Jesus went to Galilee. At the time Israel had three main parts, Judea, Samaria and Galilee. Jesus was brought up in Galilee, and spent a lot of His ministry time there.
“Finding Philip, He said to him “Follow me””. Now this may or may not imply that Jesus did not know of Philip before this. If we read all of the gospels we find that they interweave with each other on several occasions, and an individual gospel does not record all of the facts, each one is presenting a particular perspective. Whatever the case, it is Jesus who took the initiative in finding Philip and issuing the call “Follow me”. All of the gospels, and John in particular, present the situation as God seeking out man. We often talk of man seeking out God, this is putting the emphasis the wrong way round. Now this is not to say that man does not seek out God. Gen 4:26 says that men began to call upon the name of the Lord. If we say it is all of God and man has nothing to do with it, then this is utterly unbiblical. However, we need to be equally clear that the priority, the initiative, lies with God, not with man.
This verse also shows Jesus seeking out a particular individual. Now we might then say that God calls individuals, He does not just make a general call. In saying that God does call individuals we right, God knew me before the creation of the world. However, there are parables and other places that present God as making a general call as well. So we need to be careful here. Again, if you take one perspective to the exclusion of others we run the risk of running into error.
Philip, Andrew and Peter were all from Bethsaida. Bethsaida was a large fishing town.
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