Tag: John 1

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Daily Devotion July 19th

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.

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Daily Devotion July 5th

John 1:1-18

As we embark into a new week, I am going to change slightly the format of the devotions, from tomorrow, I will include the text Scripture in two versions, the New International Version and the English Standard Version which is the one that I most commonly use. If I quote verses within the devotion, they will continue to be from the ESV unless otherwise stated. I will no longer be adding a song at the end, but occasionally I will put some further notes at the end of a devotion.We will commence this week to look at the first chapter of the  Gospel of John, although to begin with we will look at some later chapters as an introduction

Introduction

The Gospel of John was written by the apostle John, who was one of the disciples of Jesus. He was the son of Zebedee, and was a fisherman, along with his brother James. (Matthew 4:18-22 ‘While walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon (who is called Peter) and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen.  And he said to them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. Immediately they left their nets and followed him. And going on from there he saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.) He also wrote the three epistles under his name 1, 2 & 3 John and the book of Revelation. (Revelation 1:1-2 ‘The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, who bore witness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw.’)

Although John is a main character during the three years of Jesus’ public ministry, he seems to be the member of an inner circle that had special privileges such as being on the mountain at the time of the Transfiguration (Matthew 17)  but when we look at the book of Acts, John seems to take a less prominent role compared to Peter and Paul. We do read of him, when he along with Peter went up to the temple in Acts 3 which records the healing of the lame man, this narrative continues through into chapter 4. We read of John with Peter again in Acts 8, and the next and final time he is referred to is on the occasion when his brother James was killed by Herod. (Acts 12:2) The other ‘Johns’ referred to in Acts are John the Baptist and John Mark.

The gospel of John is different to the other three gospels, in that they (Matthew, Mark and Luke) are called ‘synoptic’ gospels. This means they give an account of the life and ministry of Jesus with a similar view. John differs in that unlike them he does not concentrate on the miracles, parables, and teachings of Jesus in the same way, but instead concentrates on the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is said that in his gospel John covers 90% of unique material.

But thank God that he did concentrate on the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, for it is from this gospel that we glean so much about the Lord Jesus , who came as God’s Son, to bring about the whole work of redemption. My prayer is that as we go through this gospel, we may be blessed all over again with the wonder of who Jesus is and in the wonder of our salvation.

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Daily Devotion May 28th

THURSDAY 28th

John 1

Having had six children, Elaine and I have known the difficulty in deciding what names should we give them. Shall we use family names, shall we be different and use obsolete names, shall we just choose names we like, but then what if we both do not want the same name. One name or two, or what about three? Well, we chose, and between the six we have used 14 names. Some are family names carried on and others are names we chose because we liked them and although some of our children have chosen to shorten their name’s we will still only call them by their full name. i.e. Robert goes by Rob to many, but we will never call him Rob, it is always Robert, the same with Andrew / Andy. To me, one of the joys when they were born was going to get the birth registered and having the names put on record by the registrar.

Can you imagine Mary and Joseph going to register the birth of Jesus? Name please? Jesus. Middle name? Yes, but how much time have you got, he’s Messiah, Word, Lord, Christ, Redeemer, Saviour, Lamb, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God . . .

Well, he is all of these and so much more. This new-born baby had a lot to live up to and live up to it he did.

In John’s gospel chapter one, Jesus is identified in many ways. First in verse one as the Word, then he is identified as the creator (v3), life (v4), light (v5), the true light (v9), full of grace and truth (v14, 16), God (v18), Lord (v23), Jesus (v29), Lamb of God, (v29, 35), Baptiser (in the Holy Spirit) (v33), Chosen One (v34), Rabbi or teacher (v38), Messiah, Christ (v41), Son of God (v49), King of Israel (v49), Son of Man (v51). It is a comprehensive list of names, titles etc. When you add in the ones I have listed earlier and many more such as Great High Priest, Advocate, and others which Jesus used to describe himself, the ‘I am’ the door, the Good Shepherd, etc his names would have taken some registering at birth!

But for us today what matters is not the registering of his name at birth, but our receiving him for our new birth, as John records in 3:3 Jesus said, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.’ And in 3:5 Jesus said, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.’ Earlier in chapter 1:12 John had said,  ‘But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.’ Being born again, brings us into a relationship with Jesus which then opens up to us everything that Jesus is and everything that he has to offer! But, whichever of the names and titles we use for him, we first and foremost need to go back to the name that God told his earthly parents to give him – that is Jesus, for he was to be the Saviour of the world. It is only when we come to know Jesus as our own personal Saviour that we can really start to get to know him in all the other ways. For example, he can only become my Shepherd after he has become my Saviour!

What I want to share briefly this morning is that once we do get to know Jesus as our Saviour, (that is we have believed in his name), we then begin to get to know him in all the other ways, and we will begin to realise that Jesus is all or everything that we need.

Need saving – he is our Saviour who saves us

Need help – he is our Helper, our Advocate and Great High Priest

Need direction – he is our Shepherd who leads us, he is our Light, he is our Doorway, he is our Way

Need healing – he is our Healer and the restorer of our soul

Need strength – his grace is sufficient for in our weakness, his strength is made perfect

Need peace – he is our Peace

Need comfort – He heals the broken hearted

Need resources – he is our provider

Feeling lost and helpless – he is our Hope

Need I add any more? There was a new chorus that became popular in the late 80’s early 90’s which I think we almost wore out with singing at the time when it became known in our local Church, but the truth of the words could never be worn out. It is ‘Shout for joy and sing’ and the second part continues, ‘You are my Creator, you are my deliverer, you are my Redeemer, you are Lord; and you are my healer, You are my provider, You are now my Shepherd and my guide; Jesus, Lord and King, I worship you.’

What are you in need of today? Look to Jesus, the all sufficient One. We used to go to an annual convention in South Wales and one year a new chorus was introduced as was often the case and it must have been sung over and over and over again, after returning home I popped into Hereford to the bank, and queued outside the ATM, Steven our second son was with me, he would have been around 6 years old and suddenly in the queue he started belting out loud and clear the song, he had obviously learnt it!  ‘I confess that Jesus Christ is Lord . . .’ But what surprised me the most was that he had remembered the bigger more complicated words in the song, ‘He’s omnipotent, magnificent, all-glorious, victorious, I confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.’ We need to keep reminding ourselves, or instead like Steven, sing to ourselves till we not only know the words but the reality of the words, that Jesus Christ is Lord, he is omnipotent, he is magnificent, he is all-glorious, he is victorious. Because we have come to know him as Saviour, Jesus is all we need.

It was the words of the following song that prompted me to do this devotion today, He is all I need.

He’s all I need when I just need someone to talk to,

He’s always there to hear my prayer each time I call him,

All my need he supplies my thirsty soul he satisfies,

He’s the Lord of and he’s all I need,

He comforts me when I am weary eases every pain,

Fills my deepest longing, time and time again,

He’s my souls inspiration, my hearts consolation,

He’s my everything, He’s all I need

He’s all I need I will not turn to any other,

For he’s my friend who’s closer than any brother,

On this friend I can rely to be my strength as life goes by,

The Lord of all is all I need

He comforts me, when I’m weary, eases every pain,

Fills my deepest longing, time and time again,

He’s my souls inspiration, my hearts consolation,

He’s my everything, he’s all I need.

He is all I need, He is all I need, All, Jesus is all I need,

He is all I need, He is all I need, He’s my everything, He’s all I need.