Following Jesus

good morning church family it's still morning yes it is i'm excited to be here and to share with you this morning and i'm excited to spend many more sabbas here getting to know all of you and getting to to share what god has put on my heart now this morning i'm preaching a sermon that i jokingly refer to as my narcissistic sermon we've all got a little bit of narcissism in us as humans don't we um often we like to put ourselves before others before we even realize that we've done it but this sermon is about one of the disciples in fact perhaps my favorite disciple the disciple andrew the disciple andrew was mentioned perhaps three times in the gospels in three different events aside from that in the gospel of john he is simply referred to as simon peter's brother whenever they're talking about andrew what do they say they say oh that's simon peter's brother interesting right why was this man who was a member of the 12 not taking up more space one of the questions i like to ask myself is how much space am i taking up in the room am i taking up so much space that no one else could come to know jesus i like to think that the disciple andrew led people to jesus in a really effective way we have a few examples of this that i think can be an example to us but i also want to share with you a bit about me because i think it's great for us to get to know each other i'd love to come and get to know all of you eventually um but i'd also love to share a bit about who i am as well and what my passions are but the disciple andrew did something that today we struggle to do and he accomplished it right up until he was killed on a cross as a martyr he lived by christ's example and as such he became known at least within many traditions as the one who leads people to christ would you like to be known as someone who leads people to christ don't we as adventists believe in something that we call the priesthood of all believers it isn't just up to me or to one of the pastors to lead people to christ no the bible sets out a mandate for all christians to be followers to be disciples to lead people to christ so how are you leading people to christ church turn with me to john chapter one and we're going to start in verse 35 this morning that's john chapter one we're going to start in verse 35. and it says the next day john was there again with two of his disciples when he saw jesus passing by and he said look the lamb of god when the two disciples heard him saying this they followed jesus so these two disciples of john he john say look it's the lamb of god and what do they do they abandon following john and they begin following jesus so who were these guys turning around jesus saw them following and he asked what do you want they said rabbi where are you staying come he replied and you will see so they went and saw where he was staying and they spent that day with him it was about four in the afternoon and andrew simon peter's brother was one of the two who heard what john had said and who had followed jesus the first thing andrew did was to find his brother simon and tell him we have found the messiah and he brought simon to jesus jesus looked at him and said you were simon son of john you will be called cephas which when translated we know as peter andrew kicked off a pretty important chain of events did he not he introduced jesus to peter one of the disciples that we perhaps know the most about yet we know very little about andrew andrew was already a disciple of a known religious leader and he simply made a change he recognized who jesus was and he chose to follow him have you recognized church who jesus is in your life have you given up following whatever it is that you follow in order to follow jesus andrew gave up something that was clearly important to him and immediately made the switch the calling on his so on his life was so clear that he put himself to the side and chose jesus and he started a chain reaction that resulted if you continue to read from verses 43 to fit through to 50 resulting in the majority of the rest of the disciples being found by jesus because andrew knew them he knew the community and allowed jesus to discover these people the next day it says in verse 43 jesus decided to leave for galilee finding philip he said to him following me philip like andrew and peter was from the town of bethsider and philip found nathanael and told him we have found the one moses wrote about in the law and about whom the prophets also wrote jesus of nazareth the son of joseph verse 46 nazareth can anything good come from there come and see said philip when jesus saw nathanael approaching you said of him he truly is an israelite in whom there is no deceit how do you know me nathan you'll ask and jesus answered i saw you while you were still under the fig tree before philip called you and nathanael declared rabbi you are the son of god you are the king of israel and jesus said you believe because i told you i saw you under the fig tree you will see greater things than that he then added very truly i tell you you will see heaven open any angels of god ascending and descending on the son of man in the children's story we spoke about how our actions have long lasting effects for me i love physics i grew up actually studying physics and biology and i actually wanted to become a doctor before i became a pastor and in the study of of physics we learn how everything has an equal and opposite reaction and there's a law called the conservation of momentum and it's something else that we