Good Tuesday morning! The weather change is to arrive this morning with colder temps and possibly snow later in the week. Winter may begin this week. We might as well get it out of the way... the time changed on Sunday morning. Are your meals all out of whack with your tum? Hungry an hour before it's time to eat and snacking to fill in that gap from dinner to bedtime? Welcome to the fall time change! Are you getting up way too early now and heading to bed before your favorite show comes on? Yup, that's the fall time change. And we won't even get into the darkness you see coming out of work. How depressing is that? I still say the whole daylight savings thing is the world's most successful practical joke. The only problem is that no one wants to be the one to admit it and get the thing stopped.
No practical jokes in the Bible, though Paul does mention once that if our belief is the result of such a cruel thing then we are miserable folks indeed. Today, this verse would be the grab line of the cruelest of practical jokes...if it were not true.
Jesus said to her, "I who speak to you am he." John 4:26
The woman had just told Jesus that Messiah would explain everything to the people of Samaria, the village of Sychar, or all people in general, depending upon which "us" she was referring to. In case you think that Jesus never claimed to be the Son of God, sorry, that verse is a direct claim to be Messiah. Hmm, something is missing here. Does Messiah equal the Son of God? According to the search feature on Blue Letter Bible, the word Messiah appears twice in the English Standard Version of the Bible, both in the first part of John. That's it. John 1:41 we did way back in the spring of summer and tells of how Andrew found his brother Simon, telling him, "We have found the Messiah!" And we have this verse today. Is Messiah mentioned in the Old Testament at all?
The lexicon on that same web site shows that the Hebrew word means "anointed". The word is used often in Samuel and the Psalms, but is used as Messiah in Daniel 9:25-26. These verses are a prophecy that looks very much like the crucifixion and death of Christ. Verse 26 says that Messiah shall be cut off, but not for himself, which is exactly what we believe happened when Jesus died for our sins. The English Standard Version of the Bible translates the verses in Daniel to "anointed one" while the King James leaves the Hebrew name, Messiah. I kind of like leaving the Messiah in there, but perhaps the translators of the ESV were ordered to translate all words. Whatever the technical differences, by the time Jesus arrived, the people were looking for the Messiah, God's anointed one. Jesus told the woman that he was that Messiah. The word doesn't translate to "Son of God" that would be another word. We do know that Jesus will ask the disciples who they think he is and Peter responds with that answer we know so well, "You are the Son of the Living God."
Whether you like the Hebrew term, Messiah, or the Greek, Christ, or his given name, Jesus; you might want to go with Peter's answer, or even just Lord and Savior, but the real question to answer is: Who is Jesus to you?
Bucky
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