JOHN080 - Rounding Out the Party and Embarking on the Quest

John 1:35-42

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Music by Jeff Foote

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:17

Hey my friends, it's Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. And this next thing I'm going to say is going to make sense to like a tenth of you, maybe, but I'll make it quick. There's a game that I played when I was a little kid. It was a video game for the old gray box Nintendo Entertainment System. And it was called Final Fantasy. And it opened my eyes to the world. This is a game where you would assemble a little team and they all had different skills. And then you would go marching around the world on quests, and you'd get experience points and you'd fight dragons and you'd level up and you'd equip armor and different swords and weapons, and you had to depend on your diversity of skills to go and save the world and achieve great things. And let me tell you what, I'm using my make fun of crap voice right there. But the truth is that speaks to a young boy's heart and a young man's heart and a man's heart and a grandpa's heart. Like that's just dude language right there. And I know it makes a lot of sense to a bunch of ladies too, but that questing thing, man, it is hardwired into young men. And I it should be. That's awesome. So I loved games like that, where you would assemble your party with their diversity of personalities and skills, and you go out and tackle things. Of course, the iconic film that that gives you this kind of an experience from a storytelling perspective is The Lord of the Rings, a Fellowship of the Rings, right? That's you know, all these different people and they come together and they achieve this common goal and they go on a big road trip quest, and it's just great. Well, here in John chapter one, Jesus is assembling his party, and I love it. He's assembling these guys. We just get these little flashes of their character of what they're about, because really they aren't the point of the Gospel of John. They're not the point of the New Testament. But each of these guys, if you squint a little bit, you can kind of see who they are, even the lesser characters in this party, this fellowship that is being formed up. And you can kind of see yourself in some of them, or maybe a little bit of yourself in all of them. And the party, like we talked about yesterday, is taking shape. We've got Jesus, obviously, he's the head of the party, he's the leader, but then we've got Andrew. Almost surely John is on board by now, both because he tends to not name himself throughout the whole gospel. So when there's a disciple who isn't named by name, it's usually John. And also the specific details that he's recalling and the way he's presenting it, very uh first-person point of view. I mean, it's not first-person language, but it's like a first-hand report, like it's coming from a witness who was there. I think it's John. So we got Andrew, we got John. Then Andrew looks up his brother, Simon. Jesus changes his name to Peter, who apparently doesn't argue. Now we've got three members of the party. Then yesterday, which by our reckoning is Friday in the story, Jesus gets up real early. He's gonna go on a road trip to Galilee, and it just says, finding Philip, he said to him, Follow me. We don't get any account of what Philip said in response. We just assume the answer is yes. We don't know who Philip is or what the connection is. It's kind of interesting that the first guys were kind of pointed to Jesus by John the Baptist, and then the next one was pointed to Jesus by Andrew. But here Jesus is reaching out directly to someone else. Maybe there's some theology here about how the kingdom of God grows. Like one way it grows is through like the prophets of old and people understanding that and seeing how the scriptures point to Jesus. That would be Andrew and John. And then another way people come to Jesus is people who see the truth of God revealed to them through what he's done in the past. They bring other people to Jesus, and that would be Peter, and then other people, God just opens their eyes and just calls out to them. That would be Philip. Maybe, could be, or it could just be that that's actually how it happened, and it's just there's some interesting diversity in how all of this party was assembled. Whether there's a deeper point here or not, the calling of Philip is very succinct, and Philip responds to the affirmative. And then we're going to round out the initial iteration of this party, the core group of the party, with a guy named Nathaniel. Verse 44 of John 1 goes like this. Philip, like Andrew and Peter, was from the town of Beth Seda. We talked about that yesterday. It's at roughly the one o'clock position on the Sea of Galilee, a historic little modest fishing village. Maybe I've been there and seen it. There's some debate about the exact location, but historically, the one I'm telling you about is the one that almost everybody thought it was in. Okay, so we we move on. Verse 45. Philip found Nathaniel and told him, We found the one Moses wrote about in the law and about whom the prophets also wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. Now, this is a very interesting pitch that Philip is making toward Nathaniel. We get a shorter pitch recorded when Andrew looks up, when Andrew and presumably John look up Simon, who is Peter, earlier on. They just say we found the Messiah. Well, here Philip feels the need to spell it out a little bit more for Nathaniel. Why? Here's my theory. While I don't think Nathaniel is a doubting Thomas per se, I do think that Philip throughout the New Testament comes off as one of the simpler disciples. He's it's not that he's dumb, he's just a I think he's just a pretty normal guy. Whereas I think Peter is razor sharp, I mean massively intelligent, but also brash and his personality gets him in trouble. We can picture these character archetypes. I think Philip is maybe um I imagine him, this is me reading between the lines. I imagine him to be uh a little bit slower on the uptake when he asks questions. Sometimes it seems like um the questions he asks are being asked after everyone else has kind of already figured it out. But it's kind of nice that Philip was there to bring it up. Lord, show us the Father, Philip will ask a little bit later on. And it's a good thing that Philip asked the simple and obvious question because Jesus answers him. Anyone who has seen me has seen the father. That's in John 14. So I think of