Dock
Resource Kit
Sunday sermon, 2 Aug 2026
Summary
This week Michael talked to us about the moment in John 1:35–42 when two of John the Baptist's disciples leave him to follow Jesus, and Jesus turns and asks them, “What do you want?” He explained that although the disciples had John's testimony that Jesus was the Messiah, testimony alone wasn't enough, they wanted to know and experience Jesus for themselves, which is why Jesus invites them to “Come and see” rather than demanding an answer on the spot. Michael argued that following Jesus requires both knowledge of God and love or experience of God, two sides of the same coin that deepen one another over time. He closed by inviting everyone to sit with Jesus's question personally this week, through unhurried prayer and silence, or through reading the gospels afresh, and to take another step forward with him.
Key Points & Takeways
It was highly unusual for the disciples to switch teachers - In the ancient Near East, sitting at a rabbi's feet was a lifelong commitment. It was almost unheard of for a disciple to leave one teacher for another, let alone for that first teacher to recommend it, which makes John the Baptist's disciples following Jesus so striking.
John the Baptist had already testified that Jesus is the Messiah - The day before, in John 1:29–34, John declared Jesus “the Lamb of God” and God's “chosen one,” having seen the Spirit descend on him like a dove. Preparing the way for Jesus was the entire purpose of John's ministry, so his disciples leaving to follow Jesus fulfilled that purpose rather than betraying it.
Jesus's question is personal, not abstract - “What do you want?” isn't a philosophical question about life's ultimate purpose, it's Jesus asking these two men, and asking us, what we want from him, right now, as we follow him.
The disciples asked for hospitality, but really wanted relationship - Their reply, “Where are you staying?” was a polite way of saying, “We want to come and learn from you, to see for ourselves whether John's testimony about you is true.”
Secondhand testimony wasn't enough, the disciples needed to experience Jesus themselves - Even though the disciples trusted John the Baptist completely, his testimony alone didn't satisfy them. They still went to Jesus directly, because knowing about him wasn't the same as knowing him.
We need both knowledge of God and love for God - Using the mystery objects illustration Michael showed that being told what something is (knowledge) is different from experiencing it firsthand (experience). Knowledge and love of God are two sides of the same coin: each deepens the other.
Jesus invites rather than demands an immediate answer - Jesus doesn't force the disciples to answer his question on the spot. He says, “Come and see,” inviting them into three years of walking with him and experiencing firsthand who he is.
The challenge is to take one step further this week - Those whose default is knowledge are challenged to spend unhurried, silent time with God in prayer (Psalm 62:5, “My soul, wait silently for God alone”). Those whose default is love or experience are challenged to read a chapter, or a whole gospel, to know Jesus more deeply.
Dock Discussion Questions
If Jesus turned to you today and asked, “What do you want?” What would your honest answer be right now, not the answer you think you're supposed to give?
Michael described two “defaults”: some of us default to wanting to know more about God, others to experiencing his love. Which one is more naturally you, and how can you tell?
Andrew's first response after meeting Jesus was to go and find his brother Simon Peter (John 1:41). What's the connection between personally experiencing Jesus and wanting others to meet him too?
Jesus said “Come and see” rather than demanding an answer straight away. Where in your own life do you feel Jesus inviting you to “come and see” rather than have it all figured out?
Michael's challenge this week was unhurried silence in prayer (for the knowledge-driven) or reading a gospel afresh (for the experience-driven). Which of these will you commit to this week, and when specifically will you do it?
Long-form, edited transcript
Questions Jesus Asked
What Do You Want?
John 1:35-42
Introduction: A New Series
We are starting a new sermon series on the ‘Questions Jesus Asked. Each week we're going to look at one of the questions Jesus asked either his disciples or other people he encounters, and what they can tell us about Jesus, and what they can challenge us about our own lives.
This morning we're in John chapter 1, verses 35 to 42:
The next day John was there again with two of his disciples. When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, “Look, the Lamb of God.” When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus.
Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, “What do you want?”
They said, “Rabbi” (which means Teacher), “where are you staying?”
“Come,” he replied, “and you will see.” So they went and saw where he was staying, and they spent that day with him. It was about four in the afternoon.
Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, was one of the two who heard what John had said and who had followed Jesus. The first thing Andrew did was 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 Cephas” (which, when translated, is Peter).
So here is the first question of our series on the questions Jesus asked. Jesus asks it in verse 38: “What do you want?”
