Sermon Transcript
We’ll start with John chapter 1 verses 43 to 51. The next day, Jesus decided to go to Galilee, and he found Philip and said to him, follow me. Now, Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter.
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. Nathanael said to him, can anything good come out of Nazareth? Philip said to him, come and see. Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit.
Nathanael said to him, how do you know me? Jesus answered, before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you. Nathanael answered him, Rabbi, you are the son of God. You are the king of Israel. Jesus answered him, because I said to you, I saw you under the fig tree, do you believe?
You will see greater things than these. And he said to him, truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man. One of the most predictable human behaviors, one of the most predictable human behaviors is to hide, cover up, not tell the full story. Uh, you know, omit something important, only show the presentable information.
Like in a business deal, um, if we’re, if we are the buyer, we have to presume that we’re going into the arrangement a little bit blind. Um, we know the likelihood that the sellers are not fully revealing everything that they possibly could. Um, it’s why we write contracts when we buy something big. Contracts are meant to protect us against any problem that may pop up.
And we anticipate some amount of problem. You know, we presume we can’t fully trust the other side. It’s baked in. Um, a number of years ago, I saw, I saw an online video. It was a spoof, it was a joke, it was satire, but it, uh, it depicted the buying experience, um, on Craigslist. If you’re not familiar, Craigslist is the online version of what used to be called the classified ads. Um, and you can buy just pretty much anything on Craigslist, computers, cars, dining room tables, whatever.
But this spoof video kind of told the story of someone buying concert tickets from someone else who listed the tickets on Craigslist. So the buyer and seller, um, agree to meet at a neutral location, um, because neither trusts the other. You know, sellers don’t want buyers showing up at their house or vice versa.
I don’t want to get robbed, right? Instead, both sides, um, choose, want to choose a public place where there’s many witnesses in case something happens. Um, and then additionally, in this video, the buyer and seller each had friends who were kind of inconspicuously watching, uh, the deal from afar, just in case there was a problem and they could swoop in at any moment’s notice if needed.
But then finally the moment comes that the guy with the money and the guy with the tickets, they, you know, they’re near each other and they both kind of show what they brought, but not really hold it out there very far. Um, and then they hesitantly exchange, and as they do, they just start examining what was handed to them from the other side, and they discover, oh, it’s a good deal.
You know, it’s real money, it’s real tickets, it’s, it’s the terms they agreed to. The anxiety drops and all, then all the friends come out of the woodwork and they like greet each other with smiles. You know, even though two seconds earlier, they were ready to fight, um, if the deal wasn’t per the terms. You know, it’s a funny video, right?
It was exaggerated, but it points to something real. We assume the other side may not be telling the full story. There may be something hidden that we can’t see. And the other side assumes the same about us. Concealment is embedded so deep that we’ve come to expect it. You know, and we’ve been practicing how to hide from a very young age.
You can probably remember back to when you were little, you did something wrong, you were worried you were going to get in trouble, so you tried to cover it up. And then if your cover didn’t work, you know, your parent or your teacher started asking you about it, you probably spun the story. Even if you were four years old, you, you know, you immediately switched to blame shifting, reframing the circumstances so you don’t look so bad.
No one needed to teach us how to do that. None of us ever went to deception class. You know, how to cover up your mistakes 101. Uh, we didn’t need that class. We already knew. Even as little kids, it felt safer to hide, safer to remain at least partially unknown. And that, that instinct to hide, um, it’s so deep that it influences what we do even when we haven’t done anything wrong.
Even if, uh, being known has nothing to do with getting in trouble, we still resist being known. We push against full transparency. We want to control the narrative, only present the presentable parts of our lives. Um, one obvious example is what people post on social media. You know, people usually only post their highlights, their vacation, the epic experience, the win. You know, so, so then as we scroll through our feed, we see win after win after win of other people, which then our brains interpret
as everyone’s winning except me. Like I’m the loser because I’ve just seen the great things of everyone else’s lives and since I don’t have those great things, there must be something wrong with me. This is one of the reasons why social media leads to depression. We think everybody has it better than us, uh, which isn’t true.
They don’t have it better. They have just as many problems as we do, but we don’t see those problems because everyone feels this pressure to present only the most amazing parts of themselves. Um, this is the same reason why people will take 35 selfies and then they will choose the one that looks best, and then they will use a filter on top of that photo, and then they will post that. Right, why that impulse?
Why do we all do touch-ups before the press release? Why do we resist being known for who we really are? Why do we want to control the narrative? We all do it. Um, actually, even the people on social media who they don’t post their wins and instead, like they’ve kind of made a living out of posting their losses.
