Freedom From Resentment
INTRODUCTION:
John 1:43-51 (NKJV)
43 The following day Jesus wanted to go to Galilee, and He found Philip and said to him, “Follow Me.” 44 Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. 45 Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found Him of whom Moses in the law, and also the prophets, wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”
46 And Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”
Philip said to him, “Come and see.”
47 Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward Him, and said of him, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no deceit!”
48 Nathanael said to Him, “How do You know me?”
Jesus answered and said to him, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.”
49 Nathanael answered and said to Him, “Rabbi, You are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!”
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.” 51 And He said to him, “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.”
Beginning in 1:35 John's Gospel tells the story of Jesus calling His disciples. In John's story of Jesus, the first two disciples that followed Jesus were first students of John the Baptist. They accept the message of their teacher John. We should be open to Jesus calling us beyond where we have been or what we have done before. Your relationship with God should not be stagnant, but progressively moving onward "further in and further up."
One of these disciples was Andrew. He was instrumental in finding Peter who would later be the leader of the disciples and be the one who would preach the first message of the newly born church on the day of Pentecost. Peter accepted the testimony of his brother. We should never discount what God may be doing in someone's life which we tell about Him.
As the story progresses Jesus finds Philip and calls him to follow Him. Philip then finds Nathaniel. Nathaniel, unlike the other disciples in the first chapter of John, does not accept the testimony of anyone. He is a critic. He is the type of person who tells the truth (as he sees it). There is a ring of cynicism, skepticism, and resentment in his words. Yet, his encounter with Jesus moves him from where he is to a place of freedom. Freedom From Resentment.
MOVEMENT ONE:
For some people, it is hard to love Jesus. When a person grows up in a religious environment where they are never shown the grace and mercy of God in their formative years and God is portrayed as a tyrant it can be hard to convince someone otherwise when they grow up. When parents who profess to be Christians do not model the fruit of the Spirit in their homes where their children's concepts of life are being shaped and even worse when their children are neglected or abused by those parents, it can be hard for those children to ever see God as loving or caring or kind. Yeah...
For other people, it is hard to love Jesus because He is a kind and forgiving God. They may have experienced the deepest types of suffering in life and then heard about a God who loves and forgives even the worst of sins. They can't love Jesus for the same reasons that Jonah distanced himself from God by fleeing to Tarshish. Jonah had experienced the atrocities of the Ninevites. The Ninevites were the radical terrorists of the Ancient Near Eastern world. They were Israel's enemies and oppressed and attacked Jonah's people. Jonah even tells the truth about it in his closing remarks when God decides not to destroy Nineveh. He says, "Didn’t I say before I left home that you would do this, LORD? That is why I ran away to Tarshish! I knew that you are a merciful and compassionate God, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. You are eager to turn back from destroying people. Just kill me now, LORD! I’d rather be dead than alive if what I predicted will not happen" (Jonah 4:2 NLT). You may not be a professing atheist, but you can be a practical one by distancing yourself from God because of your anger because He has not seemed to bring the justice that you want to a particular situation...
For still other people it is hard to love Jesus because of what His word requires. There may be things that we are unwilling to part with and Jesus demands complete surrender. And then there are those who have just experienced the suffering that is a part of being human and they are resentful that life has played out the way it has. Resentment is such a powerful thing. The dictionary defines it as "bitter indignation at having been treated unfairly."
In the movie Forrest Gump, Lieutenant Dan Taylor loses his legs in his service to his country in the Vietnam War. Later in the movie Lieutenant Dan resentfully relays to Gump how a priest came to the hospital and shared with him that he would one day "walk" with Jesus in glory if he would accept Jesus now. He is bitter because his life has not played out the way he had imagined and the insensitive but well-meaning words of the priest and his fellow veterans. We should be careful how we share Jesus with those who have experienced the depths of suffering in life. Resentment can keep us from God...
