John 1:43-51 Sermon. January 24, 2021. Grace-Benson and Grace-Vail. Have you ever planned to travel and tried to take someone along with you? I recently traveled from Arizona to Wisconsin and back, and I was very happy to have some tracking companions so I didn’t have to make the long journey alone. But let’s just say that I never got tired or fatigued, was always the perfect driver, really did not need companionship, would I still want someone to travel with me? That’s the situation Jesus was in. He wanted to travel from Judah to Galilee. If he would have chosen he could’ve transported himself in an instant, but he chose in his humble human life to not make use of his divine power in that way. Instead he chose to travel a lot like us. Not even in a car, but step by step on foot. He was traveling because he had work to do. And even though he could’ve done that work alone, he invited others to come with him. We can learn alot about Jesus’ travel plans, because he really extends the same kind of invitation to you and I as he did to some people many years ago. The invitation then and now is this: “come and see,” and “follow me.” We want to understand what those invitations mean. Jesus had been in Judah, where John the Baptist was, and he wanted to go into Galilee. Jesus asked a friend to travel with him. He told Philip, “Follow me.” Jesus wasn't saying to Philip, “you have a chance of a lifetime, you can become one of the 12 pillars of the New Testament church, you’d be a fool to pass this up.” Instead he just asked Philip to take a trip to Galilee with him. That’s how it started. Does Jesus still want traveling companions today? Is he still moving around to different places like Benson, like Vail, desiring friends to come along on his mission? Answer is yes. He still desires people to hear what he once said, “The kingdom of heaven is near to you, it’s available at any time in any place because he has brought it near.” Though he could do this alone, he wants to take people with him, people like you and me. He wants to travel to where your friends and family are, and he invites you to follow him. He doesn’t start with telling you, “There are people who will spend eternity apart from me unless you go and change their minds, and you have a chance to follow me and grow closer in your place in an eternally glorious kingdom. This is the chance of your lifetime and you’d be a fool to refuse.” Instead he simply invites you, “follow me. Go with me as I interact with your friend or family member. Travel with me, spend time with me.” That’s the invitation. A call to friendship and togetherness more than a call to religious rule keeping and heroic spiritual insights. Philip’s response was two things: yes, and let me invite someone else. Why did Philip say yes to the travel invitation? He explained to Nathanael, “We have found the one that Moses and the prophets wrote about.” Philip was connecting dots from the Scripture to Jesus. He knew what Moses and the prophets said, he got to know some things about Jesus, and he concluded, this is the one. What dots was he connecting? Just before this story, John the Baptist had seen Jesus and said, “That’s the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” The lambs that Moses wrote about find their fulfilment in this man walking around humbly. Through Moses God had allowed people to deal with their sins by transferring them onto a lamb, and then killing the lamb so that their sins would be released, removed, forgiven. John the Baptist recognized, the only reason that worked was the promise of a perfect human lamb who would really
accomplish the transferring of guilt from people before God, onto him, so that by his death, our sins would find release, removal, forgiveness. Not only Moses wrote about those lambs, but prophets like Isaiah had said things like, “As a lamb goes silently before his shearers, so he will not open his mouth. By his wounds we are healed.” Philip knew his Scripture, he got some help from John the Baptist, and he concluded, “This is the one.” If he invites me to travel with him, the answer is yes, because I enjoy spending time with him. I learn more every conversation I have with him. I become a better version of myself just by spending time with him. Philip also wanted to invite someone else. He went to Nathanael and asked him to travel with Jesus too. Just like when you see a movie that’s so good you can’t help but tell a friend about it, Philip naturally wanted to include Nathanael on this trip with Jesus. How did Nathanael reply? “Nazareth? Can anything good come from Nazareth?” Nathanael’s reply is two things: first, an illegitimate judgment on Nazareth and people from Nazareth. Nazareth had a reputation, especially among people who were from Judah, near Jerusalem, the capital city of Israel. The perception was: we in Judah take the words of Moses and the prophets seriously. The people in Nazareth don’t. In Nazareth, they allow so many Greek and Roman ideas to mix with their own. They allow Greek and Roman and even eastern customs to mix with their own lifestyles. They are not the pure Israelites that we in Judah are. Can anything good come from