JOHN077 - Who Is Your Celebratory Speed-Dial Friend?

John 1:35-42

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Music by Jeff Foote

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:17

Hey everybody, it's Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Lumber Podcast, and I just got done recording another podcast. I do a show called No Dumb Questions with my buddy Destin from Smarter Everyday. And we just did a podcast about automatic lawnmowers. I got one of those recently. And the reason I got an automatic lawn mower is not even first and foremost because I really wanted an automatic lawn mower. And don't get me wrong, now that I have one, are you kidding me? There's a robot that mows my lawn for me. This is the coolest thing ever. But the reason I got one and the reason it was on my radar is because my buddy Austin got an automatic lawn mower, robot mower. And he was like, You have to come see what this does. I was like, all right. And he showed me the app and he showed me the mower and he showed me the results. And I was like, dang, your little robot just did all that? It just it just ran out there in the night and it just cut that lawn and all the lines are perfect. It just did that. And he's like, Yep. And you could get one and it could do it for you too. And I was like, yep, gonna have to figure that out. Now I had to wait like a whole year before it went on sale, but when it did, I got a robot mower. And now I'm in the process of figuring out exactly how you use one. Bottom line, when we encounter something that is rad, we tell other people about said rad thing, especially people we like. Because if we find out that something is cool, well, I don't know, probably selfishly, we a little bit want the credit from being like, I found something cool, I found it, I'm the one who found it. And now I want I want you to see it, both for your benefit, but also like I wouldn't hate if you acknowledge that I was the one who found the thing that was cool. Also, I think that celebrating cool things is just way more fun with other people. It's not that much fun to sit and look at your own yard and be like, good job, robot. The robot's inanimate, it's not fun to hang out with, it's fun to show somebody else and think about it and talk about it and shoot the breeze. But also, just when you care about other people, you want good things for them. And when you're amazed by something, you want especially to share those good things. And well, what we're talking about in John chapter one is it's better than a robot mower. Don't get me wrong, the robot mower is really cool. You're gonna like that episode. We brought in a robot mower expert, it's gonna be fun. I don't know when it comes out, but it's gonna come out soon. You're probably gonna like it. But this is better. This is Jesus. Jesus is is better than robot mowers. Uh, it's not close, in my opinion. This is what we got going on. We're in John 1:35. John the Baptist is crossfading out and crossfading into Jesus. John is decreasing, Jesus is increasing. And yesterday we looked at the first, like the headwaters of Christianity, the little trickle that eventually turns into the metaphorical mighty muddy Mississippi. Then did the first disciples respond to Jesus, and it looks like that response is something that clicks for them at first just from a nudge. But then in phase two, it looks like they gain some kind of understanding of the big picture of everything, and it causes them to believe that Jesus might be the one, he might be the Messiah. So here's the passage. 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? They said, Rabbi, which means teacher, where are you staying? Come, he replied, and you'll see. So they went and saw where he was staying and spent that day with him. It was about the tenth hour. It's kind of interesting. The come and you will see, is he saying, Come and you will see where I am staying? Look, it's a hut with sticks and like a blanket. Behold, hut or more likely, I is that better understood as having a cool double meaning, like, come and you will see, you know, because there's that imagery throughout the whole Bible, but especially throughout the stuff surrounding Jesus and Jesus' life and miracles. There's that whole theme of God opening people's eyes to be able to see. So, you know, this whole exchange, what do you want? Well, come and you will see. It's kind of it's Jesus' first words in John, as we've discussed. It feels like it's an invitation, a beckoning for you and me as readers as well. Well, these first two disciples, they bite and they get to wherever they're going, or maybe this whole thing takes place around 4 p.m., the 10th hour. And what happens? Well, it looks like Jesus spells it out for them at least a little bit, kind of, you know, maybe a fraction of what he spells out at the end of Luke a few pages earlier about who he is and how the scriptures point to him. But whatever he tells them, and the author of John, John the Evangelist, he doesn't tell us what Jesus did or said, which is pretty wild that there's no, like, then Jesus did some miracles for the two disciples, and he was like, You're gonna be my first two disciples. This is very exciting. Here's proof of concept. I think if we put no, there's nothing like that. There's not even a lot of clarity as to exactly what was taught, or you know, what Jesus did with like the scriptures or whatever. I mean, they they viewed him as a rabbi, which is a very high honor, so they held him in esteem from the get-go. But there's a lot of real estate between rabbi, though there were a lot of those running around, and Messiah. Yet that's what they're about to call him. Here's how the story unfolds. Verse 40. Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, was one of the two who heard what John the Baptist had said and who had followed Jesus. The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, We found the Messiah, that is, the Christ. And he brought him, that is, Andrew brought Simon Peter to Jesus. Okay, so maybe it was enough that John the Baptist said, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. On what are we saying that was on Wednesday? Maybe that was enough for Andrew to be like, that's it. But Andrew didn't follow Jesus on Wednesday, or you know, what we're pretending is Wednesday. But then the next day, John says it again, look, the Lamb of God. Maybe that was enough, and Andrew had just had time to think about it. Maybe there was something about the countenance and mystique of Jesus that was enough. But my theory is that it was those two things coupled with whatever the heck Jesus said to them when they went and saw where Jesus was staying, when they they went the tenth hour and Jesus explained some stuff. I think that is when it clicked for Andrew. I think that's when he really saw the awesome thing and was like, I know exactly who I need to tell about this. Now think about this. You have somebody who you just gotta tell when stuff happens, right? Picture them right now. Who is the first person who comes to mind? Let's say something amazing happened to you, like this giant tension or unfolding narrative in your life that's been going on and like the resolution comes. Or let's say just some random, amazing, lucky, blessing thing falls upon you, or whatever it is. You know who you're gonna call. You know who the first call is gonna be, and you probably know who the second, third, fourth, fifth call is going to be because we all have something awesome just happened, speed dial people in our lives. I love that for Andrew, it was his brother. Don't go feeling all sorry for me or anything here. I'm just I'm shooting straight with you about how I feel about things. I hate that I don't have one of those anymore. I had a brother growing up, and then I lost him in an accident, and he is still who I think of when cool things happen. Like I want to call Mark. Yeah, that's right. I mean, it's kind of on the nose, isn't it? I'm Matthew, he's Mark. Uh I mean, I don't know what would have happened if we'd had two more brothers, but yeah, that's right. Matthew and Mark. And I loved checking in with him about stuff. He loved checking in with me about stuff. We loved sharing wins. And at this point in my life, I don't get to do that. I'm grateful for the other people who've stepped in and been brothers to me, but man, I miss my kid brother. So I got a soft spot for these guys in this scene. I love that Andrew is like, I gotta tell my brother. So Andrew goes and confidently says to his, I mean, there's such a huge risk here that he's gonna look like an idiot if he's wrong. It's such a huge claim. Hey, Simon, we found the messiah. I'm sorry, what now? We found the messiah. I'm sorry, what now? We found the messiah! You gotta see him. He's right. Let me introduce you to him. I just think about that. Uh okay, picture if you're lucky enough to have a sibling. Picture the person who you and your sibling both wildly admire. You know, in my family right now with my kids, it would be Nikola Jokic. I just love that guy. I think he's great. He's a basketball player. If you don't know he is, it's fine. But he's a Christian brother who plays basketball in a really cool, interesting way. He is not self-aggrandizing, he doesn't do social media. I just like the way he does things. He's somebody I really look up to right now, right? If if I just ran into Nikola Jokic, I would be itching to call my kids over and be like, uh, hey, check it out. Uh look who it is. What the heck? It'd be the most fun thing ever. But also, he's just he's just a basketball player, right? I mean, that's cool and everything, but he's just a basketball player. The Messiah, this is the centerpiece of God's redemptive plan. This is the one who is to defeat the curse that was instituted all the way back in the garden at the beginning of the Old Testament. This is the one. This is the point. And Andrew is speed dialing his brother Peter and being like, hey, you know how like there's a messiah and he's the point? Yeah. I met him. He said it'd be cool if I introduced you. Now at this point in the story, you and I don't get all the data to fill in the gaps. But from a purely structural narrative perspective, we have enough to know Andrew is right. Andrew is on the money and he's not leading his brother astray because we've got the prologue, the hindsight prologue, the 10 bajillion foot view prologue of verses one through 18. Now we've pinch zoomed back in to a much smaller story, a more human story, and we're just seeing this Jesus who is alluded to in the prologue moving through the crowd. Then we get just a couple of lines from him. Then the characters go off screen and we don't hear exactly what was said. But we come back up from black into the next scene, and we we learn about how amazing whatever was said was simply by the countenance of Andrew, and surely the other disciple of the two who first followed Jesus here, who doesn't name himself, is John. The countenance of Andrew and John, their action, their confidence to take this huge bold swing and call their speed dial friend and be like, we found him. It's the Messiah. Are you kidding? You have to come meet him. That tells us enough. That's enough of a hint, that's enough of a tease about what was said to very much so get our attention. And we'll look at how that introduction goes next time around. Um Matt, this is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again.