Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of John 1:40
One of the two which heard John [speak,] and followed him, was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother.
40. Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother ] Before the end of the first century, therefore, it was natural to describe Andrew by his relationship to his far better known brother. In Church History S. Peter is everything and S. Andrew nothing: but would there have been an Apostle Peter but for Andrew. In the lists of the Apostles S. Andrew is always in the first group of four, but he is outside the chosen three, in spite of this early call.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Joh 1:40-41
One of the two which heard John speak
Andrew
I.
THE EARNEST SEEKER AFTER SALVATION.
1. His mind had been prepared
(1) By the preaching of the Baptist
(2) By independent reflection and Bible study.
2. He came to Jesus with an openheartedness worthy of imitation. He had his own notions, doubtless, about the grandeur of Israels Messiah; but was not offended when the solitary, unattended man was pointed out to him. Some, in the hasty revulsion of feeling, would have turned away in disdain. But Andrews faith mastered his prejudice.
3. His search was marked by indomitable earnestness. He followed Jesus, and by addressing Him as Rabbi, puts himself under His teaching, and follows Him home.
II. THE SATISFIED BELIEVER IN JESUS.
1. The openheartedness of Christianity. Behold the Lamb! Come and see. There is no disguise, for none is needed. Christianity requires intelligence, reliance, not blind credulity. Ancient mythology and modern superstitions at Delphos, or Mecca, or Rome, had and have their reserve and mystery; but Christianity has light in herself, and studies no concealment.
2. The satisfactoriness of Christianity. When you come and see, there is always something to be seen. The search for Christ yields an intellectual and emotional satisfaction. The charge is warmly felt as well as intelligently realized. We have found the Messiah.
III. THE ENERGETIC MISSIONARY.
1. He proclaims the truth to his brother.
2. He resumes his secular duties. It was a great soul that could bear to be with Jesus at night, and to be fishing in the morning.
3. What a contrast between the first two brothers in the New Testament and the first two brothers of the Old. (W. M. Punshon, LL. D.)
The conduct of Andrew
illustrates
I. The general duty of ENDEAVOURING TO IMPART TO OTHERS THE SPIRITUAL BLESSINGS ENJOYED BY OURSELVES. There is all the difference here between natural and Spiritual things. The discovery of a hidden treasure would beget no anxiety that others should know of it. The discovery of a remedy for a direful disease would inspire eagerness in most men to give it a wide notoriety; but not necessarily in all cases, inasmuch as the discovery involves no change in the character. But the man who has lighted on heavenly treasure has found that, the direct tendency of which is to the overcoming of selfishness. A man renewed by Gods Spirit, who does not desire and seek the renewal of others, is a contradiction in terms. The wealth acquired by the believer is kept through being dispersed; the cure accomplished through the blood of the Redeemer is a cure which is radical only in proportion as it seeks its own extension. Let, then, men take it as a test by which to try their own spiritual condition. Andrew findeth his brother Simon. He felt at once the communicative and diffusive nature of religion.
II. The special duty of BEGINNING WITH THOSE WITH WHOM WE ARE MORE IMMEDIATELY CONNECTED.
1. Our own household and relatives have the first claim upon us; parents and masters are bound, if they would imitate Andrew, to provide first for their own children and servants; or parishioners or citizens are bound to provide for their own poor, before they attempt the relief of other parishes and other cities. To Englishmen, their necessitous countrymen especially come first, before they turn their attention to the African or New Zealander. There is nothing of selfishness in this. We must enlarge our operations with the enlargement of our ability. But God may be said to have parcelled out mankind into concentric circles, and he hath made it incumbent upon us that we go carefully round the inner circle before we pass on to the outer; so that, while benevolence is not to be churlishly limited, she is not to leave waste ground here, in her eagerness to spread culture over some remote and savage section of the earth.
2. But as Andrew did not stop short at his brother, so home missions must expand into foreign.
3. The great lesson, however, is that we should care for the conversion of those with whom we were associated when unconverted. The merchant, who nearly lost his soul in hunting after gain, but who is now seeking treasure above–is he doing his best to cause those who were one with him in the struggle after perishable wealth to be one with him in labouring for the incorruptible? The young man who was the slave of vice, driven headlong by his passions, and who has now forsaken the haunts of licentiousness–is he striving to withdraw from those pleasures his former associates, and to lead them to take delight in heavenly things? The young woman whose whole mind was engaged in frivolous amusements, but who now seems awake to the solemnities of eternity–is it her endeavour to teach the thoughtless With whom she squandered away life that there is something more to be cared for than dress, and something more communicative of happiness than the dance? All such cases may be gathered under the first of our text. The converted mans first care will be for those with whom he has been intimately associated, either in relationship, or friendship, or business. (H. Melvill, B. D.)
Andrews ministry
I. WHATEVER THERE IS IN FAMILY RELATIONSHIP THAT CAN BRING MEN TO JESUS SHOULD HAVE ITS FULL AND FAIR PLACE. Many people who ought not only be more useful, but more happy and healthy, by sharing as far as possible their new found light and joy with those who are near and dear to them, have become the merest religious recluses. Sometimes it is difficult to bring any direct influence to bear. How important, therefore, that every indirect influence should be wisely employed. And all have this.
II. THE VALUE OF THIS UNCONSCIOUS INFLUENCE. Let the fountain of our inner life be pure, and its manifold streams entering the most arid wastes will promote verdure and blessing in a hundred unforeseen forms.
III. THE DIRECT INFLUENCE OF A PERSONAL TESTIMONY. Men need to be told of the source of blessing, and the burden of the testimony rests with those who have heard. There are some things, the knowledge of which would brighten mens lives, and these things you know. Tell them. God takes hold of the natural love of communicating, and uses it for the good of humanity. You are ready enough with your advice on most matters, be ready with these good news of God.
IV. THE QUESTION OF PERSONAL CONVICTION AND EXPERIENCE. An inward intelligent experience will ever be the first demand of the Church. If we felt the power of the indwelling Christ, He would speak in us and work by us. If we have no light we cannot let it shine; but if we have we must not put it under a bushel, or it will go out.
V. A WONDERFUL ENCOURAGEMENT TO MEN OF RETIRING DISPOSITION OR LIMITED CAPABILITIES. We never read much of Andrew; and since we cannot tell the possible result of any act or influence, however insignificant, it becomes us not to disparage anyone. And who shall call an action insignificant? Like a winged seed carried by the wind to some barren islet, bearing in its bosom the germs of all future loveliness and verdure; so blessed oft is the deed of a good man. (G. J. Procter.)
Coming to Jesus, a motive for bringing others to Him
I. TRUE RELIGION IS THE RESULT OF PERSONAL CONVICTION RESPECTING THE CLAIMS OF JESUS CHRIST. You must possess that religion or you can never impart it. I will bless thee and thou shalt be a blessing. He that believeth on Me shall never thirst, and from within him shall flow rivers of living water. The truth of Christ must first be known, and the knowledge of Christ is essentially connected with the love of Christ as the medium and material of that knowledge. We have in the narrative an illustration of the way in which personal religion commences. When directed to Christ, the first disciples were not satisfied with a passing glance, but they looked to Jesus and followed Him. Then commenced their friendship with Christ. There is an immense diversity in the operations of the Spirit. Some are brought at once outer darkness into light. Others by a gradual method: but the results are the same. They are brought to Jesus as the result of inquiry marked by prayer and solicitude. And there is everything in the character and religion of Christ to deserve and challenge inquiry. These things were not done in a corner; everything will bear the light.
II. THOSE WHO HAVE BECOME THE DISCIPLES OF CHRIST WILL BE ANXIOUSLY CONCERNED TO BRING OTHERS TO HIM. Everything in religion is gloriously expansive.
1. Our object in all our Church operations is not sectarian, but to bring men to Christ. Keep this object before you in your families, neighbourhood, communities. If you aim at anything short of this you will fail to reach even your subordinate object. While, on the other hand, in enlarging our minds to the amplitude and sublimity of this higher object, we shall lay the most enduring basis for the accomplishment of even the minor object.
2. Contemplate your responsibility. You have the great remedy for the worlds moral diseases; you dare not keep it to yourselves.
3. Your opportunities. No man was ever disposed to do good who did not find ample opportunities as the member of a family, as a master or a servant, as a Church member.
4. Your encouragement: The command of Christ, the assurance of His presence, the success already secured, and the certainty of final success. (J. Fletcher, D. D.)
The magnet and the turning-point
No literature is more interesting or instructive than biography. Sacred biography has peculiar demands upon us. There is no part of the life of an individual which possesses more interest than its turning-point in the case of a statesman, soldier, merchant, but above all a Christian. Our text describes the turning-point of a man who stands conspicuous in sacred biography, the spiritual first moment of Peter. Notice
I. THE BEING WHO IS THE OBJECT OF ATTRACTION.
1. His name: Jesus, Saviour, who was perfect God and perfect man.
2. His title, Messias: inclusive of all His offices, Prophet, Priest, King, Lamb of God, Baptizer with the Spirit.
II. THE WORK WROUGHT. He brought him to Jesus.
1. Andrew was the instrument, and the means he used was the proclamation of Christ. Have you a brother? Bring him to Jesus.
2. God was the efficient agent (1Co 2:14; Joh 6:44-45).
III. THE CONSEQUENCES RESULTING FROM THIS WORK. The Christian Church. (J. T. Whitestone, A. B.)
The Sunday-school teacher
I. THE GREAT OBJECT SOUGHT TO BE ACCOMPLISHED.
1. Introduction to Jesus.
2. Interest in Jesus.
3. Instruction from Jesus.
4. Intimacy with Jesus.
II. THE QUALIFICATIONS WHICH TEACHERS OUGHT TO POSSESS TO SECURE THIS GREAT OBJECT.
1. Sincere and ardent piety.
2. An enlightened knowledge of Christ and the method of salvation by Him.
3. An adaptation in the mode of instruction to the disposition of the child.
4. An exhibition of the practical effects of the knowledge of Christ in your conduct.
III. THE SPECIAL EFFECTS RESULTING FROM THE ATTAINMENT OF THIS GREAT OBJECT.
1. Christ will be glorified.
2. The Church will be enlarged.
3. The world will be benefited.
4. Your labours will be rewarded.
Conclusion: Notice
1. The importance of looking out for souls to bring them to Jesus.
2. The value of union. (J. Sherman.)
Simon Peter brought by his brother to Jesus
I. JESUS IS THE BEING TO WHOM MEN SHOULD COME.
1. What is it for men to come? Andrew and his brother came corporeally. The corporeal was the sign of a mental state which is equivalent to believing.
2. Why men should come to Christ for salvation.
II. WHEN MEN HAVE COME TO JESUS THEY SHOULD ENDEAVOUR TO BRING OTHERS TO HIM.
1. The argument by which this duty is confirmed. Christ has committed His cause into their hands. They are His property. He appeals to their love to Him and their tender concern for souls, to bring the world to Him.
2. The manner in which that duty must be performed.
(1) By the exhibition of the truth in the exercise of the ministry, the circulation of the Bible, the spread of good literature, education, visitation, and the ordinary intercourse of domestic and social life.
(2) By supplicating the influence of the Divine Spirit to sanction and bless the means employed.
III. IN ENDEAVOURING TO BRING OTHERS TO CHRIST, MEN SHOULD CHERISH ESPECIAL ANXIETY AND EFFORT ON BEHALF OF THEIR OWN CONNECTIONS AND FRIENDS. This is beautifully illustrated in the New Testament. Andrew, the woman of Samaria, Cornelius, etc.
1. In justification of this principle, notice that
(1) The relationships of kindred or affection are formed under the physical or moral providence of God.
(2) God has implanted or inspired in connection with these relationships certain affections which grow out of them and are appropriate to them.
(3) The due culture of these affections issue in important results, and neglect and failure are fraught with great evils.
(4) The solicitude ought to operate in matters which affect the interest and happiness of the soul.
2. The order of exertion will not disqualify or prevent from the larger and more expanded sphere of operation as regards the general welfare of mankind.
3. Inquire how you who have been brought to Jesus have fulfilled your obligations.
IV. ENDEAVOURS TO BRING OTHERS TO JESUS, WHEN RIGHTLY CONDUCTED, ARE MUCH ENCOURAGED BY THE HOPE AND PROSPECT OF SUCCESS.
1. Success does frequently attend such endeavours, as is seen in the cases of Andrew and the Samaritan woman. And many a preacher, Sunday-school teacher, tract distributer, etc., could tell a similar tale; and so could parents and brothers.
2. Success in these endeavours is eminently and surpassingly delightful, because
(1) Of the value of the soul.
(2) Of the opening up of channels of usefulness in connection with the cross of Christ. Who can tell where a single conversion will terminate? Think of Doddridge, Whitefield, Morison.
(3) Of the connection of success with our everlasting reward. (J. Parsons.)
Simon Peter
I. THE WITNESS OF THE DISCIPLES. We see
1. How instinctive and natural the impulse is when a man has found Jesus Christ to tell someone else about Him. Nobody said to Andrew, Go and look for your brother! If a man has a real conviction, he cannot rest until he has shared it with some one else. Even a dog that has had its leg mended will bring other limping dogs to the mender. How is it in the world? And are Christians to be dumb when worldlings are in earnest? This man before he was four and twenty hours a disciple had made another. Have you made one in the same number of years?
2. He first findeth his own brother. There was a second, then, that found somebody. Andrew found Peter before John found James. Each of the original pair of disciples brought the nearest to him in blood and affection to Christ.
(1) Home, then, presents the natural channel for Christian work. It is a poor affair if all your philanthropy and Christian energy go off noisily in Sunday-schools and mission stations, and if the people at your own fireside never hear anything of Him whom you say you love.
(2) But the principle has a wider application. Why has God placed you where you are? For business and personal ends? Yes, partly. But where a man who knows and loves Christ is brought into neighbourly contact with thousands who do not, he is thereby constituted his brothers keeper. If you live in luxury in your own ventilated and well-drained villa, and take no heed to the typhoid fever or cholera in the slums at the back, the chances are that the disease will find its way to your wife and children. And Christians who, living among godless people, do not try to heal them will be infected by them.
