Don't You Know Me?

Title: Don’t You Know Me?

Scripture: John 14:9

9 Jesus answered: "Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ’Show us the Father’? 10 Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work.

When I graduated from high school back in, well, back before many of you had entered middle school :), there were a number of us in my class that had been together since the first grade. We knew by the time we were in the sixth grade, what our likes and dislikes were. We knew the parents, they knew us. Parents had been friends with other parents for 12 years, some of them longer, if they had other children in the school.

There were moms that always helped out, homeroom mothers they were called. They helped out at Christmas and Easter parties and at Valentine’s and birthday parties. Not to mention when we took those field trips to various theme parks. My mother always had to go along. I thought it was because she never had anything to do. Come to find out it was probably because she knew me a lot better than the teachers did.

Yes, 12 years is a long time. Football, basketball, track, field trips, and trips to the hospitals were all included in that time frame. Those years were sprinkled with good times highlighted by smiles and laughter and sometimes tears, and there were sad times too, mingled with tears and frowns. Every occasion solidifying friendships and bringing relationships closer.

There were always questions like, who was girl friend and boy friend today? Who had whose ring or wearing whose letter jacket? Who wrote whose name on their book cover? Don’t worry, my best friend would say, it’ll only last a week, he’d say. My answer would be: But she says the rest of our lives. Hey, I’ve got things to do.

Best friends forever, at least today anyway, would happen all the time. Predictions about the future didn’t always circulate, unless it was the immediate future. Guys always wait to the last minute to ask girls to the prom, because they can’t think that far into the future.

There was infrequent talk about:

what do you want to be when:

you grew up, and

when you graduate high school; and

when you graduate college.

There was talk about what career we would pursue, once we’d made a little money of course in something that pays high both in salary and time.

There never was really any talk about death, about the end of our lives. We didn’t really have that much in focus, nor did we really want to care. But, there are already some that have went before me, some that are teetering on that brink with this or that ailment, but I know their strength, I know their resolution and their constitution, though I may not have seen them for 30 years, I spent enough time with them to know them.

Jesus said,

"Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ’Show us the Father’?

Don’t you know me? After all the teaching, after all the time spent talking together around camp fires, dinner tables, and bedrolls, don’t you know me? Doesn’t our relationship run much deeper than that?

What is Jesus asking of Philip? What is He asking of the rest of the disciples? And, ultimately, what is He asking of us?

First let’s look at this word ‘know,’ which in English doesn’t really have the implications as its Greek counterpart.

First of all,

Jesus is asking if Philip is aware of Who He, Jesus, is. He’s asking Him if he is really conscious of the fact of just Who Jesus is, and aware of Jesus’ life and purpose. Jesus is also asking Philip if he was aware of just where Philip was and what he had been doing physically before Jesus called Him to follow Him. Jesus is also asking Philip if he was aware of where Philip was and what he had been doing spiritually before Jesus called him to follow Him.

And, Jesus was not just talking to Philip. He was talking to the entire group of disciples. He was asking the entire group, “Aren’t you aware of Who and What I am? Aren’t you aware of who and what you were before you met me?”

What about you? Before you became aware of Jesus, what were you doing? How did you speak, how did you act, how did you treat others? Now that you’re aware of Jesus in your life, has anything changed? Has anything become better, or are you still following the same direction, or are is Jesus saying the same thing to you: