Andrew: Come and See
SUMMARY
In this sermon, Karl Ihfe explores the life of Andrew, one of Jesus' lesser-known disciples, who is most often remembered simply as "Simon Peter's brother." Karl highlights how Andrew's quiet faithfulness — seen in three key moments in the Gospel of John — was defined by one simple, powerful act: bringing people to Jesus. The challenge left with the congregation is this: just as someone was your Andrew, who will one day point to you as theirs?
TRANSCRIPTION:
Well, if you have your Bible with you this morning, invite you to turn over to John chapter one. We'll spend a little bit of time there together this morning. We're in the middle of a series where we're four weeks into a series called behind the Ministry, where we've been looking at these first 12 apostles, the first disciples that Jesus called to come after him. And my hope is as we go through this series that you'll hear some. Some stories that sound familiar maybe to your experience.
You might find yourself in some of these stories. I think that's what part of why we have the testimony of so many different disciples, of just learning and seeing how God has worked in and through so many different kinds of people. But we also would hear a lesson, perhaps a challenge that God might offer to us in and through each of their stories. So we began last week, or actually a couple of weeks ago, with the story of Judas. We began kind of with betrayal and thinking about the lesson we learned from Judas that we can be really close to God and still never surrender to him.
And so our commitment to one another as we try to follow Jesus is to not fall into that trap, to not settle for proximity, but to really lean into worship and to surrender to him. A couple of weeks ago, we looked at the life of Peter and thinking some about how Peter's life, even in his writings later on, we hear this from him, but we see it in his life that his life is a testimony to God's grace, not to his personal greatness. Even though he had a lot of gifts and he had a lot of skills, and Jesus saw a lot and actually challenged him into a leadership role early on. What would make Peter's life so amazing was the grace that he lived by and that he called his followers those who would come after him, to follow Jesus as well to that same thing. Last week we got to look at the story of John and how John is such a character, he's such an interesting guy.
But we recognize that Jesus didn't transform or change his personality. He helped shape it into who God had called him to be. And so we thought some together about how different we are and how there isn't one right personality style. Instead, what we find is there's one right position, a posture, and that's humility and that's surrender. And so as you, I hope you have been able to think some and reflect some on what does that look like for you?
This week we're going to turn to a story that is maybe not quite as familiar to us as some others. But to get us ready for that, I wanna show you a picture and see if you know who this person is. All right, check this person out. Does anybody know, just by show of hands, who knows who this guy is? Anybody?
All right, I know there's one. Cause you recommended this person to me. A couple of you. His name is actually Jesse Hyman. Now, what's interesting about Jesse is he has been labeled, and I wanna get this right.
The world's greatest extra, or the world's most famous extra. If you've seen any major movie or television show in the last decade, you have seen this guy. Jesse has been in it. Spider man, the Social Network, Transformers, NCIS. He's been in the Big Bang Theory, Parks and Rec.
Jesse has been in all of these TV shows, giving you a few pictures to see if you can spot him in the scene. Pretty amazing thing to see. This guy's been in well over 100 credited movie parts. And yet rarely, if ever, has he ever had a speaking part. In fact, he kind of blew up recently because he was featured in a Super bowl commercial where he gets to kiss a supermodel.
And everybody interviewed him afterwards, like, what was that like? You know, but that's. He didn't even have a speaking part in that either. Most of the time, Jesse does not play a main character. He's the guy that, as you're watching a show, is walking through the back scene.
He's the guy that's standing in the corner of the room. He's sitting in a class, or he's waiting in line, or he's just behind the scenes. You probably never noticed him. And in fact, that's part of the point. His job was not to be the star.
His job was just to be there to support the plan. Now, I'm not trying to say Andrew is, you know, a side character instead, actually, the opposite. I think Andrew serves a really important role in our story. But I bring it out just to invite us to imagine. I think there are a number of people in here who kind of know what it's like to not live in the spotlight.