When Adam and Eve encountered God in the garden after their disobedience, they distanced themselves from Him covering themselves with fig leave aprons and hiding in the trees for fear of their shame being exposed (Gen 3:8). Zacchaeus didn't assume that friendship was even possible with Jesus and so he just climbed up in a tree to get a glimpse of Jesus (Luke 19:1-10). The trees in the garden were hiding places for our first parents. The sycamore tree of Zacchaeus was a safe place for him to hide and look from a distance... trees...
Peter thought he was too sinful to be around Jesus after experiencing His power and miracles (Luke 5:8). Then there were the Pharisees. They distanced themselves from Jesus because they thought they were better than He was and they resented His evergrowing popularity (John 11:48). They went so far as to use political maneuvering to get Jesus hung on a tree, crucified. Just to get themselves a little further from Him...
MOVEMENT TWO:
Then there is Nathaniel. He is one of those reluctant disciples like C.S. Lewis. It is as though he is dragged kicking and screaming, questioning everything along the way. The last of those called in the Gospel according to John. Christian tradition says that Nathaniel would go on to become one of the Christian martyrs laying down his life for Jesus, but it didn't start out that way. When Phillip told him about Jesus he responded with cynicism and skepticism. It seems there were at least three reasons Nathaniel initially rejected Jesus:
For Social Reasons. He asks, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" It is a rhetorical question and his answer is a plain "no." Nazareth was the side of town where the underdogs and losers lived. It was small, rural, backward, and on the fringes of respectful Jewish society. No one would have imagined that the Messiah would come from a place so unclean and hidden. Yet, when we read Scripture we find that God rarely fits into the boxes we construct for Him. Jesus scandalized the religious and pious of His day because His friends and preferred company were the outsiders and sinners, the broken, the poor, and the destitute. Yeah... Have you ever heard anyone testify that the reason they came to faith in Jesus was because a religious person scolded them and condemned them? No... Our "isms" can keep us from Jesus. Our conservatism, our liberalism, our sexism, our... you fill in the blank... Jesus is often found on the fringes and it's no wonder Nathaniel asked what he asked...
For Political Reasons. Nathaniel expected the Messiah to be a conquering King who would overthrow the Roman government and set up an earthly kingdom. He was expecting a Superman, not some guy from Nazareth...
For Personal Reasons. Jesus responds in a diffusing way, "Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no deceit!” Jesus gets too close to Nathaniel. You know those people who are close-talkers, who invade your personal space? Jesus's compliment to Nathaniel seems too intimate for two people who have just met. And so Nathaniel reacts with sarcasm, "How do YOU (a person from Nazareth) know ME?" It's a defense mechanism. He wants to distance himself from this Jesus.
And then Jesus responds in a way that moves Nathaniel from complete rejection of Jesus to a profession of faith.
Jesus says, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.” His answer is gentle and patient. He diffuses Nathaniel's social, political, and personal cynicism with gentle words about seeing. This idea of seeing is repeated again and again in our text. When Phillip first calls Nathaniel and Nathaniel responds "Can any good thing come from Nazareth?" Phillip just says, "Come and see." What would it be like if our presentation of the gospel was less about arguments with words and an invitation to look at Jesus? Before the Truth was a book it was Person! Come and see.
Then Jesus diffuses Nathaniel with the words, "I saw you." What was it that Jesus saw? Three things:
MOVEMENT THREE:
He saw the best in Nathaniel. He sees the best in us. In response to Nathaniel's hatred for all things from Nazareth and his "How do you know me?" reaction, Jesus is not offended. Jesus responded with gentleness, kindness, and charity. He said, "Wow, you're a guy who always tells the truth!"
We don't always respond like this, do we? When someone insults us we want to retaliate.
Jesus chooses to affirm the character trait of brutal honesty that characterized Nathaniel. What would it be like if this was the way we responded?
