JOHN074 - What Do You Want?

John 1:35-42

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Music by Jeff Foote

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:15

Where does your head go if somebody asks you the question, what do you want? It's hard to imagine that question without tone, isn't it? I mean, I imagine there's a nice version of that question, but usually if somebody's like, what do you want? Oh, crud. This is confrontational. We got to find, you know, you're out in public and maybe you're just not paying attention. You stare at somebody on accident a little too long because you're spacing off and they look at you, there's a real reasonable chance they're gonna be like, what do you want? That's not a friendly question when they ask it. If you go into a place of business and the person behind the counter is having a fussy day, and you walk in and they're like, What do you want? Oh man, this is not going well. I'm probably taking my business somewhere else. I feel weird. If you're walking down the street and you kind of encounter somebody else and they're like, What do you want? Ah, crud. Well, now I'm in a fight with this guy. I mean, do I have to fight him now? I think, what do you want? Asked like that means that we have to fight now. That's it's deeply disappointing. It's a question that, at least in our culture, it is often associated with something pretty confrontational. I suppose, what do you want? Could be a question that would also happen around asking where we should go for dinner. Uh, what do you want to get? I don't know. What do you want? That could be a friendly or neutral version of the question, but there's another version of the question that isn't aggressive and that certainly isn't neutral. It's tender, it's probing, it's attentive, it's a version of the question that looks through your eyes and all the way down to the depths of your soul, and in all of its simplicity, can bring a person to their knees because it can be such a hard question to answer. And that version of the question sounds like this What do you want? I mean, you might think you know, but until somebody asks you, and you really sense they mean it, and you can really tell that they don't mean what do you want for lunch or what do you want right now? They mean what do you want? What is it in life that you are going for? What do you lack? What is it that drives you? What would make you feel complete or whole? When you get asked that question, if you've ever been asked it, I think it's stunning. It's a lot harder to answer in that moment. It's the kind of thing that can make you stutter, like that, like that Billy on the street incident where he went around with a microphone and just randomly would walk up to people, shove the mic in their face, and be like, name a woman. It was incredible how many people just couldn't think of the name of a woman when there was a camera on them and a microphone jammed in their face without notice. Same way with the sincere asking of what do you want? Uh, I I want uh peace, I want uh knowledge, I want to feel important, I want to be seen, I want to be famous, I want people to finally respect me. I want my wife to love me more, I want my husband to appreciate all the things that I do. I want my dad to be proud of me. I want certainty about things that right now I wonder about, or I don't know. I want to be rich, I want to be beautiful, I want to be talented, I want to not want. I want my needs to be met. I want to feel secure. Who knows what might come out in those moments, maybe all of those things. But I think what do you want? Asked with sincerity is kind of a terrifying question. And I think if push comes to shove and you're being honest right now and you're doing the exercise with me, it can be a tough one to answer. It can be a tough one to really get the heart of it. I hope that my answer would be I want to be right with God. I I want to enjoy God's presence and right relationship with my maker for all of time and all of the peripheral things that come with that. I think that would be a pretty good answer. I want God to be glorified in my life. That would be a pretty mature answer. But really honest knee-jerk, I don't know, maybe a bunch of the stuff on the previous hypothetical list I was throwing out is what would come to mind. What do you want? It's surprising that that's such a hard question. Also, it's surprising to me that that's the first thing Jesus says in the book of John. Did you know that? Maybe you knew that. I should know that. I do Bible things for a living, but if you've hung out with me for a while, you've probably figured out that I don't know a lot of it. And I have to learn it when we're here talking on the microphone. Now, if you'd just put it to me and been like, uh, what is Jesus' first words? It's the first line that he gets in John. I wouldn't have guessed that it is, what do you want? But it is. So then I got to thinking, okay, well, real quick as a side note, what is it in the other gospels? Uh Matthew, I got, Jesus replied, Let it be so now. It is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness. I think I remembered that. Mark, the time has come, the kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news. Maybe I could have come up with that. I don't know. Luke, I got. Why were you