According to John’s Gospel, our world is a mess because our world doesn’t know who God is. But at the heart of John’s beautiful, inspired book is an incredibly simple but powerful truth: Jesus reveals God to us.
Not everything revealed, however, is seen. A billboard that stands in the middle of an empty field with no roads nearby makes no impact.
And not everything seen is received. Each of us looks at billboards daily that make no impact whatsoever on our lives or decisions.
So how can we see and receive what Jesus reveals in order to make sense of the mess in the world?
This is what John 1:19-2:12 is all about, and I’m looking forward to reading it together.
Podcast: Download ()
Downloads
Notes Transcript Video Audio iTunesSermon Transcript
Grace Fellowship Church
Jon Stallsmith
Series: The Gospel of John
January 18, 2015
See It // Be It
John 1:19-2:12
Good morning. It is a busy time of year for sure. Of course, it’s budget season. When we make chili this time of year at our house, we only use black beans. No red bean chili. Sort of a prophetic gratitude to God for generosity, finishing in the black. This past weekend, so yesterday and Friday, we had our Leader Learning Community here at Grace. Were any of you guys there at Leader Learning Community the last couple of days? Yeah, many of you guys.
A really sweet time where we try to equip and resource our leaders for the coming season of ministry, because so much of who we are as a church at Grace is not focused merely on the preaching or staff or even elders, but it’s really about encouraging and equipping and resourcing the whole body to be living out the calling of Christ. Actually we’ll be talking about that a little bit this morning.
But then in addition, not just on the church calendar here at Grace, but on the national calendar, it’s Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, and I would encourage you maybe if you have some time, your kids are out of school tomorrow, or even today, to go back and just refresh yourself a little bit on some of that history of the Civil Rights Movement. Maybe go down to the new civil rights museum that opened in Atlanta. Or go on YouTube. Check out some clips of Dr. King’s speeches. Something like that. It’s a good thing to do to connect with the season.
Of course, we’re journeying through the gospel of John. Before we dig into John, I just want to make a couple of maybe overview comments about how we’re going to tackle the remainder of the gospel of John. If you’ve been with us the last couple of weeks, you know we’ve been zeroing in on that first chapter of the gospel of John, and we’ve spent a lot of time digging deep.
Last week even was our Nations Sunday, and we saw that story of how God in Christ comes into our world for the sake of the whole world and to draw people from every tribe and nation and tongue into the great swoop of his narrative of new creation bursting into the old. Beautiful beginning.
Every one of those phrases in that prologue, the first 18 verses, could be an entire sermon. I mean, we could just dig into every one of those, and that’s one of the great and beautiful things about the Bible. It’s that throughout it is this living Word we could dive really deep into. In fact, often the Scripture is compared to bread or to a meal. When Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, he says, “Man does not live on bread alone but every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” There’s a nutrition in the Word.
There are different ways to take it in. Sometimes we take it real slow. We zero in on a couple of phrases here and there and just really savor that one thing. Other times I feel it’s really beneficial to see the whole meal that’s being cooked. So maybe you know this. When you get married, one of the benefits (and there are many benefits to marriage) is that when you go to a nice restaurant with your wife you usually have, simply by getting married, expanded your capacity to taste things on the menu.
It used to be just me, and I ordered one thing. Now we can order two things. Or maybe two things and an appetizer, and then we can share it a little bit. I know married couples have different approaches. Some couples like to order it and just, “This is mine. That’s yours.” Great. Some couples have very different tastes. “This is way too spicy. You like it milder,” all of that.
But I think when marriage is working well (at least in my marriage) we tackle the menu together, and it’s that sense of, “What do you like? What do I like? Okay,” and we order it with the idea in mind we’re going to get to taste everything we order. Inevitably, when the food comes out, there’s that moment when your wife looks at you and says, “Hey, would you make me a bite?” You’re looking at your meal and you’re thinking, “This is delicious. Yes, of course. That wasn’t explicitly in the vows, but yes, I will make you a bite.”
But then how do you make the bite? If you have some nice meat and some potatoes and some green beans and maybe some gravy or sauce or something on there on your plate, when you go to make that bite, what you almost try to do (at least this is what I try to do) is put together the perfect bite. The right ratio of some meat with some potatoes with the green beans and even a little sauce so when you pass that fork over your wife is able to sample the whole flavor of the meal in one bite. Do you know what I mean?
