Come and See

[00:00:03] [SPEAKER_01] Welcome to Gospel in Life. Where do you turn when you're searching for spiritual truth? Some approaches to spiritual searching look to traditional religion or morality, while others tell us that the answers lie within ourselves. The Gospel offers something completely different. It points us to a relationship with the person of Jesus Christ. Today on the podcast, Tim Keller explores Jesus' own statements about Himself and shows how our search for truth can only be satisfied when we understand who He really is.

[00:00:39] [SPEAKER_00] John chapter 1, verses 35 to 51. The next day, John was there again with two of his disciples, and 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 in following and asked, What do you want? They said, Rabbi, which means teacher, where are you staying?

[00:01:09] [SPEAKER_00] Come, he replied, and you will see. So they went and saw where he was staying and spent that day with him. It was about the tenth hour. Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, was one of the two who heard what John had said and who had followed Jesus.

[00:01:23] [SPEAKER_00] The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and told him, We have found the Messiah, that is, the Christ. And he brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, You are Simon, son of John. You shall be called Cephas, which, when translated, is Peter. The next day, Jesus decided to leave for Galilee. Finding Philip, he said to him, Follow me.

[00:01:51] [SPEAKER_00] Philip, like Andrew and Peter, was from the town of Bethsaida. Philip found Nathanael and told him, We have found the one Moses wrote about in the law, about whom the prophets also wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. Nazareth, can anything good come from there? Nathanael asked. Come and see, said Philip. And when Jesus saw Nathanael approaching, he said of him, Here is a true Israelite in whom there is nothing false.

[00:02:21] [SPEAKER_00] How do you know me? Nathanael asked Jesus. Jesus answered, I saw you while you were still under the fig tree, before Philip called you. Then Nathanael declared, Rabbi, you are the son of God. You are the king of Israel. Jesus said, You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You shall see greater things than that.

[00:02:47] [SPEAKER_00] He then added, I tell you the truth. You shall see heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending on the son of man. This is God's word. Recently, probably the leading sociologist of religion, I guess you could call him, maybe the leading sociologist who studies religion in America, Robert Wuthnow at Princeton University put out a new book called After Heaven.

[00:03:15] [SPEAKER_00] And the title is very telling, like all good titles are. And he, after much, much research, he says that the watchword of Americans today is to say, I'm spiritual, but I'm not religious. I am searching for spiritual reality, but I don't expect to find it in religious institutions or sets of dogmas.

[00:03:38] [SPEAKER_00] And what Wuthnow gets out here, gets at so well, is that Americans, on the one hand, have rejected the secular ideal. They are rejecting the idea. The secular science and reason alone can give us meaning in life or a life worth living. And they're getting very interested in the supernatural and in the eternal. But they will not go back to what they remember as traditional religion.

[00:04:06] [SPEAKER_00] They will not go back to oppressive, creativity-stifling, smug moralism. That's how they understand it. And so in a way, they say, ah, the new spirituality, not the old traditional religion. In this passage, we see the account of how Jesus Christ met his first disciples. And in this passage, we see something offered to us that is neither the new spirituality nor the old traditional religion.

[00:04:34] [SPEAKER_00] It's neither a sort of vague and general sense of spiritual well-being, nor is it a new set of rules. It's an encounter with a concrete but living person. And this account is chosen not just because it happened this way, but because there are patterns here. The gospel writer doesn't just give it to us because it happened, but because there's patterns here for all of us.

[00:04:58] [SPEAKER_00] If you want to find this spiritual reality through Jesus, and if you want to get this, that is something different. It bridges the gap. It offers us something different than either the new spirituality or the old traditional religion. It bridges the gap between spirituality and religion. We need to see what the key is. And the key is this repeated phrase, come and see.

[00:05:23] [SPEAKER_00] Jesus says in both the first part and the second part, we see the way into Jesus' come and see. What does that mean? That's what I want to talk to you about today. Let's look at it together. First of all, come and see means, let's look at it. It means come and think. Examine the evidence. First, it means come and think. Examine the evidence. Now, it gets that across a couple of ways. The first time come and see happens, where does it happen?

[00:05:51] [SPEAKER_00] The disciples basically are kind of nervous. They were just told he's this incredible person, so they follow. And what do you want? Well, what they want is they want to know if this is really true. But Jesus doesn't demand belief at the moment. He doesn't sit there and say, well, let me tell you who I am and demand obedience. He says, come and watch me. Come and get to know me. Come and see how I live. Come and see how I speak. Come and see what I do.

[00:06:19] [SPEAKER_00] And then, of course, the second time come and see comes up is when Philip comes to Nathanael. And Philip goes to his friend Nathanael and says, we found the Messiah. Now, Nathanael comes back with an extremely valid and difficult question. Everybody at that time knew that the Messiah would come out of Bethlehem, would come out of the line of David. And so he looks at Philip and he says, this is the Messiah. He's from Galilee. He's from Nazareth. How could he be the Messiah?

