How did you come to Christ? What was the compelling reason? We talked about that a little last week. What was it that you heard in a conversation, or heard in a sermon, or that you read somewhere? What was it that compelled you to come? I came to Christ, and we were talking about this in Sunday school, I came to Christ because I was afraid not to. I knew that only He could save me from the eternal punishment in hell. I didn't stay there by God's grace. God brought me along to enjoy and appreciate the joys of a relationship with Him. But it took something to get me to move. Without doubt, whatever truth is that brought you to Christ, the whole process was being driven by the Holy Spirit the whole time. For without the Holy Spirit, No one would come to Christ. I'll bet if we were all to tell our stories, everyone would be a little bit different. And the message we responded to would be stated a little differently. And how we would have described what happened to us at the time would be different. Well, we're finding the same thing in John. We have people coming to Christ, but both the appeals and the responses are as different as the individuals. Remember how Andrew and John were standing next to John the Baptist when John looked at Jesus and said, behold the Lamb of God. That's how they came. Peter came to Christ when his brother told him, we found the Messiah. And this morning we'll see how Nathaniel comes to Christ. If you and I are to bring people to Christ, we have to know the gospel. That's a certainty. We must be able to repeat the saving message of Jesus Christ. But we'll find that as we share it with different people, different people will have different questions. That's why it's sometimes so important that we present the gospel in the context of relationship. in the context of caring for that person to the point that we're not only dropping a gospel bomb on them, not to make light of the gospel, the gospel is vitally important. They have to have that, that's an essential, but along with that, we are doing everything we can to offer them the opportunity to come through Christ through the only way a person can come to Christ. That is how most people come to Christ, through a fellow believer, sharing with them the gospel in the context of relationship. Every person has to believe the gospel, but every person's experience along that way is likely to be different. This morning, we get to see how Nathaniel came to Christ. Verse 43, the next day, Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, follow me. It's interesting in this sentence that the word Jesus is not in the text. It's an assumption that the translators made that Jesus decided. It's not clear in the sentence who made the decision to go to Galilee. You wouldn't know that by just reading it. Some pose that it may have been Andrew who was allowed to decide this. And the reasoning that these people give normally is that in this way, all of the people who came to Christ were brought by somebody else. But I don't think that's necessary. If Jesus decided to seek out Philip, this was an exception to the others, but it would show that Jesus did single out people. Jesus was determined to get to Philip. And I think it was probably Jesus who decided to go to Galilee. But again, that's an opinion. Now, we need to keep in mind that while this text is describing people coming to Jesus from a human perspective, they are truly deciding to come to Christ. They are deciding it. No one comes to Christ without deciding to. John the Baptist might have been an exception to that rule. I don't understand how all that works. But no one comes to Christ without deciding to. That's all true. But we are not told in this text that what happens spiritually before they come. Regeneration precedes faith. A person must be born again before they'll truly come to Christ for salvation. Now, where Jesus says, follow me, Jesus was not calling these people to full-time discipleship. He does that at a later time in the other gospels. But at this point, Jesus is asking them to come along for the ride for a little bit. Jesus was inviting people to come along and listen to him, to learn from him. Verse 44, Philip was from Bethsaida, the city. There's some apparent contradictions in some of these statements where you'll see that the same person is from two different places. But it's actually pretty common. If someone from Garrett County asks me where I'm from, I say Elysburg, Pennsylvania. But if I go to North Carolina and somebody asks me where I am from, I say Oakland, Maryland. Context is everything. No one would accuse me of lying, even though I give two different answers. Philip was probably another fisherman, and the same thing was true. Philip found Nathanael and said to him, we have found him of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. Now look at this. How is Jesus gaining his following? It's by people telling people that they know and love about Jesus. It's that simple. That is still the most common ways that people come to Christ. People telling people they know and love about Jesus. Now look at the claims. Okay, they say, we found him. Okay, who's the him? Of whom Moses in the law writes. Okay, so we found him. that Moses talked about. Now, where was that? And they would have known. Deuteronomy 18, 15 through 19. The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your