Message Information
- Key Scriptures: John 1:35-51, NASB
- Series: Sent for the Sake of the Gospel (2026), no. 7
- Date: Sunday, July 12, 2026 (Morning)
- Venue: Central Baptist Church — Lawton, Oklahoma
- Speaker: Jared Byrns
- Audio File: Open/Download
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An Invitation Worth Accepting
Nearly eight years ago, I was sitting in my office working when Charla called me and said, “The mail just came, and you got a really weird envelope.”
I said, “Well, what’s weird about it?”
She said, “It has Kevin Stitt’s name on the back.”
That was really weird. I went home at lunch and opened the mail. Inside the envelope was a piece of cardstock with gold embossing on it. It was an invitation to the governor’s inauguration.
Before you think I’m bragging as though I’m so important, I still have absolutely no idea why it came to me, how I got it, or any of that. I have no connections to the governor or anybody on his campaign. It is a mystery to me how it arrived. As a matter of fact, I have a pretty solid track record of voting for whoever comes in third in the primary. One day, when I get to heaven, the Lord may explain why I received that invitation—if I still care.
But I immediately took a photo of it. Just to get an invitation from any governor to see the inauguration was remarkable. I sent the photo to my whole family and said, “We’ve got to go. I know it’s going to be frigid in January up at the Capitol, but we’ve got to go.”
So I took Benjamin out of school that day. We still have pictures of us bundled up in hunting gear and camouflage. He was wearing his orange stocking cap, and we were out there watching it happen. Of all the years I had been aware of these kinds of things, that was the first time I had ever thought, “I’m going to go out there in thirteen-degree weather, stand there, and watch somebody be sworn in.”
But I did it because I received that invitation. I thought, “That may never happen to me again.” It was one of the coolest things that has ever happened to me.
A relative was at work that day while the inauguration was being shown on television. She said, “My nephew is there.” One of her coworkers replied, “So what? Anybody can go.” Then she showed them the picture and said, “He got an invitation.”
It was the invitation that made the difference. It made this something I had to go see. Honestly, it would not have mattered who was being sworn in as governor. I had received that invitation, and I was going. I wanted to be part of it.
We are going to look at a passage that deals with an even more important invitation—one that comes from an even higher authority than the governor of Oklahoma. We are going to be in John 1, beginning in verse 35.
This is a passage I have preached several times throughout my ministry. It comes up in many circumstances, especially when we are talking about evangelism. I have always preached it by focusing on some of Jesus’ disciples, what they did, and what we can learn from them. I do not think that is wrong. I think that is part of why the passage is here.
But as I studied it again in preparation for this message, I realized that even though I have focused all this time on the invitations given by the disciples, Jesus is the one who first invites people to Himself. The most important invitations in John 1 do not come from the disciples. The most important invitations come from Jesus Himself.
John 1:35–51 says:
Again the next day John was standing with two of his disciples, and he looked at Jesus as He walked, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God!” The two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus. And Jesus turned and saw them following, and said to them, “What do you seek?” They said to Him, “Rabbi” (which translated means Teacher), “where are You staying?” He said to them, “Come, and you will see.” So they came and saw where He was staying; and they stayed with Him that day, for it was about the tenth hour. One of the two who heard John speak and followed Him was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He found first his own brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which translated means Christ). He brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, “You are Simon the son of John; you shall be called Cephas” (which is translated Peter). The next day He purposed to go into Galilee, and He found Philip. And Jesus said to him, “Follow Me.” Now Philip was from Bethsaida, of the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found Him of whom Moses in the Law, and also the Prophets, wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” Nathanael said to him, “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” Jesus saw Nathanael coming to Him, and said of him, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit!” Nathanael said to Him, “How do You know me?” Jesus answered and said to him, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.” Nathanael answered Him, “Rabbi, You are the Son of God; You are the King of Israel.” Jesus answered and said to him, “Because I said to you that I saw you under the fig tree, do you believe? You will see greater things than these.” And He said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see the heavens opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”
It is a long passage, and there is a great deal of inviting and introducing going on. Different people are introduced to Jesus, and then they go and find others and introduce them to Him. But the thing I overlooked for so long—even though it is right there—is that the invitation begins with Jesus.
