UNFORTUNATELY, DUE TO AN INTERNET OUTAGE DURING THE SERVICE, THE SERVICE WAS NOT STREAMED OR RECORDED. BELOW YOU WILL FIND A TEXT VERSION OF THE SERMON. IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS PLEASE FEEL FREE TO CONTACT PASTOR ROB AT BEVIERFIRSTBAPTIST@GMAIL.COM. 

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John: Words of Life - Just You Wait And See
John 1:43-51

It seems that in so many parts of our lives we live by degrees. If you look back at your life, you can often measure your age by the degree of wonder or the degree of excitement. I remember how blown away I was to be 8 years old and my Grandma gave me $10 for my birthday. Ten dollars! Can you imagine? And now 6 months ago I signed the papers for the sale of my house in Colorado to the tune of nearly $400K and I hardly batted an eye since I only did a little better than breaking even.

When I was in 3rd grade in California, we went on a field trip to go whale watching. The 3rd grade class did it every year, and usually they didn’t really see anything. 3 years before, when my brother had gone, not only did they see a whale, but they saw one breach - jump out of the water - and someone got a photo! We looked at that photo in amazement - hoping we’d see something almost as cool as that. We apparently went at the right time, because there were several whales out there playing with each other, and we saw breaching all day. After that, the photo wasn’t quite as impressive anymore.

The sad overtone to this idea is that as we get older and experience more things, it becomes more difficult to fill us with awe and wonder like when we were younger, experiencing things for the first time. I remember family vacations being nothing but fun - seeing new things, camping in different places, eating different foods. Now, as the parent, I see the other side of those trips - the work, the expense, the often seemingly endless drives. Sure, I see new things, but now my mind is clouded by the responsibility behind the fun. And don’t even get me started about Christmas...

As believers, we are plagued by this reality. Many of us have heard all of the stories, know all the things Jesus said, even have parts of the Bible memorized. Each passage we examine here has interest for us, maybe because it has been a while since we’ve read it or because you are hearing a new preacher with a different perspective than what you have heard before, but we lose the sense of awe - of amazement. We are about to get into the stories of the miracles in Jesus’ ministry, but most of them will not be new to us, and so it is really easy to lose the sense of wonder that permeated the life of Jesus and those who followed Him.

When was the last time you were really and truly stunned? Speechless? When did you last experience something truly unexpected? I am fortunate - for me it was not that long ago. I was at a point in my life where I was questioning heavily what my call was and what I should be doing to insure the ongoing care of my family when a little church in rural Missouri voted almost unanimously to ask me to be their pastor. I expected at best I would just squeak by in the vote, and I was genuinely worried that I might not. When Harold told me the result, I was speechless. How is it possible to not recognize God’s call on your life when it is as clear as that?

So I ask the question again - when was the last time you saw or experienced something that your mind had no ready explanation for? For many of you you have to go back to your wedding, or maybe when your children were born, or maybe even further. It is so easy to get caught up in the everyday mundane life that we miss things, or that these things go by without affecting us the way they ought. We can remember tragedy for sure - each of us has our story of where we were on 9/11, or for some it is when JFK was shot, for some even earlier events. But what would it take to stun you today?

Jesus has two people already following Him, and He hasn’t done anything out of the ordinary except to make time for them and accept their company. These two have come based on the word of the Baptist, and they have no idea what they are in for. Likely they have seen some wonders in their time with John, but this is a whole new ball game. And now, Jesus is going to begin collecting His following, showing them that His life will be more than just a story.

Please open your Bibles to John 1:43-51. Read Passage.

The number of men following Jesus doubles in this encounter, and we are treated to the first interaction with Jesus in this gospel which starts to reveal a bit about who He is and what He can do. Now, he recognized Peter on sight, and as far as we know, He had no reason why He would, but the Evangelist does not make much of that encounter as being all that amazing. This time, though, this supernatural knowledge Jesus displays plays a role in the overall story, and serves to give fair warning to those who choose to follow that He has not yet even begun to do incredible things - just you wait and see!