So this has a lot to do with the Bible because if you’re looking at your note sheet you see that this morning we are planning on reading the entire second half of chapter 1 and even a little bit into chapter 2. You might be looking at that going, “Wow! That is biting off more than we can chew,” and it’s true actually. If we were going to try to just chew on every single phrase of meaning in that section we could never do it in a Sunday morning or even in a week of study.
But one of the things I want us to be thinking about and doing as we journey through the gospel of John this spring is…How do we see these phrases and these sections and these passages relating together? Because sometimes you can taste something unique and very important when you’re able to taste the whole meal in one setting. So not just zeroing in on little phrases, although that’s really valuable.
What I really want to do through the spring is take some bigger chunks where we can hold together a few stories that often are not read at the same time though they are sequential and see why the Holy Spirit inspired the author of John to put this together in such a way that we can taste it all at once. Does that make sense? So we’re going to move a little bit quicker through a few things for the sake of being able to taste the whole meal in the section, and that’ll happen a few Sundays through the spring.
Another reason why I feel comfortable and confident in doing that is because one of the things we talked about at the Leader Learning Community even this weekend is how to continue the conversation of the Scripture we open on Sundays into the week. So our adult team has put together a resource that’s going to be really valuable I think to a lot of groups, and it’s a resource that draws from the text and from the sermon on Sunday and helps people process in their groups what we’re going through.
There are some helpful questions, overview of the sermon, some ways to apply it. It’s going to be called the “See It // Be It” sheet. I think I even have a picture of one of the drafts we’ve been working on. It’s a one-page sheet. It has some review stuff. You can see it. You can be it. The team started developing this after the 9:00 service, so it should be available to you and to your groups by Sunday around 2:00 or 3:00 in the afternoon. If you go to the Grace website, you could just find it right there.
Click it and download it. A very simple tool to help continue the conversation and go a little bit deeper. If you tasted something you like in the bite on Sunday morning, you can really chew on it, digest it, feast on it during the week hopefully with the help of this guide. I think we have a zoomed-in version of it too. You can see just a little bit of that structure. It’s going to be a very helpful tool. We’ll all learn how to use this.
A lot of our nCommunities will be using this tool, but even if you want to just download it and work through it in your family, or if you have a couple of families that get together once a week or every couple of weeks and it would be a helpful resource to you, I want you to know that’s available. So those are a couple of overview, broad strokes as we prepare to continue and pick up the pace even in the gospel of John.
So if you have your Bible, go ahead and open it to John 1. If you don’t have a Bible, slip up your hand. We have some great ushers who’ll put Bibles in your hand. If you need a note sheet or you want to jot down a prayer request at the bottom of that note sheet and drop it in the offering plate as it goes by after the sermon, you’re welcome to do that as well.
But we’re in John 1. As I mentioned, we’ve spent a little bit of time understanding the shape of that prologue that really tells the whole story of Jesus in 18 short verses beginning with the Word, Jesus, with God, united with God, yet distinct from God taking on flesh, dwelling among us, shedding light and truth and grace and life on all mankind, and then drawing us up into this great sweep of history.
As we talked about this last week, one of our great challenges and callings in life is to recognize how when Jesus is drawing us into that story we fit into history. What’s our place? Or another way of talking about it is, “What’s our identity? What’s our role in this whole great movement of God?” As a pastor, I’ve noticed in the last few years that I can have conversations with people about their lives and what’s going on. Sometimes they’re in a sticky spot or trying to get some wisdom or figure out what’s next or something like that.
We can talk about advice back and forth, but then there are those occasional times when you have a sense that God gives you some insight not just into a person’s next steps or some advice or some processing questions, it feels like God gives you some insight into that person’s identity because you know that person or you’ve walked with that person or you’ve just seen some things in that person. I have found when we start to talk to each other about the identity we see in another person, it seems to really awaken something.
It taps into, it gains traction in the heart because deep down so many of us (all of us actually) have a craving to know who we are and how we fit into this big swoop of things. I think the availability and even the number of different personality tests that are out there speak to the same need. There’s an enormous market. People want to know who they are, how they work. “How do I relate to other people?”