call inertia have you ever felt yourself being pulled to the side when you're driving your car around corners it isn't that you're going around the corners that your body wants to keep on going straight and it has a force applied on it in order to change we as humans we have some inertia when sin entered the world humanity took the inertia in the complete wrong direction and we need to change that don't we do we need to change that god already had a plan in place and he sent jesus into the world to provide a push provide a force on our lives to change our direction towards him now church i um being a pastor's kid grew up in the church some might call that a blessing some might call that something else maybe i got lucky but being a pastor's kid isn't all it might be cracked up to be you watch your dad your family go through some pretty tough stuff but when i was a kid i was three and a half years old and my dad was a pastor down in victoria and i had a sabbath school leader her name was sue she invited my dad as the pastor and she invited the elders into the sabbath school that i was in at three and a half and the elders and my dad came in and they brought in this bucket of water and they brought in some grape juice and they broke bread and they washed our feet in our sabbath school the elders and the pastor that moment for me was the moment i recognized who god was and on the drive home at three and a half years old i spoke up and said dad mum i want to be baptized can i be baptized and my mum recognizing that i actually understood what was going on and i was actually making a decision elbowed my dad and said this is your moment he's three and a half but work it out and so my dad said sure absolutely when you're a little older and so for every year for the next few years i bugged them can i be baptized i want to be baptized because i want to be a pastor i want to do what you do dad because i saw my dad as a superhero and sure enough when i turned 10 i was baptized down a memorial church and that was an amazing experience right being baptized was was awesome but life isn't always easy is it and you might think that after i was baptized it was smooth sailing i went through high school there was no problems i became a pastor and i cruised all the way to here this morning but that wasn't so much the case you see for me growing up i couldn't speak very well at all growing up had something that we might call a speech impediment but i couldn't say my eyes i could barely barely be understood by people and in fact when i was in kindergarten they went and did some testing on when they on me and they said to my mum and my dad your son has the coordination and the speech of a severely brain damaged child but he's clearly not brain damaged and it continued on and i remember growing up in grafton for a while trying to get into the speech therapist and for some reason we could only get in there once every 12 months to get the support and my mom's a teacher so she worked it out and and just made it work and as we continued on i realized i couldn't sit still anyone here struggle to sit still have to fidget permanently i'm constantly fidgeting to the point that probably drives people bad i used to drive my mum batty always moving always flicking on something always having to move my hands and as i went through school my teachers realized that perhaps there was something more going on i sat my mum down and had a conversation and said look he's progressing well he's very smart but there's all these other things that are going on and sure enough by the time i got to high school i was diagnosed with something that we now call high functioning autism but back then they called it atypical autism until they changed the dsm to dsm-5 from dsm-4 and it meant that it gave me an answer to why so many things were complex in my life growing up i could not make eye contact with someone at all i couldn't speak i still can't really i can write but you can't read it so don't ask me to sign my signature or anything like that but it was tough but the other thing is is that it also made me a target because i was so different it made me easy picking i probably didn't help myself much either but when i reached high school there was a friend of mine who wasn't really a friend at the time but he knew i was different he knew i was an adventist and that was about all he knew about me but he made his sole goal in life to work out why i would even have faith in god and when you couple that with your faith being attacked and who you are being attacked it made for a pretty rough high school experience and i soon recognized that i didn't need to say a thing this guy spent all my high school years attacking my faith yet i did not speak up once i didn't defend my faith once i didn't tell him that he should go away and stop picking on me over my faith and as i finished high school and i i sat there deciding whether i was going to become a doctor or a pastor and you can work out which one i eventually chose i wondered whether i should have spoken up and defended my god until i got a message when i was sitting at summer camp one year from this guy he said hey andrew i just wanted to let you know that you should never apologize for having faith i was horrible for picking on you for believing in jesus i believe in jesus now too and it was because you didn't argue with me you just let me have a go at you over it why do you think that was why did he change because my actions spoke louder than my words when we follow jesus we're not called