midst, from your brother. And remember, this is in Deuteronomy, this is in the law. Him you shall hear according to all you desired of the Lord your God in Horeb in the day of the assembly, saying, let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God, nor let me see this great fire anymore lest I die. These are people afraid of coming into contact with God himself, the Father. And the Lord said to me, What they have spoken is good. I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brethren, and will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. And it shall be that whoever will not hear my words, which he speaks in my name, I will require of him." We looked earlier in our study, The disciples evidently use this scripture, or eventually use this scripture to describe Christ. So we know that this scripture was referring to Christ, they used it that way. So in the law is revealed this Christ who was to come. And so when they're saying, this is of whom the law writes, they're thinking this guy. So they're saying, we found this guy, in whom also the prophets wrote, he says. Now, we could look at hundreds of prophecies in the Old Testament prophetic books that point to Christ. Isaiah 53 is certainly a wonderful one. Now, Philip must have known Nathaniel enough to know that only that which directly came from Scripture would appeal to this guy. He's one of them. You know, he's one of the guys that he cares about what Scripture means. He wasn't looking for some new fad or some new idea, show me what scripture says. He was looking for a specific answer to a specific biblical promise. And that's what Philip offers him. And who is this that fulfills the prophecies? Who is he? Now, this is the most common way of describing who a person is. His name is Jesus, he came from Nazareth, and he's the son of Joseph. Like we could say, Levi is Mark's son from Oakland, and it really narrows down who the person is. So Philip is really enthusiastic, and he wants Nathaniel to meet Jesus. Now, how does Nathaniel respond? Verse 46, Nathaniel said to him, can anything good come out of Nazareth? not exactly the opening line you want when you're really enthused about something and you share it and this is what you get back, but the Judeans had a prejudice against the Galileans, and the Galileans had a prejudice against the town of Nazareth. It's kind of like somebody from New York City might make fun of the little town of Oakland, and those in Oakland might make fun of the little town of Gormania. There's always some place that's less desirable than the place you're in. Last time I used the town of Kitzmiller as an example of a tiny insignificant town, and we had a visitor who was born in Kitzmiller. So if anyone's from Gormania, I intend no offense. It's just an example. But I love Philip's response. He doesn't get sidetracked. He doesn't get stuck in, oh, I think it was you. He doesn't get stuck in an argument trying to prove that Nazareth is really a great town. He doesn't try to argue that Messiah can't be from Nazareth. No, he just cuts to the chase and he says this, Philip said to him, come and see. Come and see. Sometimes the best approach is to appeal to a person to come right to Jesus. They may have questions about apologetics. They may have questions about the Bible having some contradictions or the Bible just being written by men. We've heard them. If you've shared the gospel, you've heard these. And I've often gone off in some of those tracks, but sometimes we would do better to call them to read the gospels for themselves before we talk about these side issues. Most people only know what they've heard about scripture. People haven't read it. They've never read it for themselves. It's not true of everyone, but it's true of a lot. My approach might be to read the first three chapters of John and we'll get together and talk about it. See what you think. You come to Jesus. Come and see. Let Jesus convince you about what the truth is. Well, Philip probably had a good enough relationship with Nathanael that Nathanael did come and see. He might not have liked the idea. He might have thought, no good can come from there, but I'll give you a chance because you're not stupid. You're my friend and I'll listen to you. So verse 47, Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, behold an Israelite indeed in whom there is no deceit. Now, Jesus starts a theme here that is easily missed. At least I missed it. Let's look at that before we think about this human interaction. First, think about an Israelite who had deceit. Think about an Israelite who had deceit. It was Israel. It was Jacob, who was the most deceitful patriarch. That award would have to go to Jacob. He was the supplanter. That's what his name meant. You had to watch Doing Deals with Jacob. He was crafty. He might not always be lying, but he's often deceiving. He's got his big brother's birthright by deception. So one could have said in the beginning of Jacob's life, no one could have said, Here are God's people who has no deceit. No one would have looked at Jacob and said that. But after Jacob lived a while, he learned a few lessons. This culminated in Jacob wrestling with the pre-incarnate Christ, or an angel, don't know which. And when the match was complete, his opponent renamed Jacob Israel, which means he strives with God. He strives