They know what it's like to not be the person that's in the center stage, that's not the person who's answering all the questions. In fact, you may not be the most popular person at your workplace. You may not be the loudest voice in the room. In fact, there may be times where you wonder, is what I'm doing really important? Does it really matter that much?
I wonder sometimes if Andrew Maybe asked himself that question. When we meet Andrew in the Bible, pretty much every time we meet, he's already has a label. And it's not Andrew the Apostle or Andrew the disciple. We heard it this morning in Betty's reading. It's Andrew, Simon Peter's brother.
And how many of you have a sibling who's maybe more famous or more infamous than you? Okay. You know that in your world you kind of grew up being so and so's brother or so and so's sister, that somehow you were kind of seen and shaped by the work of the people around you. I think it's kind of funny we spent the last couple of weeks in some way, shape or form talking about Peter, right? Two weeks ago, him specifically, but last week about how John and Peter had this friendship.
Well, literally every time we meet Simon in Scripture. Excuse me, every time we meet Andrew in scripture, it's always Simon Peter's brother. Everywhere he goes, they show, oh, that's Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. You know, it's funny, whenever you go visit a church, if you asked, hey, who's a disciple of Jesus? And they didn't say Judas, the first name usually comes Peter.
But if you asked them, well, who's Peter's brother?
I know it. Give me a second. Hold on. I got it right. He's not quite as well known.
Andrew lived his whole life in the shadow of his brother, his brother who would go on to become one of, if not the most famous disciple of Jesus in history. And yet I don't think Andrew ever had a problem with that. I don't think that really bothered him. I think Andrew understood something about God. And the way that he measures value and significance is very different from the way the world does.
Right? The world celebrates platforms. How big is your platform? How many followers do you have? But Jesus celebrates faithfulness.
Will you do what I ask you to? Those who will be my disciples are. Are those who will do what I ask them to do. Are we faithful? The world celebrates influence.
How many you know, again, how many followers do you have? How many people can you shape and form to become whatever? Jesus celebrates obedience. The world asks, how many people know your name? Right?
In fact, there's a character on a TV show whose famous line is, say my name. Say my name. Right? But Jesus says, how many people have you introduced to mine? How many of you helped to discover my name?
And if that's the question that really matters, well, then I think we see why Andrew has become one of the most famous disciples and important, greatest who ever lived. It's in the Gospel of John that Andrew really comes alive. His story is not told much in Matthew, Mark and Luke, but John tells us, in fact, three different scenes we get of Andrew's life. And I want to look at each one, but I think as we dive in a little bit, we'll see. They each tell us and kind of point to the same thing about Andrew in each one.
So let's begin in John 1, where John tells us first about Andrew. And what's interesting is we don't find him with his brother. He's not fishing. He's not with the guys out on the water. He's not with Peter.
In fact, he's already become a disciple, but it's of this guy, John the Baptist. And we learned that there's an important little detail that Andrew is already pursuing God. He's not settling for the religion of his day. He wants to know more. And if you know much about John's ministry, John was a pretty intense guy.
He wore camel's hair. His favorite breakfast cereal was locust and wild honey. Right? Strange guy. And he's calling people to repentance.
And we discover Andrew's one of the first that go out and follow him. And that's actually where we encounter him the first time. Andrew is one of the men who left their everyday lives to go see because he was hungry, he was spiritually curious, and he wanted to know more. He wanted to discover and experience God's presence. And so he began following John until that one day, that one day that Jesus comes walking by and we're told, look, the Lamb of God.
John the Baptist says, and when the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus. That's all it took. Look, the Lamb of God. And Andrew is one of those disciples we learn and another one, and they start following Jesus. It's interesting that I love this question that happens next, at least in the niv, the translation we read this morning.
Jesus saw them following and he asked, what do you want? Now we hear that question today and we think, I mean, come on, come on, that's a little rude. I think a better translation of that is, what are you looking for? What are you looking for? Which is a really important question.
And their answer is kind of interesting. Rabbi, where are you staying? Kind of an odd response. Look, the Lamb of God. Let's follow him.
Hey, what are you looking for? Where are you staying? And I love Jesus. Response. Simple, come and see, come and see.
