We just want to turn to three brief Scriptures. First, John chapter 1. We will pick up at verse 35—John 1:35.
And the next day John was standing with two of his disciples; and he looked upon Jesus as He walked, and saith, Behold, the Lamb of God!
And the two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus.
And Jesus turned, and beheld them following, and saith unto them, What seek ye?
And they said unto Him, Rabbi (which is to say, being interpreted, Teacher), where abidest Thou?
He saith unto them, Come, and ye shall see.
They came therefore and saw where He abode; and they abode with Him that day: it was about the tenth hour.
So, John the Baptist and his two disciples—John and Andrew—are standing there. John looks at Jesus as He walks by and says, “Behold, the Lamb of God.” The two disciples hear him, and they follow Jesus.
Jesus turns, sees them following, and says, “What do you seek?” They say, “Rabbi”—which means Teacher—“where are You staying?” It is a good opener, isn’t it? And He says, “Come and see.”
Come and see. Hold on to that, but let us go to 1 Peter 2—verse 2, really.
Like newborn babes, long for the pure milk of the word, that by it ye may grow unto salvation; if ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious.
Then turn to Psalm 34:8.
Oh taste and see that the Lord is good:
Blessed is the man that taketh refuge in Him.
Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. First Peter 2:3: “If ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious.” Then the Lord’s own invitation to these two men who became His disciples, John and Andrew: “Come and see.”
I would like to speak this morning on what happens before “Follow Me.” Here we have this passage where it is a matter of coming and seeing.
I want to pull back just a little bit, because we need a little understanding here. Everybody is at a different place in their growth in the Lord, and I want to pull back for a couple of reasons.
I have a son who is bigger than me. When he got into his senior year of high school, he was six foot five and 280 pounds. He was making the coaches on the high-school football team salivate. He had finally grown that big in size, and it was mostly muscle. He was a big dude.
He went out for the football team, as he had in the years before. He always had a major place. They had him block wherever they wanted. On the left side, they would put Mark over there, and he blocked the whole left side—whatever.
Then, in his senior year, he went off to practice. He went about four days, and I was not paying much attention until he came in and said, “I quit today.”
I said, “Well, Mark, you quit? What did you quit for?”
He said, “They’re torturing me. I came to play football because I thought I would have fun, but they’re torturing me.”
What had happened was that, although he had gone to practice, they ran him until he threw up every day—which is not atypical. They ran him until he not only threw up, but fainted from heat stroke. After lying there for a while, getting up, and being woozy, the coach said, “Okay, Mark, we’ll see you tomorrow for practice.”
Mark said to himself, “You know what? I’m burned out. This is no more fun.”
Actually, I have to admit that I noticed my boys, when they were growing up and playing even Little League baseball. There are a lot of fathers out there who are almost whipping their kids to where I was not sure the kids wanted to play ball. You know what I am saying? They were doing it because they had to.
And I also have a fear lest young people become professional worshipers and professional prayers. You get burned out on it unless we go back to the reality of what makes us move—what makes us want to pursue.
Unless you yourself have this hunger to come and see the Lord, we are really not going to get too far. Sometimes Christians want to serve God so badly, and they want to see Him so badly.
We have had this whole phenomenon in the last ten years: the rise of passionate worship songs and the whole passion movement, where worship songs are of a very passionate, intimate nature. Words of complete surrender and total consecration are being said.
I have to believe that most young people sincerely mean that, as far as they have any idea what they are saying. The problem is, I wonder how much they really know what they are saying.
Lest we come into a totally sentimental religion, I want to go back to the reality of “Come and see,” because that is really the starting point for everybody. You have got to come and see. Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good.
If that cannot be proven to you, to your satisfaction, then you may be one of those happy, shallow plants that sprouts immediately when the seed falls upon you, but as soon as trouble comes, you will fade away—as Jesus taught in the parable of the sower. I do not want to see that happen to you.
I also want to preface what I am going to say with this: when the Lord Jesus gave us the greatest commandment, He said that we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our soul, and all our mind. Some versions add strength, which is fine.
