All right, guys. We are back in this series that we started last week. I am so excited about this one.

This one is called Who is Jesus. And if you missed last week, go back and check out that message. But the big idea of this series is this. In a world that is full of everybody's different version of the truth and everybody's different agendas and narratives, it can be easy to give our own versions of truth. And this series is meant to bring us back under the authority of God's word and to look at this big question of who is Jesus.

And so we're looking at all of these big kind of questions that we call apologetics. And apologetics are not an apology, but rather they're your defense and your way of building up and speaking the truth, but doing it in love. And so the whole goal of this series is so that you might build a case for Christ in the courtroom of the world.

And as John tells us of why we're going through the book of John for this because his goal in this book is to write these words and record these words so that you may have life. And so that's the big idea of this message series. And one of my big I'm just going to be completely honest.

I nerd out over apologetics. I really love these big questions. Where did we come from.

Why is there you know hard things in the world and why do good things happen to you know bad people and all of these questions that we ask or that our kids ask right before it's bedtime. That seems to be the case anyways for me. But one of my favorite writers on the topic is a guy named Lee Strobble. If you don't know the name, it's an a he's an atheist who it was a journalist who turned into a Christian as he kind of researched and interviewed different people about facts and truths of who Christ is. And so he wrote the case for Christ, if you've heard that, the case for faith.

If you haven't heard of these books, I have them at the next steps table. I'd love for you to c to check them out. But in this book, he tells this really cool, well, not so much cool as it is kind of surprising story as he was this investigative journalist about somebody named Ronald Keith Williamson.

Now, Ronald Keith Williamson was somebody who was accused of murder. And what they did with Williamson is they sentenced him to the death penalty. And the media and all of the investigators reported and they were convinced that this was the guy who did it. This was the guy who committed this this murder.

And they were convinced based off of some loose physical evidence that that suggested that there was some hair found on the scene of the crime that looked to be almost in line with what Williamson's hair would have looked like. Now, years later, as almost a decade passed, Williamson sitting on death row and DNA evidence and the way that we look into DNA changes. And so, what they found is that Williamson, as he was being tried, was saying, "I'm not guilty. " And they sentenced him to to death. But Williamson was found after this DNA evidence that he was actually completely innocent.

And so Williamson got released off of death row and it was all just because the evidence and the version of the truth was different than the reality. And this kind of exposes some crazy truth for us that authorities and different ones of us can rush to a certain truth and lives can be destroyed. Confidences can be broken and we learn that sometimes the first narrative is not always the best narrative.

Now I'm talking about this case and I'm talking about the case that we're looking at in the Bible. But I know that for all of you who have seen just a little bit of news or a little bit of social media this week, you know that we're facing a lot of different versions of a story, right. And so I don't I don't know where everyone is at in this room, where you're at on the political, social kind of side, and I frankly don't care. What I care about is bringing these things to God in prayer.

And that's what we as a church are called to do is to first be people of prayer and then be people of action. So what I'm going to do is I want to pause this message and I just want to take a moment. Would you pray with me as we pray for our state together. God, I thank you so much just for the freedom to come and worship you and to talk about you and to just come into your truth. And God, we pray for peace over our land.

God, there are so many people hurting. There are so many people in questioning. There are so many whatifs. And there's so many just different anger and and so many different emotions happening. And so God, would you just bring your spirit of peace, of unity, that we would speak the truth, but we would do so in love, and we would we would help one another to to see you in all things.

And that we would continually just bring these things to you in prayer. That instead of worrying, God, that we would just come to you instead of being anxious about what could happen, God, we would come to you. And so Jesus be our source of peace in these times in Jesus name.

I just pray that you would continue praying for our state as this continues to unfold because the reality of the situation is that wherever you stand there is this kind of narration out there that there is so many different versions of truth. And this isn't just social and political. This also extends to workplaces.

You guys got workplace politics, right. It extends to families and it even extends to churches and people who speak about Jesus. And there are many churches in even 2026 that would rather speak a message that fits the church's political, financial, or social narrative than the narrative that comes under the authority of scripture in Jesus' name. And so today we're going to do that together. Are you ready, destination.

So I want you to turn to page 911. We're going to be in John chapter 1. And the big apologetics question today is, who are you trusting to tell you who Jesus is. Because as I said, in a world full of everybody making their own version of truth, we can really get misled. And so what should we be looking for as we're looking for somebody to tell us who Jesus is.

