Nathanael suffered from a skepticism that afflicts many people today.

However, it is to his credit that he came to the Lord and gave Him a chance to prove who He was.

We can only speculate what it was that Jesus saw Nathanael doing under that fig tree (v. 50), but it is very clear that it was something that proved beyond a doubt that Jesus was the Christ.

Jesus didn’t rebuke Nathanael for his doubts, instead he removed them. The Lord has an answer for every doubt that we have. We need to be without guile before the Lord as Nathanael was (v. 47) and come to Him when we are plagued with doubts instead of running from Him or avoiding Him.

Jesus knows our frame. He remembers that we are but dust (Ps. 103:14). It is not a sin to doubt, but it becomes sin if we harbor those doubts. We should do as Nathanael did and bring our doubts to the Lord. Let’s allow Him to deal with them.

Andrew was the first disciple of Jesus to share his faith and bring another to Christ. And look who it was that he brought.

Peter became one of the greatest apostles of Jesus. He preached on the day of Pentecost and saw 3,000 born again. He healed a lame man at the gate of the temple and 5,000 were born again as a result. He raised Dorcas from the dead, introduced Christianity to the Gentiles, and wrote two books of the Bible which have ministered to millions of people through the centuries.

Just think of how many millions of people Peter touched, and Andrew was responsible for it all. The accomplishments of Peter recorded in scripture, far outnumber those of Andrew, and yet without Andrew, Peter would not have known Jesus.

In the eyes of God, what Andrew did was just as important as what Peter did. As the one who introduced Peter to Jesus, Andrew had a part in every exploit of Peter. In the day when we receive our rewards from the Lord, Andrew will share in every reward that Peter receives.

Very few of us will shake our world as Peter did his, but all of us are called to share our faith with others as Andrew did. And who knows? One of those that you reach could be the next Peter.

John knew who he was and what he was called to do. This was one of the keys to his success.

Unlike most of us, John did not have an identity crisis growing up. He knew God’s plan and purpose for his life from the beginning and he spent his entire life preparing for it.

God has a plan for your life just as surely as he did for John the Baptist. To succeed in life, you must find God’s plan for your life and then devote yourself to fulfilling that plan.

It is not enough to simply “do your own thing” and then ask God’s blessing upon it. Once you know you are doing God’s will, you never have to ask for God’s blessing. God’s will is already blessed.

The Lord created you with a purpose in mind. Your talents and abilities were given you to fulfill His purpose. Although you may find limited success using these talents for your own uses, you will never find your true potential until they are directed by and for the Lord.

The good news is that God wants to reveal His perfect plan for your life to you more than you want to know it. You can rest assured that if you ask for knowledge of His plan for your life, you will receive (Mt. 7:7). He will show you His good, acceptable and perfect will (Rom. 12:1-2).

The wording of this verse implies that Satan exhausted his arsenal of temptations on Jesus and then had to leave.

We have mistakenly given Satan too much credit. He does not have a limitless number of temptations that he can pull on us. As 1 Jn. 2:16 says, there are three areas where the devil tempts us: (1) the lust of the flesh, (2) the lust of the eyes, and (3) the pride of life. Jesus’ three temptations correspond to these.

By ascribing to Satan limitless temptations and abilities, we have built up our adversary to be bigger than he is. The truth is, “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God [is] faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear [it]” (I Cor. 10:13).

Satan would like you to think that he is tougher than he really is. One of his greatest weapons is intimidation, but he has been defeated. His teeth have been pulled. Now he can only roar as a lion seeking to devour uninformed souls who don’t know their authority in Christ (1 Pet. 5:8).

Today, realize that whatever Satan is fighting you with is only temporary. Don’t quit. In due season you will reap, if you faint not (Gal. 6:9).

Jesus answered every temptation with, “It is written.” The Word of God is the sword of the Spirit (Eph. 6:17). It is the only offensive spiritual weapon that we have.

Since Jesus was the Word of God (Jn. 1:1), anything he would have spoken would have been the Word. He could have said “scat” and the devil would have had to go, yet He quoted the written Word of God three times.

This gives us great assurance that the written Word of God is sufficient for us. Jesus, in the face of the greatest temptations that Satan had to offer, did not need to say anything that was not already recorded in scripture.

