Come and See | Life in the Spirit Week 4

All right, let's dive into the word today. If you have your Bibles, you can go over to the book of John. Chapter 1 is where I'm going to be in just a moment. There was a teenage boy growing up on a dairy farm, living what appeared to be a very ordinary life. Nothing about him seemed influential or suggested any sort of influence or prominence or there was nothing extraordinary about this boy. He wasn't known as anything yet. He wasn't widely recognized for any sort of spiritual maturity. He was just a farm kid moving through the routine of his daily life. He was unnoticed by the world. No crowds, no platform, no indication that history was quietly forming beneath the surface. On that farm worked another man. There was another man that worked on this farm. His name was Albert McMakin. He was not a minister. He was not a public figure. He was an ordinary worker on an ordinary farm. And at some point extended a simple invitation to this teenage boy. There was nothing dramatic about it. There was no spectacle, no sense that anything historic was unfolding. It was simply an invitation to a young boy to go to a meeting under a tent to listen to a speaker. And the boy agreed to go. And on one fall evening of 1934,

this young man sat and listened to a preacher named Mordecai Ham. And Mordecai Ham spoke about Jesus and something stirred within this young boy's heart and something awakened, something shifted. And that same boy would go on to carry the gospel into more than 185 countries. And he would preach to live audiences of over 200 million people. His voice would travel through radio and television broadcast to billions of people across the earth. By commonly cited estimates, millions upon millions of people came to know Jesus because of the gospel message. And it was just this young boy from a dairy farm who walked forward in a meeting in an unremarkable time, in an unremarkable moment, whose name would eventually become known around the world as Billy Graham. While Billy Graham became one of the most recognized evangelists in modern history, the man whose invitation helped set that night in motion remains largely unknown, Albert McMacon. His name rarely appears in conversations about global ministry, yet his role is inseparably connected to one of the most far-reaching gospel ministries in the last century. The trajectory of Billy Graham's life was not launched from any platform.

It was not launched by strategy. It was not launched by some spotlight, but a simple invitation from an ordinary worker on a farm to a young boy to go to a meeting and encounter the living God. And we live in a world of unprecedented platforms. Voices can be spoken. I could be speaking right now, and somebody on the other side of the world could hear what I'm saying right now. Platforms are much different. But despite all of the modern advancements, the primary way that the gospel moves has never changed. It's never changed. From the very early days of Jesus's ministry, which we'll read about in just a moment, the gospel message has started and radically shifted and changed the world and gone all around the world by a simple invitation from one person to another. A simple invitation of somebody saying a version of what we'll read in just a moment in the scriptures, and it's the title of the message today, is just this, three words, come and see. Come and see. If you have your Bibles in 1 John chapter one, in verse 35, this is the beginning of Jesus's public ministry, and this is what it says. It says, again, the next day, John, this is John the Baptist, was standing with two of his disciples.

And he looked at Jesus as he walked, and John said, behold, the Lamb of God. And the two disciples that were John's heard him speak, and they followed Jesus. So they left John and followed Jesus. And Jesus turned to them and saw them following and said to them, what are you seeking? And they said to him, Rabbi, which is translated to mean teacher, where are you staying? And 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, for it was about the 10th hour. One of the two who heard John speak and followed him, him being Jesus, was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. He found first his own brother Simon and said to him, we have found the Messiah, which translated means Christ. He brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, you are Simon, the son of John, and you shall be called Cephas, which is translated Peter. The next day, he purposed to go to Galilee and he found Philip. And Jesus said to him, follow me. Now, Philip was from Bethsaida, of the city of Andrew and Peter, and Philip found Nathanael and said to him, we have found him, of whom Moses is in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth,

the son of Joseph. And Nathanael said to him, can any good thing come out of Nazareth? And Philip said to him, come and see. And Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him and said to him, behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit. And Nathanael said to him, how do you know me? Jesus answered and said to him, before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you. And Nathanael answered him, rabbi, you are the son of God. You are the king of Israel. One more text I wanna read for you. If you flip a couple of more pages over to your right into chapter seven, John chapter seven, I wanna read a passage of scripture to you because you may be saying, John, we're in a season called life and the spirit. And I already see where you're going with this, John. It's about sharing my faith. It's about sharing the gospel. It's about inviting people to church. What does that have to do with life and the spirit? In John chapter seven, verse 37, it says, now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out saying, if anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. And he who believes in me, as the scripture said, from his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.