Jesus invites people to Himself. Before any of the disciples issue an invitation, Jesus begins by inviting them to Himself. I want us to look at four places where He invites someone to Himself, because what He invited them to are the same things He still invites us to today.
Come and See
The first invitation appears in verse 39. Jesus is speaking to two disciples. One of them is Andrew, and some people believe the other is John. Throughout the Gospel of John, there are small details that only an eyewitness would know or remember. John mentions the seemingly random fact that this happened at the tenth hour. If he is using Roman time, that would be about ten o’clock in the morning. For that reason, many Bible scholars believe the two disciples who encountered Jesus that morning were Andrew and John, though we cannot know for certain that the second disciple was John.
These two disciples come to Jesus in verse 38. He sees them following and asks, “What do you seek?” They answer, “Rabbi, where are You staying?” He replies, “Come, and you will see.”
What He is inviting them to is not immediately obvious if we fail to consider the historical setting and context. It may sound as though they simply want to know where He is staying. That is what they ask, but there is more involved in the question. When Jesus says, “Come and see,” He is inviting them to come and see for themselves who He is.
Their question is more than a general inquiry about His lodging. It is a response to what John the Baptist said in verse 36. John had introduced Jesus as the Lamb of God. These men were followers of John the Baptist, and they had just been introduced to Jesus as the Lamb of God. Their first question was, “Where are You staying?”
They were not merely asking about His lodging. They were asking for access. They were asking for permission: “Can we come with You? Can we go where You are going and spend some time with You?” They wanted to investigate further who He was. This was not simply, “What hotel are You staying at?” It was, “Can we come back with You? We need to investigate this further.” They had just been told that He was the Lamb of God, and they wanted to find out for themselves—as they were right to do.
To that question, His response was, “Come, and you will see.” He was not saying, “Come back and you will see where I am staying.” He was saying, “Come back with Me to where I am staying. We will spend time together, we will talk, and you will begin to understand who I am.”
This is not different from how Jesus invites us today. There is a call to come to Him. There is a call to repent and believe and to trust Him as our Savior. To anyone who is open to that call, His answer is, “Come and see. Come and see for yourself.”
The Bible teaches that we are to have faith. Each of these men exhibited faith in his life, but faith is not a blind leap in the dark. Faith requires us to take a step into what we do not know, but biblical faith is always rooted in something we do know.
That is why Jesus invited them to come and see. That is why He routinely told people what to expect. That is why He routinely gave evidence for who He is. Jesus never presented Himself as some random man claiming to be the Son of God and saying that people either had to believe Him or not. That is part of what the miracles were about. That is part of what the resurrection was about: proving who He is.
Today, we do not see Him physically standing in front of us. We do not know for certain how every circumstance in life will work out, but we are called to trust Him anyway. That trust is not a blind leap into the dark. It is recognizing all the ways He has kept His promises throughout history. It is recognizing the things He promised would happen that did happen—things that could only happen if He is God.
We look back and say, “He has done this. He has done this. He has done this. He has always come through, so I can trust Him now. I do not know what tomorrow looks like. I cannot conceive of how He will work this out or how this will happen, but I know who He is and what He has done up to this point, so I am going to trust Him.”
Do I have definitive proof that my wife is not going to poison my lunch today? No—not if we are talking about one hundred percent proof. But all these years spent together, with her putting up with me and me putting up with her, provide pretty good evidence. I have known her for her whole life and have never seen anything that would indicate that she is crazy or a murderer. I look back at the track record, eat my lunch, and stay quiet about it.
We do this all the time. We look at the track record and exercise faith. Jesus called these disciples and said, “Come and see.” He invites anyone who is open to come and investigate.