3. The simple Word, which is the most powerful means of influencing most men. Andrew did not argue. Some of us cannot do that, and some of us are not influenced by argument. The mightiest argument is, We have found the Messias; and if you have you can say so. Never mind how; anyhow.
4. Remember the beginnings of the Christian Church; two men, each of whom found his brother. Two snowflakes on the top of the mountain are an avalanche by the time they reach the valley.
II. THE SELF-REVELATION OF THE MASTER.
1. He shows Himself possessed of supernatural and thorough knowledge.
(1) The look described by an unusual word was a penetrating gaze which regarded Peter with fixed attention. It must have been remarkable to have lived in Johns memory for all those years.
(2) The saying was meant to imply more than natural knowledge. Thou art Simon. Thou God seest me, an unwelcome thought to many and to us unless, through Christ.
2. He changes Simons name, and so
(1) reveals His absolute possession of him. Jehovah changed the names of Abraham and Jacob. Babylonian kings changed the names of their vassal princes; masters those of their slaves; husbands those of their wives. We belong to Him altogether because He has given Himself altogether for us.
(2) Reveals His power and promise to bestow a new character, new functions, new honours. Peter was by no means Peter then. Like the granite, all fluid and hot, he needed to cool in order to solidify into rock. But he eventually became all that Christ here meant him to be. No mans character is so obstinately rooted in evil but Christ can change its set and direction. He will not make Peter into a John, but He will deliver Peter from the defects of his qualities, and lead them up into a nobler region. The process may be long and painful, but it will be sure. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Introductor to Christ
This is the appropriate name given by Bede to Andrew, who brought his brother and the Greeks (Joh 12:20) to Christ.
I. SPIRITUAL USEFULNESS BEGINS IN PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. Before we can introduce any one to the Saviour we must have found Him ourselves.
II. SPIRITUAL USEFULNESS OFTEN WORKS BY PERSONAL TESTIMONY. The prevalence of a blatant religionism should not hinder the Christian man or woman giving the witness not only of life, but also of lip, on all right occasions.
III. SPIRITUAL USEFULNESS MAY BEGIN WITH THE MEMBERS OF OUR OWN HOUSEHOLDS. Sometimes the influence to be exerted must be indirect and quiet, rather than by appeal and word; but even then the time comes to speak, in order to lead others nearer to the truth who are of our own kith and kin.
IV. SPIRITUAL USEFULNESS DOES NOT DEMAND OUTSHINING ABILITIES. St. Andrew, of whom we read little, led St. Peter, of whom we read much. (Family Churchman.)
Finding and following
(cf. Mat 4:19)
I. FOLLOWING TO FIND. Christ was found
1. By association with the godly.
2. By listening attentively.
3. By unhesitating action.
4. By reverential inquiry.
II. FINDING TO FOLLOW.
1. The first to become a disciple is the first to be selected as an apostle.
2. After the definite summons he followed to serve. (Tertius.)
Christian service
I. Andrew FINDING Peter.
1. Andrew sought his brother at once.
(1) John and Andrew set out to find their brothers. Andrew was the first to find his.
(2) Andrew found his brother first and others subsequently.
2. Andrew was not specially gifted; but what gift he had he used for Christ.
3. Andrew was not specially commissioned to go and convert others. The authorization was given later on.
II. Andrew SPEAKING TO Simon.
1. Andrew did not preach or argue; he simply talked to him.
2. He talked earnestly. You have no fine language, or polished phrases, or balanced periods, but a few brief words coming hot from the heart. Intense earnestness has no leisure to indulge in the luxury of elocutionary flourishes.
3. His conversation was inspired by brotherly love. His own brother, indicative of close, warm friendship.
4. His announcement was marked by incompleteness. Had he been asked to explain he would have been embarrassed. But imperfect teaching is often blessed. If you cannot speak the whole truth, speak half of it. Potato planters are never afraid of splitting the seed if they can only secure an eye in each half. See that your fragment of truth has an eye in it.
5. His talk was characterized by much assurance. We have found, not, I think, or I hope. Religious dogmatism is much deprecated in certain quarters. You may dogmatize as much as you like against theology, but you are warned under heavy penalties not to dogmatize in its favour. But the dogmatists are the successful evangelists after all.
III. Andrew BRINGING Simon to Christ.
1. Our chief aim should be to lead men to Christ, not to any particular sect. Proselytization is not conversion.
2. Creeds and theologies should be subordinated to Christ. Men should be brought to Christ, not to our own system of divinity. If creeds stand in the way of Christ, then away with creeds. They are for edification, not conversion.
3. Christ should be placed above the Bible itself. It is possible for men to read it diligently and yet stop with it, instead of making their way to the interior court to contemplate the inner radiance. There is not a town or house in Great Britain but there is a way from it to London; so there is not a subject named in the Bible but it is directly or indirectly connected with Jesus.
IV. Christ RECEIVING Simon.
1. Jesus beheld him, took stock of him, formed a correct estimate of him; looked, as the word implies, with the eyes of the mind as much as with the eyes of the body.
2. Christ saw that possibilities of good lay in Simon; doubtless the possibilities of evil also. But the Saviour estimates character not by the evil but by the good. God singles out every grain of virtue that may be hid in our deepest nature. (J. Cynddylan Jones, D. D.)
The first home mission
We cannot tell certainly who was the first foreign missionary. But we know who was the first home missionary–Andrew.
I. THE SPRING of all true home mission work. Andrew had himself made acquaintance with the Lord Jesus Christ. We must come into personal contact with Christ, be in the house with Him, learn to know Him as the Lamb of God. In the degree in which men have been in the house with Christ, and have learned to know Him, will they be ready to go out with the message to others.
II. THE OBJECT of the first home mission. It was not enough for Andrew to speak to his brother about Christ, his aim is to bring him as close to Christ as he himself had been. We should be satisfied with nothing less. Here is a lesson for parents with their children, for a teacher with his scholars, for a minister with his hearers. We must neither begin nor end with ourselves. In this object of Andrew, notice
1. He was perfectly sure that Christ was willing to receive his brother. It does not appear that Christ had said anything about this. And Andrew does not seem to have thought it needful to ask Christ. He knew it from the way in which He had welcomed him.
2. Andrew is sure that he himself can have his own share in no way diminished. There would not be less of truth and love falling to his lot when Peter came to have his part. If a man covets land or wealth or power, the more he gives away the less he possesses. But let a man bring others to the treasures of the Lord Jesus Christ, and his own share will be increased.
III. THE PLACE of this mission.
1. There are some who say we should have no foreign missions till our own country is redeemed. But these people forget that when Christ said, Preach the Gospel among all nations, etc. He did not say stopping at Jerusalem. They forget that if the apostles had acted on this principle we should have been heathen still. They forget, moreover, that it was only when the Church of Christ began to think seriously of the foreign heathen that she had her thoughts turned to the home heathen. We generally find that those who are always talking of confining our attention to the home heathen are those who do least for them.
2. But this surely we may say, that in our zeal for the foreign heathen we are not to forget our own kinsfolk; and here are some reasons
(1) They have not the only claim upon us, but they have the first claim. Go home to thy friends, etc.
(2) And even for our own sakes we must think of home. We cannot let masses of ignorance and sin and wretchedness fester and grow, without bringing a blight on our own Christianity. It is like having an unwholesome marsh beside our house; it spreads malaria and fever and ague. Think of your children living in this atmosphere, and of the danger to them in the sights and sounds and associations around them.
(3) In the home mission field there is opportunity for every one of us to do something personally, Few of us can go to the foreign field. But there is always a sphere not far from our own door.
(4) It seems to be part of the Divine plan that this opportunity should be given to Christians for the benefit it brings to themselves. It is thus we are to be like our Master, going about doing good, and to grow always more like Him in the work of doing it. As the Church labours for the world around her, she would feel the duty of arising and shaking herself from the dust and putting on her beautiful garments.
IV. THE TIME. Andrew did not wait till he had been made an apostle, or even a regular disciple. He began at once. If we never think about doing good to the souls of men till we are licensed, we should think seriously if we ought to be licensed at all; and if, when we are licensed or ordained, we look upon our work as a task, and measure carefully what we have to do and what we have not to do, we should ask ourselves, Is this not the place of a hireling. And the same lesson comes home to all. A man may never think of being a minister or missionary; but he is not thereby freed from the duty of beginning at once to speak a word to his brother about the Gospel of Christ. And it is not necessary to wait for a great deal of knowledge; let us use the knowledge we have, not pretending to more. All cannot speak in public, teach in the Sabbath-school, go from house to house and influence strangers, but what one is there who has not some neighbour, by whom his word will be regarded? Like that of Andrew, it may be simply We have found the Christ. But it will serve the purpose if it leads the man to where he will learn more. This is, indeed, all that any of us, if we are true speakers, need to say, We have found the Christ; He has met our need, answered our desire. He will meet yours; will you not come and see?
V. THE SPIRIT of the first home mission. Andrew went to his brother from his interest in him. Ha did this naturally, not from calculation, but because he had it in his heart. It is in this spirit we must go to our fellow-men, whether they be closely related or not. They are our brethren, with the same nature, needs, sins, sorrows, destinies. It is love to Christ and love to men that are the secret of power in Christian persuasion. We shall never have great success otherwise. Andrew did not say to his brother, Go; he took him by the hand and led him.
VI. ITS SUCCESS. Andrew gained his brother–a great encouragement. Perhaps we may see much fruit, even here. In any case, if our work be sincere and loving and prayerful, if we go out from Christ to men that we may bring men to Christ, the work will not be in vain. We may touch one who will touch many more. A humble soldier may draw in some young recruit who may become a leader among thousands and subdue kingdoms. Conclusion: If the work is to be well and perseveringly done, there should be common counsel and co-operation. Many are afraid to commit themselves. Andrew, indeed, went alone–he could do nothing else; but our Lord sent them out two and two, and brought them together again to speak and hear about their work. (J. Ker, D. D.)
Christian missions
We have here the first step in the history of the Gospel, and an indication that it was to survive the ministry of its founder.
I. THE PREPARATION OF THE MEN.
1. In the wilderness was the first missionary college.
2. John was the teacher.
3. His lesson was the atonement of Christ.
II. THEIR CALL BY CHRIST.
1. The seed sown in the wilderness bore fruit, when Christ by His invitation quickened it into life.
2. They obeyed the call and followed Jesus.
3. They attached themselves to the higher Master and became pupils in the higher school.
III. THEIR USEFULNESS IN THE CAUSE OF CHRIST.
1. The fruit now become seed to develop in other hearts and lives.
2. Andrew brought his brother to Christ: only one man, but had the Church gone on at that rate the world would long since have been converted.
3. We have no right to expect that Christ should spread His Church. That is our work in co-operation with Himself.
Conclusion: Pleas on behalf of the missionary effort here exemplified.
1. Christs commission: Go ye into all the world, etc.
2. Christs example. Christ never asked us to do what He has not done.
3. The purpose of the Christian Church as set forth in the parables and prophecies. It is a living growing body to spread by its inherent Divine vitality.
4. The nature of our call to the work.
(1) The call of Christ, Come follow me, Go ye into all the world. This call reaches modern counting-houses and workshops as well as ancient custom houses and fishing stations, to spread the gospel at home, in the town, in the country, in the world.
(2) The call from within–the call of conscience impelling us to rescue others from the danger from which we have been saved–the call of Divinely-kindled love.
(3) The call of the heathen unconscious of their darkness and sin.
5. The extent of the investments already made. An investment makes a man a partner in the concern, and the greater the investment the more difficult or dishonourable is it to try to get out of it. During the past 1,800 years the Church has been investing her men, her energy, her money. We must not, we dare not draw back. By the blood that has been shed and successes attained we are pledged to go on with this work. (R. Maguire, D. D.)
Gospel propagation
I. THE KIND OF WORK TO BE DONE.
1. Not to swell denominational ranks, although that may be a consequence.
2. But to
(1) Find,
(2) Tell,
(3) Bring.
II. THIS WORK CAN ONLY BE DONE BY THOSE WHO HAVE FOUND CHRIST THEMSELVES.
1. Not unbelievers
2. Not worldly professors.
3. But those who love and are in union with Christ.
III. THE SPECIAL DIRECTION OF EFFORT. Our brother:
1. Literally.
2. Socially.
3. Nationally.
4. Universally, for God hath made of one blood all the nations of men.
IV. THE ULTIMATE AIM. To bring our brother to Jesus.
V. THE SPECIFIC MEANS–individual personal effort.
1. Subscription to a missionary society does not relieve us from this. If you were to see a man drowning it would be a poor excuse for not helping that you gave a sum to the Royal Humane Society.
2. Andrew himself brought his brother to Christ.
3. Andrew brought his brother to Christ before he was commissioned to do so. The grand weakness of our Church membership is the failure to realize that every man who is made a Christian is made a missionary. (J. Culross, D. D.)
The aim and methods of Christian work
The ambition of every Christian is to leave the world better than he found it. The instincts of Christian life, the example of the Master, the needs of the world, and the blessedness of doing good strengthen its ambition. Various methods are open to us–education, philanthropy, hospitals, civil and religious liberty, civilization: all of which are sanctioned by Christ, but were subordinate with Him to the great work of preaching the gospel. And what He did Himself is set forth in the earliest labours of His disciples.
I. THE AIM OF ALL CHRISTIAN WORK IS TO BRING MEN TO CHRIST. Other methods of usefulness are to be honoured, but they fail to reach mans deeper needs, and at best only secure present happiness, and leave moral character unrenewed and eternity unprovided for. But even here the highest happiness is not to be secured by temporal means. This is only to be had by union with Christ. Therefore, God Himself sets us the example of evangelism (Tit 3:4), and now sends the Holy Spirit to reveal the things of Christ.
II. THE METHODS BY WHICH THIS END IS TO BE EARNED.
1. We must try it with the members of our own families. The charity of the gospel begins, but does not end, at home. The healed man was commissioned to tell his friends what great things had been done for him. The apostles were commissioned to begin at Jerusalem.
(1) What more fitting than this.
(2) What more profitable.
(3) Yet what more neglected.