But this, he spoke of the spirit whom those who believed in him were to receive for the spirit was not yet given because Jesus had not yet been glorified. So he uses this reference and he says, if you believe, those of you, Jesus is saying, if you believe in me, something is going to happen. Something on the inside of you. It says, from your inmost being, rivers of living water are going to, he uses a very important word, flow. Rivers are going to flow from your innermost being out of you. And then it says, of this, he was referring to the spirit. When you come to know Jesus, something happens and a river forms and it begins to flow out of us. It gives us this example. And so you know me, you listen to me preach, anytime the sermon, anytime the Bible gives us something where it says something is like something else, that's referred to as a simile. It means it's similar to this. So Jesus is giving us an example of when you believe in me, something will happen in you and it's going to be like a river, like a river. So anytime you see that in scripture, you should pause and look at the simile and be like, okay, if he's saying it's like a lion or like a tree or like fruit or like a river,

I need to study and look at what it means to be that thing. Because the river will tell us a couple of things. We know that rivers have a source. Rivers don't come from themselves. Rivers have a source. So it's saying when you come to know Jesus, you are going to get a new source. The Holy Spirit is going to come and rest in you and be on you and be in you. And it's going to create a river that flows out of you. Rivers, another thing about rivers is rivers cut through obstacles. If you've ever been to the Grand Canyon, you see the power of a river. And rivers have the ability to cut through rock and carve out mountains and all of these sorts of things. And so the Spirit has the ability to move on us in such a way that we can move through obstacles. Rivers also, rivers make noise. Have you ever seen a silent river? And all of these similes give us a picture of what it looks like when I receive Jesus. Something should happen. Something should flow from me. Something from my innermost being cannot be contained. It's like a river that flows out of me and it has a source and it's the Spirit. And it can overcome obstacles and it can move mountains and it should make noise. There should be something in me

that I'm incapable of remaining silent. because of what I've experienced. And we see this happening in this text in John chapter one that I briefly want to unpack. If you've ever been around some friends lately and especially on the onslaught of subscription Netflix and Prime and you know, movies have shifted, right? Very rarely do we go to theaters anymore because there's episodes. There's episode one and episode two and season one and season two and season three. And we get addicted to these shows. I know Michelle and I do, we have shows that we just want to binge watch. And if you ever get with friends and somebody says, what have you been watching lately? Watch out. Because everybody in the room is like, oh my gosh, you have to watch this show. You have to watch this show. You gotta watch it. It's unbelievable, right? Whether it's Chosen or House of David or that show that you know you shouldn't watch but you do anyways, right? It's like that. It's so binge worthy, I can't stop. And we watch these shows and you see this like element happen where rivers of something flow out of someone and they're like,

I have to tell you about this show. It's unbelievable. Or you go to a restaurant and it's so good you have to tell everybody about it. Like everybody has a favorite restaurant. Come on, let's do it right now. Everybody on the count of three, everybody shout out at all of our campuses, shout out your favorite restaurant. Ready? Are you gonna do it? One, two, three. It's good. And then we could sit here for an hour and argue about why yours is bad and mine's better. Why? Because you've experienced something that really impacted you. Something you saw with your eyes or tasted with your tongue. And we are so compelled by it that we want others, listen to me, we want others to experience what we have experienced. But yet sometimes when it comes to Jesus, why do we not have the same excitement? That there should be something, a river, as it says, that from my innermost being flows out of me and it makes noise and there's something about it that wants to be shared and wants to be impactful.

And so week one, R.T. Kendall talked about the sensitivity of the Spirit. Week two, I talked about what grieves the Holy Spirit. We need to find out what grieves the Holy Spirit and stop doing that. Last week, we talked about fruit. We talked about if I'm walking by the Spirit, then I have to be careful who I allow to walk with me because their fruit is going to impact my harvest. This week, I want to talk to you about finding our flow. Like, I'm talking not at you, I'm here with you. I find that as a pastor, I find that it's very easy for me to spend all of my time with Christians. And before you know it, I wake up and I'm like, I need to tell somebody about Jesus. And I had one of the most impactful things happen to me not too long ago, I won't go too deep into it, but I had a pastor friend of mine from St. Louis call me and said, hey, there's a guy in the hospital near you. Would you mind going to see him? I'm like, who is it? He's like, well, it's a friend of a friend of a friend, but he tried to commit suicide for the fourth time. Could one of your pastors just go to the hospital and see him? And I hang up and I'm like, sure, sure. I hang up and I'm thinking to myself, which one of my pastors could I send? And the Holy Spirit just tells me not audibly, louder than audibly, this one's for you, buddy.

