Okay, let's get back. Open your
Bibles with me to John chapter four. I love the fact that the Lord teaches
us, teaches us in words, and if you want to read Romans four
and Romans 10 and many other passages, Scripture have long
and wonderful descriptions of what it is to have faith. But
as well as those things in the scripture, it's pictured for
us. And I like the pictures. I like
seeing pictures. I like this story so much. It's
just a beautiful picture of how God draws his people to himself
and how in a word he creates faith and creates assurance and
creates rest. in Him and who He is and in the
very act of creating faith He actually reveals His character. Always God is going to reveal
His character to His people. So let's begin in verse 43. After two days He departed and
went into Galilee. For Jesus Himself testified that
a prophet had no honour in his own country. And when he was
come into Galilee, the Galileans received him, having seen all
the things that he did at Jerusalem, at the feast. For they also went
up to the feast. And that might seem a confusing
thing, that he has no honor in his own country, and he came
from Galilee. It was no honor in the place of his fatherhood,
as it were, in the original. It means that he had no honor
in Nazareth. And so he went to the feast. to Cana in Galilee
and he ended up having residence in Capernaum as we'll see a bit
later on in the Gospel accounts. So he did have some honour amongst
the Galileans. As you know, when he went to
Nazareth, he spoke to them of who he is, and he spoke to them
of God's sovereign purposes in grace and election, and the people
of Nazareth were so offended, and they took him out to a cliff,
and it wasn't just a little cliff, it was a thousand feet high or
more, to throw him off. They wanted to be rid of him.
He who lived amongst them for 30 years, nearly 30 years, never
sinned. And no one in that town nor in
his family knew that they had, for all those years, God in their
house. It's extraordinary, isn't it?
It shows us once again that the Lord reveals himself by revelation. It is his prerogative to reveal
himself to whom he will and at a time of his love. So verse
46, he came again into Cana of Galilee where he made the water
wine. Let's turn back a page in our
Bibles to this particular story because it resonates with the
rest of this story that we have here. Cana is the place where
the Lord Jesus Christ took his disciples. You remember the story.
John the Baptist was proclaiming the Lamb of God who takes away
the sin of the world in the Jordan and baptizing people and people
were coming to him and then he sees the Lord Jesus and he says,
behold, the Lamb of God. And the Jews from Jerusalem came
down to inspect John the Baptist and to inspect the Lord Jesus
Christ. And they looked at John the Baptist. Nothing much about
this bloke is there. Nothing much about him. He just
wears the clothes made from camel's fur, and he has a leather belt
around his waist, and he's eating locusts and wild honey. And he
looks like a wild man, and the Lord Jesus Christ just looked
like a carpenter. But the Lord Jesus came to that
place and was baptised by John and he took his disciples, didn't
he? As we saw, he gathered his disciples, he gathered six of
them at that time in that area and he took them. He took them
to Cana, he took them to a wedding and it's a glorious picture,
isn't it? The Lord Jesus Christ walked away from the religious
people and took his people to a wedding. It's a sign and a
picture of the fact that the Lord has come to take his people
to a wedding. He's come to take his people
to the great wedding feast of the Lamb. And those who in their
willful obstinance reject him, he just walks away, the Lord
Jesus Christ. And in this same story here,
he's departed, hasn't he? He's departed from Judea and
he's gone to a village in Samaria and he's departed there now and
he's gone into Galilee and he went to Cana. And there's a lovely
picture here, isn't there, that I want us to see. In Cana of
Galilee, if you read in verse 11 of chapter 2, he says this
is the beginning of miracles that Jesus did in Cana of Galilee. This one that we're reading about
this morning is the second of the miracles in Cana of Galilee. And listen to what the miracles
do. Wherever the Lord Jesus Christ
manifests his glory, there will be the creation of faith in him. You know the story, don't you,
from John chapter two, that he went to this wedding and they
ran out of wine, which is a great embarrassment to the host, and
Mary came to him and said, they have no wine, in verse three,
and Jesus said under her, woman, what have I to do with thee?