You know, they’ve gained popularity by depicting how comically terrible their life is. You know, their job is, their marriage is, their kids are. They they’ve made a joke out of it. There’s comedians like this that their stick is how badly everything is falling apart for them. Okay, but if that is their platform, if they’ve made a career out of, you know, telling stories of their disobedient children, then people keep tuning in to see what’s going to happen next.
And those people feel pressure to keep posting negative things. You know, they can’t post about the day that their kids were perfect angels because that would ruin their carefully curated, curated image of that they have created. So they feel pressure, you know, to just curate what other people see.
We want to control the narrative. Even if we haven’t done anything wrong, we still curate what other people see because it feels safer. But here’s the deal. If everyone is curating, it means no one really knows anyone else because we’ve never even seen each other. You know, the real us and the real them is hidden behind the image that all of us carefully craft to present to the world.
Now, we may ask, what’s the problem with that? So what if we’re not really known? So what if we don’t know anyone else? You know, we’re just interacting with the images everybody kind of puts to the front. What’s the problem? The problem is hiding diminishes our relationships. So we’re missing out on connection and intimacy and depth. And we want connection and intimacy and depth.
We we know those kinds of relationships are better. Hopefully, all of us have experienced it at some point with someone. Hopefully, all of us at some time in our past have had a friend, a spouse, a parent, a somebody with whom we didn’t feel like we needed to put on a show. They knew us. They even knew the embarrassing things about us.
And somehow, with them, we could laugh about it, and it didn’t hurt. It was fun. We felt known, but not judged. We were accepted. Those people got us, got us in a way that others haven’t. We clicked. It was natural. Even though we were totally transparent with them, it still felt safe. That impulse to hide wasn’t there with that person.
And if you’ve ever experienced that, you know those are the best kinds of relationships. We prefer those relationships to the ones where we always feel like we need to keep a little bit of a guard up. I mean, we want, we enjoy the deeper kinds of relationships where we are fully known and fully received.
We want it. And actually, it’s what God wants for us. It’s what humans had at the beginning of time with God and with each other. When God first created us, we hid nothing and we were fully loved. It was paradise. That was at the beginning. But then it all got ruined. And ever since, humans have been hiding, curating, controlling the narrative. Um, we’re in the third week of our series in the book of John where we’re studying the many miracles of Jesus.
We’ve said in the first two weeks that Jesus’ miracles, they were not only um a display of his power, nor were they only uh supporting claim or supporting evidence of his divine claims. Um even though miracles were both of those. They they they demonstrated his power. They backed up his divine claims. But they were also more.
Jesus’ miracles put something back together that is broken in the world. They restore, at least partially, to the goodness that we had at the beginning. They are and they are signs that point forward to the day when Jesus will fully restore all things. Miracles are a taste of the complete redemption to come.
So today, we’re looking at a passage when Jesus restores uh this loss of intimacy and connection that we had at the beginning of time. He brings us back to where we are fully known and fully loved, to the place where we don’t need to hide, and yet, we’re still completely accepted. Um, Jesus restores that. Um and we’ll see it in this account when Jesus invited various men to be his disciples, to follow him.
Okay. Now, off the bat in this narrative, um in this account, we know something is a little bit different about Jesus. Because on the one hand, it was it was very common, first century, uh for rabbis, rabbi means teacher. It was very common for rabbis to have disciples, followers. That was common. Um and the disciples would travel with their rabbi, and the rabbi was usually itinerant.
But but the idea was they were always together. They would eat at the same table. And if the rabbi had a trade or, you know, a job in addition to teaching, then the disciple and rabbi would work that trade together. So morning, noon, and night, the disciple was trying to absorb everything he could from his rabbi.
It was a common arrangement in the first century. That wasn’t new. But what was new with Jesus uh was the rabbi inviting people to follow him. Because typically, uh potential disciples, they applied to study under a certain rabbi. It’s like getting into college. You know, some rabbis were more prestigious than other ones.
And of course, if you’re a rabbi, you you only want to take the best and brightest students. But then here comes Jesus, who upends that typical model. Um instead of disciples applying for admission with him, Jesus is the one who for the most part goes out and says to potential disciples, follow me.
And then another difference, instead of Jesus choosing the best and brightest, we know from other descriptions that the disciples weren’t. Um, you know, they were fishermen, trades people. On one occasion, Jesus called a tax collector. Tax collectors, you know, they’re most ostracized, most rejected people in their community, and for a reason.
They’re really robbing their own people for the benefit of Rome. They’re sellouts. They were not uh they were not part of the in crowd. But Jesus invites those guys in. So we already have hints of Jesus seeing people, kind of with all their mess mess and complexity, and yet still bringing them near.
We already have that hint. But we will see that theme even more as we go through this passage. Um in our text, Jesus introduces himself to a soon-to-be disciple named Nathanael. And Jesus and Nathanael, they have this short dialogue, but in that short exchange, quite a bit happens. Um so as we study these few verses to for today, we will see Nathanael’s instinct to hide, what Jesus does in response, and then how he does it. Like what it takes for Jesus to do what he does.
Nathanael’s instinct to hide, Jesus’ response, and then how Jesus like pulls off that response. So first, Nathanael’s instinct to hide. He’s under a fig tree. The fig leaf or the fig tree, that carries a good bit of biblical significance. Um, with Nathanael, uh we see a subtle connection back to the creation account, but even though it is subtle, it’s hard to miss.
Nearly the first thing we learn about Nathanael is uh Nathanael was doing something under a fig tree. Jesus saw him when he was doing it, and then Nathanael was surprised that anyone knew about it. It’s an echo back to the very first story in the Bible. If you’re not familiar with the biblical creation account, here’s a quick recap. Um God when God created everything, he created everything good. Um everything was completely harmonous, uh harmonious with us and God, with us and each other, with us
and the rest of creation. Everything was exactly as it should be. And at that time, God gave our earliest ancestors one rule, one boundary. God said, stay in this lane right here. If you don’t, things will not turn out as they should. He warned them, if you deviate from my prescribed course, you’re going to have problems.
And what did they do? They deviated from prescribed course. Uh they broke the rule. And as soon as they did, they immediately knew they messed up. You know, they literally took the bite and the goodness of creation collapsed. The weight of their error hit them, and they hid. More specifically, similar to Nathanael, they used fig trees or fig leaves to try to cover themselves up.
They played this game of cat and mouse with God. God comes and asks where they are, and they they don’t want to say what happened. They start making excuses. They don’t want to tell the whole story. For them, it felt safer to hide than to be known. And thus began the long human history of hiding. Now, for the first humans, Adam and Eve, they hid because they sinned.
They had done something wrong. They knew it. They didn’t want to get found out. So they spun the story, right? And we can all relate to that. But as we know, and we already said, we don’t only hide when we’ve done something wrong. This instinct to cover up, to not be known, only show the presentable.
It has tainted everything. There are all sorts of times when we hide, even though we’ve done nothing wrong. I mean, there’s no sin. And this is likely what happened with Nathaniel, because Nathaniel doesn’t appear to have done anything wrong. In fact, Jesus says about Nathaniel, Here is one in which there is no deceit.
No deceit. And yet, he’s still hiding. We know he’s hiding because when Jesus tells him, I saw you under the fig tree. Nathaniel is shocked. Whatever happened there, and we have no idea what it was, clearly Nathaniel thought it was going to stay private. He was not intending on anyone seeing it. So when Jesus tells him, I saw you.
Right? Nathaniel doesn’t respond by saying, Oh, yeah, well, you know, of course, of course you know about the fig tree thing. Everyone knows about that. It was a public event. Nathaniel doesn’t say that. When Jesus says, I saw you under the tree, Nathaniel exclaims, You are the Son of God! Like, if you know about that, you must be omniscient. Like, it’s it’s miraculous, Jesus, that you saw me there. Because no one could possibly have seen what happened under that tree.
You know, whatever occurred, Nathaniel thought it was hidden. He thought the fig tree, the fig leaves would cover it, right? That’s similar to Adam and Eve. So let’s pause for a moment and just self-evaluate. What do we want to keep hidden? What do we want to put under cover? What would we rather people not know?
Which includes sin. I mean, for sure, absolutely. For most of us, it feels more instinctual to hide sin than to confess it. Even the idea of confessing our sin, you know, to another person, that can feel a little terrifying. So even if we muster up the courage to confess at all, we might only reveal, you know, part of the story and not the whole thing.
Like our earliest ancestors, if we sin, we hide. Okay? That is one way that we cover up, true. But let’s also think more deeply about the other ways that we cover up. Like Nathaniel, if he if he wasn’t sinning, what are what are other times that we resist being known? And what do we miss? What do we lose if we stay unknown?
Are there topics of conversation you avoid because you don’t want to be found out? Are there subjects that you talk around? Where do you find yourself curating the narrative? Maybe it’s some deficiency that you perceive in yourself. Maybe it’s something that embarrasses you. Maybe it just doesn’t feel presentable.
