Steven Furtick — Do You Know Who You Are?
What was it about Nazareth, that made them push away the One, who came to set them free? What was it about Nazareth? Well Nathaniel is gonna tell us. Nathaniel doesn't get a lot of speaking parts in the Bible, so let's pay close attention, it's very uncommon that Nathaniel speaks, but the Bible tells us one thing that he said. That this whole text and our entire understanding of why God often cannot do what he wants to do in our lives. It hinges on this, because when Philip came to find Nathaniel, he was excited about Jesus. This is when Jesus was first assembling his squad, this is before he sent them out to do any miracles. And Philip comes running up to his friend Nathaniel. He's called Nathaniel in John's Gospel, other writers call him Bartholomew. He had an alias, here he's called Nathaniel.
And Philip comes to Nathaniel, because sometimes the first thing you do, when you really meet Jesus is drag people with you. Sometimes when God really gets ahold of your life, you will bribe people into coming to church with you. You'll buy a Starbucks to get them to sit with you in church, because you know how messed up they are. But you can't tell them that, but if you drag them in this church and let me open the Bible, God will tell them, and together, the Holy Spirit and you can get them fixed. And so you say: "come with me to church". And they say: "I don't like Church". And you say: "Well, this isn't normal Church". And they say: "I've been to church before...". Yeah that's the church, where you're coming with me. Now shut up and come!
And so, Philip found Nathanael, verse 45 John 1, and told him: we have found the One... Somebody shot "we found him"! This is the One Moses wrote about in the law and whom the prophets also wrote. Watch Jesus of Nazareth. Where's he from again? Nazareth. The son of Joseph. And Nathaniel's reaction helped me to understand why the people of Nazareth resisted Jesus and missed his miracles. And it helped me understand, why I tend to push people away sometimes. And it helped me understand, why sometimes I reject the love people are trying to give me, but really I'm rejecting something else.