He uses a title of respect, but he wants Mary to know her place,
doesn't he? Mine hour is not yet come. And
his mother said, and it's a glorious picture, isn't it? His mother
said, under the servants, even though she was rebuked, she said,
whatsoever he saith unto you, do it. I want to see this resonating
with you as we look at the story of this man from Capernaum. And there were set there six
water pots of stone after the manner of the purifying of the
Jews, containing two or three ferkins apiece. That's about
40 litres. There were six of them, so there's
240 litres. And Jesus saith unto them, Fill the water pots with
water. And they filled them up to the brim. And then he saith unto them,
draw out now, and bear unto the governor of the feast, and they
bear it. And when the ruler of the feast had tasted the water
that was made wine, and knew not whence it was, but the servants
withdrew the water new, the governor of the feast called the bridegroom,
and saith unto him, every man at the beginning doth set forth
the good wine, and when man hath well drunk, then that which is
worse, but thou hast kept the good wine until now. This is
the beginning of miracles that Jesus did. One thing I want us
to take note of here in particular in regard to the Lord Jesus in
the saving of this man and in creating and growing the faith
of this man, the Lord Jesus Christ comes always always He is the
first cause of everything. It's always He who comes. It's
always He who comes to a place where He reveals Himself to His
people. But I love what it says there,
He came again unto Cana of Galilee. The Lord Jesus Christ comes again
to places where He's revealed His glory. He comes again to
places where people have believed in Him. And we stand here today
with thankfulness in our hearts that the Lord has created a place
where he manifests his glory and people have believed in him
to the saving of their souls. And we trust that if he came
again to Cana in Galilee, he'll come again to us. He came again. to where the Lord
had made the water wine. What a glorious miracle. What
a glorious picture of the creative power of the Lord Jesus Christ.
It's also a glorious picture of the Lord Jesus fulfilling
the Jewish sacrificial and ceremonial washings. The water pots are
filled. He fulfilled the law. And what was a Jewish ceremony
now becomes a feast for the children of God. What was cleansing the
outside people's bodies with water is now turned by the power
of God into something that cleanses us from the inside, the blood
of the Lord Jesus Christ. So let's watch this man from
verse 47. This is the picture I want us
to see again and again and again. I want us to understand the incredible
significance of faith. Faith is the gift of God. He that believeth on the Son
has everlasting life. And he that believeth not shall
not see life. Faith is the gift of God. Faith
is the work of God. Those Pharisees in Jerusalem
came to the Lord Jesus Christ and said, what must we do to
do the works of God? And he said, this is the work
of God that you believe on him who he has sent. Faith receives
the promises of God. And faith is the grace gift of
God. And we are justified by faith
without the deeds of the law. By faith, Romans 3, 31 says,
we establish the law. Faith is the foundation grace. Everything flows from faith,
flows through faith. It's faith which connects the
children of God. to all of the promises and all
of the glory of God. I don't know who it was, but
Spurgeon quoted, faith is the queen bee of grace. Wherever the queen bee is, all
the other graces come and flow in. So let's follow this man's
journey, this man's journey from believing to believing. He begins, doesn't he? It always
begins, as I said earlier, with the Lord Jesus Christ coming
to us and coming to a place where he reveals himself, coming to
a place where he reveals his glory. But he also draws his people to himself. So listen to what he says. The
story says here, this beautiful picture of saving faith, verse
47, when he heard that Jesus was come out of Judea into Galilee,
he went unto him and besought him. that he would come down
and heal his son, for he was at the point of death." This
certain nobleman whose son was sick, the Lord Jesus Christ always
deals with certain ones. There is a picture in this village
of Capernaum of man in his fall and God delivering man out of
where he has put himself by his sin and his rebellion against
God. Capernaum means Village of comfort,
village of consolation. Capernaum was a village on the
top north coast of the Sea of Galilee and it was near where
the Jordan River flowed into the Sea of Galilee, so it was
a prosperous and delightful place. It was a village of comfort and
it was also a place where the Lord Jesus spent some considerable
time in his ministry, but also because of the willful rejection
of the people of Capernaum. Listen to what the Lord says
about Capernaum in Matthew 11. He says, and thou, Capernaum,
which art exalted unto heaven, exalted in its own estimation,
shall be brought down to hell. For if the mighty works which
have been done in thee had been done in Sodom, it would have