You think you’d be rejected if people knew. You think you’d lose honor if people knew. Maybe it’s whenever you feel insecure or afraid, inferior or lonely. Do you feel like you can admit those emotions to others? Maybe you’re in a season where it’s hard for you to make a friend, but you don’t feel like you can share that.
Maybe you never told anyone about the job you applied for but you didn’t get because of some kind of shame. Maybe you’ve never told someone that things are not going well in your marriage. Maybe you’ve never shared that you’re behind on your budget, and then when you get invited to go do a fun adventure, you have to say no, but you don’t want to say the reason that you’re saying no is because you can’t afford it.
Maybe you’ve never shared that you’re having a hard time with one of your kids because you don’t want people to think that you’re a bad parent. You just want to keep all of that under the fig tree. Or maybe it’s not negative at all. You know, some of us hide positive things about our lives. Whenever we did something really well, we maybe we don’t want to tell people how proud we are of it.
Maybe we received an award or were thanked, and part of us, we love the recognition of the award, but another part of us doesn’t want anyone to know how much that award meant to us. Maybe we have a dream that we’re afraid to tell anyone because we’re we’re worried it’ll sound foolish. Maybe we we know that we’re really talented at something, but we don’t want to say, Hey, I’m really good at this. Because then that sounds like bragging.
Whether it’s positive positives or negatives, we often feel safer if people don’t know. Even if it isn’t a sin. Even if it even if it’s something good and flattering. We sometimes just want to stay under that fig tree. But that is not what we had at the beginning before the world was broken. In the beginning, we were totally known and we were comfortable with it.
In the creation account, Adam and Eve were literally naked. Naked before each other, naked before God. And yes, that means they didn’t have any clothes, but it’s also an image of being totally known. Nothing to hide. Not even a means by which they could hide something. Everything was on the table for everyone to see.
It never crossed their minds to conceal anything. And it was paradise. They had no fear of rejection or condemnation. They were completely vulnerable and transparent, and it was good. It was part of the perfection of the original world. And this is what Jesus comes to restore. Or we see this in the narrative with Nathaniel, right?
And it brings us to our second point. What does Jesus do in response to Nathaniel’s hiding? He sees Nathaniel. He sees him. Just like in our culture, seeing someone means more, it means more than, you know, the light is reflecting off of their skin and forming an image in the back of our retina. Like seeing someone means more than that.
Seeing someone means that that you know them. You perceive of who they are beyond what is just in the visible spectrum of light. You might have heard people in our culture use the phrase, I feel seen. It means they’re understood. Someone else gets them. It’s like when you and your best friend can laugh about the embarrassing things in your life.
It’s not just that you’re accepted, it’s that you’re accepted even though you are known. Someone knows you and they don’t push you away. Someone sees you to the bottom and yet still receives you. Like secrets and all, skeletons in the closet and all. They know all of it and they still draw near. To be known like that, to be seen like that, is one of our deepest hopes. Um, Tim and Kathy Keller write in their marriage book, um, to be loved but not known, loved but not known, is comforting but superficial. Right?
In other words, I mean, sure, it’s nice to be liked, but if you’re liked by a random person who doesn’t know you, that’s it’s superficial. It doesn’t mean much. So to be known, but to be loved but not known, comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved, well, that’s our greatest fear. This is the if people really knew me, they would reject me fear.
Right? And that’s likely why we cover up because of that fear. We’re worried that we’ll be known and not loved. Um, but to be fully known and simultaneously truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It’s what we need more than anything. It liberates us from our pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us against any difficulty that is thrown at us.
Known and loved. This is to be seen. It is the absolute best. And it is what we lose whenever we conceal or hide. Because we cannot be known and loved if we’re hiding. Right? That would mean people don’t know us, so they can’t love us. They don’t even know what they would be loving. They have to be known in order to be known and loved.
But Jesus sees Nathaniel, even Nathaniel’s under the fig tree. Jesus sees him and invites him near. Um, this interchange between Jesus and Nathaniel, it is both a parallel to the creation account and a redemption of it. Because in the creation account, um, God knows what Adam and Eve did. It’s no mystery.
He knows why they’re hiding and he speaks to them. Okay? That’s the creation account. Likewise, Jesus knows whatever Nathaniel was doing under that tree. He knows why Nathaniel’s keeping it private, and Jesus speaks to him. So there you go. Both accounts, people are under figs, both times God talks to those people, the stories parallel, but not entirely. Because Adam and Eve were cast away.
Adam and Eve were known and therefore exiled from the garden. They were not brought near. They were cast out. And that’s our greatest fear, known and rejected. Even though there’s a bunch of grace in the Adam and Eve story. I mean, even in their exile, there is grace because God clothes them, he doesn’t abandon them, you know, defend for themselves.
