Some of you did not plan to be reading this today. Somebody sent you a link. A friend, a family member, maybe somebody you fish with said, "Read this," and here you are. Whatever you expected, I want you to know something. That is exactly how the church of Jesus Christ began. No building, no program. One man turned to another man and said, "Come and see."
Everybody has an opinion about Jesus. Ask ten people and you will get ten answers. A good teacher. A prophet. A myth. A crutch for weak people. But have you ever asked what the men who actually met Him said? The men who ate with Him, walked with Him, watched Him with their own eyes?
In seventeen verses of the Gospel of John, the men who met Jesus call Him the Lamb of God, Rabbi, the Messiah, the One Moses wrote about, the Son of God, the King of Israel, and the Son of Man. Seven titles. One Person. And every single one of those men ended up saying some version of the same thing: come and see for yourself.
When a sinner truly sees who Jesus is, he follows Him, and he cannot keep quiet about Him.
[35] On the next day, John again was standing with two of his disciples, [36] and he looked at Jesus as He walked, and said, "Behold, the Lamb of God!" [37] And the two disciples heard him speak and followed Jesus. [38] And when Jesus turned and noticed them following, He said to them, "What do you seek?" They said to Him, "Rabbi (which translated means Teacher), where are You staying?" [39] He said to them, "Come, and you will see." So they came and saw where He was staying; and they stayed with Him that day. It was about the tenth hour. [40] One of the two who heard John speak and followed Him, was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. [41] He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, "We have found the Messiah" (which translated means Christ). [42] He brought him to Jesus. When Jesus looked at him, He said, "You are Simon the son of John; you shall be called Cephas" (which is translated Peter). [43] On the next day, He desired to go into Galilee, and He found Philip. And Jesus said to him, "Follow Me." [44] Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. [45] Philip found Nathanael and said to him, "We have found Him of whom Moses in the Law and also the Prophets wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph." [46] And Nathanael said to him, "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" Philip said to him, "Come and see." [47] Jesus saw Nathanael coming to Him, and said about him, "Behold, truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!" [48] Nathanael said to Him, "From where do You know me?" Jesus answered and said to him, "Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you." [49] Nathanael answered Him, "Rabbi, You are the Son of God; You are the King of Israel." [50] Jesus answered and said to him, "Because I said to you that I saw you under the fig tree, do you believe? You will see greater things than these." [51] And He said to him, "Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see THE HEAVENS OPENED AND THE ANGELS OF GOD ASCENDING AND DESCENDING on the Son of Man." John 1:35–51 (LSB)
So reads the infallible, the inerrant, the all-sufficient Word of the Living God.
Behold the Lamb
Look at verse 36 again. John "looked at Jesus as He walked, and said, 'Behold, the Lamb of God!'"
John the Baptist was the most famous preacher in Israel. Crowds walked out into the wilderness to hear him. Kings feared him. He had disciples of his own, men who had attached themselves to his ministry and his teaching. And what does he do with all that influence? He points away from himself. He sees Jesus walking by, and everything he is compresses into five words: Behold, the Lamb of God.
That title would have landed hard on Jewish ears. Every morning and every evening a lamb died on the altar in Jerusalem. Every Passover a lamb died in every household. Isaiah had written of One who would be led like a lamb to slaughter, bearing the iniquity of us all. Fifteen hundred years of blood and smoke and substitution, all of it walking past John on two feet. John is saying, there He is. The Lamb all the other lambs were pointing to.
Notice what happens in verse 37. The two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus. They left John. Think about that. John's own disciples walked away from him, and this was not John's failure. It was his success. His whole ministry existed to lose disciples to Jesus.
So two men leave the greatest preacher of their generation and start walking after Jesus. They do not know what to say. They do not know what will happen. And Jesus turns around.
Come and See
Verse 38 gives us the first words Jesus speaks in the entire Gospel of John. "What do you seek?"
Sit with that question a minute, because He is asking it wherever you are reading this right now. What do you seek? What are you actually after in this life? Money runs out. Health gives way. The people you lean on will fail you or leave you or die before you do. Jesus asks these two men the question underneath every other question, and it is the question underneath your life too.
Their answer sounds almost clumsy. "Rabbi, where are You staying?" They are not asking for His address. They are asking for access. Can we come near? Can we be where You are? And look at His answer in verse 39. "Come, and you will see."
He does not hand them a scroll and send them home. He does not say, think it over and get back to Me. He opens the door. Come. And John tells us it was about the tenth hour, ten o'clock in the morning. He remembered the hour. Decades later, an old man writing this Gospel, and he still remembered the exact hour. They stayed with Him the rest of that day. Whatever they heard in that house, they came out convinced.
I have stood on the fishing pier waiting on a bite, and I can tell you the difference between hearing about fish and having one on the line. Secondhand reports only carry you so far. There comes a point where you have to see for yourself. That is what Jesus offered these men. Not a rumor about God. The thing itself.
