SUNDAY 19th
John 1:41
NIV – ‘The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, We have found the Messiah (that is, the Christ).’
ESV – ‘He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, We have found the Messiah (which means Christ).’
We have the same verse again today, but in this devotion, I want to look at the words ‘We have found the Messiah’. The nation of Israel had been waiting for a long time for the promised Messiah, you may remember that in John 4 when Jesus was talking with the woman at the well near Sychar in Samaria, that after he had told her about the living water,(vv10-15) they had the conversation about her many husbands, (vv16-8) she then perceived that Jesus was a prophet (v19) they then talked about true worship (vv21-24) after which the woman said to him, ‘I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.’ Jesus then replied, ‘I who speak to you am he.’ In verse 26 she goes back to the town and tells the people ‘Come, see man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?’
The woman was still looking, Andrew had found him! But thankfully, the woman also came to the realization of who Jesus really was. Thank God today that we too have found him as we have entered into a personal relationship by faith and have been born again of the Spirit.
By the time we get to Jesus being identified as the Messiah here in John 1, he has already been described in several different ways. I have already mentioned some in an earlier devotion, (Wednesday 15th July – The ‘Word’ in verse 1, is creator in verse 2, life and light in verse 4, becomes flesh (v14), full of grace and truth (v14) Jesus Christ (v17) and the Lamb of God in verse 29.) We add to the list the Lord (v23), Son of God (v34), Rabbi / Teacher (v38), Jesus of Nazareth (v45), King of Israel (v49), Son of Man (v51) and Messiah (The Christ) in verse 41.
The Messiah – The Greek ‘Christ’ is the equivalent to the Hebrew and Aramaic ‘Messiah’ and means ‘one who is anointed’ or ‘anointed one’. The chapter we are considering commences with ‘In the beginning was the Word . . . and the Word was God.’ V14 ‘And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us’ In Isaiah 9:6 we have the prophetic declaration that a child is born, a son is given, the Word who became flesh was the Child born, and the Son given, the little baby lying in the crib was the arrival of the anointed one, the Messiah, the Christ.
Again in Isaiah chapter 61 we have the following words ‘The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn.’ (vv1-2) And in Luke 4:18-19 we find that the Word who became flesh, the child born, the Son given used the very same words from Isaiah to describe who he was and what his mission was, thus declaring that he was the Messiah, the Christ.
In Matthews gospel when Jesus asked the disciples who did they say he was, Peter replied ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ The Messiah has come, and the good news is that he has accomplished all that the Father had anointed him or sent him to do. And as a result, as we believe by faith, we have life in his name. Remember where we started two weeks ago with John 20:30-31 ‘Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.’
We have only briefly gone through John chapter 1 over the last two weeks, but my prayer is that we will have either discovered or rediscovered something of the wonder of the redemption story, the wonder of who Jesus really is, the Christ, the Son of God, so that we will have life in his name.
As we conclude this look at chapter one, I bring a challenge to all who have read it in whatever format, do you know him? Have you responded by faith and accepted the one who was sent to be the Saviour, can you honestly say that you are born again by the Spirit of God? If not, then open up your life to him, allow him to come and to clean up the old and to recreate you into a new person, for ‘if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, behold the old has gone and the new has come.’ (2 Corinthians 5:17)
For those of us who do know him, may we allow him to be all that he is meant to be in our lives, both Lord and Christ. The one who has saved us and the one who is sovereign in our lives.