An Object Lesson
I wanted to start with an object lesson this morning, so I asked for three volunteers brave enough to come up and try to guess what three mystery objects were. Paul, Nathan and Amanda were good enough sports to come up on stage.
Paul went first, with an oddly shaped object. He guessed it was some kind of juggling-ball trainer, or a fitness tool for coordination, which was a good guess, because it's actually a reaction trainer: you throw it, it bounces unpredictably off its knobbly surface, and you have to catch it wherever it ends up. We proved the point by throwing it up a couple of times and watching it bounce off in a random direction each time.
Nathan was next, with a strange, brightly coloured piece of material. He guessed a high-vis marker you'd lay out camping, or maybe a hat. It wasn't a hat. It turned out to be a spinning toy, the kind used by people learning to stretch pizza dough.
Finally, Amanda took on the heaviest object. Her guesses ranged from a medieval torture device to something for strengthening your wrists, to something circus-related. It turned out to be a “burn machine,” a weighted tool you spin in a circular motion that's used by fighters to build punching power. “I never choose violence,” Amanda said, which was a fair response.
I promised the object lesson would connect to the sermon, and it does — how those objects apply will become clear shortly. Jesus asks, “What do you want?” and the answer has something to do with the difference between being told what something is and actually experiencing it for yourself.
Why Were John's Disciples So Quick to Leave Him?
Before we dig into the question itself, I want to take a step back and look at the context of this passage, because it helps answer something that always nags at me when I read it: why were John the Baptist's disciples so quick to abandon him? They had been journeying with him for a long time, and then John says, “Look, there's Jesus,” and they leave to follow Jesus instead.
In the ancient Near East, sitting at the feet of a rabbi and having a teacher was a common and serious commitment. John the Baptist wasn't the only rabbi-like figure of his day, there were others too. But it was almost unheard of for disciples to change who they followed, and it was even more unheard of for a teacher to recommend that his own followers go and follow somebody else.
So let's look at the passage immediately before this one, John 1:29–34:
The next day John saw Jesus coming towards him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! This is the one I meant when I said, ‘A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’ I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel.”
Then John gave this testimony: “I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. And I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize 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 testify that this is God's Chosen One.”
So just the day before his disciples leave him, John gives this detailed testimony that Jesus is the Messiah, the Chosen One. It makes sense, because John the Baptist's entire ministry is to prepare the way for Jesus's ministry, baptising with water for the one who will baptise with the Spirit. That is the purpose of John's ministry: he identifies who Jesus is. He's the Chosen One of God, the Messiah. And that's why, in the very next passage, Andrew says, “We have found the Christ.”
Jesus's Question: What Do You Want?
Let's think about Jesus's question in verse 38: “Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, ‘What do you want?’”
What did the disciples want? They followed Jesus to see if he was the one they should be following. And how did they answer? “Where are you staying?” They're being very polite here. What they're actually saying is: “We want to come and learn from you, Jesus. We want to follow you and hear what you have to say. We want to hear, see and experience whether John's testimony about you is true.” They're asking for hospitality.
And Jesus says, “Come, and you will see.” He extends the hospitality. We know from the detail that it was about the tenth hour, or four in the afternoon, that this was late in the day, they weren't going home after this. They were going to stay with him, journey with him, and sit at his feet into the evening, hearing what he had to say.
It's tempting, and I've preached this sermon before, to stop right there, at the question “What do you want?” That's a good sermon. What do we want from life? Is it security? A successful relationship? Good exam results, a better job, a bigger house, kids that let us sleep through the night? What is it that we want? From there you can talk about putting our trust in things more than we put our trust in God, and about the dangers of idolatry. That was my instinct, and it's a good sermon, but it's not what we want to talk about today, because it ignores the context.
Who is Jesus asking this question of, and in what context? The context is: what do you want of me? These disciples are coming up to Jesus, and he's not asking, “What is your ultimate aim in life?” He's asking, “What do you want from me right now, as you follow me?” What do we want from Jesus? What do you want from Jesus?
It's one of the most important questions we can ask ourselves. Sooner or later we have to ask it, and it's a question we have to keep asking, over and over again. C. S. Lewis talks about this in his book Miracles. He says there comes a moment when children who've been playing at burglars hush suddenly, was that a real footstep in the hall? There comes a moment when people who have been dabbling in religion, in humanity's search for God, suddenly draw back: supposing we really found him? We never meant to come to that. Worse still, supposing he had found us?
