All right, let's pray. Father, thanks for being such a great God. Thank you for loving us. Thank you for bringing us here together. Thank you for being here with us. And Holy Spirit, just ask you to teach each of us this morning that you would even speak to every single one of us, that one of us this morning. That we would all leave, knowing that you gave us something. You know our hearts, you know where we're at, you know what we need. And so, Holy Spirit, please speak to us this morning. And Jesus, thank you for being our friend and our our uh our Savior, and we praise you for that. We uh we ask this prayer in your name. Amen. Well, I'm fired up this morning. Um, we're all fired up this morning. The uh because we're gonna talk about Jesus. Uh we know we talk about Jesus every week. You know, I mean we're focused on Jesus. That's what that's what we're about. We're we're uh with each other and we're we're following Jesus, but but there's things, you know, like relationships. We talked about relationships for for several weeks, and there's some hard stuff there, you know, forgiving and uh just digging in and um those types of things. Last week, you know, just talking about money a little bit, and uh it's just uh so great to me when we just simply talk about Jesus. Um there's nothing like it. What what he did, what what he said, what he taught, and then uh just seeing how we can apply that to each of our lives. Jesus only had a small amount of time here on earth, and how he spent that time must must have been pretty important. Um meet people. He just met people. He met all kinds of people. He met young people, he met um older people, talked with uh women, talked with men, Jewish people, Greek people, interesting people, and all different types of situations. And so for the next few weeks, what what we're gonna do is uh just look at some of the people Jesus met, um uh where they were at, what what he uh said to them, and then see how we can apply it. Uh he met some pretty interesting people. Uh we're gonna see a uh a naked man that he met while walking through a cemetery. We're gonna see a woman uh who was in a real bind, a handicapped man that bust into a meeting. But this morning I want to look at maybe the tamest of the bunch. And uh I figured we're doing easy Sunday. So we'll just go uh we'll go tame this morning. But it's a man named Nathaniel. The story starts really not with Nathaniel, but with uh Nathaniel's friend Philip. Philip has met Jesus, and he is excited, and he's so excited to have a relationship with uh with the Messiah and with the living God, and he wants his friend to know Jesus too. Perhaps you've been there, perhaps uh you know that uh feeling. Um so in John 1, starting in verse 45, we read the story. Philip went and found Nathaniel and told him, We found the one Moses wrote of in the law, the one preached by the prophets. It's Jesus, Joseph's son, the one from Nazareth. Nathaniel said, Nazareth? You've got to be kidding. See, I like Nathaniel right away. See, Nathaniel is honest and he's skeptical. The Messiah from Nazareth? See, that'd be like being a bulldog fan and somebody telling you Jesus was from Knoxville. I mean, it's just it seems pretty impossible. It's uh it's highly unlikely. And and that's the way it was for um Nathaniel. It just didn't add up. Um, the Messiah? From Nazareth? You got to be kidding. But it is where Jesus was from. Joseph and and Mary, you know, they went to Bethlehem because there was a census called, and so they traveled to Bethlehem, and and that's where Jesus is born. And then they had to flee to Egypt because Herod's trying to trying to kill Jesus. So they they live in Egypt for a few years, and then finally Herod dies, and they come back and they resettle in Nazareth. Um, Nazareth was uh was a really small town. It was uh cut kind of into a a hillside. It was known for, it was mostly known because it was a military base. It was a Roman military base, and the Jewish people hated the Romans. Um, and so they were um in general skeptical of anybody from Nazareth. It was it was known as a Roman um military town. And and honestly, the people in Nazareth, they I mean, they really weren't that nice a people. Um at one point, Jesus is teaching in his hometown, and they get so mad they drag him off and want to throw him off a cliff, these people in Nazareth. And and he slipped away, but you know, Nathaniel had a point. I mean, Nazareth, it wasn't that great of a town. And Nathanael immediately, he's got his guard up. He's skeptical. Philip's probably a little bit bummed. You know, I mean, he's just kind of bummed. He wants so much for Nathaniel to meet Jesus. What argument can he make? What can he possibly say? What he says are four of the most powerful words that he could have said to his friend. It's the same four words that we can say to our friends, to our family, to our neighbors, to anyone. Verse 46 it says, But Philip said, Come see for yourself. I love that. Come see for yourself. No arguing, no arm twisting. Come see for yourself. Make up your own mind. But at least come see for yourself. You know, the first of the year we talked about uh what an opportunity that we have. I mean, just to simply invite people to come here and experience uh something unique and something wonderful. Um we had these cards up, made up to make it easy to invite friends and and family and everyone to join us. We talked about that that if we if we would start each week asking God to show us who we might invite, that by the end of the year, I mean, together, 50,000 people would have been told, come see for yourself. Just come see. You know, as Christians, sometimes sometimes we think we're supposed to be like the world champion debaters. You know, it's