Clough John Lesson 10

Jesus Reveals His Divine Nature – John 1:43-51

John’s Gospel is an apologetic for the Christian faith. That means that John wrote this Gospel for the avowed purpose of proving something, of proving the fact that the man, Jesus, was indeed the God-man Savior of Israel and of the world. And in so doing John has laid down for us a model of an apologetic approach to the world. John provides us with a how-to by giving us an example. In the first chapter we find John has presented John the Baptist as the King-making prophet, the one who introduces Jesus Christ to the nation. We have seen the judgment/salvation motif, that you cannot have a Savior unless you have a judge. Jesus Christ is judge first, then Savior afterwards. That’s the same motif of the flood of Noah, that is the motif of the Exodus and it’s the motif all the way from Genesis to Revelation in Scripture, that in a fallen universe with rebellious creatures you cannot have salvation from sin without a destruction of sin. So John is warning the nation that judgment is coming as well as salvation.

We found from verses 35-42 that on that famous Shabbat John met Jesus Christ. John remembered the very hour of the day that he cast his eyes on the person of Christ and began to follow Him. We understood that John, as he followed Jesus Christ followed some distance behind; Jesus turned around and said, What is it that you seek? And from this we gathered the principle that Jesus Christ in His workings with us as believers always has one thrust or one effort in His ministry and that is to bring us into a closer union with Him. And in order for us to be brought into a closer union with Him there are some things that we have to know; things that difficult to teach, that can only be taught gradually, with much patience. And so Jesus begins to teach gradually and with patience the things the disciples have to know.

We saw evangelism in that day because in that day there were two men who sought their brothers; Andrew sought his brother Peter and John, by implication, sought his brother James. So evangelization proceeded. You’ll notice that the evangelization proceeded on a factual basis; it wasn’t just a cold detached objectivity, it was a warm objectivity born of a union with Christ but nevertheless it wasn’t a degenerate subjectivism that goes around witnessing how I feel. It pointed to the objective historic facts of who Jesus was and that He fit the mold of Old Testament prophecy. These men were not keen theologians and the very fact that they weren’t saved them from the morass of subjectivity, because they could just have a few facts they could use to point to.

Now in John 1:43 we come to the day following. This is Sunday, by our calculations, the fourth day mentioned in the narrative. It was Sunday and the Shabbat had ended; travel restrictions were limited now people could move again. And it says, “The day following Jesus would go forth into Galilee, and finds Philip, and said unto him, Follow me.” Jesus determined to travel to Galilee. Now if John had been near Jericho, then this would have been a mere brief walk of about 50 miles, that’s how far it is to go from the north end of the Dead Sea up to Galilee, and since we are now encountering new terrain, new geography we are going to show some slides of the terrain that they followed on this journey. By the way, Galilee does not mean just the Sea of Galilee, Galilee is this whole area, Upper Galilee here, not because it’s north but because it’s higher, and lower Galilee here. So this is the Galilean area. It was from this area that Jesus’ disciples were mainly taken and also we’ll recall that if John did baptize here, and not somewhere along here, then we’ve got to go up the Jordan Valley and around the Sea of Galilee.

This chart is a demonstration of where we are going to go with some of these slides. We’re going to start at the north end of the Sea of Galilee, then around the Sea of Galilee, getting an idea of where these disciples went. On this map areas of low terrain are indicated in green and areas of high terrain are indicated in brown. As you can see, this area is very, very low. The disciples, John and his entourage are going to move northward going up the Jordan River all the way up, this one big long valley, from this area which is wilderness, on up through here. To the right or to the east side are highlands; this is today Jordan, this is Transjordan in that day, that was in the area of Gilead, and up here Bashan which is today the Golan Heights. So we’re going to go up that area just to the south of Galilee. [continues showing slides of area]. This will give you an idea of where these men came from and where they were going to. Bethsaida means the house of fishing and it’s appropriate because that was the place that these men came from.

So “the day following Jesus wanted to go into Galilee, and there He found Philip.” Now one of the things that John emphasizes in his Gospel is the different kinds of people that followed Jesus Christ, and I emphasize that because in our fundamental circles we have a tendency, unconsciously often times to level everyone out to the same kind of personality and we do it with all sorts of pious phraseology, like if you don’t have the exact personality I think you ought to, you don’t show love. And if you’re going to show love then your personality will be just like mine or somebody else’s. And in John’s Gospel we find these disciples having utterly different personalities; we see John, he’s kind of an ascetic type, he’s a loner, he could care less whether you carried on more than a 30 word conversation with him in any given moment, and the Lord Jesus Christ and John do not have much of a conversation between themselves. No great long recorded conversation. John is a loner and that’s the way he likes it, and he is obviously in fellowship with the Lord so you cannot accuse him of being unspiritual because he doesn’t like to go to the parties and have a lot of fellowships and so on. John probably avoided all the fellowships because he just didn’t care too much for them, that’s all. The fellowship he enjoyed was being out in the desert and chasing locusts.

