Based on John 1:43-51 and Psalm 139
Have you been watching the TV series Perfect Planet? It is the latest nature documentary, narrated by the wonderful David Attenborough. I was watching it last Sunday and….well it just blew my mind! Creation was wonderful! It was magnificent! Since its wonder and magnificence is often beyond our comprehension and understanding, we find ourselves looking up, smiling and saying ‘Thank you God. I know that was you!’. Our creator God.
In today’s bible readings we are reminded of our creator God – that God formed us in the womb. We are also going to explore how the readings reveal that our Lord knew us before we knew him; and thirdly, that he knows us completely – he knows our true self. He literally knows us ‘off by heart’!
So first, we are reminded that God formed us in the womb.
In Psalm 139 we read:
For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works that I know very well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
Today’s Old Testament reading reminds me of one of my favourite metaphors. It is about how God handles everything for us when we are in the womb.
In the first 9 months of our life, from the moment of our conception until the moment of our birth, everything was being handled for us. There was nothing for us to do. It was all being taken care of, we just surrendered. Then we are born and our parents looked at this beautiful creature, the amazing creation, and they may have found themselves looking up, smiling and saying “Thank you God, great work, you couldn’t have done any better, but we’ll take over from here”.
‘Great work but we’ll take over from here’ and from that moment on we start edging God out. We think we know better and we turn away from our dependence on God.
God handled everything for us when we are in the womb, he formed us both physically and spiritually. Isn’t a key part our faith the turning back toward God; acknowledging what he has done for us and how he continues to provide for us; surrendering back to being dependent on God; just like we were in the womb?
God created us and handled everything for us when we were in the womb.
So what stops us from trusting him now to handle the rest of our life for us?
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Secondly, our bible readings remind us that ‘our Lord knew us before we knew him’.
In our gospel reading Nathanael was amazed that Jesus knew who he was before they had been introduced. How could Jesus know him? Why would Jesus know him? Why would Jesus be interested in him?
This reading is about Jesus calling his first disciples. In the previous verses Jesus has already called Andrew and Simon Peter, and now we read that Jesus found Philip and simply said ‘Follow me’ and Philip followed.
Jesus found Philip, he seeked him out, and Philip immediately responded to the calling ‘Follow me’.
Some of us will be like Philip, keen to follow straight away. Some of us will be like Nathanael, full of questions and concerns. Nathanael does not accept the invitation but challenges Philip to prove that anything good, let alone the Messiah, can come from somewhere so downmarket as Nazareth!
So Nathanael went to see Jesus for himself and in conversation with Jesus, he discovers that Jesus knows far more about him than he expected. We read, ‘Nathanael asked him, ‘Where did you come to know me?’ Jesus answered, ‘I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.’ Nathanael replied, ‘Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!’ Jesus answered, ‘Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these. Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.’
Nathanael was amazed that Jesus knew who he was before they had met and that was enough for him to believe. Yet I love Jesus’ effective reply – just you wait, if you believe because of that, you ain’t seen nothing yet!
How easy is it for us to forget that God knows who we are, not just because he formed us in the womb, but because he seek us out. God constantly seeks out a relationship with us. He knew us before we knew him.
One of the most fundamental messages of the gospel is that God seeks us out. The shepherd leaves his 99 sheep to go searching for the one that is lost, because the one matters to God. If the one matters, we all matter and he will spend eternity seeking us out and asking us to turn back to our dependence on him, so that we may live life in all its fullness.
God constantly seeks out a relationship with us.
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God formed us in the womb; he knew us before we knew him; and thirdly, he knows us completely – he knows our true self.
I often struggle with the Old Testament but Psalm 139 is epic! The author has amazing insight and clarity on God’s ‘all-knowing’ nature – what is referred to as Omniscience. We have an omniscient God – God has the capacity to know everything. All-knowing.
Perhaps wisdom comes with age, but as I get older I notice how fixated many people are with putting up a façade. Pretending to be something they are not. Perhaps for what they feel is good reason – to present to the world the person that they think the world wants to see. The façade may not just be for their own personal benefit. In fact, long term, it is often at their expense. With their current thinking, they believe that the world is a better place if they hide behind a façade.
In Psalm 139 we read
O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from far away.
You search out my path and my lying down,
and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
O Lord, you know it completely.
You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is so high that I cannot attain it.
God knows us completely – he knows our true self – and if we go back full circle it was God that created our true self in the womb.
Each of us has been wonderfully, beautifully and perfectly formed by God. Isn’t that a good enough reason to be our true self and drop any façade.
But what if we don’t know how to drop the façade or even how to become aware of our façade? You may recall that a few weeks ago I talked about the refiners fire and how we should embrace it rather than be wary of it. How CS Lewis wrote in unspoken sermons – if you trust the nature of this God, you will run to God with your arms wide open. You will say, ‘come on judge me to the core and burn out of me all that keeps me from being fully free and fully alive’.
If you trust the nature of God, that God is good all the time, then we can drop the façade; know that God perfectly created us; and he can give us the strength, wisdom and courage to get rid of the façade that keeps us from being fully free and fully alive.
God formed us in the womb; he knew us before we knew him; and he knows us completely – he knows our true self.
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Is there anything else that we can take from today’s gospel reading? Well I think there are some learnings that we can take from Philip. As soon as Jesus found Philip, we read that ‘Philip found Nathanael’ and told him about Jesus.
I remember when my kids were young and if they had discovered something really exciting they would come bouncing up to me, bursting with excitement and tell me all about their discovery. Here’s Philip, just as excited, telling his friend about discovering the one ‘whom Moses and the prophet wrote about’. How excited are we about telling our friends about our discovery? Are we as excited now as we were when we first believed? If not, how can we rekindle that excitement?
Nathanael may have burst Philip’s bubble of excitement with asking ‘how can anything good come out of Nazareth?’ No doubt Philip was disappointed but he responded ‘Come and see’.
It is not up to us to form someone else’s relationship with Jesus. We can trust Jesus to do that himself. We can trust Jesus to form that relationship in his own time just like he did with Nathanael. Our job is to say ‘come and see’.
Come and see that we haven’t got three heads; come and see how our life has been impacted through fellowship with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit; come and see how we experience life in all its fullness now – ‘as in heaven, so on earth’.
Conclusion
So to conclude, in today’s bible readings we were reminded of our creator God – that God formed us in the womb; that he knew us before we knew him; and he knows us completely – he knows our true self. He knows us ‘off by heart’!
God knows our true self and if we go back full circle it was God that created our true self in the womb. So why do we edge God out?
Do you recall the metaphor at the start when the baby is born and the parents say
“Thank you God, great work, you couldn’t have done any better, but we’ll take over from here”?
In the first 9 months of our life everything was being handled for us. There was nothing for us to do. It was all being taken care of, we just surrendered…..and he CAN also handle the rest of our lives.
So a key part our faith is turning back toward God; acknowledging what he has done for us; how he formed us and knows us; and how he continues to provide for us.
It is actually not so much about learning, but unlearning – the unlearning of fear and independence; and instead, the re-acceptance of dependence on God.
Let’s surrender back to being dependent on God and let go of trying to do it on our own. He knows us better than we know ourselves. So perhaps it time for us to acknowledge, that with our best interests at heart, he also knows best! Amen
Debbie Story 