NATHANAEL AND THE FIG TREE:

NATHANAEL AND THE FIG TREE: John 1 has one of those little details that looks almost meaningless until you stop and ask why Nathanael reacted the way he did. Philip tells him they found the Messiah. Nathanael fires back, “Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?” John 1:46 KJV Then he meets Jesus. Jesus says, “Before that Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee.” John 1:48 KJV And just like that, Nathanael answers, “Rabbi, thou art the Son of God; thou art the King of Israel.” John 1:49 KJV That’s a massive confession over six words about a fig tree. The Bible tells us Nathanael was under one. It never tells us what happened there or why Jesus mentioning it hit him so hard. There is an old Syriac tradition preserved through the tenth-century lexicon of Hasan bar Bahlul that says Nathanael was an infant during Herod’s slaughter of the children, and he was hidden beneath a fig tree to keep him alive. A later Syriac work, The Book of the Bee, preserves the same basic account. Now I’m not calling that Scripture. It isn’t. But if there’s any truth behind that old tradition, John 1 gets wild. Imagine carrying that story your entire life. You survived Herod as a baby because you were hidden under a fig tree. Years later, you walk up to a Man you’ve never met, and He looks at you and says, “When thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee.” That would explain the reaction. Nathanael didn’t answer, “Wow, good guess.” He answered, “Thou art the Son of God.” Maybe Jesus wasn’t talking about where Nathanael had been a few minutes earlier. Maybe He was reaching all the way back to the day Nathanael’s life was spared. Either way, the point is hard to miss. Nathanael thought this was his first meeting with Jesus. Jesus already knew exactly who Nathanael was. #MoreJoyMinistries