2. We must make the office and work and teaching of Christ our chief theme. Messias
(1) Prophet;
(2) Priest;
(3) King.
3. The quiet talk of private men may effect our purpose as well as the preaching of public teachers. Andrew was not in office.
(1) We must not undervalue the ministry, only it is not substitutionary but supplemental. It does not set aside individual effort: it trains, guides, and completes it.
(2) Public preaching has disadvantages of its own: it is necessarily general and indiscriminate; its hearers pass on the message to the next pew. Preaching scatters the seed, but talk afterwards presses it into the soil; and in this talk the private Christian has the advantage over the public minister.
4. It will be more easily done by simple announcement than by discussion. There are exceptions, but as a rule arguments only raise objections to shield the conscience and to gain time. What we want is fewer appeals to the reason and more to the heart.
5. We must rest largely on our own experience. We have found this does not require genius or learning. If we have been to Christ ourselves we can tell others the way.
6. We must make it our chief business to bring men to Christ
(1) Directly. Not to this teacher or that Church;
(2) Promptly. There is no time to lose. (J. Angus, D. D.)
Finding the Messiah
I. HOW GREAT MAY BE THE EFFECTS WHICH FOLLOW IN THE SPIRITUAL WORLD FROM WHAT WOULD APPEAR TO BE A VERY TRIVIAL CAUSE. It was a passing remark of the Baptist, to all appearance, which was the means of Andrews conversion.
1. But we must remember that that remark fell on prepared minds. The severe life of the Baptist, and his lofty teaching–recalling the great Elijah–must have made a profound impression on them. They were presentwhen John denied before the agents of the Sanhedrim that he was the Messiah, and declared that he was only the forerunner of One who was of a higher order of Being than himself. On the following day Jesus presents Himself; and then John solemnly refers to Him, and explains that this was the Person of whom he had spoken on the day before–the Son of God. Then, on the third day, John said much less, but his short sentence crowned the preparatory work.
2. All this seems to show that outward circumstances, persons, language are only a part of a complex providential agency. The deepest causes are unseen, and wait like the tinder for the spark, the passing word or influence which shall set them in motion.
II. THE COMPARATIVELY SMALL STOCK OF RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE UPON THE STRENGTH OF WHICH ANDREW SETS TO WORK TO BRING ANOTHER INTO THE SCHOOL OF CHRIST.
1. He had heard of the Messiah all his life; but there was, and there continued, up to the hour of the Ascension an earthly and mistaken element in his idea of Him. A meaning had been read into Jewish prophecy for generations which did not belong to it. The Messiah was to be a rival to
Caesar on a more splendid scale. He also failed to grasp the vast consequences to the world of Christs coming.
2. But the one simple truth that he did grasp sufficed to kind!e every affection and power of his Spirit; to concentrate in its analysis every ray of his understanding. He had seen enough of Jesus in a few hours to know that John was right; that Christ was one whom he could perfectly love and trust; and that the best thing he could do for his brother was to bring him to Jesus.
3. Here St. Andrew reads an important lesson. There is no doubt a great deal of forward ignorance in religious questions which is willing to set the Church and the world to rights on subjects the first elements of which have not been mastered. But there is also a great deal of false modesty which declines plain and practical duties on the ground of insuifficient knowledge. But the great truths which moved Andrew and move us are the simple truths about which, amongst Christians, there is no controversy, and which are learned by experience. No Christian need delay to testify to Christ because he is not a theologian. He may at least do as well as Andrew.
III. RELIGIOUS TRUTH CANNOT BE HOARDED LIKE MONEY, like a discovery for which a man wishes to take out a patent. It belongs to the race, and in the first instance to those who stand by the appointment of providence nearest to its possessors. Andrew found his own brother. Go thou and do likewise. Conclusion:
1. Consider the untold capacities which lie buried in men who as yet know nothing of grace and truth. Peter takes precedence of Andrew.
2. The reflex blessing of every sincere effort for Christ and His kingdom. Every teacher knows more of his subject after he has taught it. He that watereth is watered himself. (Canon Liddon.)
Christian fraternity
Andrew was before all else a good brother. In the great church at Rome, which is dedicated to him, no other inscription could be found suitable, except Andrew, the brother of Peter. Before casting his nets on Jew or Gentile, he first bethought him of the one fellow-creature who was near to him by the ties of home and family. Blood is thicker than water in sacred as well as in social life. If a man loves not his brother, etc. This is a principle which needs to be asserted as a corrective of the excesses of the missionary or proselytis-ing spirit; but it also contains within itself some of the best methods of the true conversion of the world.
I. It exemplifies the undoubted truth that THE BEST MODE OF DIFFUSING CHRISTIANITY IN THE WORLD is by converting our own brethren who have settled abroad. The chiefest missionary, who was especially the Apostle of the Gentiles, in every case made his own Jewish countrymen the nucleus round which the heathen converts were to be gathered. This is a practical lesson for all of us in respect of foreign missions. Every English settler in a distant land is already, by his good or evil conduct, a missionary for God or for the devil; nay, every country in Europe, according as it holds up Christianity in a repulsive or an attractive form, repels or attracts the outside world from the light of the Gospel. It is said that some of the Japanese envoys who lately visited the nations of Europe and America had come with the predisposition to establish Christianity on their return, but that after witnessing its actual fruits they in disappointment relinquished the project. Let us first find and convert our own brethren, and we shall then go with clean hands to convert the Jew, the Turk, the heretic, and the infidel. This is a missionary enterprise in which every man, woman, and child can bear a part. In this way the Home Mission becomes the mother of all missions.
II. But the same principle also points out to us THE BEST ACCESS TO THE HEARTS AND MINDS OF THE UNKNOWN STRANGERS OF HEATHEN LANDS. In every heathen country there are those whom we may call our own brothers, for the nobler qualities which raise them above their fellows, and bring them nearer to the civilized and the Christian type. Often, indeed, this fraternal sympathy has been rendered impossible on the one hand by the impurities, the cruelties, the follies of heathen nations, on the other hand by the pitying scorn, or the iniquitous dealing, with which the European has looked down on what are called the inferior races of mankind. But happy are those Englishmen and missionaries who have made it a point first to find their own brothers in those strange faces. Livingstone was never tired of repeating that he found amongst the native races of Africa the same feelings of right and wrong that he found in his own conscience, and that needed only to be enlightened and developed to make the perfect Christian. Bishop Patteson won the hearts of his simple converts by treating them as his brothers, detecting the Christian beneath the heathen.
III. There is one further application of the principle, viz., THE DUTY, obvious, though often neglected, OF SEEKING FOR OUR CO-OPERATORS IN THIS, as in all good works, NOT THOSE WHO ARE FAR AWAY, BUT THOSE WHO ARE CLOSE AT HAND. Let us cultivate by all means a friendly intercourse with all Christian people throughout the world. But an intimate, organic union can only be with those who are near at hand, or of the same race and nation and culture as ourselves. It is because the work of evangelizing the heathen has a direct tendency to bring all English Chris tians together that this (St. Andrews) day is doubly blessed; blessed alike in what it gives and in what it receives. Let us first find those of our own communion. But next to our own Church, and before any combinations with foreign Christians, however estimable, let us find out our own brethren in the British Islands, who, however parted from us, are yet heirs of the same national traditions and of the same inspiring future. Such are our brethren amongst the Nonconforming communions of England, whose praise for their missionary zeal is in all the Churches. (Dean Stanley.)
Our brother
You are wealthy, and that poor man who lives near you is your brother. Or you are poor, and your brother is that wealthy neighbour of whom you think with envy and anger. Our brethren are not confined to those who can enter into our thoughts and sympathies; they are also those whose narrowness and ignorance make mutual sympathy and intelligence impossible. They are not only those who are honest and respectable, but they are those who are under the ban of society, outside the frontiers of decent and civilized life. Our brethren, they are not only our near relatives by blood; nor our fellow-townsmen or countrymen; they are not confined to the races which are now in the van of civilization, or have played a great part in the worlds affairs. They are also the races on whose rights civilization is apt to trample with heartless selfishness. They are the natives of Australia and America; they are the Maories of New Zealand; they are the islanders of the Pacific. Our brethren are everywhere. (Canon Liddon.)
The difficulty of bringing a brother to Christ
It would seem the most natural thing in the world to urge ones own brother to share in ones faith before looking elsewhere for a new believer. Yet, as a matter of fact, one is more likely to shrink from speaking on the subject of personal religion to a brother who is out of Christ than to one who is a comparative stranger. A reason for this is that ones own shortcomings and failures are so well known to a brother, that one often hesitates to urge the importance of a truth he is supposed to illustrate, but which he feels he represents unworthily. Andrew seems to have avoided this difficulty by saying nothing about himself to Peter. If Jesus were more prominent in the thoughts and words of believers, there would be less thought of self, and less embarrassment on that score, in pleading His cause with those who are yet aloof from Him. (H. C. Trumbull, D. D.)
Christ the inspiration of Christian effort
The Egyptian Memnon is represented as keeping silence all the dark hours of the night, but bursting forth into mystic strains of weird like music every morning just as the first rays of the sun kiss his lips. Like that idol, John and Andrew and Philip lived mute and inactive; but when the first beams of the Sun of Righteousness began to play around their hearts they began immediately to speak. The flowers require not to be sternly told to grow and blossom and make themselves beautiful; let the sun but shine and they will do it out of the gladness of their own hearts. Birds need not an almanack to apprize them that the month of May, the season for open-air concerts, has arrived. And once men have been in the presence of Christ they require he elaborate certificate to empower them to go and tell others of His beauties–the fire burns, and speak they must. Commission or no commission, be not ashamed to tell others that you have found the Saviour. (J. C. Jones, D. D.)
Personal testimony
I was reading the other day about a minister who preached an elaborate course of lectures in refutation of infidelity for the special benefit of a man who attended his church. Soon after the man came and declared himself a Christian. The minister said to him, Which of my discourses was it that removed your doubts? The reply was, Oh, it was not any of your sermons that influenced me. The thing that set me thinking was that a poor woman came out of the chapel beside me and stumbled on the steps, and I stretched out my hand to help her, and she said, Thank you. Then she looked at me and said, Do you love Jesus Christ, my blessed Saviour? And I did not; and I went home arid thought about it; and now I can say I love Jesus. The poor womans word, and her frank confession of her experience, was all the transforming power. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
The value of private Christian effort
The Niagara excites our wonder, fills us with amazement, perhaps with awe; but one Niagara is enough for a continent. That continent, however, requires tens of thousands of silver fountains and lucid brooks; and let me tell you–those clear springs and busy streams, whose names have never been registered in any geography, prove an inestimably greater blessing to America than the mighty Falls, whose fame fills the world. And God, now and again, once or twice in a century, raises a man great and gifted, a Niagara of a man, in whose presence the world trembles and admires. Yet the Church depends more for its prosperity upon the ten thousand happy souls who quietly and unobtrusively scatter blessings broadcast in every neighbourhood and throughout the length and breadth of our beloved country. Though you be but slender rills, yet let not the slender rills think they may as well cease flowing. God fructifies the world by small rivers; He saves the world by private Christians. (J. C. Jones, D. D.)
What is a missionary
The term comes from the associations of olden times, when tyrants ruled and made sport of human life. In those days when the world was not gladdened by the glad tidings of great joy, and upon the occasion of the gladiatorial combats, when one of the antagonists had smitten his opponent to the dust, he then had the right of life or death over that man. But the conquered man had one source of appeal, and by the lifting up of his finger he could appeal to the prince, and that prince had the power, if he chose, to send a courtier from his side down to the dust of the arena to separate the combatants and deliver from death the man who was appointed to death. The sending of that message was called in the Latin a mission, and the person sent a missionary. So down in the dust of the arena of this world are Satan and man. It is a deadly conflict. Man is smitten and undermost. He appeals to the King of all; yea, before he appeal the King of all anticipates. His only Son comes on a mission, and rescues mans prostrate soul from Satans power. (R. Maguire, D. D.)
The joy of finding the Messiah
There was joy in the breast of the geometrician of Syracuse when he uttered his glad Eureka in the hearing of people who deemed him mad; there was joy in the soul of Newton when the first thought of gravitation burst upon his wondering view; there was joy in the spirit of Columbus in that moment of serene triumph over doubt and mutiny, when the tiny land birds settled upon the shrouds of his vessel, bearing upon their timid wings the welcomes of a new world; there is joy for the gold-finder when the rich ore glistens in his cradle; joy for the emigrant when after years of absence and hardship he first glimpses his boyhoods home again; joy for the child when he is let into another and yet another of the marvels of the world, and claps his hands for very joy and wonder; joy for the poet when he sends a glad thought careering through the world and stirring the pulses of mankind; but oh I of all the joys that human hearts can be thrilled by, commend me to that when the glad disciple clasps a brothers hand and says, We have found the Messiah. Then all doubt ceases, and fear is banished from the mind, and condemnation lifts its shadow from the spirit, and sweet peace nestles in the breast, and holy love throws itself upon the believing heart, and a newfound sense of reconciliation pulsing through the veins makes all creation more beautiful and brings a rarer melody than the music of the spheres, and throws a brighter azure upon the opening heavens. Is this joy yours? (W. M.Punshon, LL. D.)
What would happen if the example of Andrew were followed
If every disciple to-day were to call only one other person to Christ in each year, and that one were to call one other, how swiftly the world would be wholly converted! There are to-day millions of true believers in the world. But if there were only one hundred, see how quickly the work would grow. In less than twenty-five years the world would be converted, for this would double the number of disciples each year. First year, 100; second year, 200; third year, 400; fourth year, 800; fifth year, 1,600; sixth year, 3,200; seventh year, 6,400; eighth year, 12,800; ninth year, 25,600; tenth year, 51,200 (Well, says some one, just here, that is rather slow progress, only 51,200 in ten whole years. Go on, however, ten years more, and see how your numbers will look then); eleventh year, 102,400; twelfth year, 204,800; thirteenth year, 409,600; fourteenth year, 817,200; fifteenth year, 1,634,400; sixteenth year, 3,268,800; seventeenth year, 6,537,600 (its growing now); eighteenth year, 13,075,200; nineteenth year, 26,150,400; twentieth year, 52,300,800; twenty-first year, 104,601,600; twenty-second year, over 209,000,000; twenty-third year, over 418,000,000; twenty-fourth year, over 836,000,000; and in the twenty-fifth year, over 1,600,000,000, or more than the population of the whole earth. This shows the power of ones multiplied. (A. F. Schauffler.)