[00:06:49] [SPEAKER_00] Now, you see, this is a very valid question. And Philip says, what? How dare you question the Messiah? You know, or does he say, well, if you understand. He says, let's go find out. Come and see. Let's study it. Let's learn it. In other words, if you were modern day Nathanael, and I know a lot of you are, you wouldn't be asking that question.

[00:07:12] [SPEAKER_00] But you'd say, Christianity, how could there be a loving and merciful God when the world is the way it is with all the injustice? You'd ask questions like that. What does Jesus say to you? Let's not think for a minute about what the church says to you, because the church often gets it wrong. What does Jesus say to you? On the one hand, he does not say what the new spirituality says, which is, it doesn't matter what you believe, figure out what works for you. How convenient. No thinking necessary. No critical thinking. No assessment. Jesus doesn't do that.

[00:07:42] [SPEAKER_00] He says, come and think. But on the other hand, he does not say to you what very often traditional religion has said. And that is, don't question. Just believe what we're telling you. Because we told you. No. Jesus says, come and think. Now, how can we do that? That's the first thing this means. How different this is than either the spirituality, new spirituality or old religion. How can we do it? Because we say, well, great. Show me Jesus' apartment.

[00:08:12] [SPEAKER_00] I'll go check it out. But, you know, he doesn't have an apartment here. Back then, he did. But the gospel writer, the writer of this text, is writing to people who are in the very same boat as we are. Sure, he's writing to people who lived 2,000 years ago. But essentially, they're in the same boat. How can they go and look at Jesus? How can they listen to him? How can they look at the evidence of what he said and how he lived? And here's the answer. This writer tells us.

[00:08:38] [SPEAKER_00] And it's actually in this very interesting verse that, at first look, doesn't seem like much. It says, the next day, John was there. And when he saw Jesus passing by, he said, look. All through the first chapter of John. There's actually two things in here. All through the first chapter of John. This first chapter of this gospel. John the Baptist, five or six times, we're told he saw and he said. Now, sometimes it's translated said.

[00:09:08] [SPEAKER_00] Sometimes it's translated witness. Sometimes it's translated testify. It's a shame because it's the same Greek word. It happens over and over again, five or six times. And it's a word that means, I was actually there. I really saw this. And now my testimony is admissible evidence in court. The gospel writer over and over again uses words that are extremely concrete. John is not talking about an inward experience.

[00:09:35] [SPEAKER_00] John is not talking about an impression. John is saying, I'm seeing this. I'm seeing this. Not only that, but as you read all the way through every part of this passage, we see that it has the marks of an eyewitness account. For example, how long did they go to see Jesus? Well, it says they went and they saw where he was staying and they spent the day with him until the tenth hour. And the tenth hour was four o'clock.

[00:10:02] [SPEAKER_00] Reynolds Price, who is an English professor, pretty well-known one too. His books are always reviewed. Every new book of his is reviewed in the New York Times. And that means he's a pretty prominent person. He teaches English at Duke. And a couple of years ago, he put out a book called The Three Gospels, in which he looked at Mark and John. And he actually wrote his own version of a gospel. But in his introductions, he says something extremely interesting. He says, one thing you're going to have to remember is this. Modern fiction uses details.

[00:10:32] [SPEAKER_00] If you're going to read a modern novel, you could say, even though it's fiction, you could say he stayed till four o'clock. But his ancient fiction never used details. Epics, legends, myths, they never used details. You don't see Oedipus went to see the Oracle of Delphi and she came out around four. It doesn't say that. And what Reynolds Price says is what you have here with, even the very beginning of the passage, look, it says the next day. It doesn't say once upon a time.

[00:11:04] [SPEAKER_00] Price says, when you read this, you know what's being said. It says, he looks like a person. With signals that any reader of that day could have known. The technical language used whenever John the Baptist speaks. The details. This is John's way of saying, the writer's way of saying, this is an eyewitness account. This isn't a legend. This isn't something I heard. This isn't something that has sort of been embellished over the years. And the way you can hang out with Jesus is exactly the way we hung out with Jesus.

[00:11:34] [SPEAKER_00] I'm giving you an eyewitness account. I'm showing you exactly what he said. I'm showing you exactly what he did. So if you read my account, you will be able to come and see and examine the evidence exactly the way we did. Now, therefore, how can you come and see? How can you examine the evidence? Read the account of the Gospels. Now, how do we know if you've done that? Before we move on, how do we know? How can you know that you have, in a sustained way, read the evidence of who Jesus is?