The point is that the real matter of love stems from the heart. I do not want to chop this whole thing up psychologically, but I will say this: you will express your love for the Lord by emotions, by obedience, and by a desire to know. That is all part of your soul.
But first, you have to love the Lord with your heart, that the heart might direct your soul in knowledge, obedience, and emotion.
The problem is that we replace that actual spiritual source—the heart, which I am equating here with the spirit. We replace that spiritual source, that original source, which is the fountainhead of our worship, obedience, service, and study. We replace it with a soulish desire to do these things.
If we do that, then somewhere along the line I am going to see teenage burnout.
But if it springs from the wellspring of life within you, and there are waters gushing out, those waters gush out in various directions, including your emotions, your actions, and your mind, as we will look at in a very introductory way this morning.
Here the Lord starts out very simply with John and Andrew—Johnny and Andy. They were two pretty young disciples. They both had older brothers, James and Peter. Johnny and Andy were following John the Baptist.
When they saw the Lord Jesus on that fateful day, they started following Him. They were just checking Him out. I do not know what they were going to do. I suppose they were just going to walk a block behind Him—keep their Mercedes-Benz one block away so they would not get traced.
But, of course, Jesus could hear somebody behind Him. Finally, He says, “Hey, you guys, what do you seek? What do you want?”
That is a strange way to do it. But you know what? This is my first point: the Lord does not force anybody to follow Him. He cannot. It is a violation of free will. He will not do it.
Now, He has surprising ways of convincing you who He is, but He does not drag you, pressure you, or force you. I do not want you to feel forced, because if you feel forced, then you are under some kind of juridical thing that could burn you out later on. You could become offended.
The whole deal is that you were sort of chasing after Jesus, and He said to you, “What do you want?” Johnny and Andy could only say, “Where do You live?” They did not even know who He was. They knew there was something there—something that did not tweet.
Can you imagine that day? They stayed all day, and perhaps spent the night because it was late in the day. They had dinner and spent the night. What do you think they did that day?
People are surprised when they spend time with Stephen Kaung. He does not talk to you. If you have something to ask, ask a question; he will give you an answer. But he does not say, “Are you a Yankees fan? What is the weather like outside?” No, no, no, no.
I am not using Stephen Kaung as an example of Jesus Christ. All I am saying is that I bet those guys felt a little awkward, would you not? First, you go over to this place, and it is not His own house. It is somewhere down along the Jordan River—not up in Capernaum or Nazareth. He was staying with somebody.
Jesus probably said, “Got two more tonight, Myrtle.” Whoever the husband and wife were, they made a little more bread, had a meal, and sat around.
Then Jesus says, “I think I’ll go out to pray.”
Johnny and Andy think, “Wow, He’s going out to pray.” You could not spend the day with Him and not learn a lot of things—silent lessons and spoken lessons. I suppose they asked Him questions: “Who was the rabbi who taught You?” It was all that kind of stuff, a lot of dead-end questions.
But there they were, on the way: Jesus not dragging them, not forcing them, not manipulating them. All He does is this: “Come and see.”
Then He starts feeding them hors d’oeuvres that make them incredibly hungry.
I was in Santa Barbara. I am not a sushi guy. I do not believe in uncivilized food, you know what I mean? I believe you should cook. These folks wanted to tease me about sushi, so they took me to a sushi place. They gave me some cooked sushi, like smoked eel, and I said, “Hmm, this is kind of good.”
That is what the Lord Jesus does. He just gives you an hors d’oeuvre. He says, “Hey, Johnny, Andy, what do you think the kingdom of God is like?”
They say, “Well, it is a two-tiered political-spiritual system where a Messiah comes, takes over Rome, and rules from Jerusalem.”
Jesus says, “No, no, no, no. Here is the kingdom of God: it is like a treasure buried in a field.”
Huh? That kind of whets the appetite.