One convert wins another
Some time ago one of our people, who had herself been a drunkard, was standing at one of the open-air services on the waste, when she observed a woman who had formerly been one of her bad companions suddenly leave the crowd and walk quickly away. Hurrying after her, she found this poor drunkard in great distress about her soul. Oh! she said, I listened to the speakers; but when I saw you standing there so wonderfully changed from what you used to be, I could stand it no longer. She was induced, however, to return to the meeting, and then to attend the service in the hall, where she found salvation. She is now another living witness of the power of Christ to save the drunkard. May God preserve her faithful unto death! (General Booth.)
Dealing with individuals
Richard Baxter adopted the method of individual dealing with the parishioners of Kidderminster, bringing them to his house, and taking them apart one by one. He tells us that, because of it, he had reason to believe that more than a third of the grown-up inhabitants of the place were converted to God. The late Mr. Grant of Arndilly was so intent upon this habit of individual intercourse that in three months he had dealt with fifteen hundred souls, while the refrain of all his letters was Speak a word for Jesus.
Those who have found Christ must speak of Him to others
I was visiting at my brothers one time, says a lady, when Richard, his little boy, stopped suddenly in his play, and looked steadily at me for a minute. What are you thinking about? I asked. Are you a Christian, auntie? I hope so, dear. But you never speak of Jesus; if you loved Him very much, would you not talk about Him sometimes? We may love a person without speaking of him, I replied. May we! I did not know that. You love to talk of your brothers and sisters, and your papa and mamma, dont you, auntie? Yes. And then you speak of other people and things you like; but you speak no word for Jesus. Dont you love Him, auntie? Yes. Then I should think you could not help speaking of Him sometimes. (Sunday School Union.)
Mission work must begin at home
You will never make a missionary of the person who does no good at home. If you do not seek souls in your own street, you will not do so in Hindostan. If you are of no use in Whitechapel, you will be of no use on the Congo. He that will not serve the Lord in the Sunday-school at home, will not win children to Christ in China. Distance lends no real enchantment to Christian service. You who do nothing now are not fit for the war, for you are in sad health. The Lord give you spiritual health and vigour, and then you will want no pressing, but you will cry at once, Here am I; send me! Oh, my friends, go at once to your families, to your workshops, and declare the name of Jesus I Oh, for more spiritual life! This is the root of the matter. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
A word in season
On Thursday last I picked up some bread which I had scattered on the waters more than ten years ago. I was preaching in Essex, and at the close of the service a gentleman came up and said, Do you remember preaching a sermon on the 14th February, 1869, on the text, Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed? Oh, yes, I said, I do remember the subject and the occasion. That was the sermon that changed this heart, Mine has been another life from that night. Ten and a half years that bread was floating on the waters! Thou shalt find it after many days. (J. Thain Davidson, D. D.)
Speak earnestly
There was a dying man upon his death-bed, and he was visited by his Christian brother. The dying man said, I am dying. I know that I am lost, but I cannot help putting some of my ruin at your door. I believe you to be a Christian, I know you to be a Christian, but I do not recollect that you ever solemnly addressed me about my soul. You believed I was perishing, and yet you did not speak to me; therefore, as I cannot conceive you to be inhuman–for you were always a kind brother–I suspect you do not believe, as you say you do. His brother said–Iwas afraid of offending you. I did speak to you once or twice. The brother replied, You ought to have taken me by the shoulders. You ought not to have let me be lost. I cannot acquit you. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Concerning the call of this Andrew to the apostleship, See Poole on “Mat 4:18-19“. See Poole on “Mar 1:16-17“. That was at another time, and in another manner: Christ here only invited them to come and see where he lodged.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
40. One . . . was AndrewTheother was doubtless our Evangelist himself. His great sensitivenessis touchingly shown in his representation of this first contact withthe Lord; the circumstances are present to him in the minutestdetails; he still remembers the Very hour. But “he reports noparticulars of those discourses of the Lord by which he was bound toHim for the whole of His life; he allows everything personal toretire” [OLSHAUSEN].
Peter’s brotherand theelder of the two.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
One of the two which heard John [speak],…. The above things, concerning Jesus being the Lamb of God:
and followed him; that is, Jesus, as the Syriac and Arabic versions read; and the Persic version, Christ: and the Ethiopic version, “the Lord Jesus”; for not John, but Jesus they followed:
was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother: see Mt 4:18 the other, as before observed, might be the writer of this Gospel.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
Andrew (). Explained by John as one of the two disciples of the Baptist and identified as the brother of the famous Simon Peter (cf. also John 6:8; John 12:22). The more formal call of Andrew and Simon, James and John, comes later (Mark 1:16; Matt 4:18; Luke 3:1-11).
That heard John speak ( ). “That heard from John,” a classical idiom ( with ablative after ) seen also in John 6:45; John 7:51; John 8:26; John 8:40; John 15:15.
Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament
1) “One of the two which heard John,” (eis ek ton duo ton akousanton para loannou) “One of those two who heard John,” John the Baptist speak and climaxed his remarks with “Behold the Lamb of God,” or take note of Him, Joh 1:36-37.
2) “Speak, and followed him,” (kai akolouthesanton auto) “And then followed him, followed Jesus, the Lamb of God, of whom John the Baptist had so eloquently witnessed, both to the masses and the quiz delegates from the Pharisees in Jerusalem, Joh 1:15-34.
3) “Was Andrew Simon Peter’s brother.” (en Andreas ho adelphon Simonos Petrou) “Was Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter,” an early disciple of Jesus, member of His church company and later one of the twelve apostles, Mat 10:2, who came from the baptism of John, Act 1:21-22. The name “Andrew” means “manly,” beyond which we know little.
Tradition says that Andrew was crucified at Patrae in Greece, on a cross formed as an X, which has from that time been known as St. Andrew’s cross. He was with Jesus through all His ministry, from the beginning, and was at the first church assembly business conference after the ascension of Jesus, when the church elected Matthaias to take the office of the apostleship, from which Judas Iscariot fell, Act 1:10-11; Act 1:13; Act 1:15-26.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
40. Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. The design of the Evangelist, down to the end of the chapter, is to inform us how gradually the disciples were brought to Christ. Here he relates about Peter, and afterwards he will mention Philip and Nathanael. The circumstance of Andrew immediately bringing his brother expresses the nature of faith, which does not conceal or quench the light, but rather spreads it in every direction. Andrew has scarcely a spark, and yet, by means of it, he enlightens his brother. Woe to our indolence, therefore, if we do not, after having been fully enlightened, endeavor to make others partakers of the same grace. We may observe in Andrew two things which Isaiah requires from the children of God; namely, that each should take his neighbor by the hand, and next, that he should say,
Come, let us go up into the mountain of the Lord, and he will teach us, (Isa 2:3.)
For Andrew stretches out the hand to his brother, but at the same time he has this object in view, that he may become a fellow-disciple with him in the school of Christ. We ought also to observe the purpose of God, which determined that Peter, who was to be far more eminent, was brought to the knowledge of Christ by the agency and ministry of Andrew; that none of us, however excellent, may refuse to be taught by an inferior; for that man will be severely punished for his peevishness, or rather for his pride, who, through his contempt of a man, will not deign to come to Christ.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(40) One of the two.The Evangelist will even here draw the veil over his own identity (see Introduction). The one is Andrew, even now marked out as brother of the better-known Simon Peter. On these names comp. Note on Mat. 10:2-4; but it should be observed here, that on this first day, as the earnest of the harvest to come, we have the two pairs of brothers, the sons of Zebedee (comp. next verse), and sons of Jonas, who are ever leaders in the apostolic band.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
40. Followed him Followed him at his invitation to come and see where he dwelt. We note this particularly, as some have interpreted it to follow him as already a chosen apostle; whereas he was not chosen as apostle until the miraculous draft of fishes. See Luk 5:1-11.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
‘One of the two who heard John speak and followed Him, was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother.’
In a passage where names are continually given the total silence as to the name of Andrew’s companion is profoundly significant. It cannot have been forgotten. Too many remembered that day, and after all they were the first disciples of Jesus. We must therefore see the silence as deliberate, and in the face of the fact that the name of the Apostle John is never mentioned in the Gospel the inevitable conclusion is that it was the writer himself, and that the writer was the Apostle John.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Missionary efforts:
v. 40. One of the two which heard John speak and followed Him was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother.
v. 41. He first findeth his own brother Simon, and saith unto him, We have found the Messias, which is, being interpreted, the Christ.
v. 42. And he brought him to’ Jesus. And when Jesus beheld him. He said, Thou art Simon, the son of Jona; thou shalt be called Cephas, which is, by interpretation, A stone. The name of one of the former disciples is given. It was Andrew of Bethsaida, the brother of Peter. The name of the other man is not given, but anyone that reads the gospel of John carefully may read between the lines that John himself was the other disciple who here found Jesus. Now the hearts of both men were full of the happiness of their salvation. They felt constrained to let others know of the faith that was in them and of Him that inspired it. Before doing anything else, Andrew therefore set out to find his brother Simon. His heart was full, and out of that fullness his mouth spoke. He tells him that they had found the promised Messiah, the Christ of the prophecies. They, Andrew and John, were convinced that Jesus was the Christ. That conviction was the result of their conversation with Jesus. If many persons that now stand aloof from the Gospel and its teaching would only hear and read the Bible with an open mind, letting the Lord Himself talk to them, the chances are that they would be brought to the same glorious certainty. And Andrew was not satisfied with the mere telling of the news. He must needs bring his brother Simon to Jesus. The same missionary zeal should fill the hearts of the Christians today. There is altogether too much aloofness from the actual work of the Gospel among the members of the Christian congregations. Belief in Christ as the Redeemer, missionary talk, and missionary deed must go hand in hand. Jesus looked up as Simon approached. He uttered a word by the working of His divine omniscience. He gave Simon his correct name; He told him the name of his father, Jona, of Bethsaida; he read his character and his future, and gave him an additional name to fit the future, the Aramaic name Cephas, which is the same as the Greek name Peter. He would have need of the nature and firmness of a rock, and had better lay the foundation of his faith in the great Rock Jesus, before the dangers and trials of the coming enmity of the world would overwhelm him.
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
Joh 1:40. Which heard John speak, Who had received information from John; namely, that mentioned Joh 1:36.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
40 One of the two which heard John speak , and followed him, was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother.
Ver. 40. One of the two ] See here how mean and slender the Catholic Church was at first. Two poor men only follow Christ, who yet had the promise of the “heathen for his inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for his possession,” Psa 2:8 ; “Despise not therefore the day of small things,”Zec 4:10Zec 4:10 . The cloud of a hand breadth may shortly muffle the whole heaven: the little stone cut out without hands may bring down the huge image, and break it to pieces, Dan 2:45 : the dry root of Jesse prove a tree so tall, that, like that of Nebuchadnezzar, the height thereof shall reach unto heaven, and the sight thereof to the end of all the earth, Dan 4:11 . Nec minor ab excordio nec maior incrementis ulla, said he of Rome, say we of the Church. (Eutrop. Hist. lib. 1.)
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
40. ] They ask ., . Euthym [35] They enquire after His place of lodging for the night , intending to visit Him there; or perhaps He was then apparently going thither, as it was late in the day. But He furthers their wish by inviting them to follow, and they will see.
[35] Euthymius Zigabenus, 1116
] i.e. 4 P.M., according to the Jewish reckoning; not, as some have thought, 10 A.M., according to that of the Romans. Our Evangelist appears always to reckon according to the Jewish method, see ch. Joh 4:6 ; Joh 4:52 ; Joh 19:14 , and notes, but especially ch. Joh 11:9 . And as Lcke remarks (i. 446), even among the Romans, the division of the day into twelve equal hours was, though not the civil , the popular way of computing time. So Persius, Sat. iii. 3: “Stertimus quinta dum linea tangitur umbra.”
They remained with Him the rest of that day , which would be four or five hours, and need not strictly be limited by sunset.
Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament
John
THE FIRST DISCIPLES: II. SIMON PETER
Joh 1:40 f11 – Joh 1:42
There are many ways by which souls are brought to their Saviour. Sometimes, like the merchantman seeking goodly pearls, men seek Him earnestly and find Him. Sometimes, by the intervention of another, the knowledge of Him is kindled in dark hearts. Sometimes He Himself takes the initiative, and finds those that seek Him not. We have illustrations of all these various ways in these simple records of the gathering in of the first disciples. Andrew and his friend, with whom we were occupied in our last sermon, looked for Christ and found Him. Peter, with whom we have to do now, was brought to Christ by his brother; and the third of the group, consisting of Philip, was sought by Christ while he was not thinking of Him, and found an unsought treasure; and then Philip again, like Andrew, finds a friend, and brings him to Christ.
Each of the incidents has its own lesson, and each of them adds something to the elucidation of John’s two great subjects: the revelation of Jesus as the Son of God, and the development of that faith in Him which gives us life. It may be profitable to consider each group in succession, and mark the various aspects of these two subjects presented by each.
In this incident, then, we have two things mainly to consider: first, the witness of the disciple; second, the self-revelation of the Master.
I. The witness of the disciple.
But that by the way. Passing that, notice first the illustration that we get here of how instinctive and natural the impulse is, when a man has found Jesus Christ, to tell some one else about Him. Nobody said to Andrew, ‘Go and look for your brother,’ and yet, as soon as he had fairly realised the fact that this Man standing before him was the Messiah, though the evening seems to have come, he hurries away to find his brother, and share with him the glad conviction.
Now, that is always the case. If a man has any real depth of conviction, he cannot rest till he tries to share it with somebody else. Why, even a dog that has had its leg mended, will bring other limping dogs to the man that was kind to it. Whoever really believes anything becomes a propagandist.
