Let's read through this again,
down through about verse 46 here, and we'll just start there. John
4, 43. Now, after two days, the Lord
departed thence and went into Galilee. Now, the Lord had called
many by His Word, by His grace there in Samaria, and now He
goes into Galilee. For Jesus himself testified that
a prophet hath no honor in his own country. Now the Lord's town
was Nazareth in Galilee. But he didn't go to Nazareth
because they didn't give him any honor there. They considered
him to be a despised person, not to be a prophet of God, not
to be a needful one to listen to, not one to hear. They ridiculed
him. Instead he went into the more
rural parts of Galilee. went to Cana. And it says, verse
45, Then 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 unto the feast. These were Jews that were despised
by those in Jerusalem, by the Jews in Jerusalem. But they traveled
all the way to Jerusalem to worship. They went there because that's
where the Lord had Word of the Lord had come to them and told
them to go to Jerusalem. When they were there, they saw
Christ work more miracles. Maybe some of them had seen Him
in Cana when He worked His first miracle. But they went there
and saw Him work miracles at Jerusalem. And so when He comes
down now to where they are, they received Him gladly. Verse 46
says, So Jesus came again into Cana of Galilee. That's where
He made the water and wine. That's where he worked that first
miracle, you remember. Alright, here's the first thing.
We see that honor is due to Christ Jesus the Lord. Honor is due
to Him. Now, the Word begins in John
1, and it tells us there in John 1, that Christ Jesus is the Word. And the beginning was the Word,
the essential Word. And the Word was with God, and
the Word was God. The same was in the beginning
with God. All things were made by Him. Without Him was not anything
made that was made. The first creation was made by
the Word, God speaking. Christ the Word, the Word. And
we read on down the page here and it says, And there were, verse 14, and
the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. Now we know who it
is, don't we? It's Christ. Christ came. The
Word was made flesh, dwelt among us. We beheld His glory. The
glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace
and truth. You know what He said that He did when He turned that
water into wine at Cana? He manifest His glory. Manifest
His glory when He did that. Well, then we read here that
over here that he came to Philip. And when he came to Philip, I
didn't write the exact verse down, but when he came to Philip,
he called him. He spoke the word, spoke the
word. And he said, follow me. And Philip
then, Philip turned and he ran and he found Nathaniel. And he ran and he told Nathanael,
he said, we have found him of whom Moses and the law and the
prophets did write. Actually, Christ found him. But
you know how we get it backwards. We found him. Jesus of Nazareth,
the son of Joseph. And the Lord referred to what
Philip did when he went to Nathanael as Philip calling Nathanael. You see, the Lord called Philip.
and said, follow me. Philip believed. Philip went
and told Nathanael and through Philip's word Nathanael believed.
Well in our text in verse 45 it says, then when he was coming
to Galilee The Galileans received him, having seen all the things
that he did at Jerusalem at the feast, for they also went unto
the feast." They lived a long distance from Jerusalem, and
they had to go through Samaria to get to Jerusalem. And there
wasn't a Jew living that wouldn't have anything to do with the
Samaritans. They went through that land to get to Jerusalem,
because the word of the Lord said, this is where you go to
worship, and that's where they went. They went all the way up
there. When they got there, they saw the Lord work miracles in
Jerusalem. And so they had honored Him in
going up there to that feast. And they saw Him work miracles. And so now He comes to where
they are. He comes there and He passed by those in Nazareth
who denied Him. and who would not honor him.
He passed them by. He didn't go to them at all.
And he came to these Galileans out here in the more rural parts
of Galilee and he went to Cana back there. And then we're told
here that there was a certain nobleman who came because he
had heard. He heard. Look at verse 46. There
was a certain nobleman whose son was sick at Capernaum. When
he heard that Jesus was come out of Judea into Galilee, he
went unto him. He heard this and he heard where
he was and he went to him. He went to where he was. Christ
went everywhere he went preaching the gospel and this man went
to where he was. Now where Christ has sent his
gospel, those that have heard him, those that have believed
on him, they gather to hear him. They gather to hear him. You
don't have to twist their arm. Just don't. They want to. I gather
to them, literally to hear a word from the prophet. Is that why you came today? Did
you come here today to hear a word from the prophet? That's why
I came. I came to hear a word from the
prophet, Christ the Lord. These Galileans, they had seen
when they were up there in Jerusalem, they've seen what we see by faith,
by God-given faith. They saw the miracles He did
at Jerusalem. Have you seen the miracles He did at Jerusalem?