remained until this day. But I say unto you that it shall
be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment
than for thee. It's hard to imagine, isn't it,
that we picture the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and what
followed it in the lives of those people, and we think, what could
be worse than that? And there is something worse,
isn't it? There is. being in a place where the Lord
reveals himself, where the Lord gathers his people, and to be
there obstinately rejecting the Word of God. See, the Lord Jesus
Christ comes to certain ones. This man being drawn out of Capernaum
is a picture of all of us being drawn out of this world of sin,
this world of rebellion against God, this whole world that lies
in the evil one, and the only possible way of you being drawn
out of it, the only possible way of you seeing that what you
think is a place of blessing to be a place of peril is by
the work of God, by the sovereign hand of God. And it's a challenging
thing that happens to this man, doesn't it? There was a certain
nobleman and his son was sick at the point of death. God interrupts
the lives of all of his people in this world. God disturbs people
in their lives in this world. God, when he comes, is going
to turn your world upside down, and all of what you thought was
your peace and your comfort, and all of what you thought you
were establishing for yourselves, he will turn it upside down,
and he'll turn this whole world upside down. Such is the necessary
power of God, and such is the revealing power of God to his
people. And I have to say at the outset,
this man was brought to the Lord Jesus Christ and had his faith
and assurance and his rest in the Lord Jesus Christ established
by the circumstances here. But there are countless multitudes
throughout this world that have suffered enormous things Shocking
things, things in so many ways as we see in places like Ukraine
and Yemen and throughout this world at the moment. So much
worse in many ways than what this man went through. But saving
faith uses those tragedies of life to draw people to the Lord
Jesus Christ. Do you see what it says? He went
unto Him. He went unto Him. I don't often
tell personal stories about my life, but the Lord used the events
of tragedy to bring me to a place where I was forced by the circumstances
around me to take God seriously and to be like this man. Many
of us will empathize with this man in the distress that he felt
with his son. The Lord used the suicide of
two men that lived very, very close to us. Their families were
reared with our families. One was my brother-in-law. And
another one was our near neighbor. Our near neighbor had five little
children, and four of them were the same age as our little ones.
And my brother-in-law around the road had two children, and
he worked with us for many years, and their family and ours grew
up together, and we knew nothing of the tragedy of his life. He fell into terrible despair
and I remember going around to talk to him when he'd been charged
with embezzling money and he did it in such a stupid way where
he'd written out checks for the organisation he was working for
and signed them with his own name and then went off and cashed
them and then had used that money for willful and wicked living
and I remember when he called me to go around and he showed
me these charges and I sat there and looked at him and I said
either this is true and your life is now going to be radically
changed and well this is not true and it'll all be sorted
and I didn't know whether it was true or not at the time but
I remember talking to him because his name was David and I remember
talking to him about David from the Bible and how David in his
acts with Bathsheba and his murder of his friend. and the death of his son, David,
was brought to a place of terrible despair. And yet there was restoration
and with God there is hope. And as I was telling him this
story, I was thinking to myself, you are just a jolly hypocrite.
There you are talking to this guy about going to God and all
you've been doing is running away from him for the last 20
odd years. Anyway, it was less than six months later that I
got a phone call saying that something happened at my neighbor's
place. And I go down to this absolute
tragedy. This man had committed suicide
at his house, and his wife was distraught, and the ambulance
and other people were there. It was just a shocking scene
and we were still recovering and this fellow, our neighbour,
was close friends with my brother-in-law and their children and ours were
similar age, so we had a lot to do with them over a number
of years. And one of the people there asked me to do something
which I, in the shock of it all, I didn't know what to do, but
they asked me to go to the school, to the Christian school, and
pick up these four little kids, and bring them home, and not
tell them what had happened. So I go out to the Christian
school, and the children are waiting in the office for me,
and I have about a 10 minute drive from the school back to
our place, and it was the longest 10 minutes I could ever imagine.