There's a verse in Ecclesiastes I use all the time when I talk to people about Jesus who don't yet know him: God has written eternity in the human heart. People search for meaning, they search for God, and then when they find him, they draw back “I don't know if I'm prepared” We need to ask ourselves this question: what do I want from Jesus, regularly, every day if we can.
Knowledge and Love: Two Sides of the Same Coin
As I think about how we might answer that, I want to go back to the disciples. They say, “Where are you staying?” They respond to the question with a request to get to know Jesus personally. They had John the Baptist's testimony: this person they'd been following, trusted, learned from, been baptised by, had told them plainly that Jesus was the Messiah, the Chosen One of God. But that testimony wasn't enough for the disciples, was it? Because they still went to Jesus. They wanted to experience Jesus for themselves, in order to answer the question he posed to them: what do you want from me?
John's Gospel suggests that for us to really answer this question, what do we want, and specifically, what do we want from Jesus, we need two things. We need to love God, and we need knowledge of God.
Thinking back to our mystery objects earlier, I told you it would come back around, you didn't trust me, I understand. I could tell you that object was a reaction trainer. That's knowledge. But to actually throw it and catch it is a deeper understanding. We need both knowledge and experience of God to grasp the answer to the question, what do we want?
That's why Jesus says, “Come and see.” And importantly, Jesus doesn't demand the answer from the disciples immediately, does he? He doesn't say, “What do you want? And before we take another step, answer this question.” He invites them: come and see. You've received knowledge of who I am, you've heard from those you trust that I am the Son of God, but now come and see, experience it. And they do, don't they? They spend three years experiencing who Jesus is.
Some of you know a lot about Jesus, God and the Bible, I feel confident many of you could give me a run for my money in a Bible quiz, and I love a Bible quiz; I'm a big nerd, just so you know. That was me. I'm not from a Christian family, but I started going to church when I was four. I devoured the Sunday school stories, I knew them all, I was the teacher's pet. But I didn't have the experience of God for a long time. It took me a long time to understand that there was knowledge, and there was experience.
Some of you, on the other hand, love Jesus so much that you have experienced, on a deep and transformational level, the love of God as your very first experience of him. I praise God for that. Yet there are parts of His story, teaching, maybe some theology that leave you confused.
Knowledge of God and love for God are two sides of the same coin. One deepens the other. As we get to know more of who God is, we understand and love him more. As we love God more, we desire to know him better.
The Challenge: Come and See
This morning, you don't have to have a tidy answer to the question Jesus poses in this passage: what do you want? In fact, if you're visiting with us, I have a particular challenge for you. And if you're journeying with us through this series, there will be other opportunities to understand in more detail what it is that Jesus offers, as we look at the other questions he asks. But that doesn't stop us taking a real, powerful challenge from this question this morning.
If, like me, you default to wanting to know and understand — I'm not saying you don't love God, I love God, but that's my default — then this week your challenge is to spend some unrushed time with God in prayer, in silence, listening, abiding in him, being still, and knowing that he is God. As we prayed this morning at the start of the service, from Psalm 62:5 in the New King James Version:
My soul, wait silently for God alone, for my expectation is from Him. He only is my rock and my salvation.
My soul, wait silently for God alone.
That's my challenge to myself this week, and I invite you to join me. If you're a knowledge person by default, wait silently for God alone, even if it's just for ten minutes.
And for those of you for whom that's not the problem, your default is a heart towards God, you're an experience-based person, but you've also got that nagging feeling that you long to know Jesus in a deeper way, my challenge to you is maybe a little longer, I apologise: read a chapter or two, or if you can, an entire gospel. Remind yourself of who this Jesus is, of what he did, of what he said, of how he loved and how he lived.
Jesus asks you what you want. I encourage all of us this week for our answer to be another step forward with Jesus. Jesus turned around and asked two strangers, “What do you want?” He's not asking two people today, he's asking everyone in this room. He's asking you. He's asking me. What do you want? And his response to us is: come and see.
Come and see.
Closing Prayer
Lord Jesus,
You turn to us today, just as you turned to those first two disciples, and you ask us: What do you want?
Search our hearts and help us answer honestly. For those of us who know so much about you but have grown distant from you, draw us into silence, and teach us to wait for you alone. For those of us who love you deeply but long to know you better, open the Scriptures to us afresh, and reveal yourself to us there.
Thank you that you don't demand a tidy answer from us before we take another step. Thank you that your invitation is always the same: Come and see.
So this week, give us the courage to come, and the eyes to see. Whatever it is we're searching for, let it be you we find.
We ask this in your name, Jesus, our Rabbi and our Christ.
Amen.