You can find in your copy of
the Scriptures John chapter 4. We've got a few weeks left here
in John 4. And then next year we'll be in
John 5. Not for the whole year, just
it will be next year. We've seen a lot of things. It's
a good text, Dr. Queller, for you to read this
morning out of Romans chapter 6 because we've been so inundated
over the last six to eight months with the gospel. And there's
nothing wrong with being inundated with the gospel, but it does
cause us in our flesh to think about the greatness of God's
mercy to the point that we can say, hey, we can just live the
way we want to live. We can do whatever we want to do. We can just be
who we want to be, like the Adams family, I guess, you know? We could just sin, sin, sin,
sin, and just God's grace, grace, grace, grace, grace. And we know
that's ridiculous. Now we know that all the sin that we have
in our lives is covered by the grace of God. It's covered by
the blood of Christ. We are atoned for through the work of Jesus.
But that motivates us. That motivates us when we see
the great love that we have or that God has for us. We are motivated
to walk in a manner worthy of the gospel. Not only are we motivated,
we're empowered and encouraged and are striving. And we see
what the Scripture teaches us about what those fruits are and
what this world looks at and really strives for versus what
the Bible teaches us to strive for. And it's easy to see those
areas that are blatantly wicked versus those areas that sometimes
are just a little bit good, but not necessarily great. And we
have to be very careful when we're going through these texts,
when we're going through these doctrinally deep texts, even the narratives
that we see. You notice that once we got through
John 3, when we got into John 4, there wasn't a whole lot of
dialogue that would bog us down at length. But it's there. And
so you might say, well, you know, we could have got through that
in one Sunday, but really there's a lot more there. There's a lot
more in some of these things that we will see as time progresses,
but it's very easy for us to get in a place where we just
become ho-hum when it comes to the hearing of the teaching of
the Word of God. It's very easy for us to go, okay, I know this
story, let's move on, or I know that truth, but in reality, what
is the power of God for us? It is His gospel. What is the
power of God unto eternal life? It is the gospel. What is the
power of God unto preservation? It is the gospel. What is the
gospel? It is the story of the finished work of Jesus Christ.
The gospel is the story, that's what is written, of the finished
work of Jesus Christ and what Jesus did, who Jesus is, and
what difference it makes for us. That is the gospel. The historical
picture of what God has done through Jesus Christ is the gospel.
It is the good news of God. But in our culture, we believe
the gospel is repent. That's not the gospel. That's
the bad news. To say, repent and believe is
not good news. Why? For none of us can do that.
None of us can do that without what? The gospel. Without the
good news of what God has done, not only to enable us, but to
equip us and to preserve us in our faith. The gift of righteousness. The gift of faith. The gift of
the rebirth. The Spirit blows where it wishes.
This is what we've been learning. And what it does is it ties us
up. It breaks us away from our fleshliness. It takes the man
and the woman that we are in our flesh and all of our knowledge
and all of our ability and it wrecks it. It poisons it. It
puts it to death because we see that there is no way possible
that we can satisfy the righteous requirements of God. And so some
of us try harder and sometimes some of us just stop trying at
all. And these are the two points or the two ends of the spectrum.
And the ultimate end is that Jesus Christ has satisfied the
righteous requirements of God and His command to be holy because
God is holy. Holy, holy, holy. is the Lord
God Almighty. No other man is good. No other
woman is good. No other child is good. No one
who has ever breathed air into the lungs of their humanity has
ever been good. For Jesus Himself said to the
rich young ruler, Why do you call me good? For no one is good
but God. And then what do we see? How
do we say then Jesus is good? Because Jesus is God. He's not
just man. He is God and He is man. He is fully God and fully man
and truly God and truly man. And that's what we've been learning.
And we've been seeing that. And some people like to... You
know what the synoptics are. The synoptics is Matthew, Mark,
and Luke. They go together. They have synergy. They walk
in lockstep with what they teach. Even though they're all three
from a different perspective and for a different focus, then
John stands apart. John stands apart because John
teaches the divinity of Jesus. John shows us that Jesus Christ
is God in every turn. And so as we get into this text
today, some people would argue and say, well, John's gospel
is just not as authoritative because he misses so much. No,
John, by the umption of the Holy Spirit, God, through John, has
taught us exactly what we need to know through John. And John
emphasizes some things that we can't get other places. Namely,
the incredible power of the divine nature of Jesus Christ through
the narrative. The very fact that no one can
know Him, but that those who do receive Him have been called
the children of God because of the will of God. The very nature
that we see Jesus knowing all things. We see Him knowing Nathanael.
