John 1:43-51

The Gospel Story in John 1

So tonight we're gonna look at the end of chapter one of John and I want you to remember a couple weeks ago where I actually said that if there was one chapter in the entire Bible that I could have with me at all times, maybe it'd be Romans eight, but I'd like for it to be John chapter one.

And the reason that I said that John chapter one was that important to me is because the entire chapter gives the entire gospel story. See, Christianity didn't begin 2 ,000 years ago. Christianity began in eternity with the eternal Christ, the eternal, transcendent, divine second person of the Trinity who has lived forever in relationship with God the Father, and yet at just the right time, he steps into space and time and through Jesus Christ he's the creator.

So we not only see in John one that there's this eternal Christ, we also see that he's a creator, that all things come into being because of Jesus, that he speaks creation into existence and not only that, he sustains creation by the word of his mouth.

That like R .C. Sproul says, there's not a rogue atom in the entire universe. Every single molecule and all of existence gets their life and their light and their existence from Christ. We also learn in verse five, there's five verses in and we learn about the fall of man.

We learn that we are the ones who rebelled against him and we are the ones who turned our backs on Christ and in just five short verses in the Gospel of John, we see the beginning of the entire redemptive historical narrative.

We see the creator, we see the creation turning their back on him, but we see God and his grace not abandoning us and not leaving us. In verses six through seven and verses 14, we see the culmination of Jesus's love and his grace for us in that he has not abandoned us or forsaken us, he has stepped into our world so that he could rescue us.

That's no more clear than in verse 14, it says we beheld his glory, the glories of the only begotten father, he's the one who stepped into our world so that he could save us and after thousands and thousands of years of Old Testament failure and promises from the prophets, this Jesus is the one who comes to rescue his people.

We also learn in verses 10 and 11 that most of the people are not going to accept him, that they're going to choose darkness over light, they're going to reject him in his life and they're going to choose death instead.

But verse 12 and 13, what sweet verses those are because it says to all who accept him, he gave the right to become children of God. He saved them, he adopted them. You see, we're seeing the whole story coming into play that while we have abandoned Christ, Christ did not abandon us and he came in order to rescue us, in order to save us and as we saw in the last several weeks in verses 15 through 42, as he saves us, he teaches us how to follow him.

He teaches us how to walk with him, he teaches us how to have a relationship with him. You see, God is telling the entire story of salvation from beginning to end through the first chapter of the Gospel of John and tonight we're going to look at the end of that climactic story and what I love about what John does is he gives us the whole gospel story in chapter one and then in chapter two, he's going to work that out for 21 chapters.

So if you will, turn with me as we see the climax of chapter one together and we're going to be in verses 43 through 51 this evening. The next day, he, that's Jesus, decided to depart from Galilee and he was finding Philip and Jesus was saying, follow me.

Now, Philip was living in Bethsaida from the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip was then finding Nathaniel, who was saying to him, we have found the one Moses wrote about in the law and in the prophets, Jesus, the son of Joseph, who is from Nazareth and Nathaniel said to him, is anything good able to come from Nazareth?

Then Philip was saying to him, come and see. So Jesus spoke to Nathaniel, the one who was coming to him and speaking concerning him, Jesus said, behold, a true Israelite in whom there is no deceit and Nathaniel was saying, from where do you know me, Jesus?

And he answered him and he said to him, before Philip called you, I saw you under the fig tree and Nathaniel answered him and said, rabbi, you are the son of God and the king of Israel and Jesus answered and said unto him, behold, I saw you under the fig tree or because I saw you under the fig tree, you believe?

You will see greater things than these and he said to him, truly, truly, I tell you, you will see the heavens open and the angels of God descending and ascending upon the son of man. This is the word of the Lord.

Let's pray. Lord God, we are but finite dust. We are but simple creatures who approach your holy word and Lord God, I pray that you would illuminate your scriptures tonight. Lord God, I pray that you would help me communicate it in a way that honors you.

Lord, I thank you for this text and Lord, I just ask that you would write it on our hearts, that you would multiply its meaning to us and that we would see not only what it means to be a follower of Jesus but what it means to be truly saved by Jesus and what that means and what that entails for our life.

So Lord God, again, I thank you for this text and I pray that you would use it for your honor, for your glory, for our sanctification. It's in Christ's name we pray, amen. In a lot of ways, this text is a repeat from last week.

Last week and the two weeks before that, we saw a theology of what it means to follow Jesus and in a lot of ways, Andrew or Philip is doing the exact same things that Andrew was doing. He's leaving the comfortable in order to follow Jesus.