We learn that the day after Andrew and Peter spend the afternoon with Jesus, he decides to leave for Galilee. Since they had to leave to go to Galilee, it is assumed that they were still in Judea, which places the site of at least John’s second declaration of Jesus as Lamb of God likely south and east of where the Jordan flows into the Sea of Galilee. Now there are a few notes to be made on the places we are going to discuss today, because in order to fully understand the attitudes and prejudices of the time, we need some of the backstory.

Jerusalem was in Judea, and Jerusalem was the center of the world for Israelites. This was where the temple was, where the home base for the faith resided, and where all manner of sophistication in their time originated. Apart from the Roman outposts in the region which would occasionally enforce some influence to remind people who was “in charge” Jerusalem was the hub from which Israelite civilization spread. Judeans were proud of their status as the center of the society, and so naturally the further you traveled from the center, the more opinion changed. Within Judea you had the center - the priests and shopkeepers and other people who lived in Jerusalem. Surrounding them you had the farmers and workers of the land that provided Jerusalem with much of its wares.

However, as you get further north, you leave Judea and enter Galilee, where there is a much greater level of poverty and the main providence is fishing rather than farming. To the Judeans, the Galileans were less important, looked down upon. These were the “hillbillies” or “rednecks” in Israel. Yet, it didn’t stop there - the Bible does not explain the origin of these opinions, but we learn that even with Galilee there are areas considered less reputable than others, with Nazareth being one of the places generally not favored - basically, the wrong side of the tracks.

So imagine, immediately after choosing to follow Jesus, He tells them “Let’s go to the ghetto!” But before he leaves, He finds Philip. We aren’t told where Philip was, or what Philip was doing. We don’t know what caused Philip to seemingly drop everything and obey and follow Him - was Philip there when the Baptist proclaimed Him? Did Philip have any background as to who this man was and why he should follow Him? All we know is that Philip was from the same town as Peter and Andrew, so it was likely they knew each other.

While we are not treated to the reasoning behind Philip’s faith, we do see it on full display immediately after Jesus calls him. Like Andrew, Philip finds another and makes an incredibly bold proclamation right off the bat. Remember Andrew approaches his brother and says “We have found the Messiah” - Philip finds Nathanael and says the same thing using different words - “this is the one Moses and the prophets wrote about” meaning Messiah, and then names him - Jesus of Nazareth, son of Joseph. As Andrew brought Simon Peter to Jesus, so Philip found Nathanael and witnessed to him. That has been the foundational principle of truly Christian expansion ever since: new followers of Jesus bear witness of him to others, who in turn become disciples and repeat the process.

In the words Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph, Philip provides exactly the kind of information that positively identifies a man in first-century Palestine: the name of his village, and the name of his (reputed) father. And this is interesting as we look at the character of Nathanael - a character that is not named as one of the 12 in any of the other gospels. The name Nathanael means literally “God has given” causing some scholars to believe that Nathanael was not actually a historical person, but rather a symbol - representing the disciples being given to Jesus by the Father. However, everyone else in this passage is a known historical character, so some suggest that he is an “unknown disciple” or perhaps represented one of the others. If we look at the structure of names during the time, we find the most likely scenario. It is most likely that Nathanael is the personal name of Bartholomew. 

This is understood to be an Aramaic Patronymic - a practice where a person was identified by who their father is. People were introduced as name, son of so and so. We just saw Jesus introduced in this way - Jesus, son of Joseph. The term used in the Aramaic would have been Jesus bar Joseph, bar meaning “son of.” Bartholomew was thought to have meant “son of Tholomaeus” and was not a personal name, and no other name is given for Batholomew in any other gospel, despite there being link between the characters as described in all three gospels. 

