Come and See

Join us for “Come and See – Week 4 – The Empty Chair,” where we share how simple invitations can spark life‑changing chains of faith, from Andrew bringing Peter to Jesus to modern stories of believers reaching out. Using John 1:35‑51 as the foundation, the sermon challenges us to notice, invite, and invest in the people around us, reminding us that every great movement begins with one personal “come and see.” Watch to discover practical ways you can become the catalyst for someone’s encounter with Christ.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Uh if you were to travel back in time 25 years ago, and it was during the school year on an afternoon, uh you would probably find myself at Loganville High School on Sea Hall in the Spanish room uh taking Spanish. Uh I don't remember much of Spanish. I took four years of it. It's pretty sad that I can't speak it at all, but um I didn't retain a whole lot. But what happened in that class uh was uh a powerful, powerful uh moment or season of my life. I got partnered up to and next sat next to a young girl, little girl, same grade as I am, but she was just so much smaller than me, so I called her a little girl. But uh her her she went by peanut, but her name was Lindsay Pugh. And uh Lindsay was a small softball player, uh kind of meek and mild, um, but she was passionate about Jesus. And without fail, every single day I would come into the class, and I at the at this point in my life thought that I was a follower of Jesus, but I really wasn't. And every single day she would begin to share with me about Jesus, something that she read in Scripture that morning, or something that God was doing in her life, or something that was happening at the church that she attended. And just day after day after day after day, she relentlessly and lovingly shared the good news of Jesus with me. And it was just a summer after her sitting next to me in that class that I finally turned and put my faith and trust in Jesus, and my whole life is changed. And I'm sure back in that time, 25 years ago, she probably was not thinking, and no one was thinking, that I would be standing where I am today. But that's how God works. God works through the power of one. One person sharing with another person, and just the exponential increase and multiplication that can happen as a result of that is not something that can truly be calculated or understood. And this morning we're finishing up this series called the empty chair. And so far in this series, we've looked at how there's these empty chairs that are all around us, and every empty chair that sits around us is an opportunity for someone that you know, that I know, that is far from God, that needs to be connected to the person of Jesus. And so we talked about there's these three knots. Um, that when you think and you hear people say these knots, set sentences or or phrases, that it should be an audible cue for you to be able to think, man, this is somebody that needs Jesus in their life in this moment. It's when somebody says, Hey, we're not in church. Man, that's an easy invitation. Man, we would love for you to come and be a part of our church. And we looked at the person of Zacchaeus. It's when somebody says, Hey, things aren't going well in my life. Um, whether whatever that might be, things are just not going well. Maybe it's a marriage or a financial struggle or something that is beyond their control. And when things aren't going well, that's an opportunity for us as the people of God to say, hey man, I would love for you to come and see, for you to come and meet my Jesus and tell, uh, let him change your life. The the third knot was when something one was not prepared for something. Um, when something was kind of unexpected, maybe it was a cancer diagnosis or a new baby or a new marriage or a divorce, whatever it might be, but they're not prepared for something that's happening in their life. Man, that's the Lord opening up a door and an opportunity for us to be able to share and to speak about who Jesus is to us. And this morning we're kind of looking at the fourth chair. And the fourth chair is not filled by someone 2,000 years ago. The fourth chair is not a character in Scripture. The fourth chair is someone that you know. It's a name that you already have in your head. It belongs to somebody that you personally know that doesn't have a relationship with Jesus. And here's the main idea that I want to push at all morning long: is this it's that found people, find people. That if you've been found by Jesus, if your lives have been changed by him, then you have a responsibility and an obligation and an opportunity to introduce other people to Jesus as well. That's what we're called to do as followers of Jesus. And I know that's not necessarily a popular statement in this day and age, where people talk about how faith should be a private thing and it should be kept to yourself. But man, if we are followers of Jesus and the good news of the gospel has changed our lives, we shouldn't be people that are shy about that. We should want other people to know and to recognize and to experience what we have experienced as well. And so that's where I want us to go this morning. Um, I know Caitlin just prayed for us, but I would love for us just to pray again before we open up the word. And so, Lord Jesus, we come to you this morning. And as we've worshiped and sang your praises and we've acknowledged and heard stories of just life change this morning through baptism, Lord, we