our job just to convince everybody. But God isn't a debate trophy. He is alive He is He is alive, He's loving, He's real, He's powerful, He changes our hearts, He changes our lives. See, it is something people can see for themselves, experience for themselves. God's with us all the time, but there is something unusual that happens when we get together. In Matthew 18, 20, Jesus says, For two or three gathered together as my followers, I am there among them. See, something special happens when we get together on Sunday. Jesus promises to be here. It's kind of a wild thought, isn't it? Jesus promises to be here, and every Sunday I can physically feel his presence. That may sound weird, but it's true. Every Sunday, I can physically feel his presence. You may describe it in different ways. You may say, man, I can just feel the excitement. You know, there's just something. I can feel energy, I can just feel love. It's Jesus' presence that you're feeling. It's his presence. It's exactly what he promised. We're gathered together in his name. He's here with us. It's his presence. I mean, don't you feel much better every Sunday after being here? Man, I do. And it's a lot of things. We worship God together, we we hear his word together, we, you know, we we're with each other. You know, we uh we get prayed for. I mean, all these things. And it's Jesus' presence. There's just something about it. Um I've had more people tell me that they can feel God just when they walk in this building. You know, there's a I might have I I don't know if I've shared this before, but there's a guy that came in and uh filled up the Coke machine over on the youth side, and he says, I can't explain it, but every time I walk in this building, I can feel God. I mean, it's something we pray for, it's something we ask for, and it's something that is true. See, Jesus can be proven intellectually. He can. You can prove Jesus intellectually, but he is not an intellectual argument, Jesus. He is real, he is a person. You can feel him, you can experience him, you can have a relationship with him. Come see for yourself. Philip says, You don't have to take my word. Just come see for yourself. And so that's what Nathaniel does. And when Jesus saw him coming, he said, There is a real Israelite, not a false bone in his body. Nathanael said, Where did you get that idea? You don't know me. See, Nathaniel's still honest, still skeptical. Jesus answered, One day, long before Philip called you here, I saw you under the fig tree. In other words, I do know you, Nathaniel. I've always known you. Now in heaven, we can ask Nathaniel about the fig tree. What that meant to him when Jesus had said it. Maybe he'd been praying there. You know, maybe he had asked God there to show him the Messiah. Maybe he was one of those, if you're real God, please show me. Maybe it was one of those, God, I need you. Maybe he had a crisis. He'd ask God's help for. Maybe he'd been mad at God. You know, Jesus said there's not a false bone in your body. Maybe it was one of those honest conversations where he was actually mad at God. Why did you let that happen, God? I don't understand. Where were you? What's the deal? See, we don't know. But what we do know is it was personal and it was important. He had said to Jesus, Nathaniel had, he had said to Jesus, you don't know me. Jesus answered with the truth, I do know you. I've always known you. I saw you long ago under the fig tree. Nathanael exclaimed, Rabbi, you are the Son of God, the King of Israel. Jesus said, You've become a believer simply because I say, I saw you one day sitting under the fig tree. You haven't seen anything yet. Before this is over, you're going to see heaven open and God's angels descending to the Son of Man and ascending again. Jesus says, Is that what it took? You haven't seen anything yet. And he was right. You know, the very next day, the very next day, Nathaniel got invited to a wedding party, along with the rest of Jesus' followers. It was at that party that Jesus turned the water into wine. That was just the start. It went from there. He had not seen anything yet. Nathaniel had come to see, and he was blown away because Jesus knew him, knew all about him. As an aside, you know, to Jesus, it didn't really matter what he knew about Nathaniel. You know, with Nathaniel, he said, man, you're an honest guy. But it wouldn't have mattered. Jesus met a woman once, you probably know this story, but she was getting water from a well. He had already spoken, Jesus had, to the emptiness and the dryness in her soul inside her. And he said, I'll give you living water, and you will never be thirsty again. She said she wasn't married, and Jesus said, Yeah, I know. You've been married five times, and the guy you're living with isn't your husband. See, he wasn't getting on her case. He was letting her know he knew her. I know you. I've always known you. And she was blown away. She ran back to her town and she brought the whole town out to meet Jesus. In Matthew, or in John 4, this is what it says. Many of the Samaritans from that village committed themselves to him because of the woman's witness. He knew all about the things I did. He knows me inside and out. They asked him to stay on, so Jesus stayed two days. A lot more people entrusted their lives to him when they heard what he had to say. They said to the woman, We're no longer taking this on your say-so. We've heard it for ourselves and know it for sure. He's the savior of the world. Amazing. He knew her inside and out. He knew Nathaniel. He knew her. You know what's more amazing is he knows you. He knows me. He knows us. He knows us inside out. And he said to Nathaniel, I saw you under that fig tree. And he's seen us too. He's seen us that