Look round about us to-day! and hearken to the Babel, the wholesale Babel of noises, where every sort of opinion is trying to make itself heard. It sounds like a country fair where every huckster is shouting his loudest. That shows that the men believe the things that they profess. Thank God that there is so much earnestness in the world! And now are Christians to be dumb whilst all this vociferous crowd is calling its wares, and quacks are standing on their platforms shouting out their specifics, which are mostly delusions? Have you not a medicine that will cure everything, a real heal-all, a veritable pain-killer? If you believe that you have, certainly you will never rest till you share your boon with your brethren.
If the natural effect of all earnest conviction, viz. a yearning and an absolute necessity to speak it out, is no part of your Christian experience, very grave inferences ought to be drawn from that. This man, before he was four-and-twenty hours a disciple, had made another. Some of you have been disciples for as many years, and have never even tried to make one. Whence comes that silence which is, alas, so common among us?
It is very plain that, making all allowance for changed manners, for social difficulties, for timidity, for the embarrassment that besets people when they talk to other people about religion, which is ‘such an awkward subject to introduce into mixed company,’ and the like,-making all allowance for these, there is a deplorable number of Christian people who ought to be, in their own circles, evangelists and missionaries, who are, if I may venture to quote very rude words which the Bible uses, ‘Dumb dogs lying down, and loving to slumber.’ ‘He first findeth his own brother, Simon!’
Now, take another lesson out of this witness of the disciple, as to the channel in which such effort naturally runs. ‘He first findeth his own brother’; does not that imply a second finding by the other of the two? The language of the text suggests that the Evangelist’s tendency to the suppression of himself, of which I have spoken, hides away, if I may so say, in this singular expression, the fact that he too went to look for a brother, but that Andrew found his brother before John found his. If so, each of the original pair of disciples went to look for one who was knit to him by close ties of kindred and affection, and found him and brought him to Christ; and before the day was over the Christian Church was doubled, because each member of it, by God’s grace, had added another. Home, then, and those who are nearest to us, present the natural channels for Christian work. Many a very earnest and busy preacher, or Sunday-school teacher, or missionary, has brothers and sisters, husband or wife, children or parents at home to whom he has never said a word about Christ. There is an old proverb, ‘The shoemaker’s wife is always the worst shod.’ The families of many very busy Christian teachers suffer wofully for want of remembering ‘he first findeth his own brother.’ It is a poor affair if all your philanthropy and Christian energy go off noisily in Sunday-schools and mission-stations, and if your own vineyard is neglected, and the people at your own fireside never hear anything from you about the Master whom you say you love. Some of you want that hint; will you take it?
But then, the principle is one that might be fairly expanded beyond the home circle. The natural relationships into which we are brought by neighbourhood and by ordinary associations prescribe the direction of our efforts. What, for instance, are we set down in this swarming population of Lancashire for? For business and personal ends? Yes, partly. But is that all? Surely, if we believe that ‘there is a divinity that shapes our ends’ and determines the bounds of our habitation, we must believe that other purposes affecting other people are also meant by God to be accomplished through us, and that where a man who knows and loves Christ Jesus is brought into neighbourly contact with thousands who do not, he is thereby constituted his brethren’s keeper, and is as plainly called to tell them of Christ as if a voice from Heaven had bid him do it. What is to be said of the depth and vital energy of the Christianity that neither hears the call nor feels the impulse to share its blessing with the famishing Lazarus at its gate? What will be the fate of such a church? Why, if you live in luxury in your own well drained and ventilated house, and take no heed to the typhoid fever or cholera in the slums at its back, the chances are that seeds of the disease will find their way to you, and kill your wife, or child, or yourself. And if you Christian people, living in the midst of godless people, do not try to heal them, they will infect you. If you do not seek to impress your conviction that Christ is the Messiah upon an unbelieving generation, the unbelieving generation will impress upon you its doubts whether He is; and your lips will falter, and a pallor will come over the complexion of your love, and your faith will become congealed and turn into ice.
Notice again the simple word which is the most powerful means of influencing most men.
Andrew did not begin to argue with his brother. Some of us can do that and some of us cannot. Some of us are influenced by argument and some of us are not. You may pound a man’s mistaken creed to atoms with sledge-hammers of reasoning, and he is not much the nearer being a Christian than he was before; just as you may pound ice to pieces and it is pounded ice after all. The mightiest argument that we can use, and the argument that we can all use, if we have got any religion in us at all, is that of Andrew, ‘We have found the Messias.’
I recently read a story in some newspaper or other about a minister who preached a very elaborate course of lectures in refutation of some form of infidelity, for the special benefit of a man that attended his place of worship. Soon after, the man came and declared himself a Christian. The minister said to him, ‘Which of my discourses was it that removed your doubts?’ The reply was, ‘Oh! it was not any of your sermons that influenced me. The thing that set me thinking was that a poor woman came out of the chapel beside me, and stumbled on the steps, and I stretched out my hand to help her, and she said “Thank you!” Then she looked at me and said, “Do you love Jesus Christ, my blessed Saviour?” And I did not, and I went home and thought about it; and now I can say I love Jesus.’ The poor woman’s word, and her frank confession of her experience, were all the transforming power.
If you have found Christ, you can say that you have. Never mind about the how! Any how! Only say it! A boy that is sent on an errand by his father has only one duty to perform, and that is to repeat what he was told. Whether we have any eloquence or not, whether we have any logic or not, whether we can speak persuasively and gracefully or not, if we have laid hold of Christ at all we can say that we have; and it is at our peril that we do not. We can say it to somebody. There is surely some one who will listen to you more readily than to any one else. Surely you have not lived all your life and bound nobody to you by kindness and love, so that they will gladly attend to what you say. Well, then, use the power that is given to you.
Remember the beginnings of the Christian Church-two men, each of whom found his brother. Two and two make four; and if every one of us would go, according to the old law of warfare, and each of us slay our man, or rather each of us give life by God’s grace to some one, or try to do it, our congregations and our churches would grow as fast as, according to the old problem, the money grew that was paid down for the nails in the horse’s shoes. Two snowflakes on the top of a mountain gather an avalanche by the time they reach the valley. ‘He first findeth his brother, Simon.’
II. And now I turn to the second part of this text, the self-revelation of the Master.
It was the impression which Christ Himself made on Simon which completed the work begun by his brother. What, then, was the impression? He comes all full of wonder and awe, and he is met by a look and a sentence. The look, which is described by an unusual word, was a penetrating gaze which regarded Peter with fixed attention. It must have been remarkable, to have lived in John’s memory for all these years. Evidently, as I think, a more than natural insight is implied. So, also, the saying with which our Lord received Peter seems to me to be meant to show more than natural knowledge: ‘Thou art Simon, the son of Jonas.’ Christ may, no doubt, have learned the Apostle’s name and lineage from his brother, or in some other ordinary way. But if you observe the similar incident which follows in the conversation with Nicodemus, and the emphatic declaration of the next chapter that Jesus knew both ‘all men,’ and ‘what was in man’-both human nature as a whole, and each individual-it is more natural to see here superhuman knowledge.
So then, the first point in our Lord’s self-revelation here is that He shows Himself possessed of supernatural and thorough knowledge. One remembers the many instances where our Lord read men’s hearts, and the prayer addressed to Him probably, by Peter, ‘Thou, Lord, which knowest the hearts of all men,’ and the vision which John saw of ‘eyes like a flame of fire,’ and the sevenfold ‘I know thy works.’
It may be a very awful thought, ‘Thou, God, seest me.’ It is a very unwelcome thought to a great many men, and it will be so to us unless we can give it the modification which it receives from the belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ, and feel sure that the eyes which are blazing with divine omniscience are dewy with divine and human love.
Do you believe it? Do you feel that Christ is looking at you, and searching you altogether? Do you rejoice in it? Do you carry it about with you as a consolation and a strength in moments of weakness and in times of temptation? Is it as blessed to you to feel ‘Thou Christ beholdest me now,’ as it is for a child to feel that, when it is playing in the garden, its mother is sitting up at the window watching it, and that no harm can come? There have been men driven mad in prisons because they knew that somewhere in the wall there was a little pinhole, through which a gaoler’s eye was always, or might be always, glaring down at them. And the thought of an absolute Omniscience up there, searching me to the depths of my nature, may become one from which I recoil shudderingly, and will not be altogether a blessed one unless it comes to me in this shape:-’My Christ knows me altogether and loves me better than He knows. And so I will spread myself out before Him, and though I feel that there is much in me which I dare not tell to men, I will rejoice that there is nothing which I need to tell to Him. He knows me through and through. He knew me when He died for me. He knew me when He forgave me. He knew me when He undertook to cleanse me. Like this very Peter I will say, “Lord, Thou knowest all things,” and, like him, I will cling the closer to His feet, because I know, and He knows, my weakness and my sin.’
Another revelation of our Lord’s relation to His disciples is given in the fact that He changes Simon’s name. Jehovah, in the Old Testament, changes the names of Abraham and of Jacob. Babylonian kings in the Old Testament change the names of their vassal princes. Masters impose names on their slaves; and I suppose that even the marriage custom of the wife’s assuming the name of the husband rests originally upon the same idea of absolute authority. That idea is conveyed in the fact that our Lord changes Peter’s name, and so takes absolute possession of him, and asserts His mastery over him. We belong to Him altogether, because He has given Himself altogether for us. His absolute authority is the correlative of His utter self-surrender. He who can come to me and say, ‘I have spared not my life for thee,’ and He only, has the right to come to me and say, ‘yield yourself wholly to Me.’ So, Christian friends, your Master wants all your service; do you give yourselves up to Him out and out, not by half and half.
Lastly, that change of name implies Christ’s power and promise to bestow a new character and new functions and honours. Peter was by no means a ‘Peter’ then. The name no doubt mainly implies official function, but that official function was prepared for by personal character; and in so far as the name refers to character, it means firmness. At that epoch Peter was rash, impulsive, headstrong, self-confident, vain, and therefore, necessarily changeable. Like the granite, all fluid and hot, and fluid because it was hot, he needed to cool in order to solidify into rock. And not until his self-confidence had been knocked out of him, and he had learned humility by falling; not until he had been beaten from all his presumption, and tamed down, and sobered and steadied by years of difficulty and responsibilities, did he become the rock that Christ meant him to be. All that lay concealed in the future, but in the change of his name, while he stood on the very threshold of his Christian career, there was preached to him, and there is preached to us, this great truth, that if you will go to Jesus Christ He will make a new man of you. No man’s character is so obstinately rooted in evil but that Christ can change its set and direction. No man’s natural dispositions are so faulty and low but that Christ can develop counterbalancing virtues, and out of the evil and weakness make strength. He will not make a Peter into a John, or a John into a Paul, but He will deliver Peter from the ‘defects of his qualities,’ and lead them up into a higher and a nobler region. There are no outcasts in the view of the transforming Christ. He dismisses no people out of His hospital as incurable, because anybody, everybody, the blackest, the most rooted in evil, those who have longest indulged in any given form of transgression, may all come to Him; with the certainty that if they will cleave to Him, He will read all their character and all its weaknesses, and then with a glad smile of welcome and assured confidence on His face, will ensure to them a new nature and new dignities. ‘Thou art Simon-thou shalt be Peter.’
The process will be long. It will be painful. There will be a great deal pared off. The sculptor makes the marble image by chipping away the superfluous marble. Ah! and when you have to chip away superfluous flesh and blood it is bitter work, and the chisel is often deeply dyed in gore, and the mallet seems to be very cruel. Simon did not know all that had to be done to make a Peter of him. We have to thank God’s providence that we do not know all the sorrows and trials of the process of making us what He wills us to be. But we may be sure of this, that if only we keep near our Master, and let Him have His way with us, and work His will upon us, and if only we will not wince from the blows of the Great Artist’s chisel, then out of the roughest block He will carve the fairest statue; and He will fulfil for us at last His great promise: ‘I will give unto him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth save he that receiveth it.’
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
heard John speak = heard (this) from (Greek. pare. App-104.) John.
Andrew, Simon. See App-141.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
40.] They ask ., . Euthym[35] They enquire after His place of lodging for the night, intending to visit Him there; or perhaps He was then apparently going thither, as it was late in the day. But He furthers their wish by inviting them to follow, and they will see.
[35] Euthymius Zigabenus, 1116
] i.e. 4 P.M., according to the Jewish reckoning; not, as some have thought, 10 A.M., according to that of the Romans. Our Evangelist appears always to reckon according to the Jewish method, see ch. Joh 4:6; Joh 4:52; Joh 19:14, and notes, but especially ch. Joh 11:9. And as Lcke remarks (i. 446), even among the Romans, the division of the day into twelve equal hours was, though not the civil, the popular way of computing time. So Persius, Sat. iii. 3: Stertimus quinta dum linea tangitur umbra.
They remained with Him the rest of that day, which would be four or five hours, and need not strictly be limited by sunset.
Fuente: The Greek Testament
Joh 1:40
Joh 1:40
One of the two that heard John speak, and followed him, was Andrew, Simon Peters brother.-We may well feel sure that his stay with Jesus satisfied his desire to know and strengthened his faith in Jesus. Andrew was one of the first called of the followers of Jesus. He was Peters brother. Their home was in Bethsaida, a city on the Sea of Galilee. This was also the home of John and James, the sons of Zebedee. They are now at Bethany-not the Bethany near Jerusalem, but a village on the east side of the Jordan, near its entrance into the Dead Sea. Simon Peter was the older of the two brothers, likely the more aggressive, and became in one sense the first leader among the disciples.
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
Personal Service
One of the two that heard John speak, and followed him, was Andrew, Simon Peters brother. He findeth first his own brother Simon, and saith unto him, We have found the Messiah (which is, being interpreted, Christ). He brought him unto Jesus.Joh 1:40-42.
According to St. Johns narrative, Andrew and John (who characteristically does not name himself in the narrative) were the first men who heard and responded to the Masters call, the first whom He enlisted in His little cohort of disciples. They had previously been followers of John the Baptist; but one day as Christ passed by they heard that prophet speak of Him as the Lamb of God, and they looked into His face and felt some wonderful attraction drawing them to Him, and all uninvited they followed and abode with Him one day. What Christ did with them and what He said on that day we know not, but it removed every doubt from their minds if any doubt had lingered there. It was a day of revelation, a day of grace, the most wonderful and the happiest day that these men had yet known, for they had found the Saviour of the world.
And then we have this incident recorded. Andrew had no sooner made his great discovery, than he burned to impart the secret to others. Quickly therefore he sought his own brother Simon and passed on the glad tidingsWe have found the Christ, and he brought him to Jesus. Here, then, we have to deal with (1) a great discovery, (2) a great enthusiasm kindled by that discovery, and (3) a great service accomplished as the result of the enthusiasm.
This is one of the famous personal work chapters. There are three findeths in it. Andrew findeth his brother Peter. That was a great find. John in his modesty does not speak of it, but in all likelihood he findeth James his brother. Jesus findeth Philip, and Philip in turn findeth Nathanael, the guileless Man 1:1 [Note: S. D. Gordon, Quiet Talks on Service, 27.]
I
A Great Discovery
We have found the Messiah.
1. It was a great day in the life of Andrew when he uttered these words. It was a great day also in the life of the race, for he announced to his brother, Peter, a discovery fraught with importance far beyond his own comprehension.
(1) We have found. They had been looking for Him. The Jews were the nation of hope. Both Andrew and Peter, we may be sure, had heard of the Messiah, the hope of Israel, all their lives. From the earliest antiquity, down through the centuries of the tragic, chequered, strange career of this extraordinary people, there had presented itself, with varying degrees of distinctness, the hope of a Coming One who would be the source of great, although for many centuries undefined, blessings. They had been taught as children, as young men, to put the precious promises of Scripture together, just as nowadays family treasures are taken out and scanned, and arranged and re-arranged, and put back again, from time to time. These promises were the splendid inheritance of the great Jewish family, carried by it everywhere in its sufferingscarried by it throughout the civilized world; and the Galilean peasants, like all others of the race of Israel, felt that they were ennobled by having a share in this great possession. How much that we cannot even understand, in this age of the world, was gathered into those pregnant words: We have found the Messiah.
(2) The Messiah (which is, being interpreted, Christ). What did Andrew mean when he said Christ? In the thought of the best men of that time the word Christ set forth a Heaven-commissioned Prince, the Deliverer of the oppressed people, who should lead His followers to dignity, freedom, and happiness, and in whom all the nations of the earth should be blessed. This indeed Christ fulfilled, though not in the way Andrew imagined when he ran to Peter with his great discovery. For to the popular conception of the Christ our Lord added the momentous fact that the Messianic goal was to be reached by suffering, humiliation, and death, and that His supreme duty as the Anointed of God was to give Himself up for the race that rejected Him.
(3) How did Andrew find out Jesus to be the Messiah? There is no reason to think that Jesus told him so. The more carefully we study our Lords own words about Himself, the more convinced we shall be that He made no such revelation to an inquiring disciple at this early period. He had seen no miracles to convince him, for it is not till the next chapter that we hear of Christs first miracle. As far as we can judge, every sign of outward power was wanting; for all he could see, Jesus might be the weakest and the most helpless of mankind. What was it then that led him to speak so confidently to Peter? Surely it must have been, first, the effect of Christs unutterable goodness; and, secondly, that of Christs inward power, the power of spirit over spirit. Good men, no doubt, as we commonly call men good, he had seen and known before, as almost all of us have done; but here was One whose deep and perfect goodness made Andrew feel as if he were in the presence of God Himself. His own heart was sound and right enough to know the true marks of One come from God.
(4) But when Andrew spoke thus, he knew little of the real Christ. During the next three years he was to be continually finding Christ. He found Him anew in the Sermon on the Mount. He grew larger to his thought as he saw Him heal the sick, teach the inquiring, forgive the sinning. He grew still mightier as he watched Him feed the thousands, still the storm, and raise the dead. And the Christ in the upper room, in Gethsemane, and on Calvary, towered still higher above the Christ to whom he introduced his brother, and was in turn surpassed by the Christ of the Resurrection morning and the Ascension Mount. It is a red-letter day in any mans life when he finds Christ, but that is only the beginning of his religious life. From that point we follow on to know the Lord.
2. To-day our Lord is living and working among us, revealing His glory and manifesting His power, to a far greater degree than when He trod the plains of Galilee, or taught in the Temple courts. But of this the majority of men are little conscious. The need of our times is for men and women who can say with the conviction of Andrew, We have found the Christ. Amidst the perplexities of our modern life, there is a cry for those who can speak with certainty of Divine things. It was the peerless personality of the Son of God that first attracted Andrew, and made him declare to Peter the discovery he had made. And the same attraction is operating to-day. Men are not won by beliefs about Christ, but by Christ Himself.
(1) If we would find Christ, we must be looking for Him, and preparing for Him. God taught His own chosen people for whole generations. He taught them about the Messiah, who He would be, what He would do, preparing by His messengers the way before Him; and the consequence of all that steady, systematic teaching was that, when the fulness of the time was come, and one brother said to another, We have found him, of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write, they had not to ask who was meant; they took all their old religious knowledge and religious teaching in their hand and went to Jesus, and found Him to be all that they had learnt He would be. And so with our teaching of religious truth; we teach the history of Christ, and His sermons and His parables and His miracles; and we teach, laboriously perhaps, and in the sweat of our brow, the meaning of His Word and of His Sacraments. It is not labour lost. When the fire from heaven descends upon the sacrifice to consume it, it does so all the more readily because the prophet had previously prepared the altar, and set the wood in order, and laid the sacrifice on the wood.
(2) But we must not be content to know about Christ. We must come into personal contact with Him. We must be in the house with Him, we must learn to know Him as the Son of God and the Lamb of Godas that One who came from His Father to be our Brother, to share our nature and to bear our sins and to take us back to God as His Father and our Father, His God and our Goda Friend in sickness and sorrow and death, who points us through death to life eternal. This is the one great discovery, compared with which all other inventions are shortlived opiates of an houra little ease on the road to death.
(3) Having recognized the Master when we are brought face to face with Him, we must trust Him as Andrew did. Possibly these early disciples may have thought that, having found Christ, the rest was easy and secure; that the new Kingdom of great Davids greater Son would present no difficulties, either to flesh and blood or to mind or spirit; that, having found and recognized and honoured the King, there was nothing to follow but position and privilege, and glory such as the Kingdom could and would liberally supply. If this was their thought, they were quickly to be undeceived. The King, though personally dearer to them every day, seemed every day to become more mysterious and unintelligible, and His Kingdom more disappointing and more remote. If He began to tell them about His coming Kingdom, He spoke in parables which they could not understand. If He showed evidence of His superhuman power, it seemed to be His policy to restrain the publication of those miraculous proofs as much as possible. When they suggested that an exhibition of His wrath in the way of punishment might be a warning to His opponents, He rebuked their ignorance of the very spirit of His Kingdom. When they expected Him to be telling them of coming triumph, He could speak only of persecution and suffering and death, until the uncontrollable Be it far from thee broke from the lips of their scandalized spokesman. What, then, was the charm, what was the bond, which held the Master and followers together? We answer without hesitation, it was their personal love of the Christ whom they had found. This was what made all disappointment at His want of success and all perplexity as to His doctrine equally unable to break up their little society. They did not pretend to understand His methods or His objects, but when He laid before them one of the hardest and most difficult of His doctrines, that which caused many of His disciples to go back, and walk no more with Him, Peter, answering for the Apostles, could neither turn back nor yet pretend to say that he understood the difficult matter in question; but in all the helplessness of a constraining love, with all the confidence of such a plenary devotion as has no other choice and wishes for no other, he put the seal on his former declaration, We have left all, and followed thee, by adding to it, Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life. And we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God.
(4) If we can say We have found the Messiah, it is now, as of old, enough. John in the desert, Andrew on the morrow after meeting the Redeemer, did not look like the men who were to initiate nothing less than the spiritual conquest of the world. But one truth, seriously believed and proclaimed with the accents of sincerity, will go a great way with any single soul. If, indeed, we have found the Messiah, not merely in a literature, not merely as an explanation of existing institutions, not merely as the centre of much thought and activity in this our time and day, not merely as an historical personage that must needs be recognized by intelligent men,if we have found Him for ourselves, found Him as a still living friend, found Him in our prayers, found Him in our Bibles, found Him in our efforts to conquer deep-seated evil within us, found Him in our intercourse with His living servants, found Him in the appointed Sacrament of His love,if we have found Him as the pardoner of sin and as the conqueror of sin, then we have motives enough and to spare for working for the evangelization of others, for bringing all whom we can to that agreement in the faith and knowledge of God, to such ripeness and perfectness of age in Christ, that there may be no place left either for error in religion or for viciousness in life.
3. Society must find Christ. The conception of Christ as the Saviour of individuals only is insufficient for the fulfilling of prophecy or the solution of historic problems. The institutions of men must be saved as truly as individual souls. The Christian design for the world is not an anarchy of good individuals. And it is as society finds Christ that it rejoices in the exhilarating pulsations of a diviner life than the older dispensations ever dreamed of. Modern civilization, so far as it is virtuous, philanthropic, and high-principled, is the result of Andrews discovery. And one of the great needs of our age is to extend the beneficent influence of this discovery. The spirit of Christ claims dominion over all life, and the principle of Christs own life must be the principle of the home, the shop, the school, the court, and in the work of every department of our many-sided activities. It is as men realize this, and practise it, that the time is hastened when the new Jerusalem shall descend out of heaven from God, having peace for its walls, righteousness for its foundations, and love for its law.
There is a great deal of good talk these days about regenerating society. It used to be that men talked about reaching the masses. Now the other putting of it is commoner. It is helpful talk whichever way it is put. The Gospel of Jesus is to affect all society. It has affected all society, and is to do so more and more. But the thing to mark keenly is this, the key to the mass is the man. The way to regenerate society is to start on the individual. The law of influence through personal contact is too tremendous to be grasped. You influence one man and you have influenced a group of men, and then a group around each man of the group, and so on endlessly. Hand-picked fruit gets the first and best market. The keenest marksmen are picked for the sharpshooters corps.1 [Note: S. D. Gordon, Quiet Talks on Service, 29.]
II
A Great Enthusiasm
He first findeth his own brother Simon.
Andrew does not dream of keeping his great discovery to himself. His first thought is to tell it to his brother Simon. He is full of itcan think or talk of nothing else. His eye flashes, his face shines, his voice rings with the music of it. Simon, we have found Christ.
I like greatly the motto of the Salvation Army. It must have been born for those workers in the warm heart of the mother of the Army, Catherine Booth. That mother explains much of the marvellous power of that organization. Their motto is, Saved to Serve.2 [Note: lbid. 141.]
1. There is no joy known to human hearts so glorious, so imperativebreaking down all strongholds and through all restraintsas the joy of a heart in its first gladness in finding the Lord and knowing the forgiveness of sins. As Morley Punshon, the famous English preacher, said, there was joy in the breast of the sage of Syracuse when he shouted aloud his glad Eureka in the hearing of the people who deemed him mad; there was joy in the soul of Sir Isaac Newton when the first conception of the law of gravitation burst upon his thought as he sat under his orchard tree; there was joy in the heart of Columbus in that moment of triumph over doubt and mutiny, when the tiny land-birds settled upon the sails of his vessel, bearing upon their timid wings the welcomes of the new world; there is joy for the gold-finder, when he sees the precious ore shining in his gold-pan; joy for children when new marvels of the world open on their vision; joy for the poet when he sends through the world a glad thought that stirs the pulse of mankind; but none of these can compare with the joy of the ransomed sinner who can clasp his brothers hand and say, Come, brother, we have found the Lord.
I remember well how I used to pray for joy. I was told that a Christian must be joyful. I prayed and prayed, and I must say I did not get it. Why not? Because it does not come by prayer alone. It may come that way, but not alone. I used to think that joy was kept in lumpspackets which were stored up and then doled outor injected like morphiaand that if I prayed a lump would come. This is a material conception that many hold. They want virtues and graces, and they set-to and pray. They pray for rest, peace, love, joy, and they hope these will drop from heaven and stay with them for ever. But these are Fruits. How can you have Fruits without Branches? Where are your branches to bear fruit, where is your blossom to precede it? Whats the use of a lump of joy if there are no branches? Now, gentlemen, look up in your Bibles and find out how to get joy; find the cause of joy. Work by the law you know of as cause and effect. Joy is an effect, find the cause. There is one, just as surely as you have a cause for toothache. Turn to the fifteenth of John, and there you will read the parable of the Vine in the words of Jesus. He tells His disciples about the tree and its branches, and then He tells them the why of these things:These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full. That is the end of the parablethe cause of joy, something of which the effect is joy. Joy comes of a great law. But what is the condition? Go home and look and see. It is to do good. Abide in Christ and bring forth fruit, then comes the joy, and you cant help yourself. You dont make the joy. It simply follows after a certain cause, and I defy any man in this hall to go off and do something for somebody, comfort them, help them, any one whom you may meetI say, I defy him to do that and not come back happier and full of joy.1 [Note: Drummond, in Smiths Life of Henry Drummond, 496.]
2. Andrew started at once to spread the good tidings. The day after his conversion was the day in which he became a soul-winner. How instinctive and natural the impulse is, when a man has found Jesus Christ, to tell some one else about Him. Nobody said to Andrew, Go and look for your brother; and yet, as soon as he had fairly realized the fact that this Man standing before him was the Messiah, though the evening seems to have come, he hurried away to find his brother, and share with him the glad conviction. That is always the case. If a man has any real depth of conviction, he cannot rest till he tries to share it with somebody else. Why, even a dog that has had its leg mended will bring other limping dogs to the man who was kind to it. Whoever really believes anything becomes a propagandist. Look round about us to-day! and hearken to the Babel, the wholesale Babel of noises, where every sort of opinion is trying to make itself heard. It sounds like a country fair where every huckster is shouting his loudest. That shows that the men believe the things they profess. Thank God that there is so much earnestness in the world! And are Christians to be dumb whilst all this vociferous crowd is calling its wares, and quacks are standing on their platforms shouting out their specifics, which are mostly delusions? Have we not a medicine that will cure everything, a real heal-all, a veritable pain-killer? If we believe that we have, certainly we will never rest till we share our boon with our brethren.