Then the next day, Andy immediately runs and finds Peter: “Peter, Peter, Peter, we found somebody. I do not know, but John the Baptist is pretty high on Him. Come on, come on, come on. I think He is the Messiah.”
Peter comes over, and Johnny and Andy watch Jesus change Peter’s name. They say, “Wow, why did He do that? He looked like a rock to me.” Especially Andy knew that was not true.
Then they went a little further and found Nathanael. Jesus says, “Hey, Nate, I saw you under the tree.”
“That was yesterday. You saw me under the tree?”
“Yes, under the fig tree. You are an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile.”
He says, “Master, how do You see these prophetic things?”
Jesus says, “You have not seen anything yet. I am a ladder. Wait until you see.” Then He just walks on.
They did not have to follow, but believe me, they followed. “We have to find out what He does next.” The next day He goes to a wedding feast and changes water into wine.
Then He goes down to Jerusalem, and they go with Him. What does He do? He cleanses the temple—boom, boom, with a whip. “Get out of here. It is a house of prayer.”
They say, “Woo, this guy is a dude.”
Now, that is a taste. Come and see. You want to see what He is like? Check Him out. Taste and see that the Lord is good.
They got a taste now. “Oh, this Rabbi is real. He is a Rabbi for real.”
What happened? They all went home.
If you interviewed them and asked, “How was it?” they would say, “Oh man, it was awesome. You should have seen this guy. What a dude.”
Somebody would say, “It was like the Toronto Summer Conference, man. It was a wonderful time.” Others would say, “What a great two weeks we had with Jesus. But we have to go back to Galilee.”
Jesus stayed down in Jerusalem. There was a year of Jesus’ ministry, mainly in Jerusalem and Judea, while the disciples were up in Galilee. They just got a little taste, you see.
It was not until the next year, after John the Baptist was thrown into prison, that Jesus went up to Galilee.
Jesus came by those same guys and said, “Okay, now you follow Me.” There was a year between “Come and see” and “Follow Me.”
There is a little lag time, baby. Time for them to think. Time for them to understand what is going on.
Do you think they had any idea what they had just contacted? Do you think they had any idea what had just transpired?
Behind the scenes, there was a God who, fifteen years before, said, “Okay, angel, get down there and help Peter rescue Andrew. He is drowning there in the Sea of Galilee, because he is going to be one of Jesus’ followers.”
All that is behind it. Before they were born, God said, “Let us keep an eye on these guys.”
The Bible has a great mystery, which our brother shared. As a matter of fact, Jim and Sonya basically spoke my message, so there is not much to say.
But let us look at one verse they did not touch—one of the only ones they did not steal directly from my notes. Jeremiah chapter 29, verse 11.
For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you hope in your latter end.
And ye shall call upon Me, and ye shall go and pray unto Me, and I will hearken unto you.
And ye shall seek Me, and find Me, when ye shall search for Me with all your heart.
And I will be found of you, saith the Lord.
This promise was made to some of God’s children who were about to go into exile, but the purpose and spirit are always the same.
Can you imagine that our God actually wants to be found by us? That tremendous love God has for you gets translated down into “Come and see.”
Behind that simple, sort of neutral statement, there is a love for you that is undying. I love the way James says that His Spirit yearns jealously for you. Johnny and Andy had no idea how jealous God was for their hearts.
They just said, “Wow, that was cool.” They had no idea. Time had to go by. Things had to happen.
The Lord wants to be found by us. Basically, I am going to put it in a simple way: there are four conversations the Lord wants to have with you in this taste-and-see realm.
The first is a conversation regarding creation. God created this heaven and earth in such a way that you might know Him by looking at creation.
He wants you to engage in a conversation like David had when he was under the stars, looking up and saying:
When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers,
The moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained;
What is man, that Thou art mindful of him?
In this conversation about creation, there is an awareness of God’s awesome presence out there. But that is not enough unless you get into the dialogue: “Where do I fit? What is man, that Thou art mindful of him?”
Then David said those amazing words of purpose: man was created a little lower than the angels and meant to rule and have dominion.