And these little kids, and I just knew what they were going to
walk into. And as I took them home and I heard the screams,
which I'll never forget, in one of the girls, the oldest one
who was about 13, ran out of the house and she looked at me
as if I was completely responsible for the death of her father. And later that day, just to get
away from it all, I went to Sydney and picked up the eldest one
who was at school in Sydney and brought her home. I think probably
for the first time in my life I really prayed. The first time
in my life I think I really pleaded with God. that whatever he might
do, the tragedy of those circumstances and the horrible things that
happened to those families, and it was an ongoing horror that
went on and still goes on, I'd be protected from it, and that
the Lord would be merciful to us. God used that in my life
to make me serious about the things of God and about the Lord
Jesus Christ. man have heard something about
the Lord Jesus Christ. This man, being a noble man,
no doubt went to Jerusalem as was required for that feast that
is spoken of in chapter 2 of John's Gospel and he'd heard
of the fame of the Lord Jesus Christ and like the other Galileans
he'd heard that the Lord Jesus was a miracle worker. And unlike
the people in Jerusalem, the Galileans The Galileans believed
and they honoured the fact that this man was indeed and possibly
the Christ for some of them. But he heard, this man heard,
you've heard of the Lord Jesus Christ. You've heard of his fame. His fame is spread throughout
this world. We long and seek to proclaim
Him and lift Him up high so that you'll be seeing Him and see
Him clearly above all the noise and all the mess of this world.
But we know that the Lord Jesus Christ will draw His people to
Himself and He'll use these circumstances. This man heard. The first thing
that happens, isn't it, in saving faith is that you hear. You hear. He heard of him coming into Galilee,
and he came. Listen to what the noble man
did. He heard that Jesus had come,
and he went unto him. and besought him that he would
come down. Note what the noble man did. He came, and he came by himself. He had all the money that you
could possibly wish to have. He could have sent a truckload
of servants up there in a carriage to bring the Lord Jesus Christ
down. But such was the urgency of his message, and such was
the urgency of his need, that no one was going to deliver this
message but him. No one was going to beseech the
Lord Jesus Christ but him. And that's exactly what happens
in saving faith, isn't it? You hear and you come and you
come yourself personally. No one else can be entrusted
with that task when it comes to the saving of your soul. You'll
come yourself. And he goes to him. We know that
this man had genuine faith because this faith took him to the Lord
Jesus Christ. He had one person in view, he
had one object in view. I must get to him and I must
plead my case before him. He went to him, and he besought
him. In fact, the word means that
he kept beseeching him. He wasn't going to rest until
he had his Kaiser. It means, he besought, it means
to beg him. He begged him. He continued beseeching him. When we come to the Lord Jesus
Christ, we come as mercy beggars, brothers and sisters in Christ.
This man had so much to offer the Lord in the eyes of the world,
but in this circumstance, when it comes to the saving of his
soul, he's got nothing to offer himself. And he came with his
ignorance, didn't he? He says you have to come down,
come down and heal your son. Did the Lord Jesus Christ need
to go down physically to heal his son? No way in the world. Would the death of the son limit
the Lord Jesus Christ's power to restore him to life? I want
us to see here, brothers and sisters in Christ, that we all
come to the Lord with a faith that is in so many ways weak
and so many ways deficient. But this faith is a faith that
led him to him and led him to plead with him. John pictures
this in so many examples in his gospel accounts that it's just
lovely, isn't it? People come with an ignorance. They come to the Lord Jesus Christ
and they come with ignorance. So the woman at the well that
we've just been looking at, she thought he was a Jew. He just
looked like a Jew. And then she says, well, he might
be a prophet. And then she thinks, he might
be the Messiah. Come and see this man who's told
me everything. Is not this the Christ, the Messiah? And eventually,
they see him as the savior of the world. There's a beautiful
story in John chapter nine of the blind man. He says he's a
man. He's a man called Jesus. He's a prophet. He's a man of
God. He's the son of God. And then
he calls in, Lord, the journey is mine, and the journey is yours,
isn't it, brothers and sisters? Faith has an object, and we may
not see him as clearly as we ought, but if our object is him,
