47When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching, he said of him, “Here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.” 48“How do you know me?” Nathanael asked. Jesus answered, “I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you.” 49Then Nathanael declared, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the king of Israel.” 50Jesus said, “You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You will see greater things than that.” 51He then added, “Very truly I tell you, you will see ‘heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on’ the Son of Man.”
John 1:47-51
How often do you wish that God would see you? Do you wonder if He sees you or really cares about you? What if God really saw you in the most mundane places of your life and truly cared and had an opinion about what you do and where you are?
Jesus was good to Nathaniel this day. What a blessing to hear the Creator of all the earth say that He saw you. Jesus told Nathaniel that He saw him when Philip called him. If Jesus knew Nathaniel in such a mundane encounter, surely He saw him in everything he did. What a beautiful reality!
You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet
But Jesus didn’t stop there. Nathaniel was content to believe that Jesus was the promised Messiah just because He had seen him when Philip spoke to him under a tree, but Jesus told Him that was nothing compared to what he was going to see and experience in the future.
In a reference to Jacob’s experience at Bethel, Jesus told Nathaniel that he too would experience the majesty of what his father Israel had encountered; to see the heavens opened and see the angelic host ascending and descending. We are never told of this exact encounter in scripture, so we can assume that it actually happened and was not recorded, or that it will happen in the future in eternity, and in fact, we will all see this in eternity.
The heavens will one day be opened (Revelation 6:14) and we will all see the heavenly hosts with Jesus (Revelation 19:11-14). So then, we can claim that same promise that God gave to Nathaniel.
Does He See You?
But what about you? Do you need to hear that the Lord knows you? That He sees you? What Jesus told Nathaniel that day was that God seeing him was nothing compared to what was coming. Will you choose to believe that God sees you the same way? Will you ask Him to speak to you that He knows you, cares about you and sees you even in your mundane moments?
God does see you and He does know you. Set your heart on these truths and the glory of what is to come. Ask God to whisper to you that He knows you. Nothing moves our hearts more than to hear the voice of God that He knows us, but know that this is a small thing compared to what He has in store for us!
I am a writer, author and purveyor of ink on paper. I also preach, teach and create Excel spreadsheets.