Then it leads to the conversation, “How do I fit into this whole plan? I do not feel like I am ruling and reigning. I am the least of my family, among the sons of Jesse, and I am a shepherd out in the field. How exactly am I ruling and reigning?”
David began a dialogue from creation that led him into the very presence of God Himself.
Now, you as young people—well, there is so much to say and not much time—all of you innately have a hunger. Sometimes your hunger has been despoiled by too much religion.
I want you to step back just a little bit and taste and see for yourself. I do not want you just to love your mom and dad’s God. I want you to love Him because you have conversed with Him.
In that big, huge thing called creation, with all that tremendous, awesome design, power, detail, and order, there should begin a conversation in your life. Not merely as a creationist in some sense, but as a person who is in that creation.
Where am I involved?
In the long run, most Christians do not have the problem of thinking too much of themselves. Most Christians have the problem of not realizing the height of God’s purpose for them.
God has a very high and important calling for you. But it is only when you see yourself in relation to God’s purpose for creation that you begin to understand. You see that creation has come short, and you have come short. It is all in that conversation.
Have you ever had that creation conversation? That is part of tasting and seeing. You should really go outside. This is a tremendous place where we are right out here. You should sense something. You should be conversing with God and checking it out: “What is Your glorious plan for me?”
The vastness of that will make you realize there is a vastness in you.
I remember going to a Russian funeral. I go to Russia occasionally, but at this Russian funeral there was a preacher, and a man was translating. The preacher said, “Here is a box two meters long, and this lies Vladik. Put him in the ground.”
His body was two meters long—about six foot four, I guess. But he said, “Vladik’s soul was infinite. Your soul is infinite and infinitely hungry.”
Nothing in the world can satisfy your soul. It is bigger than anything you can consume in this world. The only thing that will satisfy your soul is God Himself.
Vladik found God, and God infinitized his soul and eternalized his soul. It was something like that, roughly translated.
Have you ever been aware of that? How big are you—five foot four, five foot nine? That is your body. How big is your soul? Oh, your soul is so big.
Is it not amazing when you see somebody who has made two billion dollars and is not satisfied? If you want the world, the world will never satisfy you. Your soul is bigger than the world. Think about it. Your soul is bigger than the world.
Only God can make you go, “Num, num, num.” Taste and see that the Lord is good. Now, that is your satisfaction.
Girls run off and find a guy to marry, hoping to find satisfaction. Wow. It is back to: taste and see that the Lord is good.
Then, during your tasting-and-seeing period, you need to be honest about this. Romans 1 says that every man can see God—His eternal nature and power—in creation. Some are dishonest.
The men who do not believe are dishonest about their nonbelief in God because there is a vested interest in their immorality. If you really understand that God created the heavens and the earth, then you are obligated to something. Men do not like to be obligated to anything, since man has set himself up as being God.
But if you are an honest person, this awareness of creation will bring you into God, into a sense of, “What is man, Lord?”
The second conversation that has to go on is the conversation of conscience. There is an inward road to understanding God, and it is our conscience.
Immanuel Kant, the great philosopher, said, “No matter what I study in philosophy, two things make me aware of God: when I go outside and look at the stars, and when I look inside at my sense of ought.”
You can do everything you want to a man to try to destroy his conscience, but most people still have a sense of ought.
There are all kinds of theories that this is a developed sense of morality—developed by society or by what parents teach you. To some degree, that has validity. But there is a sense of ought, which Paul says even the Gentiles, who do not have the Law—the Ten Commandments—understand by instinct when they are right or wrong.
There is something deep within us.
Paul goes on to say that if those Gentiles pursue satisfaction for their conscience, they will come right through the tutor, the Law, and right through the tutor to the finished work of Christ and be saved.
Many a person has had a guilty conscience, and that is how they came to Christ.
Are you aware of your conscience? Do you listen to your conscience? Do you try to obey your conscience?
Is that not an interesting little thing in John chapter 3? After the famous John 3:16, there is a little section in verses 19 through 21 that is included in this whole segment about God so loving the world.