Then we have some other men, we have John the Apostle. John is another different type of man, he’s more of the meditator and the thinker; he’s the man who thinks and ponders long about issues; it took a man like that to write this Gospel. Then we have Peter who is the outgoing natural leader. We have Andrew who’s the evangelist and the helper, he’s always bringing people. Andrew beats the bushes and he’s that kind of person. Then we have Philip. Now Philip is interesting in John because he’s presented as a man that’s not too bright. For example, if you turn to John 6:7, see, there’s hope for all types. This is the feeding of the thousands with the bread and the fish, and Philip, I’ll get into the full irony of what he says here when we get to the passage, but “[Philip answered him,] Two hundred penny-worth of bread is not sufficient for them that every one of them may take a little.” He’s just completely out of it as far as figuring out what’s supposed to be done, even the finances don’t check out right, as we’ll see when we come to the passage.

Then in John 12:21 where Philip again comes through with one of his pearls, he doesn’t know what to do. “There were certain Greeks” in John 12:20 “that came up to worship at the feast,” they were on positive volition, [21] “And the same came, therefore, to Philip, who was of Bethsaida, of Galilee, and desired him, saying, Sir, we want to see Jesus.” And Philip didn’t know what to do so he came and told Andrew, then Andrew and Philip came to tell Jesus. And Philip was a man who was apparently unsure of himself. He just didn’t know how to act around people and didn’t know how to make decisions. Then in John 14:8 he really shows his colors. The disciples are gathered around for their last briefing, and Thomas has just gone through his thing, and Philip, his response to the whole thing of Thomas is well, “Lord, all you do is just show us the Father, and then it will suffice us.” And obviously what Jesus is supposed to do is show the whole Father right there, you know, just move the tables guys, I’ll show Him. So Philip just really isn’t too smart a type.

Now I point this out because God does not select you on the basis of your IQ. And God does not select you on the basis of your education. If He did none of us would make it the way we’re educated today. So the good news is that we have all types on the kingdom of God and they are represented by these early men. Philip does perform a useful function. He’s not to bright but he performs his function. Jesus thought enough of him, in John 1:43 you notice what Jesus does; this is the first man Jesus finds. See up to now the other disciples have come through John the Baptist, but the very first man that Jesus Christ picks is just frankly not too bright an individual. Now what does that tell you about the nature of our Lord? He doesn’t pick you on the basis of your IQ, how smart you are, how stupid you are; He has other considerations and those other considerations determine His choice, but not IQ, and not how bright you are. And the proof is the very first person He selects as a disciple is Philip. “And He said unto him, Follow Me.”

John 1:44, “Now Philip was of Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter.” So obviously he comes from the same group, same area; it’s a fishing village. [45] Philip finds Nathanael, and said unto him, We have found Him, of whom Moses in the Law, and the prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” You notice the evangelism here proceeds on a one to one basis. Do you notice what he says, “We have found Him,” there’s a shift, not I but “we have found Him.” And so Philip is arguing that “we,” the faithful Jewish remnant, have discovered our Messiah, will you join the group, “we have found Him.” He identifies himself with the group; he is not just the lone spokesman. And in evangelism when you go out to witness for Jesus Christ you do not go out as the lone spokesman. You go out as an ambassador that represents Christ through His Church. You go out in the name of that Church, not Lubbock Bible Church, I mean the universal church of all believers. And you go out in the name of the historic Christian church and you too are saying we have found Jesus Christ. So that the burden is not upon you to present every little piece of evidence. All you are doing is identifying yourself with every other Christian down through history.

“We have found,” and notice when he does his evangelizing he says, again concentrating objectively, he says “We have found Him, of whom Moses…and the prophets, did write.” Now it’s obvious that Nathan and Philip both have been carefully trained I the Old Testament or he wouldn’t bother to make the claim. Edersheim, the Hebrew Christian scholar says that at this time in history the rabbis interpreted in a Messianic way some 456 different passages out of the Old Testament. Now as this little conversation with Nathanael develops we’re going to see that apparently it was one of those 456 passages he had just been looking at because there is one of the most fascinating, subtle, intriguing conversations that will now start between Nathanael and Jesus Christ. It has humor in it, it has subtlety, it has lots of character. And the reason that this is the first, so to speak, real intriguing conversation we’ve seen in the Gospel, is because of the kind of man that Nathanael is. So as Philip says to Nathanael, he says look, the Old Testament model of Messiah we find fits this person of Jesus Christ.

