Philip - Learning to Look with the Eyes of Faith

Many years ago, there was a circus tightrope walker whose name was Blondin. He was known the world over for his death-defying feats of balance and skill. One day it was announced that the Great Blondin was going to walk across Niagara Falls on a tightrope.

A wire one-inch thick was strung from the American to the Canadian side for Blondin to walk on. The raging waters of the Niagara River thundered onto the rocks 165 feet below. Obviously, there was no net. One slip and Blondin would fall to his death.

The great day came and a huge crowd gathered along the gorge to watch this incredible feat. Slowly and carefully, Blondin inched out onto the wire. With intense concentration, he moved step by step out over the canyon as the crowd held its breath. Soon he was at the middle—a tiny figure suspended in space above an raging river.

A few more minutes and he was safely across, a great smile upon his face. The crowd cheered wildly. Men threw their hats in the air. Everyone marveled at the unbelievable bravery of this amazing man.

Blondin crossed the wire several more times that day, each time increasing the difficulty by carrying something with him. Finally, he announced to the crowd a sensational offer. For his final trip, he would push a wheelbarrow across with a volunteer from the crowd riding in it. Who would like to volunteer?

The crowd that had cheered him so loudly suddenly fell silent. No one stepped forward. Blondin turned to a spectator standing nearby and said “Sir, do you believe that I could carry you across?”

“Yes sir.” the man replied. “Well then, let’s go.” said Blondin. “Not on your life” exclaimed the man, and he turned and fled into the crowd.

And so it went. One after another expressed great confidence in the tightrope walker, but no one would agree to ride in his wheelbarrow across the Falls. Finally, a young man stepped forward saying “I’m willing to go with you, Mr. Blondin.” And with that he climbed into the wheelbarrow. A few exciting minutes later, he and Blondin were safely across to the other side.

Thousands of people saw Blondin cross Niagara Falls that day, but only one of them saw him do it through the eyes of faith.

We come today to the story of a disciple who needed to learn to look through the eyes of faith. His name was Philip. We don’t know a great deal about him other than what we read in the Gospel of John.

Philip seemed to be an average sort of man, not outstanding or memorable in any particular way. In fact, he is so ordinary that people often confuse him for another man named Philip—Philip the Evangelist, who appears in the Book of Acts.

The apostle Philip lived in Bethsaida, which was a fishing town on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. Simon Peter and Andrew, who were fishermen, lived there. Philip may have been a fisherman himself, but we don’t know for sure.

What we do know is that Philip is the very first disciple that Jesus found. He was not the first disciple to follow Jesus, but he was the first one whom Jesus found.

Andrew and John followed Jesus because John the Baptist pointed him out to them. Peter followed Jesus because his brother Andrew came and brought him to Jesus.

John 1:43 The next day Jesus decided to leave for Galilee. Finding Philip, he said to him, “Follow me.”

Some people find Jesus. Others, like Philip, are found by him.

The first thing that Philip did was to find his friend Nathanael and bring him to Jesus. He said “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.”

Philip shows a surprising grasp of OT Scripture for someone who had only just met Jesus. Clearly, he thought that Jesus was the Messiah. But his understanding of that Messiah was faulty, because he had not yet learned to look through the eyes of faith.

When you go to the optometrist, he tests your eyes to find out how well you’re seeing. He gives you a chart and he asks you to read it. He is seeking to determine the acuity of your vision.

This seems to be what Jesus does with Philip. Three times, God gives Philip a spiritual eye check-up, to determine if he’s seeing with the eyes of faith. And each one of those tests has something to say to you and me. Let’s look at the first one. It’s found in John 6:

Some time after this, Jesus crossed to the far shore of the Sea of Galilee (that is, the Sea of Tiberias), and a great crowd of people followed him because they saw the miraculous signs he had performed on the sick. Then Jesus went up on a mountainside and sat down with his disciples. The Jewish Passover Feast was near.

When Jesus looked up and saw a great crowd coming toward him, he said to Philip, “Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?” He asked this only to test him, for he already had in mind what he was going to do.

Philip answered him, “Eight months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each one to have a bite!”

We learn a lot about the focusing power of Philip’s spiritual eyes here. When Jesus presents him with a problem to be solved, what does Philip focus on to solve that problem?