And this is the judgment, that the light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their works were evil.
For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, and cometh not to the light, lest his works should be reproved.
But he that doeth the truth cometh to the light, that his works may be made manifest, that they have been wrought in God.
He makes a distinction. There are two kinds of men. He is not talking about saved and unsaved; He is talking about men as a whole.
Everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. That is type one. They wear sunglasses.
But he who practices the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest as having been wrought in God.
There are some God-fearing people on this earth who are not Christians yet, but they want the light. They want to know the truth. Their consciences are saying, “Tell me the truth. What is the way?”
Have you ever talked to people like that? There are God-fearing people who are not saved, but they want to be in the conversation. Praise God for that. You also should be in that conversation.
As you are tasting and seeing the Lord, many of you got saved when you were seven, nine, or eleven years old, and you did not have much sense of sin. Unless you have a good, thorough, ongoing conversation with God about your conscience, you can get to the place where you desensitize your conscience and are not aware of how sinful you really are.
As you grow older, you become aware of it. Even I, when I was twenty years old, was saved. I was a good old sinner before I was saved, so I had a lot of external things to be forgiven.
But at least two or three years into my Christian life, after college, I began to see the depth of my pride, my self-will, and things like that. This is a conversation that goes on. You have to converse with your conscience. You cannot become hardened in your conscience.
Taste and see. Look out there; look in here. Then the third way He lets you taste and see is by what we call providence. That is, He sets up clues in your life that are beyond coincidence.
Some people are made so aware of God by the clues in their lives. When God sets something up, you know it was not coincidence. Something happened; something converged; this and this happened.
Even Johnny and Andy meeting Jesus—do you think that was a coincidence? This was something developed in God’s strategy before these guys were ever born. But they come to see this.
Remember when John was fishing with Peter and the others on the lake after Jesus’ death and resurrection? They had not caught any fish—the usual pattern for Peter.
Then a man yells from the shore, “Throw it on the other side.” They throw it on the other side, and of course they catch 153 fish.
All the guys say, “Oh wow, we could sell this with Lizzie—twenty-six dollars. You get that; I get that.” But John immediately says, “It is the Lord. This is not a coincidence. Do you not remember last night, you bozos?”
Some people just connect the dots. Part of your tasting and seeing is that you have to be an investigator who can connect the dots.
Even if they are dots of discipline—when Paul was struck down on the road to Damascus and Jesus said, “It is hard for thee to kick against the goads,” Paul knew exactly what that meant: “All these dealings in my life over this last year have been You, God.”
Connect the dots. Do not be dumb.
There is a proper age—and it is a young age—when there is nothing better than that little book where you go from one to two to three to four to five to six, and Andy Panda appears. You connected the dots.
You need to come and see. I dare say that even those of us who are most detective-like in spirit are probably losing ninety percent of the dots.
He is doing a lot more coincidental things in your life than you can recount. But can you at least come up with a log of ten percent? That is a good start.
Taste and see: “Lord, why am I here? Why did that happen? What is going on?” You would be amazed. Sometimes you learn things retrospectively, but connect the dots. Maybe you need a little dot book.
Two weeks later, you say, “Ah, that is what happened.” There are so many dot things. Just think about it.
That is the third conversation.
The fourth conversation in this whole thing is to begin to taste the Word. This is not everybody’s diet. I tell you the truth, there are a lot of Christians who do not think it is much of a diet.
But do not forget: when Peter says, “Taste and see that the Lord is good,” he is talking about desiring the pure milk of the Word.
Can I just strip away all the doctrine you keep running on when you read this thing and say, “Just chew on it. Let it talk to you.”
Have you ever tasted and seen that the Lord is good by His Word? It is wonderful when that becomes part of your dialogue, because the dialogue with the Word is wonderful.
Most Christians do not really take that seriously. It is almost impossible to be a Christian these days because we are absolutely overwhelmed with so much internet stuff and everything.
