Life Lessons From Andrew - Dealing With Racism, Evangelism & Humble Service

Andrew - Living in Your Brother’s Shadow"

John 1:35-42

(Watch clip from Friends - season five - "The One Where Phoebe Hates PBS" - show first 3 minutes - theme is all about whether or not there are truly selfless good deeds)

Well, that’s a great question and one that we will come back to at the end of this message. We are looking this morning at the brother of Simon Peter, a man by the name of Andrew.

John 1:35-42 “John the Baptist was standing with two of his disciples when he saw Jesus passing by. ‘There,’ he said, ‘is the Lamb of God!’ John’s disciples followed Jesus. When Jesus saw them, he turned and said, ‘What do you want?’ They answered, ‘Where are you staying, Teacher?’ He said, ‘Come and see.’ They went with him to the house and they stayed with him the rest of the day. One of them was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He found his brother immediately and told him, ‘We have found the Messiah.’ And he took Simon to meet Jesus.”

There are three great lessons we learn from the life of Andrew.

#1 - He always focused on the mission.

-There are four main occurrences of Andrew in the New Testament.

-Comes to Jesus (In John 1 he is the first of the Apostles to come to Jesus)

-Brings his brother to Jesus (John 1:41,42)

-Brings a young boy to Jesus (John 6:8, 9)

-Brings a group of Greek men to Jesus. (John 12:20-22)

He appears only four times in the gospels. But whenever he is mentioned, he is always doing the same thing, he is bringing somebody to Jesus. He had a passion for bringing people to Jesus. And we have to ask the question, do we have that same passion? Are we overwhelmed with an urgency in bringing people to Jesus?

This past week we had a very challenging episode. I was sitting at work when my wife called in a panic because our four year old son was lost. She is in a genuine panic – she sounded like Beaker from the Muppets. Anyway, I ran home from work – wife crying – kid’s searching – finally found him asleep under a bed.

Anybody been there? Show of hands, who’s lost a kid? Now, I know that it’s bad to lose your kid but hey, at least I didn’t leave my kid at church…(name names)..

But when our child is lost we are filled with a sense of anxiety and urgency and overwhelming emotion. And here’s my question, why do we not feel anything close to that emotion when our family members and those in our circle of influence are spiritually lost?

Why don’t we have a glimmer of that same emotion? Andrew did.

Andrew always focused on the mission. He was consumed with bringing people to Jesus. And we might ask why? And the answer is that he understood the value of what they were going to find. He found a good thing in Jesus and he knew that there was nothing better that he could do then bring people to the Savior.

I’ve mentioned before that each and every Christian needs to do a cost/benefit analysis of

sharing the gospel. Of living the life of a contagious Christian. Cause when we do we’ll

find the same conclusion of Andrew. Hey, it’s worth it. Let’s give it a shot.

I mean ask yourself what is the worst thing that’s gonna happen to me if I raise my evangelistic outreach up a notch or two. And I’ll tell you what it is, in this country anyway, for the most part, the worst thing that’s gonna happen is that somebody might decline your efforts to lead them to Christ.

With the extremely rare exception, that’s about it. And we’ve got ask, is that so awful?

And some of us are paralyzed from living a contagious Christian life, paralyzed from vocalizing our faith and calling for others to make a decision, paralyzed from that because someone might say no thanks. Or might think a little less of us. Might think we’re weird or religious.

And so we fall into a pattern of silence. A pattern of never trying. And for many it’s become normal not to share the good news with other people.

Do you remember the parable Jesus told of the man sowing the good seed, it’s like the good news, but he sewing or planting the good news wherever he goes. And it says he first plants some on hard ground and the birds come down and swoop it up. It

doesn’t take root. Strike one.

And then he plants some on some rocky ground and it grew for awhile but it didn’t have nourishment and so it withered and died. Strike two.