Woodlawn Evangelical Lutheran Church           

50 Jesus said, "You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You shall see greater things than that." 51 He then added, "I tell you the truth, you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man."

 Introduction – If someone said, “Follow me!” How would you respond? What question might you ask the person? Where are we going? Why should I? How do we get there? How about if someone said, “Come and see!” What would you say? Come and see what? Come and see whom?

            We have both requests before us today. Jesus calls Philip with the words, “Follow me!” But Philip doesn’t ask, Where are we going? Or Why should I? He just follows. He seems confident that wherever Jesus is guiding him, it will turn out well for him. In fact, Philip is so confident that he goes and finds his friend Nathanael and invites him to join in, “Come and see!”Nathanael seems to be a little unsure. He goes, but he seems to have questions floating around inside his mind about whether or not this is a good idea. Is his friend Philip maybe a little naïve to want to follow Jesus of Nazareth without a lot of questions? Looking at how Jesus called these men, we gain insight into the way Jesus gathers all his followers.

 How Does Jesus Gather His Followers?

I. By his call

II. By their confession

 I. By his call

            After Jesus was baptized by John in the Jordan, he spent time in the wilderness, where he was tempted by Satan. Then he returned to Judea where John was baptizing. It was there that he began to call his followers. Some of the followers of Jesus had been disciples of John, but when John testified that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God, they began to follow Jesus. This group included men from a town called Bethsaida, in Galilee. That was the northern part of Palestine, near Nazareth, the home of Jesus. Jesus had already called two men from that town to follow him – Andrew and his brother Simon Peter.

            The day after he called those men, Jesus called Philip, who was also from Bethsaida. Jesus very simply said to him, “Follow me.” And Philip did. Sometimes it seems that simple. From our perspective, some people just seem ready to hear Jesus’ call to believe in him as their Savior and follow him. They don’t seem to offer any arguments; they don’t seem to express any doubts. We know that the Holy Spirit is at work when people are called to be Jesus’ followers because the Bible says that “no one can say Jesus Christ is Lord, except by the Holy Spirit.” Philip gladly followed Jesus and was eager to tell others.

Philip said to his friend Nathanael (who was from Cana, where Jesus later performed his first miracle) “Come and See!” They are simple words that any of us can use. They are words of joy and confidence. Jesus Christ has given us the hope of eternal life. We can invite a friend to “Come and see” so the Spirit can work in their hearts.

But a person may have obstacles to overcome. People object to being a follower of Christ: maybe it seems too hard; maybe it doesn’t make sense. People are skeptical of the claims and promises of Jesus Christ. Nathanael was skeptical about someone from Nazareth being the Messiah. Maybe like others, he was looking for the Messiah to be born in Bethlehem. Maybe he was looking for someone to make a bigger celebrity entrance.

            Whatever Nathanael was looking for, Jesus gave him exactly what he needed. He gave him a taste of his divine knowledge, describing Nathanael to a tee as a “true Israelite in whom there is nothing false” and explaining to Nathanael that he already knew him. Jesus had seen him under the fig tree that day, perhaps as Nathanael was meditating and praying. Jesus led him to the truth that he was the one Nathanael had been waiting for.

            For a person to become a follower of Jesus Christ is a miracle. It goes against our sinful nature which is rock hard and stubborn, easily led astray by superstition, lies, pride, lust, self-centered ideas, and faith in humanity. The call to follow Jesus demands a dramatic and drastic change in perspective and requires that we put ourselves under the authority of God’s Word, submitting ourselves to the truth of who Jesus Christ really is.

            In his mercy, the Holy Spirit breaks through our rock hard sinful nature and destroys our resistance to Jesus. This faith comes only through the hearing of the gospel message. This faith comes only through Jesus’ work as a prophet, using the mouths of his disciples to offer the invitation to “Come and see!” Come and see what? Come and see the one who rescues us from desperation and hopelessness and brings us peace with God. Come and see the one who gives us a purpose and a goal in life – to serve God without fear. Calling disciples to follow Jesus is part of the ministry of our congregation. Be a Philip and say to someone, “Come and see!” Then they will hear the call of Jesus, who says to all people, “Follow me.”

            But pay attention to God’s warning. As you invite people to “Come and see”, the devil will be working through lots of people to keep the hearts of people hard and resistant to the message of life that Jesus Christ brings. Humanists have been using bus ads in England and the US recently to promote atheistic philosophy. In London, one ad reads: "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life". In the United States, in December, an ad read, "Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness' sake". (http://www.christiantoday.com/article/ atheist.bus.ads.reach.america/21891.htm). Promotions like that try to make God seem irrelevant in our world.

