SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/19/2021 10:50 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 “Looking at Nathanael”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
10:3a
Message of the
verse: “Philip
and Bartholomew;” (also known as Nathanael).
Nathanael was not only a genuine
spiritual Jews as the Lord had said there was no guile in him, but he was also
a genuine Jew and a genuine person.
Nathanael had no deceit or duplicity, he had no hypocrisy or
phoniness. These characteristics alone
would set him apart from most of his countrymen, especially the self-righteous
and hypocritical scribes and Pharisees, whose very names Jesus used as synonyms
for religious and morally hypocrisy.
This can be seen in Matthew 23:13-15, 23, 25, and 27.
We
mentioned that Nathanael had a problem with being prejudice from a statement he
made about where Jesus was from, but after being with Jesus for a while that disappered. Another good thing we can see about Nathanael
was that after receiving a compliment from the Lord his head did not swell up
with pride. He asked the Lord “How do
you know me?” as seen in John 1:48. He
wanted to know how the Lord knew that he truly seek to follow God and that my
life is not hypocritical. It seems that he was inclined at this time to doubt
the Lord since he did not know Him that well at that time, but Jesus next words
to Nathanael removed all doubts that he may have had as Jesus said “Jesus answered and said to him, "Before Philip called you, when you were
under the fig tree, I saw you." 49 Nathanael answered Him, "Rabbi,
You are the Son of God; You are the King of Israel.’” It did not take Nathanael to get rid of his
doubt because of the answer that Jesus gave to him.
John
MacArthur writes “Because fig trees of that region could become quite large,
they were often planted near a house to porvide shade, comfort, and a place to
retreat from household activities.
Nathanael must have been meditation and praying in the shade of such a
tree before Philip came to him.
“In
any case, Jesus not only saw where Nathanael was sitting but knew what he was
thinking. ‘I saw you in your secret
place of retreat,’ Jesus said, in effect, ‘and I even saw what was in your
heart.’ Nathanael’s prayers were
answered and his searching for the Messiah was over. Because his heart was divinely prepared to
seek the Messiah, he immediately acknowledged Him when they met, just as the
godly Simeon and Anna recognized even the infant Jesus as the Son of God (Luke
2:25-38),”
In
our SD’s about these men we have been talking about what tradition said
about their death, but in the case of Nathanael we see that the New Testament
says nothing of his ministry or his death, and even tradition has little to
offer about him. One thing for sure
though is that it is apparent from the Lord’s own words that, like David, Nathanael
was a man after God’s own heart.
In
our next SD we look at the last two apostles from this second group, Thomas,
and Matthew. 8/19/2021 11:12 AM
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