Philip and Bartholomew

Published by Stanley Pouw in 2012 · 21 October 2012

When we think of the twelve Apostles we are prone to think of people without faults. People who don’t have any of the failures of humanness that we have. But we are wrong. Because they are people just like us with many faults, but after they are called, they are transformed, trained and sent by Christ.

Let us just go back to the Bible to see the people He used there. I mean, there was Noah who got drunk and conducted himself in a lewd way. There was Abraham who doubted God, lied about his wife and then committed adultery. And then there was Isaac who lied like his father; did the same thing with Rebecca and lied to Abimelech.

And then there was Moses who was a murderer. Moses acted in pride and struck the rock instead of obediently speaking to the rock as God said and he never entered the Promised Land he had led the people to. And there was David the all time ladies man. Every time he saw a lady he liked he married her. An adulterer, a murderer, a lousy father and a man with such bloody hands God wouldn't even let him build a temple. And then there was Solomon the world's leading polygamist.

And God used Elijah who could overcome 850 false priests but ran fearfully from one woman named Jezebel. They're all unqualified. And when you look at the twelve, you know what? They are just as unqualified like all the rest. Therefore God only has one alternative; He uses unqualified people to do the impossible. God Himself transforms them into usefulness. And that can happen to you too!

Now remember the twelve apostles are divided into three groups of four. The first four were the most intimate. The next four were somewhat intimate. And finally the last group is the least intimate with Christ. But they were all trained and sent and they all had an effective ministry, with the exception of Judas Iscariot who was replaced.

Not all of them had the same level of intimacy with Christ. Not all of them had the same gifts and talents and ministries. Yet they all preached and they all proclaimed and they all advanced the Kingdom. They all spread the good news, but they were very special unique individual people.

Now we have just looked at group one and how great a diversity. Now let's look at group two and we're going to cover two of them this time and two of them next time. Matthew 10: 3, "Philip and Bartholomew.´ So let's look at Philip first. His name is a Greek name. Now all twelve were Jews so he must have had a Jewish name but we don't know his Jewish name. And by the way, his Greek name means “lover of horses”.

He is always in the second list and he is always at the head of the second list which means that he was the leader of the second group. Now for a while he also lived in Bethsaida, the town where Peter and Andrew came from. Since they were all God-fearing Jews, Peter, Andrew, Philip and Nathanael or Bartholomew, they probably all knew each other. And it is obvious that there is a lot of friendship interwoven there.

The three gospels say nothing about him, just his name, nothing else, but John's gospel mentions him four times. Look at John 1:43, "The day following," meaning the day following Peter and Andrew having an encounter with Christ, the day following the time when John the Baptist pointed to Christ and said, "Behold, the Lamb of God," and Peter and Andrew followed Him. "The following day Jesus wanted to go to Galilee, and He found Philip again and said to him, “Follow Me.”

Now that is the first direct call of a disciple. Peter and Andrew had already met Christ but they had found Him, they had sort of come along. But Philip is the first individual to whom the Lord expressly said - Follow Me. He walked up and found him and said Follow Me.

But Philip also had a seeking heart. God doesn't find people against their will. If you look at John 1: 45, it says Philip then went to find Nathanael, or Bartholomew same person, and said to him, "We have found Him." From the Lord's viewpoint He found Philip, from Philip's viewpoint he found the Lord and in order for that to happen both of them had to be seeking.

Luke 19:10, "The Son of man has come into the world to seek and save that which is lost;” Jeremiah 29:13, “And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.” God seeks that true heart that seeks Him. In verse 45 he continues, "We found Him of whom Moses in the law and the prophets did write." In other words, he must have been seeking Him.

And when Phillip heard the divine voice say - Follow Me, he ran to tell Nathanael that he had found Him, that the Messiah was here. Phillip was excited and wanted to bring Nathaniel to Him, at the end of verse 46, he says - Come and see...

So who was Philip? First thing is that he was seeking the Messiah. We also learn that his response when being found was to find somebody else to learn this too. Do you know that the greatest source for evangelism is friendship? Friendship provides the most fertile soil for evangelism.

Invariably, when somebody becomes a Christian their first reaction in the warmth and the joy of that new found life is to find a friend and tell that person what has happened. And if you have lost that, then there are only two possibilities, either you don't have any friends that are not Christian or you don't care anymore about them. Both are sad.

You know, people who are just saved and told they should be baptized respond instantly. And most frequently joyously they want to give their testimony. People who have been saved way in the past, and failed to be baptized when years later they know that they should be obedient and do that, very often won't do it because they hesitate to stand up publicly and give their testimony.

But now we're going to find out the rest of Philip’s story. Let us look what happens before the feeding of the five thousand. In John 6:5, “Then Jesus lifted up His eyes, and seeing a great multitude coming toward Him, He said to Philip, “Where shall we buy bread, that these may eat?” Why did Jesus ask Philip? See the next verse, “6 But this He said to test him, for He Himself knew what He would do.” And also because Phillip was in charge of the food as they travelled around.

7 Philip answered Him, “Two hundred denarii worth of bread is not sufficient for them, that every one of them may have a little.” Phillip answered Him immediately, which proves that he indeed was in charge and had already analyzed it. He had it figured out. And in his mind it could not be done.

So what do we learn about Philip? He forgot that the Lord was supernatural, that Christ could do creative miracles. He is too analytical and pragmatic such that he missed faith all together. He didn't know that God said: "That with Him nothing is impossible." He should have said, “Lord, You made wine out of water at Cana, You fed Your children in the wilderness with manna, You are healing all day long and Philip had watched His supernatural power himself, Jesus, You can surely feed them!”

Go to John 12:20, "Now there were certain Greeks among those who came up to worship at the feast.” "21And they came to Philip," because he was the Greek connection, "and asked him, saying, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” But Philip didn't take them directly to Jesus. He said, in affect, now you guys wait here, let me check first. So he goes and tells Andrew and together they go to Jesus.

So Philip was not decisive and not forceful. And he was still living in Matthew 10, way at the beginning when the Lord said, "I have come but for the lost sheep of the house of Israel." So he's saying - these are Gentiles, should they see Him? He didn't get the message of grace.

We finally see him in John 14:8, three years later, Philip says to Jesus the night before His crucifixion, at the Passover, at the communion, where Jesus is unfolding His heart to His disciples. He's going to be arrested and crucified and so forth right after this. It's all coming to an end and Philip says to Him, "Lord, show us the Father and that will be sufficient.”

“9 Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; so how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10 Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on My own authority; but the Father who dwells in Me does the works. 11 Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me, or else believe Me for the sake of the works themselves.”

Tradition tells us that Phillip became a faithful servant and he died as a martyr for Christ he wouldn't deny. They stripped him naked, according to tradition, they hung him by his feet upside down and they pierced great holes in his ankles and his thighs so that the blood would pour out and he would die slowly. And his only request was that they not wrap his body in linen like his Lord because he wasn't worthy of that.

One more fellow for this evening, and he is only introduced to us in one passage and then we just lose him the rest of the time. His name is Bartholomew in Matthew 10, but that was his last name. His first name was Nathanael, and it means gift of God, son of Tolmai.

And he was very different from his friend Philip. He was full of faith and he was so in awe of the supernatural. And he perceived everything as clear as crystal from the very beginning. John 1:45 says: "Philip finds Nathanael, or Bartholomew, and said to him, We have found Him, of whom Moses and the law and the prophets did write, and His name is Jesus of Nazareth and He is the son of Joseph."

This implies that Nathanael was a searcher of Scripture and a seeker after divine truth. It tells us that Nathanael studied it because the way that Philip approaches him is - Here's the One the Scripture told us about. But verse 46 tells us he had a weakness too.

"Nathanael said to Philip, Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" Nazareth was a rowdy and a wild place. It was the last stop before the Gentile world; it was out on the fringe. Nothing ever came out of Nazareth but trouble.

Nathanael's heart had the ugly sin of prejudice. You know what prejudice is? It is an uncalled for generalization based on feelings of superiority. He just blanketed the whole town of Nazareth and said nothing good is ever going to come out of there.

Prejudice is ugly. Liberals say that about us Christians today. Prejudice is a device used by Satan to blind people to the truth. It caused the Jewish nation to remain deaf to the appeals of their own Messiah.

Well, Philip offered him a solution at the end of verse 46, he says - Come and see. Now we're going to find out how deep his prejudice is. Verse 47, he went and: "Jesus saw Nathanael coming and He said to him, "Behold, an Israelite for real, in whom there is no hypocrisy." Boy, what an introduction. Talking about me?

What is the Lord saying? What is an Israelite indeed? Not all Israel is Israel, Romans 9:6 says. There are Jews in the flesh who are not Jews in the covenant because they do not believe, right? Here was a true Jew, a God-seeking Messiah oriented Jew. And Jesus said, "In him there is no deceit." He is an honest, sincere Jew who seeks God.

But even a man that good was still stained by the sin of prejudice. So you see, the Lord is always working with the unqualified at some point or another, even with the best of them. And to show you his sincerity he said to Him, verse 48: "How do You know me?"

Jesus answered, "Oh, before Philip ever went to get you I saw you under the fig tree." Wow, that's where he was. A fig tree would grow to a height of 15 feet and spread its branches out as far as 25 feet from the middle. It would be a great shade area but beyond that, a fig tree was a place of retreat. It became a place of prayer, a place of communing with God, a place of searching the Scripture and a place of quietness.

And Jesus is saying to him - I saw you meditating, I saw you seeking, I saw your open heart. I saw you in the secret private place. I saw what was there and what you wanted to know and I am here now. Here was Nathanael praying under the fig tree - Lord, show me Your Messiah. And here comes Philip from under the branches saying - Nathanael, I found Him, your prayers are answered. He's from Nazareth.

And then Nathanael says - Ah, you've got to be kidding. Even he knew that it said in the prophet Micah, "Bethlehem, yet out of you shall come forth to Me The One to be Ruler in Israel.” And nothing good ever comes out of Nazareth. But Phillip said: come and see. Okay. His desire to understand overwhelmed his prejudice and off he went.

Well, that was enough proof for him. Nathanael right away in verse 49: "Answered and said to Him, Rabbi, You are the Son of God; You are the King of Israel." Three years later Philip still wasn't sure whether He was God. But Nathanael knew it immediately. He saw deity in His presence.

John 1:50 says, 50 Jesus answered and said to him, “Because I said to you, ‘I saw you under the fig tree,’ do you believe? You will see greater things than these.” The reason you believe is because of My omniscience. You were convinced that only God can know everything. Jesus says - listen, you're going to see greater things than that. You have only just begun to see.

So look at verse 51, “And He said to him, “Most assuredly, I say to you, hereafter you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” Jesus is saying Nathanael, you think you saw heaven, you think you saw divine power in that omniscience, from here on you're going to see other stuff going on all the time between heaven and earth. You're going to see heaven open and angels going up and down and the Son of man working in response to heavenly power. You're going to be exposed to heaven coming down.

And it may well be that Nathanael understood the glory of Christ better than anybody else. He never asked another question. He never even appears the rest of the time in the whole account. He was in, solid like a rock, from the start. And Jesus promised to him the most wonderful revelations and everything he saw from then on he knew was heaven open.

God uses slow, plodding, mechanical, analytical, weak faith skeptics like Philip. And God uses great faith, clear understanding souls like Nathanael. You know what He does? He takes the raw material in all of us and He transforms it into what He can use, Amen?