These words are going to be really important in the rest of John's gospel. They begin right here with Andrew. Come and see words that Andrew will be shaped by deeply. So they went on, were told by John and saw where he was staying and they spent the day with him. And it was about 4 in the afternoon.
Kind of a strange little detail, but I think one that reminds us that that's the kind of detail an eyewitness would include when they're trying to cement this moment in their mind. What time was it that happened? It was about 4 o'. Clock. And he wouldn't forget that John began that afternoon following, or rather Andrew began that afternoon following John.
He ends it by following Jesus. And then John tells us exactly what happens next. He tells us what Andrew does not eventually, not after a little while, not after stopping and thinking, getting a drink of water. The first thing Andrew did, we're told, was find his brother Simon and tell him we found the Messiah. That is the Christ.
I love it. The first thing before anything else, before figuring everything out, before he understood completely what he had gotten himself into. The, the first thought that comes across his mind is I gotta tell my brother, I gotta find Peter, I gotta find Simon. He's gotta know this. Peter has to meet him.
And I mean, isn't that how it usually works when we come across something that's life changing for us? When we've been impacted deeply by something, whether it's a movie or a book or any other thing, our first thought is our family. Who can I tell about this? I've gotta share this with somebody. And the first people we think of are our family, our spouse maybe, or our kids.
Maybe it's a grandparent or it's a friend or a roommate at school. Whoever it may be, we want to share with them. And I love how he says, Simon, we found the Messiah.
Then John gives us this simple little statement, verse 42. If you got your Bible with you that you can Mark in, just invite you to circle this statement. It's maybe the most, one of the most important in all scripture, we're told. So he brought him to Jesus. That's Andrew.
That's the sermon, friends. That's it right there. Simon, you gotta meet him. And so he takes him to Jesus. Not to a movement, not to an argument, not to a rally, not to a religion.
He brought his brother to Jesus. I think it's so amazing that Andrew never tried to become Peter. He didn't compete with him, he didn't try to. He wasn't resentful of him. He probably knew his brother better than Anyone he knew, his personality, he knew.
Peter's a loud guy. Peter's the kind of guy that when he walks in the room, he meets everybody. How you doing? My name's Peter. Who are you?
Oh, let me tell you, he likes to take over. He's kind of this natural leader. He just goes into his mode, right? So imagine if Andrew had allowed his pride to get in the way, right? He knows if I introduce Peter to Jesus, I'm going to kind of fade into the background.
So you know what? Sorry, pal. You're the fisherman, man. You get to be out on the boat. No, I'm not going to talk to him about this.
Imagine if he had said, I'm not going to give him that kind of attention, right? Maybe no Pentecost sermon. Maybe no letters to first and Second Peter. Maybe no confession. Maybe you are the Christ, the Holy One of God.
No restored fisherman in Galilee. I mean, humanly speaking, because Andrew was willing to take his brother to Jesus, it literally changed the world. I mean, that's the kind of impact that faithfulness can have. We see in Andrew's life, you never know what hangs in the balance. When you're talking with somebody who doesn't know Jesus, isn't that amazing to think about.
You never know what God might be doing, working in another person's life that you meet and what's, I think, so freeing about Andrew's story is it's not our responsibility. We don't have to know. It's not up to us. Andrew didn't have to turn Peter into Peter. That wasn't his job.
The only thing that he was responsible for was just making an introduction. I hope that word is freeing to you this morning because we've been talking about evangelism. And oftentimes in church, when we start talking about evangelism, people get nervous because we think, well, I gotta have the answers. I just don't know enough to talk about. I just wouldn't know what to do if they brought this up.
I've gotta win an argument. I've got to be able to close that conversation. I think Andrew reminds us that sometimes, maybe most times, evangelism can be boiled down to three simple words. Come and see. Come and see.
So let me ask you, church, who's your Andrew? Who is the one that first invited you to come and see? That's actually a question we asked a couple of our fellow members here at Broadway this week. Here's what they said.