He examines why he's following him. He desires to dwell with Jesus. He becomes his disciple and he goes out and he tells others about Jesus. All of the same themes that we saw in the section on Andrew is showing up here with Philip and Nathaniel but what I love about this passage is that it takes it further.

You see, this passage is not just going to talk about what it means to be a follower of Jesus. This passage is gonna talk about what it means to really be saved by Jesus and as we look at what does it mean to be saved by Christ, it's gonna impact our life in certain various ways so what I want us to accomplish tonight is just two things.

I want us to spend the majority of our time looking at the text and understanding what Jesus is actually communicating to Nathaniel and then as we finish, we're gonna highlight three application points on what this means for our life.

Philip, Nathaniel, and the Call to Follow Christ

So now, verse 43, let's begin. The next day, he purposed to go to Galilee. This means that Jesus is now moving deeper into the heart of Galilee. This means that he's leaving the Jordan River where he had this encounter with John the Baptist and what we realize about this moment is that Jesus is differentiating himself from John.

John came announcing the Son of God. Now, the Son of God is about his work and he's leaving this location in order to get on with his work and we see that he does this with four initial followers. He does this first and foremost with John, the gospel writer, and with Andrew but Andrew leaves and go gets Peter.

Most scholars believe that John leaves and goes to get James so what we have here is Andrew, Peter, John, and James as the original followers of Christ according to the gospel of John and these four men are leaving this region in order to go to this town called Cana which is where the very first miracle of Christ occurs and it's the text that we will consider next week but as incredible as that miracle is, it's a physical miracle, I would contend that what Jesus is describing here tonight is even more glorious because he's describing how deaden sinners can become regenerate through Christ.

These four men at Jesus's direction are heading with him and we see first and foremost as they're on their way to Cana, Jesus finds Philip, Philip then goes and finds Nathanael so now we're at six early disciples.

The text continues this way and he found Philip, that's Jesus, he went and found Philip and Jesus said to him, follow me and now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter and he went and found Nathanael and said to him, we have found him who Moses and the law and the prophets wrote Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph which is probably the most unlikely phrase that Nathanael would have ever thought to hear.

Philip again is doing the exact same things as Andrew, he's unpacking his Bible and he's saying, look brother, the first five books of the Bible testify about him, everything else in the Old Testament testifies about him, we have found the Messiah, the son of God, I'm so glad that this particular example is in our Bible because as we talked about last week, it would be easy to assume if Andrew was the only example that we had that evangelism would be easy for us, it would be easy for us to assume that when we share Christ that the person that we're sharing Christ with accepts him, Peter, look at what he does, he has no questions, he simply goes to Jesus, he gets converted, he becomes a leader in the early church, eventually he preaches a sermon where 3 ,000 people get saved, he becomes an effective evangelist missionary and then he eventually dies for Jesus.

It would be really easy for us to look at that and say, Andrew has got the gift of evangelism, I don't because when I share Christ with someone, that's not what happens because when I share Christ, people reject it or they have questions and I don't have answers, I'm so thankful that this particular scene is in the Bible because it gives us a theology of the fact that there's no cookie cutter response to the gospel of Jesus Christ, we're in a gospel narrative where there's all kinds of responses to Jesus, some are gonna like Peter accept him and are gonna follow him immediately, some are gonna have questions, some are gonna reject him at first and then are gonna accept him later like Nicodemus, some are gonna reject him outright and crucify him.

The point that I wanna share on this particular passage is to not get caught up in the results, to not be concerned with the fruitfulness of it but with the faithfulness of it, God has not called us to be necessarily fruitful, he's called us to be faithful, he's called us to share the gospel, if you remember last week, we talked about Charles Spurgeon and what he said, we will not be held accountable to the responses, we will be accountable to the gospel that we preach and as we go from here tonight and as we share the gospel with various types of people, some of them will accept it, some of them will reject it and that has absolutely nothing at all to do with how faithful you have been, what it has to do is whether or not Christ has decided to save that particular person and if he has redeemed them and regenerated them.

We are not accountable for the results, we are accountable to be faithful to God. Now, I share that as a little application here because I want us to notice that Philip's evangelism wasn't quite as effective as Andrew's but they were both faithful.

I would also say that from this text, we learn a little bit about who Nathaniel actually is. You know, when I read this text, I look at Nathaniel and I think he's a skeptic, he's a cold hearted guy, I look at him talking about Jesus's hometown but this is not a guy who's like that.

This is a man who grew up in a culture that anticipated the coming of the Messiah. If you have read anything about the history of the Jewish people, there were three or four different fake messiahs that had already risen up in the ranks because everyone was reading Daniel and everyone was reading Isaiah and everyone was thinking this is the time that the Messiah is going to come.

Everyone was expecting the Messiah but what I love about Nathaniel is that he knew his Bible. He knew his Old Testament. Nathaniel knew that the Messiah was gonna be born of a virgin. Nathaniel knew from Isaiah 7 .14 and Genesis 3 .15 that he was not gonna have a human father, he was gonna be born from an unwed virgin woman.

He knew that he was gonna be born according to Micah 5 .2 in the town of Bethlehem, not Nazareth. He knew that the Messiah was gonna be from the line of the kings and he was gonna be from Judah, not from Galilee.

So here Nathaniel, when he says, can anything good come from Nazareth, I want you to understand that he's not just saying my town is better than yours. And he's not just saying everybody hates Nazareth.

This is not the kind of town though that Philip is mocking. What he's saying is, I know where the Messiah is supposed to come from, can the Messiah come from Nazareth? The Bible's clear that he's gonna come from Bethlehem, can he come really from Nazareth?

Philip, why are you telling me this? Can he really be from Galilee since the Bible's clear he's gonna be from Judea? These are all legitimate questions from a man who is sincerely asking. And what I also love about this passage is that Philip doesn't have all the answers.

If you share Christ long enough, someone's gonna ask you a question that you never anticipated. And you're gonna wonder, I have no idea how to answer this. I love how Philip answers the question. Can anything good come from Nazareth?

And he does not start shooting from the hip, and he does not launch into a pseudo theological argument that he made up on the spot. He doesn't get behind his keyboard and blast out a response on first century Palestinian Facebook.

What he does is he just says, come and see. That's the only answer, come and see. I don't know the answer to your question, Nathaniel, but I know who the answer is. See, what I love so much about this is that Nathaniel is just humble, and he says, I don't have to be an expert on all the answers.

I don't have to know all of the questions that you're gonna ask, but I know the one who has all truth. I know the one who knows the answer to this, so come and see. Let me introduce you to Christ. Philip is basically saying to Nathaniel, you know, I have to admit that I don't know the answers to your questions, but I know the one who does.

Come with me. Let me introduce you to Christ. And I find that so refreshing because there's no shame in any one of us sharing Christ and saying, you know, I don't know the answer to your question. Let me go look that up in the word of God.

We're not gonna literally introduce people to Jesus because Jesus is not physically with us, but he did leave us his word. We can look at someone and say, you know, I don't know the answer, but what I do know is that there is answers out there and they are found in the word of God.

And we can have that humble approach. You see, I actually believe that most people do not share Christ because they're afraid of not knowing the answer. And because they're afraid of not knowing the answer, they feel like that they're gonna look like a fraud or they're gonna look like a fool or they're gonna look like they don't know what they're talking about.

Philip doesn't have that problem. He just says, come and see. He just says, let me show you where the answers are. And what I love about these two witnesses, we had Andrew first, he knew Jesus maybe 30 minutes.

So it's not about experience. He didn't have years of walking with Christ before he started sharing Christ. So it means that anyone can be qualified to share Christ if you know Jesus, even if it's only for five minutes.

Philip on the other hand says, it's not about how much I know. I don't know all the answers, but I know the one who does. You see, the two most common objections to us sharing Christ is experience and knowledge.

And both of these examples disprove that, that we don't have to know all the answers. We can just say, I know the one who does. We can look at someone and say, I'll get back to you next week. I'm gonna go research this.

And there's no shame at all in that. And what you will find is that as you share Christ, you will get more questions. And all of them will be ones at first that you have never heard. And you'll go back to the Bible, and you'll look up the answer to those questions.

And then you will have a growing database of answers that you can then share with someone who does not know Christ. And the more you do this, the more you share Jesus with people who have questions, the larger that database is gonna grow.

So that over the course of your life, you're actually becoming a better witness by being vulnerable and sharing him with people who have questions that far surpass your level of knowledge. So as we share Christ, we actually become a better witness for Christ.

Jesus Reveals Nathaniel's Identity as a True Israelite

Now let's continue with the text. I love how Jesus interacts with Nathaniel here. He doesn't even answer his questions. Nathaniel's coming and he's like, what good can come from Nazareth? Why is Jesus from the son of Joseph?

Where did he come from? He has all these questions, but he didn't answer them with a single answer. Instead, Jesus does something totally shocking. In verses 47 through 48, it says, Jesus saw Nathaniel coming to him and he said, behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit.

And Nathaniel said to him, how do you know me? Jesus answered and said, before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you. What Jesus is doing here is he's not even allowing Nathaniel to ask his questions.

He's interrupting him to challenge his identity. Now in order for us to see that, we have to actually go back into the Old Testament for just a moment and understand what Jesus is doing. Because he says some pretty peculiar words.

He says, behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit. What does Jesus mean by that? Well, if we're gonna understand that, we've gotta turn back to the Old Testament where Israel is actually formed.

Because Israel was formed through this man named Jacob. Jacob was the first man who was ever called Israel. So for Jesus to call Nathaniel true Israel is what he's basically saying. In the Greek, it's very clear.

There is true Israel in front of me, the one who has no deception. We need to understand Jacob. We need to understand the foundations of this whole thing called Israel. And we need to look at a little bit of a background on this man.

If you remember from the Old Testament, Jacob was a liar. He was a deceiver. He was a surplanter and a manipulator. It's actually what his name means, surplanter. And he gets that name because he's the one, if you remember, he stole his brother's birthright.

A birthright means that you get a double portion of the property. So Jacob, while his brother was hungry, makes a bowl of stew and sells the stew for his birthright. It says in the Bible that Esau hated his own birthright.

So Jacob deceived his brother. It doesn't stop there. He takes his blessing as well. With his mother's help, they collude together and they dress him up like an old, like a hairy hunter man, and they go in front of their old and blind father, and they steal the blessing.

The blessing was like a last will in Testament. So not only did he take his birthright, he took his blessing, and of course, you realize that Esau is angry about this, and he's so angry, in fact, that he's ready to murder his own brother, the deceiver, the liar, the manipulator.

Now, of course, Jacob flees for his life, and he runs to this place called Laban, but what I love about this story is that God shows up beforehand. God shows up and gives a vision of his own glory to this man who's the liar and the manipulator.

I find that so fascinating that on his route to this place called Haran, God shows up and he makes promises to Jacob. He says that I will never leave you. I will never forsake you. I'm gonna bless you.

I'm gonna bless your family, and your family's gonna be a blessing to the ends of the earth, and we're gonna look at this vision in just a moment, but suffice it to say, he does end up in Haran. He does end up with his extended family, and his life is still a mess.

God's made these amazing promises to him, and his life is not any better, and he lives there for 20 years, and what's so funny about this particular scene is that the deceiver is now the one who's deceived.

He gets duped into three unwanted marriages just so that he could marry one woman. His wages are changed time and time and time again, and here it is. The man who's manipulated so many is now being manipulated by others, and eventually, he gets tired of it, and eventually, he believes after 20 years, maybe my brother doesn't wanna kill me anymore, so maybe I should return, and on his way back, even while he still has shoddy character, God reveals himself to him again, and I love the bookends of this.

No matter what Jacob does, there is this thread that runs through the entire narrative of the faithfulness of God. God reveals himself to him in the beginning, and God reveals himself to him in the end.

God makes promises to him when he's running away, and God makes it personal when he's coming back, and I wanna share with you from Genesis 32 the second encounter that Jacob has because I think Jesus is referencing it.

He says, then Jacob was left alone. Jacob had basically sent his family ahead of him so that if Esau was still angry, they might kill them first, and he could escape. Maybe not the best strategy if you wanna be a good husband, but that's what Jacob does, and it says, a man wrestled with him until daybreak.

Now, all of a sudden, Jacob's alone, and here comes this man out of nowhere to wrestle with him. It's a very strange detail in the story. It continues on in verse 25. When he, that's the man, saw that he had not prevailed against Jacob, he touched the socket of his thigh.

So the socket of Jacob's thigh was dislocated while he wrestled with him, and then he said, let me go, for the dawn is breaking. But Jacob said, I will not let you go unless you bless me. Now, real quick, one guy touches the other guy's thigh, and his socket is completely unloosed.

One of them is more powerful than the other. One of them is just allowing the other to participate because of sheer grace, and it says, so the man said to him, what is your name? And he said, Jacob, and he said, your name shall no longer be Jacob, but you shall be called Israel because you have wrestled with God and you have prevailed.

This is the foundation of what it means to be Israel. Jacob realizes that he's not wrestling with any ordinary man. He says right after that in verse 29, please tell me your name, and the man says, why do you ask my name?