then he'll do the teaching. He'll do the drawing and he will
correct that ignorance. He had an insatiable need. I love what verse 48 reminds
us of and shows us this in true and saving faith. The Lord Jesus
said to him, except you see signs and wonders, except you see signs and wonders
you will not believe. Here the Lord Jesus Christ rebukes
this man. He rebukes this man for his ignorance,
signs and wonders. How often do we need to be reminded
that signs and wonders never ever create faith. Signs and
wonders never create faith. Where in the scriptures do we
see signs and wonders creating faith? Moses performed remarkable
miracles in Egypt. Did it create any faith? You
know, in the Egyptians, for 40 years the Jews wandered through
the wilderness. What remarkable miracle. Every
morning they got up and there was a miracle. And then there
was a double miracle on Friday morning when there was twice
as much manna. There were miracles, weren't there? Every morning
they woke up and there was that cloud. Every night they went
to bed and there was the pillar of fire by night. They had signs
and wonders for 40 years. 600,000 of them died. Their carcasses fell in the wilderness
and they didn't enter into the promised land because of their
unbelief. The Lord Jesus Christ did many, many miracles in Jerusalem
and did it create faith. Saving faith is the grace gift
of God. How often do we need to hear
God say, faith, as Hebrews 1, Hebrews 11, 1 says, faith is hope for. Faith is the evidence
of things not seen. Through faith we understand that
the worlds were framed, were made by the Word of God. So the
things that which are seen were not made of things which do appear. God made all this universe out
of nothing. By faith we understand that.
Hebrews 11 says without faith it is impossible to please him
for he that cometh to God must believe that he is must believe
that he is God and that he is the reward The Lord Jesus Christ left a
place where there were signs and wonders aplenty in Jerusalem.
Nicodemus confessed it, didn't he? No one can do these signs
and wonders unless God is with him. We have been inundated with religion
that says that God has to produce signs and wonders. You might
hear of those people that say that you have to speak in tongues
and you have to perform miracles. It is all fake and it is all
false. And the Lord promised that false
Jesuses and false Christs will arise, doing great signs and
wonders to deceive even the elect, if it were possible. Thank God
it's not possible. Thank God it's not possible.
Seeking signs and wonders is not a sign of faith, but a sign
of unbelief. But I want us to see something
wonderful about this man. See, Mary and Cana, when the
Lord was there previously, Mary was rebuked, wasn't she, by the
Lord? You're not really to tell me what to do. I'm now, I'm going
to be, I'll honour you, but you'll honour me, Mary. And she stayed
and said, just do whatever he says. See, this man was rebuked. You're not going to believe unless
you see signs and wonders. And he says, effectively, I'm
just clinging to you. I'm clinging to you. It's a great test of true and
saving faith, isn't it? When the character of God And
the power of his operation in this world challenges your notions
of who God is. And you still cling to him. Brothers
and sisters, we're disciples. Disciples are learners. If we
ever get to a place where we're above learning from God, we're
in an extraordinary dangerous place. The Lord keeps his people
humble. And God operates in ways which
will astound us. He says, one of his great criticisms of
all humanity, he says, you think that I'm altogether like you.
And this man thought the Lord Jesus Christ had to come down
to heal his son. But I love, I love his response,
and I love it when I meet with people who, when they find the
word of God, challenges their notions of God, just bow, just
bow. This is what God says. I don't
need, I don't need anything other than what God has said. This
nobleman, he still pleads, doesn't he? See, when faith comes, it
teaches us how to pray. When faith comes, it's fixed
on the Lord Jesus Christ and fixed on who he is and what he'll
do. Faith comes, it has a need. Faith pleads mercy because it
has nowhere else to go. Nowhere else to go and it has
nothing to offer God. That's the cry of faith, isn't
it? Lord, if you will, you can make me whole. This man had one
thing in mind, and he was desperately asking, even when the Lord challenged
him about him looking through the eyes of flesh and not through
the eyes of faith. He was challenging him about
what his notions were of who God is and how he saves and how
he heals. He stayed there. See, faith hears. Faith comes. True faith stays
in troubles. In fact, the troubles cause us
to plead more for God. Faith pleads for mercy, and faith
receives. And faith receives without seeing. Listen to what happens here.
