{"id":7115,"date":"2015-11-15T00:05:46","date_gmt":"2015-11-15T08:05:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/?p=7115"},"modified":"2015-11-14T14:40:31","modified_gmt":"2015-11-14T22:40:31","slug":"where-you-come-from","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/2015\/11\/15\/where-you-come-from\/","title":{"rendered":"Where You Come From"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jesus decided to go to Galilee. There he met Philip, who was from Bethsaida, the hometown of Andrew and Peter. Jesus said to Philip, \u201cCome with me.\u201d <\/p>\n

\tPhilip then found Nathanael and said, \u201cWe have found the one that Moses and the Prophets wrote about. He is Jesus, the son of Joseph from Nazareth.\u201d <\/p>\n

\tNathanael asked, \u201cCan anything good come from Nazareth?\u201d <\/p>\n

\tPhilip answered, \u201cCome and see.\u201d <\/p>\n

\tWhen Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said, \u201cHere is a true descendant of our ancestor Israel. And he isn\u2019t deceitful.\u201d <\/p>\n

\t\u201cHow do you know me?\u201d Nathanael asked. <\/p>\n

\tJesus answered, \u201cBefore Philip called you, I saw you under the fig tree.\u201d <\/p>\n

\tNathanael said, \u201cRabbi, you are the Son of God and the King of Israel!\u201d <\/p>\n

\tJesus answered, \u201cDid you believe me just because I said that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see something even greater. I tell you for certain that you will see heaven open and God\u2019s angels going up and coming down on the Son of Man.\u201d (John 1:43-51)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\tJesus can\u2019t be ignored. People have to make a decision about him, one way or the other. Philip quickly became convinced that Jesus was the long awaited Messiah, so he asked Nathanael\u2014elsewhere in the Bible referred to as Bartholomew\u2014to come and meet Jesus.<\/p>\n

\tNathanael was doubtful. Nazareth had a bad reputation and he couldn\u2019t see how Israel\u2019s Messiah could call such a place home. When Jesus saw Nathanael, he said something that Nathanael probably thought was mere flattery. So he asked Jesus a simple question, \u201chow do you know me?\u201d <\/p>\n

\tJesus\u2019 answer about seeing him under a fig tree convinced Nathanael that Jesus was the Son of God and the king of Israel. Why did Jesus\u2019 few, and rather mundane words convince Nathanael of so much? Because no ordinary person could have known where Nathanael was or what he was doing. It meant Jesus really was the Messiah.<\/p>\n

\tJesus\u2019 response to Nathanael\u2019s expression of faith was to let him know that, in effect, \u201cyou thought that was impressive? You ain\u2019t seen nothing yet.\u201d Jesus would perform far more impressive miracles than something akin to what Sherlock Holmes or a stage magician might have been able to figure out.<\/p>\n

\tJesus inspired passion in the hearts and minds of everyone he came in contact with. They either accepted him or rejected him. You can\u2019t stay on the fence about Jesus. <\/p>\n

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Jesus decided to go to Galilee. There he met Philip, who was from Bethsaida, the hometown of Andrew and Peter. Jesus said to Philip, \u201cCome with me.\u201d Philip then found Nathanael and said, \u201cWe have found the one that Moses … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes"},"categories":[18,17,16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7115"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7115"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7117,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7115\/revisions\/7117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}