Jesus Makes His First Disciples

Good morning to all of you. Nice to see all of you here on this beautiful Sabbath day. We're going to be continuing in our series of studies on the Gospels today. Today we'll pick up the story in Luke—excuse me—John 1, the Gospel of John. Last time, to catch us up to speed just a little bit, last time we talked about the Jerusalem religious establishment, sending some of the priests and Levites out to question John the Baptizer. John responded that he was not the Messiah, that he was not the prophet like Moses, who had been prophesied, and he was not Elijah. But instead, he was the voice in the wilderness crying out, make straight the way of the Lord. And then he identified Jesus as the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, and testified that Jesus was indeed the Son of God. Then we talked about the prophecy in Daniel 9 of the 79 weeks, or 483 years, prophetically, between the decree to rebuild Jerusalem in the Temple and the time when the Messiah would appear on the scene, and went through how that points to the year 27 AD as the time of the appearance of the Messiah, and how indeed that was when Jesus Christ began his ministry. So now we'll pick up the story there in John 1 with the events that follow right after those we covered last time. So begin covering it today in verse 35 of John 1. It says here, again, the next day, John stood with two of his disciples. Somewhat minor point I'd like to point out here, mainly for a future reference, but several times right in here, John mentions a very tight time order. For instance, verse 29, which we covered last time, he mentions the next day. Then here, verse 35, he mentions again the next day. And then down in verse 43, he says the following day. The reason I mention this is that sometimes John gives a great deal of detail about events that took place in a relatively short period of time. And actually what John is describing here are the events of the first week of Jesus Christ's ministry. And this is particularly true later on as we'll see as we get toward the end of this series, where John gives a great deal of information about the events of the last week of Christ's life. So I just want to point this out that John does give this very tight chronological order here, and will do so again at the end of Christ's ministry as well. One point to mention here, and this is one of the study questions I sent out last night too, is that John the Baptizer has disciples too. And a question I sent out is, what does this tell us about John? Any takers on that? What do we get? What do we learn about John from the fact that he has his own disciples there? Okay, yes, I think Sheila had her hand up first. Yes, thank you. Yes, yes, he was a rabbi or teacher. Yeah, to have disciples, you basically had to be a rabbi during that time. There were many different types of teachers that we find referred to in the Gospels. We find scribes, for instance. We find teachers. We find teachers of the law, or Torah teachers, as they would have been called in Hebrew, and rabbis. And then, of course, there is the religious establishment that we've talked about earlier in Jerusalem. But yes, to have disciples, you had to be a rabbi. And we'll talk about that system here in a few minutes here. I do want to spend some time covering that. I actually, back in January, gave an entire sermon on the subject of rabbis and teachers and that system. And if you didn't hear that, I'd recommend you go back and review that material. We need to understand it because that's, frankly, a part of what we are called to do.

And that's a key reason why we're spending so much time in the Gospels in such detail here.

We are called to be a student or a learner or a disciple, or as the Bible calls it, a Talmud.

It's a Hebrew word. There's not a straight English equivalent, but we'll discuss what that means here.

It's a Hebrew word. Plural of that is talmiddim, with im on the end. That's how you denote a plural in Hebrew, adding an im. Well, a lo m is one that we're familiar with here.

So collectively, we are talmiddim. We are a group of students. We are a group of learners, a group of disciples. In Greek, the equivalent word is mathetes. M-A-T-H-E-T-E-S. It doesn't have exactly the same connotations, but that's the closest equivalent, and that's the word that's used in the Gospels here for disciples. So if one is a student, a learner, a disciple, one must have a teacher, or leader, or master. This is what a rabbi is called in the Bible. Of course, the most famous rabbi mentioned in the Bible is Jesus. Another rabbi, as we just mentioned, is John. John the baptizer is a rabbi. Another one who was training to be a rabbi is the Apostle Paul. That was his training under Gamaliel, the famous Jewish teacher there. So a dozen times in Scripture, his followers call him rabbi. And rabbi is a term of great honor and respect. In Hebrew, it means master or great one, something like that. Twice in Scripture, Jesus is called rabbonai, which means great master or most honorable of all. And similar terms that we find in Scripture would be teacher or Lord. Lord would be another way of expressing the concept of master. Both of these terms, teacher and Lord, are used of Jesus Christ a number of times in the Gospel. So you could say that that rabbi actually encompasses and wraps up all of these different meanings there of teacher, master, great one, all in one term. And yes, a rabbi was a teacher, but his followers also saw him as a great master. And yes, he was a great master, but his followers also saw him as a great teacher. And yes, he was a great one, but his followers saw him also as a great master and a great teacher. All of these meanings are wrapped up in the one term. Again, there's not a good English equivalent for it, but they all are wrapped up in that term rabbi. And this again is what Jesus was and John the Baptizer before him. And again, the followers of a rabbi were called in Hebrew, Talmadim or in Greek, Mathetis. And yes, it does mean student, it does mean disciple, it does mean learner, but it means more than that here because a disciple or student or learner, if someone is called a student, basically that means somebody who's trying to learn what the teacher knows. But the concept of a disciple or a Talmid went much deeper than that because they wanted to not just know what the teacher knew, to learn what the teacher knew, but to become like the teacher in every way. And that's the key distinction. The purpose of a disciple was to try to become like his teacher in every way. And this is the system that was in use in Galilee at that time. I would liken it to an apprenticeship, and I discussed that quite a bit in the sermon back in January there. There was a certain amount of classroom instruction that took place in the local synagogue, similar to our modern educational system there. And there, the boys and the girls would go to be taught in the classroom at the local synagogue. But they would also learn the trades, the skills they needed outside the synagogue. For instance, the girls would learn weaving, sewing, spinning cloth, spinning wool, yarn, cooking, this sort of thing, from their mothers there at home. And the boys would learn, in most cases, the trade of their father, whatever trade that happened to be, whether it's a farmer, whether it's builder, whether it's a craftsman like a metal worker or leather worker or a potter or a fisherman, as we see a number of the disciples were or whatever. They would have gone to school at the local synagogue for part of the day and then would have learned their other skills they needed to learn at home from their mother or from their father or perhaps from another relative there.