Now it is at the point where you can have a devotion without having a devotion. Punch the button, and there you are: “Okay, that, that, that, that, that. Okay, I must walk.” You know?
Have this conversation. Then you are in some kind of a taste-and-see relationship. Are you in a taste-and-see relationship?
There is an enemy, and the enemy has one basic strategy: to blind the minds, to blind the eyes, so that you do not see God. You walk through life without connecting the dots. You open the Bible without seeing God. You look at creation and say, “Hmm, looks like rain.”
The enemy wants to blind our eyes from the glory of Christ that can be seen in the things around us. There is an enemy who is out to do that, and we are pretty dumb.
So how is this thing ever going to work? Did the plan succeed with Johnny and Andy? They went back to work.
Our God is an awesome God. We love those kinds of things, but we have to get back to real life. Is something missing in the plan?
No, there is nothing missing in the plan. I forgot to tell you something. Back in Ecclesiastes 3:11, it says that God has set eternity in your heart.
He hath made every thing beautiful in its time: also He hath set eternity in their heart, yet so that man cannot find out the work that God hath done from the beginning even to the end.
Ecclesiastes is famous for the phrases just before that section: “There is a season—turn, turn, turn—and a time for every purpose under heaven.” There is a time to be born, a time to die, and all that.
After he gets through all those times, we realize, if we are smart, that under the sun there is a time for everything. That is the whole point of that section.
But what good is it if you know the times and seasons of earth? Verse 11 says that He has made everything beautiful in its time, and He has also set eternity in your heart.
Now He has got you. In your heart, He has put a little something there. That is what can respond to Jesus when He says, “Come and see.”
Think about it again. Here come Johnny and Andy, and Jesus turns to them: “What do you want?”
They say, “We want to know where You live.”
What do you do before “Follow Me”? It was a year later when He said, “Follow Me.” What do you do before He says, “Follow Me”?
Well, you follow Him. But you follow Him—but you follow Him. “Come and see.”
How many of you have a free will? All right, good. How many of you exercise that free will and follow Jesus because you want to follow Jesus?
It is very important that you do that, because if you do, then that little eternity in you will become more dissatisfied with just this existence under the sun. There is something more to your life.
Then you are going to get set up for the day Jesus comes by again and says, “Follow Me.” You are going to be ready because you tasted and saw. You came and saw.
Why did the disciples go back home? They saw the most awesome Rabbi on earth, and they went back home. What is the deal?
You guys sing about the awesome God, and one of your favorite words is “awesome.” You use “awesome” too much. You have to find other words. There is beauty in worship when there is specificity. When we use the same old words, “awesome” becomes an old word. You have to find new words.
By the way, you can always tell a person who is searching in the Word and a person who is searching in their relationship with the Lord, because they have other words—their own words—that express this thing.
Anyway, that is another subject. Why did these guys leave? This was the most awesome Person they had ever met. Look at Him turning water into wine. “Hey, we could use that back home,” Pete says.
But they go back to Capernaum.
What is the one problem here? With all the awesomeness of coming and seeing, of tasting and seeing, why is that not enough? It was not enough for Johnny and Andy. How come it is not enough for us?
It is not enough for us. We have to move beyond taste and see. Before “Follow Me,” there is “Come and see,” and then “Follow Me” is actually what? “Come after Me.” There is something in between. What is that?
Matthew 11:28: “Come to Me.”
Come and see is one thing. You are seeing kingdom things; you are tasting and seeing. You are seeing Him externally, as it were.
Now here is the second point: come to Me.
When will you come to Him? You will not come to Him until—what is the one thing that has to happen? You will not come to Him until you need Him.
That is what the Holy Spirit has to work into our lives: an understanding of how much we need Him.
When I first got saved, I loved the Bible. It was such an interesting book. I had never read it. I did not grow up in Christian ways, so I was reading the Bible out of curiosity. It was piquing my interest like crazy.
But now, forty-three years later, I come to the Bible because I need to. I study the Bible because I need it—not so I can preach to you. I need the Bible for me.
