Jesus: Messiah and High Priest

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Saturday, March 7, 2009
Devotions: Ps 55, 138, 139:1-17; Deut 11:18-28; Heb 5:1-10; Jn 4:1-26

Lord God, hear my prayer today! Answer, so that I will not become distraught or distracted. My heart is in anguish and horror overwhelms me. I would fly away, if I had wings. I am opposed at every turn in this world. I have no one but You to trust; but I know that You, my God, will deliver me. I cast my burden on YHWH; He will sustain me. He won’t let me be shaken. Yes, I will trust in You, my God! I bow toward Your holy city; I give thanks for Your steadfast love and faithfulness. Your name and word are exalted above all things, my Lord. Great is the glory of the Lord! Though I walk in the midst of trouble, You preserve my life. Do not forsake me, Lord—the work of Your hands. Fulfill Your purpose for me. You made me and You know me thoroughly. I am surrounded by Your presence and Your holy love. I know You made me complex and amazing. How precious to me are Your thoughts, O God!

Moses continues his valediction to the Israelites: ‘Take my words to heart; bind them on your hands and on your foreheads; teach them to your children at all times; write them on your doorposts and gates! If you love YHWH and do as you are commanded, then God will give you a homeland and protect you in it. No one can stand against God’s people. Today, you have a choice: blessing or curse—blessing if you are obedient, a curse if you turn from God and His commandments. Disobedience or neglect is idolatry!’

A high priest is a sinful mortal, chosen and called by God to act on the community’s behalf, atoning for their sins and his by gifts and sacrifices. Jesus the Messiah is God’s eternal High Priest, appointed by God the Father as Son and Priest after the eternal order of Melchizedek. Though He was Son and sinless before the law, He learned obedience and maturity and was made perfect by suffering, and therefore He Is the Source of eternal salvation to all who obey Him.

As Jesus was traveling through Samaria, He stopped at the well in Sychar on a hot midday. There, a Samaritan woman met Him as she came to draw water. Jesus asked her for a drink; this surprised the woman, a sinner spurned by her own people; she was amazed a Jew would speak to her, much less ask her for water. Jesus responded at another level: ‘If you knew Who I Am that asks you, you would ask Me for living water.’ She wondered if this speaker could be greater than Jacob, who had provided the well in Sychar. Jesus answered, if obliquely: ‘Everyone drinking water from this well will thirst again; but whoever drinks of My water will never thirst again. And My water will become a spring in that person, welling up to eternal life!’ That convinced the woman: ‘Sir, give me this water, that I may neither thirst nor have to come here again to draw.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Go call your husband, and draw near.’ The woman said she had no husband. Jesus went deeper: ‘It’s true you have no husband now; you have had five husbands, and the man you have now is not your husband.’ She perceived that Jesus is a prophet. She referred to the fact that Samaritans believed Samaria’s Mount Gerizim was the holiest place on earth, while the Jews said this of Jerusalem and Mount Zion. But Jesus transcended these traditions: ‘Woman, believe Me: the hour is coming when true worship will be centered in neither of those sites. You worship in ignorance, for salvation comes from the Jews. But the hour is near when true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and in truth—those are the worshipers God seeks. God is Spirit; His worshipers must worship, then, in Spirit and truth.’ The woman’s insight deepens: ‘I know that Messiah is coming, and when He comes, He will show us all things.’ Jesus replied, ‘I Who speak to You Am He.’ [I Am Messiah!] Glory to You, Lord Christ.