We see Him knowing Judas. We see Him knowing the woman
at the well. We see Him knowing the intimate
realities of Nicodemus. We see Him going into the temple
and cleansing the temple. And then going, what sign do
you bring? And they cannot see it. Beloved, if nothing else
comes from the teaching of God's Word, my prayer every single
day is that you can see it. We aren't coming in here to collectively
do our duty, though it is a duty that we are assembled together
each week. We don't do it because it is our duty, we do it because
it is the flow of the affection of our soul. It is part of who
we are as God's people. It is part of who we are in the
sense that we know the Lord and we desire to be intimate with
Him, and we know that the Word alone is how we have intimacy
with God. And we also know that with each
other, in any aspect of our engagement, of our assembly. God can use
our relationships in small pieces with mighty consequences. Just
words, just prayers, just seeing each other can have great benefit
to our soul. And so this morning, as we get
into this text, we are going to see that Jesus is going to
do something in Galilee. Look at chapter 4, verses 42
through chapter 5, verse 1. I'm going to read this for us
this morning. Verse 42, they said to the woman, this is they,
the Samaritans. Look at verse 39. We'll just
start there to get the context. Verse 39, many Samaritans from
that town, that's Sychar, believed in Him because of the woman's
testimony. Remember last week we talked about the testimony
pointed to Christ and there was some type of faith, but it wasn't
a saving faith until they heard Christ teach who He was. So when
the Samaritans came to Him, they asked Him to stay with them and
He stayed there two days. And verse 41, and many more believed
because of His word. This is very important. because
of His word. They said to the woman, It is
no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we
have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the
Savior of the world." After the two days, he departed for Galilee,
for Jesus Himself had testified that a prophet has no honor in
his hometown. So when he came to Galilee, the Galileans welcomed
him, having seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the
feast, for they too had gone to the feast. So he came again
to Cana in Galilee, where he had made the water to wine. And
at Capernaum there was an official whose son was ill. When this
man heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went
to him and asked him to come down and heal his son, for he
was at the point of death. So Jesus said to him, Unless
you see signs and wonders, you will not believe. The official
said to him, Sir, come down before my child dies. And Jesus said
to him, Go, your son will live. The man believed the word that
Jesus spoke to him and went on his way. As he was going down,
his servants met him and told him that his son was recovering.
So he asked them the hour when he began to get better, and they
said to him, Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him. And the father knew that it was
the hour when Jesus had said to him, your son will live. And
he himself believed in all of his household. This was now the
second sign that Jesus did when he had come from Judea to Galilee.
Let's pray. Father, Lord, let us have our eyes opened
by your Spirit this morning. Let us see the beauty of what
you have shown us in this historical record. the small portion of
this dialogue between Jesus and this nobleman. It seems so insignificant. We could write it on the back
of a postage stamp. But Father, it is so rich. It
is so beautiful. And it is not my creativity,
nor my intellect, nor anything of me that is to impart upon
this text something glorious. But Father, it is glorious as
it sits upon this page. Not only is it glorious in its
construction and in its wording, it is powerful in what it shows
us about who Jesus is and about what Jesus can do. And it shows
us about our own flesh and how we long for things that are extemporaneous,
things that are majestic, and things that seem to be wonderful
and awesome, when we really need only look at the Word of God.
And so Father, help us to see that this morning. As many of
us are focused on the advent of Your Son Jesus, let us focus
on the work that He did, on the purpose for which You sent Him.
Not for Christmas, but Father, for the cross. And Lord, You
have told us to remember the body and the blood of Jesus.
You have told us to remember You've told us to learn these
things and meditate on these things. So Father, I pray that
that is our heart today. Let it beat, a divine beat, by
the power of Your Spirit over the person of Jesus Christ. In
His name we pray. Amen. Jesus went to Galilee. Now, I
read out of Luke chapter 2, this past beginning of the service,
and you notice that Joseph, his earthly stepfather, if you will,
his earthly guardian, his earthly dad, was from Galilee. So Jesus, by lineage, is from
Galilee. He's a Galilean. So when Jesus
goes back to Galilee, He is going back to His hometown, much like
I came back here six years ago. The place where I am from, the
place where everyone knows me, the place where everyone knows
everything about me, historically. everything. You know, when we
go from one place that we grew up and have always lived to a
new place, everybody looks at us in different eyes. They look
at us in such a way that they don't know who we are. And they
can either assume what they think or assume their judgment of us
in a good way or a bad way, in a right way or in a wrong way. But until they get to know us,
until they get to spend time with us, they really don't know
who we really are. And whether we're gone 30 years
or what have you, there are always people in our lives who know
the true us, know everything about us, know what makes us
happy, know what makes us angry, what kind of food we like, what
kind of things we like to do in our habits at home, where
we throw our socks when we take them off, how we hang the toilet
paper in the bathroom. If we even hang it, we just sit
it on the back of the toilet. Whatever it might be, there are people
who know us. And the people of Galilee, of that region, they
knew Jesus. They knew Jesus. They knew who
He was, and they knew His mom, and they knew His dad, and there
was no qualms about it. He was a man who was known in
Galilee. So we see Jesus now going back
to Galilee. And he went there because, as
it says there in the text in that parenthetical, a man has
no honor in his own hometown. Now, what does it mean to be
honored? See, sometimes we hear that and we think, well, see,
they just didn't like Jesus, but that's a different story, isn't
it? I mean, I had no honor here. Why? Because I'm a nobody in
Claxton. These are my people. You just
show up and, hey, we know who you are, we like what you do,
we like what you say, but we're not going to worship you or praise
you or exalt you in any given way. And that's the same way
they looked at Jesus. Jesus had no honor in His home. He wasn't going to be seen as
the king. He's just the kid. who happened to grow up and have
a pretty good ministry, a healing ministry at that. A miracle ministry,
if you will. Nobody in that day, as we saw
in the end of John chapter 2, many people believed in Jesus
because of the signs that He did, but they did not honor Him.
They knew that He was a man of power. They knew He was a man
of purpose. They knew He was a man with some
type of ability to do some things. And they appreciated that. And
they respected that. But there was no honor there.