The devil also likes the response of some in London who didn’t like the ad because there were many different religious groups in the area and they were concerned that some might be offended. We certainly are offended by any talk that makes our God seem irrelevant. But we are also offended by any talk that makes our Triune God, who reveals himself to us in the Bible, the same as every other god designed and made by the philosophers and cultures of our world. The call to follow Jesus is the call to forsake all other gods and sadly, that may cause conflict and offend other people.

 II. By their confession

            The Holy Spirit worked through the call of Jesus and led Philip and Nathanael to trust in Jesus as the promised Savior. He led them to make confessions of their faith, openly stating what they believed about this man, Jesus of Nazareth.

Philip confessed, “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” God had revealed through Moses, “I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers; I will put my words in his mouth, and he will tell them everything I command him. If anyone does not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name, I myself will call him to account.” (Deuteronomy 18:18, 19) Jesus was the prophet long ago foretold by Moses and the other prophets of the Old Testament as Philip well knew. Many generations of God’s people had come and gone and did not get to see the One who was promised. But Philip was able to see the person he had been hoping and waiting for.

            The Holy Spirit led Nathanael to confess his faith in Jesus after his personal experience with the all-knowing Jesus. He believed Jesus is the Son of God. Only someone sent by God could have such knowledge. He also believed Jesus is the King of Israel. What Nathanael expected of the King of Israel, we don’t know. But undoubtedly he was looking for someone to lead and watch over the people.

            Through the call to follow Jesus, the Holy Spirit leads us to our confession about who Jesus is. It leads us to acknowledge the truth. That’s what confession really means, “acknowledging the truth” as God demonstrates it to us in the Bible.

            What is our confession? Normally in our public worship, we have two confessions. We publicly acknowledge the truth that we are sinners and deserve God’s never ending punishment, but God gives us what we don’t deserve – forgiveness of sins through the willing and obedient sacrifice of Jesus Christ our Savior. We normally call that the confession of sins. In our worship we also publicly acknowledge the truth that God is one, yet is three persons – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We normally call that the confession of faith.

            Whether we recognize it or not, we are always making confessions. We acknowledge to others what we believe about life, about God. But we need to be careful, so that our confessions are from the Word of God, God’s truth, and not our own ideas.

Our sinful nature doesn’t like to be restricted to what the Bible says. It wants to be imaginative and creative. It wants to trust our eyes more than God’s Word. It wants to follow the persuasive ideas of well-read scholars who report their research in the latest magazines and on the latest documentary on the History Channel. But we confess that the authority of God’s Word is higher than that of any investigative reporter or cultural anthropologist or archaeologist. Interesting theories and research do have their place, but only as long as they support the truth of what God tells us and not oppose it.

It makes us reflect, doesn’t it? How well do we know God’s Word? How much are we influenced by what we see and hear from people around us? How faithful are we in making the Bible really the most important book in our life and making sure everything else falls in line with what it says?

Jesus promised his disciples that if they would follow him, they would experience greater events than Jesus demonstrating to Nathanael that he is all-knowing. What did Jesus promise? “I tell you the truth, you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”

The greatness that Philip and Nathanael saw through the eyes of faith was that Jesus Christ had built a stairway to close the gap that separated heaven and earth. The gap was there because we have rebelled against God and not accepted the authority of his Word in our lives. Jesus Christ came to rescue us from the punishment of hell that rebels against God, like the devil, deserve. Jesus Christ took the responsibility for our rebellion, so that we are eternally free God’s anger. By means of the terrible suffering of our innocent Substitute at the hands of our just and unreachable God, heaven and earth were brought together. The stairway to heaven is clear for us to climb because Jesus Christ made himself the stairway.

It is that great truth that we confess every day. It is that great truth that every human being must accept or deny. There is no middle ground. There is no half way point or middle ground. You can’t ride the fence on this issue. When we gather as the disciples of Jesus, everything we do confesses that truth about Jesus Christ. It is the strength of the songs we sing, the thread that weaves through the words of God that we hear. It is the power of the water in Baptism; it is the purpose of Christ body and blood in the Lord’s Supper. All of this reassures us that heaven has come down to us and God has lifted us up to his heavenly throne.

 Conclusion – Although we hear very little about these two disciples in the Bible, fairly reliable church history records for us that these men remained faithful to their call and their confession. Church history recognizes them as martyrs, witnesses who testified to the end of their lives that Jesus Christ has opened the way between earth and heaven. And having testified to the truth, they willingly suffered death at the hands of those who denied and opposed that truth about Jesus Christ.

Philip apparently was crucified because of his confession of faith in Jesus Christ in an area of modern day Turkey which in his day was known as Phrygia. Nathanael most likely was brutally killed because of this confession of faith in Jesus Christ in an area of modern day Armenia, having his skin peeled away from his body and then beheaded. It reminds us of the cruel persecution of Christians that has gone on in our world ever since the message of Jesus Christ was first proclaimed.