So whether Nathanael is Bartholomew or some other unknown disciple, he has a connection to Philip and serves a very important role in this exchange. First, expressing the prejudice of the time, he makes the offhand comment about nothing good ever coming out of Nazareth. This is stated in such a way as to likely have been accepted, maybe even laughed about among the people. The Jews knew from prophecy that the Messiah was to be born in Bethlehem, so Jesus being called “of Nazareth” might have been a red flag to anyone who knew the prophecies, because it obscured the fact that Jesus Himself was born in Bethlehem. Jesus being identified as Nazarene has long lasting political effect - even throughout the majority of His ministry people did not know He was born in Bethlehem, yet still had the faith to follow Him as Messiah.

Philip answers the snide comment in the same way Jesus had answered Andrew and Peter - “come and see.” He invites this skeptic to come and see Jesus for who He was - to experience the man himself. Besides being a challenge to Nathanael, as readers we can see it as an invitation to learn more about Jesus. Jesus immediately recognizes Nathanael for the man he is - truly an Israelite without deceit. Jesus’ point is not that Nathanael is an Israelite, ‘true’ or otherwise, but that Nathanael is a certain kind of Israelite, an Israelite in whom there is no guile, no deceit. Nathanael may have been blunt in his criticism of Nazareth, but he was an Israelite who was willing to examine for himself the claims being made about Jesus. Otherwise he would not have followed Philip’s challenge and would have dismissed this man from Nazareth out of hand - as many of us today would have. Jesus recognizes that Nathanael is a man who will make up his own mind - not have it swayed by what other people say. 

Nathanael’s question, How do you know me?, demonstrates that Jesus’ brief summary of his character had hit the mark. Jesus replies by showing that his supernatural knowledge extends beyond this: he ‘saw’ Nathanael while he was still under the fig tree. What Nathanael was doing under the fig tree is open to conjecture. In the Old Testament the fig tree is sometimes almost a symbol for ‘home’ or for prosperity; but also in rabbinic literature its shade is associated with a place for meditation and prayer. But John’s chief point here is Jesus’ supernatural knowledge, not Nathanael’s specific activity is what gets through to the man, so there was truth to his statement about the fig tree that mattered a great deal to Nathanael.

This display of special knowledge combined with the witness of Philip to remove Nathanael’s doubts instantly. Now he addresses Jesus as Rabbi, a far more respectful approach than his first blunt question. Already he has answered his own question - something good in the form of a respected teacher did in fact come out of Nazareth. But the titles he assigns to Jesus go far beyond what any disciple would normally ascribe to his rabbi: you are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel.

Clearly, Nathanael was acknowledging Jesus as the Messiah, the Promised One to whom the ancient Scriptures had borne witness and the Baptist had been heralding. But the particular titles chosen tell us a little more. The expression ‘the son of X’ can have an extraordinarily wide range of meanings for this time period, as it had, as we already discussed, been a popular means of identifying a person. This figure of speech was used to describe the nature of people as well - thus ‘a wicked man’ might be called ‘a son of wickedness’ (Ps. 89:22); people in trouble are ‘sons of affliction’ (Pr. 31:5); brave men are ‘sons of valour’ (Dt. 3:18). Those deserving execution are ‘sons of death’ (1 Sa. 26:16). In the sermon on the mount, peacemakers are called ‘sons of God’ (Mt. 5:9), because their peacemaking attests that in this respect at least they are imitating God. Like father, like son: so it was in the ancient world, far more strongly than today. To call a man a ‘son of God’ is to apply this in a way that is clear to all present - there is no doubt - this man is sent by God Himself.

Nathanael took a huge step of faith largely on the basis of Jesus’ display of supernatural knowledge, and of his friend’s testimony that he was Messiah. His faith is largely grounded upon a miracle, and such a foundation can be insecure, as even the rest of the disciples have their doubts despite what they see in Jesus’ life. Jesus promises Nathanael that, regardless of the present importance of this display of supernatural knowledge, he will see greater things than that (v. 50), including the signs reported in this Gospel, the first of which is about to unfold (2:1–11). Indeed, more generically, what Nathanael will see is the greatness of the Son of Man, far surpassing anything they can imagine.