Jesus did not have to fear being honored in Galilee. You might
think, well, why fear? I use that term lightly, for
we know the Lord Jesus and His divine nature would not fear,
for He knew everything was ordained by God. But in that sense, He
knew that the Pharisees would not be after Him as much in Galilee. Because people would not be talking
so much about how awesome He was. They would just be interested
in what He was doing. So I believe this is one of the
most obvious and simple observations to understand when it says that
a prophet has no honor in his own hometown. Jesus went to Galilee
because He had no honor in that town. That's why He went there. That's why most of His ministry,
if you look at the synoptics, Jesus spent more time in the
region of Galilee than He did anywhere else. He spent more,
he did more miracles there than he did anywhere else. That was
really his entire ministry, if you look at it. Over half of
his ministry was spent in Galilee. And the synoptics are like, miracle
after miracle after miracle, and then we see other things
that John teaches that there's not enough pages in the cosmos
to hold the words that he said and to talk about the things
that he's done. Because if every witness to what Jesus had done
wrote a book about what they observed, there would not be
enough space in the world to hold the text. But yet here in
John we see this second miracle that He did here in Galilee and
Cana. And the first one, of course,
turning the water into wine. And here Jesus is going back
because a prophet has no honor in his own hometown. So his ministry
would not be paralyzed by the continual oppression and persecution
of the Pharisees here. The word would not get to them
as it did when the Pharisees... What did we learn? The Pharisees
learned that Jesus was baptizing more disciples than John. And
what did they do? They showed up en masse. They
showed up in a large group and thought, this guy's gaining popularity. Of course he's going to be known
and talked about in his hometown, but he's not going to be popular.
Because what happens when someone comes? You know what an alumni
fund is? You know, how many of you have
ever been inundated by your college or your university? You know,
especially this time of year, you've got nine days left of
the end of the world. I mean, end of the, excuse me, end of
the year. It sounds like the end of the world when they send
those messages out. And you gave, and we gave to you, now it's
time for you to give back, right? That's how it is. How is it they
give to you when you paid for the education? I never understood
that. But anyway, and the professors are who gave. The college didn't
give you anything. But here we see the same type of attitude.
You were from us, and now you owe us. And that's sort of what
Jesus is talking about here, that He had no honor in His own
hometown. He wasn't going to be celebrated and praised. He
wasn't going to be admired. It was sort of a duty for Him. Come back and serve us. You're
from here. We're your people. You've got
the powers of healing. Come on, come on, come on. You
see what I'm saying? And that's what we need to hear in this
text. That's what we need to see when
we look at this stuff. He has no honor in His hometown.
So Jesus, after the two days He spent in Sychar in Samaria,
He went to Galilee. And it says in verse 45, so when
He came to Galilee, the Galileans what? Welcomed Him. That's how
we know that this is not an issue of being hated. It's just an
issue of not being honored. He's not being esteemed, but
He's being welcomed. Having seen all that He had done
in Jerusalem at the feast. Because what did they do? See,
they saw what He did in Judea. They were there. They saw the
miracles. They heard of the things. They
witnessed it. And they got together and they
talked about it. In our day it would have been shared and memes
would have been made. It would have been some kind of grand
scheme with millions and millions of views. Jesus was a spectacle. And now He's come back to His
hometown. And they had gone to the feast
and they remembered. They remembered who He was and
that He was one of them. So in verse 46, it says, So we
came again to Cana in Galilee, we had made the water wine, and
at Capernaum there was an official whose son was ill. And when we
get to, matter of fact, we go through John 6, that's it. That's the last thing that John
will teach us about the miracles of Jesus in Galilee, which is
the feeding of the 5,000 there. And that is going to be an incredible
turning point in John's writing. And then after that we start
seeing the latter part of Jesus' ministry and it winds down very
quickly. And I'll give you some of the
narrative of that history as we move through it. So here he
is back in Galilee. He's back in Canaan. He's back
where it all began for him. He's back in his hometown. Nobody's
really impressed. They just feel like he's obligated
to them to do something. Nothing's changed. in their hearts. They don't have
salvation. They don't have this great worship
in honor of Jesus Christ, but they do believe in His abilities.
Now I want to ask you before we move forward, what do you
believe about Jesus? I want you to be very careful to consider
this in your own mind. Is Jesus to you the miracle worker
who saved you from wrath? Or is Jesus the God of heaven
whom you love and adore? Is Jesus God to you? Is Jesus the Savior who in His
mercy and His love caused you to escape the judgment of, for
the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal
life? Are you more in love with the gift of life than the giver
of the gift? Be very careful not to glaze
over this teaching here. Because this is one of the applications
that is required of hearing these types of things. We see that
the Galileans expected Jesus to invest in their lives because
He was one of them. He was one of them. And sometimes
we believe we're so one of the Lord's people that we, in some
sense, indirectly and subconsciously, expect that Jesus must do something
for us. What is it that we expect? Do
we expect Jesus to save us? He will save who He feels like
saving. As we'll see in John 5, Jesus walks amongst a thousand
invalids, heals one, and then supernaturally vanishes. The
Bible says, because there were so many that would want healing. He refused to heal them. He refused
to feed them twice. He refused to do miracles with
people who commanded Him to do so. His ministry was not a ministry
of benevolence. His ministry was a ministry of
glory. And the glory is pointing to God the Father. It's about
what God had done to not just gather a people, but to securely,
and justly, and righteously sanctify a people through Jesus Christ.
