John 1:35-42

http://biblehub.com/parallelgospels/The_First_Disciples_of_Jesus.htm

Follow the leaders is a game we used to play as children.  One child lines up behind the leaders and simply follows him wherever he goes.  Along the way other children begin to fall in line behind the first child as a means of joining in the fun.  The longer the line gets the more successful the game is deemed to be.  Christianity is really the longest game of follow the Leader in history.  Now that Jesus has been publicly identified as Messiah the focus of the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament turns to Him.  Many of the multitudes that had come out to see and hear John the Baptist will become followers of Jesus.  This is as it should be.  Today’s text records the actions of the first people to begin following Jesus.  They started a process that has continued through many generations and has finally come to ours.  Each of us must make a choice as to whether we will line up behind Jesus our Leader and follow Him or if we will reject His invitation.

LEAVING JOHN TO LEARN FROM JESUS: The day after John’s public proclamation about Jesus, two of John’s disciples were standing with him when Jesus came by.  Perhaps they had not been present the day before or perhaps John simply repeated his message from the previous day.  In either case, John is faithful to identify Jesus as the Lamb of God to his disciples.  These two men promptly approach Jesus in order to learn from Him.  When Jesus asks why they are following Him, they called Him Rabbi which means teacher and they ask where He was staying.  By following Jesus they were demonstrating that they believed John’s testimony about Him.  When they called Him teacher they were placing themselves in the position of students who were desirous of learning from Him.  Their question about where He was staying was an indication that they desired to be where He was and get to know who He was.  John was fulfilling his mission by pointing others to Jesus.  He was not concerned by the fact that he was losing followers; his only purpose was to see the followers of Jesus increase.  We must be careful not to allow people to become our disciples without helping them to become disciples of Jesus.  These two disciples go the wherever Jesus happened to be staying at that time and they spend the day with Him. It was either 10 am or 4 pm when they started following Jesus so they had a significant amount of time to get to know Him and hear His teachings.  They were probably surprised by where Jesus lived.  Perhaps they were expecting the Messiah to have a palace somewhere.  Instead they probably spent the day in a very humble home where Jesus was staying as a guest.   As we follow Jesus we must come to expect the unexpected.  Once we learn of Jesus our goal in life ought to be to learn from Jesus.  Today we can’t go see Jesus in His home but He has recorded what He wants us to know about Himself in Scripture.  Since we can’t go live with Him right now He has sent the Holy Spirit to come live in us so that we might learn from Him.

CALLING SIMON TO COME SEE JESUS: One of these two disciples is identified as Andrew the brother of Simon Peter.  We don’t know for sure the identity of the other disciple, but it is most likely the Apostle John, the author of the book in which this account is recorded.  John rarely identifies himself in his book so that would be consistent with this humble approach to John’s writing style.  Andrew’s first response to confirming the identity of Messiah was to go and find his brother.  He wants his brother to know that Jesus is the Messiah and as soon as he finds Simon He declares that he has discovered Messiah.  He takes Simon to see Jesus and it seems that before Andrew has the opportunity to introduce his brother to Jesus; Jesus knows his name and changes his name from Simon to Cephas which means Peter.  People need to be introduced to Jesus so that they can know Him.  Jesus never needs to be introduced to us because He already knows and loves everyone perfectly.  Our purpose in life is to know Jesus and make Him know to others.  We don’t know much about Andrew and his other accomplishments as a follower of Jesus but we do know much about Peter.  His new name means stone and Jesus would use him as one of the men to lay the foundation of the church.  He would become the most vocal of the disciples and one of the most influential leaders in the history of the church.  He would be used to point thousands of other people to Jesus.  Andrew sets in motion a pattern that all of us are called to follow.  Once we believe that Jesus is the Messiah, it only makes sense for us to tell our friends and family about Him.  We don’t know exactly what Jesus taught them that day but it is clear that He identified Himself as Messiah and that He wanted His followers to engage in God’s mission to reconcile the world to Himself.  God wants disciples in every nation of the world so it seems very likely that Jesus taught John and Andrew that they were to go and find others to come and follow Him.  Jesus continues to call us to engage in that same mission today.

APPLICATION: We must do all that we can to identify Jesus as Messiah and encourage others to follow Him.  Our hearts should be full of a desire to know Jesus and spend time with Him.  The number of people following us in unimportant; our mission is for others to follow Jesus.  A life of following Jesus will rarely be as we expect it to be.