God promises one day he’ll fix what they broke. God says he will end the evil that they entangled themselves with so they can be together again. I mean, Adam and Eve do not have a graceless exile, but it is exile. And deservedly so. But then Jesus does the opposite with Nathaniel. Unlike in the garden when humanity was seen and then pushed away, Jesus tells Nathaniel and by extension tells all of us, I see you and I’m bringing you near.
Follow me. Be with me. You’re not exiled. You’re home. That’s a relief to our ears. That we can be received even when we don’t deserve to be. That’s a relief. But our last question is how? How are we brought home from exile? You know, why weren’t we pushed away if that’s what we deserve? And the answer is that Jesus is the bridge between exile and home.
Jesus is the means by which humanity is seen and received, accepted, not rejected. And Jesus explains it in this interchange with Nathaniel by alluding to yet another Old Testament story. Jesus tells Nathaniel, you believe because I saw you under the tree, you will see greater things than that. And then here’s the connection to the Old Testament.
He tells Nathaniel, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the son of man. That image, heaven’s opened, angels ascending and descending. That image is a reference back to something that happened in the Old Testament. It’s Genesis 28. The Old Testament uh patriarch, Jacob, he had this dream about a ladder or a staircase between him and God. And there were angels ascending and descending up and down on that staircase. It’s very similar to what Jesus told Nathaniel.
But the staircase in Jesus’ dream, it is what serves as a bridge between heaven and earth. Between where God is and where we are. A path, you could say, back to God. After we were exiled from the garden, cast out of God’s presence, Jacob sees a way back. It’s this staircase. That’s Jacob’s dream in Genesis 28.
And Jesus tells Nathaniel that Nathaniel will see the same thing. Heaven opened, angels ascending and descending on something. But Jesus changes one detail on the story. Instead of angels ascending and descending on a staircase, they are ascending and descending on the son of man, which is Jesus’ name for himself, son of man.
In other words, Jesus is saying he’s the staircase. He is the bridge. He is the path between exile and homecoming. He is the path between being known and accepted, instead of being known and rejected. He’s the way by which we are welcomed back after being pushed out. He’s the bridge and he’s the only way. Even for someone like Nathaniel.
You know, Nathaniel, Jesus says, Nathaniel, in you is no deceit, but Nathaniel still can’t get back on his own. Even though Nathaniel is apparently a very moral person, you know, still, there is a staircase between him and God. And the staircase between him and God, the staircase between his rejection and his acceptance, it’s not Nathaniel’s morality.
Nathaniel’s path back to inclusion is not how good of a person he is. Nathaniel’s path back to inclusion is Jesus. It’s the same for Nathaniel as it was for Jacob. Right, even though Jacob’s name literally means the deceiver. Jacob lied all the time. He’s a very immoral person. Jacob is the complete opposite of Nathaniel, in whom there is no deceit.
And yet both of them, whether they’re moral or immoral, there’s still only one way. It’s Jesus. It’s Jesus’ work on their behalf. And the rest of John’s biography of Jesus, it unfolds, um as it unfolds, we learn more specifically what it takes for Jesus to be this bridge, which is he stands in our place.
He substitutes himself for us. I mean, when we ask, how could we be brought near? The answer is because Jesus was cast out for us. How how are we welcomed? It’s because Jesus was exiled. Why are we forgiven? Because Jesus bore our guilt. How can we be known and yet not have any shame? It’s because Jesus carried our shame for us.
How can we be metaphorically naked before God? It’s because Jesus was stripped naked in our place. The bridge between heaven and earth is not ultimately a staircase. Um it’s certainly not our morality. Instead, it’s the cross. That’s the bridge. It’s the cross. And what that means for us is that the most frightening thing about being fully known, you know, this fear that we have, if people really saw us, they would send us away. That fear, it’s answered by the gospel.
Jesus sees you. Jesus knows you. He’s not sending you away because he was sent away in your place so that you could come home. You never need to fear being known because the only one who really matters, he sees you, he knows you, and yet he’s still drawing you near. Which means you can feel safe showing who you really are.
It is one step back toward the intimacy and connection that we had at the beginning. It’s one piece of our broken world put back together. And it’s what Jesus was doing when he saw Nathaniel. Let’s pray. Father, thank you for being a safe place where we can be seen and known and loved. Thank you for providing a way that we could get back home after we deserve to be cast out.
May we take your approval and acceptance of us and may it fill our hearts so much that we feel comfortable being vulnerable and transparent with everyone else. We pray those things in Jesus’ name. Amen. Amen.
