EXPLORE IT! - John 1:35-51

“The next day John was there again with two of his disciples. When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, ‘Look, the Lamb of God!’” 

-- John 1:35-36

When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus and spent the day with him. 

Andrew was one of these disciples, and the text says that the first thing he did was to go find his brother Simon and introduce him to Jesus, saying, “We have found the Messiah!”

Jesus looked at him and said, “You are Simon son of John. You will be called Cephas” (which, when translated, is Peter). 

Cephas (Aramaic) and Peter (Greek) both mean rock. 

Later, Jesus is leaving for Galilee with his new disciples and comes across a guy named Phillip.

Philip, like Andrew and Peter, was from the town of Bethsaida. 

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.”

Nathanael is skeptical that anything good can come out of Nazareth. 

When Jesus sees Nathanael, he says, “Here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.” 

Nathanael is like, “What do you know about me?” 

Jesus tells Nathanael that he saw him while he was still sitting under the fig tree.

Nathanael is very impressed by this and declares that Jesus is the Son of God. 

Jesus is in turn impressed by Nathaniel’s faith, and tells him that he’s going to see much greater things than that – he will see “heaven open, and the angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” 

Jesus is referencing the Genesis story of Jacob’s dream of the ladder between heaven and earth with the angels descending and ascending on it. 

Jacob, however, did not realize that he was in God’s presence until after he saw this sign; whereas, Nathaniel recognized God in his midst well before he would see the sign of the Son of Man bridging the gap between heaven and earth. 

Also, Jesus says that Nathanael is an Israelite without deceit, and Jacob was definitely a deceitful Israelite. 

And so ends the beginning chapter of the Gospel of John, up next… the rest of the story.