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First Baptist Church of Manassas
Manassas, Virginia · Established 1872
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1st Sunday · Sunday, November 1, 2026
The 3 A.M. Bench!
John 1:43-51 (Yahweh’s Word Translation)
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A Word From Your Pastor
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| Good morning, Church. We gathered on this first Sunday with an extra hour in our pockets and a great deal to be thankful for. Brothers and sisters who have been away through storms were back in the sanctuary with us, our live stream family was worshipping right along with us, and Dr. Floyd Harrelson led us in a way that set the atmosphere before a word was ever preached. | ||||
| Then we went to John chapter 1, and I asked you to sit with a question that sounds small until you hear what is underneath it. I want to put the whole thing in front of you again here, because this one is not meant to stay in the sanctuary. | ||||
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Sunday Recap
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Can you write something on this receipt
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| Let me tell you about a cashier named Marcus. He works the night shift at a convenience store, ten at night until six in the morning, and he sees the same faces every night. The same people who cannot sleep. The same people coming off work. The same people avoiding an empty house. | ||||
| One night around two in the morning a man came through his line, bought about seventeen dollars of food, paid with a twenty, and then stood there staring at his receipt for a full minute. He looked up and said, can I ask you something weird. Can you write something on this receipt. Anything. Just something a human wrote to another human. Marcus asked him what he wanted written. The man said, the name, the weather, a smiley face, I do not care. I just need proof that someone saw me today. | ||||
| So Marcus took his pen and wrote, I hope you have a good night, Marcus. The man folded that receipt, put it in his wallet, looked up and said, thank you. You are the first person to speak to me in six days. And then he walked out. | ||||
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Alone together
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| Six days. Marcus stood there stunned, and then he started paying attention. The woman who buys cat food at three in the morning and never speaks to anyone. The man who gets coffee and donuts at four with his headphones in, never looking up. The teenage girl who comes in every night for a single serve meal with her eyes down. Same store, same hours, all of them completely alone together. | ||||
| So he started writing on every receipt. You matter. Someone sees you. Hope tomorrow is better. Two weeks of it and not one person said a word, and he started to think he was just being strange. Then the woman who buys cat food read hers, looked up, and for the first time in months they made eye contact. She said, you are the one writing these. And she started crying right there at the register. She told him she was going through a divorce, living alone for the first time in thirty-two years, and that these were the only kind words she had gotten in months. She had been saving them. She showed him a photograph on her phone of her refrigerator covered in grocery receipts. She said, you have been talking to me. I just did not know how to talk back. | ||||
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The bench
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| Word spread. The coffee man started talking. The teenager started talking. Then they started talking to each other. A convenience store at three in the morning turned into something else entirely, and people began showing up not for groceries but just to exist near other human beings who were also awake when the rest of the world was asleep. | ||||
| Marcus told me his manager came in agitated, wanting to know what all these people were doing there at three in the morning, and he said, they are lonely, they need somewhere to be. He was sure he was in trouble. A few days later the manager put a bench outside that store with a sign on it. The 3 A.M. Bench. For anyone who needs somewhere to be. | ||||
| And the first man came back, and he brought somebody with him. He said, this is David, he is going through some things, I told him about this place. They sat for an hour and talked. On his way out he handed Marcus the very first receipt he had ever written on. The man had laminated it. He said, I keep it in my wallet, and on a bad day I look at it, and it gives me proof that somebody saw me. | ||||
| Marcus still writes on every receipt, even for the people who tell him not to. Because you never know who is counting the days since the last time somebody spoke to them. You never know whose refrigerator is going to be covered in your handwriting. You never know when have a good day is the only thing anybody is going to give them all day. Loneliness is an epidemic nobody wants to talk about, and sometimes being seen is the only difference between surviving and giving up. | ||||
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Sawubona
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| Church, that brother was not asking for ink. He was asking for evidence. Evidence that he exists, that he has value, that somebody besides himself sees him. Evidence that he still matters to God. | ||||
| There is a Zulu word for this. Sawubona. It means I see you. I notice that you are present. I recognize the worth God has placed in you. I do not know your story, but I see you. I do not know your pain, but I see you. And the reason I can say it is that God sees you first. The same God who sees me sees you. So if nobody has spoken to you in six days, if nobody has written anything to you, if nobody has shown you that you matter, hear me: Sawubona. I see you. | ||||
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Jesus sees you beneath the fig tree
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| Now take that into John 1. Philip finds Nathanael and tells him we have found the one Moses and the prophets wrote about, Jesus of Nazareth. And Nathanael says what people still say about places and people they have written off: can anything good come out of Nazareth. Philip could have argued with him. He could have said, really, brother, you are a Galilean yourself, you are not much better. He did not argue. He said, come and see. | ||||
| So Nathanael gets up and starts walking, and Jesus sees him coming from a long way off and says, behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no deceit. Nathanael asks the question any of us would ask. How do you know me. And here is where the whole thing turns. Jesus says, before Philip called you, while you were sitting there under that fig tree, I saw you. | ||||
| Nathanael is flabbergasted. Rabbi, you are the Son of God, you are the King of Israel. What made him say that? He got there because before Nathanael ever knew Jesus, Jesus had already seen Nathanael. We do not know what he was doing under that fig tree. The text does not tell us and we are not going to make it up. But we know he was by himself. We know he was in a private place. We know nobody else saw him there. And right in the middle of that, Jesus says, I saw you. | ||||