just come with humble and expectant hearts. Uh, Lord, what all of us need in the room this morning is a word from you. And so, Lord, would you just speak like only you can speak? So, Holy Spirit, would you come now? Would you open up our minds and our ears and our hearts to be able to hear from you? That's where life comes from. And so, Lord, would you just be with us moment right here, right now? And Lord, give us expectant hearts to hear from you. And it's in your name we pray. Amen. If you have a Bible, you can turn to John chapter 1. Um, we'll be there pretty much all morning long. Um, but just to kind of set this up for us, uh, Jesus has come to earth. Um, his early life, we don't have a whole lot of details beyond his birth, um, but he's grown up. He's now an adult, around 30 years old. His ministry hasn't begun yet. And there's really only one person at this point in history that's talking about Jesus, and that's his cousin, John. John the Baptizer or John the Baptist. And John the Baptist was a unique character. I mean, he was someone that wore the animal skins and he ate locusts. I mean, he was a strange dude, uh, but he lived out in the wilderness in the desert, and that's where people were flocking to hear John the Baptist preach the message that there was a Savior that was coming. On this dusty shore on the river banks of the Jordan River, people were coming that were curious and they were searching for something more, and they were coming to listen to John. And John speaks these words, these 13 words, that change the course of human history. He says, Look, as Jesus approaches one day. He says, Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. That changes the course of human history. What happens next is not a strategy, it's not a program, it's not a crusade. What we see happen after John speaks these words is a chain reaction. And that's what the gospel does. The gospel message of Jesus is a chain reaction. It's where one thing happens and then another thing sets that off, and then another thing, and another thing, and another thing, and it just exponentially increases and multiplies as the gospel message spreads. And so when John is standing there on the banks of the Jordan and he declares that there's Jesus, the Lamb of God who has come to take away the sins of the world, John's got his own disciples. He's got his own people that are following him and learning from him. And two of his disciples hear that this is the Lamb of God, and they decide to leave John and to actually go and start following Jesus themselves. I've always wondered what John thought about that. Um, was John sad that, you know, the people were like, oh man, like here's somebody better than me, and like they're following him now. Or I think John's reproach, as he says in John 3.30, that he says, I must become less and he must become more, or he must become greater. John was ecstatic, I think, about the people that were following him were now following Jesus, the person he had been pointing to. And so one of those guys is a man named Andrew. And Andrew spends one afternoon with Jesus. One afternoon, and then goes and he gets his brother. Another one of those men is Philip. And Philip comes and spends some time with Jesus, and then he goes and finds his friend Nathaniel. In four days, five guys, nobody's famous yet, just ordinary men that are meeting Jesus, and they can't keep it to themselves. And so with that, let's look at John chapter 1, and we'll start in verse 35. It says this. When Jesus turned and noticed them following him, he asked, What are you looking for? Which isn't that an interesting question that I think Jesus would ask us as well. What are you looking for? They said to him, Rabbi, which means teacher, where are you staying? Come and you'll see, he replied. So they went and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day, and it was about four in the afternoon. Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, was one of the two who had heard John follow and followed him. He first found his own brother, Simon, and told him, We have found the Messiah, which is translated the Christ. And he brought Simon to Jesus. When Jesus saw him, he said, You are Simon, son of John, you will be called Cephas, which is translated Peter. So Andrew meets Jesus, the significant afternoon that he spends with Jesus, and he recognizes that there's something different about Jesus. He's not like all the other guys, he's not like everyone else. There's something significant, and he recognizes that Jesus is the Christ, that he is the Messiah. Now, there's a lot that he still doesn't understand, there's a lot that he still doesn't get, but he recognizes that there's something special about Jesus. And so what does he do? He goes and finds his brother Simon. I mean, this is the guy that he probably grew up sharing the same room with. They had bunk beds together. I mean, they would fight and wrestle on the ground, and the first person that he wants to meet Jesus, the one that he has found to be the Christ, is his brother Simon. And so he goes and he finds Simon. And Simon comes to Jesus, and Jesus immediately accepts him in, and the gospel begins to spread. It's a chain reaction. One person meets Jesus, that one person then introduces another person to Jesus, and the gospel message spreads. This is the power of one invitation. One invitation can change not just one person's life, but it can change the whole course of human history. It says again in verse 