That's what we've seen. If we believe Him, that's why
we believe Him. We've seen what He did at Jerusalem, the miracles
He did at Jerusalem. We saw Him go to Jerusalem and
lay down His life. We saw Him go to Jerusalem and
willingly, willingly was He subjected himself to the Father and was
made sin for his people. Willingly, he bore the wrath
of God's justice for his people. And through his righteous obedience
unto death, he satisfied divine justice for him. He come out
of the grave and went back to the Father, ascended to the Father.
We've seen the miracles he did at Jerusalem by faith, by his
Spirit, by grace. We've seen those miracles he
did, like they did. And so when he came to where
they were, They were receptive to Him. They were ready to assemble
and see Him and talk to Him and hear Him and see more of the
gracious works of His hand. That's what it is whenever a
believer is planted. When the Word of God has been
planted into a believer's heart by Christ the Word, when the
Word has spoken the Word and He's implanted His Word in our
hearts, we're born of a A righteous seed. We're born of an incorruptible
seed. The Word of God. Look at 1 Peter
1, 23. 1 Peter 1, 23. Being born again. 1 Peter 1, 23. Being born again. Not of corruptible seed. This
seed can't be corrupted. This Word It's incorruptible,
of incorruptible, by the Word of God, which liveth and abideth
forever. It's a living Word. The Word
was made flesh and dwelt among us. For all flesh is as grass,
and all the glory of man is the flower of grass. The grass withers,
the flower thereof falleth away. There's no stock to put in us,
is it? But the Word of the Lord endureth
forever. We saw this in Psalm 9, didn't
we? He said that He come down and He worked righteousness in
the earth. And He said all His enemies were
destroyed. And they thought that they had destroyed Him. But the
very next word is, but the Lord endureth forever. If you look
that word up, Some of the old, old, old translations have that,
the Word. The Word endureth forever. He
rose again. He rose again. The Word of the
Lord endureth forever. And this is the Word which by
the Gospel is preached unto you. You see, you just can't separate
the living Word. from the written word, from the
preached word, from Christ's word. This is essentially united. And this is how faith comes.
And this is how faith's grown. By the sincere milk of the word.
Have you heard Him? Anybody here, have you heard
Christ speak? Have you heard Him speak? Have
you heard Him speak so that He's put a desire in your heart to
honor Him? so that you don't say, that prophet's not worth hearing.
You see, where he's given an earnest desire to hear him, men
want to gather together and hear him. Men want to assemble. If
he's assembled this body together, right here, he's here. He's in our midst.
If he's assembled the body, he's here. Wherever he's gathered
his people together, that's where he is. Where he's gathered them,
that's where he is. Now, if you knew Christ was speaking
here, would you come and hear him? Would you honor him with
your presence if you knew he was? Well, that's what he says
he is. Let's give the prophet, the prophet,
let's give him the honor due to him. That's why he didn't
go to Nazareth. He went where he went here. They
honored him. They gave him the honor and he
honored them. He honored them. He came back right to where they
were. That's the first thing we see. Honor is due to the prophet
Christ the Lord. He's the word speaking. Secondly,
God heals his children of our unbelief through his word. Now
look at verse 46. There was a certain nobleman
whose son was sick at Capernaum. Now this man was a nobleman.
That means he was an officer of some kind. It means he was
well off. He had a house, many servants
and so on that he was in charge of. And Capernaum was about 15,
20 miles from there. It was a long distance from there
by foot. Capernaum means a village of
comfort. It was a wealthy city where he lived, a very wealthy
place. But none of those things had brought him comfort. None
of those things had comforted his heart. He didn't really have
peace in his heart. You know why? He had a child
who was sick. He had a child who was dying. And he knew that child was dying.
