Can anything good come out of Nazareth?

Judge not lest ye be judged.

Can anything good come out of Nazareth?

• I have a Bible story for you today, about a guy who made a mistake.

• There was a man named Philip, who met Jesus and decided to follow him.

• Philip talked to Nathanael, and told him "I have met the one that Moses and the prophets told about!

• He is Jesus, from Nazareth.”

Can anything good come out of Nazareth?

• Well, Nathanael didn't know Jesus, but he knew Nazareth -- it was just a sleepy little town, nothing much exciting there.

• Nathanael just laughed and said "Hah! Can anything good come from Nazareth?"

Can anything good come out of Nazareth?

• Can you guess what Nathanael's mistake was?

• See, he thought that he knew all about Jesus just by knowing where he was from.

• And since he thought Nazareth wasn't very good, he thought Jesus couldn't be very good!

• What a huge mistake!

Can anything good come out of Nazareth?

• But then he met Jesus, and talked to him, and very quickly realized that Jesus is the Son of God, the King of Israel.

• Something really good had come out of Nazareth!

Can anything good come out of Nazareth?

• It is easy for us to make Nathanael's mistake.

• A lot of times we think we know about people because we know where they live, or what kind of car they drive, or what school they go to, or the shape of their bodies, or the color of their skin, or the language they speak.

Can anything good come out of Nazareth?

• But none of those things tell us what a person is really like inside; none of those things help us see people the way God sees them.

Can anything good come out of Nazareth?

• Do you know what tomorrow is?

• Tomorrow is the day we remember Martin Luther King Jr.

• He was a strong Christian and a great leader who helped change some very bad laws we used to have in this country -- laws that separated people because of their skin color.

• You know what?

Can anything good come out of Nazareth?

• I am sure that there were people in Martin Luther King's time who looked at him and said "Hah!

• Can anything good come out of Montgomery, Alabama?

• Can anything good come out of the mouth of a black man?"

• They didn't stop to listen to what he had to say, or get to know him.

• They made Nathanael's mistake.

Can anything good come out of Nazareth?

• Nathanael fixed his mistake by getting to know Jesus.

• We need to make sure that we take the time to get to know people too -- not just judge them by where they live or their skin color or their clothes.

• Because God can make something good come out of anybody, from anywhere, at anytime.

Prayer• Lord Jesus help us not to

be so narrow minded that we judge someone based on their physical characteristics such as their color, size, or clothes. For all have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God.