[00:12:03] [SPEAKER_00] I'll tell you, the sign is you have been pushed to the extremes of credulity in the position you've come up with. In other words, if you really look at the evidence and you come to a conclusion, that conclusion will be at the utter extremes of credulity. You know why I'm saying that? Reynolds Price, in his book, he quotes a very famous quote by C.S. Lewis. In Reynolds Price's book, he quotes Lewis, and this is the quote.

[00:12:30] [SPEAKER_00] There are only two possible views of the Gospel accounts. Either this is reporting, as close to the facts as Boswell reporting on Samuel Johnson's life. Or else, some unknown writer in the second century, without any known predecessors or successors, suddenly anticipated the whole technique of modern novelistic, realistic narrative fiction. If these things didn't happen, the writer must have accomplished this. Or else, it's nothing but a fraud.

[00:12:59] [SPEAKER_00] The reader who doesn't see this has simply not learned how to read. Now, this is what he's saying. This is what Price is saying. This is what I'm saying. If you read these accounts, these accounts over and over and over again are saying, we saw this, we saw this, we saw this. This isn't a legend. This isn't, we saw this. Either you're going to have to come to the conclusion that a group of first century Jews who had been trained all their lives that human beings are not God came up with an incredibly elaborate, very conscious, and very deliberate system of lies,

[00:13:29] [SPEAKER_00] wrote it up and sent it out there, and then they went out into that world and they died for those lies and lived lives with such attractive power that the whole Roman world was overcome and swept. That old pagan world was swept by the power of their lives. So you either have to believe this was deliberate lies by people who died for those lies, or you have to believe that a human being was the creator God who came to earth to save us. But there's nothing in the middle you can come to. There's no conclusion in the middle that's warranted.

[00:13:59] [SPEAKER_00] If you say, well, well, what I believe is that Jesus is a good man, but you can't believe everything in the Bible because a lot of that stuff is legend. You can't take it literally anymore. That is intellectually lazy. It means you haven't read. It means you don't know what you're reading. You don't have to believe it to be a person of intellectual integrity, but you can't have that position. These are either fraudulent lies or else they're telling you the truth of what they saw. And that's the only way you know that you have come and seen,

[00:14:29] [SPEAKER_00] is if you have a position that frankly is extremely hard. It's very hard to believe that a human being would be God. And it's very hard to believe that this incredible movement and these incredible people who died for this consciously, deliberately told us lies about. They're both hard to believe. Very hard. You have to decide which one is easier for you to believe. But don't you dare stand in the middle. If you have, it means you haven't come and seen. Secondly, come and see does not just mean come and think, examine the evidence. Secondly,

[00:15:00] [SPEAKER_00] it means come and follow, change your life. The word come means I move from where I am to here, I make a change. The reason Jesus says come is because he wants them to follow. He doesn't just want them to believe. The text gets that across a couple ways, but here's the best one. If you read the whole chapter, you'll see that it's in John, pardon me, in chapter 1, verse 29, for the first time, John the Baptist says to his disciples, look, the Lamb of God.

[00:15:30] [SPEAKER_00] See, he says that in verse 29. Look, the Lamb of God. But it's not until verse 35 that he says it and they actually follow. And this is a way for us to see the difference. When John the Baptist told his disciples this is the Messiah, surely they believed. They were excited. They were thrilled. They joined the Jesus Christ fan club, but they weren't followers until this moment. Now that is exactly, actually, I'm going to use that. That's exactly

[00:15:59] [SPEAKER_00] the perfect illustration. Let's just say that you love the writings of John Doe. So you join the John Doe club. And every month people come together because you read John Doe's works. And you love them. And they've changed your life. They've helped you. They've enriched you. And so every month you get together and you read another book and it's really great. And maybe even one day John Doe comes to the club and speaks and everybody's so agog. We're just agog. And we go up and we shake his hand.

[00:16:29] [SPEAKER_00] But part of John Doe's life has touched part of your life. But let me ask, let me give you a different scenario. Let's just say you married John Doe. Things have changed now. John Doe's, not just part of his life on part of your life, but all of his life is now stretched out and in contact with all of your life. You know, many of us realize the day after we get married you suddenly realize you wake up the next morning if you want to go out and get a loaf of bread you've got to tell

[00:16:59] [SPEAKER_00] where you're going. You've got to tell John Doe I want to get a loaf of bread. I mean, that didn't used to be necessary. And that's the difference between being just a person who subscribes to beliefs, who says, oh, I like Jesus, I believe in Jesus, I'm trying to follow Jesus, and knowing Jesus personally and becoming a follower, a disciple. Now, how does that happen in your life? He actually tells you, but unfortunately this particular translation in the interest

[00:17:29] [SPEAKER_00] of being coherent for the reader kind of masks the answer. If you get down to verse 51 there's a great place where Jesus says, I tell you the truth. Now, you know what he really says in the, what the gospel writer tells us he really says is, he started off by saying, not I tell you the truth, literally he says, amen, amen. Now, that's actually the reason the translators don't say that is because that would be incomprehensible to us.