He knew his child was about to perish out of this earth. And
meet God. This man knew that. Is there
anybody here like that this morning? Anybody here who has sons or
daughters or loved ones who are sick, I mean sin sick, I mean
that don't know God, that don't know Him, that are dead and trespassing
in sins. You know, it could be that the
Master is doing for you what He did for this man right here.
It could be the master's doing for you, one of his certain elect
children, like he did for this certain elect nobleman right
here. You see, this nobleman only thought that his son was
sick. This nobleman didn't know that he was sick. He didn't know that his whole
house was in a desperate condition. He only thought his son was sick. Everybody here that's a parent,
everybody here that has a child who doesn't know the Lord, do
what this man did. This man, we see this as a picture
of coming to the Lord in importunate prayer, coming and pouring out
your heart to him and begging the Lord to have mercy on him
and to come and save according to his will. Do that, but let's
learn something about ourselves here too. There are times when
I'm sure that the Lord uses those bodily infirmities of our loved
ones. I'm quite sure there's times
when He uses some other trial in our lives by His providences. He's wrought, that He's worked.
This boy didn't fall ill by accident. Everything that the Lord is doing
here from where he came from to where he came to, to what
he's working here with this nobleman, even to that boy that was sick
back there in Capernaum, and that whole house back there.
Everything that he's working here, this is God working this. And all of this together is teaching
us one full glorious lesson right here. None of this is to be isolated
and just taken apart. We've got to look at all this
together. What's he showing us here? He showed us first the
importance of honoring the prophet. who speaks this word. Now he's
showing us that he heals by this word. Now I'm quite sure when
those providences come upon us that we have a tendency to, and
we should, we should ask our children, ask others what the
Lord's teaching them. Don't forget to ask what's the
Lord teaching you. What's the Lord teaching me by this? The Lord was dealing with him
personally. The Lord was drawing him. He's the focus of this. this story, not the sick boy.
He is. This nobleman is. Verse 47, and when he heard that
Jesus was come out of Judea into Galilee, that's what he heard. He heard that Jesus was come
out of Judea into Galilee. And he'd heard about him. He'd
heard somebody speaking about him. And he went unto him and
besought him that he would come down and heal his son for he
was at the point of death. I'd like to find somebody wise
as this nobleman was. This man was wise. He heard,
he went to Christ where he was, and he besought him. He begged
him to come down. Have you heard that he's come?
Have you heard that the Lord Jesus Christ has come? He has
come. Have you heard the miracles that
he wrought at Calvary Street? Have you heard what he has done?
Have you besought him? Have you come to him and besought
him? Oh, there's a big difference between everything else and coming
to Him. There's a huge difference. Huge
difference. But there was something missing
in what this nobleman asked the Lord. There was something amiss
here in what he did. Look at verse 47. He besought
him that he would come down and heal his son, for he was at the
point of death. Now the Lord's going to tell
us what's wrong. Then said Jesus unto him. Then
said Jesus unto him. Then said Jesus unto him. Except
ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe. The nobleman
saith unto him, Sir, come down ere my child die. The nobleman's
son is sick. He's very sick. He's got a bodily
fever, bodily disease. He's sick. But it's the nobleman
that the Lord's going to heal first. He's going to heal him
first. He besought him to come down,
come down there. You know, Christ the Lord's going
to have the preeminence. We're going to buck against him
and kick against him and kick against him, but it's not going
to do any good. He is going to have the preeminence.
We're going to obey Him in this life right here when He speaks
His word in our heart and we're going to bow to Him by His grace
or we're going to obey Him in the day when He says, depart
from me. You've been working iniquity
in my name and claiming to worship me and you've never once bowed
to me. And in that day, we're going
to obey Him. We're going to depart. That'll
be the first time. If we meet Him like that, it'll
be the first time that we've ever obeyed Him. But we're going
to obey Him that day. We're going to depart out of
His presence. Wouldn't you rather Him speak and heal us in our
heart right here, right now, today? Heal us of all our unbelief
and all our sickness to trust Him and Him alone? Wouldn't you
rather that happen today than to meet Him in judgment? Well,
he's going to have the preeminence. We're the ones who are going
to have to be brought down. You see, the man comes to him
and he tells him, not only beseeches him to do this, but he tells
him what to do. You're not going to tell Christ
what to do. You're not going to command him to do anything.
