Found him

DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL OF JOHN

FOUND HIM

John 1:40-51

40 Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, was one of the two who heard what John had said and who had followed Jesus. 41 The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, "We have found the Messiah" (that is, the Christ). 42 And he brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, "You are Simon son of John. You will be called Cephas" (which, when translated, is Peter).

NIV

This solves the question whether the two who were with John understood the meaning of the phrase, “Lamb of God” when John used it, seeing Jesus again. They must have known what it meant or John had explained to them that Jesus, the one he called the Lamb of God was the Messiah. Which either it was, Andrew was one of those two men who left John the Baptist to follow Jesus. We cannot be sure how that all played out in the sense how long were they following him until they got to way he was staying. We don’t know how much or little conversation they have with Jesus alone the way. But what we do know is that Andrew at some point left for a moment to go find his brother, Simon and tell him they had found the Messiah. What we need to remember at this point is they had no idea what it meant that Jesus was the Messiah. For them, like all the Jews, most likely thought the Messiah was going to save Israel from the oppression of the Romans and set up an earthly kingdom. Nevertheless, it had to be an exciting time in their lives, much like the time we first found Jesus. How exciting it was to find this freedom from the life in that dark city of sin and death. We can just hear Andrew in his excitement. “Simon, Simon come on, come with me, we have found the Messiah, we have found the Christ” “Hurry, we are staying with him, come on brother, leave everything, come on, and see him” So Andrew and Simon went to where Jesus was and what happens, Jesus, being God, either being divine and all knowing, or having been revealed by the Spirit this information about Peter. We prefer to believe Jesus had to be omniscient, after all he is God in the flesh. Jesus changes Simon’s name to Peter. In the Aramaic Cephas means Rock and in Greek Peter means Rock. It is interesting that Jesus did not change any of the others names, only Simon Peter’s name. However, what we also can be certain of is all of them had been changed forever by their encountering Jesus. Just as we have been changed forever from the very first time we encountered Jesus. Our life has never been the same. Our name has been changed from sinner to saint, from a dead man, to an eternal man, from one lost to one saved. The journey of this life is anything but dull, in fact, it is exhilarating. But have we lost some of that enthusiasm? Are we still running after our brother, “hurry, come, we have found Jesus”? Let us run the race, walk the journey, follow Jesus, but at the same time look for others we can tell, “ We have found him”