41, it says, He found his own brother Simon and told him, We have found the Messiah, which is translated the Christ, and he brought Simon to Jesus. And when Jesus saw him, he said, You are Simon, son of John, you will be called Cephas, which is translated Peter. Now, if you know anything about the early church and the disciples of Jesus, Peter was a well-known disciple of Jesus. He was notorious for sticking his foot in his mouth and saying the wrong things at the wrong time. But he was someone that was dramatically used by God. The Holy Spirit was strong in Peter, and Peter was used in a powerful, powerful way. The person that he loved the most was the Peter, Andrew's brother, and that's why he went to him. But here's my question. What if Andrew hadn't gone to get Peter? What if Andrew was genuinely moved by Jesus, but he made the conscious or even unconscious decision not to tell his brother? What if he wanted to keep the news to himself? What if he just assumed that his brother would not be interested? What would history have looked like? Think about what would have been lost. Peter is one of the early pillars of the church. On the day of Pentecost, after Jesus has died and he's been crucified and he's resurrected and come back and spent 40 days walking on the earth, and he's ascended to now be with the Father in heaven, and the Holy Spirit comes down in the day of Pentecost in the early upper room, and Peter stands up and begins to preach, and there's 3,000 people that day that come to know and experience Jesus. None of that would have happened if there wouldn't have been an Andrew that invited a Peter to come and to meet Jesus. In Acts chapter 4, Peter stands up against the Sanhedrin after they've just healed a guy, and the people are upset that they've healed this man, and he stands up and he just publicly witnesses again about Jesus, this boldness that he has in the face of the persecution that he's going to face. He's imprisoned, he's beaten. I mean, he's had all of these things that are going on, but he still says, we're unable to stop speaking about what we have seen and heard. And the gospel spreads again. Peter is one of the God sends to a Roman soldier named Cornelius who initiates the good news of the gospel to the Gentile people. Up until this point, before Peter starts to meet with Cornelius and has this vision and this dream, the faith, the Christian faith in following Jesus was just a Jewish thing. But now, because of what the Holy Spirit is doing through the person of Peter, the gospel is now available to all people, Jew and Gentile alike. The Gospel of Mark is an account of Peter talking to John Mark and telling him what Jesus did while he walked on earth with him. So just take Peter out of the equation for a second. If there's no Andrew telling Peter, then there's no preaching at Pentecost, there's no standing up to the Sanhedrin, there's no Gentile believers, and there is no gospel of Mark. The power of one invitation. It reminds me of a story that I read a while back in 1934. A 24-year-old farmer named Albert McMinnon was determined to get a local teenager's in Charlotte, North Carolina to a neighborhood tent revival. He filled his truck with youth every single night, and one specific 15-year-old boy in the community flatly refused to go. The teenager was completely uninterested in religion and dismissed the traveling preacher as a mere tabloid speaker. Albert didn't argue with the young man. Instead, he used a clever bit of strategy based on what he knew about the boy. The bait, he knew the teenager was absolutely obsessed with cars. And so the deal that he created was that Albert offered to let the boy drive his truck to the meeting if he agreed to sit through the entire crusade. The result, the offer got this the boy got behind the wheel. It was too good for him to pass up, and the reluctant teenager finally agreed to go. But Albert had no idea how that simple invitation, that practical invitation, would change history. He was just trying to help a local farm boy, but that night that boy not only came to drive a truck, but he walked down an aisle and gave his life to Jesus. Albert McMinn would never preach to millions, but by the simple power of his invite, he introduced the world to Billy Graham. Imagine the thousands and thousands of people that have been impacted either directly or indirectly through the ministry of Billy Graham. A simple invitation can have exponential impact that we can't even begin to overestimate. It makes me think of how we're even sitting here today. I did some study back when we first started the Social Circle campus and kind of charted out some of the history markers of how we get to sit here today. And so this is what I some of the things that I found. In 1735, a man named John Wesley and his team go to a colony in Georgia to become missionaries, particularly in the city of Savannah. In 1746, Jonathan Edwards appeals for prayers for world missions, and out of that comes the first great awakening. In 1787, William Carey is ordained in England and soon begins to urge for worldwide missions to be undertaken. As a result of that, in 1715, the very first Baptist church is created in America. In 1845, at the first Baptist Church in Augusta, the Southern Baptist Convention is formed. In 1836, seven little people, or seven people, not little people, but seven people in a little town called Social Circle start First Baptist Church of Social Circle. In 1993, a little over 150 years later, Social Circle, First