That does not mean you have to go the full Lee Strobel route, conduct a journalistic investigation, and write The Case for Christ as a result. But Jesus invites us to come and know Him and, as a result of knowing Him, to trust Him. That is why He invited them to come and see. He invites us to come and see for ourselves—to draw near to Him, investigate His claims, and know Him for who He is.
Come and Be Transformed
The next invitation appears in verse 42. Andrew found his brother Simon and brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, “You are Simon the son of John; you shall be called Cephas,” which is translated Peter. Some translations say “son of Jonah.” Those are simply different ways of expressing the same Hebrew name.
At first, this does not sound like an invitation. It sounds as though Jesus is simply giving him a nickname. But when Simon comes to Jesus, Jesus gives him a new name. In the ancient world, naming or renaming someone or something was a way of asserting authority over it. More than that, it was a way of giving someone a new identity.
When Jesus says, “You shall be called Peter,” He is inviting Simon to come with Him and be transformed. This is not merely a new name. This is going to be a whole new person. Jesus is inviting Simon to come with Him and become not who he has always been, not who he always thought he was going to be, but who God created him to be.
Jesus invites us to the same thing. When we come to Him and trust Him as our Lord and Savior, a transformation takes place. When we trust Christ, some things change in an instant, while sanctification—the process of being made more like Jesus—continues throughout our lives. The common denominator is that to be with Jesus is to be transformed.
We see this transformation take place in Peter. We see part of it at the beginning when he drops everything. He walks away from his fishing nets and follows Jesus. I was talking with Brad before the service about how annoying it is when we do not have time to fish, and Peter simply walked away from it to follow Jesus. That does not mean he never fished again, but his life was changed.
We see Peter grow throughout the life and ministry of Jesus. We especially see transformation after the resurrection. Peter goes from being the man who—he will just have to forgive me when I see him in heaven—was sometimes obnoxious and hotheaded, and when it mattered, a little cowardly. By the way, I can exhibit those traits too. We all can.
But we see him become the man in the book of Acts who is absolutely fearless and possesses incredible spiritual depth and maturity. That is what walking with Jesus and experiencing the resurrection of Jesus did for him. There was transformation.
Jesus invites us to come to Him and be transformed. When we come to Him, our sins are forgiven, and we begin to be transformed into what He calls us to be. We begin to become more like Him. That is why Paul said in 2 Corinthians 5 that if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature. The old things have passed away, and new things have come.
Follow Me
One verse later, in verse 43, we read, “The next day He purposed to go into Galilee, and He found Philip. And Jesus said to him, ‘Follow Me.’”
Again, this is more than an invitation to come along. When Jesus says, “Follow Me,” it is an invitation to become His disciple. If He were merely saying, “Come with Me on this journey,” that would be easy. You might ask somebody without a second thought, “Do you want to go to the store? Come with me.” It is a very different thing to say, “Come spend your life with Me.” That is what Jesus calls Philip to do.
As we have seen throughout our study of Luke, which we have set aside for the summer during this study, there is a great difference between following Jesus and merely following Jesus around. Jesus is not inviting Philip just to follow Him around. He is inviting him into a rabbi-disciple relationship.
That meant Philip would walk away from everything, learn from Jesus, obey His commands, follow His example, and pattern his entire life after Him. That is what a student did with a rabbi. He changed his entire life and oriented it around following the rabbi.
That is what Jesus called Philip to do, and that is what He calls us to do today: to follow Him and be His disciples. He calls us and says, “Do not simply make Me part of your life. Do not make Jesus something you add on or tack on for a little while on Sunday mornings. Do not make Him one item on a list of priorities. Make Him the One by whom everything else is prioritized.”
Make Him the center of everything you do from Sunday through Saturday. Make Him the center of all of it. Jesus invites us to come and be His disciples.
Come and Witness His Glory
At the end of the passage, in verses 50 and 51, Jesus invites Nathanael to come and witness His glory.