Then Jesus refers to the story of Jacob's dream of a ladder to heaven (Gen 28) in the words, "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” (John 1:51). It is easy to miss the playful way that the language is used here. Jesus is calling Nathaniel a person of integrity and then refers to one of God's people in Scripture who was one of the most deceitful characters. Jacob the liar eventually wrestled with God and was changed into Israel. In that encounter, he declared that he had seen God face to Face.
Jacob was deceitful. Nathaniel was abrasive. Yet, both of them encounter a God who has come down not to curse them, but to bless them. They were both unworthy but were transformed by the gentleness of their God. Jesus sees the best in you!
He also saw the worst in Nathaniel, and no matter how we try to hide it, He can see the worst in you and me. We are not sure what it was that Jesus saw when He saw Nathaniel under the fig tree, but Nathaniel knew.
It may have been something wonderful that Nathaniel was doing under the tree. Praying, vowing, feeding a hungry soul, defending a weaker person against a bully, talking someone out of suicide...
It may have been some hidden pain that Nathaniel experienced or expressed under the fig tree. Perhaps it was under the tree that he had first experienced abuse as a child, or where he cried silently and alone thinking no one saw or heard. Perhaps it was under the tree that he had received a terrible diagnosis...
It may have been under the fig tree that Nathaniel committed some heinous sin. Maybe it was under the tree that he berated or bullied a child. Maybe under the tree he black-out drunk and woke up not knowing what he had done. Maybe it was there that he committed the worst crime or sin you can imagine right now. You fill in the blank with what you've done or has been done to you that fills you with resentment or cynicism. That thing that causes you not to trust others or to distance yourself from the church or ministry or your family and from Jesus...
Whatever it was, Jesus let Nathaniel know that he was not alone and that he saw...
There are parts of our story that God only knows...
Nataniel's response was one of awe. He even made a profession of faith. “Rabbi, You are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” There is something powerful that happens when we have an encounter with Jesus where we willingly place our trust in His ability. Nathaniel, like all the disciples, did not have all the nuances of their theology and Christology figured out, but at this moment he placed His trust in the One that was the Answer to all his questions. The One who saw him!
Jesus responds, “Because I said to you, ‘I saw you under the fig tree,’ do you believe? You will see greater things than these.” 51 And He said to him, “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.”
Like the words that Jesus would later say to Phillip (John 14:12) where He told him that because of his belief, he would do greater works, here Jesus refers to greater things.
Nathaniel thought he saw the world clearly and he wasn't afraid to say so, but after his encounter with the gentle Jesus, he was going to be transformed to see things in a greater way.
In the story of Jacob, he saw the angels of God ascending and descending upon the ladder when he was fleeing from his broken relationship with his brother and family. He woke up and declared that God had been in the place where he was and he didn't realise it. He then spent 20 years of his life suffering and reaping the consequences of his dysfunctional family and his own choices. On his way home to the family you can hear the resentment in his heart as he talks to his father-in-law about the way he has had to live and was treated. Then he has an encounter with God and sees God. This God he wrestles with holds up the mirror to him and asks him to see his own role in the mess of his life, it is only then that transformation happens.
The next time Jacob/Israel meets his brother and family, he is a changed man. He has owned his own role and things are different.
Jesus is telling Nathaniel that there are greater things. I gave you a word from God earlier this year and I want to remind you of it here today. The victory that you are seeking in your life that if directly related to you doing your part to repair the broken relationships in your life that you have put at a distance from you.
CONCLUSION AND APPLICATION:
Right now as we stand, let's close our eyes and bow our heads and just be honest with God. In the coming week let's do it again each day. Bring your issues to God honestly, bring your hurts, and your questions to him, and just tell Him. It may seem like a wrestling match. Jacob wrestled. Nathaniel wrestled. But, if we will bring it to Him, He can do what we cannot and He will show us what we cannot see.
As we approach this altar, I want you to think about a relationship that is broken in your life that you need to repair. I want you to tell God about it and begin to ask Him what you can do on your side of the relationship. There are some places where resentment has kept you at a distance. Let's talk to the one who can help us right now. We want to see greater things.
