John 1:35-51 35 The next day John was there again with two of his disciples. 36 When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, “Look, the Lamb of God!” 37 When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus. 38 Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, “What do you want?” They said, “Rabbi” (which means “Teacher”), “where are you staying?” 39 “Come,” he replied, “and you will see.” So they went and saw where he was staying, and they spent that day with him. It was about four in the afternoon. 40 Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, was one of the two who heard what John had said and who had followed Jesus. 41 The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, “We have found the Messiah” (that is, the Christ). 42 And he brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, “You are Simon son of John. You will be called Cephas” (which, when translated, is Peter). 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.”
Here we see that two of John’s disciples followed Jesus. John the Baptist drew people to the Lord Jesus, not to himself. Two disciples who heard John’s words and followed Jesus, one of them was Simon Peter’s brother Andrew. He told his brother Simon: “We have found the Messiah.” Messiah means Christ, the Anointed one, the one anointed with oil, the one anointed with the Spirit of God, Messiah means the Savior. The Old Testament prophesied the coming of the Messiah. Micah 5:2 prophesied the birth of the Messiah in Bethlehem. Matthew 2:23 tells us that the Lord Jesus grew up in Nazareth, Galilee. The Old Testament prophesied that he was called Jesus of Nazareth. The Lord Jesus was born in Bethlehem, but grew up in Nazareth. When Philip went to Nathanael and told him that they have met the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, Nathanael said, “Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” Nathanael said this because the Old Testament prophesied that the Messiah was born in Bethlehem, not in Nazareth. But when the Lord Jesus told Nathanael that before he saw him, “I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you.” He believed, because he knew that the Lord Jesus knew everything. Jesus said to him: “You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You will see greater things than that.” 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.” The Son of Man here is the Lord Jesus, who is both the Son of God and the Son of Man. As mentioned earlier, he was with God from the beginning, and he is both God and man. Then what does it mean when the Lord Jesus said “you will see ‘heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on’ the Son of Man.” Let’s look at the following verses:
12 He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. 13 There above it stood the Lord, (Genesis 28:12-13)
This was the dream of Jacob, the ancestor of the Israelites. The Lord Jesus compared himself to be a stairway from the earth to the heaven. Through the Lord Jesus, angels ascending and descending, and through the Lord Jesus, people can be saved and enter heaven, enter the kingdom of heaven.
May God bless you and your family. 😊
