John 14:9-Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip?
Philip was one of Jesus’ disciples. For more than three years, Philip watched Jesus as He performed miracles, listened to all of His sermons, and hung out with Him in His private time. Philip had a “front seat” in the life of Jesus. He knew Jesus! And yet, in our verse for today, Jesus says to Philip
“Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip?
John 14:9 NKJV
Have you ever felt like Jesus? Have you ever talked with someone and they left you wondering if they even knew you? I can definitely say, “Yes, and amen!”
Jesus told the disciples that He was about to leave them, to go and prepare a place for them. He told them that where He was going, they would also be able to go because they knew where He was going and they knew the way. Yet, Thomas said that they not only didn’t know how to get where He was going, they were clueless as to where He was going!
If this wasn’t enough to prove that the disciples and Jesus weren’t on the same page, Jesus told them they knew the Father and had seen Him. Yet, Philip said to Him:
“Lord, show us the Father, and it is sufficient for us.”
John 14:8 NKJV
Clearly, Jesus and the disciples were having a failure to communicate. From Jesus’ standpoint, He had been busy showing the disciples who He and the Father were, and they had totally missed it!
Jesus responds to Philip by asking him:
“Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip?
John 14:9 NKJV
For some reason, this question has been echoing in my heart lately. Not so much about Jesus, but in general. It has caused me to stop and think about all the times and all the ways we could use this phrase with others, and be as perplexed with them as Jesus was with Philip!
For example, I was working at my job when my boss came in and threw an accusation at me. I was taken completely off guard because we had worked together long enough, had seen enough drama, and had even put out enough fires together for her to know my character. And yet, she accused me of something that was so totally not me. Have I been with you so long and you still don’t know me? It’s baffling! At this point in our relationship, I believed we knew each other so well that nothing like this could have ever happened. And yet, it did!
Can you imagine Jesus’ perplexity with His disciples at this point? I can! In this text, Jesus used the Hebrew word “ginōskō” which has several meanings, including perceived and understand. Philip thought he was having a “Moses” moment with Jesus. After all, Moses had asked God a similar question when he asked God to show him His glory (see Exodus 33:18). Only this didn’t produce the same results for Philip as it did for Moses because Jesus said:
“Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; so how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?
John 14:9 NKJV
I believe Jesus had a two-fold assignment, or goal when He came to Earth. One was to bring reconciliation between man and God and the other was to give us a new awareness of God. In John 12, Jesus spoke these words before His disciples and others:
“He who believes in Me, believes not in Me but in Him who sent Me. And he who sees Me sees Him who sent Me.
John 12:44-45
In the Old Testament we are given opportunities to see God as He revealed Himself. We see Him as the Creator in the beginning. He reveals Himself to us through encounters with Noah, Moses, Abraham and his descendants. We discover Him to be a miracle worker, a healer, a provider, and a deliverer. We are shown His glory and we desire to know Him in a greater capacity; for ourselves, as David did.
Then Jesus comes on the scene. He walks in an authority that no other man has ever displayed. He demonstrates that He is a miracle worker, a healer, a provider, and a deliverer. When John the Baptist asked if He was the Messiah, He told John the blind see, the lame walk, and the lepers are cleansed. He even said to Philip:
Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on My own authority; but the Father who dwells in Me does the works. Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me, or else believe Me for the sake of the works themselves.
John 14:10-11 NKJV
In other words, “Let the works I’ve done speak for Me!”
If you think I’m baffled that those closest to me often leave me feeling as if they don’t know me, then you should know that I am still amazed that so many are unaware of who Jesus is!
I may not know Him as well as I should, but I have the basics figured out. I truly believe that Jesus is real and is the Son of God, and therefore He is God. I know Him to be my healer, deliverer, provider, and protector, to name a few. I trust His character even when I don’t agree with His decisions about my life. I trust His love for me even when He feels distant. I trust His word even when I don’t understand it. It is my heart to know Him better! Paul prayed this for each us:
For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God
Colossian 1:9-10 NKJV
We are to live our lives to understand God. We should know Him better today than we did last year. Our desire should be to grow in our understanding of God more than anything else. If we believe that He would do anything to hurt us, then we don’t know Him. If we believe He could ever leave us alone, we don’t know Him. If we believe that He doesn’t care about us, we don’t know Him yet! Keep working at it! He’ll reveal Himself!
I started this blog two weeks ago and it ended up in my drafts. I tried to move on to another post, but I couldn’t move past this one. Without knowing my struggle, my husband came to me this week with this very same puzzlement from his quiet time with the Lord. He thought the discourse between Jesus and His disciples in John 14 was disconcerting. I knew then I needed to go back to this draft.
None of us will ever be able to grasp the totality of the Person of Jesus with our finite minds! Hopefully, we are gaining in our knowledge of Him regularly! Wherever we are in our journey with Him, we don’t want to be in a position where we He asks us, “Have we been together this long and you still don’t know me?” Wonderful Jesus!
Wonderful Jesus! 