At this point in the story we have 4 men in Jesus’ company, traveling in a place they don’t care for and is probably not particularly welcome to them as Judeans. These four men have seen Jesus demonstrate a remarkable knowledge of them personally, and they have each heard testimony about Jesus - not just that he is a teacher or leader, but that he is the Messiah, the Lamb of God, the Son of God, and that He will take away the sins of the world. These 4 men have no idea what they have signed on for - no idea what they will encounter. And now, Jesus recognizes that these men have placed their faith in Him without having yet seen what He is there to do. 

So Jesus tells them, right from the beginning - just you wait and see. He is not boasting about all of the cool stuff He is going to do; rather he begins to prepare them for that which they could never be prepared. He tells them that they will be shocked, awed, and left speechless. For me today and my years and experience, I have a hard time imagining what would truly shock me now - it takes a lot to break us from our trajectory. Yet He tells them right in the beginning - get ready for something you will not forget - something you cannot even imagine.

‘I tell you the truth, you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.’ Jesus introduced his explanation of the ‘greater things’ with the formula ‘I tell you the truth’ (amēn amēn legō hymin), also translated as “truly truly I tell you” - found here for the first time in this Gospel. This formula is used twenty-five times in all, and in each case it introduces an important statement by Jesus. Jesus’ promise that his disciples would see heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending contains an allusion to the experience of Jacob - a story they would know well. When fleeing from his brother, Esau, whose birthright he had taken by guile, Jacob stopped in a certain place, where he slept and dreamed of angels ascending and descending upon a ladder joining heaven and earth. Above the ladder stood the Lord, who made specific promises to Jacob, promises about the land, his descendants, the blessing that would come to the world through them, and finally about Jacob’s return to the land from which he was fleeing. ‘When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it.” He was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven” … He called that place Bethel’ (Gen. 28:16–19). 

For Jacob, then, Bethel was the place where he encountered God and where God revealed his plans for him. When Jesus, alluding to this incident, said to his disciples, ‘you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man’, he was implying that the place where people encounter God was now in the person of his Son, Jesus, and that it was through him that God was now revealing his truth. The greater things people were to see, then, would be the revelation of God in the life, ministry, death, resurrection and exaltation of Jesus. In this promise to his disciples Jesus referred to himself as ‘the Son of Man’. This title has its background in Daniel 7 and carries overtones of authority, power and glory. But the title is used by Jesus in the Fourth Gospel also in connection with his suffering and death. For the four men with Him, this expression confirms for them the truth that they have already proclaimed about Jesus, His connection to God, and His role as the promised Messiah.

When we are blown away by something - good or bad, each of us responds differently. Sometimes we like to deny the truth, either because it does not align with what we have always thought or it casts us in a bad light. Some of us respond with joy - having seen the light or learned the truth. Some of us like to keep these moments to ourselves - either because we are hurt, or because we might have an intimate connection to the new understanding we have gained through a shock to our system. Regardless of our reactions, we process, we review, we accept, and we move forward. We see here in Nathanael and the others an almost supernatural ability to get past all the internal processing and immediately come to faith. They see, and they immediately believe. Of all the things we will see the disciples do throughout this book, I think this is something to emulate above all else. They met the object of their faith, and they followed without question. What must it be like to be that decisive about the course of your entire life.

This week, we should begin to look inwardly at our own faith. Why do you believe? What makes Jesus more than a man to you? Why does the title of this series - Words of Life - why does that resonate with your faith….or if it doesn’t, why not? When was the last time you examined the foundation of your faith in God? Take the time - rediscover the wonder and awe of the savior that is in your life - find that faith like you did in the beginning! Huge things are coming - just you wait and see! Let’s pray.