So he came here, and this nobleman, this official, this government,
probably a Hellenistic leader under Herod, sitting there, part
of the noble class. He was a Jewish man, but he was
all about Rome. and he comes and he finds Jesus.
Now imagine this. Busy man, this busy official,
and he comes and finds Jesus in the midst of a place that's
not too easy to find somebody. But it wasn't hard to find Jesus,
was it? You just look for the crowds. You look for the crowds,
you look for people lining up. I mean, remember the story that
we see in the Gospels where Jesus goes into this house And he's
healing, and he's preaching, and he's teaching, and no one
can get to the house. You can't even get close. You
can't even get to the windows. But there are people who want
their brother healed, so they tear a hole in the ceiling and
lower him down. I mean, that would be obvious,
wouldn't it? Could you imagine if we see this big crowd of people
all across the street at the Rite Aid? And there's somebody
up there with a jackhammer tearing the ceiling open so they can
put somebody... I mean, we would know where Jesus was. Jesus was not
an obscure person in that sense. I mean, He was, but the crowds
that followed Him, just like we see in John 6, 5,000 men followed
Him around. The only way you can find that
anywhere in our world today is at the mall or at a ball field.
Or maybe some megachurch someplace that everybody's having a grand
old party. Either way, in a little community,
And even in a large city, if thousands and thousands of people
gathered, you would know that something was going on. And here
this man goes and leaves the business of his affairs, leaves
the important task of whatever he was doing to go find this
unhonored man, this man that had no honor. But he wanted to
find Jesus. And why did he want to find Jesus?
See, a lot of people will preach this wrongly. A lot of people
say, see, you've got to go find Jesus. Jesus is there. He's hanging
out in your city. He's close by. But you better
go find Him. You know what happens when we
go find Jesus? I want you to hear this. We go find Him for
the wrong reasons. Because what we want is for Jesus
to do something for us. What we want is for Jesus to
satisfy some fleshly desire. And it might not even be bad.
When I say fleshly, it doesn't always mean wicked. It's not
wicked for us to pray for God to heal us, or to bless us, or
to honor us, or to carry us through in success. Whatever that means. Those are all relative terms.
It's not wicked. But it is fleshly. It's a temporal,
fleshly mind that focuses just on the here and now, or the few
minutes before. It focuses on setting up the
future for our own comfort, rather than seeing the purpose of Jesus
to begin with, which is the eternal glory of God the Father. And
so this man goes and he finds Jesus. This man, of course, probably
saw Jesus' ministry, probably heard of it. He heard that Jesus
was there. He probably saw some of the miracles
and heard about many more of them. And though Jesus was well
known, as I've already said, He was not honored, He to them
was a miracle man. He was a man of power. He was
a healer and nothing more. And that's what they wanted with
Jesus in Galilee. And that's what this man for
Capernaum really wanted from Jesus. Verse 47, when he had
heard, he went to Him and what did he ask? He asked Jesus to
come down to Capernaum and heal his son. for he, the son, was
at the point of death." See, what this man did is he sought
after Jesus for his personal interests. And which is a good
interest. Is it not a good interest to
pray for God to heal your son? Absolutely. Is it not a good
thing for you to want someone to be healed? It is a good thing.
So it wasn't like this man was wicked, but it surely was selfish.
It surely was self-centered. And so we need to recognize sometimes
that even that which is good that we ask for, sometimes it
can be self-centered. That is why Jesus taught us to
pray, what? Thy will be done. Because our
ultimate desire, though it may be something personal for us
and it may be good, if the Lord wills, is what we want. Father,
if you will, please heal me. If you will, please heal my son.
If you will it, Lord, work in this way. If you will it, Father,
save my children. Give them eternal life. Give
my neighbor salvation, if it be your will. Because the one thing we learn
about how Jesus teaches us to pray is that the will of God
is always done and has never failed. Everything that God has
ever desired comes to pass. And if God is not sovereign,
then the name, or it's not a name, the title of God is not His to
bear. Because God, by definition, Elohim,
the High One, Adonai, Lord, Ruler of all. He's the highest one. There is no higher being. God
is not the God of cosmic relations that spins everything into being
and then hopes it works out for the best. The idea that a census was called
during the birth of Jesus is that God put it in the heart
of those leaders to call the census. Just like God did that
many times in the Old Testament, God puts in the heart of men
things to bring about His purposes. God is sovereign. Jesus Christ
is sovereign. Jesus Christ rules everything. Friends, you all know how difficult
life is. You know how frustrating it can
be to try to find our way in this world. You know how hard
it is to try to balance living in the world and living for the
Lord. And you know how many times we just want to throw our hands
up and say, I quit. My friends, that's why we have
a King who is above all kings, and a Lord who is above all lords,
and a God who is the God of all things. Because if He is truly
who He says He is, then we do not have to fear. We do not have
to fear. I was reading through the Exodus
last night when Moses led the Israelites through the Red Sea.