This actually goes all the way back. The earliest personality test they know of is Hippocrates in 400 BC, and he said there are four main humors. You can be choleric, sanguine, phlegmatic, melancholy. Of course, as time has gone on, we’ve updated the language and we’ve come up with all sorts of different phrases and tests. You have Myers-Briggs. You have the DISC. You have StrengthsFinder. You have Gary Smalley’s animals. You’re kind of like this animal or that animal. The Color Code. “What color are you?”
Because we do really want to know who we are, we take these tests. These tests actually often shed helpful light on how we’re wired. It helps us know how to relate to each other. Although sometimes if you don’t speak the language of the tests, people could talk to you about their personality, and you really have no idea what they’re talking about.
So you’re in a conversation, and they might say something. “Well, you know I am really a blue melancholy otter with a blue melancholy otter introvert sensor with a need for security and a bent to ideation.” You think, “Do I really know you any better now? I’m not sure I do.” Or somebody looks at you and they say, “Well, to tell you the truth, you know I’m a lion feeler maximizer, so what I’m about to say to you is going to make sense.” You’re like, “What’s a lion feeler maximizer?” But we crave this.
Sometimes if you don’t know the language at all you actually can totally miscommunicate. So if you’ve taken the DISC test and you know you’re high on that influence level, you might tell somebody, “I am a high I.” If you don’t know that’s from the DISC test, you’re like, “You do seem a little high.” But this is something we crave even in the spiritual world. You know the spiritual gifts inventory can be very helpful. We want to know who we are. We want to figure it out. What’s our place in the world?
John is very sensitive to that. In the gospel of John actually, we see lots and lots of people come alive to their true identity from God. But there’s an idea in John that is a little bit countercultural. It’s actually a very fresh and powerful idea, and if we get our heads around this idea I think it can revolutionize the way we process our identity.
Here’s the idea. According to John, we discover identity not by looking inward at our own selves but rather by looking at Jesus, that when we see Jesus for who he is and recognize him, we learn who we are to be. Not by looking inward so much but looking at Jesus. He shows us who we are to be. We see this really clearly in our section of Scripture for this morning, and we see it functioning in three ways. The first with John the Baptist, the second with some of the calling of the disciples, and then we’ll just touch briefly on the miracle of the wedding feast.
But in that, what we’re going to see is that when we see Jesus and he shows us who we are to be, part of that process is that looking at Jesus helps us clarify who we are not, part of that process means looking at Jesus clarifies who we are, and then part of that process means looking at Jesus shows us who we are becoming.
So let’s start off with John the Baptist as we wrestle with this a little bit. We’ll start in verse 19. It says, “And this is the testimony of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, ‘Who are you?'” Identity question. “He confessed, and did not deny, but confessed, ‘I am not the Christ.’ And they asked him, ‘What then? Are you Elijah?’ He said, ‘I am not.’
‘Are you the Prophet?'” Referring to a prophecy in Deuteronomy 18 most likely, where Moses said there would come one like him, a new Moses down the road. “And he answered, ‘No.’ So they said to him, ‘Who are you? We need to give an answer to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?’ He said, ‘I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, “Make straight the way of the Lord,” as the prophet Isaiah said.’
(Now they had been sent from the Pharisees.) They asked him, ‘Then why are you baptizing, if you are neither the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?’ John answered them, ‘I baptize with water, but among you stands one you do not know, even he who comes after me, the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.’ These things took place in Bethany across the Jordan, where John was baptizing.” (John 1:19-28)
Here’s what we notice about John the Baptist. He is very clear about his identity, and part of his clarity about who he is, where he fits in history in the world and God’s plan is that he’s very clear about who he is not. Have you thought about that much in your own journey, discovery, figuring out where we fit in the world? Have you thought about who you’re not? See, because these roles they’re asking John the Baptist about, this delegation come to check on this movement of people who are feeling their hearts stirred to God and John’s in the middle of it…
They’re coming out to check on it and they first asked him, “Are you the Messiah? If you’re not the Messiah, then who are you?” That idea of Messiah is the one who saves. They say, “Well, okay, if you’re not that, are you Elijah?” because there are some prophecies back in Malachi that before the coming of Messiah there’d be Elijah coming as a precursor.
Elijah, you remember, was this prophet in the Old Testament who was known for these big public showdowns. The great moment, of course, Mount Carmel, when he’s showing down the prophets of Baal and fire falls from heaven to vindicate the true God, ignites the altar, and Elijah kills all the prophets. I mean, this big public display. Huge, eye-catching stuff. They say, “Are you Elijah?” John says, “No.”
