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This lesson is designed to take approximately 90 minutes in lifegroup or discipleship settings.

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🎉 CELEBRATE (35 mins)

• CELEBRATE ONE ANOTHER (15 mins)
  • Vision: Invite someone in your group to share the vision.
  • Icebreaker:
    • What’s your go-to comfort food after a long week?
  • Check-Ins: life updates, praise reports, etc.
• ANNOUNCEMENTS epicentre.org/events (5 mins)
  • This is the central spot, where you can stay up to date with all events and announcements at our church!
• CELEBRATE GOD THROUGH WORSHIP (15 mins)
  • Take some time to encourage a member to prepare the worship space. This *guide* can help them plan the time: *Tips for Leading Worship at Lifegroup.*
  • If helpful, you can also pick from this worship list of Spotify playlists/Youtube songs.

❤️ ACCOUNTABILITY (5 mins)

• In twos or threes, take a few minutes to check in on how you're living life with God. Share, encourage, challenge, and pray for one another.
  • Have you been working for Jesus or being with Jesus more lately? Why?

📖 LEARN IT (40 mins)

• SCRIPTURE DISCUSSION
  • Short Context on the Gospel According to John:
    • John’s Gospel aims to draw readers to faith in Jesus as Messiah and Son of God through his portrait of Jesus as the divine Revealer. The evangelist establishes this through Christology and revelation—God revealing himself through the Son, whose “I AM” declarations equate him with Yahweh. The Father-Son relationship forms the Gospel’s heartbeat, with their mutual glorification culminating in Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection. John emphasizes active belief (using the verb “to believe in” rather than abstract faith) and weaves together three moral themes: light versus darkness, with Jesus as “the light of the world”; life as the Gospel’s central gift through belief; and love uniting Father, Son, and believers. These themes work together to transform readers’ understanding of who Jesus is and what commitment to him demands, inviting them to encounter the glory of the Son made flesh and live for him in their everyday world.
  • Short Context on the the reading, John 1:43-51:
    • The turning point arrives through Jesus’s supernatural knowledge. When Jesus characterizes Nathanael as “an Israelite in whom there is no deceit” and reveals that he observed Nathanael beneath a fig tree before Philip’s summons, Nathanael’s scorn transforms into confession—addressing Jesus as “Rabbi” and declaring him both Son of God and King of Israel.1 This abrupt reversal mirrors the pattern seen elsewhere in the Gospels, where Jesus’s personal presence itself becomes the compelling force drawing people to abandon their former lives and embrace discipleship.

JOHN 1:43-51 (NIV)

43 The next day Jesus decided to leave for Galilee. Finding Philip, he said to him, “Follow me.” 44 Philip, like Andrew and Peter, was from the town of Bethsaida. 45 Philip found Nathanael and told him, “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” 46 “Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” Nathanael asked. “Come and see,” said Philip. 47 When 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.” 49 Then Nathanael declared, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the king of Israel.” 50 Jesus said,  “You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You will see greater things than that.” 51 He 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.”

QUESTIONS

1. What stands out to you from this passage?
2. What can we understand about Jesus in this passage? Why?
3. What can we understand about people in this passage? Why?
4. Jesus saw Nathanael under a fig-tree…how would you interpret Nathanael’s “fig-tree-moment?” Why do you think he was there?
   1. This is important to answer before going into small groups below.

🎯 LIVE IT (10 mins)

• RESPOND IN SMALL GROUPS
  • Break into groups of 2–3 for the following—
    1. Are you experiencing any “fig-tree-moments” during this season of life?
    2. Share & pray for each other to close.