with God. Genesis 32, 28 says, then he said, your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed. So right away, Nathanael was probably thinking about Jacob. But then in verse 51, Jesus tells Nathanael that he would see the angels of God ascending and descending on the son of man. Where did that happen? What would that have reminded him? And he'd have gone back to Genesis 28, 12 in Jacob's dream, where it says, and he dreamed, and behold, there was a ladder set upon the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven, and behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. So Jesus' whole conversation with Nathaniel was couched in the Old Testament imagery here. Evidently, Jesus knew that this would have a bigger impact on Nathanael than some of the other things that he may have said. I also wonder if this isn't what Nathanael was actually thinking about when he was sitting under the tree before Philip called him. You can imagine the effect that would have had. So Jesus says about Nathanael, behold an Israelite indeed in whom there is no deceit. Behold a son of Jacob who has no Jacob in him. That's what he's saying. That would have been quite a compliment. Now, I would guess that this was not an absolute statement. He may have been guilty of deception at some points in his life. I mean, I sort of wish he was my kid if he never did. That'd be pretty sweet to have a child that never deceives anyone for anything. That's a rare child indeed. I think impossibility, at least some of the time, to avoid consequences. Kids, have you ever lied to your parents to keep yourself out of trouble? It's that kind of thing. But no one who knew Nathaniel would say his most obvious sin was duplicity, or hypocrisy, or trickery, or deception. Nathaniel was an honest man. What you saw was what you got with Nathaniel. He was not fake, he was real. How well would we stand up to Christ's evaluation of our honesty? Are we so real that Jesus could look at us and say, here's someone in whom there is no deceit? We should be. Now, look at how Nathanael responds. Nathanael said to him, how do you know me? Evidently, Nathanael saw himself as the same kind of person that Jesus calls him. He doesn't act surprised and he doesn't act overly complimented. It's more like, well, that's sort of how I am, but how do you know it? My guess is Nathanael was a deep thinker, and that he knew himself. And that's somewhat of a rare commodity, he knew himself. He made an effort to tell the truth. So when Nathanael hears Jesus referred to him as not being as Gollum in the Lord of the Rings would say, Trixie, Nathanael essentially says, how do you know about me? After all, you certainly can't know this kind of thing about a person without spending some time with him, and you haven't spent time with me, or he could have learned it from my friends. Is that how? Nathaniel may have expected Jesus to say, well, Philip told me all about you before I called you. But he would not have expected what Jesus said next. Jesus answered him, before Philip called you, When you were under the fig tree, I saw you." Whoa, now that's spooky. Evidently, no one was with Philip when Philip was under the fig tree. Now in that time period, the phrase under the fig tree often came with it the idea that a person was there for a spiritual reason. Maybe they were praying, maybe they were meditating on the word, maybe they were reading the word. That is frequently where you would do such a thing. And that's often what people did when they were hanging out under a fig tree. And while Nathaniel was thinking about God, God was thinking about Nathaniel. When Nathaniel was thinking about God, God was thinking about Nathaniel. That's always true of a true believer. And that's comforting. John again pulls back the curtain and keeps doing this. John pulls back the curtains and he shows us what God is doing that we cannot see. Jesus is looking where a human heart cannot look and he's seeing. And not only Nathanael's actions, but he's seeing Nathanael's very heart, his thoughts. What can you learn from this? Really. Jesus knows where Nathaniel was, what he was doing and what he was thinking. What does that tell you? Let's think for a minute how our lives would change if we were to apply the simple truth in every area of our lives. The simple truth is God is watching. God is watching, and he's watching with a view of love. Like, he's not watching, like, Santa Claus, you know, making a list, everyone's naughty and nice, you know, fictional Santa Claus, I might add. But God is watching, and he knows what we are doing, and he knows why we are doing it. He knows our real motives, and he knows what we say about our motives. He sees us, and he cares about us. He cares about what we are doing. What would change in our lives if we remained aware of that truth every moment? And I know this is no new idea, and I know this is something that we try to do, live in the presence of God. The truth is, it is true every moment, but we often lose sight of it. We get busy, we get distracted. Jesus sees. Jesus knows. My first thought is how much that would keep me from doing anything evil or questionable or sneaky or any of the bad things. I would wanna make sure everything I said was absolutely true, even if I can get away with lying. I would not want to wrong, to do wrong with Jesus looking on. The