I need Jesus for me. I will tell you another thing that sounds really strange: I need to serve the Lord. I am no longer happy when I am not serving the Lord.
Now, I can serve the Lord by doing nothing, if that is what He wants me to do. But you understand: there is something so satisfying in the Lord when you do His will. I need this. It is so wonderful.
But until you have a need, you do not come. What was it Jesus said?
Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
There you go. Practice your own soul-power Christianity for a while, but when you get good and tired and burned out, then Jesus says, “Okay, now come to Me.”
Do not come to My Christianity. Do not come to be one of My worshipers. You come to Me. I can give you rest.
That is what has to happen even in a Christian’s life. We come and taste and see, and do a lot of stuff in our own effort. But then the day comes when we get worn out, and He says, “Now come unto Me.”
You had to wait a year. It was almost a year before He came to the Sea of Galilee and said to those guys, “Come, follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.”
Why were they ready? We know because of two things. First, He had to take away John the Baptist and their adherence to John. As long as they were adhering to John the Baptist, they would not follow Jesus. So John was thrown into prison.
Sometimes you have to give up your religion to find Jesus. So many people grow up in religion. They are steeped in religion. They love religion. They desire it. They have a religious temperament. They have a will that wants to serve and a love that wants to give, yet it is all religion, religion, religion.
God has to sit them down and say, “You come to Me.”
Undoing all that religion can be a tough job sometimes. “Come to Me. You are weary and heavy laden, and you have all this stuff on you, do you not? Okay, just lay it down. I will give you rest.”
Here is the deal: now come and learn from Me.
Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me.
You tried it your way; now learn from Me.
I do not know anybody who has served God who has not gone out serving by his own strength first. There is no way around that. You are going to have to do that.
Go on the mission to Zambia, then come back. Go through another thing. Do things. Hit the varsity by your own strength. Just serve the Lord. You will learn.
You are going to learn the difference between learning from Him and merely doing your own thing. You will not learn the difference if you do not do anything.
If you sit there and say, “Lord, I do not want to do anything unless You do it. I cannot do it unless You do it,” you will not do anything. It is a strange mystery as well.
Anyway, I speak on things so deep that I confuse myself sometimes.
We come from a time of coming and seeing to a time of coming and learning. After that, He says, “Okay, you came and saw. Now you have come to Me. Now, come after Me.”
That demands a cross in order to follow Him.
I have a feeling—I am just going to say it, and I could be wrong—I would say that fifty percent of you are not ready to follow Him, because I do not know how much you have tasted yet.
I know you love your mom and dad. I know you love their religion. I know you embrace the Lord. I believe there is reality in your lives. Actually, I am very blessed to be here with you.
But all I am saying is: have you really tasted Him?
Something happens with that eternity—that clock of eternity in your life—with all of your goodness and all of your aspirations. When He truly touches that thing, you start to follow, and you can never turn back again.
How much do you really sense you need Him?
Is Christianity just a nice thing, a good aspect of your life? Is it something you do because, if you did not go to church, your parents would be very upset?
Or is it that you need the Lord’s people? You need a message from the Word. You need worship. You are the curious one.
I do not know how to put it. I see people, and it is as though everybody has a sovereign alarm clock. Your alarm goes off at some time. I do not know when—fourteen, sixteen, seventeen, twelve. I do not know how old you are when your clock goes off, but it is different for everybody.
It is interesting to watch two sisters in a house. They grow up side by side, eat the same meals, and have the same crummy parents.
One of their alarms goes off at twelve years old, and she starts pursuing the Lord. The fourteen-year-old is going, “Duh, what is this kid doing?”
Then, suddenly, at eighteen or in college, the alarm goes off. The eighteen-year-old comes home, and she is reading the Bible. You say, “What is going on?”
What the Lord has to do is find a metaphor in your life—something that is real to you. Some people are sitting here this weekend, and everybody is singing emotional songs and praying emotional prayers, but they are not emotional people. They feel like they are out of it.
But they are not out of it. Love is not just emotional.