[00:17:58] [SPEAKER_00] But I'd like to unpack the significance of that. The word amen was an Aramaic word and it means this is true. And every commentator, every historian, everybody who knew ancient cultures knows that this is an absolutely and utterly unique usage of it. Not only is no one in the Old Testament ever do it, but in the New Testament nobody else dares to ever do it. Because the word amen, actually I have this from a commentator, one of the commentators puts it this way. He says, Jesus Christ's use of amen

[00:18:28] [SPEAKER_00] to introduce his own words is without analogy in all of Judaism and among any other New Testament writers. verse, amen was only used to affirm and approve and accredit the words of another. Like someone would be preaching in the synagogue, the elders would stand up and when they were all done they would say amen. Why? That was their way of saying we've checked out what this person says with our understanding of the scripture and it's true. And maybe all the people would say amen. But Jesus starts,

[00:18:57] [SPEAKER_00] Jesus starts his words with amen. In fact, he doesn't just say amen, he says amen, amen. Now in the old King James it's usually translated verily, verily. But you know, nobody gets it. I'm trying to help. Jesus says, I take away your right to decide whether or not what I'm saying is something you like. I take away your right to decide that something I am teaching you you're going to follow.

[00:19:26] [SPEAKER_00] You don't listen to me and say that makes sense, I'll do that, but that doesn't make sense, I won't. And of course, Jesus Christ made it even a lot harder for us because Jesus affirms the Bible. I mean, if you can go through and find the little red letters in the Bible where it says Jesus' words, you say okay, I'll follow Jesus' words. The trouble is, Jesus' words says the scriptures shall not be broken. Not a jot or tittle will pass away till all is fulfilled. You see. Everybody who wrote the New Testament was someone trained by Jesus. Either they wrote it

[00:19:56] [SPEAKER_00] or they provided the material for it. Everybody in the Old Testament, Jesus Christ already has already said you must listen and here's what this means. If you want to come and see and believe, investigate the evidence, all you've got to do is believe the Bible is reliable reporting. But if you want to be a disciple and if you want to know Jesus personally, you've got to be willing to listen to what the Word of God says whether you like it or not. Now the reason I put this out is, oh yes, you say gosh,

[00:20:26] [SPEAKER_00] preachers like to get to that. Isn't that traditional religion, that old impersonal religion that says you've got to believe it no matter what? Yeah, but it's not impersonal. Oh no. In fact, I beg you to think about this for a second. Personal following without an infallible Bible I think is impossible for this reason. If you read the words of Jesus or if you read the Bible and some things your heart says, that's great and some things your heart says, I can't believe that, that's primitive, that's outdated.

[00:20:55] [SPEAKER_00] When you're done, what kind of Jesus have you got? You've got the Jesus of your own heart's making. You think you're following Jesus but you're following your own heart under the guise of following Jesus. If you have a personal relationship in which that person, you say, I know that person but they never contradict you, they never cross your will, they never tell you something you hate, that person is not telling you who they really are, you don't know them or else they're using you or you're using them but it's not a personal relationship.

[00:21:24] [SPEAKER_00] And unless you've got a source of truth from Jesus that you say, I'm going to do this, I'm going to listen to this, I'm going to wrestle with this, I'm going to submit to this, even where I hate it, if you don't have that, you don't have a personal Jesus. I mean, look, you don't, I am not proving, am I? I am not proving that you've got to trust everything in the Bible. I'm proving this, that if you don't, you're actually only listening to yourself when you think you're listening to Jesus.

[00:21:54] [SPEAKER_00] You're actually only following your own heart when you think you're following him. This is how you follow him. Come and see. Change your life. Listen to me. Amen, amen, I say unto you. Thirdly, come and see means come and see. Think. Examine the evidence. Come and see means come and follow. Change your life. Thirdly, come and see, and this is brief, but this is fun. This is my,

[00:22:24] [SPEAKER_00] this is the fun point. Come and see means process this with friends.

[00:22:29] [SPEAKER_01] A lot of people think they know the Christmas story. A lot of people think

[00:22:46] [SPEAKER_01] they know the Christmas story. Request your copy of Hidden Christmas today when you give at gospelinlife.com slash give. That's gospelinlife.com slash give. Now, here's Tim Keller with the rest of today's teaching.