night in bed crying. He's seen us that time dancing outside saying there must be a God. Seen us thrown up in the morning saying, God, I can't keep living like this. He's seen us excited. He's seen us brokenhearted. He's seen us calling out. Where are you? I need you. And he knows us. And he knows you just as clearly as he knew Nathaniel. Has God ever done anything small and nice and sweet just to show you that he knows you? You know, uh an answer to a prayer. Um a bird coming down at the right time and sitting in a tree next to you. Maybe it's been here, a song, you know, or a verse, or something someone that shared, and and we're sitting here, we're like, that's just for me. That's just for me. It was. It was. It's Jesus speaking to you. He knows you. John 10, 14 says, I am the good shepherd, I know my own sheep, and they know me. You know the best part, I mean, I think that is just um amazing by itself. But the best part to me is not that he knows me, that he knows us. It's that he knows us and he likes us. To me, that's like the miracle of it all. I mean, he knows us and he loves us. He likes us. It doesn't matter. You know, Nathaniel, Jesus said, Man, I can tell you you're an upright dude. Um to the to the Gal at the well, I mean, she had a checkered past. It didn't matter. He loved them both. He loved them both just the same. It didn't matter. He knows us, he knows everything about us, and it doesn't faze him. You know, in Hebrews 2.11 it says that. So now Jesus and the ones he makes holy. You see, he's not so much worried about whether or not we're holy. That's his job anyway. We turn to him, he makes us holy. So now Jesus and the ones he makes holy, us, have the same father. That is why Jesus is not ashamed to call them his brothers and his sisters. He's not ashamed to call us his brothers and sisters. He doesn't care. It doesn't matter to him where we've been and what we've done, other than he hurts for us. He loves us. He knows us. God's the same way. In Hebrews 11, 16 says, but they were looking for a better place, a heavenly homeland. That is why God is not ashamed to be called their God. For he has prepared a city for them. Our Father. He knows us. He likes us. He loves us. He's not ashamed to call us his children. It's amazing. He knows us inside and out. He's not ashamed of us. He just loves us. Jesus told Nathaniel, he said, wow, if the whole fig tree thing did that, you haven't seen anything yet. It was true for Nathaniel, and it's true for us too. We have not seen anything yet. Man, we're gonna see so much from Jesus. You know, continue to see him answering our prayers, continue to see him changing our hearts, continue to see him changing our lives, changing our families, our friends. And those around us. Jesus told Nathaniel what he was gonna get to see is he was gonna get to see the heavens open up and angels coming down to help Jesus. You know, for us, it's even better. It's better. We're gonna get to see the heavens open up and Jesus himself coming down to minister to us, to help us, to take care of us. And he'll heal all of our hurts, he'll restore all of our losses at that time. He'll give us brand new bodies, real bodies, but Strong and healthy and full of life. And we'll be reunited forever with the people we love. We have not seen anything yet. We haven't seen anything yet. I remember the first time that Jesus answered one of my prayers in a way, um, in a way where it couldn't be a coincidence, you know, in a way where I couldn't explain it away as old it was it was uh it was specific and dramatic and it was an undeniable way. And what affected me most about that was not the prayer. What affected me the most was I was like, wow, he knows me. He actually knows me. I mean, I knew he loved everybody in the world and all that, but he knows me. He heard my prayer, he cares about me. It blew me away. What an amazing thing. You know, if you're not sure that whether or not Jesus knows who you are, everything about you, he does. He does. But you might need shown, you might need reminded. You know, if that's you, we'll just when we pray, we'll just ask. We'll just ask God to show you. And he will. You might be honest and skeptical, like Nathaniel was. Philip told Nathaniel, come see for yourself. And the thing about God is God is a big God. You know, we keep him in this little box sometimes, but he is a big God and he's real. You know, we're not playing church. He is real and he's alive and he's powerful. And you can ask him and he will show you. If you're not sure, ask him. Say, God, I want to know. Show me. In Jeremiah 29, 13, it says, when you came looking for me, when it says, when you come looking for me, you'll find me. Yes, when you get serious about finding me and you want him more than anything else, I'll make sure you won't be disappointed. He's a big God. Just go looking for him with all your heart. You'll find him. And then we turn to Jesus and we say the same thing Nathaniel said. You are the Son of God. You are the Son of God. And then He fills us, He strengthens us, He teaches us. We start following Him, and there is nothing like it. We can come see for ourselves. Let's pray. Father, I thank you for being such a great God. I thank you for loving us. I thank you for not being ashamed of us, that you're proud and excited to have us as your children. And I just ask now, God and Holy Spirit and Jesus, that you would speak to each one of us. You would speak clearly. That each of us would know in our hearts the truth, the truth that you do know us. You've always known us. You love us. You'll take care of us. And so we trust you with that. We praise you for that. We thank you for being such a great and loving God. And Jesus, it's in your name we pray. Amen.