It's glorious, isn't it, how the Lord Jesus Christ dealt with
this man. In verse 50 of John chapter 4, Jesus said to him,
Go thy way, thy son liveth. Your son's alive. See, faith comes by hearing,
and hearing by the word of God. When the word of God comes with
power, it creates faith, and it creates life, and it creates
peace, and it creates assurance. Romans 15 speaks of the joy and
peace of believing. So this man was desperate. Bosni, if you have had children,
you have had children who were possibly at the point of death,
know what it is to plead to God, know what it is to be anxious
about it. I love what Paul says in Romans 15, 13. Now the God
of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing that you
may abound in hope. through the power of the Holy
Ghost. The joy and peace of believing. The question is before us all,
isn't it, when we come to the scriptures, is God as good as
his word? Did God really say? When God
speaks, does God create reality? For believers, the answer is
absolutely. And listen to what this man did.
The man believed the word that Jesus had spoken, and he went
his way. He'd had a word from God. He'd
had a promise from God. He didn't need any more evidence.
That young boy, possibly, was 30 kilometers away. Imagine that walk that that man
had. He walked all the way. Effectively,
it's like us, because Cana's very high up in the mountains.
Effectively, it's like us walking from Gerima Point all the way
to Fitzroy Falls. What a journey, even if you had
the best of transportation available in those days. It was a long
journey, and he went by himself. He was taken maybe with his servants
and others, but it's a long journey all that way. You just have one
thing in mind. You've got to see Jesus. So we would see Jesus. It's been on our pulpit since
we began. So we would see Jesus. We must see him. And when he
got there, no matter what the circumstances were, he was gonna
get to the Lord Jesus Christ and he was gonna plead with him
for mercy. You must come down. And even when the Lord rebukes
him for seeking signs and wonders, he still stays there. You see what happens when the
Word of God comes with power into the hearts of people. There's
rest. There's rest, isn't there? There's
a lovely story of a missionary who was trying to translate the
word faith into the language of the people and he just couldn't
get a handle on a word that fitted faith. And after he'd been out
labouring with this man, one day they came back in and the
The native speaking fellow just flopped down in his chair. And
the missionary said, now I know. Tell me what that word is in
your language. That's the word for faith, isn't
it? We just rest. We rest on the word of God and
we rest in the arms of God and we rest in the promises of God. See, he ended up believing. In spite of all of his preconceived
notions, he had only fixed in his mind that the Lord must come
down and must physically walk that 30km journey with him. And
now he goes his way without seeing signs and wonders. What happened? The Word of God came to him in
power. And how do you know that the
word of God has come to you in power? When it's no longer an
opinion, brothers and sisters. When it's a living reality. This man no longer required Christ
to touch. This man now believes that the
Lord Jesus Christ is not limited by time. He's not limited by
space. He can heal at his will. He can speak a word of promise. How did this universe come into
existence? We just read about it in Hebrews
chapter 11, isn't it? God spoke. Everything real you
see is here because God spoke it into existence. Why is it
still here? Because God sustains it. The word of God, the Lord Jesus
Christ sustains it. Our Saviour's word is as good
as his presence. That's what this man had to learn,
didn't he? That's what we have to learn. He just had to speak a word.
All he has to do is command and it's done. What comfort, brothers
and sisters, when you go to the Word of God and you find the
promises of God written on every page of it. What wonder it is
as we see the Lord Jesus Christ described in all of that glory
in the Scriptures. This man echoed what Psalm 138
says. That's the Old Testament word
for grace. for thy grace and thy truth.
Why? For thou hast magnified thy word
above all thy name. God has magnified his word above
all thy name. In the day when I cried, thou
answerest me and strengthen me with strength in my soul. So what was the peace of this
man? How do we know that this man had heard from God? For this
man, and for us, isn't it? It's a difference between knowing
that Christ can heal and believing in his word that he already has. He has healed. It's the response,
isn't it? Taking God at His word, and nothing
else is needed. This man needed no evidence,
and he couldn't get any. He was 30 kilometers away, but
he believed God at His word. And what's the evidence of this
faith and this repentance and this assurance? He went his way. He went his way. The other thing that's remarkable
that we'll see in the following verses. He went his way, and
as he was going, now going down, verse 51, his servants met him
and told him, saying, my son liveth. Then he inquired, here
the hour he began to amend, and they said unto him, yesterday
at the seventh hour the fever left him. And the father knew
that it was the same hour in which Jesus said unto him, my
son liveth. I've had one son that's been
really, really sick, and it's just extraordinary when you have
a little one. We don't know how old this man
was, but you'd have a little one, and you just, it's just
a desperate thing, isn't it? If my son was sick, and I was
a noble woman with a bucket load of money, I would have found
some means, any means, to get that journey back down to sea,
wouldn't you? I would. Nothing would stop me
going down there. This man stayed the night, brothers
and sisters. He stayed the night somewhere.