[00:23:15] [SPEAKER_00] You see, one of the things that's so interesting about this is that John the Baptist leads Andrew and the other person, whoever it is, to Jesus. Andrew leads his brother Peter to Jesus. Philip leads Nathaniel to Jesus. But you see, when Philip says let's come and see, what he says is let's go together. Let's go together. Let's figure this out. And so, what you really have here is a very important point. You know, there are exceptions. Of course there are exceptions, but the rule is, in general,

[00:23:45] [SPEAKER_00] the way to find Jesus like this, the way to really come and see Jesus, the way to really know him personally is almost always through a friend. You're not going to find Jesus unless you've already been found by a friend who's already found Jesus. Jesus. Let me be real, let me be real, real practical here. A lot of you have come to the Redeemer and plenty of you have come through friends, but a lot of you have not. This is one of the problems with a big church. You start to get word of mouth. People hear about it or you may read about it so you say you're going to come and wow,

[00:24:15] [SPEAKER_00] you're getting something out of it, but a friend didn't bring you. Let me give you a warning. 99 times out of 100, 9 times out of 10, something I don't know. You're not going to be able to really process what you're hearing here unless you get with some friends. If Christianity was a philosophy by which you saved yourself, then maybe the main way you would really come to Christ is through some great teacher. But since Christianity is an encounter with a person, the main way you'll see in the Bible over and over again that you really find Jesus is through friends.

[00:24:47] [SPEAKER_00] And if you don't have friends that are helping you to process, this is what's going to happen to you. It may already be happening to you. You go home every week feeling kind of inexplicably happy, but you don't really know how that really applies and you don't know how that really works in unless you have some friends a couple steps ahead of you spiritually and a couple friends right with you spiritually and a couple friends behind you spiritually, you can't come and see. I remember last year, I forget what it was, I was preaching at a weekday lunchtime service

[00:25:16] [SPEAKER_00] at St. Bartholomew's. And for some strange reason, I suppose one of the times in my whole life that there was a tremendous clarity, I remember, in the sermon and in the whole service, there was just this remarkable feeling and everybody knew it. Everybody said, wow. There was some clarity that came and there was some reality that came and when it was all done, I said goodbye and we prayed and most people got up but some people just sat there. I went by a woman who was sitting there kind of scared looking and I said, hi,

[00:25:46] [SPEAKER_00] I introduced and said, hi, are you okay? And she said, I can't leave. I said, why? She says, finally I understand. I think my life makes sense. I think God makes sense. I finally see it and I'm afraid if I leave here, I will go back into the shadows. I'm afraid I'm going to forget it. I'm afraid to leave. I think I understand when I go out there, everything's going to change. I know I'm going to lose it but when I talked to her, I came to realize she had no friends that were any further ahead on spiritually than she was.

[00:26:16] [SPEAKER_00] Now, what can we do about this? I'll tell you what we can do about this. If you're someone who needs a friend, we have a fast way, it's a formal way, it's not the only way but a fast way is get in a small group. Why do you think we say around here if you're not in a group, you're not in a church? After a period of time in a church like this, you will have a group even though it may not be a formal group where you're constantly helping each other as friends think through Jesus. And if you have that, you don't need a formal small group. But in the beginning, you almost always do.

[00:26:46] [SPEAKER_00] But let me just say a word for a second to those of you who don't so much need a friend to help you find Jesus, more of Jesus. Some of you have an awful lot to offer and you're not finding anybody for Jesus. And if you want to know how you can finally be effective and really be helpful to people, look at the text. There's three things we see here. Number one, patience. John the Baptist says, look, the Lamb of God, look, the Lamb of God, look, the Lamb of God. Finally, they follow Jesus.

[00:27:16] [SPEAKER_00] You've got to be patient. Who knows how many times you have to say, look. Secondly, courage. I think what happens to Philip is probably the reason that most of us are so ineffective in being friends to other people for Jesus. Philip says, we found the Messiah and here's it. This is the nightmare. Isn't this the reason why we're all such chickens? Nathaniel asks him a question that, oh no, it's a good question and number two, I have no idea what the answer is.

[00:27:46] [SPEAKER_00] Bad questions, you can always say, that's not honest. But there's so many good questions. There's great questions. There's tremendous reasons not to believe. Great reasons not to believe. And he's going to get asked a question that he doesn't know the answer to. Isn't that what we're afraid of? Now, how do you get good at answering those questions? I'll tell you. You have to practice by floundering and blowing it for years. And unless you're willing, unless you have the courage, unless you have the guts to do that, you're never going to be effective.