It's just not going to happen, and neither am I. If that's the
case, and we think we can, he's going to deal with us like he
dealt with this man right here. He's going to very mercifully,
very graciously, He's going to teach us. He's going to have
the preeminence. We're going to have to be brought
down to trust Him and His way of saving sinners and not look
to our way and not look to our understanding of things. The
Lord said to him, except you see signs and wonders you will
not believe. The sign and the wonder is this.
The sign and the wonder that we're looking at in this text
of Scripture is that the Lord Jesus Christ, the prophet, comes
to where His child is and He speaks the Word. And when He
speaks the Word into the heart of His child, He makes His child
alive. He speaks faith into the heart. He speaks light. He speaks so
that we can do nothing but hear Him, do nothing but believe Him,
do nothing but rejoice in Him and delight in Him. When He speaks, He causes us
all the the pain and all the secret hidden
turmoil and all that secret worry and anxiousness and all of that
that's really hidden underneath that nice pretty facade of nobility
and that nice pretty facade of living in the village of comfort
and that nice pretty facade of having all that money could buy
and being happy and we got the world by the tail on a downhill
drag. He makes all of that that's hidden underneath all that that
only you know about. He makes all of that to be cast
off of you and that yoke taken off your neck that's been burdening
you down. And He takes all that on to Him
when He speaks this Word. I don't know how to explain what
faith is. I don't know how to explain what it is to believe
God. That's about right now the best
I can do is that it's just a huge burden relief that my Lord can
be trusted. He speaks and it's so. And He
does this by speaking into our hearts effectually. Naaman came
to a prophet of the Lord. Just like this man is coming
to the Lord Jesus, the prophet, the prophet, priest, and king,
God our Savior. He's come to Him. But it was
the same for Naaman when he came to the Lord Jesus' messenger. He came to Him. And when Naaman
came to Him, Naaman had it all figured out in his mind. He was
a smart man. Naaman was a ruler. And I'm sure he read up on this
prophet and learned everything he could about this prophet before
he went down there. And he had everything academically
figured out in his mind that this prophet would probably do.
He read all the books about him. He inquired about him. He knew
everything. And he had in his mind what he thought that prophet
was going to do. But you see, what he thought
the prophet was going to do was come bowing down at his feet.
He thought the prophet was gonna come out to him and was gonna
do some hocus pocus magic trick and call on his God and cater
to this fine man who just happened to be a leper. When in reality,
this man was a leper who just happened to have a few things
God had given him. That was the reality. But instead,
his pride was stained and his dignity was just struck a blow
when the prophet wouldn't go out to him. He wouldn't. He sent somebody out to him and
said, here's the word that's come to you, Naaman. Go dip into
Jordan seven times. That word was such a despised
thing to Naaman. That River Jordan was a despised
thing to Naaman. name and thought just like most
religious people think in our day. Any church is as good as
the next. Any gospel that's being preached
is as good as the next. Just so they're calling God,
just so they're calling Christ, just so they're saying some of
the key words that I'm listening for. It's all the same. And you'll
think that. You will go through this life
thinking that. A sinner will go through this life convinced
that so, till this prophet busts his heart wide open and makes
him hear the truth. I thought it. Thought that I
thought it doesn't matter. It's all the same. We're all
going in the same direction. We're all I Thought he was gonna come down
to me But he made me come down to him He made me bow to him
and he showed me he's got the preeminence and that's what happened
to them and it offended him to heed the Word of God, but you
see Most sinners want to be healed. Most everybody wants their children
to be saved. That's no big deal. If you've
just got a little compassion, you have that decency about you. Nobody wants to go to hell. Everybody
wants to go to heaven. You give me the place of laying
out under a sunny blue sky in a green field or under a thunder
cloud with a storm barreling down on me, I'd take the green
field and the blue clouds any day, wouldn't you? Anybody would.