Now, this is for us as a church to learn, but it's also for you as an individual because someday you might not live here. You might move to somewhere that has palm trees and is nice in the summer or in the winter, right. And you'll need to find other people that can point you to Jesus.

And how do we do that. Secondly, if you don't have a Bible, by the way, take this one with you. It is our gift to you.

If you need a notebook, I encourage you to grab one from our next steps table or welcome table. You're going to want to write some stuff down in this message. But what we're going to do is we're going to meet a a lot of different characters here.

And all of these characters. What we're going to learn is how we can see if somebody is truly pointing to Jesus. So, let's start in verse 19. You can kind of follow the numbers down to where it says 19.

And we're going to meet John the Baptist first. And it starts out like this. Now, this was John's testimony.

When the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask who he was, he did not fail to confess but confessed freely, I am not the Messiah. They asked him, then who are you. Are you Elijah.

He said, I am not. Are you a prophet. He said, no. Finally, they said who are you.

Give us an answer so we can take it back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself. John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet. He's quoting the book of Isaiah in the Old Testament.

He says, "I am the voice of the one calling in the wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord. " Now the Pharisees who have been sent to question him said, "When then do you baptize or why do you baptize then if you are not the Messiah nor Elijah nor a prophet. " He replies, "I baptize with water. But among you stands one who you do not know.

He is the one who comes after me. The straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to unite. This happened at Bethany on the other side of the Jordan where John was baptizing.

Okay, I want to pause there. We're going to keep going into John in in just a second here. But this is John the Baptist. This is not John, the writer of the book of John.

And what he is what's happening is something we're going to see in this book a lot and that's questioning. Who are you. Why are you here. Why are you doing what you're doing.

There's this questioning happening to John. And the reason why this questioning is happening is because John has a per has a personal platform that he's growing. He's an influencer. He's he's he's influencing the culture around him and they're going to figure out who he is. And they give him all of these opportunities, by the way, to for him to claim to be something that he's not.

Did you see that. Are you Elijah. Are you a prophet. What do you say about yourself. And by the way, if he would have claimed those things, his influence could have grown.

Okay, keep that in mind. Let's look at 29. The next day Jesus John saw Jesus coming towards him and he said look the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

This is the one I met when I said a man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me. I myself did not know him but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel. Now listen, John is going to give a testimony.

Verse 32, I saw the spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remained on him. I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize him with water told me, "The man on whom you see the spirit come down and remain is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit. I have seen and I have testified that this is God's chosen one. So, this is what all of that is summarizing.

John is telling his story about how he experienced Jesus's baptism. And he is pointing everybody to say, "Stop looking at me and look at Jesus. " Look at verse 29 again. It says, "Look, the lamb of God who takes the away the sin of the world.

" John wants the attention off of himself and onto the one who is worthy of having the attention. He wants to point everything to Jesus. This is what you need in somebody that you are trusting to tell you about Jesus. Also, this is what you need to be to be somebody who is trustworthy to talk about Jesus is you need to be and you need someone who always is pointing towards Jesus and saying, "Look the lamb of God. Look at Jesus.

Look at what he's doing. Look at how he's done this. Look at the word.

Not do better, not try harder, but look at Jesus. And pastors are called to have this similar heart that John the Baptist has. And that's why at Destination Church from the beginning, I've said one of our core values is gospel. That means that everything points back to this.

Everything points back to Jesus as the hero of the story. It's not me. It's not do better, try harder.

It's not a glorified TED talk. It is Jesus in your life. And my my just little side note as your pastor is that I do not take this lightly. I don't take this platform lightly.

I don't take the message and just kind of come up here and wing it. Even if sometimes it might sound rehearsed. I'm going off script, too.

Don't worry about it. But I think that I'm just so grateful for you for trusting me, for trusting me to be somebody to speak into your life. And I want to honor that and always honor that. But I always always want to point it towards Jesus. And so my hope for each and every one of you is to know that I'm a pastor, but I'm also human.

I'm going to make mistakes. Gonna forget to call and text some of you. I'm gonna It's It's just going to happen. But if you trust me, my promise to you is that I will always be like John in this way to say, "Look, look at the lamb of God. Look at Jesus.