And then the man blessed him, so Jacob named the place Peniel, for he said, I've seen God face to face, and I did not die. Jacob realizes what is utterly shocking, that God shows up and wrestles with him.

And what we realize is this is what scholars call a Christophany. It means that Christ, the pre-incarnate Jesus, has come into the pages of the Old Testament, and he has done something in order to foreshadow something that he's going to do later.

It's not God the Father who's coming to wrestle with Jacob. It's not God the Holy Spirit. God the Father is so infinite, he cannot be contained in a human body, and God the Spirit does not have a human body, so therefore it's the second member of the Trinity wrestling with Jacob.

Jacob is wrestling with Jesus. Now what I love about this is because Jesus is referencing not some story in the past that he has no connection to. He's referencing a story that he personally participated in.

Notice even the words. A true Israelite in whom there is no deceit, Jacob was known as the deceiver, but yet God blessed him, and yet God renamed him, and yet God gave him the name Israel. That means the one who wrestles with God.

No longer is Jacob gonna be known as the deceiver. He's gonna be known as the one who is true Israel, the one who wrestles with God, the one who begs not to be let go until God gives him a blessing. See, it's here that Jacob's name is changed.

The deceiver, the supplanter, the liar, the manipulator is given a new identity. He's given an identity as the one who wrestles with God, and what I love about this is eventually Jacob's own 12 sons will be called the children of Israel.

Eventually those 12 sons will have lots of kids, and then the nation will be called the children of Israel. Eventually it'll just be shortened to Israel, which means that the entire ethos of what it means to be Israel is someone who wrestles with God, someone who holds onto their Bible with white knuckles and says, I'm not gonna let go of it until God blesses me, someone who gets down on their knees and prays with such tenacity and with such courage and says, I'm not gonna leave this moment until I've been blessed by God, someone who participates in the feast and participates in the community and does every part of their life in such a way that they would gain the blessing from God.

Israel means that I'm going to cling to God and I'm gonna hold onto God with such tenacity that I'm not gonna let go until God would bless me. This is the kind of man that Jesus is comparing Nathaniel to.

Behold, a true Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit. He's not answering Nathaniel's questions. He's speaking into his identity. He's saying, you are a true Israelite. You are one modeled after your father, Jacob.

And unlike Jacob, who was found wrestling with me 1 ,800 years ago, now you're standing face to face with me and you have no clue. And we know that he has no clue because of his response. In verse 48, he says, essentially, you don't know me.

You don't know who I am. How do you know me, Jesus? How do you know that I'm a true Israelite? How do you know that I wrestle with God? How do you know that I try to be faithful in every part of my life?

And it's here that Jesus moves beyond information to revelation. Jesus assumes that information is not enough to convert this man. He needs revelation. He needs to see who Christ is. Jesus answered him and said, before Philip called you when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.

And Nathaniel, just like Jacob, realizes that he's not speaking to any ordinary man. You know, Nathaniel, at this point, had been praying under a fig tree. It says that Philip was seeking after him, searching for him, so he was well hidden.

No one else had seen where he was at, but yet Jesus sees where he's at. Although he's hiding in a secret location, Christ had saw him. Christ had known him. And it's here that Nathaniel realizes that this man has greater vision than any other human being, that he has a greater mind than any other human mind, that he has unlimited knowledge.

What Nathaniel is saying is the same thing that Jacob said. I have seen the face of God, and yet I live. He responds, with Rabbi, you are the son of God. You are the king of Israel. But it wasn't until he wrestled with Jesus that he knew that.

And it wasn't until Jesus revealed himself to him, not by answering his questions, but by revealing himself to him, that Nathaniel actually understood who it was he was talking to. What I love about what Jesus does here is he doesn't end here.

You see, Nathaniel has just made, perhaps, the most clear and credible declaration of who Jesus is so far in the entire gospel. And you would think Jesus would say, all right, great, you know who I am.

All right, let's continue on. But he doesn't. He doesn't leave it there. He wants Nathaniel to know that salvation is not just about his declaration. Salvation is not just about his opinion of Jesus. Salvation is not just about what he thinks.

Salvation is something greater than that. It's larger than a profession of faith. The reason why he reveals himself to him and the reason why he showcases his glory to him is because he wants him to know the purpose of salvation and it's larger and it's greater than Nathaniel could ever recognize.

Jesus says to him, because I said to you that 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 that you will see the heavens open and the angels of God ascending and descending on the son of man.