truth is he is looking on, but it's easy to forget that fact. Yeah, keeping that truth in our minds would surely help us to not do anything wicked. But it works the other way too. There's a very, very positive side to this. Often we feel that what we're doing has no significance. Know what I mean? No human sees the mundane task that we do day after day. But if Jesus is watching, suddenly every task becomes a fresh opportunity for honoring him. and pleasing Him, and gifting Him. We can offer up every little task we do as a sacrifice to Him that He sees, and that He is pleased with, and that He will reward. Jesus saw in Nathaniel, and He seems to be impressed. Let that encourage you. As you're living for Jesus, as you're trying to make changes that some of us are committed to for this new year, and in our lives, however that works, as all of us are trying to live out the faithfulness we know that we should, Jesus is watching. And he cares about you. And he knows you. And he will not miss a single thing that you do in faithfulness to him. He sees it. He cares about it. Look how Nathaniel responds. Nathaniel answered him, Rabbi, you're the son of God. You are the king of Israel. Now, Nathaniel's impressed. I would not have thought Nathaniel would be so easily switched, so easily impressed. I don't think Thomas would have made that change so quickly. He was a little more cynical. But evidently Jesus thinks that Nathaniel is a little too easily impressed. Nathaniel moves from being a skeptic to being a believer with one simple evidence that frankly could have been trickery. The faith healers pull this stuff off all the time with trickery. They find out all the details of a person's lives ahead of time and then they use that information to pretend that the Holy Spirit is revealing them stuff supernaturally to normally get person's money. But fortunately for Nathaniel, this is not the case. Nathaniel calls Jesus rabbi, and this was a great compliment. It would be like calling someone doctor. It was a prestigious title. And Nathaniel recognized Jesus as an authoritative teacher. And then he calls him the son of God. Now, Hebrew does not have as many adjectives as a lot of languages do. So they made up for it with phrases like son of. Like son of. If a man was particularly evil, he was called a son of darkness. A wicked man was called a son of wickedness. People who are suffering are called sons of affliction. Those who deserve execution are sons of death. You see what I mean? Well here, Nathaniel calls Jesus the son of God because that's what best describes him. He is the epitome of God's character. Jesus is about God. Jesus is God's son by his very nature. Jewish kings were sometimes addressed by God as his son. So Jewish kings were frequently called son of God. In Psalms 2, 6 through 8, it says, as for me, I've set my king on Zion, my holy hill. I'll tell you of the decree. The Lord said to me, you are my son. Today I have begotten you. Ask of me and I will make the nations your heritage and the ends of the earth your possession." So we know this was about Christ, but originally it would have been understood to be about kings. So the phrase son of God probably would have been understood as Jesus' kingly role. And then Nathanael says right out, Jesus, you're the king of Israel. Now, Jesus had just made a reference to the life of Jacob, the life of Israel, the person. Nathaniel is responding by saying that Jesus is superior to all that. Jesus is superior to Israel. Jesus is the king of Israel. He's the king over the offspring of Israel. The king of Israel would have also been understood as a reference to the Messiah. So that's what he's referring to. And I think it's safe to say that Nathaniel jumped to a conclusion. Now that's not always safe. But in this safe, if you jump to a conclusion that Jesus is good, stick with it. You're right on. You can jump as much as you want, because you're going to be right even if you got there the wrong way. In this case, it was the safest of all conclusions. Jesus answered him and said, because I said to you, I saw you under the fig tree, do you believe because of that? Well, you just wait and see. You're going to see greater things than these. Now of all the miracles that Jesus did, which do you think was the least notable, the most easy to fake? You know, I don't know, I don't know which one might be, but he turned water into wine, that'd be hard. Told storms to shut up, that'd be hard. Used fish to pay taxes, that'd be hard. Caught fish where there shouldn't have been any, that'd be hard. And we could go on and on, but here Jesus sees something that no human could possibly see. It's like Jesus is saying, Nathaniel, it's good you believe. You got it right, it's good you believe, and it's good you were convinced by this little miracle. But if you think this is something, just hang on for a while. You're gonna see some amazing things, things you can't conceive of. And so he did. He saw many of the miracles mentioned in the New Testament. You'll see greater things than these. Where else do you remember hearing that phrase? You'll see greater things than these. John 14, 12 through 14, says, truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do, and greater works than these he will do. Greater things, because I'm going to the Father. Whatever you ask in my name, this I'll do, and