THE MAIN IDEA
Greater things are in store for witness of Jesus Christ. Our passage shows us three aspects of being a witness of Jesus Christ.

THE QUALIFICATION OF WITNESSES OF CHRIST
Andrew and the other disciple were the first two people to start following Jesus, because John the Baptist told them that Jesus is the Messiah. After spending an afternoon with Jesus, Andrew finds his older brother Simon and tells him, “We have found the Messiah.” When Simon met Jesus, Jesus named him Peter, which means “Rock.” By the time the Gospels were written, Peter was already famous among Christians, but not Andrew. He would be unknown, except that he is mentioned in the Gospels. Andrew was your everyday kind of guy. The one thing that we find Andrew doing consistently is introducing people to Jesus. But that’s huge. The whole history of Christianity is filled with ordinary people like Andrew who simply introduced somebody to Jesus Christ. We don’t have to be a great preacher or a great missionary to introduce people to Jesus. We just have to be ourselves. But we do need some motivation.

THE MOTIVATION OF WITNESSES OF CHRIST
The first believers all understood Jesus to be the promised Messiah. But no one understood what that really meant. However, they knew something. For the Jewish people, the coming of the Messiah offered hope that God would overthrow the tyranny of the Roman Empire and fully restore His kingdom. They were right in hoping that the Messiah would come and that He would restore the kingdom of God. But they were wrong in their expectation about the kingdom of God itself. And so when Jesus asks, “What do you want?” He is asking them what they were really hoping for in the Messiah. And we should ask ourselves that question too. We might know very little about Jesus Christ and what it means to follow Him. But if Jesus Christ is the hope for our lives, then that is the best place to be. Because then, Christ Himself will be the motivation for all that we do. And He will be the center of our life experience.

THE EXPERIENCE OF WITNESSES OF CHRIST
Jesus invited Philip to follow Him, and then Philip found Nathanael and told him that they found the Messiah. Nathanael was skeptical, but changed his mind once he meets Jesus and Jesus shares some supernatural knowledge about where Philip found him. And then Jesus tells the disciples that they will see “greater things.” Jesus was prophesying that they would be witnesses of God’s testimony that Jesus is indeed the promised Messiah through His teaching, through His holy life, through His miracles, and especially through His death on a cross, His resurrection to eternal life, and His ascension to glory. But we too bear witness to these greater things through the eyewitness testimony of the apostles! And because we bear witness to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, through faith, we will also see miracles, persecution unfortunately, and God’s purpose being fulfilled through us, His church. And then we will see Jesus coming in the clouds with great power and glory (Mark 13:26-27), as well as the coming of a new heaven and a new earth (Revelation 21:1-4). So we need not be afraid. Instead, let us remain faithful to God’s purpose for us, be filled with the hope of our salvation, and love one other so that the world will know that Jesus lives in us.

Discussion: What are some great things you have witnessed in your life? What are some greater things you would like to experience?