Nathaniel as being pretty sophisticated and a little snarky and a little been there done that prove it to me. And I kind of imagine Philip in this scene as knowing that Nathaniel is a tough sell, and Nathaniel is he's got an edge to him, and it's a little sarcasm to him, and it's kind of hard to know when he's serious and sarcastic. And Philip maybe feels a little bit outmatched by Nathaniel. But Philip, in this moment, I see him overcoming all kinds of relational inequity and maybe a little bit of relational inferiority or insecurity around Nathaniel, and he believes in the Jesus thing so much. This is just the way I read it. It could be different than this. This is my read. He believes in that so much that he comes to Nathaniel and he's like, hey, like I'm gonna bow up, I'm gonna stick my chest out. Nathanael, you listen up, buddy. We have found the one Moses wrote about in the law and about whom the prophets also wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. Doesn't it sound like somebody who's mustering his courage? Somebody who's very sure of a thing and really wants to be the one to bring this person he respects but feels a little outmatched by along for the ride? And isn't it interesting also how closely that mirrors the stuff we looked at in Luke 24 the other day? Remember all that business from like Luke 24, 27, just right at the very end of Luke. It's only like three pages earlier in my Bible, where it very specifically says that beginning with Moses and all the prophets, Jesus explained to them what was said in all the scriptures concerning himself. Well, that's exactly what Philip the modest has encountered here. And he's like, hey, look, I get it, my eyes have been opened. Well, I mean, this is the stuff that was convincing to Andrew and probably John and probably Simon as well, but definitely Andrew and the unnamed second disciple in the party that's being assembled. And Philip's gonna go try it out. He puts it in front of Nathaniel, probably a little bit nervous after he delivers his report. And sure enough, Nathaniel does his thing. He snarks a little bit. Nazareth? Can anything good come from there? Nathaniel asked. Well, then this is just great. I love what Philip says. He says, Come and see. Amazing. Look at that. But they're already taking on the characteristics of Jesus, they're already mimicking his style. You know who else mimics the style of Jesus? I mean, theoretically, any of us who are Christians? I hope I do a little bit. I gotta think Jesus was a lot nicer than me, and you know, obviously a much better communicator, but he would engage in a little bit of snark. He liked to make it a little bit fun, a little bit funny too. He really liked to use stories to make it make sense. You got me. How I talk is it's a cheap imitation of the amazing way that Jesus could communicate so much, so quickly and with so much depth. Well, look at this. Already, I mean, it's just Friday. The original band of disciples, they're already taking their cues from Jesus. Remember when the first two disciples met him, Jesus said to him, What do you want? And they said, Well uh uh Rabbi, where are you staying? Come, he replied, and you'll see. Well, now we got Philip, a day later, already saying, Come and see. How about that? All right, so okay, Nathaniel, so you're the snark archetype. You're the 80s show kid who sits in the back with the leather jacket and the black permed hair and is too cool for everything, probably played by John Stamos. Deep down, though, the teacher, he knows that you secretly care, but you're not gonna let anybody see that. You hide behind that snark and that superiority and that know-it-all-in-ess. But brave, humble Philip shows up and he's equipped with something new. Maybe he couldn't handle Nathaniel before, but he's already learned things from his new master, his new teacher, his new rabbi, and he cuts through Nathaniel's snark. He doesn't engage, he doesn't meet him on the battlefield of making fun of Nazareth, which I guess was maybe a dump or something, or had a reputation for dumb people being from there. Maybe he had a reputation as being like a backwoods place where Hicks were from or something. I've heard different theories. But now instead, Philip doesn't get bullied at all. He's just like, come and see. And next time around, we'll talk about what happened when Nathaniel did go and see. Apparently, curiosity got the best of him. Come and see was enough from the theoretically ill-equipped Philip to get Nathaniel to come out of the back corner of the classroom with his leather jacket and his snark and be like, uh, okay, all right, yeah, you win. Let's go see. And what happens when he does go and see is pretty impressive. Now, am I being fair to these characters entirely? Probably not, because Nathaniel ends up looking pretty awesome in the next passage that we're going to look at. Philip is an original disciple of Jesus. Me overcharacterizing him as being maybe a little bit simpler is probably completely unfair. Probably I'm getting laughed at right now from the Great Beyond by the church triumphant. We're like, yeah, okay, Whitman. Yeah, Philip's very, very simple. But you're very smart, very smart. Okay, look, I get it, I'm overcharacterizing it, but uh part of the fun of some of these scenes is just sharing how it jumps off the page to me, what I imagine when I see these little dynamics and these little interactions. And it's kind of fun to play with that. The theology, well, I'm not trying to play with the theology. The theology speaks for itself, and it's really going to speak for itself in this next exchange between Nathaniel and Jesus, which is quite remarkable. But hey, the party is taking shape. We're getting this colorful cast of characters, and they're different, and they're joining the party in interesting and different ways, the way it works with any movie about a fascinating, unlikely band of brothers and sisters who come together to go on an amazing quest and do something fascinating. And well, we're halfway through the Nathaniel join up with the party scene right now, and we'll round it out next time around. Y'all are great. Thanks for doing this with me. I try to tell you a lot. I don't know if I ever do tell you enough. I appreciate you so much. I would not get to game this out this way if you weren't willing to associate with me and hang out with me and do this. And it really means a lot. I'm glad that we are in a party together. All right, I think that's good for now. I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.