Nazareth? It’d be somewhat comparable today to asking, can any religious influencer come from Las Vegas? Can anything good come from Phoenix? LA? New York City? Such prejudice still exist today, and first we must say, it’s wrong. Nathanael should have known better than make blanket judgment statements about all things Nazareth. Can anything good come from Nazareth? Of course. Does God only bring good out of places like Jerusalem? Of course not. God can work through people like Nazareth, in fact, that’s exactly the place he chose to send his son to live and grow up and spend much of his human life. But we also have to give Nathanael some credit here. Where was the Messiah supposed to come from? Not Nazareth. Bethlehem. He was supposed to be a king like David who once ruled not in Nazareth, but in Jerusalem. It’s a legitimate objection to say, “Wait, the Messiah isn’t supposed to come from there.” Nathanael knew his Scripture, and had a legitimate question. Before we get to Philip’s response, are there still legitimate questions about Jesus today? Yes. People today don’t say, he’s from Nazareth, that’s a deal breaker. Instead they say things like: how could there be a loving God when there is so much evil in the world? Or, how could a loving God send anyone to hell? Or, how could a murderer end up in heaven while a nice old lady might end up in hell? Legitimate questions, hesitations to accepting Jesus, skepticism at taking someone else’s word that Jesus is the Christ, the promised Savior. Notice what Philip did in response. He didn’t say, “How dare you question me, you should take my word for it.” He didn’t say, “You’re messing up the chance of a lifetime and you’re going to regret it.” He didn’t say, “What a stupid question to ask, how could you be so foolish?” Instead he simply said, “Come and
see.” You have a legitimate question about Nazareth, and I don;t have the answer. How about we go with Jesus together and see if your question gets answered? You can do the same when people have objections, skepticism about Jesus. You don’t have to compel them to change their minds, you don’t have to know the answer on the spot. Just invite them to come and see, to spend time with Jesus and see if their questions find answers. When you have questions, skepticism, even doubt about who Jesus is, you can know that Jesus doesn;t reject you for it. He doesn’t tell you to come back when you have an unyielding faith and trust in him. Instead he invites you to come with your questions, travel with him, spend time with him, and see what happens. It’s important Nathanael took his questions in the direction of Jesus. There is danger in skepticism taking us away from Jesus. If Nathanael would have refused outright to go to Jesus because he was from Nazareth, he would have experienced only distance from him, not closeness. But in the willingness to go and see with his questions, he found more than answers, he found what he was looking for. A few weeks ago I was talking with a woman sitting next to me on an airplane, and she shared with me how she had been a member of a wels church as a girl, but how when she asked questions of her Pastor as a teenager, she was basically told how disrespectful and wrong she was to question his authority. She left that church group, and has found a relationship with Jesus in a different Christian group. I thought, what a shame that her Pastor responded that way. In the Bible it seems God welcomes questions when they are asked toward him and not away from him. Come and see means come and think, come and ask, come and be honest. And it’s ok to come in groups. You don’t have to figure out your doubts and questions alone. In fact, the more usual way God seems to work is in groups. Nathanael was invited by Philip. Philips seems to have benefited from John the Baptist pointing out Jesus. Most people get to know Jesus because a friend or family member introduced him. What happened when Nathanael met Jesus? Jesus spoke first. “Here is a true Israelite in whom there is no deceit.” Notice that Jesus paid Nathanael a complement. Of all the things he could have said about Nathanael. He could’ve said, “Here’s Nathanael, who has a prejudice against Nazareth. Here’s Nathanael, who doesn’t believe that I am the Messiah. Here’s Nathanael, who when he was 12 years old pushed his sister down the stairs.” Of all the things Jesus could have said, he complimented Nathanael. This is a true Israelite, there is no deceit in him. He’s honest when he has questions and doubts. He doesn’t pretend. What grace from Jesus to praise Nathanael rather than tearing into him. So also when you come to Jesus with questions, don’t worry that he’s looking down at you disapprovingly. He doesn’t look at you and say, “here’s the doubter, the fool, the faithless.” Be amazed at the graciousness of Jesus with you. Here is a person who is honest enough to admit they have a question, they don’t have everything about me figured out. But they’re here. Nathanael wasn’t convinced. “How do you know me?” he asked. Then Jesus shared supernatural knowledge. “Before Philip called you, I saw you under the fig tree.” We’re not sure exactly what that meant.
