The Power Of A Friend


A Sermon On:

MATTHEW 28.16-20

JOHN 1.35-51



PREPARED BY

KEN GEHRELS

PASTOR

CALVIN CHRISTIAN REFORMED CHURCH

NEPEAN, ONTARIO



Please read Matthew 28.16-20.

Wow!
What an enormous challenge in those verses, isn't it? -- "go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you."

What a challenge. A commanding challenge. You caught that, right?
It's not a negotiable item; a maybe-yes, maybe-no item.
It's "Job 1" for the Church.
Question - how to do it? How to? Such a huge item. Sometimes we look at it and it seems like one of these unreasonable challenges that parents can place on children, sort of like painting a house without a ladder..... and using only a toothbrush.
Of course, our Lord isn't that way.
We earthly dads have to all admit that there are moments when we run unreasonable demands and lines across the family.We parents sometimes just snarl out, "no" because we're in a snarky mood. Or get unreasonably tough in demanding kids toe the line. "Roar!"
But God in heaven?
Hear Jesus speak: "How much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask him." (Mt 7.11)
Meaning that if something is asked of us, the means will be supplied through the gracious provision of heaven to ensure the task can be done......
...... if we are willing to hear it and do it. The challenge is put in our lap to take the great richness of being adopted into the family of God, His heavenly children, and sharing that with others.
Exposing them to the message.
Drawing them in so that they, too, become brothers & sisters in faith.
One of us. One with us.

DO we hear it?
WILL we do it?
Sometimes we can pretend we didn't hear the Master issue this call. Sort of like the child who suddenly develops a severe case of deafness when mom yells up the stairs that it's time to turn the computer off and get to Math; or to remember to take the garbage out before going to school.
Say what?
Ooooohhhhhhhh.
You were talking to me???
We can do that as a church. Get all caught up other stuff of church life --- and man is there ever a lot of stuff. Always can be more. And if there isn't something, we can dream something up. Or we'll get into a conflict of some sort with each other that is sure to consume every ounce of energy.
Hey - we could even get into planning and dreaming for the future of our congregation ---- the sort of thing we're engaged in now with this 2020 business -- and get all wrapped up in what suits us, what is nice for us, what meets our needs.
Spiritual navel gazing.
Not so much as a whimper about those outside the Kingdom.
And then we look to heaven and say, "What do you think, Lord?" feeling like we're being really quite obedient and being the sort of Church that brings joy to heaven.
It would be very easy to drift into this kind of mind set.
That's one of the great things about the Billy Graham Mission as it descends on the National Capital Region. It's a cup of cold water, poosh, right in the face of anyone drifting towards spiritual naval gazing.

So - here's the call.
Not to some other church community.
But to us.
You and me - right here at Calvin.
A call from a God who promises to provide us the means to fulfil it.
Means which are closer than we think.

To see those means please open your bibles and read with me:

John 1.35-51, p.1196



Meet Andrew. Nothing special about this typical, hardworking Jew. He was a man with a heart for the Lord, desiring to live with integrity in the presence of His heavenly Master. That's why he had taken up following the prophet John.
And now John introduces Andrew to someone greater than himself. To Jesus. The invitation is given to spend the day with Jesus and check him out. Which they do. By nightfall Andrew is hooked.
Notice what happens next -- v.41.

Andrew's immediate reaction. Do you see it?
Go back to work?
Take some time to sort things out for himself?
Keep tagging along behind Jesus?
No. No. And no.

The Bible tells us, "The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, 'We have found the Messiah."
And before long Simon is also hooked in as a follower of Jesus.
Do you know who that Simon is?
One that later is known as Peter - leader of the disciples, writer of part of the Bible, one from whom the leaders of the Catholic Church claim their spiritual lineage. St.Peter -- spiritual giant.

All because a common guy named Andrew didn't keep his mouth shut.
Notice -- Andrew didn't have to come up with fancy speeches. He didn't take any 10 week course in evangelism. Had no tracts in his pocket.
Just a basic excitement that here was someone who could fulfil deep spiritual longing. Here was the person in whom lay the answers for all who sought spiritual peace, who sought to become right with God.
Here - in Jesus.
All Andrew did was say, "Simon, you've got to check this out. C'mon"
Jesus took care of the rest.

Now - sometimes there are things in life that are hard for us to absorb. Our heavenly Father, in his sovereign wisdom, knows that. And so the Holy Spirit makes sure that important and hard-to-get points are reinforced a few times.

This, for some reason, happens to be one of them.
So - if we don't get the basic evangelism principle as Andrew lives it, the Spirit inspires John to present us with an encore.

Philip.
Jesus points the finger at him and says, "I want you."
No resistance. He follows.
Becoming, over time, one of the leading evangelists and deacons of the Ancient Church.

Philip then hustles off and finds his buddy Nathanael.
"Hey Nate, you gotta come with me, man. The Prophet. We've found the Prophet. Right here, man. Name's Jesus." (v.46)
"Yeah, right. Phil, get back in the shade. Ain't nobody worth his salt came from up in that boony town of Nazareth."
"No, no, man. Just come and check him out for yourself."

So, carrying a load of scepticism big enough to fill a tandem axle pick up, Nathanael wanders across town.
Where's he's ambushed by the Lord.

"Rabbi, you are the Son of God."
:"Nathanael, I tell you the truth, you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man."

Do you understand what's being said there?
The ancestor of the Hebrew nation, Jacob, was travelling through the desert and had a dream of a ladder extending from heaven to earth. Angels moved up and down the ladder. Jacob wakes up in a cold sweat and realizes that he was at the point of contact between heaven and earth. The place where they touched.
Jesus picks up on that remembrance and says, "Nathanael, you believe in me. Great. Because when you come to me, you are coming to that point of contact between heaven and earth. I'm the link to heaven for you. I'm the link between you and the caring service of angels in your life. I'm the link between you and the throne of Almighty God."

Nathanael's life is changed forever. Thanks to Philip saying, "Come and see."

Need another reference?
Fast forward 3 chapters in John's story. In ch.4 you find an encounter between Jesus and a Samaritan woman sitting at a well. We're not told too much about this woman, other than that she had gone through a string of broken relationships. In that male dominated society she'd been ditched by 5 husbands, and the man with whom she now lived couldn't even be bothered getting married to her. She was an item to be used and discarded time and again by the boys in town.
Jesus reaches out to her with compassion and hope, breaking every social convention in the way he spends time with her.
And then her response. Look at John 4.28.
She forgets about why she came outside the city to the well, leaves her water jug, and tells her friends, "You've got to come and see this man. He's incredible. Could He be THE answer for our lives?"
They come to meet Jesus. "Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony." (v.39). And then, as Jesus continues to meet them, one after the other, still more come to believe.

Can you see the clear pattern?
  1. People encounter Jesus and their lives are changed
  2. They run off to tell others about Jesus, urging them to meet Him.
  3. As others meet Jesus, their lives are also changed.
That's the basic, and the whole secret to the growth of the Christian Church.
People meet Jesus. Bam! Their lives are changed.
They bring others. Bam! Their lives are also changed.

Evangelism -
Someone defined it this way:
Spreading the gospel in the power of the Holy Spirit
And leaving the results to God.

Three parts:
Spreading the gospel - get the word out that Jesus is in town.In the power of the Holy Spirit - as you get the word out, pray that the Holy Spirit will make people interested enough to want to check it out themselves.
And leaving the results to God - like in each of the stories in John, those who brought their friends to Jesus didn't have to force change in the lives of their friends. They just brought them. Jesus took over from there.

Spreading the gospel - We've all heard about the World Wide Web, that interconnected link of computer sites that enable people from around the globe to communicate with each other in unprecedented ways.
There's another web that we're all in - the web of relationships and friendships: with family, neighbours, people at work, at the club. And the Bible directs us to surf that web and point these people to Jesus. "Hey, know who I met? He seems to have the spiritual answers I need. I wonder - would he be able to have the same for you? Why don't you check Him out?"

In the power of the Holy Spirit - We could worry ourselves silly about how to frame our invitation, what words to use, whether we might offend those to whom we speak, what their reaction might be. Just relax!! Their response is not your problem. You can't make them respond, anyway. That's way out of your league. You have to leave that up to the only power who can reach inside of a person's heart and make it spiritually itchy, spiritually thirsty - craving for satisfaction. That's the Spirit of God as He moves mysteriously, doing His life-changing work.

And leaving the results to God - In each of the stories we read, once the person brought their friend to Jesus they fade into the background. He takes over. We can bring someone to church. We can buy them a bible. We can pray with them. We can tell them of God's work in our lives. We can listen to them. But then we challenge them to meet Jesus on a personal level. In the private of their own prayer life and thought life. In their own heart. Challenge them to challenge Jesus to show himself. And leave the results to God.
Remember Jesus' closing words in Matthew 28?
Yes, He gives the command - Go and make disciples.
But then are the following words - words of power, comfort and courage:"And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."
They are words directed to us, also, as we live out the command in our lives;
As we become like Andrew, like Philip, like that woman whose life was healed.