I am, and have for a long time been, persuaded that if the Christian Church were to claim that fulness of the Holy Spirit which is her birthright, her equipment, the greatest of all her needs, the proportion of what we call evangelists to pastors and teachers would be very much larger than it is at present. Touched with this flame, not only a multitude of ministers, but of the laity, who have hardly tasted the ecstasy of soul-winning, would joyously respond to Gods call with a fervent Here am I, send me! Then He could and would send them, and they would come back laden with trophies of victory.1 [Note: T. Waugh, Twenty-three Years a Missioner, 65.]
3. Andrew did not wait until the Master had given him full equipment and training. He started with imperfect knowledge. As yet, and for long after, there was an earthly and mistaken element in Andrews idea of the Messiah whom he had found. He knew that the Messiah had come, but of the vast consequences to the world, to the soul, of that comingconsequences extending through the sphere of time into the depths of the eternal future, as we find these things developed in the Epistles of St. Paulof these at such a time he must have had only an indistinct perception. One truth was clearly present to him, whatever else it might involve, and that one truth sufficed to kindle every affection and power of his spirit, to concentrate in its analysis every ray of his understanding,We have found the Messiah. He had seen enough of Jesus in those few hours to be awed, attracted, won,enough to know instinctively that John was right,enough to know that here was one whom he could perfectly love and trust,enough to know that the best thing he could possibly do for those nearest and dearest to himself was to tell them of his own experience.
In a list of Indian missionaries of Mohammedanism, published in the journal of a religious and philanthropic society of Lahore, says Arnold in The Preaching of Islam, We find the names of schoolmasters, government clerks in the Canal and Opium Departments, traders, including a dealer in camel carts, an editor of a newspaper, a bookbinder, and a workman in a printing establishment. These men devote the hours of leisure left them after the completion of the days labour to the preaching of their religion in the streets and bazaars of Indian cities, seeking to win converts from among Christians and Hindus, whose religious belief they controvert and attack. This is what constitutes the power of Islam. With no missionary organization, with no missionary order, the religion yet spread over Western Asia and Northern Africa, and retains still its foothold on the soil of Europe. Where the common man believes his religion and spreads it, other men believe it, too.1 [Note: R. E. Speer, A Young Mans Questions, 55.]
III
A Great Service
He brought him unto Jesus.
He brought him unto Jesus; it was the kindest and best service that any human being could do to any other.
1. Consider the nature of the man who performed this service.
(1) Andrew was an ordinary man. He was not a genius. He does not play a conspicuous part in the gospel drama. We know him better than some of the other disciples, better than Bartholomew and Jude, but not nearly so well as Peter and John. He is one of the subordinate characters stepping on the stage here and there to do a bit of modest work, and then vanishing into the background. Men like Andrew are the one-talented men who use their one talent sweetly and nobly, and show us all the way we ought to go and the work which we can do.
We often think that if we had that mans means or that mans ability or that mans opportunity, we could do something worth doing; but, as we are, there is no possibility of any great thing. Yet God does not want us to fill any other mans place, or to do any other mans work. God wants us to improve our own opportunity with the possessions and the powers that He has given us. It is a very great thing for us to do the very best we can do just where and as we are. God asks no one of us to do more than this, nor has any one of us a right to do less.1 [Note: M. D. Babcock, Thoughts for Everyday Living, 19.]
(2) Andrew had come from communion with Christ. He had spent a night with the Master, and in the sacred, secret converse of those few mysterious hours his whole life was altered. He had seen and had found the Christ. Here we have the secret of success. It is to be found in communion with Christ. This is the indispensable qualification of every Christian worker. It makes of the dwarf a giant, and without it the giant becomes a dwarf. In the Christian realm we can influence others only as we ourselves are influenced.
Place a bar of iron, cold and lifeless, by a piece of wood. The wood is not influenced at all, but when the iron is placed in the furnace and left there for a while and afterwards withdrawn, a change is then effected, for the iron seems to have ceased to be iron and to have become a mass of fire. If placed then by the side of the piece of wood how different is the result; as it has been influenced, so it influences, and the wood too becomes a mass of fire.2 [Note: William Arthur, The Tongue of Fire.]
(3) This ordinary man, coming from communion with Christ, shows three remarkable qualitiesthe courage which initiates, the sympathy which communicates with others, the humility which obliterates self. Courage, sympathy, humilitythree chief elements in the saintly character.
(a) There is first of all the courage of the man, the boldness which takes the first step, the spirit which comes bravely forward while all others are hanging back, timid or irresolute. We have many phrases which bear testimony to the value and the rarity of this courage. We speak of breaking the ice, of shooting Niagara. It is a plunge into an unknown future, where none has gone before, of which none can foretell the consequences. We say that it is the first step which costs. We are lost in admiration of the soldier who steps forward to lead the forlorn hope, to storm the breach, though almost certain death is his destiny. The forlorn hopedoes not the very phrase tell its own tale? Yes, it is the first step which costs. Where onethough only onehas gone before, it does not cost halfnot a twentieth partof the bravery, the resolution, for a second to follow. And for a third and a fourth the degree of courage required lessens in a rapidly decreasing scale. The first step was taken by Andrew. He was the leader of the forlorn hope of Christendom, the first to storm the citadel of the Kingdom of heaven, taking it as alone it can be takentaking it by force. Be not deceived. Only the violent enter thereinonly the brave, resolute, unflinching soldiers, who will brook no opposition, who make straight for truth and righteousness and love, come what may, who are ready to lose their lives that they may save them. This unique glory is Andrews. Peter may have held a more commanding position in the Church of Christ; Paul may have travelled over a larger area and gathered greater numbers into the fold; but Andrews crown has a freshness and a brightness of its own which shall never fadea glory of which no man can rob it.
On Sunday afternoons the boys in his passage would often indulge in pillow fights or games of a somewhat rowdy order. In order to stop this, Hogg, now one of the eldest boys at Joynes, suggested that they should all club together and have tea in his room, and then read aloud. He collected a large quantity of old Chamberss Journals, in which he would look out any curious or interesting articles for these Sunday afternoons. After a time he proposed that before separating a chapter of Scripture should be read and a prayer offered. It must have cost any boy a great effort to make such a suggestion, though the fact that a strong religious revival was then moving England, and that the movement had touched even the great public schools, may have made it a slightly less difficult innovation than one would imagine. Yet his contemporaries own they would not have stood it from any one else; and he himself spoke of it as a sore struggle. As a matter of fact, very little opposition or ridicule was met with. Most of the boys respected him for having the courage of his convictions; the majority responded to the invitation; those who held aloof were by no means antagonistic. Young Hogg used to read the chapter, and usually made some remarks as he did so; occasionally other boys would take an active part, and thus gradually the Chamberss Journals were dropped, and the gathering became a regular Bible Class.1 [Note: Quintin Hogg, 36.]
(b) The second quality is wholly different. It is the sympathy which mediates; the temper and character which draws others together; the conductivity of the man. It is a remarkable fact that, after this first meeting with Christ, every subsequent notice of Andrew specially brings out this feature in his character. It is not that he does any great thing himself, but that he is the means of getting great things done for or by others. What was his first impulse, what was his first act, after his call? Not the establishment of his own position with Christ, not the proclamation of his discovery on the housetops, nothing of self or self-seeking in any, even in its highest, form; but he first findeth his own brother Simon; and he brought him to Jesusbrought him who was henceforward to be the leader of the Apostles, the foremost after the Ascension to proclaim his risen Lord to a hostile world, the earliest to gather the first-fruits of the Gentiles into the garner of Christ.
Dr. Trumbull was often spoken of as being a man of exceptional tact. He practised pretty constantly at individual soul-winning from the time when he first found his Saviour, at twenty-one, until his death more than fifty years later. People who knew him and his ways, and his lifelong habit, have said of him, Oh, it was second nature to Dr. Trumbull to speak to a man about his soul. He simply couldnt help doing it, it was so easy for him. I never could get his ease in the work. And in so saying they showed how little they knew of him or of the demands of this work upon every man. The book on Individual Work was written after its author was seventy years of age. Hear what he had to say as to the ease which his long practice had brought him: From nearly half a century of such practice, as I have had opportunity day by day, I can say that I have spoken with thousands upon thousands on the subject of their spiritual welfare. Yet, so far from my becoming accustomed to this matter, so that I can take hold of it as a matter of course, I find it as difficult to speak about it at the end of these years as at the beginning. Never to the present day can I speak to a single soul for Christ without being reminded by Satan that I am in danger of harming the cause by introducing it just now. If there is one thing that Satan is sensitive about, it is the danger of a Christians harming the cause he loves by speaking of Christ to a needy soul. He [Satan] has more than once, or twice, or thrice, kept me from speaking on the subject by his sensitive pious caution, and he has tried a thousand times to do so. Therefore my experience leads me to suppose that he is urging other persons to try any method for souls except the best one.1 [Note: C. G. Trumbull, Taking Men Alive, 53.]
(c) The third feature in his character is intimately connected with the second. To Andrew was given the humility which obliterates self. He, who brought others forward, was content himself to retire. Just as at a later date Barnabas, the primitive disciple, took Saul by the hand, introduced him to the elder Apostles, and started him on his career as an Evangelist, content that his own light should wane in the greater glory of this new and more able missionary of Christ, so was it now. Andrew was the first called Apostle. Andrew brought Simon Peter to Christ. Yet Andrew is known only as Simon Peters brother. We know in what school he had learnt this lesson. Andrew was the Baptists disciple, and was not this the lesson of the Baptists life? He must increase, but I must decreaseobscuration, eclipse, obliteration of self. The personality of Andrew is lost in the personality of Simon. So it is truly said that the world knows nothing of its greatest benefactors. They are lost in their work, or are lost in others.
Lord, I read at the transfiguration that Peter, James, and John were admitted to behold Christ; but Andrew was excluded. So again at the reviving of the daughter of the ruler of the synagogue, these three were let in, and Andrew shut out. Lastly, in the agony, the aforesaid three were called to be witnesses thereof, and still Andrew left behind. Yet he was Peters brother, and a good man, and an apostle; why did not Christ take the two pair of brothers? was it not a pity to part them? But methinks I seem more offended thereat than Andrew himself was, whom I find to express no discontent, being pleased to be accounted a loyal subject for the general, though he was no favourite in these particulars. Give me to be pleased in myself, and thankful to thee, for what I am, though I be not equal to others in personal perfections. For such peculiar privileges are courtesies from thee when given, and no injuries to us when denied.1 [Note: Thomas Fuller.]
2. Consider the manner of the service.
(1) It was service rendered as the result of experience.No sermon did Andrew preach that day. He simply uttered one sentence, We have found the Messiah, which is, being interpreted, the Christ. Who could not have uttered such a sentence, if he had possessed the experience? The man who had experienced the effect of his eyes being opened, the woman who had experienced the opening out of her life before her eyesboth spoke with such power that men believed the words they uttered. So Andrew had found the Messiah, and the words of such a man, though few, had a weight such as those of a Demosthenes could not carry. Eloquence can never make up for the lack of experience. Experience with one sentence can move men as eloquence without it can never do, and Andrew with his one sentence brought Peter to Christ. When the Holy Ghost fell upon the Apostles they went out stating that God had shed forth this; so, to-day, the man who has spent the night with the Christ can go forth and, with the light of joy in his life, and the ring of conviction in his tone, can say, We have found the Christ, and men will listen to his message.
Some of us are influenced by argument and some of us are not. You may pound a mans mistaken creed to atoms with sledge-hammers of reasoning, and he is not much nearer being a Christian than he was before; just as you may pound ice to pieces and it is pounded ice after all. The mightiest argument that we can use, and the argument that we can all use, if we have got any religion in us at all, is that of Andrew, We have found the Messiah.2 [Note: A. Maclaren.]
When John Wesley went as a missionary to Georgia, he went, as he writes, to save his own soul; but two years later he returned to England a disappointed man, having saved neither his own soul nor those of the colonists and Indians. I who went to America to convert others, he says, was never myself converted. Then, with a new accession of self-forgetfulness, he turned from his own salvation to the service of others. The words spoken of his Master came home to him: He saved others; himself he cannot save. He was no longer Wesley the ritualist, but Wesley the missionary. He first findeth his own brother Simon, and soon his own life acquired confidence and peace. His soul was saved, says his biographer, because he had found his work.1 [Note: F. G. Peabody, Mornings in the College Chapel, ii. 59.]
(2) It was service rendered by the utterance of one sentence.Andrew was a young convert and had no learning. He could not argue about it, and he could not preach about itall of which was a great mercy. Because he could do nothing else he had to stick to the pointWe have found the Messiah. The simple sentence uttered by one man to another is often the way by which men are brought into touch with Christ. We cannot all be preachers to the crowd, nor are we all called to such a work; but we are all qualified and we are all called to pass the message on to any one into whose company we may be thrown.
The real powers of the Early Church were not men who could harangue crowds or arouse congregations by their fervid appeals, but men who could talk to a brother, a friend, a companion, a neighbour, about the wonderful love and beauty of Jesus Christ, and out of the fulness of their own joys testify to those nearest them of the new life which they had found. It was in that way chiefly, and not by the orators of the Church, that Christianity was spread in the early days. A man who had realized the blessedness of it passed it on to the one next to him. It went like a forest fire, each tree kindled set fire to another. Each convert was as good as two, for each one made a second. The Christian plant, like every other, propagated itself; the flower of its joy dropped seed as it ripened into fruit. Prisoners whispered the glad secret to their gaolers, soldiers to their comrades, servants to their masters, women to every one who would listen. Each saved soul was eager to save another, eager to pluck a brand from the burning and win a jewel for Christ. So the work went on, so the army of the Lord grew, so the great Roman Empire was slowly subdued under the Cross, and Christianity made the ruling faith of the world.1 [Note: J. G. Greenhough.]