Lisa Mack:
Well, my story begins really, when I was a little girl, my family came to Broadway. Our family quit coming through a series of events, and I guess we just couldn't make it happen anymore, so we quit coming. But I always yearned to come back to church and to know more about Jesus, and I just didn't. Well, in ninth grade, I was playing tennis one time against a lady, actually a girl named Holly Lanier. And I don't know how I knew, but I knew she came to Broadway.
So after our match, I said, hey, Holly, if I came to Broadway this Sunday, would you sit by me? And she said, yeah, of course. Come on. So my mom brought me to church that Sunday, and Holly sat by me and it made all the difference. And I met the youth group, and my life changed forever because of all the friends I made and the relationships and how they included me and asked me back and wanted to know more about me.
And one of the sweetest parts of this story to me is the fact that I couldn't drive and I didn't have a way to get back for Sunday night church or Wednesday night church or Tuesday night Divo's. But. But all those kids, parents would come and get me to make sure that I could be here, too. And it made all the difference in my life. I fell in love with Jesus and he became the Lord and Savior of my life. And I've never looked back.
Camille Whitney:
I met Curtis and Brenda Parish at a really difficult time in my life, and they invited me over to their house, and I didn't really want to go, but I'm really glad that I did because I ended up going. And I spent several hours at their kitchen table, and I just talked to them about all kinds of things that I was going through, and they met it all with love. And they started talking to me and pointing me to their friend Jesus. I spent a lot of time over there, many hours at that table, and.
And in their living room. I started to speak more from my heart and really get deep into some hard things. And I kept thinking, well, this is going to make them push away. And it did not. They leaned in to that.
Now when I sit with people who are going through hard things, I get to lean in and I get to point other people to my friend Jesus.
Chris Moncrief:
So when Christy and I lost our son, there were a couple influential ladies that came as representatives of the Young Mary group. Libby Linker, Katie Backus. They approached us during a hard, really hard time. And I'd kind of taken the approach up to that point of just kind of sitting in the balcony, not doing a whole lot as far as Engaging in the community of church.
And those two ladies really helped kind of define the sense of community. And they, I would say they brought us to the table trying to engage the, the church community as a whole. So that would be my moment.
Connir Simmons:
So my Andrew would be Lisa Mack. I will never forget her wandering through the aisles to meet me and just bright and bubbly.
And from there on she always made sure that she would check in with me and how life was doing, how school was doing. And it always ended with a message from Jesus. She started asking Nick and I if we wanted to start coming over to their house and going through the Bible and helping me understand stories in the Bible and their significance and how they could help me. And eventually it turned into a two and a half years year weekly Bible study. And now it's really easy for me to say that because of Lisa Mack and other people in my life that I do believe in Jesus and that I am a follower of Jesus because of her constant love and help in understanding and learning the Bible.
Karl Ihfe:
Love it. Love these stories. We could have interviewed any of you, said, tell me about your Andrew. Very few, if any of us ever come to Jesus without an Andrew, without somebody saying, come and see. One of the things I love about Andrew's story is right after here in chapter one, Andrew kind of fades out, right?
Peter begins this whole thing of following Jesus and he starts talking and he starts making mistakes. And the next few chapters are following Peter and these early disciples around and Andrew just kind of fades into the background until one day this group of people have, have sat down on the side of a hill to listen to Jesus. There's over 5,000 men there, so probably around 10,000 people. And they are hungry and there's no food. And once again Andrew shows up and he pops back onto the scene.
We're told, Andrew who? Which Andrew? Simon, Peter's brother. Oh yeah, he's still his brother. He spoke up.
Here's a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish. But how far will they go with so many? And Andrew found a little boy with a little lunchable, said here's something. But I mean he's not naive. He recognizes five small loaves and two fish is not going to make a big dent in this.
I think it's interesting. It's not going to solve the problem. But apparently Andrew knew something. You don't have to bring Jesus something really impressive. Just bring what you got.
Just bring him what you have. And so Andrew said, I don't have much, but here's a kid with a small lunch. I don't know what's going to change, but Jesus, I'm going to bring them to you. And he does. And food is shared with every person there.