| That is good news for us, because sometimes we are like that brother coming through the line at three in the morning, wondering whether anybody sees us at all. Jesus sees you before you ever knew Him. He sees the grief you brought in here this morning. He sees the trouble you did not put on social media. He sees the prayer you whispered before you got out of the car. He sees the disappointment underneath the smile, and the weariness you have carried so long you forgot it had a name. | ||||
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He sees what nobody else sees
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| There is a word of hope here for every place in your life where no one else sees you. Some people see your Sunday clothes. Go ahead and pop your collar. They will tell you they see you. But they do not see the struggle underneath those clothes. Some people hear you say you are all right when they ask how you are doing, and they never see what it cost you to get out of the bed and get here. Some people see you serving everybody else, and they never see the part of you that is asking, I am strong for everybody, when is somebody going to be strong for me. | ||||
| The world wants to reduce you to a label. You are too much. You are not enough. You are too broken. You have too much melanin. You are too poor. You are too forgotten. Jesus does not see labels. He sees the whole you when no one else does. | ||||
| And there are people all around us carrying that same question the brother carried to the register. The person sitting alone at the gathering. The neighbor who stopped coming around, not because you offended them but because they stopped believing they mattered. The teenager who never lifts their eyes. The one who is always telling jokes, because if it ever got quiet you might find out what is really going on. They are not only on the corner asking you for a dollar. They are the people you work with and live with every single day. | ||||
| So hear me on this. Sometimes ministry begins before the sermon. Before the choir. Before the benediction. Before you ever get out of the car. It begins when you look up. When you learn somebody’s name. When you listen without rushing to fix them. When you make room on your pew with a smile. When you start to understand that everybody matters. | ||||
| Now Marcus mattered, and that bench mattered, and those conversations mattered. But a human being cannot be everywhere at all times. Guess who can. The One who saw Nathanael under the fig tree sees you in the place where you are hurting, where you feel forgotten, where you are tired, and where you are sick and tired. | ||||
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The Jesus who sees you calls you into new life
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| That is the first truth. Here is the second one, and it is the one I do not want you to miss. Jesus does not only tell Nathanael I see you. He calls him into something greater. Nathanael came with his doubt and he left with a confession. Rabbi, you are the Son of God, you are the King of Israel. And Jesus tells him, because I said I saw you under the fig tree, do you believe? You will see greater things than these. Hereafter you will see heaven opened and the angels of Yahweh ascending and descending on the Son of Man. | ||||
| Being seen was an invitation. You are never out of the sight of Jesus Christ, and He keeps you in His sight because He is always inviting you closer. Remember that He warned us about the ones who will say, did we not do this and that in your name, and He will say, depart from me, I never knew you. Doing something in my name is not the same as knowing me. | ||||
| Some of us have the Martha syndrome. When Jesus came after Lazarus died, Martha got busy in the kitchen, and there was nothing wrong with that. It was hospitality the way it was supposed to be. But Jesus sat down to teach, and Mary sat down to listen, and Martha got upset. And Jesus said, Martha, Martha. When He calls your name twice, He is asking you to bring it down. You are worried about a great many things, and only one thing is needed. Get to know me. | ||||
| That is what He is still saying. I know what is happening in your life. I know everything you are doing. I need you to quiet it down and know that I am right here. Know me, so you can follow me, and when you follow me I will give you abundant life. Not comfortable. Not wealthy. Abundant. Some of us have a whole lot of money and still have not found the life He came to give. | ||||
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Make room
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| He does not see you from a distance. He comes right up close. He walks into your story the way He walked up on those two brothers on the Emmaus road after the crucifixion, asking them what they were talking about, letting them tell it, and then breaking it down for them Himself. He comes in because He has already defeated sin and death, so sin and death do not get the last word over your life. | ||||
| The receipt said, I hope you have a good night. The gospel says, even in your darkest hour you are not beyond my reach. The bench says there is somewhere you can sit. Jesus says, come to me. The note said somebody saw you. The cross says you are loved at a cost. And the empty tomb says your story is not finished. Jesus sees the story you have lived, and He invites you into His story, for your blessing and His glory. | ||||
| So what do we do with that? Make room. Make room for the person next to you. Extend a hand. Invite somebody to your own 3 A.M. bench. And after you have had your time of Sawubona with one another, point them to Jesus. | ||||
| If you are sitting under your own fig tree today, hear Jesus say, I see you. If you feel like that brother who came through the line at three in the morning looking for proof that he exists, hear Jesus say, I see you. If you think your story is beyond redeeming, hear Jesus say, Sawubona. I see you. | ||||
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Our Closing Hymn
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| We closed in Hymn #43, How Great Thou Art. If it has been a long week, let that one carry you into Monday. | ||||
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Life Applicable Gems
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| Here is what I want you to carry with you into this week. | ||||
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Sit With These This Week
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| Church, somebody reading this has been going days without a kind word. If that is you, I want you to know that this church sees you, and more than that, God sees you. Come and see for yourself. Come and sit with us. | ||||
| And if that is not you, then you are the one holding the pen this week. Write something on somebody’s receipt. | ||||
| When you make room on the bench, when you speak a word of hope, when you help somebody realize that they are not invisible and that they matter to God, and then you point them to Jesus, then maybe, just maybe, we will all become discipled people, serving people into a love relationship with Jesus Christ. | ||||
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In His service,
Rev. Dr. Keith Savage Senior Servant, First Baptist Church of Manassas |
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You are always welcome at First Baptist Church of Manassas.
Sunday Worship 9:00 AM · Sunday School 11:00 AM · Wednesday Bible Study 7:00 PM 9258 Center Street, Manassas, Virginia 20110
703-368-2935 · fbcmanassas.org |
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