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Jesus The Messiah
John 4:25-26 MKJV The woman said to Him, I know that Messiah is coming, who is called Christ. When He has come, He will tell us all things. (26) Jesus said to her, I AM, the One speaking to you.
John 4:25-26 ISV The woman said to him, "I know that the Messiah is coming" (who is called Christ). "When he comes, he will tell us everything." (26) Jesus said to her, "I am he, the one who is speaking to you."
Here Jesus identifies Himself as the Messiah, the Anointed One, the Saviour of Israel and the Son of God. Jesus normally was reticent to do so, but with this woman He opens up and plainly says that He was the Messiah. God frequently grants His most powerful revelations to the “most unlikely” people.
But what did this Messiah do? Did He make the woman’s’ life instantly prosperous? Did He wave a magic wand and take away her shameful domestic situation? In fact the Messiah came and went and nothing much changed on an external level.
Jesus the Messiah does not do the things we want a Messiah to do – that is fix all our problems.
In one sense Jesus is a very disappointing Messiah and we are often left with messy lives even after we are converted and even after we serve Him faithfully.
I would very much like a Messiah who would burst into my life and set it straight and make it very prosperous. I would like to own my own house and have a car and some nice furniture and be well paid for my ministry, however that has not happened at any time in my 25 years of living by faith. Jesus has chosen to not be that sort of a Messiah for me.
Jesus however has been a Messiah of grace and wisdom and spiritual growth and emotional and at times physical healing. Jesus has done a deep interior work in my life and re-constructed things of eternal value.
We tend to see our problems as being in this world and we want a political and material Messiah. For a person without a heavenly perspective “money is the answer to everything” as it says in Ecclesiastes 10:19 (which is deliberately written ironically, from a perspective that is “under the Sun”, that is without God factored in.) So we want a financial Messiah and a prosperity gospel because money seems the answer to all earthly problems.
Unfortunately Jesus never gave away bars of gold nor did He turn the water wells into oil wells.
So what sort of a Messiah should we expect? We should expect a Messiah that gives the Living Water of eternal life; a Messiah that lets us be at odds with this world while He prepares us for a better world in eternity.
This world cannot satisfy an eternal being because it is passing away, and we are eternal beings if we have accepted Christ. A true Messiah will not try to satisfy eternal beings with temporary trinkets. As much as I think I would be satisfied with a house and a car and a good salary I must acknowledge that is simply not the case.
A true Messiah will solve the true problems – problems such as death, resurrection, eternal meaning, calling, eternal reward and personal significance. He will solve the problem of being loved and accepted for who we are – and he certainly did that for the woman at the well.
Preeminently Jesus solves the problem of true knowledge. “When He has come, He will tell us all things.” Jesus tells us all things because He tells us everything about what God is like. Once we know that, then all other knowledge, both spiritual and temporal falls into place.
Jesus is more than a rescuer; rather He indicates that we have been rescued by the Father’s love. “We love because He first loved us”. There is only a Messiah because the Father willed it so. Therefore God wants us rescued, and is not willing that any should perish.
Neither is the Messiah a spirit, or a concept or an ideology. Jesus tells the woman that the Messiah had flesh and blood when He said, “ I who speak to you am He.” There He was, sitting by the well, unassuming, unpretentious, yet obviously someone different, someone who was able to change her life.
When Jesus turns up He generally does so in these quiet ways, as an eternal presence in the midst of the daily routine of drawing water. The woman did nothing extraordinary to meet the Messiah. He just arrived and met her as she was, as a sinner in need of a Saviour.
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