"Come and You Will See"

John’s gospel begins with a poem. It’s about the Word that was God in eternity, before creation, who brought everything that is into being, who became at last flesh in a solitary individual. This individual is the source of eternal life for all who believe in him. The poem is very deep and full of mystery.

That was our reading two weeks ago.

Then the story begins as John the Baptist comes on the stage and people want to know who he is. In contrast to Jesus who fourteen times in this gospel says, “I AM,” John confesses “I am NOT.” He says about Jesus, “He who IS, whom you do not know, comes after me. But compared to him I am nothing because he comes from before me.” He is in fact the Word of the prophets that preceded me, the Word of God that came to me.

John points Him out and says, “Look, the Lamb of God!” “He is the one upon whom the Holy Spirit remains, and He will baptize those who believe in him in the Holy Spirit.”

So already, like the Gospel of John itself, John the Baptist points to Christ on the cross and says “Look! This Christ who will be crucified is the one who will baptize those who believe into Him in the Holy Spirit who abides upon him.”

That was last week’s reading.

“What Do You Want?” (John 1:35-39)

In this week’s reading, John is standing with two of his disciples, Andrew and an unnamed person who is probably John, the author of the gospel, and he points to Jesus and says (again), “Look, the Lamb of God!” At once they leave him to follow Jesus.

Jesus turns to them and asks, “What do you want?” It’s the question he asks each of us. “What are you looking for?” What are you looking for when you come to church? What are you looking for when you read listen the Bible? What are you looking for when you listen to a sermon? It’s an important question, because what you find will depend on what you’re looking for. So, He asks us, “What are you looking for?”

The men ask him, “Where are you staying?” This sounds like a rather mundane question; they want to know his address. But, this is the Gospel of John—nothing is that simple. The word “staying” is the translated as the word “remain” in many places in the NIV, but I will use a term we are more familiar with, from the KJV—"abide.” According to John the Baptist, the Holy Spirit abides on Jesus. Later Jesus will speak of the Father and Holy Spirit abiding in him, and that he will abide in us. He also tells us to abide in him. Where does Jesus abide? We want to know so we can abide with him.

“What are you looking for?” Jesus asks us. Do we want to know where he abides so we can abide with him?

Jesus says to the men, “Come and you will see.” He tells them to find out by experience. Abiding with Jesus is not a matter of having information about him. It is about knowing him. It is about experiencing his life on a first-hand basis. We must come. We cannot keep our distance. We must enter on this journey and follow along with the one who says to us, “Come and you will see.”

The two men went with Jesus and saw where he was staying, where he was abiding, and they stayed or abided with him. This tells us what happens when we come to Jesus. We see where he abides, then we can abide with him. Don’t you want to abide with Jesus? The instructions here are very clear. “Come and see.” Hear the gospel and follow Jesus closely and you will see where he abides. Then you will be invited to abide with him.

“You Shall Be Called a ‘Stone’” (1:40-42)

Andrew is not content to keep Jesus to himself. He immediately finds his brother Simon and tells him about Jesus. This is how evangelism works. It is simply inviting people to “come and see” just as you did. This is how Christianity spreads.

We don’t have to persuade anyone. All we need to do is invite them. “We have found the Messiah,” Andrew says to his brother. He uses the word Messiah because that was what he and Simon were looking for. By contrast, the Samaritan woman didn’t use religious terms. She just said, "He told me everything I ever did." The people then went to see for themselves. After that they said, "We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world" (John 4:39, 42).

Andrew went to his brother. He began with the one closest to him, a member of his own family. We too can go to those in our family, or our close friends. We can tell them, “It’s not about us. Find out for yourself. Come and see.”

Peter went to Jesus and Jesus looked at him. We seek Jesus in the gospel. That means we look to see him. But then we find that he is also looking at us. We are looking at him, but he is also looking at us. If this has never happened to you, maybe you’re not looking closely enough. We need to “come and see,” and follow him to where He abides. Then we will find ourselves eye-to-eye with him.

That was when Jesus gave Simon a new name. He called him, “Peter,” which means stone. In some cultures, when you give someone a name, you’re claiming them as your own, as when you adopt a child. Jesus was saying in effect, “You are mine. I’m claiming you as my disciple.” When we get eye-to-eye with Jesus in the gospel, he starts claiming us as His own. We no longer belong to ourselves but to him. He’s entitled to do this, and we had better let him, since He called the worlds into being and formed them: we already belong to him. It may seem like he’s capturing us, but, in reality, he’s freeing us from someone else who captured us—who had no right to do so.