Look at what he's done. Look at what he's doing and has yet to do in your life. " And that is what John is doing.

And look, he doesn't just do it once. He does it again. Look at verse 35. It says, "The next day, John was there again with two disciples.

" That's who we're going to meet next. We meet John the Baptist. Now, we're meeting two disciples.

When Jesus was passing by, he said, "Look, the lamb of God. " When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus. Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, "What do you want.

" This is such a funny line to read, by the way. Like, how do you read that. Do you read it like an angry parent. Like, what do you want. Or do you hear like what do you want.

Like, I I don't know. They said, "Rabbi, which means teacher, where are you staying. " "Come," he replied, "and you will see.

" So, they went and saw where he was staying and they spent the day with him. It was about 4 in the afternoon. So, there's these two disciples.

One of them, we'll find out in a minute, is Andrew. The other one is the writer of this gospel which is John. And John and Andrew are following Jesus and Jesus turns around and says, "What do you want. " Now, I joked about that, but there is some biblical truth in how that is read because we can read it in different ways depending on our perspective, right. And our narrative that we want to tell as we read it.

But when we read into it, this was both a question of the soul and a question of logistics. So it was what do you want. Like what do you want to do right now as you're following me. But it was also what do you want.

What is in your soul right now that you are searching for through me. And so he asks them this and their profession or their reply back to him is saw is seen in these very first words. Rabbi means teacher as it even says in the scripture.

And this shows us what we need to look for and what who who we need to be to be trustworthy people to talk about the gospel is the best leaders are lifelong students of Jesus. Look, if you found a Christian that says, "I know everything. I've arrived.

It's not the right person. I don't know everything. And and it's going to be so hard to learn and to know everything about the gospel, but to be able to be a student, to be humble, and to continue to dive into some of these really deep questions.

And all of us are called to lead something. But you can't lead something without being a learner first. You're called to lead your families, your workplaces, in your own faith walk.

You are called to lead. But if you can't learn, then how can you lead. And this is something that, by the way, I look for so much in my growth group leaders. And so if if there's growth group leaders in here, just know this. This is what I was looking for when I talk to you.

Everybody's like, "Oh, I'm connecting the dots now. " that that's a growth group leader. I am looking for somebody who can say, "Hey, I did this and this is what I learned and this is how God humbled me and this is when I dove deep into this, how I came face to face with this issue in me. " And that shows me that they are a learner. And this is why you, everybody in this room needs a group of Christminded people who are also learners.

So that you can exercise how you teach and talk about Jesus, but also so you can be learning from other voices that are not just me. Because everybody in this room has different experiences and different perspectives that they can bring to a group that can teach you something about the character of Jesus. In other words, every student needs a school.

And guess what. If you don't have a church home and you don't have a group of Christians that are surrounding you, guess who becomes your teacher. The culture. AI, Google, all of those things that you when you're up late at night will run to when you have a question as monumental or as big as one of these apologetics questions.

Here's my plea to you. Remember that Google and AI are tools and not teachers. They are tools. They are the pen and they are the paper, but they are not the teacher.

And so it's important for us to ask God before we ask Google. And I'm putting together resources. Next week I'll talk about a whole resource page for this series of different places that you can turn to that are biblically solid kind of ways that you can look up some big questions that you might have because all of these online sources that you might find may have a built-in narrative. And so you need somebody who is talking about Jesus in the right way. And that's what Andrew does.

Let's meet Andrew and Simon Peter. Verse 40, it says this. Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, was one of the two who had heard about who heard what John said, and who had followed Jesus.

The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, "We have found the Messiah, that is the Christ. " And he brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, "You are Simon, son of John.

You will be called Cipherus, which translated is Peter. So, the first thing the very first thing that Andrew does is goes and finds his brother, , Simon Peter, which I've preached about before. I love talking about Peter, by the way. , and he finds Peter, introduces him to Peter. Jesus looks at Peter and says, "I don't really like your name, Simon.

I I'm gonna not call you that. I'm going to give you a nickname. I'm going to call you Peter.

" and a and Peter just follows Jesus along with Andrew. And the the profession that Andrew makes is we have found the Messiah. Now, maybe you've heard this word.

It's kind of churchy. It's kind of a churchy word, Messiah. And maybe you've heard it around like Easter or something like that. But Messiah really just translates to anointed one.