searching for me? Jesus asked. Didn't you know I had to be in my father's house? Yeah, that one I remembered, but you know, I mean, that's he's a kid when he says that one, so it kind of stands out in the story. But John, his first line is, What do you want? Man, that's really interesting, isn't it? Like before we even go and look at the context, think about the way John is organizing this book. The whole thesis of the book is that you're supposed to see this and believe it, and by believing, have life in his name. This book is targeted at you. Jesus specifically prays for you at one point in this book in John 17. Like this book unapologetically is in conversation with the reader, regardless of when the reader lives. This is in conversation with you. That question, therefore, what do you want? Is for you. John knew what he was doing when he picked this to be the first thing Jesus says in the book. Because this whole book is meant to be a reckoning for us. All right. So we got all these objections to believing that Jesus is the Son of God, God in the flesh, and that by believing that we would have life in his name. We got all these objections, right? We got all these reasons, presuppositions, whatever. Yeah, but let's cut to the heart of just what makes us us, right? But what do you want? What are you after? What are you doing? Why do those objections even matter? What does this create a hurdle for you achieving with your life or getting? It starts with the right question here in John. What are you going for? And I'm I'm like legitimately asking you and me right now, what are you going for? What do you lack? What are you after? What is the point? Honestly, I think the way Jesus phrases the question is better than any of the alternatives I just threw out. What do you want? Well, it's been my contention, especially when I'm reading through the book of Matthew, that when I look at Jesus' early words over there in the Sermon on the Mount between chapter five and chapter seven, I look at the Beatitudes, I look at Jesus' teaching on the fulfillment of the law and the religious practices and treatment of your enemies. And I'm like, dang, like blind taste test. I think, I think this is what people want. I think this is the kind of world people want, the kind of relationships people want. I think this is the kind of heart posture that people think is beautiful, but the world makes us hard, the world makes us weird. We contribute to the world that makes us weird by being weird ourselves. And then it gets skewed, and maybe, you know, maybe we forget what we're built for, what we're wired for. But I like the way the Sermon on the Mount paints this beautiful picture of the values of the kingdom of God. And if you get to the end of that, you know, heck, maybe just go read it. It's only chapters five, six, and seven of Matthew. Maybe just go read that when we're off the phone here. But you get to the end of that and you go, man, that's beautiful. That's what I want. And I I want to be around whoever wrote that. I want to be around whoever architected that vision for reality, that set of values. That's what I want. I would feel pretty secure in that. And I think what John is presupposing here is that if you're honest about that question, what do you want? And then maybe even if you chase that question with why? Why? Well, what does that mean you want? Well, what does that mean you want? And you drill down all the way to the core of what you want, that you're going to discover that the only satisfaction for the meaningful desires of your life, even desires that sometimes manifest in weird, twisted-up ways, things that won't truly satisfy those desires that still have the mark of your maker on them. At the core of drilling down on what do you want, what do you want, what do you want, what you're going to find is that the answers are in Christ. I think that's John's assertion. John 1.35, it says, the next day John was there again with two of his disciples. When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, Look, the Lamb of God. When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus. Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, What do you want? Tomorrow we'll talk about what their answer to that question was, and we'll break down this whole scene a little bit more. I was sitting here reading it, and I was really struck by that. We have desires we're proud of and that we would proudly admit. We have desires we're embarrassed of and would prefer other people not know about that. But I think at the core of all of that stuff, where our desires seem sinful, it's because it's a twisting, a perversion of a yearning for something that is rightly satisfied in Christ. And where our motivations are, what do I want? Where those things are beautiful and noble, well, that also points back to things that are only satisfied in Christ. So by picking this phrase to go first, I feel like John is assertively putting the ball in our court to consider the question Jesus is asking, drill down on it deeply, and especially as we work through the book of John further, to discover that Christ is the one who cares enough to satisfy that, knows enough to satisfy that, and is powerful enough to satisfy that. All right, that's good for now. I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.