[00:28:16] [SPEAKER_00] But here's one more thing. Patience, courage, but here's the great thing. Confident humility. Isn't this wonderful? What does Philip do when he gets the total stump question? Good question. Isn't the Messiah supposed to be from Bethlehem? Yeah. Isn't this Messiah from Nazareth? Yeah. And? And what does Philip say? He says, well, you know, you can't question this man. Or does he say, how dare you? Or he says, you don't. No, what does he say? I love it. He says,

[00:28:47] [SPEAKER_00] I don't know. Let's talk about it. Let's study. Let's go talk to him. Let's go look. You see, there's a humility here because he takes Nathaniel seriously enough to say, we do need to think about this and I don't even know. But he also has the confidence to say, if you come, you will see. So there's this wonderful, we're just not very good. We're not very good friends unless we learn those things. Now, lastly, come and see does not just mean come and think, examine the evidence,

[00:29:17] [SPEAKER_00] come and follow, change your life, come and together, process with a friend, but it also means come and wonder. The last few verses give us the ultimate reason why Jesus does not just simply say to somebody, well, here it is. Why does he say come and see? Why doesn't he just say, well, here it is, I'm going to, you know, why doesn't he just do the Apostles' Creed, you know, right? Why doesn't he say it? You know, don't you believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth? Why doesn't he do that? I'll tell you why. Have you ever read a book

[00:29:47] [SPEAKER_00] or watched a movie and it just thrilled you and you try to talk to somebody else about it and they don't have categories for it? And what do you do? At a certain point, you say, well, it's this and they're looking at you like this and then finally you say, you know, Martin Luther says, like a cow stares at a new gate, you know, what's a gate? Right? And so, and what do you finally say? What do you finally have to say to him? You know what you have to say because it's beyond what they can imagine because it's glorious beyond their abilities and their categories. What do you say?

[00:30:17] [SPEAKER_00] You say, you're going to have to come and see. I can't tell you. Now, if that's true and it is true, what does that mean? Nathaniel comes and Jesus says, you believe because I da-da-da-da, you will see greater things than you can imagine. And Jesus actually shows us, he says, come and see means come and wonder and he reveals two wonders, two adventures. He's basically saying, I am calling you into an adventure

[00:30:47] [SPEAKER_00] so wonderful that it is beyond your imagination now he gives us two of them, two ways in which he does that. First of all, in this passage, he calls us to the wondrous adventure of personal transformation. I put it to you this way. Do you remember ever meeting somebody

[00:31:15] [SPEAKER_00] that you suddenly realized really understood you? Could have been a counselor, could have been a new friend, could have been an older, wiser person or it could have been somebody who you really, really were falling in love with. But what was it so heady? Why was it so heady and addicting? I'll tell you why. Because first of all, you're excited about the possibility of finally being able to figure yourself out. We're all riddles to ourselves. Why do I do what I do? Why do I feel what I feel? So you're excited about the possibility of that.

[00:31:44] [SPEAKER_00] Well, you're just as excited about the fact that this wise person, this person you love and respect, thinks about you, considers you significant enough to think of you, to ponder you, to consider you. I mean, it's the two together, the prospect of new information and that incredible affirmation just throws you through the roof. But almost always, always, whoever you think is going to be the ultimate, you always find

[00:32:14] [SPEAKER_00] that there's a limit to how much that person really knows you and how much that person really loves you. Then Nathaniel walks up and he's blown away by something that no rabbi ever has done or ever will do. First of all, he walks up and Jesus says, Behold, an Israelite in whom there is no guile. Now, that's not what it says in the NIV. It says, in whom there is nothing false. The old King James says, in whom there is no guile. What Jesus is talking about is his character. He uses a word that means unpretentious and transparent.

[00:32:45] [SPEAKER_00] Nathaniel looks at him and says, You nailed me. Yeah. I am that kind of person. I'm plain spoken and I'm kind of blunt and I'm unpretentious. That's right. How do you know me? And then Jesus says, Know you. I saw you under the fig tree. Now, some commentators have said, Well, it just means that Jesus was walking by and saw him under the fig tree. But you know what? I mean, if that was the case, Nathaniel would say, Oh, really? When was that? Or, you know. But that's not what Nathaniel.

[00:33:14] [SPEAKER_00] What does Nathaniel do? When Jesus says, I saw you under the fig tree. Jesus, Nathaniel says, His eyes are as big as saucers. He says, How could you, how could any, You are the Messiah. And what does that mean? I don't know. And we don't know. That's what, you see, that's one of the, that's one of the marks of an eyewitness account. There's, but I'll tell you this, it was something so private, something so significant.

