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.

John 1:43:46

Nazareth must have had a poor reputation among the people. Think of a city or a suburb near you that is not all that stellar in reputation. We only look at Nazareth and Bethlehem as where Jesus was from but miss the point that Nathanael was making. He knew the area and what came out of there, and the Messiah shouldn’t have been from there.

If we had thought of the birth of the Messiah, a small, little-known town with a poor reputation would have been the so far from our thinking.

But He had to be from there. He had to have grown up with Joseph as His father and Mary as His mother. It was to the Glory of God that it happened that way, not the glory of kings or of men.

Throughout the Gospels we see instances where God did things that make us scratch our heads. This is one of them.

The mysteries of God unfolds every day as we seek them out in the Bible.