But why does Jesus call Simon a stone? What kind of name is that? As far as we know, “Peter” was not a proper name back then. It was the word for stone. I think a clue to understanding the meaning of his new name is to see how Peter used the word “stone” in his first epistle:

“You also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house” (1 Peter 2:5).

In the last verse of our reading, verse 51, there’s an allusion to Jacob’s dream in Genesis 28:11-22. Jacob fell asleep with a stone for a pillow. He had a dream in which he saw a staircase leading up into heaven and the angels of God ascending and descending on it. When Jacob woke up, he called the place “Beth-el,” which means House of God. So, I think Jesus named Simon Peter because Simon was going to become an important stone in the building of God’s spiritual house, the church.

Just as Simon is a stone in that building, so are all who come to Jesus. When Jesus calls you, and makes you his own, when you hear the Gospel and become a believer in Jesus, you become a stone. Presently, he’s working you into shape, so you can be fitted into the house he’s building. That house is the house of God, the place where God abides. “My Father's house has many rooms (abodes).” Jesus says in John 14:2. “I am going there to prepare a place for you,” He told his disciples. Then he says, “I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.” What are you seeking? Jesus asks us. We want to know where he abides so we can abide with him. He goes on to say in John 14 “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.” God himself will abide in us! Paul says that in Christ, “you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit” (Ephesians 2:22).

“You Shall See Heaven Open” (1:43-51)

After that, Jesus calls Philip and—just like Andrew did—Philip invites someone else, Nathaniel. Like the people we sometimes speak to, Nathaniel has questions Philip doesn’t know how to answer. So, he says to him what Jesus Himself told the other disciples, “Come and see.” When we share our faith with others, we don’t need to have all the answers. All we need to do is to invite them, “Come and see for yourself.”

Just as Jesus looked at Peter and sized him up, so he does the same to Nathaniel. Nathaniel, like us, wants to know how come Jesus can see through him. Jesus tells him He already knew him, before Philip came to him. As we surrender our lives to Christ, sooner or later we will find Jesus looking at us. He not only looks at us, he looks into us. And we realize that not only is he looking us over and examining us, he’s also not discovering anything he didn’t already know. We find that we are known by him, that even before we come to know him, he already knows us. It’s disconcerting to discover that someone whom you never met knows all about you. But it’s also comforting to know that we are known so well. We are known and understood. There’s nothing left to hide. And this one, who knows us so well, still loves us.

Nathaniel recognizes somehow, he doesn’t know how, he has run face-to-face into God in the Person of Jesus. “You are the Son of God; You are the King of Israel!” he says. He might not know fully what that means. The human king of Israel was called the son of God, but in the gospel Jesus is Son of God in a much fuller and completely different sense—He is the only-begotten of the Father. In any case, as we look and see, we too discover that the one whom we meet in the gospel, who comes to us through the gospel, is none other than he who is the “I AM” of God.

Jesus says to Nathaniel,

“You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You will see greater things than that.” ⁵¹ He then added, “Very truly I tell you, you will see ‘heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man” (vss. 50-51).

When Jesus was baptized by John, heaven opened, and the Spirit of God descended from heaven to earth and abided on him. When we come to Jesus and see where Jesus abides, and if we abide with him, heaven is open to us, as well.

The heavenly Word became earthly flesh. Jesus is where heaven and earth meet. He descended to earth from heaven. He will ascend to heaven from earth. Then the Holy Spirit will descend from heaven to earth to us, and we in spirit will ascend from earth to heaven. The body of Jesus, broken on the cross and resurrected, becomes the ladder that links heaven and earth.

“What do you seek?” Jesus asks us. “Where do you abide?” we answer. We want to know where he is, where he abides, where we can find him, so we can be with him where he is. He answers, “Come and you will see.” So, come on this journey. Listen with us the Gospel of John; find out where he abides. As you look closely, you’ll find him looking you in the eye and looking you over. You will find him claiming you as his own and telling you you’re a stone in the house of God. If we stay and find out where he abides, and abide with him, we’ll find out he is abiding in us as the abiding place of the Father on earth. “Come and you will see.”