Give a little more detail about that. We've covered some of this before, but we need to review it here briefly. Basically, from about age five or six up to about age 12, the boys and girls would go to school at the local synagogue. And this there, their schooling would focus on the Bible. The boys would basically concentrate on the five books of Moses, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy with the goal of memorizing those books by the time they were 12. The girls had a slightly different curriculum. They would study, let's see, just off the top of my head. I think it's the book of Deuteronomy, the Psalms, one other book which I don't recall off the top of my head because that was viewed as more pertinent to their education. They would also, in studying the scriptures, learn about things like history. But it would be the national history of Israel and Judah. It wouldn't be world history because they weren't aware of everything going on in the rest of the world. But they would study things like Egypt and Assyria, Babylon, Greece, as they interacted with the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. So it wasn't all Bible that they studied. They would study other subjects as well. But their education was certainly centered around the Bible. That was the hard and core of what they would study in this schooling.

Again, the boys would be expected to memorize the five books of Moses, the Torah, as it's called.

Of course, not all boys would be able to do that. Many of them would not have that aptitude. But there was a small minority who could accomplish that. Then they would go on, after age 12, to study the rest of the Old Testament scriptures and interpretation or understanding of them as well. And again, among that group, many of them would not be able to do that as well. So at some point, age 12 or beyond, most would end their formal study or formal schooling and would go adopt and continue on in their father's trade. Again, farmer, fisherman, craftsman, whatever it might be. Those who were really gifted and had that aptitude for studying and memorizing scripture and explaining it, interpreting it, and so on, generally they would then search out a rabbi to follow. Or they would be more typically, you didn't just pick out a rabbi and follow him, you would essentially have to be invited by the rabbi to become one of his followers. We'll actually see an example of that here later on today. So it wasn't just you picked out a rabbi and automatically became one of his Talmadim. You had to be invited by the rabbi to do that. But again, to follow a rabbi meant much more than just sitting in a classroom and absorbing his lectures and involved literally following the rabbi. Here's an illustration of that here. The disciples would travel with the rabbi, they would live with a rabbi, they would eat with him, they would imitate their rabbis learning not just from what they said or what they taught but from what they did all the time from activities of everyday life as well as from the manner in which they lived, from their personal example in other words. And again, this was all with the goal of the Talmadim becoming exactly like their rabbi in every way. And this is why I compare it to an apprenticeship program for many, many centuries, actually up until this last century, the common way that people learned their occupation was through an apprenticeship program. And that method was very common for centuries. Most of us have not experienced that, perhaps a few have, but it always has been a very effective way of learning, standing right beside the person you're apprentice to and learning the skill, learning the craft from that individual. And again, this is the way Jewish boys and girls in Galilee in the first century would have learned.

The usual method of learning was hands-on experience. They are imitating somebody and learning the skills that they wanted to learn. Learning wasn't so much about memorizing and retaining data, as in our school system today, but rather it was about absorbing more or less the essential knowledge and skills and wisdom from the person you were following there. And again, this is the method that the rabbis used in training their talmadeem or their disciples.

And it's important, I give this background, because it's important because we are to follow that same system, to be blunt about it. We are followers of a rabbi, and our rabbi is Jesus Christ. And like his talmadeem, his disciples, we also are to become his faithful followers, to become like him. And in turn, what are we called to do?

Matthew 28, 19 says that we are to go and make disciples of all the nations.

How can we do that if we are not disciples ourselves? If we are not like Jesus Christ, if we are not modeling ourselves on him, how can we teach and train others to become like Jesus Christ? As I discussed back in the sermon in January, there are three keys to becoming a disciple. There are many of them, but three that I focused on in particular. First of all, a disciple must spend as much time as possible with his master.

This was the point of the disciples literally living with their master, as we see with Jesus, his followers, following him all over Galilee, down to Jerusalem, and so on. So it was all geared around spending time with him, and absorbing that knowledge from his teaching and from his example. Another point is that a disciple must be totally committed to his master. Totally committed to him. You're not going to have two minds. You're not going to be divided in your loyalties. You have to be totally committed to the master.

The last point I talked about there is that a disciple must serve his master. We covered a number of scriptures about each of these points. Again, you can go back and review that. But the point of all of this is to transform our lives, to become like the master, like the teacher, like the rabbi, Jesus Christ. And again, that's why we're spending so much time going through the Gospels in detail, so that we can know what he is like.

How are we going to model our lives after him if we don't know what he did? If we're not studying the Gospels, that gives us the accounts of his life. One truism in life is that we are going to become like whatever we surround ourselves with, or by whatever we allow into our minds. So, as an example, if we surround ourselves with negativity—and it's hard to avoid the political ads, that certainly comes to mind these days—just gets you in a bad frame of mind, just seeing all this garbage there thrown at us every day.

But if we surround ourselves with negativity, that's just one example, what are we going to be? We're going to become negative, negative-minded. If we have friends who are Gossips, tailbearers, like that, what are we going to be like? Well, we're going to fall into that same kind of behavior there. We're going to be careless about what we speak about. If we are surrounded by people who don't care about God's laws, his way of life, then that's going to rub off on us, and we're going to grow more lax ourselves and our obedience to God.

