Jesus Talked With Nathanael

Philip had run to his closest friend and told him about Jesus. In response to his friend's understandable skepticism, Philip merely said, Come and see for yourself.

Notice that when he came into view, Jesus saw Nathanael, He saw his heart, and said “Here’s a real Israelite.” That must have been humbling for Nathanael, because he had kind of implied Jesus wasn’t, since Jesus was from Nazareth.

Then Jesus said, “In him is no deceit,” or “no guile.” Jesus was saying Nathanael was honest and up front, he had integrity. This must have made Nathanael pretty uncomfortable! How could Jesus understand him like that?

Then Jesus told him,

"Before Philip called you, I saw you under the fig tree." (John 1:48)

What Nathanael said next is remarkable

"Rabbi, you are the Son of God and the King of Israel!" (John 1:49)

That was the most dramatic thing any of these men had said yet about Jesus. How did such a skeptic turn into a believer, just like that? What could possibly have happened in Nathanael’s heart?

The fig tree was the common place for prayer, especially for young rabbinic students. And in Nathanael’s day, the rabbis taught that every time one prayed they were to pray for the coming of the Messiah. So what was Nathanael doing when Philip came to find him? Nathanael put two and two together in his mind. Only Messiah would have seen him praying for Messiah.

Nathanael’s response of faith must have pleased Jesus, because He gave further revelation – that’s what happens when you and I respond to God in believing faith, He opens our eyes to even deeper insight,

"Did you believe me just because I said that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see something even greater. I tell you for certain that you will see heaven open and God's angels going up and coming down on the Son of Man." (John 1:50-51)

This is the first time the term “Son of Man” comes up, and is rich with meaning. We will study more what this phrase means as we get deeper into the blended gospels.

Jesus was talking about Jacob’s dream as he was running away from his brother, falling asleep alone in the desert. Jacob saw the angels going up and down from earth to God and he knew God would be with him. The actual staircase was hidden in plain view! How many people must have read about Jacob’s dream over the centuries and never even thought about the significance of that staircase.

The staircase was Jesus, Son of God and Son of Man, connecting God with people.

God uses witnesses to bring people to Jesus

The natural overflow of discovering Jesus for these men was to bring others to Him. So how strong is that natural overflow in your life and mine right now? Which is stronger, self-consciousness, lack of confidence, and wanting people to like you; or a sense of excitement to introduce people to Jesus?

When you and I love God the most, we will point people to Him, and not to ourselves, regardless of the circumstances. How well do you and I do that? How well do we point people to Jesus by urging them to pray and look to the Bible for answers, instead of to ourselves for answers? Who will you ask to “come and see” Jesus this week?

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The First Five Disciples Begin To Follow Jesus

The next day John the Baptist was still preaching repentance and baptizing people, preparing them to follow Messiah. Jesus again came to where John was teaching, so John spoke to the two disciples who were standing near him, intent on what he had to say. Andrew and John heard the Baptist announce once again that Jesus was the Lamb of God.

When John pointed Jesus out to them, there was no question but that they would follow Him.

Do you think their hearts pounded when Jesus turned around and saw them? Pay attention to that. With each person who came to Jesus, Jesus looked at that person and read their heart. As Jesus saw them He said “what do you seek?”

Those are the first words Jesus says in John’s gospel, maybe the first words He spoke as He began his public ministry.

“What are you looking for in life? What are you looking for from Me?”

Think of Who Jesus was and what these two men must have been thinking and wondering about. John and Andrew wanted to be near Jesus and spend time with Him. They wanted to know Him.

So Jesus invited them to come and spend time with Him. They spent an entire afternoon and evening with Jesus, and they fell in love with Him. No doubt the Lord told them something about His mission, revealed their own hearts to them and answered their questions. They were so fascinated they could hardly tear themselves away.

Others can tell you about Jesus, and about God, but you will only really get to know Him by spending time with Him yourself.
* How close am I willing to get to Jesus and how long am I willing to stay with Him?
* Does He ever get a whole day from me, let alone my whole life?

It seems as though both Andrew and John got the same idea of racing to get their brothers,
--> but Andrew was the first to find his brother Simon.
--> Andrew was the first to announce, “We have found the Messiah,” and bring his brother to Jesus.
--> In fact, all throughout the gospels, Andrew was bringing people to Jesus – the boy with the loaves and the fish, and later some Greeks who were looking for the Messiah.

When Simon arrived it says Jesus looked at him. The meaning of that word is to look intently, like looking at a work of art. Then Jesus told Simon he would be Peter, a rock, solid, dependable and true. I think Peter must have hung on to that three years later during the events surrounding Jesus’ trial.

The day after that Jesus decided to go up to Galilee where all these men had their fishing businesses, and He found Philip. Philip was from Andrew and Peter’s home town, Bethsaida, a small fishing village, so probably they all knew each other.

Philip had the same response as Andrew and John, he fell in love with Jesus and went to find his good friend Nathanael. In the other gospels Nathanael is referred to as Bartholomew, “Bar” means “son of,” so he was Nathanael, son of Tolmai, and he and Philip were inseparable friends, always grouped together on later missionary expeditions.

Nathanael was a student of the scriptures, so Philip told him about finding the one Moses and the prophets had written about. But when Philip said Jesus was from Nazareth, right away Nathanael was skeptical. Nazareth was considered only a grade above Samaria, full of Gentiles and the worship of pagan deities. What prejudices are revealed by your and my attitudes?

Did you notice how Philip didn’t argue? He just said what Jesus had said before, “Come and see.” To Nathanael’s credit, he did.