They say, “Are you the Prophet?” Of course, the Prophet, the one who Moses promised would be just like Moses, the new Moses to come who would know how to lead the people and know what to say to the people, hear from God and say exactly the right thing all the time. John the Baptist says, “No.”
Why is he able to say no to all of those things? It’s because he knows Jesus and he knows who Jesus is. He recognizes Jesus. In fact, he tells this delegation, “There’s one among you you don’t recognize.” The idea is he is coming to recognize it. Because he’s able to see Jesus clearly, he knows he is not any of these other things.
I tell you where this begins to intersect with our lives. Not many of us are running around claiming to be the Messiah. I hope. I mean, we should have a conversation if that’s the case. But oftentimes we live and act as though it’s our singlehanded responsibility to save the world. We look at our lives or our families, certain things aren’t going well, maybe some challenges in school, look at our jobs, the workplace, and some dissension there among the people, and we feel like it is our sole responsibility to save everything and fix everything.
We probably don’t run around saying, “Oh, I’m Elijah,” but sometimes we do feel like it’s our responsibility to do something big for God that everybody’s going to notice. We feel like we have to really make a splash in some way in our lives. Sometimes we feel the pressure we have to say the perfect thing all the time to just the right person.
Verse 29: “The next day he [John] saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, ‘Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!'” The whole world. “‘This is he of whom I said, “After me comes a man who ranks before me, because he was before me.” I myself did not know him, but for this purpose I came baptizing with water, that he might be revealed to Israel.’
And John bore witness: ‘I saw the Spirit descend from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, “He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.” And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God.'” (John 1:29-34)
John, who’s the first person in this gospel to really recognize who Jesus is, for who Jesus is, and because he is so clear about this…he hears from God, he recognizes Jesus…he is able to say with total freedom that he is not any of these other things.
How does that work in your life when you feel like you’re trying to save the world or you’re trying like you have to make the big splash and everything has to look perfect and be impressive, or maybe you feel like you just have to say the right thing all the time, be the leader? What we learn from John here is that by looking at Jesus and recognizing that Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, Jesus is the one who’s responsible, he’s the Messiah, he’s all these things, when we look there, suddenly we recognize we don’t have to be.
We’re not. We don’t have to save the world. We don’t have to say the perfect thing all the time. We don’t have to make a great big splash. Sometimes in the journey of learning who we are, learning who we are not is just as valuable as learning how we’ve been wired.
I remember just this weekend, Friday night. I mentioned we had the Leader Learning Community. Dave Rhodes, who’s made some announcements here… He has preached a couple of times the last few months. He’s a relatively new part of our team here at Grace. He’s leading up the adult discipleship ministry. Dave is also leading that team of adult staff and working with many of you. You’ll get to know Dave if you haven’t met him already. He’s a great guy.
He was doing the first talk on Friday night to set the tone for the whole Leader Learning Community. As he was preaching Friday night, he was preaching so well. Like this talk was amazing. I was sitting right back there next to Amy, and he was delivering this talk, and you could just feel the Spirit of God moving, and the Scripture was alive and working in our hearts, and people were responding and clapping and saying, “Amen!” Dave was just preaching!
About halfway through, I looked over at Amy and I said, “He is doing really well,” because I also give talks. I also preach. Something shifted in my mind, and I stopped taking notes on the content of what Dave was saying and I started taking notes on how I could preach like Dave. It was like, “Okay, that’s good. Yes, build up idea like that. Crescendo. Very nice, okay.”
We know what this is like, where you see something, and it’s not wrong in any way to be inspired by someone or to see somebody do something really well and just want to be like them, but I just felt that little shift in my heart, and I felt the Holy Spirit just remind me and say, “Jon, you don’t have to be Dave. You’re not. Just be yourself.”
But just that permission to give yourself to not be some of these other things, not have to be this, not have to be that comes from knowing who Jesus is because when we know who Jesus is, he’s the Creator and he’s the one who has made us who we are. So we look to Jesus and he’s the one who leads us into our true identity.
Some of us this morning have spent a long time in our lives trying to be something we’re not. Some of us this morning just need to hear from Jesus that we are not our parents. We are not our circumstance. We do not have the responsibility to save the world like a Messiah. That’s Jesus’ work. We do not have to have the perfect thing to say all the time.