Baptist Church plants a church in Loganville, Georgia called the Summit Church. Summit Church exists for 14 years and then plants, putting money and family and staff aside, it plants Church at the Grove in Walnut Grove in order to reach people in that community. And then five years after Church at the Grove in Walnut Grove is planted, Church at the Grove Social Circles starts. And we also send a third campus to Aradio, Aradia Romania, and start a church there. The gospel creates a chain reaction. I just think about the saints that are over across the street at First Baptist Social Circle, some of which are still alive today that were a part of planting summit many, many years ago. What if they didn't do that? Some of you would not be sitting here today. Some of you would not have maybe entered into the baptismal waters over the course of time that you've been here at Church of the Grove. But there's power in the one invitation. It continues though, verse 43. It says, the next day Jesus decided to leave for Galilee. He found Peter or found Philip and told him, Follow me. Now Philip was from Beth, I can't say the word, Betheda, and the hometown of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathanael and told him, We have found the one Moses wrote about in the law, and so did the prophets. Jesus, the son of Joseph from Nazareth. And then he responded, Can anything good come out of Nazareth? Nathanael asked, Come and see. Philip answered. So Jesus now meets Philip. This was probably a friend of Andrew and Peter. It's somebody they probably grew up with. And so Philip now meets Jesus, and Philip calls Jesus the son of Joseph, and he also says that he was from Nazareth. Now that's not totally accurate information. Philip is running through some very small amounts of information from the limited of time that he's been able to spend with Jesus, but yet he doesn't have all the information. He doesn't understand everything, but he's still going and bringing people to Jesus, even though he doesn't have all the answers. God is going to use him anyway. He said that he was born the son of Joseph, which is not entirely true. Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary, right? He was he was he was given through the Holy Spirit. He wasn't born in Nazareth. He was born in Bethlehem, but he did grow up in Nazareth. And so Philip doesn't have all the information, but when he's confronted by Nathaniel about these questions, hey, who who what good thing comes from Nazareth? What does he respond? He doesn't pull out his chat GPT phone and type in, hey, what good comes from Nazareth? How do I need to respond to this person? He doesn't do an internet search. What he does is just say, come and see. Come and see. Philip understood that it isn't about having all the answers, but rather it's about getting his friend in front of Jesus. This is what I want you to understand that you don't have to have all the answers to be used by God. Praise the Lord for that. You don't have to have all the answers to be used by God. And this is one of the number one obstacles, I think, to many people sharing their faith. They feel like they're not capable. They feel like they don't have all the information. They feel like they haven't had the training and the equipping. And sure, there can be some growth in that area. You can learn more and you can learn tactics and techniques, and it does become more natural over time the more you do it. I recently ran into somebody that was talking about just out of the course of this series, and they were talking about just feeling really compelled to share with people that didn't know Jesus that they were working with, and they just said, like, who am I to be the one that shares? And I think that's something that we all feel at one time or another, but at the same time, I think that's a great tool of the enemy. I think the enemy oftentimes will try to stop you from speaking up and speaking out about who Jesus is. And he'll try to get you to convince yourself that you have a lack of knowledge or because of your shortcomings or because of your Sin or your struggles, that God has no business using people like you. But that's not the case. That is who God uses specifically. He doesn't typically use the people that seem to have their lives all together. He uses the broken people that are trophies of his grace so that he can get the max amount of glory from what happens. And so we have to be open. We have to be open to allowing the Lord to work in and through us. We don't have to have all the answers. We just need to simply say, come and see. Come and see. I think one of the greatest ways that you can share with the empty chair, the person that represents the empty chair in your life, is simply saying, Hey, I can't answer all of your objections. I don't know maybe some of your hesitations with Scripture, but here's what I do know. I know that Jesus has changed my life. We heard it from Adam and Asher just this morning, those simple testimonies of, hey, this is what my life was before Jesus, this is how I met Jesus, and this is how my life has been changed by Jesus. And you hopefully have a story like that. And for some of us, it might be dramatic. It might be all over the place a crazy story of redemption. And for others of us, maybe it's not, maybe it's an easier kind of to digest story, but you have a story. And in Philip saying, come and see, you have the opportunity to say, hey, let me tell you about Jesus and what he has done in my