So I go, he's a vet, he's a vet, he has PTSD. He's tried to, this is his fourth time trying to commit suicide. I sit there for two hours. I can tell he does not want me to be there. He is not happy that I'm there. Guys, I sit there for almost two hours. I talked to him. By the end of that meeting, I had led him to Jesus and he now attends the Gravine Campus. He now attends the Gravine Campus. And I, man, I walked to my car in that hospital parking lot and I shut my door and I bawled like a baby. Because every week I stand on this platform and lead people to Jesus, but I couldn't remember the last time I did it off this platform. There are so many lost and hurting people all around you, all around you. And we come to church and come back next week and we'll continue that pattern. We come to church and we want a word. We need an encouragement. We want worship to be impactful. We want the sermon to speak to me and to change me. And I hope they do. And that's amazing. But today my prayer is that we don't necessarily get a word for ourselves today.

We get inspired to go and share with someone else. We're so inspired. Listen, you know. Sometimes I'll have you raise your hand if you need to give your life to Jesus. We're gonna do the opposite right now. If you have given your life to Jesus and he's changed your life, will you raise your hand, raise your hand? All over the room, raise your hand. All of our campuses, raise your hand. Okay, put your hand down. Why wouldn't we tell people to come and see, come and experience what I've experienced? Why would I get more excited about a Netflix special than I would about the life-altering, eternity-changing power of the gospel message? Amen? Amen, we can give a hand clap or be mad at me, that's fine too. So a couple quick things that I see in this text and then we'll just, we're gonna pause and we're gonna go through an exercise and do a little bit of worship and prayer. First thing I see in this message, you just, you see a rhythm. In John chapter one, in verse 41, it says, Andrew went and found Peter. And then it says, Jesus found Philip. And then it says, Philip found Nathanael.

So there was this first step in this process was finding. And if you're taking notes, just write that down. Oh, in fact, open your Bible to John chapter one and write in your Bible and just write the word find. Circle where it says the word found, if your translation says that, and circle those. Because the first step in inviting someone to follow Jesus or inviting them to church is you gotta find them. You gotta seek them out. You gotta ask the Lord to put people on your heart, right? And so there's this first step, you see this, and this word found in the Greek is the Greek word horesco or horisco. It means to detect, to acquire, to obtain, to win, and to gain. And so part of this process, we're gonna go into the next couple of weeks. We have Easter coming up, right? Easter coming up very quickly. And so we're gonna begin to pray as a church and we're gonna ask the Lord to put people on our hearts that we need to invite to church, okay? And it doesn't mean you can't lead them to the Lord before they come to church, that would be even better. But we're gonna ask the Lord to help us find, we're going to seek and we're going to find people in our lives, whether they're in the cubicle next to us, whether they're the neighbor next to us. Sometimes I'm guilty of coming home,

opening my garage door from my clicker, pulling in my garage and close the garage door from my clicker and the garage door just closes down. Do we know our neighbors? Do we know them by name? Well, I know this guy and this guy, but I don't know that guy. Well, let's get to know that guy. Let's find, let's seek, let's seek and find the lost. The second thing you see in this text is after they found, it says, Andrew found, Philip found. The next thing you see is in this particular text, it says, Andrew found his brother. Jesus found Philip. Philip found Nathaniel. And they all said a version of this. Come and see, come and see. So we find, and then we give a simple invitation. We've all heard of Billy Graham. We've never heard of Albert McMacon, but without Albert McMacon, there would be no Billy Graham. And we never need to lose sight. Now God could have worked a way and I'm sure God has a way. He's sovereign, but listen, God wants, isn't it cool that God wants to use us? God wants to use us to impact people's lives. And we will never know the impact that we can have with a simple, and I do mean a simple invitation. Simple invitation. The smile, the greeting, the thing that you do,

and then all leading up to this moment was, hey man, you ever thought about going to church? You wanna go to church? This particular guy that I told you about a while ago, we started talking about church. That was the way in. I said, man, have you been to church? He said, yeah, the church. He said, church isn't for me. I'm not going to church. I'll never go to church. I said, well, you have kids, right? He goes, yeah, I would consider taking my kids to church. And I go, okay, I'm confused. I said, just curiosity, man. Like why would you think it's important for your kids, but not important for you? And a tear went down his face right as I said those words and it hit me, the Holy Spirit just, it did hit me. And so I said to him, oh, you don't think you're worthy. You think your past disqualifies you from going to church. Waterworks. So you just never know a quick, simple, so simple invitation that could radically change someone's life. He has given his life to Jesus. Him and his wife are in church almost every single weekend. They're now bringing their kids to V Kids every weekend. And I believe that's generational. Generational impact.

