"We have found the Messiah (which translated means Christ). "
John 1:41
A NEW NAME
Read It: John 1:40-42
What would you do if you had just spent the day with Jesus? You'd probably run out and tell someone, wouldn't you? Weil, that's what Andrew did. He and the other disciple mentioned in verse 35, most likely the Apostle John himself, spent part of a day with Jesus. Then Andrew said, "I've got to tell somebody!" See, when you meet Jesus, you have to tell. Andrew had only been with Jesus for a few hours, and he felt that he just had to be a witness. He hadn't been to seminary. He hadn't been around Christians for years. But he had met Jesus, and that gave him something worth talking about. The tragedy for a lot of Christians is that they did more talking about Jesus when they first got saved than they do now that they're "old hands" around the divine corral. But Andrew didn't have that problem. This was all new to him. Jesus was a Person, not a program. The first place Andrew went was home, to his brother Simon. You know, the hardest place to talk about Jesus is to relatives. Most of us would rather talk to strangers, because relatives know us. With strangers we can say, "Do you know about Jesus?" But they can't scrutinize how we've been living. They can't see whether our walk and our talk are married. They don't know us. But when we go home, we can't be shucking and jiving. So I like what Andrew did here. He went straight home and told his brother Simon about Jesus.
Then he brought Simon to Jesus. Now Simon perked up when Andrew told him he had found the Messiah, the Anointed One, the promised Redeemer of Israel. When Jesus met Simon, He changed his name to Peter. Jesus was saying, "If you are going to be My disciple, we need to stop calling you what you were and start calling you what you are going to be." Whenever you meet Jesus, you get a new name (Revelation 2:17). Have you come to Jesus and received your new name along with new life? Have you brought anyone else to Jesus lately? Think About It As a disciple you have a new name, a new destination, a new heart, and a new job description. Your job is to live like the new person you are.
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