What was Nathanael doing under the fig tree? Whatever it was, it meant a lot to Nathanael. He now knew, “Jesus, you are the Son of God, the King of Israel.” Nathanael took Jesus at his word. Coming to Jesus today still involves taking Jesus at his word. Today it’s common to say of Jesus, “He’s a great religious and moral teacher, an inspirational figure. But let’s not say he’s the Son of God, that’s just a misunderstanding.” The problem with that opinion is that places like this and really on every page of the accounts of his life, you find extraordinary claims about Jesus. He didn’t say to Nathan, “now don’t call me the son of God, I’m just a great teacher.” In fact, Jesus does the opposite, he only intensified the claim to be God by what he said next. “Amen, amen I tell you.” Now that may seem like just a way to introduce what he said next, but there is far more going on in this phrase. Jesus is claiming speak with the authority of God himself. Every other prophet or religious teacher would say things like, “Amen, Amen, God says to you.” Jesus says, “Amen, Amen, I tell you.” I am not speaking for God, I’m speaking as God. Whenever you come to Jesus today, you need to take Jesus at his word. CS Lewis summarized the options very well. You either have to take Jesus as a liar, a lunatic, or as Lord. The option of taking Jesus as a great moral teacher is not an option that he intended to leave open to you. He claimed to be God. He claimed to see Satan fall like lightning. He claimed to be coming in the future to judge the living and the dead. Those are not the claims of a great teacher. They are either the claims of a liar, a lunatic, or the Lord himself. But he didn’t even stop there. He went on to make an even greater claim as God. Before I get to it, I think this is a place where many of us stumble and fall short of experiencing Jesus in the same way that Nathanael did. You’re here to worship Jesus today, you want to follow him, maybe you even read your Bible and pray regularly as a way of spending time with him. But often you don’t look to Jesus and expect him to do truly amazing things in your life. You have low expectations for how much of a difference he actually makes in your daily life. You look at your time with Jesus as enough to get rid of some sin guilt, to make you a little more certain of life with him after death, life will get a little better; but you don’t really expect life to be transformed by him. We all often set the bar of life with Jesus very low. Jesus set the bar incredibly high. He said to Nathanael, “You believe because I said I saw you under the fig tree. You will see greater things than this. You will see heaven opened, and angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” What’s going on here? There’s a story about Jacob, who was renamed Israel. Jacob had to flee home because his brother Esau wanted to kill him. He was on the run with nothing, and he went to sleep and had a dream in which he saw a ladder extending from earth to heaven, and angels were ascending and descending on the ladder. Jesus said to Nathan, You will see what Jacob saw. Heaven opened. The realm of invisible God opened up to you, made available to you. Angels, the powerful, perfect servants of God will serve you. What’s the link? Not a ladder, not a stairway, the angels ascend and descend on the Son of Man. Jesus’ title for himself. He was telling Nathan, “I am the stairway. I am the way for heaven to be opened to you and
angels to serve you. I am not teaching you a way to God, I am the way to God. And every story of Scripture is really about me bringing people to God.” It’s an amazing claim, far beyond anything Nathan would have thought to ask or imagine. What’s the rest of the story? After this introduction to Jesus, Nathan followed him not only to Galilee, but many places. He became one of the 12 disciples. And where is Nathanael right now? His body is dead, but his soul lives, and experiences heaven opened in a new way, and angels serving him, all because Jesus has led him to God. One day his body will rise and enjoy that closeness to God. The same is true for you. The simple invitation to follow Jesus, spend time with him, can lead you to the same place as Nathanael, amazed at the claims Jesus makes for you. He is your way to experience heaven opened and angels serving you. All because Jesus was willing that his soul would take our deceit, our stubborn refusal to believe God, that’s how our souls can have friendship with God right now. And because Jesus’ body was lifted up on a cross to die, put in a grave dead, only to come alive again 3 days later, you can have the assurance that like Nathanael, your body will rise one day to new life with Jesus. He is the way. He is the reason your future will be filled with greater and greater experiences of Jesus just like Nathanael. Jesus calls us to an adventure. Have you ever met someone who you could tell right away, they understood you? A friend, a teacher? Why was that so impactful? Because deep down we all want to be known and loved for who we are. Jesus is the one person who knows you all the way down, and loves you all the way up. Jesus, the same one who called stars into existence, not only knows you, but takes an interest in you. He sees you when you are under your fig trees. He wants you to follow him, travel with him, spend time with him. How can we do that? We can’t go to Jesus’ house like they could. We can’t actually travel to Galilee with him like they did. But we can listen to the people who did see him. We can spend time reading and reflecting on the written accounts of Jesus’ life, which are very historically verifiable. We can spend time with him by reading, and thinking, comparing, asking questions, doing it all in groups, and watching as Jesus does great things in our lives. We should expect things to change. For Philip and Nathanael, their geographic location changed. For you and I, it will more likely be our questions and objections that change. Our life obedience will change. It’s really the difference between being a fan or a follower. Imagine that you are a fan of a great movie producer. You watch all their movies, and you are inspired by their work. Then let’s say that you have a chance to meet this movie producer, you have lunch with them and have a conversation, and you feel great about it. The truth is, as long as you are a fan, you really only let that person into a very small part of who you are. You only know a small part of who they are, and you only are really affected in a small part of who you are. But let’s say you marry that person. Suddenly you’re not just a fan anymore, you’re a constant companion. More of who you are is affected by more of who they are. You let them in and they change you in much more deep and profound ways. Most basically it’s because you spend way more time with them. Last question for you to consider: are you a fan or a follower of Jesus? When you spend time with him, is it only to let a small part of him affect a small part of him? Or have
you given him permission to have access to all of you with all of him? His invitation is not to be a fan, but a follower of him. So why not come and see what Jesus has for you? Amen.