life. And they might have objections to Scripture or the accuracy of what this or the historical kind of benefit of that. They might have all of these objections. But no one can argue with your story. And don't ever underestimate how powerful your story can be. That God can use your testimony to make a difference in the lives of people around you and open them up to the gospel message. Lindsay Pugh, peanut, in Spanish class, was telling me every single day her testimony. And you can do the same thing. Pat Hardin, that's at our other campus, he is someone that relentlessly, without fail, is going to share his testimony. And we'll be out at lunch occasionally, and like the waitress will come over and he'll always ask, like, hey, how can I pray for you? And then nine times out of ten, that conversation is going to lead to him sharing something about his testimony. What if we all had that same type of mindset? How could God use that? You don't have to have all the answers to be used by God. But then finally, we also want to see that God is already working in your one, that God is already at work in the person that is identified as your one that fills the empty chair. Listen to what it says in verse 47. Philip has gone to Nathaniel, Nathaniel's now coming to Jesus, and it says, Then Jesus saw Nathaniel coming towards him and said about him, Here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit. How do you know me? Nathaniel asked. Jesus answered him, Before Philip called you, you were under the fig tree, and I saw you. See, Jesus was already at work in Nathaniel's life. Nathanael didn't recognize it. He didn't understand that, but Jesus was already at work. The Holy Spirit was already drawing and preparing Nathaniel's heart to meet Jesus. Jesus already sees him and knows him. And what Philip does here is he unknowingly steps into the work that's already in process. And that's what we have to understand is that when we're working, when we're living out our faith and our testimony and we're sharing with others, it's not us doing it on our own. We are joining God in the work that He has already started and begun. And we're stepping into a situation where we just believe wholeheartedly that God's already at work here. Especially if you've been praying for somebody, if you've been praying for your son or your daughter or your relative or your coworker or your neighbor, and you've been actively praying for them, then man, you should assume that God is at work in that person's life and that he's going to open up doors and opportunities for you to be able to speak and to share with them. This is true with all the chairs that sit in this room. It's true with the chairs that we've looked at over the course of the series that God was at work long before anyone spoke up or said anything. And that's a comforting feeling, isn't it? That you're not doing this on your own. That the Lord is already preparing the hearts of the people that you will encounter. And somebody might be waiting for you to speak up. God might be working and doing something in their life, and they're just desperately wanting somebody to say something to them that can help lead them to the truth. A.W. Tozer said, before a man can seek God, God must first have sought the man. We put a lot of pressure on ourselves to have everything right and to get it all perfectly explained when it comes to sharing our faith. But man, when we understand that God is already at work and that we don't have to have all the answers, man, it releases some of the pressure and helps us to be more bold in what we share. Henry Blackaby said, watch to see where God is working and then join him in his work. And that's what we get to do. When we talk about empty chairs, when we talk about people that are far from God that we want to see come into a relationship with him, we're joining God at work. That's why we started the church 20 years ago to reach people far from God and to lead them to become followers of Jesus. That's what we've been about. And so for 20 years, which by the way, 20 year anniversary, we're going to do a celebration next month. We'll have more information about that coming out, so but make plans for that. But for 20 years, God has used the church up at Walnut Grove, the church here, and the churches that we've started and supported over the course of 20 years, where lives and people have been changed by the gospel message. And I can remember being at the very first service, we were at youth middle school setting up in their cafetorium. Pipe and drape, plastic chairs, sound was horrible. I mean, it was it was it was pretty rough. And God has taken the faith of a few and he's multiplied it into something that we probably would have never thought would have happened. It's the power of one. It's the power of one person looking at another person and saying, hey, come and see. And before there's a crowd and before there's a room full of chairs, there's always a one. Maybe it's the person that you sit next to in a Spanish class that seems like their life is going okay, and it seems like maybe they're even a follower of Jesus, but you still continually talk to them about who Jesus is and what he's done in your life. Maybe it's a farmer that's just trying to get some of the teenage boys to go to this event with him so that they can hear the good news of Jesus. We don't know what the power of one will look like. We just know that there is power in the one. The one neighbor, the one friend, the one coach, the