For John, because he sees Jesus so clearly, he has this remarkable, clear grasp, the first one to really recognize Jesus, it sets him free to not be so many things. In fact, it even sets him free to encourage his disciples, his guys to follow Jesus. He’s so humble because he knows who Jesus is. So if John shows us how seeing Jesus teaching us to embrace what we’re not, what we don’t have to be, then the encounter between John’s disciples and Jesus’ calling the first disciples follows up with that idea.
The next flavor in this passage is how seeing Jesus helps us see who we are called to be. So check this out. Verse 35: “The next day again John was standing with two of his disciples, and he looked at Jesus as he walked by and said, ‘Behold, the Lamb of God!'” Total freedom to send his disciples to the source. “The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them, ‘What are you seeking?'” (John 1:35-38)
This is the first time Jesus speaks in the gospel of John. What a great question. Have you ever heard the Lord just prompt that question on your heart, “What are you seeking? What are you looking for?” That’s what really defines these first guys. They’re seekers. They may not even know exactly what they’re looking for, but they’ve been following John. They got this idea maybe from the Old Testament that there’s a promise of God to come and deliver things and set things right, but what are they seeking? They’re not even fully sure.
“And they said to him, ‘Rabbi’ (which means Teacher), ‘where are you staying?’ He said to them, ‘Come and you will see.'” (John 1:38-39) What a beautiful invitation from Jesus. They ask him, “Rabbi, where are you staying?” He doesn’t give them an invitation to information. He doesn’t say, “Here’s my book. Check it out.” He invites them into relationship. He says, “Come and you will see. Just come here.”
“So they came and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day, for it was about the tenth hour.” (John 1:39) Now there’s a little wrinkle you might miss if you’re reading, like we are now, the English Standard Version. They have that word that they stayed with him that day. It’s translated as stay. That’s a good word. It’s a clear translation, but if you go back and even read the way like the King James translates that same word, what you see here is actually abide.
If you know the gospel of John, you know that this will be one of the central ideas as the gospel develops. By the time you get to John 15, Jesus will be comparing himself to the vine, and he compares his followers to branches, and he says, “You need to be abiding, grafted in with me. If you abide in me and I in you, you’re going to bear lots of fruit.”
What do we see here? We see these guys who are seekers. They’re not maybe even sure exactly what they’re seeking, but when they see Jesus and he invites them into his life to see him more clearly, what they find is a place to abide. They find their place in history. They stay with him. They begin to discover their identity, their calling. Why? Because they’re looking. They’re seeing Jesus and Jesus is showing them how to be and who to be.
It becomes very explicit here in verse 40. “One of the two who heard John speak and followed Jesus was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, ‘We have found the Messiah’ (which means Christ). He brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, ‘You are Simon the son of John. You shall be called Cephas’ (which means Peter).” (John 1:40-42) Or translated Rocky. Don’t think of Sylvester Stallone. It changes the whole gospel if you think of Sylvester Stallone playing the role of Peter every time you read it.
But Jesus gives him this name, Cephas, or Peter, which literally means the rock or rocky. It means rocky. What happens? Peter comes up to Jesus, looks at Jesus. As he looks at Jesus, Jesus says, “I’ll tell you exactly who you are. There’s your identity. This is your name.” See how this works?
Verse 43: “The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, ‘Follow me.'” I love that Jesus also finds people on his own. It’s not just that people are brought to Jesus; he’s out there doing stuff. “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?'” (John 1:43-46)
It’s an interesting question. We find out later in chapter 20 of John that Nathanael is from Cana, which is actually a neighboring town to Nazareth. So it’s possible when he’s asking this question he’s asking this question as an across-town rival, maybe the way somebody would say if they’re from Pittsburgh, “Can anything good come out of Philadelphia?” or something like that. Maybe a little of that there.
There’s also really a lack of promises in the Old Testament about Nazareth as a source or a place where the Messiah would come from. So he asked this skeptical question, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” “Philip said to him, ‘Come and see.'” (John 1:46) Now Philip is saying the same invitation. “Come and see.” The invitation to relationship. “Come and see this Jesus.”