Maybe you are reading this with honest questions about Jesus. I want you to hear this: He does not ask you for blind faith. He never has. Christianity is not a shot in the dark. His invitation from the first day of His ministry all the way until now is the same. Come and see. Examine Him. Read one Gospel, this Gospel, the Gospel of John, start to finish, and watch Him with your own eyes. He can bear the inspection. No man ever came away from an honest look at Jesus Christ with a shrug.
Do not just read books about the Bible. Read the Bible. Do not settle for stories about Jesus. Come and see for yourself. And if you do not have a copy of the Gospel of John and need one, reach out to us using the contact information at the bottom of this page. I will see to it that you get one.
So Andrew spends one day with Jesus. One day. Watch what one day with Jesus does to a man.
We Have Found Him
Verse 41. "He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, 'We have found the Messiah.'"
Andrew does not organize a committee. He does not enroll in a training course. He has spent one day with Jesus, and his feet carry him straight to the person he loves most, his own brother, and the words come out of him like water through a broken dam. We have found the Messiah. Andrew was a fisherman, and the first thing he ever caught for Christ was his own brother.
Then it happens again. Verse 45. "Philip found Nathanael and said to him, 'We have found Him of whom Moses in the Law and also the Prophets wrote.'"
What does it feel like to be saved? These men will tell you. It feels like finding treasure. It feels like the search of your whole life is finally over. A man pulled from the ocean does not lecture himself on who did the swimming. He just tells everybody about the one who pulled him out.
Then comes Nathanael, verse 46, and Nathanael is the skeptic in the crowd. "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" Nazareth was a no-account town, and Nathanael almost dismisses the Savior of the world over a zip code. Notice what Philip does not do. He does not argue. He does not debate the merits of Nazareth. He repeats the exact invitation Jesus gave the day before: "Come and see." You do not have to win the argument, friend. You have to make the introduction.
Philip brings his skeptic to Jesus. And what happens next turns a scoffer into a worshiper in the space of two sentences.
Greater Things Than These
Jesus sees Nathanael coming and speaks first. Verse 47: "Behold, truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!" Nathanael is startled. "From where do You know me?" And Jesus answers in verse 48, "Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you."
We do not know what happened under that fig tree. Nathanael did. Whatever it was, whatever he prayed or wrestled with or hoped for in that private place, Jesus saw it all. No one had told Him. No one could have. And that one sentence shattered Nathanael's skepticism like glass. The man who sneered at Nazareth now makes the highest confession in the chapter: "Rabbi, You are the Son of God; You are the King of Israel."
Jesus knew him before he knew Jesus. Mark that down, because it is the story of every convert in this passage. Before you ever sought Him, He saw you.
But Jesus is not finished. Verse 50: "You will see greater things than these." Then verse 51, and here Jesus reaches all the way back to Genesis. "Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see THE HEAVENS OPENED AND THE ANGELS OF GOD ASCENDING AND DESCENDING on the Son of Man."
Every Israelite knew that picture. Jacob, running for his life, slept on a stone in the wilderness and dreamed.
Then he had a dream, and behold, a ladder stood on the earth with its top touching heaven; and behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. Genesis 28:12 (LSB)
Jacob woke up and called that place Bethel, the house of God, the gate of heaven. Now stand back and look at what Jesus is claiming. In Jacob's dream, the angels ascended and descended on the ladder. In Jesus' words, they ascend and descend on the Son of Man. Jesus is the ladder. He is the one meeting place between a holy God and sinful men. Bethel was a shadow. The stone pillar was a shadow. He is the house of God and the gate of heaven, standing there in sandals talking to a man from Cana.
There is no other ladder. Not your religion, not your baptism, not your good record, not your family name. One Mediator between God and men. If you would get to heaven, you go by Him or you do not go.
This is why the men in this chapter could not keep quiet. They had not found a philosophy. They had found the door between earth and heaven, and it stood open.
The Chain Has Not Broken
Trace the chain one more time. A preacher pointed. Two men followed. One of them fetched his brother. Jesus fetched Philip. Philip fetched a skeptic, and the skeptic ended up on his face confessing the Son of God. Seventeen verses. No buildings and no budgets. A church is being born in front of your eyes, and it is built one sentence at a time: come and see.
Two thousand years later, that chain has not broken. Somebody said "come and see" to the person who said it to the person who said it to you. Today the chain runs through a link on a screen, straight to wherever you sit. It reaches you.
He Sees You
If you are reading this without Christ, I want you to see something in this text that ought to unsettle you. Jesus saw Nathanael under the fig tree. Nobody else did. Friend, He sees you the same way, right now, right where you sit. He sees the things you have buried where no one can find them. He sees what you did, what you carry, what you are afraid of. You have never had a private moment in your life. And here is the wonder of it: knowing all of that, He still says come. The Lamb of God takes away sin. His blood was shed for sinners exactly like the one sitting in your chair, and every sinner who has ever come to Him found the door open. But Nathanael almost missed Him over a sneer about Nazareth. Do not dismiss Him over something smaller than that. Do not click away from this page unchanged because of a joke, a grudge, or a busy afternoon. Come and see.
COME AND SEE.