#DailyDevotion Just Bring People To Jesus. Let Them Hear Him.
John 1:43–46 43The next day Jesus wanted to go to Galilee. He found Philip. “Follow Me!” Jesus told him. 44Philip was from Bethsaida, the home town of Andrew and Peter. 45Philip found Nathanael and told him, “The One Moses wrote about in the Law, and the prophets, too — we’ve found Him, Jesus, Joseph’s son from Nazareth.” 46“Nazareth – can anything good come from there?” Nathanael asked him. “Come and see!” Philip told him.
Jesus has just begun his ministry. The Baptists had pointed Jesus out to Andrew, Peter’s brother, and Andrew started following Jesus. Andrew went and got his brother Peter and brought him to Jesus. Now this must have been down the Jordan river, where John was baptizing. This brings us to our text now. Jesus started heading back to Galilee which upstream of the Jordan river. Jesus is going to the land of darkness, the land of the northern tribes of Israel who are no more. It is a land where many of the Gentiles, non-Jewish people, settled after Babylon, Greece and Rome had taken control over that land. He is to bring his Light to this area to fulfill the Scriptures.
Now he must have gotten close to Galilee because Jesus finds Philip and tells him to follow him. Philip is from Bethsaida, the same town of Andrew and Peter, who were fisherman on the sea of Galilee.
Now people don’t just generally find Jesus all on their own. John has to point out Jesus to his disciples who start following Jesus. People like Andrew who start following Jesus and believe his teaching bring others to Jesus, like Andrew brought his brother Simon, who Jesus calls Peter. And now, Philip whom Jesus calls goes and gets Nathaniel.
Now who does Philip believe Jesus is? Philip believes Jesus is the Prophet Moses wrote about in the Law, and the prophets too. What is Philip referring to? Moses told the Israelites in Deut. 18, 15“The LORD your God will raise a Prophet for you, one of you, an Israelite, like me; listen to Him.” Now certainly the LORD had sent many prophets to the Israelites over the centuries. Some proclaimed the word of the LORD. A few of them did miracles. But none were like Moses. A prophet like Moses would deliver the Israelites from their oppressors. He would speak God’s Word directly to the people. He would do great signs and wonders. We can see from Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount that Jesus certainly spoke like Moses, with great authority. We won’t see any signs and wonders from Jesus until a few more verses pass by when he changes water into wine. Now Nathaniel is skeptical of Philip’s report. “Can anything good come out of Nazareth,” he asked. Nazareth no doubt is a small Podunk town in Galilee, full of Gentiles, we believe. That gives it a couple of strikes. The Messiah was to come from Bethlehem (which is well a small town too, but David the king was born there.)
Philip tells Nathaniel to come and see. This is really all we can really do in evangelism. We’d all love to be apologetical giants convincing people Jesus is their Savior. Pastors too, would love to preach and teach to swoon their crowd of listeners. But all we can ever do is bring people to Jesus and have them hear his teaching and see what he has done for them. It is the Holy Spirit through that which will convert them to believe in Jesus. So just try bringing people to Jesus.
Heavenly Father, we thank you that you have called us to believe in Jesus or had someone bring us to Jesus to believe in him. Use us as your instruments to bring people to Jesus so they may hear his word and believe in him also. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.