Verse 47: “Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, ‘Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit!'” Calling out his identity. “You’re an honest man without guile.” “Nathanael said to him, ‘How do you know me?'” “How do you know my identity? How do you know who I am?” “Jesus answered him, ‘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!'” (John 1:47-49)
Now this is actually a little bit of a funny story. Nathanael is skeptical. “Who’s this guy from Nazareth?” Then he meets Jesus and Jesus is like, “I saw you under the fig tree,” and he’s like, “What? You are the Son of God!” It seems like… What’s the backstory here? Why is this such a significant moment for Nathanael?
I think that in the old rabbinic Jewish tradition, one of the traditions is that you would read the Bible or meditate on the Scripture under a fig tree. That was an image that shows up several times in some of the writings just that the rabbis in Judaism put together. So there was this idea that perhaps Nathanael, especially because of the reference to seeking the Scripture and the writings of Moses and everything else, was just sitting under this fig tree reading or maybe just reciting passages of Scripture he had memorized. Or maybe he was praying.
But there’s this sense I get as I read this passage that Nathanael was just sitting there under his fig tree, maybe even having a conversation with God and wondering if God even noticed. Have you ever had those days where you get up in the morning, you carve out 10 minutes just to pray and maybe read a little Scripture? Or you’re walking your dog and you just turn your heart toward God and lift up some prayers? While you’re doing it, you feel, “Lord, do you even notice? Does this even matter? Are you just going to do what you’re going to do and who cares if I pray?”
I have those moments, those moments when you feel like you’re just sitting under a fig tree and maybe even forgotten. Jesus walks up to Nathanael and he says, “Hey, when you were under that fig tree, I saw you. You matter to me. Yes, I care for you. You’re not forgotten. I see you.” It’s one of those moments that maybe even from the outside as we’re reading it, it feels even a little silly. Jesus has this amazing, divine power, and somehow understands, sees Nathanael under the fig tree. There’s a sense of something miraculous that’s happened here.
But it’s like one of those moments. Maybe you have these moments as well where you just get the sense God notices you in the smallest way, but somehow it lifts your heart so deeply. Maybe you’re just driving somewhere and you know it’s going to be crowded and you’re running late, and you’re thinking, “How in the world am I going to find a parking spot?” and just as you get there somebody pulls out and you’re like, “This is silly, but God, thank you. Thank you for seeing me right there.”
But God does that and he delights in doing those just little things in our lives that if we had the eyes to see it and the ears to hear it, we’d recognize, “Wow! God does notice us. We’re not just sitting under the fig tree by ourselves reading some book, but no, this is a living, dynamic, real thing.”
This is the sense that Nathanael is tapping into. When he meets Jesus and Jesus reveals himself as the one who knows and the one who cares, Nathanael in looking at Jesus is suddenly discovering, “This is where I need to be. Yeah, I want to follow you.” Then look at the follow up. This is so beautiful.
“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.'” (John 1:50-51) Amazing promise referencing back to a very famous story in the Old Testament, Genesis 28.
Jacob, the son of Isaac. His name, Jacob, means schemer, deceitful. Echoes of Jesus telling Nathanael, “You’re an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.” Jacob’s name means deceitful, and his life has been characterized, his identity has been characterized by swindling. He cheats his brother. He lies to his father. Eventually, he makes his family so mad that he has to flee lest they kill him. Esau, his brother, is just going to slaughter him.
So in Genesis 28, Jacob is wandering. He’s away from his home. He has left his family. He’s in route to his relative Laban’s place, and he’s just in the middle of nowhere. It says he came to a certain place to fall asleep. He lays his head down on a stone, and it’s one of these moments where Jacob is just wondering, “Who am I? What’s going on? I’m away from my family. I’m a schemer.” All this stuff in his journey is coming to this head.
During the night, he has a dream, and in the dream he sees a ladder, angels ascending and descending, and then God speaks to him in the dream and reiterates to him the promises God had made to Abraham. He says, “I am going to make these promises come true in your life as well. I know you feel like you’re wandering, I know you feel like you’re kicked out, I know you feel like you’re in the middle of nowhere on the road to nowhere, but everything I promised Abraham, land, blessing, offspring, I will promise and fulfill in you as well.”
It’s a reminder that God shows up and visits people even in their wandering. Even in their expulsion, even in their brokenness and their shame, he just shows up. He says, “I have an identity and a purpose for you.” When Jesus is talking to Nathanael, he takes that story and he actually reinterprets it a little bit.