So, none of us is so spiritually mature and perfect that we're not affected and influenced by those around us. So, a question we need to focus in on is who and what is going to be shaping our lives? What do we want to shape our lives? Something is always shaping us. It's either going to be the culture of the world around us, or will it be our master and teacher, Jesus Christ?

Again, it's a matter of what our priorities are, how we're spending our time. I'd like to turn to one scripture here that's very relevant to this, Ephesians 4, verses 11 through 13. I'll read this from the NIV, which catches some of the flavor better than the New King James Version. Paul is writing here talking about the purpose of the ministry within the church.

Notice what he says. He says, it was he, Jesus Christ, the head of the church, who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers. Why did he do that? Why did Jesus Christ give some of these responsibilities within the church? Verse 12, he says, to prepare God's people for works of service. The New King James says, for the ministry.

That's actually a bad translation because the ministry is service. That's the whole point. The ministry is to prepare God's people for works of service, for serving. In other words, that's why we keep emphasizing that a great deal. We're preparing God's people for serving so that the body of Christ may be built up. That's the goal of the serving, so that the body of Christ may be built up, strengthened, in other words.

Going on, he elaborates on that, until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

So that's what we're trying to do here. That's what we're trying to do here in these classes, in particular. Becoming knowledgeable of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, so that we may become mature and attain to the whole measure of the fullness of Jesus Christ. In other words, to become like Him.

Which again, is the whole point of being disciples, to become like Him, to measure up to His fullness, His character, His maturity there. So basically, the whole point of this is, is He saying we're continuing the system of Rabbi and disciple there. We're all training to become like Jesus Christ in every way, so that eventually we measure up to Him. His character, His maturity, His spirituality, His priorities, His thoughts, that sort of thing. So that is the whole point of Jesus Christ, the head of the Church, establishing these responsibilities and priorities within His Church, so that the whole body can grow and mature together to become like Him. So with that background about Talmadeem and disciples and so on, now we'll go back and pick up the story here, back in verse 35 again of John 1. Again, the next day John the Baptizer stood with two of His disciples. And looking at Jesus as He walked, He said, Behold the Lamb of God.

The two disciples heard Him speak and they followed Jesus. Now, this is very unusual for that day because, after all, if you're a rabbi and you have your disciples, you don't want your disciples to go off following another rabbi. Because by implication, that means that rabbi is better than you if your disciples are leaving to go follow that rabbi.

But John was not that way. John the Baptizer was not jealous of Jesus. He knew that Jesus was destined to be first. There, the more important one, not Him. After all, what was John's mission? John's mission was to repair a people for the coming of the Messiah, Jesus Christ. And this is what He did with His own disciples, pointed them directly to Jesus, the Lamb of God, as He said here.

Verse 38, then Jesus turned and seeing them following, said to them, What do you seek? And they said to Him, Rabbi, which is to say, when translated, teacher.

Where are you staying? So let's notice a couple of things to pick up here in these few verses.

First of all, it's obvious these two disciples are following Jesus from a bit of a distance there. And this also was typical of the culture of that day. If you wanted to follow a rabbi, you didn't just march right up and say, can I be your disciple? That is very disrespectful in that culture. What you did is you kind of hung back. So we'd know that you were there, and you would wait for Him to speak to you first. To say, do you have a question to ask?

Something like that. That's the way the system worked. This was the respectful way to approach and engage a great rabbi, as Jesus was. You waited until He initiated the contact. And indeed, that is what we see Jesus Christ did. He notices these two disciples of John hanging around, following Him, and He looks back. Which means they're obviously following Him from behind. You might say that Jesus reaches out to meet them halfway. Again, He initiates the contact with them there. That's the way God works with us, too. He's the one who reaches out to us.

He initiates the calling. No one, as we read later on in John, comes to God unless the Father calls Him. We see this modeled in what Jesus is doing with these two disciples of John.

Notice also the question that Jesus asks them. It's rather interesting. He says, What do you seek? What would be the obvious question? Who do you seek? Are you looking for me? No. Jesus says, What do you seek? Think about that. Let's dissect that question a little bit about how it applies to anyone today. Back then, like today, people were looking. They were seeking different things. In the culture of that day, some were just curious. Some were what you might call religious hobbyists there. We see them fairly regularly. People who are interested, they're curious, but they don't really want to change their lives. They're just curious. Interested about the truth. We've seen this with the Kingdom of God Bible Lectures. People will come and listen for a couple of hours, and then we never see them again there. I would characterize a lot of them as religious hobbyists. They're interested, but they're not really interested in a commitment or changing their lives. Some, like the Pharisees of that day, wanted to know more than anybody else.

They wanted to know every little minutiae of wah and its application. So, frankly, they would be smarter than everybody else. They would go from rabbi to rabbi, or teacher to teacher, and pick up a little bit of teaching from this rabbi, and a little bit from this teacher, and so on, so that they could show that they were smarter than everybody else. We've seen people like that over the years as well. Some, like the Sadducees we've touched on a bit. We'll talk about that more next class. And the Herodians, who were basically people affiliated with the political leadership of the day, the Herodians that are mentioned in the Gospels, what did they want? They wanted power. They wanted control, like the Jerusalem religious establishment we've talked about. They were ambitious. They liked the good life. They had the good life, and they wanted to hold on to that. Others, we'll touch on later on, like the zealots. What were the zealots interested in? The zealots were interested in recruiting, finding recruits, and getting a military leader who would lead them to kick out the Romans and establish a new Jewish kingdom there in Galilee and Judea, based on a new society as they interpreted how it should be.