And God had already told Moses that He, listen to this, He,
the Bible says that God was going to harden the heart of Pharaoh
and put anger in his mind that he would pursue, so that he would
pursue the Israelites, so that His glory would be manifest and
viewed. And the Bible says that as Pharaoh's
army, as the Egyptians were coming close, that a pillar of fire
and smoke surrounded the Egyptian army and began to tear apart
their chariots. And that the Egyptian army testified,
their God is fighting for them. You see that? And I was just
overcome by that narrative. and how amazingly coincidental
it goes so well with this. And it goes so well with where
we are as a people, each of us individually in our own households
and collectively as a church. The Bible teaches that God rules
over everything. Jesus Christ is that God in Galilee
and this man sought Him out not knowing He was God. How amazing
is that? Just like the shepherds of that
birth day. Let us go and maybe see what
is told to us. It says, they left their worshiping
Talk about Coram Deo. If you know your church history,
in the face of God, Coram Deo. We live in the face of God. He
sees all things. But how much more in the face of God can you
be when you're standing in the end in a trough looking at God
Himself? How amazing was it that this
man, just like Nicodemus, just like the Pharisees and the Jews
of the temple in John 2, and they're asking, what sign do
you bring? And they're confessing, we know that you are from God.
They were wrong! He is God! The woman saying,
I know that Messiah, the God of heaven, Emmanuel,
He'll teach us. And Jesus says, the one of whom
you speak I am He. And then they believed and salvation
came to Samaria. And now salvation is about to
come again to Galilee to a noble man who seeks after Christ for
the wrong purpose, for the wrong reason. Just like all of us who
may be here today for the wrong motivation, for the wrong reason. But beloved, by the grace and
the mercy of Christ, when we hear this Word, we can be not
just convicted, but cleansed of those things. We can be transformed
in those things. And we can worship. We do not
have to let the world around us and the life that we live.
Do you think we are in charge of our lives anyway? No. So as God's children, when He
disciplines us and it hurts, It is for our good. And as God's
children, when He blesses us, in contrast to what we think,
the difference between blessing and discipline, it's all blessing.
But when we see it and we say, oh, in the good times, the Lord
is blessing us, it is for our good. And sometimes He blesses
us abundantly over here with health and wealth and relational
joy and everything, just so that when the hammer drops, we're
stronger. We recognize just what it is.
We got to meet with Brother Jim this past Thursday, Friday. I can't remember what day it
is. What day is it today? Sunday. And I've never... I'm not going
to give it away because I want him to share it with you, but
I've never heard a testimony as glorious and as beautiful
and as God-focused as I heard out of his mouth this week about
the chip of ice that was in his mouth. And if you know Jim, he's
a poet. And I thought to myself, what
great mercy and blessing for God to permit him to suffer in
this way that he might rejoice and exult in the Lord Jesus over
an ice chip. Here I am, not liking the drink
that I drank because it's flat, focused on what I might want
to eat or not even thinking about these things. What a glorious
gift it is when we suffer as God's children. This man sought Jesus out. He
wanted one thing, but Christ had an alternative plan, a plan
that was better for him. This son who was at the point
of death, he wanted Jesus to come down to Capernaum. He pleads
with Jesus. He says, come down and heal my
son. This shows an unbelief in the
power of Jesus. Why? Because he limited the power
of Christ to proximity. He limited. Some of you say,
oh, if I could have just been alive during the ministry of
Jesus. You are! And Jesus, out of His own mouth,
says that when I go, greater things than these you shall witness. The problem is, we look at the
Scripture, though it is the story of Christ, though it is the news
that is good that God has given us, we forget that it is intimacy
face to face with Christ. The Living Word is the reason
John uses that. And he goes from the beginning
in the Pentateuch to Moses and he says, In the beginning let
there be light. This is Jesus, the light of the
life of men. And the darkness shall not overcome
it. Jesus tells Nicodemus, this is
the judgment, the light has entered into the world, but man and man
loves darkness rather than the light because their works are
evil. The light of God is given through the Word of God who is
Jesus Christ. And though unregenerate people
hear the stories contained within, As the Lord wishes and when He
blows where He wills, the story that just flies off the pages
as interesting becomes divine and supernatural, bringing to
life a dead man, bringing to life a dead woman, bringing to
life a child who seemingly is not paying attention this very
moment. For the power of God to separate an army from Israel
and to make the sea stand up on its end, and to bring people
back from the dead, to speak in the entirety of the cosmos,
leaps into being, is the original cause of all things, can supernaturally
cause you to hear the story of the good news of the finished
work of Jesus Christ, and be made alive forever and ever to
the praise of His glorious grace. This is how we are intimate with
Jesus Christ. and nothing can separate us from
it. The old joke that we learned
in seminary, you know, professors are asked a question and for
those in the class that are always being smart, what's the answer?
We don't know the answer and so somebody just goes, Jesus? Of course Jesus is not the answer
to the question because the question had to be something like, you
know, who wrote the book on such and such in the 1750s? Jesus? That's the old fun answer. Jesus is always the answer. Friends,
Jesus is always the answer. We joke about it, but it really
is. He really is the answer. How shall I live today through
the power of Christ? How shall I find Truth to the
power of Christ. How shall I know where I'm to
walk tomorrow? Through the power of Christ.
How am I supposed to be confident in what I'm doing as a parent,
as a husband, as a wife, as a father, as a mother, as a child, as a
friend through Jesus Christ? What am I to do with this frailty
of my flesh? Trust in Jesus Christ. How am
I to see the face of Christ? To look at the Word of God. But no, we want other things.