Nathanael is skeptical. He is probably the same person called Bartholomew in the other three Gospels. He is skeptical about the idea that the Messiah could come from a small, insignificant town like Nazareth. Philip simply says, “Come and see. Come and see for yourself.”
Nathanael is introduced to Jesus, and Jesus says, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit!” Nathanael responds, “You do not even know me. How do You know me?” Jesus tells him, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.”
Jesus had not been there. He saw Nathanael because He is God. He sees and knows everything. Nathanael is shocked and says, “Rabbi, You are the Son of God; You are the King of Israel.”
Jesus essentially responds, “That is all it took to convince you—the fact that I saw you earlier, where you were, when I was not there? You are going to see greater things than these.”
That is an invitation to come and witness His glory, but it goes beyond that. In verse 51, Jesus describes the fullness of the glory Nathanael is going to experience. What He says sounds strange: “You will see the heavens opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”
Jesus is drawing Nathanael’s attention back to Genesis 28, where Jacob sees a vision of a ladder with angels going up and down. Jesus is claiming that He is the place where heaven and earth meet. He is the point where God reaches down. He is the crossroads of everything. He is identifying Himself as the fulfillment of the promises of the Old Testament.
He is telling Nathanael, “You are going to see things you cannot believe. You are going to see and experience My glory in ways you cannot imagine. Just come with Me.”
Jesus does the same thing for us. He still invites us to come and witness His glory. He calls us to witness His glory on display as He works in us. As we see the changes He makes in us, we experience His glory. We also see His glory in the way He works through us.
If you have ever experienced that, you know what I mean. God may use you in a way you could never have imagined, and you begin to see His plans come into place. Maybe you talk to someone about the gospel and experience a moment when the words simply come out of you. You think, “I am not smart enough to have come up with exactly what needed to be said. That was the Holy Spirit.”
We experience the glory of God as He works through us. We also see His glory as He works among us and moves among His people. We see these things, and our faith grows as we watch His promises being fulfilled and see the glory of the Lord around us.
This is not a blanket promise that we will all physically see angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man. But the Bible does teach that we will see His glory as we walk with Him.
These are the things to which Jesus invites us as part of the gospel. We are called to understand who He is based on everything He has shown us and to put our trust in Him. We are called to come and be transformed, to have our sins forgiven, to learn to walk with Him and pattern our lives after Him, and to experience the glory that naturally follows wherever Jesus is.
This is all part of the Christian life, and Jesus invites these people to it before they ever issue an invitation to anyone else.
Inviting Others to Jesus
It is important to understand that we are called to invite others as well, but before we invite anyone else, it all begins with what Jesus has invited us to. Jesus is the One who issues the great invitation. Then, as a result, His disciples invite others to Him.
Because we have experienced Him, because we have been transformed, because we are learning to walk with Him, and because we see His glory in small ways throughout our everyday lives, we go and extend that invitation to others.
We see several different invitations that the disciples extend in this passage.
The One Who Takes Away Sin
In verse 36, John invites people to the One who takes away their sin. He says, “Behold, the Lamb of God!” That points back to verse 29, where he said it in more detail: “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”
Throughout Scripture, the lamb is presented as an offering and a sacrifice for sin. The lamb was the means by which the wrath of God was satisfied and people were temporarily restored to right fellowship with Him. The lamb had to be sacrificed. The lamb had to be offered.
John calls Jesus the Lamb. He points to Him and tells his followers, “There is the Lamb of God.” John had already told them, “I am not the One God sent whom you need to follow. I only prepare the way for Him.” Then he points to Jesus and says, “There is the Lamb of God.”
John is pointing them to Jesus as the sacrifice who would take away their sins. That is what we have the opportunity to do as well: invite people to the One who takes away their sin.
If we are firmly convinced that Jesus and what He paid on the cross are the only way people can be made right with a holy God, and if we keep that reality at the forefront of our minds, we will not be able to stop telling people. We will not be able to stop inviting people.
