"The Faith Network"

THE FAITH NETWORK

John 1: 35-46

I. You Must Respond to the Invitation. 1:35-1:37

II. You Go Wherever Jesus Leads You. 1:38-1:39

III. You must seek those who are lost. 1:40-1:46

1. You Must Be Willing to Witness

to Those You Know. 1:40-1:42

2. You Must Be Willing to Witness

to Those You Don’t Know. 1:43-1:46

INTRODUCTION

Turn in your Bibles if you will to the first chapter of the Book of John. This morning I want to talk to you about THE FAITH NETWORK. No, I didn’t come up from Louisville to sell you on another cable channel. We will see today as we look in the Bible, John talks about a faith network, or if you prefer, a network of faith.

The concept of networking is all over our society today, particularly in business circles. Before I went to Seminary I worked in the mental health field. Part of my job was to network with other services and organizations. If you take a broad approach to the term, networking simply means to establish relationships for a specific purpose. In my case, I established relationships with outside organizations in order to provide better service. Many of you do that where you work. But this morning we are going to look at a picture of networking according to the writer of the Gospel of John. My hope and prayer is that the picture we see here can be reproduced here at PBC.

35 Again the next day John was standing with two of his disciples,

36 and he looked at Jesus as He walked, and said, "Behold, the Lamb of God!"

37 The two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus.

38 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?"

39 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.

40 One of the two who heard John {speak} and followed Him, was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother.

41 He found first his own brother Simon and said to him, "We have found the Messiah" (which translated means Christ).

42 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).

43 The next day He purposed to go into Galilee, and He found Philip. And Jesus said to him, "Follow Me."

44 Now Philip was from Bethsaida, of the city of Andrew and Peter.

45 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."

46 Nathanael said to him, "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" Philip said to him, "Come and see."

PRAYER

On a wall in the Museum of Natural Science in Chicago there is a checkerboard with 64 squares. In the lower left hand corner is a grain of wheat. The display includes this question: "If you doubled the amount of wheat as you move from square to square, how much would you have when you reached the 64th square? A carload? A trainload? In reality you would have enough wheat to cover the country of India six feet deep."

That is the power of exponential growth. Suppose on the first day of January there is only 1 Christian in the world. And suppose that Christian shares the Gospel with one other person. And then on the following day two Christians share the Gospel with two others. Now if each person accepted Christ, there would be 4 Christians on January 3rd. Suppose then on the 4th, each of the four Christians shares their Faith, and so on. There would be 16,384 Christians on January 15th. If that continued, the entire population of the world would be reached by the third day of February. Mathematically, it figures out to 8, 589,934,592.

Let’s scale it down a bit. The U.S. Census reports about 8,500 people in Switzerland County. Say we take 10 people from RBC. And each day they share the Gospel with 1 person, following the same pattern, every single person in Switzerland County would be reached with the Gospel message in 10 days.

When I say the faith network, that is exactly what I am talking about. You, as a believer in Jesus Christ, share the Gospel with someone, then that person in turn shares the gospel , and then that person, and so on, and so on, right down the line.

But being a part of this network is not for everyone. There are conditions. And as we look at verses 35-46 of John chapter 1, I believe we will be three conditions. First and foremost: