Tell Me The Story Of Jesus Series

(Sermon began with a group of people standing on a sidewalk looking upward) Back when I was a boy, there was a TV show that always began with this group of people on a sidewalk - pointing and looking up in the sky. Does anyone know what TV show this was? (SUPERMAN) “Look! Up in the sky…. It’s a bird. It’s a plane. No, it’s superman”

Now, back in 1969, a social psychologist named Stanley Milgram who decided to test if people on a busy street could be prompted to ALL look up at the sky at the same time. What he did was hire groups of actors who were instructed to just stop on a busy street in New York … and then stare up at specific window on a nearby building. When the actors stopped and stared so did a number of other people on the street.

Years later, another social psychologist did the same experiment where he filmed pedestrians reacting to actors – who stopped for a minute and stared at a building-mounted camera. He found that - on average - 27 per cent of the passers-by looked in the same direction as the actors. (https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/what-are-you-looking-at-people-follow-each-others-gazes-but-without-a-tipping-point)

Now, what these experiments demonstrated was - IF you can get people’s attention they’ll often look at what you think is important.

In our text today –Jesus came to John the Baptist to be baptized and John said “Behold, (look) the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” John 1:29

(THEN) The next day again John was standing with two of his disciples, and he looked at Jesus as he walked by and said, “Behold (look) the Lamb of God!” John 1:35-36

(LATER) 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 anything good come out of Nazareth?" Philip said to him, "Come and see." John 1:45-46

LOOK! BEHOLD! COME AND SEE! These are not deep theological statements. These statements in Scripture are a declaration that – a lot of times – all you need to do is get people’s attention. Just get them to look at Jesus. And IF they can get them to look at Jesus… that simple action can change people’s lives.

ILLUS: A famous preacher (E. Stanley Jones) once said: "The early Christians didn’t say 'Look what the world has come to.' They said 'Look what has come into the world' (Jesus).”

LOOK! BEHOLD! COME AND SEE JESUS!

ILLUS: Back in 1979, there was a movie called “The Jesus Film”. The object of the film was to reach as many people as possible with the story of Christ. It was a simple story of Jesus as described in the Gospel of John, and the creators of the film put it out in over 2000 languages. They displayed it in tribal areas of places like Africa and India where they’d have an electric generator to run the projector and often show the movie on bedsheets. But they also showed it in movie theatres in Europe and Asia and the USA.

And the film had some intriguing results.

For example – in Oslo, Norway one of that nation’s most notorious neo-Nazis and wanted criminals turned himself in to authorities confessed to having blown up an anti-racism center a few years before. He confessed to it! Why? Well, his lawyer said “It was the film that made him realize that he had to show his hand… It has been a long process, but the Jesus film made the difference.”

In Palm Beach, Florida: A 53-year-old man walked into a sheriff’s office and confessed to having robbed a bank in the city two years earlier. He had gotten away with $25,000, and police had no leads on the case. But the thief said he’d decided to come clean after seeing the Jesus film

Now why had these men confessed and changed their lives? Because they had come and seen the story of Jesus, and it had changed their lives. (Uncle John’s Slightly Irregular Bathroom Reader, p. 271-272)

But what is it about Christianity that changes people? What is it that shakes up people’s lives? Well, it’s Jesus, You see, all the other world religions teach that if you could just clean up your life - that God would love you. But the Bible teaches us that “We all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. (WE WERE NOT CLEANED UP) But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.” Ephesians 2:3-5