I've Been Searching So Long

This is the message given in the Gettysburg United Methodist church on Sunday night, January 3, 2021.  The Bible verses used are John 1:35-51.

Years ago, when I was a lawyer in Wessington Springs, there was a sheet of paper I needed for a case I was working on.  I knew I had the paper, but--I could not find it.  I looked for it, and it simply was not there.  I went through the entire file, front to back, and I could not find it.  I went through the file again, back to front, and I could not find it.  I looked around my desk, thinking maybe I’d set it aside--but I could not find it.  I went to my file cabinet and looked through files that had been around that file, thinking maybe I’d put it in the wrong file by accident--but I could not find it.

            I was getting really worried at this point.  This was a paper I really needed, and there was no other copy of it.  I had to find that paper.  I went through the file again, and I still could not find it.  I was starting to panic.  Finally I did the only thing I could think of to do.  I closed my eyes and prayed.  I asked God to help me find that paper.

            I finished my prayer, I opened my eyes, and--you may not believe this, but there the paper was.  It was right on top of the stack on my desk. 

            To this day I have no idea how it got there.  A logically-minded person would say that it had been there all the time, and I had just been in too much of a panic to realize what it was.  All I know is that I could not find that paper, I prayed, and there the paper was.  And I can still remember the incredible sense of joy I felt when that paper was found.

            It’s an awesome feeling when you’ve been looking for something for a long time and finally find it.  Wanda once lost her wedding ring for five years.  We had looked everywhere--or at least we thought we’d looked everywhere--and we thought it was lost forever.  And then, one day, we found it.  It was in a little paper bag in the trunk of an old car that we were selling.  We’d been through the car, we thought we’d gotten everything out of it we wanted.  But Wanda decided to look through it one more time, and for some reason she looked in that little paper bag.  And there was her wedding ring.  And she was incredibly happy.

            You probably have some similar stories.  It’s a wonderful thing when you’ve been searching for something for a long time and finally find it.  And the longer you’ve been searching, the better it feels when you do finally find it.

            The people of Israel were searching for a Savior.  One had been predicted since the days of the prophet Isaiah, which was at least seven hundred years earlier.  Seven hundred years is a very long time to be searching for something, or someone.  It would have been easy to give up, to quit, to assume that they’d never find the Savior they were searching for and just try to muddle through their lives as best they could.

            But then John the Baptist came along.  You may remember we talked about him a month or so ago.  He was the one who prepared the way for the coming of Jesus.  He let people know that this Savior they’d been searching for was on his way.  In fact, in the passage just before this, John had baptized Jesus and said the Holy Spirit had descended on Jesus.  And now, as Jesus is passing by, John says, “Look, the Lamb of God!”

            Two of John’s disciples heard him say that.  And immediately, they left John and followed Jesus.

            Can you imagine how they must have felt?  All of a sudden, they found him!  They found the one they’d been searching for!  They had to be overjoyed!  Now, obviously, they had not personally been searching for him for the whole seven hundred years.  But they’d heard the stories.  They’d heard the prophecies.  At this point, the Savior had almost become a legend.  I mean, it would be a little bit like finding Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster or something, someone who’d been rumored to exist but no one had ever actually found them and people were starting to doubt whether they existed.

            The difference, of course, is that even if you found Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster, they could not do anything for you.  The Savior can give you salvation and eternal life.  That’s quite a difference.  And of course, that made finding the Savior even more of an awesome thing.

            So look at what they did.  These two men, former disciples of John, spent the rest of the day with Jesus.  And wouldn’t you love to know what that was like?  To hear the conversation between Jesus and his first two disciples?  Were they asking him questions?  Were they so in awe of him that they could hardly speak, and so they just listened to whatever he had to say?  Were they just so happy to be in his presence that nothing else mattered?  How would that be, after searching for the Savior all that time, to have him be right there, with you?  It would be incredible.

            We find out that one of these two is named Andrew.  We never find out the name of the other one, which has always seemed kind of strange to me.  I mean, these are the first two of Jesus’ disciples.  That seems kind of important, right?  And yet, we never even get to know the name of one of them.  They are Andrew and--well, Not Andrew, I guess.  But after spending the day with Jesus, Andrew goes and gets his brother, Simon.  He tells Simon they’ve found the Savior, and he brings Simon to Jesus.  And Simon, too, knows that he’s found the one he’d been looking for all these years.  And he, too, felt incredible joy.

            So there are three of them now.  And the next day they add two more.  Jesus goes and finds Philip, and that’s interesting, too.  In John’s telling of this, of the first five of Jesus’ disciples, there’s only one whom Jesus actually called.  Andrew and Not Andrew heard from John that this was the one they should follow.  Andrew went and got his brother, Simon.  And as you heard, Philip went and got his friend Nathanael.  Philip himself is the only one Jesus personally sought out and called. 

            All but Nathanael believed immediately.  Nathanael was a little more skeptical, and can you blame him?  After all, he’d been searching all these years, too.  And in those years, there’d been other people who’d claimed to be the Savior.  And some of them had attracted a substantial following.  But it had always come to nothing.  It was natural for Nathanael to wonder if this was another phony, another faker, another person to get their hopes up and then have them collapse.  But Philip told him to come and see, and he did.  And he believed.  He, too, knew that he’d found the one he’d been searching for all this time.  And like those first four, he, too, felt an incredible joy at the fact that the search was finally over.  They had found the Savior.

            So what’s the point?  I mean, it’s a nice story and all.  It’s a happy story, for these people to have found the one they’d been searching for, for such a long time.  But how does this apply to us?  After all, we’ve already found Jesus.  We know who he is.

            Well, yes and no.  Yes, we would all say that we know Jesus is the Savior.  We might even all say we follow him.  But do we?  Do we really? 

            What I mean is, how many of us, as we go through our day to day lives, really think about Jesus very much?  Is Jesus really a part of our every day lives?  Or is Jesus someone we think about once in a while?  Maybe on Sunday.  Maybe when a loved one is sick and we ask for healing.  Maybe when we’re in a tough spot and we need someone to bail us out.  But not when things are going well.  Not when our lives are going smoothly.  Yes, we’re still aware of Jesus, maybe, but he’s just kind of in the background someplace.  We bring him out when we need him.

            But while that may be true, there’s something else that may be true, too.  As you go through your day to day life, do you ever feel like something’s missing?  There may be nothing wrong, exactly, but it’s like there’s a hole in our lives.  Our lives are just not complete somehow.  We’re searching for something, just like the people of Israel were.  Sometimes we’ve been searching for a long time.  We may not even know exactly what it is we’re searching for, but we know we’re searching for something.  And we cannot find it, no matter where we look.

            We try all kinds of things to fill that hole.  We experiment with all kinds of things, to see if it might be what we’re searching for.  We might try a new job.  We might try a new love.  We might try immersing ourselves in sports or music or community involvement or some sort of hobby.  And those are not necessarily bad things.  They might even seem to fill the hole, for a while.  But ultimately, they’re not what we’re searching for.

            But here’s the amazing thing.  The answer, that thing we’re searching for, is right here.  He’s right here.  Right in plain sight, if we’ll just open our eyes to see Him.  Just like that piece of paper I was looking for was there all the time, just like Wanda’s wedding ring was there all the time.  Jesus, the Savior, is right there.  And if we take Him out of the background and put Him front and center in our lives, He’ll fill that hole.  He is what we’ve been searching for.

            So let’s open our eyes.  Jesus is right there.  See Him.  Feel Him.  Know Him.  Love Him.  We can stop searching, because He’s here.  Our search is over.  And we can feel the joy, the incredible joy, of knowing that we’ve found what we’ve been looking for all this time.