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Waking The Fallen (2003) "Radiant Eclipse"

[reprinted as written by Avenged Sevenfold]
As performed by A7X

Two nights ago I was shot
A bullet sunk straight through my skull
A friend pulled the trigger that silenced me
No pain as I awoke, but dead
Seeing the face of the man
The time as he lays down his gun
I knew this was going to take place
White silence, so peaceful, so numb

No one knows the time they're changing
No one will see through:

You're all gone to me, (gone to me)
I've been pulled out to watch from my eternal sleep
Intuition and a warning to believe (I will believe)
Something was wrong and though I felt I had to stay
Moving on seemed to be somber bliss
Without one goodbye
I watch my Mother shed tears
(and taste the blood she cries
and taste the blood she cries)

No:This gun has stopped time in its tracks
Has altered the course of my fate
Destiny is shattered and timeless
Closed eyes feel the cold winds embrace

I'll watch you call, calling for me,
you can't bring back time...
Close your eyes or look away,
fate exposed and won't let me stay
Hope will fall tonight with broken wings,
descending entity in me

My voice has been taken from me.
The more I listen, the more I have to say

Like a ballad, the poet sings a tragic tale of life cut short. Betrayal comes through a friend ~ we almost hear Caesar's famous words to his beloved nephew, "Et tu, Brutus?"

The poet sees all, the treachery of his friend, the shredded grief of his mother spilling tears of blood, the shattering of his destiny, the desparate cries of his friends trying to call him back to life. But nothing can change the finality of his death.

Now that he is in this spirit realm he senses peace, silence, numbness, the promise of somber bliss. He watches as broken hopes and broken dreams coalesce in his body, stilled by the cold embrace of death. What keeps him here, gazing down on this awful scene, is the wrongness of it. He's been pulled out of what would be his eternal sleep to stay in this strange halfway place.

Now as he listens he realizes, poignantly, that he has something important to say, a warning to believe...but death has taken his voice from him.

How do you feel about the poet's claim that fate can be altered? Who is in control in this story? Not even the poet, but the betrayer, who lays down his smoking gun, having now silenced the voice he no longer wanted to hear.

Where was God? Why would He allow the destiny of anyone to be destroyed? How could any good come from such ruin? How could this tableau be anything different than what we are given to see, the young hero lying in the widening pool of his own blood, his mother kneeling beside him, wracked with sobs, the betrayer shadowed in the background, wails rising from his stunned and devastated friends?

Change the picture only a little and there is Jesus, dead in His mother's arms, John and the others ravaged by grief, dark Judas slipping quietly away.

In the physical earthly realm passersby saw a man shredded by flogging, naked, hanging on a cross between two known felons. His crime was posted over his head, “King of the Jews.” Not much to report, just another sordid crucifixion brought to you by the Roman empire.

But in the spiritual heavenly realm a vast transaction was taking place, immeasurable in size. In fact, what was happening on the spiritual plane finally affected the earthly realm to such a degree that all the light was sucked out of the area, and darkness completely blanketed the crucified Lord. That was heavily indicative of what it cost God to redeem His people from sin and death.

“Redemption” was originally a technical term, used in the ancient near east, in the world of commerce. It was used specifically in connection with the buying and selling of slaves. A person being sold as a slave could be purchased to own, or could be “redeemed” for the express purpose of being set free. The price of redemption was called a “ransom.”

In Jesus’ day slavery was pretty commonplace. You could offer yourself as a slave, which people routinely did in order to pay off debts or provide for their families, and that’s what Adam and Eve originally did, they freely entered into sin’s employ. Your parents could sell you as a child into slavery, and in a sense that happened with the whole human race, since Adam and Eve consigned all their descendants to sin’s slavery. Finally, you could be born a slave of slave parents, and that is exactly what happened with you and me, and all people. We were born slaves to sin.

When you belong to sin, all sin will give you, in the end, is increasing wickedness, corruption and death and there is no way out except to be redeemed by someone who doesn’t belong to the same master. We could never have redeemed ourselves, because everything you and I might have tried to lay claim to by way of payment already belonged to our master, sin.

In order to purchase a slave, something of value had to be exchanged, whether the coin of the realm or some other product that could be used as cash. Peter said that Jesus paid with something that was even more valuable than silver or gold, which, after all, as precious as it is, is still perishable.

Without Jesus you and I would have been condemned to a life of sin ending in death. Jesus did more than dig into His treasure to pay a ransom for us, to rescue us from our cruel master of sin. In order for Jesus to pay what would be recognized by God as the coin of the realm, He had to become a man, He had to have a life that He could live perfectly, without one sin, without one way that sin or death could have a hold on Him.

Jesus substituted Himself for us, He took the penalty for us. In a way the ransom He had to pay, the only ransom that would be accepted, was to give His life in our place, to take all the sin into Himself and to allow the wrath of God to consume our sin in Him. Jesus redeemed us from our empty lives with His own blood, the blood of a perfect sacrificial lamb.

Jesus actually redeemed people to set them free, to give people the choice again to live in righteousness, and to have eternal life. The Apostle Paul said, “You were bought with a price...Therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s”. There is no way we could ever repay the Lord, and what He has given to us is of such incredible value, incalculable value, there is nothing less that we could give back in gratitude except to devote our whole selves to Him.

God has a purpose in the darkest, most awful moments in your life. What is that purpose? Take a risk. Ask Him expecting an answer.

[It's possible the poet was writing about more than an ordinary person]

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