But do you want to be with God, God's way, how God says He's
going to bring you to Him? That's a whole different thing.
An entirely different ball game right there. We can't tell the
Lord how He's going to save. Unless Christ speaks the Word,
until the Holy Spirit enters in and gives us life, gives us
faith to truly believe Christ is able and make us willing to
believe Him, we'll not be content for God to save in the manner
that pleases God. We won't be content. We'll try
to change God's Word to fit what we really want. We'll try to
make a Like a woman who wears a size 12 trying to fit into
a size 8. It ain't gonna happen. It ain't gonna happen. But we'll
try it. We'll try it. We'll try to make that shoe fit. And it's not gonna fit. Just
not gonna fit. But we'll try. How did it please
the Lord to heal this nobleman's unbelief? Look at verse 50. Jesus saith unto him. That's how it pleased him. That's
how I pleased Him to do it. Jesus saith unto him, Go thy
way, thy son liveth. And the man believed the word
that Jesus had spoken unto him, and he went his way. I mean, okay, this man, think
about it. This man's got a son. He got
a son in critical condition. And this is the one physician
that this man is convinced can heal his son. And this man goes
to him, and on one second, he's begging him, you've got to come
down here. You've got to come, just like any physician. You've
got to come to his bedside and do this and heal him. And just
that fast, the Lord said unto him, go your way, your son's
alive. And that fast, this man dropped
all his wrangling, he dropped all his commanding, he dropped
all of that. He dropped it all and believed
him. and believed him. That's some
kind of word, isn't it? Now you've put yourself in his
shoes. We're talking about your son is lying at death's door. And this man just says it. And
all of a sudden, the clouds rolled back and the sun came out and
this man believed the Lord. He believed Him. The Word came
home to his heart in divine, irresistible, sovereign grace
and he believed the Lord. That's what will happen. That's
what always happens. He stopped insisting on Christ
going down with him and he firmly believed that his son was alive
and well because Christ said he was. He believed the Word
God spoke. That's how God healed his heart
and he went his way. Alright, here's the third thing
we see. the Lord is able to save through His Word, from His throne
in glory, right now. Though He be not present in body
with us. That's the third point. The first
point is, He's the prophet who deserves honor. Wherever He's
assembled, that's where we draw near to. The second point is,
He's going to heal through His Word. The third point is, He
don't have to be present with us in body. He's the omniscient,
omnipotent God who's everywhere, and He can speak from where He
is, and it's done. He can do the same work He did
for this man standing right in front of Him without Him standing
right in front of you. He can do it through this Word.
Now, John 4.51, let's look at this. And as He was now going
down, His servants met Him and told Him, saying, Thy Son liveth. Then inquired he of them the
hour when he began to amend." Now see how this father's whole,
his whole direction's changed now. He was all worried about
his son before. The next words out of my mouth,
in your mouth, if this was just a carnal happening and somebody
came and said, your son is alive. If our thoughts now and our heart
now was still set on the earthy and still set on our son, Wouldn't
your next thought, word out of your mouth be something about,
tell me how he is? Tell me, is he walking? You'd
ask something about the boy, wouldn't you? That's not what
he was wondering about. He said, what time did he, was
he well? Then he inquired of them the
hour when he began to amend, and they said unto him, yesterday
at the seventh hour the fever left him. This man obviously
went home and got him a good night's sleep that night, probably
better than he'd had since his boy got sick, because he believed
God. And he went the next day on his
way home. Would you have done that? Or would you have run out,
jumped on your camel and took off as fast as you could to get
home? He believed God. He believed the Word of God.
His boy was healed. He wasn't in need to drive through
the night to get there. But when he got there, he said,
when did he start getting well? And they said a seventh hour
yesterday. And it says, so the father knew that it was at the
same hour into which Jesus said unto him, thy son liveth and
himself believeth. Now there's a lot in this little
phrase when it says, and himself believed. The nobleman at first,
you know, he believed that Christ had the power to heal his son,
but he thought he had to be bodily present to do it. And the Lord
cured him of that unbelief. Spoke the word and cured him.
