John 1:35-51; Mt. 4:18-22 January 22, 2023

If you are excited about something, you want someone else to get excited about it too. Think about what excites you about Hunting Ridge Presbyterian. Do you find a way to share that excitement with someone else? Sharing excitement was happening in the first chapter of John which we heard this morning. Jesus was in town; things were happening, and the word was getting out.
As we read John’s description of the calling of the first four disciples, we keep hearing “Come and see.” When someone says to you, “come and see”, they have something that is very important to them that they want to share. When two of John’s disciples hear John describe Jesus as “the Lamb of God”, they may not really be clear on what he means by that, but they know enough to pick up that John is showing them who to follow. The two of them follow Jesus and want to know where he is staying, what he is up to, who he is with. Jesus says “come and see”. It seems clear that he has something going on that they need to see for themselves. One of them, Andrew, must have essentially said the same thing to his brother, Simon. “Come and see who we have found—it is the Messiah.” So, Simon comes and sees for himself. Jesus seems to already know him, and gives him a new name, Peter, which means ‘the rock’. Jesus heads for Galilee, the region where Bethsaida is found, which is the hometown of Andrew and Peter. There Jesus finds Philip, a neighbor of Andrew and Peter. He tells him: “follow me”. I think we could see the invitation to follow as saying to Philip: “come and see what is going to happen, how you will change, how the world will change when you follow me, or accompany me on this adventure”. Philip then says the same thing to Nathaniel, who was skeptical that anything good could come out of Nazareth—“Come and see. This is the one Moses wrote about, the one the prophets told us would come. He is Jesus!”
Continue reading “Following Jesus is Commitment”