He focuses on his own human resources. He whips out his pocket calculator, tries to measure the dimensions of the problem, tries to assess the resources at hand, tries to boil it all down to a matter of numbers. He takes an engineering approach to it.

And after he’s run the numbers through his computer, he comes up empty. Because this problem’s too big to solve. They’ve got 5,000 mouths to feed sitting out there on the hillside, and that’s only the men. This is a first century Woodstock!

How often does God brings an insoluble problem into our lives in order to increase our faith, and we take an engineering approach to it? We start calculating and measuring and trying to figure out how we can solve this problem using our own resources. We fail to trust God because we look for human solutions.

This happened quite often in the Bible. Take Abraham for example. God presented Abraham with a promise—a promise to give him many descendants. But that promise came dressed up as a problem. How could Abraham have many descendants when he didn’t have even one, and now he was an old man? (and even more to the point, his wife was an old woman!)

So Abraham started looking for human solutions. He started by looking at his most trusted servant, Eliezar. It was a custom in those days that if you didn’t have an heir, you could name one of your servants to be your heir, and he would become a sort of “artificial descendant.” But God said, “Sorry, that’s not the solution.”

Then Abraham’s wife brought her Egyptian hand-maid Hagar to Abraham and said “Go, sleep with my maidservant; perhaps we can build a family through her.” You see, it was also a custom in those days that a barren wife could give her maid-servant to her husband to serve as a surrogate mother. And any children produced would be considered the offspring of the wife.

So that’s what Abraham did. He slept with Hagar, she got pregnant, and had a son named Ishmael. Not an ideal solution, but definitely a socially-acceptable and culturally appropriate solution to the problem.

Except that God said “Sorry, that’s not the solution.” God had a supernatural solution in mind all along so that there could be no doubt that He did it. He waited until Abraham was 100 and Sarah was 90 and then he wheeled her off to the maternity ward.

Human solutions don’t cut it when you’re dealing with God-sized problems.

Remember Goliath? Goliath was a God-sized problem facing Israel. Goliath was a man who was over 9 feet tall. He could dunk over Shaquile O’Neal any time he felt like it. He would have been even better in the WWF.

If ever there was a God-sized problem, it was Goliath. Now there were two kings over on the Israeli sideline trying to decide what to do about this problem; the present king, Saul, who was an adult, and the future king, David, who was just a teenager.

Saul was trying to find someone to fight this monster, but no amount of money and benefits could persuade anybody to take a stab at it. Human solutions always come up empty. Then along comes David and says “I’ll go fight him.”

So Saul, still thinking in terms of human solutions, tries to give David his armor. But David turns him down, because David already knows going in that this isn’t a battle that’s going to be won by man’s means, it’s a battle that’s going to won by God’s means. And he proceeds to bring down Goliath with one shot from a slingshot.

When we look for human solutions to God-sized problems, we fail to look through the eyes of faith. Is there a God-sized problem in your life today? Something that has you on the run? A Goliath that is there to laugh at you and taunt you and make you feel like a mouse every day? Why not give that Goliath to God, so that when God provides the solution, you’ll know beyond the shadow of a doubt that He did it.

Philip’s second trip to the spiritual eye-doctor comes in John 12…

John 12:20 Now there were some Greeks among those who went up to worship at the Feast. They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, with a request. “Sir,” they said, “we would like to see Jesus.” Philip went to tell Andrew; Andrew and Philip in turn told Jesus.

This happened at the Temple. It was the Feast of the Passover, when all sorts of foreigners came to Jerusalem. Those foreigners were Gentiles who had converted to Judaism. But that didn’t keep them from being Gentiles, and religious Jews were taught that you didn’t associate with Gentiles, even if they were proselytes. Especially at the Temple.

These Greeks came to Philip with a request. “Sir, we would like to see Jesus.” That seems pretty straightforward doesn’t it? Philip should have just taken them to see Jesus. But he didn’t do that. Why not?

Because he was afraid of tradition. Here in the Temple, in that fortress of tradition, in the bastion of all that was Jewish, in that place where you had to take a ceremonial bath and put on your best clothes to even enter, Philip hesitated to bring these Gentiles, these “outsiders”, to Jesus.

It might not be appropriate for them to be here. He couldn’t vouch for their purity, their cleanliness. Maybe they were dressed oddly. Maybe they would act inappropriately. What if they made a scene? Maybe they would talk out loud with their Greek accents. Maybe Philip noticed that other Jews were already frowning at them, looking askance at them, giving them a wide berth.

Philip was paralyzed. And it took Andrew to get him over the hump and get those Gentiles, those seekers, to Jesus.

We fail to trust God when our eyes focus only on our religious traditions.

Back in the 1960’s, American society was in upheaval. The youth counter-culture was in full flower. Young people were throwing off all the restraints and challenging the Establishment. They immersed themselves in free love, drugs, and protest.

But most of them found no answers, no satisfaction, no meaning in those things. So they turned to the church. And they came to the church—they came saying “Sirs, we would see Jesus.” And what did the church do?

Most churches said “We’re sorry, but we can’t take you to see Jesus. You’re not dressed properly. You have bare feet. Your hair is too long. You don’t act like we do, you don’t talk like we do, and you smell funny.” Go and get cleaned up, and then maybe we’ll take you to see Jesus.

Tradition. When tradition keeps us from seeing people’s needs and bringing them to Jesus, there’s something wrong with our spiritual eyesight.

The days of the hippies are pretty much gone but there are other seekers out there who are just as needy. They may look nicer, and dress more respectably, but their lives are just as much in confusion. They come from broken homes, and have broken marriages. Many of them are in the bonds of addiction to drugs, tobacco, sex, money, gambling, or whatever. They are living empty lives.

Behind their veneer of coolness and sophistication, they are crying “We would see Jesus.”

Can we take them to Jesus? Can they see Him when they come in here? Do they sense that loving and sharing Jesus is what we’re here to do, or do they sense that maintaining our traditions is really our biggest priority.

Philip had his eyes so fixed on tradition, that it kept him from bringing people to Jesus.

His third trip to the spiritual optometrist happened in John 14…

John 14:1 “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.”

Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”

Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.”

Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?

In John 6, Philip failed to trust God because he was looking for human solutions.

In John 12, he failed to trust God because he was focused on religious traditions.

Here, in John 14, Philip failed to trust God because he was looking past the Incarnation.

The central message of the Bible is that God has visited us in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus is God very God. He Himself said in this passage that you cannot know God without knowing Him.

Philip said that he wanted to see God. “Show us the Father” he said. That sounds very noble. Except that it implies that knowing Jesus isn’t enough.

Jesus answered him by saying “You’ve seen me, Philip. That’s all you need. By seeing me, by knowing me, you’re seeing God, you’re knowing God.”

Every person has within his heart a desire to know God. That shouldn’t be surprising since that’s the way God made us. He put within us a drive to know Him. But that drive has been warped and corrupted by sin so that it focuses on lower things, on inferior things.

People put themselves in the place of God; they put other people in the place of God; they put material things in the place of God. And they think that by worshiping those things, or those people, or themselves, they will find true meaning and happiness. The drive to worship is still there, but like a weather vane that is rusted into one position, it is turned in the wrong direction.

Many of these people may even profess, like Philip, to want to know God. But they don’t think that knowing Jesus is all that important. They want to come to God some other way. Some way of their own choosing. They want an alternative to the Incarnation. They don’t want Christianity; they don’t want the church; they don’t want the Bible; they just want God.

Jesus said “You can’t have God unless you have me. I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me.”

Does that mean that a Buddhist has to become a Christian in order to come to God?

Does that mean that a Muslim has to become a Christian in order to come to God?

Does that mean that a Jew has to become a Christian in order to come to God?

Yes, that’s what it means. Because becoming a Christian means receiving Jesus Christ and coming to know Him who is the only way to God. Becoming a Christian does not mean adopting a particular culture, or a set of rules, or a doctrinal statement; it means getting to know a person—Jesus Christ.

Philip wanted a knowledge of God that did not go through the Incarnation. Jesus said, “There is no such thing.”

What about you? Do you know Jesus Christ? Or have you been fooling yourself into thinking you were a Christian all these years by doing the things that Christians do, by trying to walk and talk and act like a Christian.

Those things don’t make you a Christian; knowing Jesus does.

If you want to learn to look through the eyes of faith, the first thing you’re going to have to see is that Jesus Christ, your Savior, is God. And knowing Him is what life is all about.