to be violent or aggressive or to use our words to somehow magically make everyone bend to our will isn't our jesus a god of love what happens when we have relationship with each other there's something amazing happens when we do that we're able to make connections and we make connections jesus is able to reach the hearts of those around us i like to think that the disciple andrew had just that impact in john chapter six jesus fed the five thousand and andrew was looking around here other disappears going how are we going to feed all these people we've got no food when andrew saw a little boy who had some fish and some bread and in faith he brought this boy to jesus and what did jesus do he performed a miracle when you bring people to jesus in faith through relationship he performs a miracle andrew does something that i intend to do as well he makes space for others he allows space for others to learn who jesus is so a big question i want to ask you this morning is when we follow jesus do you still follow jesus in your sphere of influence or do you just follow jesus on sabbath on saturday morning do you follow jesus at work do you follow jesus at school do you follow jesus when you're out on the street what do your actions your words the things you do say about jesus if we're the priesthood of all believers we all have a responsibility to be ambassadors for jesus andrew was a conduit for leading people to christ he allowed space for them to discover jesus he was an individual whose faith in jesus was paramount just from the little we know about him from the bible and you look at history you discover there was so much more that went on in conjecture and to the point that he was crucified on a cross as a martyr so i ask you today by simply allowing someone to see someone to hear someone to recognize something different you in you you're doing something by being who you are you're planting a seed you're planting a seed that might spring up into a bountiful harvest church what you do outside this building matters it's of eternal consequence who you are when you drive out these gates is of eternal consequence and i know that quentin's been taking you guys on a journey through some different things and and i want to tell you this morning that you have a responsibility for jesus when you leave these gates we don't just follow jesus in this building we follow jesus wherever we go some mentors in my life planted a seed my dad was important in my spiritual walk but it wasn't my dad who encouraged me to become a pastor that might surprise you it was two men who were both involved in audio visuals in the church and in the conference they mentored me one of them saw me arrive at gateway church as a 14 year old and he badgered me for about six weeks to get involved in the audio visual ministry at gateway church i kept on saying sorry it's not i don't really want to get involved but he saw something in me and eventually i spent every single week i think we almost became like furniture in that church at the back running audio visuals and it was that ministry in that man when i rocked up on a sabbath morning saying hey andrew how was your week what did you get up to we spoke about life and we chatted and we packed up we came back and we did it again the next week it was that man who impacted my life through his actions by allowing me to flourish in a space kind of like what andrew wants to do with those people he meets in the bible he allowed space for me to be myself he led space for me to get to know jesus he mentored me and because of that i made the decision at the end of high school that maybe i don't want to become a doctor and that just feels wrong i actually want to do ministry because he gave me space so church my final question who are you giving space to in our church who are you giving space to in our world to mentor to care for them to raise them up to become a leader in this space as i finish up church i want to tell you that you never know what the effects of your actions will be i was lucky enough that someone came and told me the effect i had on them but there's going to be countless people that you have impacted that will be in the kingdom of heaven because you followed jesus not just in this building you follow jesus outside our gates as well will you decide to follow jesus this morning not just here but everywhere we're going to sing a song as we finish up and that song gives you a proclamation it gives you a choice it allows you to proclaim that you will follow jesus please stand because you are singing this with us [Music] i have decided to follow jesus i have decided to follow jesus i have desired jesus no turning back [Music] me [Music] no turn [Music] still [Music] still i will follow i will fall no turning back i have decided to follow jesus are you saying this jesus i have desired to follow jesus [Music] let's pray this morning loving father in heaven we have decided to follow you we won't turn back whether we're here at church whether we're outside in the community lord i pray that you will enter our hearts and remind us that it is our responsibility to be a beacon of you to this world when we are followers of you lord guide us as we go from this place keep us safe lord and help us to share you with someone this week even if they don't realize it in your wonderful name we pray all these things amen you

Channel: Kingscliff Church

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Length: 29min 30sec (1770 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 22 2021