Thru the Gospel of John Загвар

Who is Jesus anyway?

“Who are you?” That was the question the priests asked John the Baptist (John 1:19) who was preaching in the desert east of Jerusalem. Are you Messiah?, they hoped. But John made it clear—“I am not the Christ. You’re looking to the wrong man.” 

“Who are you then? A prophet?,” they wondered... 

Then John said, “I am ‘the voice of one crying in the wilderness: make straight the way of the Lord,’ as the prophet Isaiah said.’ John the Baptist was the voice, Jesus Christ is the Word. 

John tells everyone that Jesus is the Messiah and the Savior they’ve been looking and waiting for. When John’s disciples, Andrew and Phillip, heard this, they followed Jesus down the road to ask Him questions. Jesus invited them, “Come and see.” He offers you this invitation as well, today.

After talking with Jesus and spending the day with Him, Andrew told his brother Peter, “We found the Messiah!” Peter then came to meet Jesus. Philip, too, found his friend Nathanael and told him, “We have found the one who Moses and the prophets wrote about—it’s Jesus of Nazareth.” 

When Nathanael heard that, he sneered, “Nazareth? Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” But Philip said, “Just come and see.” And the very first conversation Nathanael had with Jesus convinced him Jesus was, indeed, the Son of God. 

As Jesus invited His disciples to follow Him, He showed them who He really was so they would believe on Him. The first time He did this publicly, Jesus was at a wedding in Cana. Jesus’ mother had some kind of responsibility at this wedding, and came to Jesus with an unusual problem. “They have no wine,” she told him. You have to wonder if she wanted Jesus to do a miracle. 

Mary then told the servants to do whatever Jesus asked (which is good advice in any situation). The Lord told the servants to fill six stone water pots, the 30-gallon kind used in cleansing, with water. Then, He told them to ladle some out and take it to the host. And somewhere between the filling and the ladling, the water had turned to wine. 

Do you see the great lesson for us? We’re just beat up old water pots that the Lord wants to fill with water—the Word of God. Then we can ladle it out to others. Inexplicably, when that water leaves the water pot and gets to those for whom He intends, the water becomes the wine of joy. That joy can only be done by God’s Spirit. 

Next, we visit with an important leader who had a question for Jesus.

Question: It says that Andrew and Philip spent the day talking to Jesus. If you had the same opportunity, what would you ask Him?