This is the one that we've been waiting for. This is the one that we've been preparing for for generations and generations. We've been preparing for Jesus.

And listen, Andrew had that Messiah. He had that person and he was so excited that he ran to his brother to go tell him. Some of you won't run to your brother to tell him that you got a new car or whatever. Like he he was like he ran to to Andrew and he or to Peter and he was like, "Hey, we found him.

We found him. We finally found him. He was so excited to tell him about Jesus.

And that's what you need. Somebody who is just going to keep talking about Jesus. You need that in your life.

Somebody who's going to keep bringing things back to Jesus just as Andrew did. Now, let me ask you two things. First thing is, are you being Andrew to someone. If you are in here and you are a follower of Christ, does somebody know you as the person that won't stop sharing Christ. Are you known as that person.

Because listen, Peter ends up being Jesus's like rightand man next to John. It was Peter and John next to Jesus. Peter was used to start the church in Acts. He's got all of these stories throughout the gospels.

And then he has two books in the Bible that are full of wisdom. Simon Peter changed the world. And listen, Andrew doesn't get a lot of facetime after this. There's not a lot of stories about Andrew. There's not the book of Andrew.

So Andrew kind of fades back after this. So let me ask you this a different way. What if your purpose was to be an Andrew in somebody's story.

Would you be okay with that. Would you be okay with being an Andrew in somebody's story. I often think of the the first church plant I was a part of back in 2009. It met at the Andover Cinema.

It was in the movie theater. And I was brand new Christian, still learning a lot about who Jesus was. And I would attribute that church specifically to the reason why I'm standing up here today because those two pastors that were a part of that church really really poured into me in a way that prepared me for where I am now. Now this church sadly does not exist anymore. But through the change that they made in me, I am able to carry out the gospel in East Bethl and in different places that I've been in my life.

And so as you are talking about Jesus and as you are sharing your love of Jesus with somebody, you have no idea the internal impact that is going to make on somebody else's life and how they're going to carry it to someone else. And to somebody else and to somebody else. You need somebody who's going to keep talking about Jesus.

Now, Andrew is not the only one who does this. Philip also does this. Let's meet Phillip. You guys ready to meet Philillip.

Are we are we together. Just want to make sure you're still with me. The next day, Jesus decided to leave for Galilee.

Finding Philillip, he said to him, "Follow me. " Jesus wasn't messing around. He's like, "Hey, Philip, follow me. " , Philillip, like Andrew and Peter, , was from a different town. And Philip found Nathaniel, and told him, "We have found the one Moses wrote about in the law and about , whom the prophets also wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.

" Okay, quick pause before you hear his reply. Peter finds Nathaniel. He does the same thing Andrew does. Simon's response is, "Yeah, let's go see him.

" Listen to Nathaniel's response. Nazareth, can anything good come from there. It's like, East Bethl, can anything good.

No, I'm just kidding. Nazareth, can anything good come from there. Nathaniel asks, "Come and see. " These are the same words that Jesus spoke. He's echoing those.

Come and see. And when Jesus saw Nathaniel approaching, before Nathaniel even said a word, he said to him, "Here truly is an Israelite of whom there is no descent. " "How do you know me.

" Nathaniel asked. Jesus answered, "I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you. " Then Nathaniel declared, "Rabbi, you are the son of God.

You are the king of Israel. " Okay, let me just break down what's going on. Nathaniel shows up or gets the word from Philillip. He says, "Nazareth, can anything good come from there.

" He's doubting. He's doubting that this is the person that they that they've been waiting for, the Messiah. And so, he shows up and before he can even get a word in, what does Jesus do.

He starts telling him only things that he knows in his heart, only things that he's experienced. And so it's like this person knows him without ever having to talk to it. By the way, that's what Jesus knows about you. He knows your heart. He knows you.

Before you even speak a word, before you even speak the prayer, before you even say why you're angry or why you're upset, Jesus sees and he knows. And so he tells Nathaniel, "I've seen you. I've I've seen this. And Nathaniel asks, "How do you know. How do you know me.

" And what's cool about this is Nathaniel's declaration of who Jesus is the son of God, the the king of Israel comes with a testimony. He now has a testimony that that Jesus has has kind of told his whole story. And this is another thing that you need to build that trust is you need somebody with a story about following Jesus.

