Image: Lilies, North Garden, Virginia, June 2017
Note: Devotion taken from last Sunday's sermon on John 1:35-46.
Then Jesus turned, and
saw them following, and saith unto them, What seek ye? (John 1:38a).
Jesus turned to the two disciples of John the Baptist who began
to follow him and asked them a question. Jesus is the great asker of questions.
Men think they have questions for Jesus; let’s not forget that it is he who has
questions for us. What matters is not your investigation of Jesus but his
investigation of you.
These are the very first recorded words of Jesus in John’s
Gospel. These are the first “red letter” words in John. Of course, every word
in the Bible is a “red letter” word in that it is God-breathed by the triune
God. But the first recorded words of the incarnate Jesus recorded in a Gospel are
significant.
In Matthew, it comes in 3:15 when Jesus says to reluctant
John at his baptism: “Suffer it to be so for now: for thus it becometh us to
fulfill all righteousness.”
In Mark, it comes in 1:15 when Jesus preaches, “The time is
fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the
gospel.”
In Luke, it comes in 2:49 when the 12 year-old Jesus says to
Mary and Joseph in the temple where they had left him, “How is it that ye
sought me? Wist ye not [or, Did you not know] that I must be about my Father’s
business?”
The first recorded words of the Lord in John come in a
question posed to two men who begin to follow him: “What seek ye?” What are you
seeking? What are you looking for?
That is a great and fundamental spiritual question. Why would
any men seek to follow Christ? Are you seeking knowledge? Happiness?
Prosperity? Rest? Relief? Wisdom? There are many men who begin seeking after
Christ for all the wrong reason or for no purposeful reason at all. But then he
is so often so very gracious in that he gives them more than they ever could
have asked or imagined. He finds out seekers, even those who might be more than
little misguided in their seeking.
When we lived in post-communist Hungary in the early 1990s I
recall seeing a ubiquitous billboard advertising a newly opened Ikea
store. The billboard had an Ikea
catalogue on one side and a red-covered book with the title Marx, Das Kapital on the other. In between the
two books was the saying, in Hungarian, “Which makes your life better?” At that
time, the choice was clear for most Hungarians. They had given up on communism
and wanted to pursue fulfillment through Western materialism, as represented by
that catalogue.
Of course, I wanted to add a third book to that billboard.
The Bible. The only thing that will really make your life better is knowing the
God of the Bible. John wrote this Gospel so that those who read it might come
to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing they
might have life in his name (cf. John 20:31).
What are you seeking to make your life better? You will only
find real satisfaction if you seek Christ and follow him.
Grace and peace, Pastor
Jeff Riddle
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