Well, Nathanael responds to Philip, John 1:46 “And Nathanael said unto him, Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” Now it’s hard to understand what’s happening here unless we show some more slides and go through some more terrain about Nazareth and see what he’s getting at. We are going to come over to this area, that is Nazareth; please notice on this chart Nazareth is located here, Jerusalem here, and Bethlehem here. Now where did the Old Testament prophecies speak of Messiah. Bethlehem! Bethlehem is down in Judah, it’s an entirely different political district than Nazareth up here. Nathanael could understand what’s going on if you said that He’s from Bethlehem, but Nazareth, way up here? So there’s some things to learn about what’s going on with this Nazareth thing. [He shows slides] There are some elements on this map that you ought to familiarize yourself with. The Sea of Galilee is located in this region, here’s Mount Carmel, there’s the Jordan Valley. Here is Nazareth and in this whole area, that triangle is the Valley of Jezreel, or the place where Armageddon, the campaign of Armageddon begins, the gathering ground of the armies. Now something you may not have realized before is that Nazareth sits on a hill looking south onto the valley of Armageddon or the Valley of Jezreel as it should be called.

Here is the city of Nazareth. There are some interesting things about this city because just off to the north is Cana, that will figure; Philip is from this area, Cana of Galilee, it’s another small town. So Nathan has a little small town rivalry going besides just being the prophet of Israel; he’s not a smart aleck but he’s just coming out with a little barb, he’s saying look, I’m from Cana, any good thing that comes is going to come out Cana, not from Nazareth. So there is a little teat da teat going on between a man from Cana and a man from Nazareth. Now on our slides we’re going to start at Mount Tabor and look westward at Nazareth, then we’ll go to Nazareth and wind up with a shot looking across at what remains of Cana today. That’s Nazareth and you have a very fertile, very flat plain. You can see that the town where Jesus lived in as a boy had a very excellent view, and also the people that lived in that town had very good physiques, they had to climb that hill every time they wanted to go visit somebody and you can see if you had to do that it’d keep you in pretty good physical shape. Imagine Jesus and His father in the carpentry shop having to cart lumber up there. Just as you approach Nazareth there’s this Tel, which is the town of Jonah the prophet, which will be figuring in this text in a moment. Jonah’s home is only five miles up the road from Nazareth.

Then moving north, over in this area is where Cana of Galilee was. All these hills are denuded in this picture, they were covered with forests at the time the Bible was written; that was at one time a very beautiful area. That’s Cana and that’s Philip’s home, that’s the place he has on his mind when he’s talking can any good thing come out of Nazareth. Now you’ve seen the terrain around Galilee and Nazareth; the next time you read the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus talks about a city that’s set on a hill cannot be hid, this might suggest where he got that imagery from.

Here we find Nathanael, John 1:46, saying “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” Later on in John’s Gospel, in John 7:52 the same attitude toward the whole Galilean area is shown. When Jesus was having a discussion with the Pharisees and it’s revealed that He’s a Galilean, the Pharisees say, ha, “Are you also of Galilee? Search, and look; for out of Galilee there never arises a prophet.” That’s wrong; five miles away from Jesus’ home town was Jonah the prophet. So they’re not too sharp students of Scripture. So was a prophet, Jonah, he came from this area. But as far as Messianic prophecy is concerned, knowing our terrain, you can obviously see there’s a difference between Bethlehem being just south of Jerusalem and Nazareth, being up here north of Mount Tabor; there’s a slight difference and that’s what Nathan has on his mind. So what does Philip do? Now Philip isn’t too smart, but I want you to see what he does in verse 46. This is basically what we all had to do at some time or another, regardless of how smart we are, and that is that sometime someone is going to present you with a question that you cannot answer. Now you don’t fall apart because you can’t answer the question; you do exactly what Philip does in verse 46, “Come and view [see].” Now in this case Jesus was there in His incarnate form; today we must present the historic Christian faith in a visible way and show men that Christianity answers their questions.

So if you are faced with a question that you can’t answer you say okay, let’s look, I can’t answer the question right now, I don’t have that answer to your particular question but if you’re really seeking then let’s come and look at the whole Christian area, all of doctrine, this whole thing about a personal relationship with Christ, and I challenge you to investigate these claims. That’s what Philip’s doing in verse 46, I don’t have the answer to the question. Right, but I challenge you to come to the source and seek your own answers to your own questions, don’t get it from me second hand, do it yourself; don’t trust me. Now that’s Philip. And that’s his technique, and he wasn’t very bright, he probably used that many times. And if you’re not very bright you’ll be using it many times and there’s nothing dishonorable in it; it’s very honorable and it’s very Scriptural. The problem we have in our own time is that we don’t have it quite so easy as Philip, “Come and see,” because I know very, very, very few books, very, very few believers who I could point out as sources for information for the intelligent non-Christian today. Where do we go and see; there is no place we can come and see; very, very few places we can come and see. I’d like to point out that I’m not the first one to say this; back in 1912 Dr. J. Gresham Machen, who was the man who fought within Presbyterian circles for a vigorous teaching of the Word of God had this to say and I’m going to read three sections from his address at Princeton University back in 1912 to show you that in 1912 he was having a problem, that there was no place to “Come and see,” to view the content of all of God’s revelation, so its authority, its grandeur, and all of its comprehensiveness.

