John 1:19-51 Part 4
Come and see
This great theme that started with John the baptist “Look the Lamb of God” spread to Andrew who in turn encouraged his brother to come and see and now we find that Jesus himself is demonstrating the same thing. The passage tells us that Jesus “wanted to go to Galilee” and in the going “He found Philip.” John 1:43.
This has nothing to do with the divine but was all about a need to ‘go and tell’ in order to ‘seek and find’.
When Jesus found Philip he simply said “follow me”, we are not told that Philip stopped to consider the proposition or make some excuse about needing to do something else, or maybe tomorrow I will follow. No, what Philip saw in Jesus made a deep impression in his spiritual part that this man was indeed the Christ. Faith is not something we have in our head, it is a deep sense of knowing in our heart, it is something that gets hold of us and that will not let us go, it compels us to follow Christ through thick and thin.
As we read this passage we find that Philip did not appear to waste any time in going to find Nathaniel. John 1:45. Now Nathaniel was a different kettle of fish, he was not convinced by Philip’s new found enthusiasm and zeal. He doubted that anything good could come out of Nazareth, consistent with the view of Nazareth at the time which suggests that the Nazarenes were particularly hostile to the gospel.
Philip does not appear to proceed to convince Nathaniel he just says the same words to him that Jesus said to Andrew, “come and see.” In many ways we all have doubts and are sometimes sceptical about who Jesus is and what He is about so sometimes the best answer is just “come and see.” It would be good to note at this point that Philip did not say “well go and find out” he implied come with me, I will walk with you and we can find out together. Is that what we do when we present the gospel? or do we bash and condemn people into God’s kingdom?
Jesus said in John 14:6 “No one comes to the Father except through me.” Our role is to bring people to Jesus; it is He who will show the way to God. Are we walking with our friends and encouraging them to find Jesus?
Let us be like John the Baptist and point Jesus out to our friends, we may be surprised by what our friends do, they may even go and find someone else.