Now, if you remember, earlier I said that there were two visions that Jacob had. One was when he encountered the Lord and he wrestled with God. The first was where he's running away from God, he's running away from his family, he's running away from his problems and God reveals himself to him.

Jesus is now picking up this second vision of Jacob in this section. I'm gonna give a moment to just talk about what this is and then we're gonna tie these thoughts together and show what Jesus is actually communicating here.

This vision of Jacob is in Genesis 28, 10 through 17. Then Jacob departed from Beersheba and he went to Haran and he came to a certain place and spent the night there because the sun had set and he took one of the stones of the place and he put it under his feet and he put it under his head and he lay down in that place and he had a dream.

And behold, a ladder was set on the earth with its top reaching to heaven and behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. It's the same words that Jesus uses. And behold, the Lord God stood above it and said, I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac, the land on which you lie, I will give it to you and to your descendants.

And your descendants will also be like the dust of the earth and you will spread out to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south and in your descendants shall all the families of the earth be blessed.

Behold, I am with you and I will keep you wherever you go and will bring you back to this land for I will not leave you until I have done exactly what I have promised you. And then Jacob awoke from his sleep and he said, surely the Lord is in this place and I did not know it.

And he was afraid and he said, how awesome is this place? For it is none other than the house of God, the gate of heaven. What I love about this is that in the first vision, Jacob sees this ladder that's connecting heaven to earth.

A ladder that the angels could go up and down but no human could ever grab. There is no indication at all that God asked Jacob or even give Jacob the idea that he could grab that letter and climb to heaven.

That's what religion says. And this ladder actually indicates that the gap between heaven and earth is uncrossable for human beings. You see in the garden of Eden, heaven and earth were the same place.

They were overlapping realities but now God has to build a ladder between heaven and earth and he has to stand at the top of it because God is holy. Our sin has caused a rift in heaven and earth so that they're now separate places.

God's standing atop of it because he's holy and he's not gonna come down and have his holiness overcome sinful, wretched creatures. And here we have this metaphorical ladder where God is speaking to his creation and it's highlighting the fact that human beings are separated from God with infinite chasm.

No human being can reach up and grab God. All of the religions of the world essentially claim, here's our ladder, put your foot on this rung, grab your hand on that rung, pull yourself up to heaven and then you can have fulfillment and eternal life.

Jesus says that's impossible. The gap is too big. Only God can traverse the ladder so this is why the two visions work together because in the one, Jacob is left on the outside with God looking down on him making promises and how is a holy God gonna make these promises to Jacob?

How is a holy God gonna come down and not only bless him but bless the entire world through him if he can't even be in the presence of God? How is he gonna never leave him? How is he never gonna forsake him?

How is God always gonna be with Jacob? And if it weren't for what Jesus says in these passages, there would be no solution. What Jesus is doing here is he is bringing about the completion of everything that was told to Jacob and he's saying through me, all of these promises are gonna come true.

Look at what he says. Truly, truly I say to you that you will see heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending on the son of man. The first thing that he says is truly, truly which means I'm telling you the truth, listen to me.

The second thing that he says is there's no longer a ladder that is connected heaven and earth. I am the one who's connected heaven and earth. No longer is God standing atop of the ladder looking down on sinful man.

I am the one who came down and I'm the one who interacted with sinful man. I am the place where heaven and earth meet. And unlike a ladder in the Old Testament, Jesus bridged the gap between God and man with two Roman cross beams.

That's what the gospel says. That Jesus is the place where heaven and earth meet and he's the only way to God. Instead of man trying to work themselves up to heaven, he is the one who comes down and grabs hold of them.

And in him, all of the promises of Jacob come true and if you were in Christ, they ring true for you as well. That you will never be abandoned. That you will never be forsaken. That you will be a part of the family of God, the church that will be a blessing to the nations.

As the gospel is preached every tribe, tongue and nation, the blessings of God are gonna come to the entire world. Every single promise that God gives to Jacob rings true in Christ. Jacob got a momentary encounter with God but he had to be bruised to get it.

Jesus gives us a permanent relationship with God but instead of us being bruised, he's the one who's crushed. Isaiah 53 says, but he was pierced for our transgressions and he was crushed for our iniquities.

The punishment that brought us peace was upon him and by his wounds we are healed. You see, the point of what Jesus is sharing with his people is that it's not about just simply following me. Many people can follow me out of religion or out of duty or out of any other selfish, deadened motivation and they're still separated from God.