Not just, hey, I believe in Jesus, but a God transformational story. And whether you think so or not, you all have one. You all have this story.

It is either unfolding now or God's been telling it for decades. And I I just can I like rant just for a second. I I I just hear this all the time. I don't have a story. I wasn't addicted to drugs and I didn't walk away in my 20s and all of that.

I've just always been faithful. I've always grown up in the church and so nobody wants to hear my story. Are you kidding me.

Stop with that nonsense. That's what we want for all of those kids back there. Okay, that's our prayer.

So, how did you do it. Let's talk about that. But if you do have a radical transformation story, welcome to the club, by the way.

I I we need to hear it. We need to hear those stories because those stories point to Jesus in a way that can transform somebody's life. I came to Jesus through a testimony, through somebody sharing their God story. This is why when Wes and I were talking up here, this is why we get so excited about baptism because we bring people up here. By the way, we're going to bring you up here.

It's not just about dunking in a tank. You're going to tell some of your God's story because I believe that God is going to speak to and through you in that moment in those stories to bring somebody else that is watching that day to Christ and to bring somebody else to get the courage to also take the step of baptism. And you need to be people and you need people in your life that have these kind of God stories.

By the way, we did this in our growth group this week and I just I love it. I love it so much just hearing people's heart and hearing how God has transformed lives. It's something that I highly val and something that we value as a church is to share your story.

And so even if you're not getting baptized, if you're just feeling called like, "Hey, I want to I want to get my story out there. I want people to know how I came to know Jesus and follow Jesus. Like let's talk.

Let's get it on a video. Let's get it. So you are telling your story because something beautiful happens when we tell our story. Look at what Jesus says. Verse 50, we're going to end John chapter 1.

Y'all ready for it. Jesus says, "You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You will see greater things than that.

" He added, "Very truly I tell you, you will see heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending on the son of man. " So what Jesus is saying here is, "Hey, I I showed you your testimony. I I knew who you were. You think that was good, you haven't seen anything yet. You haven't seen anything yet because you are going to see greater things than that.

And this is a theme even in the book of John that that Jesus continually points towards greater things being done in his name. Greater things being done as his kingdom comes. Greater things coming as you are welcomed into the arms of Jesus in heaven.

And so here's my plea to you. Following Jesus. If you follow Jesus, you too will see great things. You will see great things in and through your life. And as you are following Jesus and as we learn through John chapter 1, you need people that are continually pointing you towards Jesus.

I kind of I just want to summarize this whole message for you. Find people. Find people in your life who are pointing to Jesus, learning from Jesus, and transformed by Jesus. And you too will see greater things.

You will see these greater things that Jesus is talking about. You will see healing in your life. You will see a community built up around you.

You will see people that are that are speaking not out of anger or not out of just regret but out of hope in the gospel. And so that is what we point towards. And so I just want to give you a moment to reflect about this. Would you just bow your heads and close your eyes. This is something that we do at Destination every Sunday morning as I invite the worship team up and it's just our moment to sit and pause and reflect and think about where do we need to take action.

Maybe for some of you it's just surrounding yourself with some people who love Jesus. Maybe you have a lot of friends, a lot of people around you, but if you're being honest, they're not people that are pointing you towards Jesus, or they don't really have God stories. And and in your life right now, you're kind of at that point where maybe you want to make a change and and find some people and find a community and find a a church that can just point you towards the love of Jesus. But maybe for some of you, you haven't had people that have pointed you towards Jesus.

You don't know that there's this savior that wants greater things for your life. And I just want to tell you this morning that Jesus sees you. Jesus sees the struggle.

He sees the story just as he saw Nathaniel's story. And so I just want to encourage you to turn your attention towards Jesus and consider that this morning may be a step for you to say yes to Jesus. If today you want to take that step and and say yes to Jesus, I'm just invite you to meet us at the next steps table. We'd love to pray over you. But let me just conclude by praying for each of us.

God, I I thank you that you've given us your word and we can take you at your word and we can trust you. God, I thank you for your love and your grace that extends that when we don't know the truth or when we react or when we lash out in anger, God, that you forgive us, God, we thank you for that. And so God, let us be people of peace, people of hope, and let us look for people who are pointing towards you. Let us be people that are pointing towards you and transformed by you, Jesus, in your name.