[00:33:45] [SPEAKER_00] It was something that's so absolutely impossible that any human being could know. That Nathaniel is astounded. This is not just somebody who knows me somewhat. He knows my personality. You know, maybe he read my personality, temperament, trait inventory. But he knows me all the way. But that's not the only reason he's blown away. Because, do you realize what he's doing? Jesus Christ is not just saying, I know you. He's praising him. Why, he doesn't even know this man. He walks up and here's this rabbi,

[00:34:14] [SPEAKER_00] this august person. And what is he doing? He's looking at, he's looking at Nathaniel and he says, behold, an Israelite in whom there is no God. He's praising this man. Isn't that astounding? Jesus Christ knows you to the bottom, praises you to the skies. There's never been a counselor like this. There's never been a friend like this. There's never been a lover like this. This is the wonderful counselor. This is the friend

[00:34:44] [SPEAKER_00] that you've always been looking for. Some of you know that Kathy and I consider C.S. Lewis kind of a mentor, someone whose writings have meant the world to us. And a few of you might know that when Kathy was 12 years old, she wrote Lewis. Lewis, and she got four letters back from him, which of course we've kept. And in those letters, it wasn't that long ago that she was pondering those letters and they're astounding letters because, first of all,

[00:35:15] [SPEAKER_00] he treated her very seriously. She's just a little 12-year-old kid and he would write back saying, yes, we writers have to suffer like that, don't we? And he was absolutely, took her absolutely seriously, telling her things. In some cases, there were definitely beyond what a 12-year-old could know, but they're wise and he wrote her even 11 days before he died when he said, I can't use my legs and he wasn't able to even use his hands to do handwriting so he had to type it. And he wrote a 12-year-old little girl

[00:35:45] [SPEAKER_00] in America. And then suddenly two thoughts hit Kathy and the first thought went like this. She says, C.S. Lewis thought of me. A man that I respect, a man that I love, thought of me. And he was willing, even when he was in pain, to take a little girl that he hardly knew at all and to treat her seriously and to answer her letters. And then she suddenly had a second thought. She says, wait a minute.

[00:36:15] [SPEAKER_00] I know, she told me this, by the way. She says, wait a minute. If a man that I respect and love decided he wanted to know me a little at the expense of his time, what does it mean that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, whose voice called all the stars into existence, has wanted to know me completely at the expense of his life, not just the expense of his time. C.S. Lewis wanted to know me

[00:36:45] [SPEAKER_00] a little bit at the expense of his time, but Jesus Christ is willing to know me completely at the expense of his life. And she says, if that moves me and thrills me to think that C.S. Lewis knew me and loved me and took me seriously and thought of me, what should it do? How much more should it thrill me? How much more should it empower me? How much more should it lift me up to know that Jesus Christ thinks of me, knows me, loves me? And of course,

[00:37:16] [SPEAKER_00] by even asking that question, it did all that to her. Now, does it do it to you? Do you know what it means to be a Christian? Do you understand? You know, when God shows up to speak to Gideon in the Old Testament, Gideon is at the bottom of his class, Gideon is timid, he's a milksop, and when God shows up, he says to Gideon, greetings, mighty man of valor. And Gideon says,

[00:37:47] [SPEAKER_00] but this is the doctrine of the Bible, that when God comes and calls you in love, he makes you, by his call, what he calls you. He's not just ascribing you because you're not that way. On the other hand, he's not really saying you're not that because, you see, when he loves you and he calls you by his love, he makes you what he calls you. And the first adventure is, oh, he says, Nathaniel, I will give you

[00:38:17] [SPEAKER_00] greater things than that. You have no idea what you're going to become transformed by my love. But that's not the only thing. There's one more thing. Jesus goes beyond and doesn't just talk about this wondrous inward journey of self-discovery and transformation of new life. He also talks about an upward journey, an outward journey, and this is what he says. He says, verily, verily, I say to you, you will see heaven open and the angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man. And now, what is he saying?

[00:38:46] [SPEAKER_00] It's astounding. First of all, he is saying that I am the story about which all the other biblical stories are about. He's saying, I'm the story and all the biblical stories really are about me. He's saying, do you remember that story in the Old Testament of Jacob? He was running through the desert, fleeing for his life. And in absolute despair that he had lost God, he had lost everything, he goes to sleep and there's this wonderful, this incredible dream

[00:39:16] [SPEAKER_00] of a ladder. And on the ladder, there's angels ascending and descending. And of course, Jacob knew immediately that angels come from the presence of God and he realized what this was. This was a dream that an opening had happened in this incredible concrete wall between the ideal and the real, between the world as it ought to be and the world as it is. And there was a ladder right up into the presence of God. And then he woke up and he said, oh, it's just a dream.

[00:39:45] [SPEAKER_00] But he knew it was more than that. How could there be a ladder to God? Who could go up that ladder anyway? But he put down a little pillar and he inscribed it and he said, this is Bethel, the house of God, the gate of heaven. And Jesus Christ shows up and says, Nathaniel, let me tell you something beyond your imagination. I am the gate of heaven that Jacob saw. That was not just a dream, that was a promise.