And sends him down there. And he gets down there and he
finds out his boy's well. Because Christ was able just
to speak the word. And he believed. He believed that from God. Now somebody's hearing this right
now. And I can guarantee you what somebody's thinking. Because
I know how we self-justify every cussing thing we do. Somebody's
sitting here thinking right now, well he healed that boy without
that boy ever hearing the word from him. So I'll just stay home
and maybe God will heal me. I'll go out and do what it is
I want to do tomorrow or next Thursday night or Sunday morning
or whatever. I don't have to hear the gospel. If God's going
to save me, He's going to save me. He'll get the word to me.
He'll speak it, whatever. He can just cause me to fall
down out in the middle of a field one day and just start praising
Him. He can. He can. He could do that. But
if He can do it the way it pleases Him and brings more honor to
Him, He'd do it that way because it's the way He said He'd do
it. You see, do you think we're given all these details leading
right up to this point of how He went unto the midst of the
Pharisees and they wanted to argue and try to split John's
disciples and His disciples over who did the most baptizing. Do
you think we're given that detail that when they started all that
at His doctrine that He just left them and went on, departed
out of their midst? You think we're given the detail
that He went from there and He went to the woman at the well
at Samaria and it says in verse 39, look there, and he spoke faith into her heart
by his word, and it says, and many of the Samaritans of that
city believed on him for the saying of the woman which testified,
he told me all that ever I did. She came home and told a bunch
of folks what he'd done, and they believed him. And it says,
so when the Samaritans were coming to him, then that bunch of them
went to where he was, and they besought him that he would tarry
with them, and he abode there two days, and many more believed
because of his own word. He preached the gospel to them
right there in person and they believed Him. And said unto the
woman, Now we believe, not because of thy saying, for we have heard
Him ourselves, and know that this is indeed thee, Christ,
the Savior of the world. He gave us that detail. Then
He leaves there and He comes into this Galilee. But he says he didn't go to Nazareth
because he said in verse 44, for Jesus Himself testified,
a prophet has no honor in his own country. There's a lot of
emphasis from the very first verse of this book, John, about
the Word, and about him going and speaking the Word, and sending
somebody to speak the Word, and about him coming and not going
to a place because he wasn't honored as the prophet. And then
we come down to where here we got this detail of this nobleman
that heard. The word says here, he heard. When he heard, verse 47, that
Jesus would come out of Judea into Galilee, he went unto him
and besought him that he would come down. And then we read here,
then Jesus said unto him, Except you see signs and wonders, you
won't believe. And then Jesus said unto him
in verse 50, Go thy way, thy son liveth. And the man believed.
We got all these details about the word, the word, the word.
You see, that boy who was six, that's not the point of the message. That's not the point of this
story. That's not the point of it. Here's the point of it. The fact is, his whole house,
all his servants and all of them that were around his six son
back in Capernaum, the only thing they knew was that his son's
fever had broken. And they were going out to meet
this boy's father to tell him your son's fever's broken and
he's not dying anymore. They went out to tell him this.
That's all they knew. They just saw it just like you
would see it. That's all they knew. They didn't have any idea
what happened between the nobleman and Christ. They didn't know
anything about this good news of what Christ had done and could
do. But when that father met his
servants, and they said, your boy got well yesterday, the seventh
hour. He inquired, what hour was it?
They said it was the seventh hour. And he thought, his heart
just overflowed. at the amazement of Christ and
he believed himself. And what do you think this man
went to talking about to those people? What do you think he
started telling them? What do you think? What would you tell
them? I was with Jesus Christ yesterday and this same hour
I thought he had to come down here and do this. In this same
hour, he spoke this word. And when he spoke the word, that's
the hour that you told me my son began to be healed from his
bodily sickness. And as he sat there and told
them this, this good news of Christ Jesus, the gospel of Christ
Jesus the Lord. You know what Christ Jesus did
for all those in his house? Look at the end of verse 53. And his whole house believed.