You know what we want? We want other things. We want
miracles to happen. We want to walk out to the mailbox
and it be overflowing with gold. How am I going to pay this bill
today? I don't know. Let's go out in the mailbox. In the name of Jesus, more bills! I mean, you know. How am I going
to deal with this pain in my body? I don't know. Let's call
a healer. The Bible doesn't say call a
healer. The Bible says call the elders of the church. By the way, if
you don't call the elders of the church, how are we going
to come? The Bible doesn't tell the church
to inundate the church. The Bible says that the church
should go. We want a miracle. We want to
see a cloud come through the sky. We want to see fire shoot through
the walls. I mean, y'all would be pretty impressed if I did
something like that today. I'd say, look at the power of God. Many people claim to have the
gift of healing. Many people claim to have the gift of prophecy.
Many people claim to have all these different things, but yet
they're doing nothing with it except personally gaining from
it. Not one example in the entirety of the world right now and over
the last thousand years, no one has ever done anything to glorify
God through these manifestations of power. For if God gave me
the gift of healing, I would not be standing here today. I
would forsake the call to shepherd and let someone else do it, and
I would stand at the door of every hospital. I would put medical
science out of business. There would be no more cancer.
There would be no more emergency rooms. There'd be reading rooms
in the place of hospitals, because you know you like to go and read
the magazines. So you just keep showing up and do that. And I'd
stand at the door, and when you drove up, I'd hit you in the
forehead when you drove up, and you'd just leave, or you could
just come on in and hang out for a spell. Maybe we could have
a snack. No one's ever done that. No, people only heal when it's
convenient. Oh, what was the name again? Ogata? Wait a minute,
you mispronounced that. What? Oh, okay. Come on up. They just wanted Jesus because
of what He could give them. He pleaded with Jesus to do something,
and it showed in unbelief in the power of Jesus. He wants
the proximity. That's the point of all this.
The proximity of Jesus. He didn't believe that Jesus
was God. He believed that Jesus was a
good healer, and if Jesus could just get to him, Like if we could
just be where Jesus, we are where Jesus is. When two or more of
us are gathered together, He is with us. The Spirit of God
indwells us. God put His Spirit in us, so
the fullness of God dwells within us. Now I'm not saying that in
a comparable way that we are divine, no. But God put His Spirit.
God doesn't put a piece of Himself in His people. God doesn't dwell
in part with His people. God doesn't put His pinky toe
in the church service here and His earlobe in the other church
service. God doesn't have those things. God is Spirit and God
is omnipresent. God is with us in all of His
fullness. And if we want to see the glory of God in all of His
fullness, we continue to look at the pages of Scripture and through
it divinely and supernaturally we see Christ. And this man pleaded, because
you know he didn't believe that Jesus was God. We know he didn't
believe that Jesus could do anything if Jesus didn't come and put
His hands on this man. And it says on this man's son, before
he was at the point of death, this man was pleading with Jesus,
do something, please, before the boy dies. He's close to dying. Please do something now. So this man didn't even believe
that Jesus had the power over death. He didn't believe that
Jesus had the power to do anything unless Jesus did something personally
to affect the temporal, to affect the circumstances right here.
Aren't we that way sometimes? And it may not be about healing.
It may be something else. It may be our own inner thoughts.
It may be our own depression. It may be our own fears. It may
be something that's going on that we wish was different in
our life and we just wish that Jesus would come in and straighten
it all out and put His hands upon it. And beloved, Jesus has
put His hands upon it when He gave us eternal life. We have
authority by the power of Christ to live at peace as we invest
our lives in the Word of God and with the people of God. We
have the ability and the authority in the name of Christ to continually
walk by faith, not putting our eyes on the temporal things that
upset us, but by trusting that even though these things may
not pass us, it is for our good and for the sake of the name
of God. And so we rejoice in them. This man, having heard
that Jesus was in town, had a type of faith on this testimony. But
as we saw in Sychar, the testimony of individuals is not sufficient
for salvation, is it? It must be the words of Christ.
It must be the word of God. So if our testimony is that God
healed my son, that's not going to cause someone to believe in
Jesus. Well, that's ridiculous. No, because that's what Jesus
says to him. He's almost like saying, I believe in you Jesus,
so come touch my son, please come to Capernaum. I know you're
busy, but please if you don't come, he will die and it will
be too late. And Jesus says to him, notice
it's not even comfort. Jesus doesn't go, oh sir, you
have little faith, just believe in me. Just believe what I can
do. He doesn't inquire about this
man's faith. Jesus doesn't need to look and
talk with this man to see where he is. He doesn't need to test
this man through dialogue. He knows the intricacies of his
heart. He knows every thought of his
mind. He knows the fullness of the motivation through which
this man is pursuing Christ. And Jesus says in verse 48, Unless
you see signs and wonders, you will not believe. That's not
a statement of how you believe. That is a rebuke. and why you
don't believe. And the you there is plural in
the syntax, in the grammar. You, speaking of the Jews, unless
you people, unless all of you, you Galileans, unless all of
you see signs and wonders you do not believe, you believe in
what I can do, but you do not believe in Me. You love the bread
that is on the Master's table, but you're not seeing the Master. And while this man has seen great
things, his faith in Jesus is really absent. It's weak. It's
insufficient. He only believes in the signs
and the wonders, the miracles. These are not two separate things.