And then some were humble men, sincere men, quietly seeking God and realizing that they needed something greater than themselves to turn their life around. So, to ask Jesus Christ's question, what are you seeking? Which category do we fall in? Hopefully we fall in this latter category of humble and sincere men and women who are quietly seeking God because we know we need something bigger than we are. We know that we need God's help. We know that we need Him leading and controlling our lives. So, again, what are we seeking? It's an important question that Jesus asked them there. Not, who are you seeking, but what are you seeking? What do you want out of life? What are you looking for? What is your goal? What is your desire? Continuing on here, picking it up in the latter part of verse 38, they said to Him, Rabbi, which is when translated, teacher, where are you staying? So, they acknowledged Jesus as Rabbi, again, as teacher, master, great one. And then they basically say, we need to talk. Where are you staying?

They're essentially telling Him that they want to talk with Him. They want to spend time with Him. They don't want just a superficial conversation. They want to sit down and have a good, long discussion with Him. Where are you staying? They essentially invite themselves over to where Jesus is staying, to have the opportunity to learn more, to see if He really is who and what John He said He was. And then Jesus responds to them in a typical rabbinical way here. Jesus responds, come and see. He doesn't engage them in a long argument or debate right then. He just says, come and see. Sit down and listen. Determine for yourselves.

So they came and saw where He was staying and remained with Him that day. Now it was about the tenth hour. So they stayed with Jesus the rest of that day and probably well into the night and overnight as well. Now, this tenth hour here is about four o'clock in the afternoon. John is using the Jewish measurement or way of counting time in which days began basically at sunrise, 6 a.m.

And what's interesting is that John... Well, actually, let me ask you a question because this is one of the study questions I sent out last night. Why would John include... Or what's the...

Actually, I don't recall how I phrased that question, but John includes this tiny little detail that these events took place about four o'clock in the afternoon. And what does that tell us? What was this little insignificant, seemingly insignificant detail tell us here? Because God puts everything in His Word for a purpose so we can learn something about it. I admit it's a pretty pretty esoteric question there, but think about it. When did most authors, and as I've explained, John's Gospel was probably written in the 80s or 90s AD, which is roughly 60 years after these events happened. And he includes this little detail in here that this took place at four o'clock in the afternoon. What does this tell us? Will it tell... Yes, Paul. He probably took notes.

Probably took notes. Had a great memory, that's for sure. Yeah, I think the bigger point I take from this is that it shows that considering the critics angle, because a lot of critics of the Bible say that the Gospel of John wasn't written in the first century. No, it was written 200-300 AD, somewhere along in there. But this little detail in here puts the lie to that, because it shows nobody is going to write something 200 or 300 years later and make up a little detail like this. Such an insignificant detail. Just mention it in passing. No, what this does show is this is indeed written by somebody who was there, who was an eyewitness to what took place. As we know, later on Jesus Christ promised that when He would give the Comforter the Holy Spirit, it would bring to your remembrance all these things. No doubt for John to write this 60 years later, approximately, God's Spirit is leading Him, helping to remember these things.

Just one of those interesting little details. We'll come across a number of these in the Gospels that nobody fabricating this hundreds of years later would think to include a little detail like this happened at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. It also tells, this isn't related to Him by somebody else, it's written by an eyewitness who was there and knew and understood what is going on.

Another question I sent out is, what does it tell us when John is translating different terms here? Like Rabbi, like Messiah, or down in verse 41, that we'll get to in a minute, or verse 42, Cephas. John translates these terms. Why does he do that? What does that tell us about who he's writing to? Why does he need to translate? Yes, Sam? Exactly, yes, because he's talking to both Jews and Greeks. A Greek speaker reading the term Rabbi wouldn't have a clue what that meant unless he happened to live near a Jewish community.

Wouldn't have a clue what the word Cephas or Kephas would have been in Hebrew. Or Messiah, a Greek speaker would not have known what these terms. The Jews would have, yes, they would have understood that, but a Greek speaker would not. And Greek was the common language of the Roman world at that time. So yes, this is telling us that John's gospel is written to a more universal audience, not strictly, or not primarily Jewish, like the Gospel of Matthew, for instance, which is very heavily Hebrew in its thinking and references and so on. So yeah, John is writing to a universal audience, and in doing so he explains his terms as he goes through Mark.

As we mentioned in one of the introductory messages, he throws in various Latin terms in there. Why does he do that? Well, because he's writing to Romans, primarily. There again, that's part of the overview material we covered in some of the earlier sermons here. But yeah, so this tells us that John's gospel is not just for the Jews, but it's a universal gospel, and that that's who he's directing it to. Verse 40, one of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. So here we see that two of John's Talmadim, two of his disciples. Hearing John say that Jesus is the Lamb of God, start following Jesus. And one is identified here as Andrew, the brother of Peter. Now who do you suppose the other one was?

Not related to your question, but back in 30 night, if I could back up a little bit. Sure. I wonder why he puts in the time frame of 4 p.m.

Was it because he was inviting them to a meal of further conversation?

Further education from Jesus? That's my guess. More than just that night, but going into the next day. I don't know. Yeah, there's actually, well, let's see, I can touch on that. Let me think. It's down a few verses. Let me find the verse. I researched this, but I didn't include it in my notes because it's down in verse 41. It says, He, Andrew, first found his own brother. This word first is, well, one of these words that can have multiple meanings, it can mean first in order of priority, or can also mean first thing in the morning. Some commentators say that what this is saying is, Andrew, first thing in the morning, found his own brother, Simon, which indicates they probably spent the night with Jesus.