Machen said this: “Our whole system of school and college education is so constituted as to keep religion and culture as far apart as possible, ignoring the question of the relationship between them.” Now doesn’t that sound familiar? “On five or six days in the week we were engaged in the acquisition of knowledge; from this activity the study of religion was banished.” 1912! “We study natural science without considering its bearing or lack of bearing upon theology or revelation. We study Greek without ever opening the New Testament. We study history carefully avoiding that greatest of historic movements which was ushered in by the preaching of Jesus.” Doesn’t that sound like a modern history course? How many history courses have you had that have dealt with the historic resurrection of Christ? “In philosophy the vital importance of the study of religion could not entirely be concealed but it was kept as far as possible in the background. On Sundays, on the other hand, we had religious instruction that called for little exercise of the intellect.” Now doesn’t that sound familiar? “Careful preparation for Sunday school lessons, as for lessons in mathematics or Latin, was unknown. Religion seemed to be something that had only to do with the emotions and the will, leaving the intellect to secular studies. What wonder that after such training we came to regard religion and culture as belonging to two entirely separate compartments of the soul and their union as involving the destruction of both.”

And then Machen goes on to discuss the remedy of the problem. He says this: “A man can believe only what he holds to be true. We are Christians because we hold Christianity to be true, but other men hold Christianity to be false. Who is right? That question can be settled only by an examination and comparison of the reasons adduced on both sides. It is true, one of the grounds for our belief is an inward experience that we cannot share; that great experience begun by conviction of sin and conversion, and continued by communion with God, an experience which other men do not possess and upon which therefore we cannot directly base an argument. But if our position is correct, we ought at least be able to show the other man that his reasons may be inconclusive, and that involves careful study of both sides of the question. Furthermore, the field of Christianity is the world; the Christian cannot be satisfied so long as any human activity is either opposed to Christianity or out of all connection with Christianity. Christianity must pervade not merely all nations but also all of human thought. The Christian, therefore, cannot be indifferent to any branch of earnest human endeavor. It must all be brought into some relation to the gospel. It must be studied, either in order to demonstrate it as false or else in order to be made useful in advancing the kingdom of God.”

And then he concluded with another section: “The missionary movement is the great religious movement of our day. Now it is perfectly true that men must be brought to Christ one by one. There are no labor-saving devices in evangelism. It is all hand work, and yet it would be a great mistake to suppose that all men are equally well prepared to receive the gospel. It is true that the decisive thing is the regenerative power of God. That can overcome all lack of preparation and the absence of that makes even the best preparation useless. But as a matter of fact, God usually exerts that power in connection with certain prior conditions of the human mind. And it should be ours to create, so far as we can, with the help of God, those favorable conditions for the reception of the gospel. False ideas,” and here is one of the greatest statements Machen ever made, and this has been basically what I have been trying to do in the divine viewpoint framework, “False ideas are the greatest obstacles to the reception of the gospel. We may preach with all the fervor of a Reformer and yet succeed only in winning a straggler here and there. If we permit the whole collective thought of the nation or of the world to be controlled by ideas which, by the resistless force of logic prevent Christianity from being regarded as anything more than a harmless delusion. Under such circumstances what God desires us to do is destroy the obstacle at its root.”

And that was His mandate, to subdue the earth, in the area of the academic world, in the area of the thought world. So Christianity could once again be visible so we could have a place where we’d say hey, if you have questions, do you have questions about where life is going, about the meaning of your life, about the purpose of science, about the something else, about marriage, about all these questions that men have questions about, “Come and see.” But we have to have a place for them to “Come and see,” and we have very few places like they had here to come and see. So in verse 46 Philip says, “Come and see.”

John 1:47, and “Jesus saw Nathanael coming to Him,” and now begins a very, very interesting, very intriguing conversation. Jesus saw him walking toward him. So Jesus is watching him for some time. “…and said of him, well look at this [Behold] an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile!” Now Jesus has some ulterior motives here and He has a plan how He’s going to deal with Nathanael. How Jesus deals with Nathanael is with humor and with particularly a Jewish sense of humor because you see, what has Nathan just said in verse 46? “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” Nathanael, you see, is a man who has no cover-up, he lets it all hand out the way he thinks. He doesn’t have a deceit that wears that goofy smile and behind the goofy smile is a knife that’s waiting for you to turn you back so he can stab you. Nathan isn’t that kind of a man. If he doesn’t agree with what you’re thinking he just plops it out, I don’t buy it! And Jesus recognizes that before Nathan has physically come to Him, and that’s what Jesus is pointing out.

But there’s something else that Jesus is pointing out, and to catch His real sense of humor in all this we have to get a little Old Testament background. Turn to Genesis 27:35, the word translated “guile” in John 1 is a word which through the Septuagint handles Genesis 27:35, Isaac is talking to Esau about Jacob, and he says you know, “Your brother came with subtlety, and he took away your blessing,” with deceit, that’s the word guile, deceit. Jacob has deceit. We’re going to use that little verse so remember the content of Genesis 27:35 and while we’re in this section of the Bible I want to pick up two other passages because these are going to be tools in understanding the conversation of Nathan; you can’t appreciate what Jesus is doing here without this background.

Genesis 28:11-15, it refers to Jacob and his famous ladder dream. “He came to a certain place, and tarried there all night, because the sun was set; and he took of the stones of that place, and put them for his pillows, and lay down in that place to sleep.” How would you like that, rocks for pillows. [12] “And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. [13] And, behold, the LORD stood above it, and said I am Jehovah, God of Abraham, thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon you lie, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed. [14] And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth,” and he goes on and repeats the Abrahamic Covenant. In verse 15 he concludes, “And, behold, I am with thee, [and will keep thee in all places to which thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land;] for I will not leave, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.” Keep that second passage in mind: Genesis 27:35, now Genesis 28:11-15.

The third passage for background, Genesis 32:27, the angel wrestling with Jacob; the angel after the wrestling tournament is ended says, “And he said unto him, What is your name? And he said Ya‘aqob,” he says. [28] And he said,” the angel did, “unto him, Your name is no longer going to be called Ya‘aqob, but Yisrael; for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and you have prevailed.” Yisrael here is derived from sharah which means to fight with El, God, to fight with God. [29] “And Jacob asked him, and said, Tell me, I pray thee, thy name. And the angel said, Wherein, what is it to you that you ask after my name? And he blessed him.” Then in verse 30 Jacob realizes who the angel was, it was Jesus Christ in preincarnate form. “And Jacob called the name Peniel,” Pen, which is the word for face, El, God, “I have seen God face to face, but my life is preserved.” I saw it and I got away with it and I lived. All that richness to understand the conversation which now begins in John 1:47.

So Jesus says to him, “Behold, an Israelite indeed,” now that’s a rare use of the word “Israelite” in the New Testament, in fact, it’s one of the few uses of the word, so it calls our attention to something that Jesus is saying, Yisrael was Jacob’s new name, that was his name that he had with God after the wrestling tournament. Jacob—deceit; Yisrael meant that he was the fighter of God, or fighter with God. And so what Jesus is really saying here, it’s a pun. He’s saying well, this is a true Israelite, one in whom there is “no guile,” or Jacob. Nathanael, one who is not a Jacob, this is an Israelite indeed.

Now why does Jesus say that? Because Jesus understands what kind of a man this new disciple is; He’s already seen John the Baptist, he had one kind of personality, we’ve seen John the Apostle, he has another kind of personality; Peter has a different personality, Philip has a different personality and now comes Nathanael and he’s got a personality entirely different from everybody else. There’s no deceit about him, he lets you know what he thinks; he is exactly opposite, in other words, to Jacob, the chiseler who wormed his way around his mama, wormed his way around Esau, always putting a goofy smile on his face and then knifing people in the back. That’s guile, that’s deceit. And so because Nathanael was quite blunt, that’s what he was thinking, “no good thing can come out of Nazareth” and he said it, he wasn’t… oh, did something come out of Nazareth with that ooey-gooey love, saying all the time in his heart what kind of crud comes out of there. Well, Nathanael had that on his mind so instead of the gooey stuff he just dropped his load right there, and Jesus recognizes it and says well here is a true Israelite.

Now John 1:48 Nathanael said unto him, How do you know me?” And he asked two questions, very typical of John. Remember when he started this Gospel I warned you, when John uses words, boy does he use them; he uses words with two or three meanings all clustered in one and here’s one of those cases, “whence,” that word can mean two things, it can mean place or it can mean cause. He could be asking where did you see me that you know my character? By the way, that shows right there he’s a man of no guile. Jesus has just given him a fantastic compliment and he doesn’t say oh shucks, I’m not really worthy of that Lord. No, he says I’m worthy of that, he says where’d you learn truth? That’s right, he says, I don’t have any guile; that’s my personality, you’ve described it exactly, now where did you find out? And so he’s asking where did you find out and how did you find out? So Jesus plays along, “Jesus answered and said unto him, Before Philip called thee, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.”

Now he’s just answered both of Nathanael’s questions, He’s answered the where and He’s answered the how. He’s answered the where because there was a time when Nathanael was doing something under the fig tree. Now we suspect, though we can’t prove, we can only use our creative imagination here to think what might have happened under the fig tree, just based on what we know of the culture of the time and the subsequent conversation, but I suspect from the reaction that happened here that Nathanael was preparing for the coming Passover; Passover is going to be the next object on the scene in this Gospel, and Nathanael was reading passages in the Old Testament in preparation for the Passover. And in particular he was under the fig tree while he was reading this because the fig tree was a place where in the Mishnah it say often students of the Old Testament went during the daytime, it was cool. Fig trees give shade, so it would be under the fig tree where they would read. And so he was under the fig tree, perhaps reading a section of the Old Testament, and one of the preparatory passages Passover was Jacob’s ladder dream. And at the time of Jesus Christ, that ladder dream was being said by the rabbis to be the promise of Messiah’s deliverance of the nation. It was the looking forward to the King of Israel, that He would one day come, and the writer that promised I am with you, Israel, wherever you go, God Himself would come and would have communion between man, between heaven and earth, indicated by the angels going up and down the ladder. And so it was this passage, perhaps, Nathan was reading underneath the fig tree.

Whatever it was, Nathan was an intense student of Scripture; when he was reading he wasn’t just reading blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but he was studying it, meditating upon it, praying about it, thinking about it. In other words he was spiritually communing with his God under the fig tree. No one else was there, and when Jesus comes out with this next piece in the conversation you can just hear his jaw drop. You saw me where? Because under the fig tree I was having communion with Jehovah, God of Israel, how could you see me under the fig tree if you were not that God? So Jesus has answered two things: where did you see Me, where did you find out I was a character without God, you saw me at the place, the fig tree, and you saw me because you are God. And this leads, therefore, to his exclamation in John 1:48, Nathanael answered, and said unto him,” you see, here’s this guile-less character, this is on his mind, he just plops right out with it. The other disciples might have been guessing this but up until this point in the Gospel of John no one has said this kind of thing about Jesus Christ… yet! They might have been thinking it, but it took Nathanael, the man who just comes right out and says what he thinks, to say it. “And Nathanael answered, and said unto him, Rabbi, Thou art the Son of God; Thou art the King of Israel.”

So he confesses this, he confesses actively that Jesus Christ is identified with the man who is coming, he’s a perfectly candid man and he lets us know about it. He has realized, as he was sitting under that fig tree, perhaps, preparing for Passover, reading a portion of the Word of God, that Jesus Christ was the one who was there at that tree and with whom he had communion. John Calvin made an interesting remark about this verse, he said we ought to gather from this passage a useful lesson, that when we are not even thinking of Christ we are observed by Him, and this must needs be so, that Christ may bring us back when we have withdrawn from Him. Jesus Christ, in other words, was watching for Nathanael before Nathanael was watching for Him: “I saw you under the fig tree.” So Nathanael explains this thing, fantastic thing.

And Jesus now, in John 1:50, carries on from here and He’s going to use something else, a little subtlety in the passage, “Jesus answered, and said unto him, Because I said unto thee, I saw thee under the fig tree, do you believe? You’re going to see greater things than these.” Now Jesus is building upon a passage that we saw. Remember after Jacob was renamed he called the place Peniel, I saw there God. Now in popular life at this time the word Yisrael, Israel, had a technical derivation from Genesis; sharah, which is the word to fight with God, but it also had another derivation. It came from, in the Hebrew, Yis ra el, the man who sees God. This is also a popular designation, Yisrael, the man who sees God, based on Genesis 32:30. So since Jesus has already identified Nathanael as a true Israelite, in whom there is no Jacob, the one who sees God, I tell you Nathanael, you’re going to see greater things than these things that you have just seen, stick around. If you’re a true Israelite you’re the man who sees God. So this is built on all these passages, this whole Jacob motif lies behind Nathanael.

And then in John 1:51 Jesus Christ concludes, “And He saith unto him, Truly, Truly, I say unto you, Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.” Now the words, “Verily, verily” are translations from an original Hebrew word, amen, which is a solemn affirmation of testimony, and this is the first place we’ve noticed this but we’re going to see it further. Jesus Christ at several places in this Gospel betrays a method of argumentation that most of His contemporaries fail to understand because it’s so radical and His conclusions, the very technique itself demands a radical revision of human thought. Jesus claims, when He says “amen, amen, I say unto you,” He claims that He testifies to the validity of His own words and that His own words are self-authenticating and do not need another witnesses. In Jewish thought that is a claim to deity. Only God’s words can be self-authenticating; only God need not have another witness, for in the Mosaic Law when man testified there had to be two and three witnesses in order to prove a claim, and Jesus says I do not need two or three witnesses. I tell you My words are true.

Now if you’ll turn to John 8:14, you’ll see where Jesus does this again, it’s a little more clear how He does it. “Jesus answered, and said unto them, Though I bear record [witness] of myself, yet my record [witness] is true; for I know from where I came, and where I go; but you cannot tell from where I come, and where I go.” And He’s claiming because He is omniscient His words are self-authenticating, no man can tell where He came from and no man can tell where He goes from and He says by the normal canons of human proof that is correct, you do need two or three witnesses. I do not fit the canons of human jurisprudence. I am superior and My words authenticate themselves. When God speaks no one argues, the words are final. So it’s another very subtle point that the Gospel is slowly teaching us, exposing our eyes to a thousandths of an inch at a time, gradually widening our perception of this person of Jesus Christ.

Let’s go back and finish John 1. “Jesus said to him, I say unto you,” and I authenticate this and my words are self-authenticating because I am God, “I say unto you,” now you see why verse 51, the self-authenticating God comes right after verse 50? What had he said to Nathanael? Nathanael, you live up to a true Israelite, you’re not deceitful like Jacob, Jacob was a man who sees God, he became Yisrael, the man who sees God. Now Nathanael, “I say unto you,” you’re going to see greater things than just Me telling you about My omniscience, and immediately, the very next sentence starts out with “Amen, amen,” which itself, though Nathanael may not have gotten the point that time, that sentence right there is saying I am God and I am speaking to you in front of your face, “Amen, amen, Hereafter ye shall see heaven open,” now if you’ll notice in the King James translation, it shifts person. In verse 50 it is singular, He is talking only to Nathanael. In verse 51 it shifts to “ye,” “Hereafter you all,” plural, yet he’s still talking to Nathanael. Why is He talking to Nathaniel but using a plural form of the second person pronoun? It’s because Nathanael becomes a type of the faithful Jewish remnant and he says “you all,” of which Nathanael is a representative, “you all shall see heaven opened, and angels of God ascending and descending” not upon a ladder as your father, Jacob saw, because He says I am the ladder, I am the One who bridges the gap between men and God, I stand between heaven and earth, and the angels ascend and descend on Me, I am “the Son of man.”

And with that He uses a title with which we must be familiar from Daniel 7, the Son of man. Remember in Daniel 7 there were four kingdoms; these kingdoms were all animal like, beast like, the last one was a kind of humanized form of a beast, man-made parts on the beast, man-made claws that ripped and tore the flesh of men. And down through history Daniel says the characteristic of the kingdom of man, whatever it’s form, Babylonian, Greek, Roman, whatever the form of that kingdom it would be animal like, it would be ferocious, it would be minus a conscience, it would be minus the very image of God, in other words, men organized together become animals. Read Gulag by Solzhenitsyn, man collectively becomes animals and that was prophesied in the book of Daniel. But then the fifth kingdom, instead of being portrayed as an animal was portrayed in the form of a man. There was a man that came before Jehovah in the ancient of days in Daniel 7 and what did that teach us? That the fifth kingdom alone would be suited for the human race, the kingdom brought in by Jesus Christ.

The Son of man, then, is a title that applies to Jesus, not just as the King of Israel, but as the King for all men, who will bring in the entire kingdom for the entire saved human race. So what has Jesus done in these few brief verses? He’s taken Nathanael from skepticism of verse 46 through his confession of verse 49 when he admitted yes, Rabbi, you’re the Son of God, you’re just the son of Joseph, you’re the Son of God, you are the King of Israel, and he’s taking him along further, he says oh no, Nathanael, I’m King of Israel but I’m a lot more than that, I’m the Son of man, and you, as the one who sees God, you’re going to see the angels ascending and descending upon Me.

Now John is a very, very in depth writer. I said before none of his words are wasted. In this passage, if we reflect, we’ve had four days, we’ve had several events. Now I want you to see if you’ve noticed something, how John has so carefully arranged this. He’s taught us something else. Watch. The next chapter as we all know is a bridal feast, it’s a wedding feast. So he presents the material and it historically happened this way but it took the keen eyes of John rather than that of Matthew, Mark or Luke to see it, the feast, Nathanael, who would be the Jewish remnant that would see Jesus Christ coming with the heavens opened, before that we had Andrew and Peter witnessing to people, and before that we had John the Baptist at the end of the Old Testament.

What have we got here but in typology a panorama of history? You have John the Baptist of the Old Testament era, you have the witnessing people of the Church Age, you have Nathanael as the representation of the Jewish remnant prior to the return of Jesus Christ, who will be there when heaven is opened and they will see the Son of man with the angels ascending and descending upon Him and then we go into the Millennium, which is the bridal feast. So we have all of history telescoped in these few days in the beginning of Jesus’ ministry and it takes the keen aged eyes of this old, old apostle, as he meditated and thought and thought and thought about this over many decades to see the relationship that he is presenting to us in his Gospel.