that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I'll do it. Do you believe It is a miracle of God when a person repents of their sin and comes to Jesus Christ in faith. I absolutely do. Given everything that scripture says about it, there is no one who'd do that apart from a supernatural work of God. Well, when Jesus was here, these miracles were very limited. They were limited to a very small geography with only a few preachers. People were being saved, but the number was tiny in light of the whole world. But after Pentecost, immediately thousands began to be saved. And then persecution drove the believers to the whole known world at the time, and it wasn't too long until there were a million believers. While the miracles of Jesus, what he did, were often of a different nature than the miracle of saving souls and changing lives, it's easy to see that Jesus' highest priority miracle was the salvation of a soul, not the impression on us human beings of all the power that he bestowed. Salvation is the greater miracle. Salvation is the greatest miracle. The angels didn't rejoice at the coming of the storm. The angels didn't rejoice at the raising of the dead that we know of, but we know for sure the angels rejoice every time a person comes to Christ. They know that this person will be with them for all time and eternity. They just entered the heavenly club and they like it. That miracle's worth an angelic party. Then Jesus moves on to the real heart of who he is, and he said to him, truly I say to you, you'll see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man. Now in the initial story in Genesis 28, the Lord stood above this ladder that the angels were ascending and descending on. Now it looks like they're coming and going and visiting Jesus on earth, similar to how they visited Jacob. Jesus is the true Israel. That's the point they would have gotten. Heaven being open means that Nathanael would get a chance to look into the heavenly realities. Jesus is actually Jacob's Messiah. It's no longer at Bethel that God reveals himself, but it is in and through his Messiah that he reveals himself. And then notice that Jesus uses the title Son of Man, and that's from Daniel 7.13. We covered that pretty well, I think, in Daniel. But it says, I was watching in the night visions, and behold, one like the Son of Man, coming with the clouds of heaven, he came to the Ancient of Days, and they brought him near before him. Now, it's odd that the Son of Man is only referenced a few times in the Old Testament. It's just there a couple of times. Yet this is how Jesus referred to himself more often than any other title. In this passage, the Son of Man is granted universal authority by the Ancient of Days in Daniel. MacArthur says this, in John's Gospel, the phrase Son of Man is associated with Jesus' suffering and death, his provision of salvation, and his authority to judge. Those three things. In the future, the son of man will receive the kingdom from the ancient of days. That we get from the Old Testament. So this gives us a pretty good scope of the use of son of man. Christ could use this title when he used it, as he used it, because it didn't convey that Jesus was the king of Israel in the sense that it didn't convey that he was gonna kick out the Romans and usher in a time of political supremacy. When he says the son of man, he's talking in a realm that isn't going to associate great political power. He was able to convey that he would be the righteous suffer rather than the conqueror king. He'll come as the conqueror king, but not this visit. Now, Nathaniel was probably not capturing all this, and this is still MacArthur's quote. It was too much to take in all at once, and he was probably mystified like the rest of the disciples. They spent a lot of their time mystifying. But they would recall it later and have a deeper understanding, end of quote. So how should the truths this morning change how we live and how we think? You may have already had the Lord nudge you in some area of your life, and whatever that is, go with it. give that time this afternoon to lay it before the Lord. But this may be a good week to realize that we are serving the Lord that sees us under the fig tree, or under the living room ceiling, or under the workplace ceiling. We can fool lots of people about lots of things, and we can say anything we want in a conversation, because nobody can look into our heart and get to the heart of the matter. We can get ourselves out of a lot of hot water that way. But Jesus knows. He knows the truths. So we do well to live every moment, not as concerned about the relationships around us, but our relationship with God in those relationships around us. Not as concerned about what people think, but more concerned about what God knows. And we have opportunity all day long to do everything that we do in worship of God as a living sacrifice lived out in his presence. It's hard to keep that mentality, but it's as true as true can be. So in light of the fact, I was gonna say, maybe this would be another mirror statement. Good to hang somewhere for this week. In light of the fact that Jesus is with me, right here, right now, how should I handle the next thing I face? In light of the fact that Jesus is with me, right here, right now, How should I handle the next thing I face? Let's pray. Lord, you are here.