Wandering from the path

The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, "Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! This is the one I meant when I said, `A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.' I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel." Then John gave this testimony: "I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. I would not have known him, except that the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, `The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is he who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.' I have seen and I testify that this is the Son of God."

The next day John was there again with two of his disciples. When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, "Look, the Lamb of God!" When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus. Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, "What do you want?" They said, "Rabbi" (which means Teacher), "where are you staying?" "Come," he replied, "and you will see." So they went and saw where he was staying, and spent that day with him. It was about the tenth hour.

Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, was one of the two who heard what John had said and who had followed Jesus. The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, "We have found the Messiah" (that is, the Christ) (John 1:29-41).

Many years ago, a farmer went to town to buy supplies and his dog tagged along. As the farmer was hitching his horse and buggy to a post in front of the general store, the storekeeper noticed that the dog was panting hard; so he criticized the farmer for making the dog run all the way while he rode in the wagon. But the farmer responded, "That dog’s not tired from following me to town. What tired him out was all his foolish zigzagging. There wasn’t an open gate, a hole in a fence, or a tree stump that he did not explore. He is tired from zigzagging all over the place."

Many people live their lives this way. They zigzag from one diversion to another, from one pleasure to another, from one thrill to another. They wear themselves out, but have no real idea of where all their running around is taking them. Late in life, the famous poet Robert Burns concluded that the biggest misfortune of his life was that he had lived with no clear direction.

In today’s Gospel lesson, we read of two men who were looking for someone to follow. One was Andrew, the other goes unnamed, but may very well have been the John who wrote this Gospel account. Although they had a trade as fishermen, they were not with their boats at the Sea of Galilee; they had come south to study at the feet of John the Baptist. They had arrived at the conclusion that a career as fishermen was not fulfilling their inmost needs; so they had come to God’s representative seeking a new direction for their lives. It was while they were learning from John that he introduced them to Jesus. When Andrew and his companion were told that Jesus was the Lamb sent from God to take away the sin of the world, they immediately began to follow the Lord, hoping to be accepted as His students.

Which brings us to my question for you this day: why follow Jesus? Who do you want to be like, as you live your life? Do you want to be like the farmer’s hound who exhausted himself by chasing from one distraction to another? Or do you want to be like Andrew, leaving every worldly thing behind in order to follow the Savior? Why should anyone follow Christ?

Consider what John told these two disciples about Jesus. First, he calls Jesus the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Under the covenant of God given through Moses, a person’s sins could be removed through the sacrifice of an unblemished lamb. The repentant sinner would lay his hands on the lamb, symbolically transferring his guilt to the animal; then the priest would kill the lamb and the man would be forgiven, because the lamb had died for his sins in his place. This procedure would be repeated many times throughout a man’s life, because until the day that he dies, each human being continues to sin.

But Jesus came down to earth to inaugurate a new covenant. Under the covenant given through Jesus, only one Lamb would be needed, only one death would be required. The Son of God became a flesh and blood human being so that all our sins could touch Him, be worn by Him like a funeral shroud. Jesus the perfect Lamb of God carried the burden of our sins to the cross where He died in our place, freeing us from all of our sins forever.

Since Jesus no longer walks among us in the flesh, how is it that we can touch Him with our sins? John gives us the answer: He…will baptize with the Holy Spirit. This is how Jesus transfers our guilt to Himself—He takes responsibility for our sins by washing us with the Holy Spirit in the water of baptism.

John told the disciples one other thing about Jesus; he said: A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me. Jesus appeared on the public scene after John had announced His coming; in this sense, Jesus came after John. Yet Jesus is the eternal Son of God; He has existed since before the creation of the world and is far older than John; in this sense, Jesus was before John. And so Jesus surpasses John, because Jesus is the Son of God while John was only a man. John would die and teach no more, but Jesus the Eternal One would rise from His grave, victorious over our sin and the death it leads to, alive forevermore to keep on leading His followers to their final destination, the gates of heaven. That is why John wanted Andrew and his friend to leave him and start following Jesus, because only the Lamb of God could free them from their sins and love them eternally in paradise. That’s why we should follow Jesus.

But following Jesus is not always easy or fun. The road to heaven that Jesus leads us along is a narrow road, one easy to lose sight of if we let ourselves become distracted. Satan knows that he cannot come onto that road and forcibly take us away from our Lord’s protection; Jesus assures us: My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand (John 10:27-28). Since the devil cannot challenge Jesus directly for control over us, he instead sets up distractions off to the side of the road to catch our attention and tempt us to wander away.

Some temptations lure us into dangerous places where we get stuck and cannot free ourselves to return to Christ’s way. A car that goes off the road can become so badly mired in the mud that only a tractor can pull it free; in the same way, Satan tries to lure us away from Jesus to a place where we become hopelessly stuck. There are some mistakes we make that change our lives forever: driving drunk and ending another person’s life; sex with someone we are not married to, resulting in divorce or AIDS; committing a crime and ending up with a prison record. These are traps that can completely derail a life, and many never recover from such mistakes; only by crying out to Jesus and asking for His help can we have any hope of being freed to follow Him once more. Sadly, the devil tricks many into believing that once they have gotten so badly stuck in the mud, Jesus can no longer hear them--and so they suffer alone, fearing the deepening cold darkness.

Some temptations are spread out by Satan in such a way that they draw us from one to the next, gradually leading us further and further away from the way to heaven, until we finally lose sight of it altogether and have no idea how to get back. A child can easily become lost when she chases a butterfly into the woods, then goes in another direction to smell a pretty flower that catches her eye, and goes further yet to watch a squirrel scamper among the trees. In a similar way, Satan lures us from one sin to another. It might start with a small lie to your parents about your homework—but then, when you successfully get away with fooling them, the lies start to become bigger. You might lie to the coach about your grades in order to play; you might lie to your girlfriend that you are not dating others at the same time. As you get older, the habit of lying can affect how honest you are with your resume, your tax returns, even how honest you are with your wife and children. Eventually you will trust no one at all, because you know how easy it is to lie; then, when you are all alone because no one trusts you enough to have a relationship with you, how will you find your way back to Christ? If the devil has taught you to trust no one, would you even respond when you hear Jesus’ voice calling to you to come back to Him?

And sometimes the devil spreads so many temptations along our way that, like the farmer’s dog, we get exhausted checking each one out, until we are too worn down to follow our Savior any more. It’s not that we lose sight of Jesus completely; it’s just that each week is so full of things to do that it becomes hard to find time for prayer or personal devotion. After all, you have to make time to go hunting or fishing or golfing, even if those activities cause you miss church occasionally. You can’t miss out on all those great sales, even if they reduce the amount of money you have left to put in the offering plate. And since you know that Jesus will forgive you anything, what’s the harm in letting your temper go when you are mad? What’s the harm in reading your daily horoscope? What’s the harm going along with a non-Christian friend to her house of worship? But when we waste our time and energy on things that distract us from following Jesus, we act like the farmer’s zigzagging dog, and we run the risk of so exhausting ourselves that we cannot finish our journey, following Christ to heaven.

The farmer calls such behavior foolish. The pleasures that Satan offers never live up to their hype; they just tease enough to keep us looking for more. But all that pursuing temptation results in is exhaustion, confusion, and despair. Jesus wants us to follow Him because He knows the safest, most direct way to real happiness; this is why we pray, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. We want Christ to be our leader, because any other path leads to the unnecessary tragedy of dying alone in the cold darkness, separated from our Savior’s love forever. You wander from His side at your peril.