So yeah, I think that's strongly implied, maybe not explicitly here, but I think that's why I say, I think they probably went and spent at least well into the night, if not overnight, with Jesus. Not necessarily, but the tradition of hospitality is very, very powerful in that culture. It would have been very natural for a host to invite somebody he just met to dinner, to a meal, to share a meal to the house.

Actually, if you wander around Israel at all today, you'll have people inviting you into their house for tea, or things like that. You can waste all your time there, except all the invitations. So you have to learn how to say no.

But yeah, that culture of hospitality is very, very strong. So yeah, I think Jesus' invitation is... it's interesting the way he words this. Come and see. There is a phrase he uses a number of times, which is, follow me. That is an invitation to become a disciple, to become one of my followers. He doesn't say that. He basically says, well, come and check me out, to put it in the modern vernacular.

So yeah, and remained with him that day. This invitation is extended about the tenth hour, about four o'clock. So if they stay several hours, then it's going to get mealtime and sunset, which begins the next day. So I think the implication is, yeah, they spend the night with him, and they're burning the lamp oil into the wee hours of the morning, talking with him there. It's not explicitly stated, but reading between the lines, I think that's what's going on there. So yeah, verse 40, then again, one of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother.

So we see two of John's disciples, and one is identified as Andrew. But an obvious question, who's the other? And why doesn't he say? So yes, Paul. Probably John. Yeah, good. Let's analyze a few details and see if that's what it points us to. First of all, as I just mentioned, there's an incredible amount of detail in here that Matthew, Mark, and Luke do not include. They don't include any of this section here. None at all. Contains a lot of tiny details like this happening at four o'clock. The only way you get that kind of detail is if somebody's an eyewitness to it.

Absolutely was there. So if you put these little details together, John's gospel contains all of this detail. It's obviously written by somebody who was there. You can put two and two together, and you conclude John's the other disciple. Now, is there precedent for that? John, we'll see. Let's take a look at another couple of passages here. John 18.

This is over near the end. This is the last week of Christ's life. He's been arrested, taken to the house of the high priest. And John is writing about the events that happened with Simon Peter here while Jesus is at the house of the high priest being questioned there. So John 18 verses 15 and 16. Simon Peter followed Jesus, and so did another disciple. No name. No name. Now, that disciple was known to the high priest and went with Jesus into the courtyard of the high priest. But Peter stood at the door outside. He wasn't known by the high priest. Then the other disciple who was known to the high priest went out and spoke to her who kept the door, the servant who was minding the door there, and brought Peter in.

So again, read between the lines. It's obvious John is talking about himself there, that John is the other disciple who is known to the high priest. And he sees Peter waiting outside the gate of the end of the courtyard there. And he goes and speaks to the servant and allows Peter to be brought in. Yes, yes, Pat. Well, John always spoke of himself in the third person. He did, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's what, that's what, yeah, this is the pattern of John's writing that we're seeing here. He's writing of himself in the third person. First person would be to write, I was there and I did this. Third person means you're, you're writing yourself as you're, you're describing it as though you were looking at yourself doing these things. That's what is meant by the term third person. Yes, Faye. Yes, yes, right, right, yeah, yeah. John seems to be quite a, quite a humble character at this stage in his life. We'll discuss this when we get to it, but he's at one point called one of the sons of thunder with his, with his brother James, which means he wasn't always this humble guy. Yes, Sheila. Yes. Well, that's John the Baptizer that's mentioned there. John the Baptizer says, yeah, yeah, I have to clarify my John's here. Yeah, yeah, John the Baptizer says the Lamb of God and two of John the Baptizer's disciples then start following, and that's Andrew and John. Look at, look at one other example here of John, of the Gospel of John, writing about himself in the third person as well. This is, this is at the Sea of Galilee, after Christ has been resurrected and he appears to the disciples there at the Sea of Galilee for the context of it. And you'll probably remember the story as we read this passage, John 21 verses 20 through 24. Then Peter, turning around, saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following, who also had leaned on his breast at the supper, the Last Supper there, the Passover with the disciples, and said, Lord, who is the one who betrays you? Peter, seeing him, this other disciple who isn't named, said to Jesus, but Lord, what about this man? And Jesus said to him, if I will that he remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You follow me. And continuing on, verse 23, then the saying went out among the brethren that this disciple would not die. Yet Jesus did not say to him that he would not die, but if I will that he remain till I come, what is that to you? This is the disciple who testifies of these things and wrote these things. And we know that his testimony is true. So here John kind of admits, acknowledges that yes, he is the disciple that was there. And he's writing about without mentioning who it is, without mentioning it's him. And until this point here, now he says, this is the disciple who testifies of these things and wrote these things. I am the one. I was there. I was an eyewitness to this. And therefore we know that this testimony is true. So again, there are other examples. These are just some of the most notable ones that I picked out where John is writing of himself in the third person. So putting again all these different clues together, you realize, yes, John is this other disciple of John the Baptizer along with Andrew. And that's why he includes so much detail. That's why he includes these details that the other gospel writers don't, because they weren't there. Matthew wasn't called yet. Mark later basically gave Peter's version of events. Peter is not called yet.

Luke wouldn't be called for several years after this. So none of the others were there. But John was. And it records this first week of the ministry of Jesus Christ here for us. So again, it's putting together little pieces of the puzzle, pieces of the clues, and a much bigger, more full picture emerges from that then. So back now to John 1 and verse 41.

He first, he being Andrew, first found his own brother Simon. And again, this first can mean first thing in the morning. And I think that's probably what is going on here, that after they've spent the night with Jesus, what's Andrew do? First thing, hey, I've got to go tell somebody about this. So he goes and finds his own brother Simon and said to him, we have found the Messiah, which is translated the Christ. Again, translating his terms here for a non-Jewish audience.