Through a very, very simple invitation. This is a pattern, right? You see this just in John four. Just a couple of chapters later, John meets the Samaritan woman at the well. Remember this part? And similar conversation about water. They're talking about getting water out of the well and Jesus tells her, if you drink the water that I offer, you'll never thirst again. And she's like, where can I find this water? And then they start talking about this supposed Messiah and Jesus tells her, the one that you're talking about, that's me. And the Bible says that she ran back to her town and told the whole town, come and see a man who told me everything about my life. It's all really the gospel message. You sharing the gospel, it's so simple. All you're saying really is just come and see. Come and see. So a couple of things to just disarm any fears or hesitations you may have. Okay, first one, we do not control the outcome. Everyone just take a deep breath. It's not like if you invite them and they don't come, and God's ashamed of you and shame on you, you failed. You don't control the outcome. You don't get to control it.

Paul said, I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but it was God that made it grow. So your only job is to throw out the seed, to throw out the seed. And you never know the smallest thing you do might plant a seed. Michelle and I love this podcast. We listen to it sometimes, shameless plug. It's called the Jesus People Podcast. And this guy will have on some of the craziest guests, former Satanists, former witches. And it's just, it's really deep spiritual stuff. It's powerful. He had this one guest on one time that used to be the head of the Church of Satan for South Africa. And this guy had given his life to Jesus, had profound faith on fire for the Lord. And he told the story of how he came to know Jesus. And he was in a radio studio, and he had done this interview. And this lady, he's like, I avoided people at all costs. I don't want any people getting close to me at all. And he said, this lady just came running across the studio when I got up to leave. And before I could stiff arm her and Heisman trophy her, like she just wrapped her arms around me and hugged me. And he said, I have never felt anything like that in my life, just from a hug. And then he fast forwards,

he's doing a satanic ritual in his church. He's by himself, he's gonna do all this ritualistic stuff. And he tells the story about his encounter where the whole room lights up brighter than he could imagine. And in walks a man. And the man says, I'm Jesus. And he says, the reason I knew that it was Jesus is because the love that I felt in that moment was the exact same way I felt when that lady hugged me in the radio studio. Just a simple hug. All she did was hug someone, but it was a seed. It was a seed that later burst forth into a harvest. So don't minimize what you're capable of doing. Don't minimize the impact that you could have on somebody's life. So those things are out of our control. Secondly, we do not have to convince them. You don't have to be a theological expert and be ready to defend your faith with the apologetics. Like you don't have to do that. Look what happened. In this story, Philip goes to Nathanael and all he says, this is all he says, come and see. Come and see. It's like, hey, you come and see for yourself. I'm not here to convince you. I'm not here to manipulate you. I'm not gonna control you.

Just come and see, man. And then you see, you choose for yourself. It was as simple as that. And there's patterns in scripture that would back this up in Romans two. In Romans two, it says that it's the kindness of God that leads us to repentance. It doesn't say it's the eloquence of your words. It doesn't say it's your theological understanding. It doesn't say if you have memorized the right amount of scripture, then you can lead someone to Jesus. It is the kindness of God that leads us to repentance. Jesus said in John 16, when the Holy Spirit comes, he will convict the world. You don't have to do that. Let the Holy Spirit do his job. In John 16, it says, Jesus says, no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. So just know that before you ever utter a word to say, come and see, the Holy Spirit's already been doing a work, okay? But it's out of your control, and you don't have to convince him. The third thing I love in this is that the invitation preceded the miracles. So in this text that we just read, Jesus hadn't done anything yet, by the way. If you go to the very next chapter in John 2,

it says that Jesus turns the water into wine. That's his very first miracle. It's where he started his ministry, okay? So these people were coming to meet Jesus, and they were seeing him, They were giving their lives to him without any grandiose, miraculous, crazy things. It was just the power of Jesus. It was the power of his presence. It was the power of the gospel. And so when we invite someone to church, when we invite somebody to know Jesus, it doesn't have to be on some grandiose event. It doesn't have to, there doesn't have to be a show. There doesn't have to be a track record. It's just the purity of the gospel message being delivered. Okay, and last but not least, what I love about this passage the most is in verse 48. It says, Nathanael, when Philip tells Nathanael about Jesus and tells him that he's the Messiah, Nathanael is skeptical. He's very skeptical. In fact, he says, how could anything good come out of Nazareth? He's more than skeptical, he's mocking. He's mocking Jesus. And some of the people that you would need to invite to Jesus are skeptical too. They're gonna be very skeptical, okay? But again, we're just throwing the seed out.