How? Through the Word. This man went
and told them what he did. And his whole house. And Christ
saved. Not just. He didn't just save
them from having a stumped toe. He saved them in their heart. He saved their soul. And they
believed God. They believed Him. And just in
case we don't realize that's what we're talking about here,
and that's the case, just in case anybody's in doubt, look
at verse 54. It reminds us again of that other miracle. This is
again the second miracle that Jesus did when He was come out
of Judea into Galilee. That first one was when He turned
the water into wine. There's a lot of pictures in
that. But let me tell you what there's one picture of that I
know. There's a picture in that of an earthen vessel. who was
nothing and nobody, though he thought he was a noble man, who was as empty as he could
be, who was drawn through God's providence to hear Christ speak
the Word. And the water of the Word filled
his heart by God the Holy Spirit. And that water that filled his
heart, the water of the Word, turned into wine within him. He beheld the glorious Savior
in Christ Jesus the Lord. He beheld the blood that's able
to heal the soul and the unbelief and save a sinner from hell and
from the clutches of death and present him faultless into the
very presence of God. And that earthen vessel who had
no power within himself, just like those pots that they used
on that day of Cana, in that day of Cana, That earthen vessel
took off back down the next day, and when he met his servants,
he spilled out this water and turned it into wine. And when
he did, the Lord filled those others with it, and they drank
of it, and it made their hearts merry through the Holy Spirit,
and they rejoiced in it too. Just like that wedding wine.
And they said, that old man said, he saved the best wine to last. I've had some mighty good wine
in this world. I've had some, but he's come now and he's, he
showed me his sovereign redeeming grace and he's made me rejoice
in his own blood. That's what we see and pictured
in that, turning that water into wine at Cana. Just the same thing he did right
here. Same thing he did right here. The center is empty like
the water pots. The center receives the water
of the written word at the command of Christ. The water produces
the best wine by the power of Christ. The change wrought in
the new birth is a miracle of grace as clearly miraculous as
the water being turned into wine. The miracle manifested forth
his glory and the governor proclaimed it to be the best wine as truly
as his grace and redemption is far better than the best this
world can give. Remember these three things. We see the importance
of heeding Christ's gospel. He said, a prophet's not without
honor, saving his own country. Sometimes we get too familiar.
Those where he grew up were just too familiar with him. They thought
they knew everything about him. They thought they had it all
understood, and they despised him because of it. We need to hear Christ the prophet,
give him the honor that's due. Secondly, Christ gives faith
when he speaks the word into our hearts. Jesus said to him,
go thy way, thy son liveth, and the man believed the word, Jesus
is spoken, and went his way. And thirdly, remember, Christ
works this miracle of grace from heaven's glory without His being
present right here in body, in our midst. He works it through
the Spirit of God, through His gospel-given faith, through those
He's already called, just like He did this man. And He makes
the whole house believe. The whole house believe. Would
it be something if that's why your child and my child is sick? That God's just drawn us to trust
Him, to heed His gospel, to have our attention fully set on Him
preeminently in everything we do. Wouldn't it be amazing if
that's really what the whole thing's been about? And wouldn't
it be amazing after God teaches us that, if He saved our house? Wouldn't it? He said, Believe on the Lord
Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved in all thy house. Our gospel, you know what happened
to that man? What Paul said, Our gospel came not unto you
in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in
much assurance. That's what happened to that
man. That's how the gospel comes. That's why he said this gospel
must be published among all nations. That's why he said, go in all
the world and preach the gospel to every creature. That's why
Paul said, where unto he called you by our gospel to the obtaining
of the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. You see, a sign's not
for them that believe, Paul said. A sign's for them that believe
not. He's going to work this sign
before you ever believe Him. He's going to work this sign
in your heart by the miracle of His grace through His Spirit.
And then you're going to believe. And you're going to hear His
Word. Then you're going to hear what He's been saying. Because
prophecy is not for them that believe not, but for them that
believe. Because faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the
word of God. I hope the word speaks the word
today. I hope we hear the prophet speak.
We'll be joyful. We'll be rejoicing. Amen.