It's just a way of saying, The same thing. And so therefore
he has no real understanding of Jesus as divine. No understanding
at all of Jesus as God. This man cannot keep his faith
unless he can see Jesus do something. He is not believing that Jesus
can do anything unless he can witness it himself. Jesus says you cannot You will not believe. You think
you've got to see all of these things. This man could not believe
in the words of Jesus, the promises of Jesus, the teachings of Jesus,
the power of Jesus, or the authority of Jesus. This man could not
believe in anything except what he could see. Blessed are those
who believe and do not see. That's why Paul many times over
said that to the world we look foolish. That's why Peter says, what else
does Paul say? He says that if Christ had not
been raised from the dead, we of all people should be pitied.
How foolish we are. Paul tells the Corinthians in
that same sense that God uses the foolish things of the world
to profound the wise. Peter would say in his first
epistle that we don't see Him, but we love Him. And though we
do not see Him now, we love Him with a love and with a joy that
is inexpressible. And the outcome of that joy,
the outcome of that faith is the salvation of our souls. And
though we suffer for a little while, we do so with faith. We do so by faith. And Hebrews,
none of those people in the 11th chapter of Hebrews ever saw face
to face the promise of God. None of them saw the promised
land. None of them saw the end of days. None of them saw the
second coming. None of them saw any of that
stuff. None of them saw the establishment of God's people, but they have
seen Christ face to face. They skipped the temporal, they
skipped the picture, they skipped the preview, they skipped the
trailer and went straight to the source. So we keep our eyes, the Hebrew
writer would say, on Christ, the founder and the perfecter
of our faith. And we do not look to that which
we can see, but we look to that which we cannot see. For faith
in something that we can see is no faith at all. But hope
in Christ who we do not see, hope in God whom we do not see,
that is a hope that cannot be washed away. Because, beloved,
when we look at what we can see and trust in that and find our
joy in that, it is just passing through. And it is only just
a moment before it's all washed away anyway. Whether it be a
season or whether it be the end of our lives, it is washed away.
There is nothing for us to hope in that is temporal. Nothing. Jesus Christ is our only hope.
And this man knew that, but he thought that Jesus was the only
hope for his son to live, and he did not understand. And Jesus
rebukes him and says, you just, you got to see signs or you won't
believe. And all this man wants to do
is see Jesus heal his beloved son. And then verse 49, what
does he say in response to Jesus' rebuke? What does he say there?
He says, Sir, please come down before my child dies. He gets
right to the point. He doesn't argue. He doesn't
say, Hey, you don't know who I am? Do you know I'm an official? Do you know I'm an important
person? You know, my son is the only son I have. Please, don't
let my household die out." I mean, look at the arguments we could
offer. If we went into a hospital, how
entitled we could be because we feel we are somebody else
that we really aren't. And how certain people in government
and certain people in entertainment, why is somebody who entertains
more important than someone who doesn't? Because more people
look at them? I don't think they're special
because everybody knows them. I think what's special is when we have
intimate relationships that nobody knows. And here this man did
not do that. He did not pull out the card.
I'm an official. You need to do this for me. My household
needs this. The government needs this. Herod
needs this. Galilee needs this. Aren't you
a Galilean? Don't you care about your community? Don't you want
to see the future government of your community do something
special and maintain its integrity? Won't you heal my son for the
sake of these people? He didn't do that. He didn't
do that at all. He just says, if you don't come
to my house, my son's going to die. And then it's going to be too
late. That's the attitude that this man has. It's going to be
too late if he dies. There's nothing you can do after
he dies. Please, I plead with you, please come. My son will
die. This man could not believe the
words of Christ. He could not believe it. He could
not believe in anything because he did not know. And he was rebuked
for having no faith except in what he could see. But this man
did not concern even that rebuke, he did not concern himself with
the rebuke, but he humbled himself and he pleaded with Jesus to
heal his son. He prayed to Christ, would you please come heal my
son before he dies. And while the man could not see
Jesus for who he was, and while he was occupied previously with
what he could see, this man knew that Jesus was the only hope
he had for his son to live. And that he would have to accept
whatever answer Jesus gave him. And that whatever Jesus did,
even though He was misapplied in His faith and His understanding,
that only Jesus could do what He needed to be done. And He says, please, do not let
My Son die. And He didn't even argue for
merit or worth. He did it just because He loved
His Son. This man knew that Jesus was
the answer to his fear. Even though he had misplaced
faith. Weak faith or no faith. He knew that Jesus was the answer
to his fear. Do you know that Jesus is the answer to your fear?
The answer to your fears? This man was taught by Jesus
that the answer would not come as he desired, but by the will
of God. This guy had it all played out
when he left Capernaum that day. I'm going to go and I'm going
to find Jesus and I'm going to tell him this and he's going to come down here and he's going
to touch him and everything's going to be good. And Jesus is not going to do what
this man wants. He's not going to respond the
way this man asked Him to respond. He's not going to answer His
prayer in the manner in which that man thinks Jesus had answered
His prayer. Beloved, we need to learn that. Let me break it
down for us a little bit simply. Sometimes we pray in detail how
we want God to do something. And even if we don't, we do it
in the subconsciousness of our mind. As we're praying with our
mouths or with our conscious mind, we think then internally,
this is how God's going to do it. Let me tell you what, He
probably is not going to do it that way. He may answer our prayers,
but it will not be in our way. It will not be in our timing.