You're just Albert McMacon. You're gonna make the invitation and whether they choose to do it is on them. And you may be one seed that gets watered three years from now. You just never know. But we have to throw the seed out. And so the last point is this, is before you invite them, Jesus saw them. Because this is what Jesus tells Nathanael. Nathanael's skeptical. Philip says, hey, just come and see, man. Just come and see. And when Nathanael meets Jesus, Jesus sees him and says, there's Nathanael, calls him out. And then he tells him before, it literally says, before Philip talked to you, before he invited you, I saw you. I saw you. This prophetic moment, right? A word of knowledge. We're saying, I saw you under the fig tree. And it was the word of knowledge that gave him the ability to say, oh my gosh, it is the Messiah. So we're gonna write some names down in just a minute. We're gonna pray over them. And for the next several weeks as a church, we're gonna pray over these names that you write down.

And what we're gonna believe is that before you ever go to them, before you ever invite them, before you ever say a word, you need to know Jesus saw them before you ever got to them. So we're gonna, in the seat back in front of you at all the campuses, there's a card like this. Just reach forward and grab it, all right? At all of our campuses, you're gonna see a card like this. On that card, it says, come and seek. On the back, it has three blanks, okay? And we're gonna take about 60 seconds here in just a moment. And we're just gonna have a moment of silence. There'll be some keys playing. And we're just gonna ask the Holy Spirit to tell us names that he wants us to seek out and to invite. Now, it may be inviting them to church. You may lead them to Jesus yourself. You may do that. You need to have the ability to lead somebody to Jesus. You can always invite them to church and we got your back too. But don't be afraid to lead them to Jesus yourself. But we're gonna write down names. And if no names come to you, that's okay. Don't feel any shame of that.

But we're gonna shift our prayers in the coming weeks to say, Lord, give me divine moments, divine encounters with the right people. You may be walking down aisle seven at the grocery store next week. And somebody is sitting there picking a potato off the aisle, weeping. And instead of like awkwardly pushing your cart by them, you're gonna stop and just be like, what's going on? Can I pray for you? You just never know, guys, the impact we can have on people. That's my challenge to us for the coming weeks. And so what we're gonna do is we're gonna write our names, as you'll see, we're gonna write our names down. As you'll see on the back of that. And then there's a perf, it just perfs right off, okay? And then these are some scriptures you can take home. If you want to, you can write the names on the, if you're forgetful, you can write those names on the back so you can take them home too and remember their names and pray over them every morning. We as a staff are gonna collect these. We're gonna pray as a staff. We're gonna pray over these until Easter, okay? Every single week, we're gonna pray for these. We're gonna pray for them. And what I like to say sometimes is, before you ever get there to sow the seed, we're gonna ask the Holy Spirit to get there before you

and carpet bomb their heart to soften their heart a little bit, you know? So we're gonna be praying and believing that when you ask them, there's gonna be soft hearts. Soft hearts. We did this last year, y'all. We did this last year before Easter. And we had several people come to church and give their life to Jesus because you invited them, because you invited them. And never, never minimize, never minimize the impact you can have generationally on someone's life because you invited them to church or because you led them to Jesus yourself. So let's just take a few minutes right now. I'm gonna pray, and we're gonna pause for about 60 seconds. And I just want you to prayerfully consider names that might pop out, and we're gonna ask the Lord. to send us people, send us people that need to know Jesus and need to be invited to church. And then we're gonna go back into worship after that. So the worship team will come forward after about 60 seconds. And then when you get done writing your names, just stand and we're gonna worship and we'll pray and then we'll go home, all right? Let's pray today. Lord, we thank you so much for the life change that you have done in our lives. We could sit here for years

and listen to one another's testimony about the goodness of God, how good you have been, how faithful you have been to us, your children. Why wouldn't we want to tell other people about you? We want others to experience the goodness that we have experienced. We want others to be free from shame and condemnation of their sin. We want others to spend eternity in heaven with us. So Father, I pray that your Holy Spirit would speak and give us names and give us courage. If it's courage we lack, give us courage, Lord. If it's words we lack, give us words, Lord. Moses didn't have words. He was a stutterer and you still used him. If it's words we lack, give us courage, give us wisdom, give us words. And God, may people's lives be transformed and touched forever because of this moment, because of this moment. Lead us and guide us towards those people that need to be found. And may we simply say, come and see. In Jesus' name, amen. We're so grateful that you joined us today. At Victory, we pray big prayers to a big God and we expect big results. If you would like to receive prayer, you can submit a prayer request by visiting victory.church slash pray.

If this message or any of our messages have impacted your life and you would like to partner with us through giving, you can do so at victory.church slash give. Thank you again for joining us. At Victory Church, we live life to the full.