And as we close in verse 51 we want to go back and notice something else about what he’s done here for us. He has just given us in 51 verses 14 titles to the person of Jesus Christ. Here they are:

In John 1:1 he calls Jesus “Word,” and he calls Him “God,” two titles, Word and God in verse 1.

In verse 4 the third title, “the Light of men.”

In verse 14 the fourth title, “the begotten of the Father.”

In verse 15 we have one who is greater than John the Baptist, one whose shoe latchet he couldn’t undo.

In verse 18, the only begotten Son, or literally as some texts read the only begotten God.

In verse 23 where John the Baptist says, “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, make straight the way of Jehovah,” and so Jesus is called Jehovah in verse 23.

In verse 29 and 38 He is called the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.

In verse 33 He is called the one who is baptized with the Holy Spirit.

In verse 34 He is called the Son of God.

In verse 38 He is called Rabbi or teacher.

And then the passage reaches a crescendo, which suggests that as history goes on it becomes more and more obvious who Christ really was, it starts out as “what good thing can come out of Nazareth, and by the time the conversation is finished we’re talking about the Son of man. And so there’s an escalation in the titles of Christ.

In verse 41, now he is called Messiah.

In verse 45 He is called the one who fulfills all of the Old Testament prophecies.

In verse 39 He’s called the King of Israel.

And finally in verse 51 He is called the Son of man.

Do you think John just composed that accidentally, or he had a purpose. He obviously had a very deep purpose in mind. Those titles portray every aspect of the person of Christ that remains in this Gospel. In his first chapter he has given us every title out of the mouths of different kinds of people as to who this Christ is. He concludes this passage on the presentation of Jesus to the nation with a man who is utterly candid, and he says if you people don’t believe the claims of Jesus Christ then I submit to you this piece of evidence; here is the piece of evidence; here was a man who had no deceit, if there was anybody who was going to call Jesus Christ a phony it would have been Nathanael because if he thought Christ was a phony he would have said Christ is a phony. And when Christ was investigated by perfectly candid people, those perfectly candid people were even more candid about his character. Before you have kind of the pious crowd that says yes, Rabbi, we know. But when you have the candid person who can yell, yeah, he’s a phony, you also have the same kind of person that says yes, He’s the Son of man. So people like Nathanael are used to present Christ to the readers of this Gospel. There’s an evidence in John’s arsenal for our faith.

And then some other themes that come out of this that we conclude with. One of the themes that’s ever recurrent in all of this is that Jesus Christ draws his follows in ever more intimate relationship to Himself. That’s a mark of sanctification in this Gospel, that Jesus Christ brings people closer to Himself. Remember what happened that day when John and Andrew saw Jesus and they started kind of very timidly following; they had kind of a… you know, they were kind of embarrassed it, they weren’t like Nathanael, they kind of tip-toed along in back of Him and Jesus turned around and said, “What do you seek?” You see, it was a drawing question, What is it you seek, men? What are the issues that you’re seeking answers to? What can we discuss? What are you looking at? And then here with Nathanael. You see, Nathanael started coming out with this and the more Nathanael talked the more Christ talked back and pretty soon, within a few short sentences Christ has led Nathanael into the most astounding think he’s ever seen in his life. He thought he had an ecstatic experience under the fig tree until he realized that the One who looked under the fig tree was the One who talked to him face to face right then.

Another principle that we see from these passages and this whole section of John 1 is how Christ uses men of every type of personality… every type of personality. Don’t brand people by their personality. There are various kinds of men and you see them here, people who are smart, people who aren’t so smart, people who are candid and people who really can’t feel comfortable being candid. Jesus isn’t asking John and Andrew to be like Nathanael; he’s not saying dump your load out like Nathanael does every time he has a thought. He’s saying you’re just not structured that way, you’re more of a timid kind of person so don’t try to pretend you’re a Nathanael; I’m not asking you to be a Nathanael; I’m just asking you not to be anyone but to get to know me better. That’s the point Jesus is making.

And finally, you cannot come away from this passage, as we won’t be able to come away from subsequent passages, without the clear, clear conviction that what impressed the men most that met Jesus during the period of the incarnation was that when they walked into His presence they were known men. Jesus betrayed who He was; He showed His divine nature by telling these men exactly who they were; they were perfectly understood people and Jesus was the first person they’d ever met in all their life who perfectly understood them. He knew the inner reaches of the recesses of their soul, better than they did. And this just took all of them off their feet. We’ll see later on a woman that comes out to the well and it’s the same thing all over again that happened to these men; this man knows me, He knows me more intimately than anybody else I’ve ever seen.

Now that’s the comforting thing about Jesus Christ. He knows you perfectly, He knows all of your weaknesses, He knows all of your hang-ups, He knows every problem that’s on your mind. He also knows how much you know about Him. He knows you perfectly and that’s why He can say now trust Me.