life and salvation beyond our
imagination. Come and see…there’s hope.
See this Man Jesus who can see you as you are and still give you life and
salvation. See this Man Jesus who can help you face whatever you're up against
and see you through it. Not just here and now, but forever. See this Man Jesus
who can give you a whole new outlook on life, on work, on neighbors, friends,
family, even what to do with enemies!
18.
Yes,
Christmas is now behind us, but the spirit of giving is just ramping up in the
Church Year. If you think about it, the whole Christmas, Good Friday, Easter
message is about God giving a gift to the world. He earned it, He promised it,
He paid for it, and He delivered it; manger, cross, resurrection. When life is
a gift from Jesus, everything changes.
19.
Don't
you love what Jesus told Nathanael at the end of this encounter? He said,
"You think it's a big deal that I
see you as you are; wait until you see heaven itself opened for you because of
me." Phillip said, "Come and See." Jesus says, "Leave your cynicism behind and believe! For
in Me, through Me, with Me," says Christ, "the gift of heaven is
offered, lives are restored, souls are redeemed, death is defeated, struggle is
overcome, pain is temporary, and life and eternal hope is real. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment