Following the Nazarene - All The LORD is near Daily Devotionals for 2024

Can anything good come out of Nazareth?
John 1:46

Following the Nazarene
Every region has a town with such a bad reputation that it becomes a byword and symbolic for everything that is bad. Merely mention the name of the place and people get the point right away. I know of a few places like that, and I am sure you do too. Nazareth was such a town in its day. Even in the rural and poverty-stricken region of Galilee in which it was found, Nazareth was looked down upon. It was too hilly and rocky for farming, and too far from the Sea of Galilee to benefit from the lucrative fishing industry surrounding its shores. The only thriving businesses there were some inns of questionable character due to the city's proximity to a Roman military road.

In today's text the answer to Nathanael's question to Phillip about Nazareth is an emphatic "Yes"! How wonderful that the "Lord of glory" would deign to identify Himself with the lowly and despised town of Nazareth. As a direct descendant of King David, the ancestral home of the Lord Jesus was in the southern and more respectable town of Bethlehem. However, it was ordained that He should spend His childhood and youth in Nazareth and thus be forever identified with it .

When the Romans crucified a criminal they would write the crime on a board placed above the head of the victim as a warning to any would-be criminals. Pilate's accusation against Christ read, JESUS OF NAZARETH, KING OF THE JEWS (Jn. 19:19).

When Christ revealed Himself to Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus, Saul asked the question, "Who are you Lord?" Christ's response was, "I am Jesus of Nazareth" (Acts 22:8). The resurrected, glorified Lord still identified Himself with His hometown of Nazareth! What humility! The apostle Paul was charged with being a "ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes" (Acts 24:5). Blessed reproach for following the One from Nazareth!

Brian Reynolds