I recently read a story in some newspaper or other about a minister who preached a very elaborate course of lectures in refutation of some form of infidelity, for the special benefit of a man who attended his place of worship. Soon after, the man came and declared himself a Christian. The minister said to him, Which of my discourses was it that removed your doubts? The reply was, Oh! it was not any of your sermons that influenced me. The thing that set me thinking was that a poor woman came out of the chapel beside me, and stumbled on the steps, and I stretched out my hand to help her, and she said, Thank you! Then she looked at me and said, Do you love Jesus Christ, my blessed Saviour? And I did not, and I went home and thought about it; and now I can say I love Jesus.2 [Note: A. Maclaren.]
(3) Andrew did not wait till he could talk to a crowd; he took the message to one.Have you ever noticed what stress the Scripture lays upon one soulas if with a tender regard for the hidden workers who deal with the one at a time? There is joy among the angels in the presence of God over one sinner that repenteth. It is the one sheep that the Shepherd seeketh, and bringeth home with rejoicing. It is the one piece of money that the woman makes so much of. It is the one son that has all to himself the loveliest parable that earthor surely heaven eitherhas ever listened to. He brought him to Jesusdo not wait for them.
We are told of a minister in Scotland, who was called to task by some of the Church officers because of his want of success. And he had to confess that during the whole year only one young man had joined the Church, so that his heart was sick within him. But that very night the same young man spoke to his pastor of his intention of becoming a missionary. Then the pastors grief was turned into joy, and he thought that the work would be judged by quality rather than by quantity. The young man was Robert Moffat, who afterwards became famous by his mission work in the dark continent. The year of his conversion was not barren in the annals of that country parish after all.3 [Note: H. C. Williams.]
In the Introduction to his Lives of Twelve Good Men, Burgon gives a sketch of two or three others whom he knew and who deserved to be called good. Among them is Charles Portals Golightly. He says: The Rev. T. Mozley (who is not promiscuous in his bestowal of praise) acknowledges the greatest of obligations to him. Golightly (he says) was the first human being to talk to me, directly and plainly, for my souls good; and that is the debt that no time, no distance, no vicissitudes, no differences, can efface; no, not eternity itself. On which, Dean Goulburn remarksBut this was what Golightly was always doing; and, for the sake of doing which, he cultivated the acquaintance of all undergraduates who were introduced to him; showed them no end of kindness, walked with them, talked with them, took them with him for a Sunday excursion to his little parish of Toot Baldon.1 [Note: J. W. Burgon, Lives of Twelve Good Men, i., xxv.]
(4) The closer the tie, the more emphatic the testimony.It is what brother says to brother, husband to wife, parent to child, friend to friend, far more than what preacher says to hearer, that carries with it irresistible, persuasive power. When the truth of the utterance is vouched for by the obvious gladness and purity of the life; when the finding of the Christ is obviously as real as the finding of a better situation and as satisfying as promotion in life, then conviction will be carried with the announcement.
Some who would not hesitate to speak of spiritual things to casual strangers find their tongues tied when they ought to speak for God to a wife, a husband, a brother, or a child. It is perhaps because we have an instinctive feeling that our intimate associates know us too well; they would feel that some inconsistency, not to say insincerity, in our Christian conversation should make us silent. Let the thought of our duty to those we love drive us to commune with our hearts and discover what it is that ties our tongue and hinders us from giving the word of warning or exhortation that is due.2 [Note: C. Bickersteth, The Gospel of Incarnate Love, 10.]
3. Consider the success of the service.
Andrew gained his brother. Simon yielded and went, and the first interview must have gladdened Andrews heart. When Jesus beheld him He said: Thou art Simon the son of Jona: thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpretation, A Stone. We cannot now tell all that Peter did; how his boldness and open confession of Christ confirmed the hearts of Andrew and his fellow-disciples; how, though he fell, he received this charge: Strengthen thy brethren; how thousands were converted in a day by his preaching; and how, in the Epistles he has left, he has been made such an instrument for comforting and building up the people of God in all ages. We hear very little afterwards of Andrew; no doubt he continued to work in the spirit of his first mission effort, and no doubt also he had his continued success; yet he had not the ability and energy of Peter, and he retires into the shade. But we cannot forget that it is to Andrew we owe Simon Peter, and all that he did. Often afterwards, we may well believe, when Andrew saw Peters character unfolding, when he beheld him opening the door of faith on the Day of Pentecost, and standing forth as one of the pillars of the Christian Church, he must have thanked Christ that He not only touched his own heart, but put it into his heart to bring his brother.
God often uses minnows to catch salmon. It may be the consolation that He gives to the ungifted, that they should be the means of bringing to Jesus the eminently useful. There is Ananias leading the blind Saul to the Saviour; and little Bilney leading sturdy Hugh Latimer; and John Bunyan drawn by the godly gossip of the old women at Bedford; and John Wesley led by the simple Moravians. In our own time instances are plentiful enough. We think of Spurgeon going burdened to the Primitive Methodists, and hearing from some plain man who murdered the Queens English the way of life everlasting. We think of Thomas Binney, led by the simple workman to the Methodist Class-meeting, and there having the good seed sown. Andrew did a good days work when he brought Simon to Jesus. It is a sign of genius when you can turn to good account the gifts of other people. Let us be geniuses of that sort if we cannot be of any other. And the best way to turn any mans gifts to good account is to bring him to Jesus.
Consider the untold capacities for high saintliness which lie buried in the mass of men who, as yet, know nothing of grace and truth. Our citiesthese great hives of agglomerated human beingsabound with men and women who are, in the eye of societywho are, it may be, in the eye of the lawamong the worst and the vilest, but who have bright and clear understandings; who have warm and generous hearts; who need but the illumination of truth, and the invigorating touch of grace, to become great in the true sense of that much misused word. I have much people in this city, was the motto traced by Christ Himself over one of the most vicious towns of ancient heathendom. Humanity is like a mine wherein flints and diamonds lie side by side in an indistinguishable disorder until the light of Divine knowledge is poured in upon the buried mass, and the hidden beauties of lives outwardly degraded are revealed. How often does it happen that the found are greater, far greater, than the finder; that Peter, in the event, takes precedence altogether of Andrew; that those who enter last into the Kingdom of heaven are bidden, in the eternal presence-chamber, to stand among the first.1 [Note: Canon Liddon.]
Personal Service
Literature
Assheton (R. O.), The Kingdom and the Empire, 51.
Banks (L. A.), Christ and His Friends, 56.
Bickersteth (C.), The Gospel of Incarnate Love, 1.
Boyd (A. K. H.), Changed Aspects of Unchanged Truths, 54.
Broughton (L. G.), The Soul-Winning Church, 62.
Burrell (D. J.), Christ and Men, 40.
Chapman (J. W.), Bells of Gold, 56.
Darlow (T. H.), The Upward Calling, 90.
Greenhough (J. G.), in Men of the New Testament, 83.
Hall (W. A. N.), Do Out the Duty, 67.
Horne (C. S.), The Relationships of Life, 31.
Hort (F. J. A.), Village Sermons, i. 117.
Ker (J.), Sermons, ii. 100.
Liddon (H. P.), Sermons (Contemporary Pulpit Library), iv. 109.
Lightfoot (J. B.), Sermons on Special Occasions, 160.
Maclaren (A.), Expositions: John i.viii. 62.
Matheson (G.), Rests by the River, 246.
Peabody (F. G.), Mornings in the College Chapel, ii. 58.
Price (A. C.), Fifty Sermons, i. 337.
Punshon (W. M.), Sermons, i. 1.
Raleigh (A.), From Dawn to the Perfect Day, 250.
Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, x. (1864) No. 570; xv. (1869) No. 855.
Stuart (J. G.), Talks about Soul Winning, 63.
Virgin (S. H.), Spiritual Sanity, 61.
Watts-Ditchfield (J. E.), Here and Hereafter, 105.
Wells (J.), Christ in the Present Age, 61.
Wheeler (W. C.), Sermons and Addresses, 9.
Williams (H. C.), Christ the Centre, 114.
Christian World Pulpit, xxxvii. 177 (Sloan); lxiv. 139 (Gregg).
Churchmans Pulpit: Mission Work: xvii. 223 (Maguire).
Examiner, Feb. 2, 1905, p. 100 (Jowett).
Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible
Andrew: Joh 6:8, Mat 4:18, Mat 10:2, Act 1:13
Reciprocal: Mal 3:16 – spake Mar 1:16 – Simon Mar 3:18 – Andrew Mar 13:3 – Peter Luk 6:14 – Simon Joh 12:22 – Andrew
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
0
One of the two evening guests of Jesus was Andrew, brother of Peter. He had been a disciple of John, but upon introduction to Jesus, followed Him.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Joh 1:40. One of the two which heard from John and followed him, was Andrew, Simon Peters brother. Andrew belonged to Bethsaida (Joh 1:44), and is again referred to in Joh 6:8, Joh 12:22. That he is now spoken of as the brother of Peter is an interesting indication of the importance attached by the Evangelist to the latter. There is little reason to doubt that the second of the two was the Evangelist himself. Simon Peter, who has not yet been mentioned, is introduced to us here as if he were well known to the readeran illustration of the writers tendency to anticipate what is hereafter to be fully explained: we have an equally striking instance in the mention of Mary in chap. Joh 11:2.
Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament
Joh 1:40-42. One of the two who heard John speak In the manner above related; was Andrew And probably this evangelist, John, was the other, it being his custom to conceal his own name in his writings. He Andrew; first findeth his own brother Simon Simon may perhaps be here called Andrews own brother, to distinguish him from some other person that belonged to the family, who possibly might be his brother-in-law, or related to him only in half-blood. Peter was so remarkable a person, that it was proper to mention who was the first means of bringing him acquainted with Christ; and if John was the other disciple that is here referred to, he might intend this as an humble intimation that Andrews zeal was, in this respect, greater than his own. We see here, that Peter was not the first of Christs disciples, but that another was the means of bringing him to an acquaintance with him. In that respect, therefore, the Papists have no room for glorying. And saith unto him, We have found the Messiah It seems the Baptists testimony, joined with the proofs offered by Christ himself, in the long conversation which the two disciples had with him, fully convinced Andrew. And he brought him to Jesus That by conversing with him he might be satisfied of the truth of what he had told him. And when Jesus beheld him , looking steadfastly upon him, as if he had read in his countenance the traces of his character, and of his future service in the church; he said, Thou art Simon Though Jesus had never seen Simon before, and no one had told him his name or his parentage, immediately on his coming in Jesus saluted him by his own and his fathers name, which could not but greatly strike Peter. He added, Thou shalt be called Cephas, which Says the evangelist, (for they are his, and not Christs words,) is by interpretation, a stone Or rock, that is, it signifies the same in the Syriac which the word Peter does in Greek. It must be observed, to account for the insertion of this explanatory clause, that John wrote his gospel in Greek, and in a Grecian city of Asia Minor; and therefore was the more careful to translate into Greek the Hebrew, Chaldee, or Syriac names, given for a special purpose, whereof they were expressive. And there was the greater reason for doing so in the two cases occurring in this and the preceding verse, as the Greek names were become familiar to the Asiatic converts, who were unacquainted with the oriental names. The sacred writer had a two-fold view in it: 1st, To explain the import of the name; 2d, To prevent his readers from mistaking the persons spoken of. They all knew who, as well as what, was meant by , Christ, but not by the Hebrew word, Messiah. In like manner, they knew who was called Peter, but might very readily have mistaken Cephas for some other person. Campbell.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Ver. 40. He saith unto them: Come, and you shall see.They came and saw where he abode: and they remained with him that day; it was about the tenth hour.
The disciples made inquiries as to His dwelling, that they might afterwards visit Him there. Jesus invites them to follow Him at once: Come immediately. This is, indeed, what the present indicates: the continuance of the going. It has been said that this sense would require the aorist. This is an error. The aorist would signify: set about going. Is the reading of the Vatican MS.: Come and you shall see, preferable to that of the greater part of the other documents? We may suppose that the latter comes from Joh 1:47. Where was Jesus dwelling? Was it in a caravansary, or in a friend’s house? We do not know. No more do we know what was the subject of their conversation. But we do know the result of it. Andrew’s exclamation in Joh 1:42 is the enthusiastic expression of the effect produced on the two disciples. When we remember what the Messiah was to the thought of a Jew, we understand how powerful and profound must have been the impression produced upon them by Jesus, to the end that they should not hesitate to proclaim as Messiah this poor and unostentatious man. In the remark: And they remained with Him that day, all the sweetness of a recollection still living in the heart of the evangelist at the moment of his writing, finds expression. The tenth hour may be understood in two ways: either as four o’clock in the afternoon; John would thus reckon the hours as they were generally reckoned among the ancients, beginning from six o’clock in the morning,we shall see that this is the most natural interpretation in Joh 4:6; Joh 4:52, and also in Joh 19:14;or as ten o’clock in the morning; he would, thus, adopt the mode of reckoning of the Roman Forum, which has become that of modern nations, and according to which the reckoning is from midnight. Rettig, Ebrard, Westcott, etc., think that the author of our Gospel reckons throughout in this way. It would give a satisfactory account of the expression that day. But this expression is also very well explained, if the question is of four o’clock in the afternoon; and that by the contrast with the idea of the mere visit which the two youths had thought of making. Instead of continuing a few moments, the interview was prolonged until the end of the day. Comp. the remarks Joh 4:6, Joh 4:52, Joh 19:14. This indication of the tenth hour has sometimes been applied, not to the moment when the disciples arrived, but that when they left Jesus. In this case, however, John would undoubtedly have added a limiting expression, such as , when they departed. It is the hour when he found, not that when he left, that the author wished to indicate. Faith is no sooner born of testimony, than it extends itself by the same means:
Fuente: Godet Commentary (Luke, John, Romans and 1 Corinthians)
The writer now identified one of the two men. Andrew was important for two reasons. He became one of the Twelve, and he provided an excellent example of testifying for Jesus by bringing his brother to Him (Joh 1:41). John introduced Andrew as Simon Peter’s brother because when he wrote his Gospel Peter was the better known of the two. We do not know who the unnamed man was. Some students of John’s Gospel have suggested that it may have been the writer himself. This is an interesting possibility, but there is nothing in the text that enables us to prove or to disprove it. He could have been anyone.