It is likely that when Jesus returns to this earth and destroys His enemies, He will just speak the Word that has already been given in scripture. No wonder Satan tries to keep us from studying and knowing God’s Word. Even our good works will hurt us if they keep us from really knowing the scriptures.

God has given us this mighty weapon of His Word! When we speak the Word in faith, hell shakes. Satan and his minions have already experienced what the Word can do. They know its power. We need to know it, too.

Two of Satan’s three temptations began with the words, “If you be the Son of God.”

Jesus was God, but he did have a human body that had to grow in the knowledge and wisdom of God (Jn. 1:1; 1 Tim. 3:16; Lk. 2:52). It took faith for the physical mind of Jesus to believe the witness of the Spirit within Him that he was the Messiah. Satan was attacking the most basic of His beliefs. This must have been a temptation to Jesus or Satan would not have used it.

Satan is very subtle in his temptations. It may have looked like he was trying to get Jesus to perform a miracle, but he was actually trying to make Jesus waiver in His faith of who He was. He tried to get Jesus to draw on the supernatural power of God to confirm it to the devil and Himself.

Unlike Jesus, we sometimes fall for this trick of the devil. We may say that we are arguing for some truth of the gospel, but many times we are hoping to convince ourselves. Someone who really knows who they are and what they believe, doesn’t have to prove anything to anyone.

Isaiah 30:15 says, “For thus saith the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel; In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength…” Let the Lord build your confidence in who you are in Christ.

These scriptures record the ministry of John the Baptist. He spent thirty years in the deserts of Judaea preparing for this ministry. Then it only lasted about six months before He baptized Jesus and men started following the Messiah. Yet in those brief six months He turned an entire nation to God.

He did not take the normal approach and go where the people were. He was out in the wilderness and the people came to him. He had no advertisements other than the testimonies of those who had heard him. He wasn’t a flashy evangelist wearing the latest styles of the day. He didn’t do anything the way the religious leaders taught it was supposed to be done in their seminaries, yet it worked.

In six short months, an entire nation was stirred in anticipation of their Messiah through a man who was not “normal.”

One thing that keeps many of us from being used by God is our “herd instinct.” We are so afraid of what someone else will think. We try to be like everyone else and then we wonder why we are getting the same results as everyone else. That’s not smart.

John was completely yielded to the Holy Spirit and he succeeded against all the odds. Dare to follow the Holy Spirit, even against the crowd, and you will get supernatural results, too!

How could it be that Jesus, who was God (Jn. 1:1; 1 Tim. 3:16), and in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, increased in wisdom? (Col. 2:3)

God is a Spirit (Jn. 4:24). Jesus, as God, had existed as a Spirit forever.

When He came to the earth as Jesus, he was Lord at birth, but that was in His Spirit (Lk. 2:11). His Spirit didn’t have to grow or increase in wisdom but His physical body did.

The Lord could have done things differently, but He didn’t. Jesus came into this world in His physical body exactly as we did. He had to grow and learn.

He became just like us so that we could become just like Him (2 Cor. 5:21).

This is the great exchange. He became like us so that He could bear all our iniquities and become a mercy high priest for us (Heb. 2:14-18).

Christianity does not produce a changed life but an exchanged life. Christ does not reform us, but He transforms us through His union with us. In the same way that the Eternal Christ could come and inhabit the body of an infant and still retain all His deity, He now inhabits our bodies through the new birth in all His glory and power. Like Jesus, grow in your wisdom and understanding of who you now are in Christ.

This is the only scriptural record of Jesus’ childhood. Yet there is much that we can learn from this brief account.

At twelve years of age, Jesus’ wisdom astounded the men who had spent a lifetime studying the scriptures (v. 47). Remember that Jesus did not have full time access to a copy of the scriptures like we do today. He had to depend on His visits to the synagogue and the direct revelation knowledge from His heavenly Father.

He was also asking these scholars questions (v. 46). This is amazing when you realize that in Him are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge! (Col. 2:3) Although He was God, He inhabited a physical human body that needed to be educated.

He also had a clear understanding at this young age of who His real Father was and exactly why He had come to the world (v. 49). We can only speculate how this must have influenced His childhood.

So we see that Jesus knew His call and purpose even in His early childhood. However, there is no record of miracles or ministry on His part until after His baptism by John at the age of thirty. Preparing a body for God Almighty to manifest Himself through was no small task. Praise God for His great love that caused Him to sacrifice everything for us.