one coworker. The person that says, hey, I'm not in church or it's not going well, or that I'm not prepared for something, that those are all the ones. And we have an opportunity to introduce them to the greatest news that you could possibly ever imagine. And there might be some people in a room like this that you are the one. You are the one that somebody's been maybe praying for or loving on or sharing with. And maybe this morning that there's just this revelation of the good news of Jesus. Here's what we believe: we believe that Jesus is the best way, that he's the only way to true life. There's a lot of things in this world that can feed and fuel your soul, and you think are going to bring you satisfaction and pleasure, but I'm telling you, at the end of the day, Jesus is the only one that satisfies. Because we have a loving God that loved us so much that even while we were still sinners, he sent his son to come and to die on a cross for your sins and for mine. But he didn't stay in the grave. Three days later, he rose from the grave, defeating sin, death, shame in the grave, so that you and I, if we put our faith and our trust in him, could walk in the newness of life and experience eternal life with him. Not someday in the future, but here and now in the present moment. And if you've never taken that step of faith, man, this is a God-ordained moment for you to respond to the good news of Jesus. He loves you. You are not too far gone. You have not messed up too much that you have run out of God's grace. God's grace meets you there and it still continues on. I don't care what you've done, I don't care what your past is, I don't care your education or economic status. God loves you. And the power of one. If you were the only one, Jesus still would have come. He still would have died. He still would have rose because of the one. And so this morning there's an invitation for you to come. We're going to have some people in a second that if you feel led, you can come down front. We'd love to pray for you, talk to you about what it looks like to follow Jesus. You can tap the tap tag and fill out a card if you want to do it that way. We'd love to follow up with you. But maybe for a majority of the people in the room, it's not that you're the one, but you've been the one. And now you're hopefully praying and thinking about who's the one in your life? Who's the empty chair? Maybe it's a husband or a wife or a son or daughter, coworker, neighbor, whoever. Who is it that you're praying for? Who is it that you're loving? Who is it the person that you're serving and sharing with the good news of Jesus? And just imagine in a room full of people today, probably 150-ish people, if we took seriously our missional responsibility, man, what could the Lord do? If we all took responsibility for just one person, for just one person whose life could be transformed by the gospel, what would the Lord do if we took that seriously? And so I'd love for us just to pray as we respond back to the Lord this morning. Lord, we we thank you first and foremost for Jesus. We thank you, Lord, that you came and you lived the perfect sinless life that we were unable to live ourselves. And then you took the sinner's death, dying on a cross for our sins, then coming back to life three days later and allowing us now the opportunity to have a relationship with you. And Lord, this morning I just pray and just sense, Lord, that there's people here this morning that have never responded to the gospel. Maybe they thought they had, maybe they made a decision when they were a young child, but it never really actually took in their lives. Maybe there's people that have been searching, and this morning was just a cry for help, just to come into the doors of a church, just hoping that there would be something that could help them in their moment of need. Lord, I don't know where everybody's at. But Lord, I pray for the people in the room this morning that maybe don't have a relationship with you, that today would be the day of salvation. That they would surrender their life to you and that they would walk in the newness of life that only you can bring. And so again, if that's you in the room this morning in a minute, we'll just ask you to come forward or you can tap the tap tags and follow up. We'll follow up with you. But Lord, I pray that you would also just give us each of us. If we're walking with you, if we're followers and your children, Lord, I pray that you would give us hearts and that are burdened for the people around us that don't know you. Lord, it's so easy for me just to go through my life and and to miss out on the work that you're doing in the lives of people around me. And how you want me to be included in the mission that you are accomplishing through your church. And so, Lord, would you burden us for the one? The one person in all of our lives that doesn't know you, that's far from you. Lord, even right now, would you impress in our hearts and minds who that person might be? And then, Lord, would you give us the boldness and the courage to be willing to share? So, Holy Spirit, would you come now as we respond to you? As we just acknowledge that you are Lord and that your way is the best way, and that it's not us trying to impose our beliefs on someone else, it's us introducing other people to the greatest news that the world has ever known, the person of Jesus. Come and see. And so, Lord Jesus, would you be with us now as we respond to you? And it's in your name we pray. Amen.