[00:40:14] [SPEAKER_00] And I am the way through that wall into that cosmic reality that's behind this world. What does it mean? Well, I already saw that. It means that that story is about him. It means all the stories in the Old Testament are about him. You know, when John the Baptist says, behold the Lamb of God, what is he saying? Remember that story? Out goes God's justice throughout Egypt,

[00:40:43] [SPEAKER_00] but the people who slew a lamb and took shelter under the blood of a lamb, they were saved. And suddenly John the Baptist says, wait a minute, God's wrath and justice was not turned aside because of some woolly little lamb. This is the lamb. That story was about this. That story was about him, about his life, about his death. But it goes beyond that. When Jesus Christ says, I am the door and the gateway into the cosmic reality behind everything, he's not just saying all the biblical stories are about me. He is saying

[00:41:13] [SPEAKER_00] all the stories are about me. Why do you get moved when you hear any of the old stories? I'll tell you why. Because even though they don't seem to be true, they do seem to be true. Beauty and the Beast, what is that about? Why do we get so moved? The idea that sacrificial love will transform. Always. Completely. But in real life, it doesn't. But why are we so moved by it then? Isn't this ridiculous? We're so moved. Sleeping Beauty.

[00:41:43] [SPEAKER_00] We're not really asleep. We're under a spell. We're not really dead. We're under a spell. And there's some great prince that can break the spell. You see? What are all those stories about? What are all those stories about? Every one of them is telling us something about something we know must be true. There must be a love that can break death. There must be a way to live forever. There must be a way that if we sacrifice,

[00:42:12] [SPEAKER_00] it leads to resurrection. There must be a way. You know what Jesus is saying? He's saying the reason that you feel that way is because there is a cosmic reality on the other side of the wall. It's behind this world. But, my story of my birth, my life, my death, and my resurrection is not one more legend pointing to that great reality. But it is the reality to which all the legends point. And therefore, he says to us, don't you remember all the times

[00:42:41] [SPEAKER_00] you read those storybooks and you said, if only I could get in. If only I could get into the story. Get into a story where you can break spells. Where death leads to resurrection. Where love always transforms. If only I could get into those stories and Jesus says, you can. You can get into my story. Because my story is the story about which all the other stories are pointing and therefore, the stories are true. You can know me. And then into your life will come this same cosmic power from that cosmic glorious center.

[00:43:11] [SPEAKER_00] And you will really be in the story. Spells will be broken in your life and through you, spells will be broken in others. You see? He says, I am not. One more wonderful legend pointing to this reality. I am the reality to which all the legends point. And someone says, how can I do that? How can I get in? That's what I want. Come and see means you can get in. Come and see means I can't even begin to describe what's going to happen in your life if you come and follow me. You say, okay,

[00:43:41] [SPEAKER_00] how do I get in? Do I have to change my life? Right? Obey the Bible? Right? You know, you're excited. You're ready. I have to tell my friends about Jesus. I've got to study the Bible. No. Well, isn't that the first three points? Surely we don't have any more of this sermon to go, do we? No, we don't. But you missed the key. The key to getting in is not to do anything. Jesus does not say, I'm at the top of the ladder. He doesn't say, angels are ascending and descending.

[00:44:09] [SPEAKER_00] They're ascending to the Son of Man. He doesn't say, if you try really hard, you can ascend. No, you can't. Psalm 15 says, who shall ascend into the presence of God? He who has a clean hands and a pure heart. There's nobody in this room that does. How are we ever going to get up there? Jesus doesn't say, they're ascending to the Son of Man. He says, they're ascending on the Son of Man. He doesn't say, I just sit down the ladder and then, you know, try your best. He says, I am the ladder. I came to bring you to God. I came all the way down. I lived the life you should have lived,

[00:44:39] [SPEAKER_00] died the death you should have died. Trust in me. And if you do, you get in. Come and see. Think. Come and see. Follow. Come and see. With friends. But come and see means, be amazed at His grace. He's laughing. He can't wait to show you what He's going to do for you. Come and see. Let's pray. We ask now, Father, especially during this time of offering,

[00:45:09] [SPEAKER_00] that You would help us to give ourselves to You. We want to be Your followers. We want to help our friends. We want to know You personally. But we know that most of all, we have to put our trust in what You have done, Your Son has done. Father, we ask that You would help us do that.

[00:45:29] [SPEAKER_01] Thanks for listening to Tim Keller on the Gospel in Life podcast. If you'd like to see more people encouraged by the gospel-centered teaching and resources of this ministry, we invite you to consider becoming a Gospel in Life monthly partner. Your partnership helps connect people all over the world with the life-giving power of Christ's love. To learn more, just visit gospelinlife.com slash partner.

[00:45:58] [SPEAKER_01] That website, again, is gospelinlife.com slash partner. Today's sermon was recorded in 1998. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel in Life podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.