He says to Nathanael, “For every person who’s in that place wondering, ‘Who am I? What’s my calling? Where am I headed in life?’ I’m the vision. I’m the place where heaven and earth come together. Nathanael, remember that story in the Old Testament about Jacob and God’s speaking identity and everything else?
When you follow me, when you walk with me, what you will see is heaven and earth coming together in ways you could never even think possible. When you see these things coming together, that’s the place where your wandering becomes foundness and your identity becomes clear.” It’s a beautiful, beautiful picture from Jesus.
He’s calling all of these disciples. In fact, it’s very interesting. Jesus’ word you there is not just a singular you to Nathanael, but he’s saying you to all of you guys. “You guys are here. You look to me. It’s where heaven and earth come together. This is where you find where your life and God’s plans come together, right here in me. Look at me. I am the one when you see me who will show you who you are to be.”
But in this passage, there’s just one more bite or taste we need to savor because Jesus here isn’t just showing us who we’re not, showing us who we are, he also is giving us a preview of who we are becoming. So I want to read this last story. I’ll make a couple of brief comments on it.
Chapter 2, verse 1: “On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples. When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, ‘They have no wine.’ And Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.'” When Jesus speaks about his hour in the gospel of John, he’s speaking about the time of crucifixion and resurrection, the climax of his ministry on the earth.
“His mother said to the servants, ‘Do whatever he tells you.’ Now there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to the servants, ‘Fill the jars with water.’ And they filled them up to the brim. And he said to them, ‘Now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast.’ So they took it.
When the master of the feast tasted the water now become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom and said to him, ‘Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.’ This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him.” (John 2:1-11)
Many things that we’ll talk about from this passage even next week, but for now, what we see is that the wedding was about to turn from a celebration into a great embarrassment. The shame was about to be multiplied, disappointment and all the rest. That really in many ways marks the path of a lot things in the world. There are a lot of things in the world that start off we’re excited, hopeful, and as time goes on they just kind of become a disappointment, diminishing returns.
Lots of things in the world. Lots of promises the world makes about what’s going to be fun or what’s going to bring life or what’s going to bring excitement or what’s going to bring meaning. We start off. It’s a big celebration and then it goes down. But notice what happens. Just as this is about to start tipping downward, Jesus shows up in the story. Mary tells the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”
As they listen to Jesus, obey Jesus, as they do whatever he tells them to do, rather than just nosediving, the celebration goes up. This is a picture of what it looks like to walk with Jesus. When we see him for who he is clearly, he shows us who we’re not, and praise God for that. That is so liberating and freeing. When we come and see and follow Jesus, he begins speaking to us and showing us who we are. Because we see him, suddenly we begin to learn who we are.
But that process is actually a journey that throughout our lives is not a journey that starts with high enthusiasm and then goes down, but rather like this story, the best wine comes last. The longer we walk with Jesus and the more clearly we see him, the more we understand about who he is, the nearer we become to his roles and his life-giving power, the better life becomes.
So here this passage gives us a little foreshadowing of who we’re becoming. Not empty vessels of disappointment and lack, but rather rich wine, flavor, joyful, beautiful. Walking with Jesus is not a nosedive, but rather a place that begins when we find our identity, and then he swoops us up and it keeps getting better and better. There are hard times. There are challenging times. Tough stuff happens in life, no question. But as we draw nearer to Jesus and see him, we find we are becoming, just like that water, something far greater than we were before.
So our challenge, our call, our direction this morning is to turn our eyes to Jesus, to open our hearts, to allow some of these phrases about who Jesus is to start working their way in, to maybe even sit under a fig tree for a little bit and say, “Okay, Lord, would you see me here? What do you have to say to me here? Lord, what do you call me? Are there any places you want me to recognize that I’ve been striving to be something I’m not and you just want to bring me freedom there?”
Maybe the prayer this morning for some of us is simply to say, “Lord, it feels like I started off with some enthusiasm and now I’m hitting a plateau, or maybe I’m at the edge of the plateau and it feels like I’m going down. It doesn’t feel like that kingdom trajectory. Lord, I need you to come in. I’ll do whatever you tell me. But Lord, would you come in? Let me see you clearly and take what’s headed toward disappoint and shame and lift it again.”