I have seen people for years who have been faithful to the Lord but do not shed many tears. Here is what I always get a feeling when I see them present themselves to the Lord: “Lord, I want more than anything to be commanded by You. I want to do Your will.”
They are faithful, loyal, and true. Let us include them in the whole assembly of those who will come and taste and see. You do not have to be emotional to be in this race, but you have to be curious.
Where is your curiosity expressing itself? Are you curious about creation at all? How about the Word of God? Are you curious, or are you just saying, “I read when I have to”?
May the Lord give you that holy curiosity, where He actually stops you and says, “Hey, what do you want?” Then He says, “Come and see.”
I think many of you have come to that place. Have you come to the place, “Come unto Me”?
Some of you are here with your friends. It is not always so clear-cut: you are a Christian, you are not a Christian. Some people are truly seekers, and they are not Christians yet. Some people are so-called Christians, and they are not seeking at all.
I do not get it. But all I know is that from “Come and see,” there comes a time to come to Him. Is that your time this weekend? You need Him.
Of course, when Jesus came to Peter and Andrew, James and John, and said, “Follow Me,” “I will make you fishers of men,” that is the short story of what happened in Luke chapter 5. Our brother Sonya stole that from my message.
Peter had fished all night and caught nothing. He got to the end of himself and realized that he needed the Lord.
Until you have exhausted your own fishing ability, you will hardly need the Lord. Tell the Lord to put you into a desert of some sort, where what you are doing is not working, even though you are a professional fisherman with “Best Fisherman, Capernaum, 8032” on your wall.
The Lord arranges it so that you are having bad luck fishing for a long period of time. The Lord says, “Peter, connect the dots. Unless I am Lord of your life, you cannot even fish.”
Peter said, “Boy, I need You, Lord. Depart from me, for I am a sinful man. What business have I being around such a Lord? He even knows how to bring the fish up.”
Then Jesus says, “Follow Me. I will teach you some fish—how to catch them on the land.”
This is our problem. You are satisfied being an engineer. God is not satisfied until you are His priest, His evangelist, His servant—whatever job you have.
Come and see, dear brothers and sisters. Come and see. I want you to be convinced of how good the Lord is. In that process, the Holy Spirit is faithful to bring you to the point where you see how much you need Him.
Oh, you need Him so much. Behind this simple “Come and see,” there is a whole arrangement of things for that dear person who would turn and actually pursue:
“Lord, I want to be free of my burden of guilt and a conscience of failure. Lord, I come to You to dialogue with it.”
Oh, how the Lord loves such people who come to Him and want resolution in these great matters of life.
So I bid you today, this weekend: would you come and see? Just taste Him. Taste Him afresh.
Some of you are professional football players, you know. You have been burned out. You have been sent through a lot of disciplines, and you have thrown up a few times. You are tired of it.
But I am telling you, when you are walking with Jesus and tasting and seeing, you do not get tired of that. I guarantee you: if you have a hold of the real thing and are following after Him, you will not get tired.
It is just that sometimes we pick up the professional stuff, and we get tired of that. May the Lord help you.
Lord, there are Your children here. They love You. Some have come and seen that the Lord is good. I hear in the worship prayers of some of Your children that they really are pursuing You with a heart that is aflame. Praise God.
Lord, there are also many quiet ones. I do not know where they are at, but I pray that You would come by Your Spirit and say, “Taste and see. Taste and see. The Lord is good.”
Then, Lord, I know that You have been giving some here the luxury of tasting and seeing. You have convinced them in many ways. You have connected the dots for them. You have led them by Scriptures at times.
But they are coming to the end of themselves, and they need to come to You and learn from You. It is another level of commitment that is necessary.
Oh, Lord, let there be that response of following You by being yoked together with You. Lord, we want to ask You to continue to prepare us, in order that we may come after You and deny ourselves.
Oh, Lord, these are big things—things beyond our understanding. But how wonderful of You to spend time with Your children and show them how good You are.
Teach us these valuable lessons, we pray, in Jesus’ name. Amen.