A man with all the resources you could ever wish to have.
And he went his way in peace. And he slept on his pillow that
night, and he rested. It's called assurance. It's called assurance. When he did get the evidence,
verse 53, and he didn't need the evidence, he himself believed. Oh, would to God that he would
give us that faith. Look to God that this simple
story would show us that we come into the presence of God always
with our ignorance of who God is and our ignorance of how he
works. And he'll always do wonders.
He'll always surprise us by his grace. He'll surprise us by his
way of drawing his people and we can't chalk it out in such
a way that we can say, now I know what God is doing. He'll always
surprise us and we should be looking over Looking over the
horizon of the circumstances of our lives with an expectation
that God will do something amazing. God will do something amazing.
This same Jesus, the same yesterday, today and forever, is still doing
exactly the same thing as he did, isn't he? Still bringing
people like this man from a place where they believe to a place,
it says in verse 53, that he believed himself. See, he believed
in coming, this man, didn't he? He believed even when he was
rebuked and reminded and shown that he had notions of God which
were elevating of man and diminishing of God. And he stayed, didn't
he? He believed when he went on his way. He believed when
he stayed and rested that night. He believed when he rested in
his journey and now he believes. See, faith grows. 1 John talks about babes in faith,
and young men and fathers. We don't expect the same from
babes as we do from fathers. But faith always has the same
object, and if faith grows, it's going to grow like this did.
But we will take God at his word. It's the joy and peace of believing. And this man's faith was a contagious
faith, wasn't it? and his whole house." See, saving
faith must be shared. Those men, I don't know, we aren't
given any details of the cure of that young man, but I suspect
it was remarkable in such a way that servants immediately said,
we've got to get up and get on our journey. We've got to get
to tell the father that his son is up and well and alive. Saving faith is contagious faith. We just long for opportunities
to talk to people about the Lord Jesus Christ. This, again, the second miracle
that Jesus did when he was come out of Judea into Galilee. And before I close, there's something
that is really special in all of this. I have never met yet,
other than one person, a Christian parent who doesn't have anguish
over their children. And I can't make any promises
because the promises are not written in the word of God. But
every time, every time a parent in the gospel comes begging for
mercy for their child from the Lord Jesus Christ. They get it. Oh, brothers and sisters, we
have one place to go. They won't come. carry them to the Lord Jesus
Christ in our prayers and we can wait, we can wait on God
and rest in his sovereign promises. Bring your children to the Lord
Jesus, cast them at his feet and beg for mercy for them. Let's
remind ourselves of this journey of faith. The Lord Jesus Christ
comes to a place where he's accessible where he reveals himself, where
he manifests his glory. He comes to certain ones and
this certain one, he heard that Jesus had come to that place
and he came and he came himself. And he went to Jesus and he wasn't
going to rest until he'd been with Jesus. And he came as a
mercy beggar to the feet of the Lord Jesus Christ. And he came
pleading, and he came with nothing to offer him. He just pleaded.
And he came with an ignorance of who God was and how he saves
people. But he still pleaded for mercy.
Even when he was challenged, he kept pleading for mercy. And
the word of God came with power. A believing man believed in a
whole new way. And he had the rest of faith,
assurance. And they spread that faith abroad. May the Lord grant you that faith. May he grant us to be like this
man. And if we can't come in faith,
we might come pleading for faith. And if our children won't come,
we can carry them to the Lord Jesus Christ. May he grant us
that faith. May he reveal himself in his
glory as the faithful one.