Nathaniel

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. We're starting a new sermon series called Identities, discovering who we are in the Gospel of John. It's the question of who am I? Why am I here? Am I my intellect? Am I my ethnic background? Am I my mistakes? Am I my history? Am I my work record? Who am I? Our culture actually is consumed by this today. Questions of identity, authenticity, you might hear that word, being true to yourself, finding yourself, expressing yourself, discovering the real you. You've heard it all probably, right? John Hoyham writes this, he says, The modern world that most people reluctantly enjoy, notice that, we reluctantly enjoy this world. It's like, yeah, it's pretty good, but, you know, gosh, there's something not quite right. Even though, man, I would not want to go back and live in the 50s or the 40s or any other place or any other time. There's something not quite right. He goes on, though, we reluctantly enjoy living in one marked by a great controversy about identity, race, gender, class, and all other items of human self-identification are in the forefront of public conversation because people recognize that who I am is the most important question one must answer. It defines human beings in their most fundamental features. So today we're looking at this and we're going to be doing this in the Gospel of John in the weeks to come. As we work through different one-on-one conversations that show different aspects of this idea of identity. And today we're looking at Nathanael. He occurs here in chapter one of John. Let's read along. And by the way, you can follow along with the U version of the Bible app and all the notes to today's message as well. Okay? So John 1, 43 to 51. The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, follow me. Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathanael and said to him, we have found him of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. Nathanael said to him, can anything good come out of Nazareth? Philip said to him, come and see. Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, behold, an Israelite indeed in whom is no deceit. Nathanael said to him, how do you know me? Jesus answered him, before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, he saw you. Nathanael answered, Rabbi, you are the son of God. You are the king of Israel. Jesus said to him, because I said I saw you under the fig tree, do you believe? You will see greater things than these. And he said to him, truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the son of man. So in an article called Is Authenticity Overrated? You can kind of guess his understanding of that. Thomas Chamorro writes, we often hear the most important thing in life, and particularly in our careers, is to be our true selves or true to ourselves. Although few have bothered explaining what this actually means. This advice highlights a number of related popular ideas, such as don't worry so much about what other people think of you. If you think you're great, you probably are. Just be yourself. Spending too much time or energy thinking about what others expect of you leads to mindless conformity. Follow your intuition. It's likely a better moral compass than any other socially fabricated cultural rule. Have you heard this kind of advice before? Are you taking this kind of advice? I hope sort of not. I get trying to be true to yourself and all of that. But man, my true self is not necessarily the thing that I should be following. Just to say. Nathaniel, in some ways, probably was following this kind of advice in our text. He was being his authentic self. As Jesus said about him, hey, behold, an Israelite, indeed, in whom is no deceit. And by the way, the word deceit here is the Greek word dolos, which means either subtlety. So in other words, Nathaniel was blunt. Have you been around people who are blunt? What, you're looking at each other? I don't think you're, what? You're blunt? I haven't noticed that, actually. He's a counselor, by the way. So that would be kind of dangerous to be too blunt with people. Although he's a little, once in a while, it's good. Yeah. Okay. Another word, or deceit, or trickery. And this will come back up later with another biblical reference at the end of this passage that I think is fascinating. In other words, Nathaniel, he probably just spoke whatever he thought or felt. He was no diplomat. He was no politician. But the question was, was he really being his authentic self, is always a question. Because here's the deal with authenticity, by the way. We want it in everybody else. We want them to be truly who they are so that we know who we're dealing with. And yet, no one really is. Okay? No one really is. Not the way God ...