Messiah

Today, we’re looking at the word “Messiah.”

It comes from the Hebrew/Aramaic word mashiach, meaning “anointed one” or “chosen one”. According to one scholar, mashiach would have been meaningless to non-Aramaic speakers in the New Testament since the word is rarely used in the Greek New Testament, but the word for Christ, ‘christos’ is used almost 530 times. John identifies Jesus as both Messiah and Christ in John 1:41,

The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, “We have found the Messiah” (that is, the Christ).

- John 1:41

A little later in John’s gospel, Jesus Himself, says He is the Messiah.

If you look at John 4:1-26, you’ll get the entire account. For now, imagine with me what it would have been like for the woman at the well Jesus encounters. She makes her way to the well around noon, generally the hottest time of the day when not many others are around. This was purposeful, because she was known as a social outcast and wanted to avoid seeing anyone. There is Jesus, sitting by the well. He asks her to draw water for Him, and she, recognizing He’s a Jew and she a Samaritan, questions Him. Let’s pick it up there in verse 9:

The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans. Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?” Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”  The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water. He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”

- John 4:9-16

Okay, this is where it gets interesting. Jesus tells her to come back with her husband. She has to admit she has no husband. His response is one you’d never expect:

Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”

- John 4:18

How did this man know? The passage doesn’t tell us why her marriages have ended. Were her husbands unfaithful? Did she have a brokenness deep inside that made her leave her husbands? I don’t know, but Jesus knew. He knew everything about her. She was broken, ashamed, and hurting. Recognizing He must be a prophet, she said:

The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”  Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you - I am he.”

- John 4:25-26  (emphasis added)

I AM HE! The Messiah! I wonder, would I have believed Him?

Would I have been a skeptic? How about you? Regardless of how we think we would respond, He knows. He knows everything about you. He knows everything about me, my faults and my failures included.  

We all are broken in some way, just like the woman Jesus met that day at the well. We need our Messiah.

As you think about Jesus as your Messiah today, remember that the brokenness inside of you He came to redeem. Jesus, our Messiah, the Anointed One!

Pastor Pam

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