We invite them to the One who takes away their sin.
The One They Have Been Looking For
We also invite people to the One they have been looking for. In verse 41, Andrew finds his brother and says, “We have found the Messiah.” He is inviting him: “Come see the Messiah. We have found Him.”
The Messiah was someone the people had been awaiting for centuries. They had waited with eager expectation for Him to come. In their minds, they had all kinds of ideas about what the Messiah would do, what He would accomplish, who He would be, and how great things would be if only He would come.
When Jesus came, He did not fit all their expectations of what the Messiah was supposed to be. He fit God’s description and fulfilled what God had said about the Messiah, but He did not fit the people’s expectations. That is part of why there was so much hostility toward Him.
But even when we are focused on what we want, God knows what we need. God did not send what the people wanted. God sent what they needed and whom they needed.
Jesus was the One they had been looking for. Jesus was the One they had been waiting for, whether they recognized it or not. When we invite people to Jesus, we are inviting them to what they have been looking for, whether they recognize it or not. We are inviting them to the answer to life’s deepest problems.
That does not mean He is the answer they realize they are seeking. But Jesus is the answer to our deepest and darkest problems. Jesus is the answer to our sin. Jesus is the answer to our estrangement from God. Jesus is the answer to guilt and shame. Jesus is the answer to addiction. Jesus is the answer to war. Name the social evil, and Jesus can only make it better.
Jesus is the answer to every problem and every longing of the human heart, whether we recognize it or not. We are inviting people to the One they have been looking for.
The One God Promised
Finally, we invite people to the One God promised. Philip finds Nathanael and says, “We have found Him of whom Moses in the Law, and also the Prophets, wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”
This is similar to saying, “We have found the Messiah,” but Philip goes into greater detail. He says, “We found the One the Law and the Prophets all talk about.” He is pointing to the Old Testament Scriptures. “We have found the One it has all been about.”
Every promise God has made to us is fulfilled in Jesus. Every gift He has offered is fulfilled in Jesus. We have found the One it has all been about. He is Jesus of Nazareth.
Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s promises and the fulfillment of God’s plans. Once you begin looking for Him in the Old Testament, you cannot help but see images of Him. He is the Passover Lamb. He is the ark that rescues us. He is the bronze serpent lifted up in the wilderness. All these things in the Old Testament point to Him.
From the beginning of humanity, God promised that He would send a Savior. When humanity fell into sin, He promised that the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent. From that promise onward, through everything God offers today, Jesus is the fulfillment.
We are inviting people to come and experience all the promises of God fulfilled. The ultimate promise fulfilled in Jesus is that God would make a way for us to return to Him—a way back to the Father.
That is why Jesus came without sin of His own. He was nailed to the cross in our place. He shed the blood that should have been ours, and He died when it should have been us. He died as the payment for our sin. He was buried, and three days later He rose again to prove that He was not merely another man who died, but the only acceptable sacrifice for our sins.
Unlike the lambs, goats, and doves offered in the Old Testament, His sacrifice did not merely put a bandage on the problem for a little while. His sacrifice was made for us once and for all. Because His work is complete, all God’s promises of forgiveness, eternal life, and a relationship with Him are available to us. They are fulfilled in Jesus.
He paid for our sins so that we could go free. That is what we have the privilege of inviting people to.
The Invitation Is for You
If you have never trusted Christ as your Savior, you have never experienced that forgiveness or that right relationship with God, and you do not have the hope of eternal life. Jesus died to pay for your sins because you could never make yourself right with God.
If you will repent of your sin and trust that He paid for your sins in full, believing that He rose again from the dead, you can ask Him for forgiveness and receive it.
You may think, “Is it really that simple? Surely there is something else I have to do. Surely there is another hoop I have to jump through.” Jesus is not trying to trick us. He invited them, and He invites us today because He wants us to come and know Him and experience that forgiveness.
He has done all the work. All that is necessary for us now is to trust Him.