In fact, they eat so much, there's leftovers. And once again, Andrew kind of takes his cue, exits stage left, and he floats back into the background until a few chapters later, some Greeks show up and they want to see Jesus. And we're told that they went up to worship at the festival. They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee with a request. Sir, we'd like to see Jesus.
Philip went to tell Andrew and Andrew and Philip in turn told Jesus. Now why does Philip go to Andrew? The Greeks didn't say, could you introduce us to the guy who knows the guy? They said, we want to see Jesus. But apparently Philip and maybe everybody else has learned if you want to, if you need some help getting somebody to Jesus for, find Andrew.
Like that's his thing. He's the guy who brings Jesus, who brings people to Jesus. And so for the third and final time, then Andrew exits stage left and we don't hear much, if anything else from him.
Andrew brings people to Jesus and then he quietly moves on about his day. Three stories, right. Peter, a little boy, some Greeks, different circumstances, different people, but it's the same Andrew. He just keeps bringing people to Jesus. Literally every time Andrew appears in scripture, he's bringing someone to Jesus.
I wonder if that's what he was going to be remembered for. You know, last week we talked about John, how John's image of himself changed so much that even when he sits to write his own gospel, he doesn't mention his own name. Instead, he says, I'm the guy that Jesus loved. Like that's how I want to be remembered. I can't help but wonder if Andrew was the same way.
I mean, I know you'll know me as Peter's brother, but I'm the guy who brings people to Jesus. He wanted to be known for that. He's okay not being the star. He's happy to do his job. See, the truth is, most of us will never get a chance to preach in front of thousands of people, myself included, the way that Peter did.
Most of us will not be able to write a book of the Bible that I know of. I'm pretty sure it's not going to be one of us. Most of us will never get to have our name remembered hundreds of years from now. But every one of us can be an Andrew. Every one of Us can invite someone to come and see.
It only requires the heart of someone who spent a little time with Jesus and asked him to give you the eyes that he had for others. So as we finish this morning, I want to leave you with this question. You know, someone was your Andrew, Someone was the one who told you first about Jesus. They prayed for you, they didn't give up on you. In fact, they gave you some version of come and see invitation.
My question is this: Who will say that about you? Who will be the person to point you out as their Andrew? Remember, you don't have to come with anything perfect, just what you have and bring it to the one who is perfect. Andrew's story reminds us that following Jesus has less to do with standing in the spotlight and learning how to point people to the true light. God, may that be true of us this week as we go about days, most of us will live kind of in a like Jesse Hyman, we're a character in your story and we have a part to play and it may not be a speaking part, but you've invited us into your kingdom work and given us gifts and you call us to be faithful to those gifts.
I'm so thankful for the story of Andrew, who is an important person in the life of the early church, who's important in the discipling of so many people, in fact, God we are legacy today because he was willing to ask Peter, invite him to come and meet you. He was willing to reach out and bring so many others. The stories that we have are because of just the faithfulness of an everyday, ordinary guy who just wanted to be with Jesus and the change that you made in his life, he couldn't help but share it with others. So God, would you challenge and bless us today as we consider the ways that you have impacted our lives, how we might be able to share that with those that we care about. God, would you give us eyes this week to see the people that you've already placed us into relationship with?
And God, would you help us to find a way, whatever way needs to be made, that invitation to just come and see God? We want to be a church that's committing to helping your kingdom grow here in Lubbock and around the world. And so Father, as best we can, would you help us to become more like Andrew who became just like you, Jesus, thank you for your amazing love for us. Thank you that there was an Andrew in our lives who helped us to encounter you that first time. How would you help us to be that for someone this week.
God, I thank you for your word that records the stories of these first disciples. May they encourage us, may they challenge us, may they convict us. But God, may they send us out into the world differently. Would you help us to find our story in the midst of theirs, in the midst of yours? And would you help us to live differently in light of it?
Thank you, Father. We pray all this in Jesus name. Amen.