And as we talked about last time from Daniel 9, the prophecy there that foretold the year that the Messiah would appear. So there is a lot of messianic expectation. It's a common theme we see through the Gospels here. And again, the word Messiah means anointed or anointed one.

And also gave a sermon earlier in the year about the significance of this as it relates to Jesus Christ. That anointing was done for four purposes that are described in the Bible, to set someone apart as a king, to set someone apart as a priest, to set someone apart as a prophet, and to set a part someone or something for holy use, to dedicate them to God, in other words. And in that sermon, I described how all four of these terms that are translated Messiah or Christ, which means anointed, all of these apply to Jesus Christ and his role. So if you want to review that, you can go back and do that. Also, verse 42 then, And he, Andrew, brought him, Simon Peter, to Jesus. Now when Jesus looked at him, at Peter, he said, You are Simon, or Shimeon, and Hebrew, Shimon, the son of Jonah. You shall be called a Kephas, as it would have been pronounced in Hebrew, not Sifas, but Kephas, which is translated a stone. So Jesus renames this Jewish fisherman, Simeon, as Kepha, in Hebrew, or Aramaic, or Peter, in Greek, both of terms which mean a stone, a rock. You might say he gave him the name Rocky.

We might give somebody a nickname today. It's not uncommon in the New Testament for people to have two names. We see a number of examples of this. I'll cite just a couple of them. There's a disciple called Thomas, or Didymus. Thomas in Hebrew, Aramaic means twin, and Didymus in Greek means twin. He's apparently a twin there. Another notable person in the New Testament, with two known by two names, is very familiar with us. His Hebrew name is Shaul, Saul. We know him better as Paul, the Apostle Paul. Two names. We also find this in the book of Genesis. This is a pattern that goes back to the book of Genesis, where God renames people when he starts working with them in a new relationship. This seems to be what's taking place with Peter here.

We see it when God changed the name of a Brahm, which means exalted father, to Abraham, which means father of nations, or father of multitudes, indicating that that's what Abraham's destiny was to be, that through his descendants there would be many nations who would come from him. We find Jacob's name. Jacob means supplanter, or one who grasped the heel.

I have to wonder if that's where the expression pulling your leg came from, because he's a deceiver, somebody who grasped the heel. In Hebrew, it seems to have that meaning, a deceiver, a schemer, a plotter, or something like that. His name was changed from supplanter, or deceiver, to God prevails, or one who prevails with God, Israel, one who prevails with God.

Now Jesus changes the name of Simeon, or Shimon, in Hebrew, which means herd, not herd of cattle, but herd, as in listen to, to Kepha, or Peter, which means a rock or a stone.

Why would he change his name to that? Apparently, because Peter is going to be a rock, a stone, part of the foundation of the early church there. I'm not saying that Peter is the first pope or anything like that, just that Peter would be a notable part of the foundation of the early church. Indeed, we see that in the book of Acts later on. What does that mean for us? What are the implications to us of that? Well, it shows in all of these examples where God is renaming people and where Jesus renames people, renames Peter, that he isn't looking at what we are now. He's looking at our potential, what he can do working within us and through us. He sees something great in us. He sees what we can become. Yes, Dave? You can see in the resurrection that he's going to give us a new name. Give us a new name, right? What's the name going to be? Overcomer, Striver, Victor, things like that. I think that's exactly it. Yes, God is going to give us a new name. I thought about putting that in, but didn't.

But I think that's the point of it. Yes, he sees our potential and he's going to rename us what we are. Our names in English generally don't mean much there. In Hebrew, the names have significance, deep significance. God calls people what they are and thinks that's exactly what he's going to do with us in the resurrection. Jesus Christ and Peter didn't see this kind of grubby guy who smells like fish. No, he saw a guy who could be a foundational part of his church, the potential of a very strong leader. I'm reminded of a story that I read about the famous Italian sculptor Michelangelo. He was in his studio one time working on this big, massive block of marble. A visitor to his studio asked him, what are you doing? What are you working on? Michelangelo responded, I'm releasing the angel imprisoned in this marble.

Think about that vision. Michelangelo didn't see a big block of stone. He saw a magnificent sculptor and it was his job to release that and let it out for people to see. I think that's the way God deals with us, the way he looks at us. He doesn't see the block of stone. He doesn't see us bags of dirt. He sees this great potential in all of us. That's why he's called us and he wants to work with us to bring us to that full potential.

Continuing on here with the story, verse 43, again, this is part of the type chronology that John is giving us here. The following day, Jesus wanted to go to Galilee, and he found Philip and said to him, follow me. This is the invitation to become a disciple. Follow me. We'll find Jesus using this phrase several times. Now, just to orient us a little bit here, we're shifting from the lower Jordan Valley as we showed on the map last time. You can see this on the back.

Our story so far has taken place just north of the Dead Sea here. Now we're moving up to the Sea of Galilee. This is a portion of the map that's on the back of your harmony here to follow along geographically. The scene shifts from near the Dead Sea up to the Sea of Galilee, where Jesus is now heading, going up to Galilee. He tells and issues the invitation to Philip to become a disciple, a Talmid, by saying, follow me. Again, this is the whole point of a Talmid, to follow him, to follow the rabbi, to become like him in every way. Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. We'll talk more about this later, but for now I'll just point out this is Bethsaida up here at the far northern tip of the Sea of Galilee there. That's the location of a number of different fishing villages and towns along the shores of the Sea of Galilee. It was also, as we see here, the hometown of Andrew and Peter. Going back to verse 45 now, picking up the story, 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 in the prophets, as he's referring to two of the divisions of the Old Testament, the law, the five books of Moses, and the prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the minor prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. Nathanael said to him, Can anything good come out of Nazareth? And Philip said to him, Come and see. Nazareth, we talked about earlier, a number of class ago, wasn't anything to write home about. It's a fairly small village, several hundred people back up in the hills of Galilee. Galilee is a fairly hilly area up there.

Wasn't notable for anything. Nobody famous had come from there. And this, it was viewed as kind of back in the sticks, to use an expression we might use today. Now, an interesting piece of information that kind of helps us understand why Nathanael might have said this. This is Nathanael is kind of a jerk. Why would he say something like that? But it's interesting, John 21, verse 2, tells us a little detail about Nathanael. This is a listing of the disciples breaking into a thought. Simon Peter, Thomas, called the twin, Didymus, Nathanael of Cana in Galilee. So this tells us where Nathanael is from. Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, James and John, and two others of his disciples were together.

So Nathanael is from Cana. Well, where is Cana? Let's go back to our map for a minute here.

Here's Nazareth. And here's Cana up here. It's about nine miles, roughly ten miles, something like that. They're fairly close towns, about a day's walk apart there.

And probably what's going on here is, I think there's probably some degree of small-town rivalry to be blunt. If you can remember back to when you were in high school, the football teams of the different towns were rivals. My football team is better than yours. My town is better than yours. And I think probably that's where this is coming from here. Nathanael is from Cana. And he says, yeah, his automatic reaction is, hey, can anything good come out of Nazareth, this little town back in the sticks there when actually Cana is not any bigger than Nazareth. But that's another point there. So I think that's probably what's going on.

It made me think, as I looked at that, now there's one kind of a city town like Nazareth, and Cana is sitting right there on that plain, maybe farming community. Well, let's see. It could well be. Cana is actually on a hillside, but yeah, it goes down to more level farming area. Nazareth is actually in a bowl surrounded by hills on all sides. So it would not have been a good farming area there. You'd have to walk a mile or two to get to your fields in Nazareth. So yeah, that might be part of the story there, too. I know myself growing up on the farm, it was always the farm kids in comparison. Yeah, with the city kids. Right? One time I went to Germany, they had the same thing there. The northern of that German city from the middle area was always quite against the agrarian people in the southern part of Germany. It was a different one. True. That's quite possible. Yeah, I like that explanation. Yeah, just different mindset that would contribute one town to feeling superior than to the other one there. Yeah, I think that's probably a possibility, too. The cultural factors there. Yeah, good observation.

Continuing on, so Nathaniel says, well, can anything good come out of Nazareth? And then picking up the story, Jesus saw Nathaniel coming toward him, and said of him, Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no deceit.

And that's a rather interesting observation here. It's actually a very high compliment here. I mean, how would you like it if God said of you? Hey, a person in whom there is no deceit, no guile, as we're commonly used to reading it in the King James Version. That's a very high compliment that I think any of us would like to hear. So this tells us that the young Nathaniel really isn't. This jerk, as his first comment may point him out to be, that he sees indeed a righteous and good man there in God's sight. Verse 48, Nathaniel said to Jesus, How do you know me? And Jesus answered and said to him, Before Philip called you, When you were under the fig tree, I saw you.

Fig trees were a good resting place. They're fairly common in that area. If you have a fig tree of your own, you know they have big shady leaves, would have been a good place to sit under and rest, get out of the sun, and have a relative amount of privacy because fig trees are fairly low growing and you can have quite a bit of privacy there. My mother has two big fig trees on her property there. And if you got up under one of those, you'd have quite a bit of privacy there. So what is Nathaniel doing under the fig tree that Jesus sees him doing there? Presumably, from the way this is worded, again, we're not told. As I'm just kind of trying to walk our way through this, he might have been praying, he might have been meditating, or both, there under the fig tree. And I'll get to why and why I think that's the case in just a minute here. So he may have been doing that when he's told that, hey, you got to come see this guy. He's the Messiah.

And then Jesus says, Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile or no deceit.

And then Jesus says, Before Philip called you, I saw you under the fig tree. And this kind of blows Nathaniel's mind here. And Nathaniel answers in verse 49. Says to him, Rabbi, you are the Son of God. You are the King of Israel. So it was stunning for Nathaniel to come face to face to somebody who told him about what he had been doing in private there.

But he thought nobody else would know. In verse 50, Jesus answered and said to 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, Jesus said to Nathaniel, Most assuredly I say to you hereafter, you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.

Now this sounds like a strange statement, and indeed it is because there's no explanation given here. One thing to point out here is it is a Rimes, as we've talked about before, something that points back or looks back to something that happened earlier. Does this story sound familiar? Can you think of something else in the Bible where there is a pathway between heaven and earth and angels going up and down on it? I see Faye nodding her head. Yes, Jacob's vision of the latter as it's translated, probably a stairway actually there. And he sees angels going back and forth between earth and heaven. Let's go back to Genesis 28 and verse 12 and read about that. This is breaking into the story. Here Jacob is fleeing from his brother Esau. He's leaving his family, his homeland, fleeing from Esau. Night comes and to break into the story, then Jacob dreamed and behold a ladder or stairway was set up on the earth and its top reached into heaven. There the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.

Why would Jesus give this Rimes to Nathanael? Again, I don't have a hard and fast answer. I have several answers. I'll toss out his possibilities here. One is that perhaps Jacob's dream, Jacob's vision, is what Nathanael was thinking about under the fig tree. I think that's probably the most likely explanation. That's why Jesus really shows Nathanael divinely what he was even thinking there. I think that's part of Nathanael's overall reaction. Wow, you've got to be the Son of God. You've got to be the Messiah here. I think that's one possibility that Jesus is pointing out to him what he was thinking or meditating about under the fig tree.

Another possibility is that this is a reference to Jesus Christ returned to earth when obviously he's going to return when the skies are opened up and the heavens are opened up. Jesus, surrounded by angels, comes to earth here. That's another possibility. And of course, Nathanael would be in the resurrection to see that when it takes place. Another possibility goes, this is a little more obscure, but when Jacob had this dream, he's again fleeing from his brother Esau and dreams of this, and he wakes up and what does he say? He says, God is in this place. And he names that place Bethel or Bet-el in Hebrew. Bet meaning house or place and El meaning God. So he names this place of God. There, that's what Bethel means in Hebrew. So another possibility is that maybe making that association, that angle, approaching it from that angle, that just as Bethel was the place where God was revealed to Jacob there, maybe Jesus is pointing to himself as the place where God is revealed now, that God is revealing himself through Jesus Christ. In other words, that's another possibility.

And another one, it depends on where you place the emphasis on what's going on here to come up with these different interpretations. Another one is to point back to the point of Jacob's dream, because what was the point of it? For Jacob's sake, again, he's fleeing for his life, he's running from Esau. And the purpose of God giving him this dream or this vision is to reassure him.

Because Jacob doesn't know where he's going. He just knows he's running from Esau from his life, doesn't know what the future lies ahead. But God gives him this vision to assure him that God is still with him and that God will be with him through what lies ahead. God hasn't abandoned him, in other words. So it shows Jacob that even though he's fleeing, he's going to become a wanderer for a while here, that there will be this relationship and this communication between him and God in heaven. Here it's symbolized by this stairway between where Jacob is and God in heaven there. So in referring to this, maybe Jesus is telling Nathanael that Nathanael is going to witness a relationship between God and heaven and his representative on earth that is unlike anything that mankind has ever seen before. In other words, the relationship between Jesus Christ on earth and God in heaven is going to far surpass any kind of relationship that's ever been seen in human history up to that point, no matter who God was working with. Were you talking about Noah, Abraham, David, whomever, the relationship between God the Father and Jesus Christ is going to be more powerful, more profound, more far-reaching than any of those other relationships. Yes, Paul?

Well, that's why I present these different possibilities because, yes, it never literally is recorded there. One of the possibilities is that it happens at Christ's return when Nathanael, as part of the first resurrection, will see heavens opened and Jesus surrounded by angels coming to earth. That is a literal fulfillment and maybe that's what Jesus is referring to. I offer these other possibilities as more symbolic ways that maybe Jesus is conveying this message here. Yes, Dave? I just wonder if Acts isn't completely descriptive of the time when Jesus left and ascends to heaven that it may have been seen like that.

Well, yeah, I haven't considered that possibility, but yeah, Jesus descends. It's interesting, too, that this kind of compliment, I'm not sure if it helps or complicates issues, that the you when Jesus says, you will actually, yeah, let me back up a little bit. When Jesus says, I say to you, hereafter you, the you there is actually plural in Greek. So Jesus is talking to more than just Nathanael, the promo of John's gospel, as he doesn't say who else is there, who the plural you is directed to. Well, I would assume John is there, and of course John did see Jesus transfigured on the Mount later on, so maybe that's another explanation, too. You get into issues of Greek language. I'm not comfortable with being dogmatic about it, but I do know several commentaries point out that you there is plural. So that may complicate issues better than clarifying them, so I don't know. But bottom line is we don't know. That's why I'm presenting these several different possibilities of depending on which part of what's going on there you emphasize. He may be saying this because of what this wording is, or maybe saying this because of this wording. The bottom line is it's not explained. So we don't know. One obvious answer is yes, at the return of Jesus Christ, yes. Nathaniel will obviously see him, Jesus Christ, surrounded by angels descending to earth. So we do know that one is going to happen. Whether that's the one Jesus is specifically referring to or not, I don't know because there's not an immediate connection between that and Jacob's dream or vision there. So I wish John had written some more details in this case. Okay, we're about out of time here. So we'll wrap up here. Just one final comment about here. Let me move forward. Yeah, Nathaniel says... actually let me back up and see. Yeah, Jesus Christ's last words here. Hereafter you shall see heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man. And as I mentioned in the sermon on Rimes, a number of months ago, Son of Man is on Rimes. Obviously it's referring back to Daniel 7. And this is the most common term that Jesus uses to describe Himself. This is applied actually more than 80 times in the Gospels. Jesus refers to Himself as the Son of Man. And every time, what's He referring to? What's He pointing them back to? He's putting them back to Daniel 7, verses 13 and 14.

I was watching in the night visions, and behold one like the Son of Man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He came to the ancient of days, God the Father, and they brought Him near before Him. Then to Him, the One like the Son of Man, was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away, and His kingdom the One which shall not be destroyed. So this is obviously a messianic prophecy of God the Father giving Jesus Christ the eternal kingdom, which as we read here will be a literal kingdom ruling over peoples, nations, languages of the earth. It's a kingdom which will not pass away. It's an eternal kingdom that will exist here. Again, this is Jesus when He refers to Himself as Son of Man, saying, Hey, I am that individual. I am the One who is given this kingdom, and I will return and establish this kingdom on earth. Again, Jesus uses this term more than 80 times in the Gospel. We'll break it off there and continue on next time with the wedding there in Kana.

Any questions before we wrap up here? Comments? Observations? Okay, if not, we'll pick it up, I think, in two weeks for next time.