And it will not be by our authority. It will be by His will and for
His pleasure and for our good. And sometimes we misunderstand
that. We think, God's not answering
my prayers. He is answering our prayers. He is answering our
prayers. He is giving us joy. He is doing
things on our behalf. He has already done them. This answer is not going to come
the way He wants it, but in the will of God. And this man was representative
of the nobility of Israel, the Romanized Jews. And Jesus had
ministered in Judea and Samaria, now Galilee, proclaiming the
gospel of grace. And when we see right at the
end of that text prior, it says, we know that Jesus is the Savior
of the world. This is the example of that.
Jesus is not just saving Jews. Jesus is not just saving Orthodox
Jews. Jesus is not... He's saving Samaritans. He's
saving Jews. He's saving Hellenists. He's
saving all sorts of people. And He's saving them because
they are the world. Jesus is no respecter of persons,
and neither should we be. And in verse 50, this is where
the power of God is so revealed here. Jesus said to him, Go,
your son will live. I don't know what your Bible
says there, but I pray that it says something that authoritative.
If your Bible says, Go, everything's going to be all right, throw
that thing down. Let me hear it hit the floor. Because that's
not a translation, that's a whacked out paraphrase. The Bible commands,
Jesus commands this man to leave him. He says, go. That's not
a suggestion. It's not just saying, okay, you
can leave now. He's saying, go from me. Go. And then he says
authoritatively, your son will live. Your son will live. And the Bible says there in verse
50, listen, the man believed the word that Jesus spoke to
him and went on his way. What would we do? What do we
do when we hear the Word of God taught? What do we do when we're
engaging and we hear the Scripture? What do we do when Scripture
comes to mind sometimes? You know what we often do when we
hear Jesus speak authoritatively through the Scripture? You know
what we do? We go, yeah, but. And I've been on a kick with
that lately. Stop saying, yes, but. Stop agreeing, then contradiction,
then being contrary to that agreement. We either trust in Christ or
we don't trust in Christ. We either believe in God or we
don't believe in God. We either hold the Bible as the
authority of our lives or we don't. We don't say yes but.
Yes, Lord, is what we should say. That is the answer of faith. Yes, Lord, and then we walk away.
We don't continue to beg for what God has promised, when He's
promised it. Jesus says to this man, go, your
son will live, and He took it at face value, even though just
moments before, He said, there's no way that you can help my son
unless you come down to Capernaum with me and touch his body, and
he will die. He will die, Jesus, if you do
not come. And Jesus rebukes him and says,
Go, your son will live. What kind of faith did this man
exercise for Jesus to answer his prayer? None! You see that? I want you to see that, church.
Jesus does not answer our prayers. God does not answer our prayers
based on the authenticity, or the thickness, or the strictness,
or the soundness of our belief. For Jesus even says you have
the faith of a mustard seed. This man believed that Jesus
could heal his son if he came down there, and then Jesus commanded
him and he just believed Jesus. Do we believe God? Do we believe
God's Word? Do we believe God's Word when
it says if we teach our children the truth of Scripture, that
God in His benevolent mercy will lead them in the right path?
Do we believe the Bible that says when we follow after Christ
and His righteousness, that everything else that we need will be added
to us? Do we believe God when He says
that we should not be anxious for anything? Do not worry about
tomorrow, for tomorrow will take care of itself. Do we believe
Christ, or do we walk around wringing our hands? You know
what we do? We walk around wringing our hands. What shall we do? And that's
one of the reasons we assemble each week, is that we might be
encouraged to not wring our hands in despair, but that we would
hold our hands freely and just walk away, trusting in the Lord. See, in our day... Hey, how's
the boy doing? You the man, Jesus, yeah. Nah. Homeboy had to walk back, get
on a boat, and cross the ocean, cross the sea to get to Capernaum. He had to get back on the boat
and check. And what was happening in his
household at that very moment is that his son was healed like
that. He didn't start feeling better, fever would go down,
wobbled to the bathroom, a little nauseated, a little less nauseated,
color came back in his face, pulse got better, blood pressure
stabilized. He didn't get all that drunk. Fever left him. He was healed. Jesus commands
him to go, and he states powerfully, your son will live. Jesus commanded
it, both. And verse 51, as he was going
down, his servants met him. They were looking for him. Man,
he's going to be so glad. What did they think? They didn't
have a clue what happened. They didn't have a clue what
happened at all. So this man had to give the testimony about
meeting with Jesus, just like the woman from Sychar, just like
Nicodemus giving the testimony of the Jews in John 3. And this
man believed. Why? How come he was an unbeliever
and then a believer? You know what he didn't believe? He didn't believe Jesus was God. And then all of a sudden, all of a sudden, when he went
to this home and they told him the hour, and it says in verse
53, the father knew that that was the hour when Jesus said
to him, your son will live, and he himself believed. Did he believe because of the
sign? No, because he couldn't see it. He believed because of the words
of Christ. He believed because Jesus spoke
into him life. Is Jesus speaking into you life
this day? And look at this, verse 54. And
now, this was the second sign. This was now the second sign
that Jesus did when He had come from Judea to Galilee. And then in
verse 1 of chapter 5, and this, after this, there was a feast
of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem, and that's where
we'll come next week. Do you believe in Jesus Christ
as the Son of God? Do you hold fast to the promises
of His Word? Can you take Him for what He's
teaching us here today? Not looking for miracles, not
looking for signs and wonders, but seeing the miracle of life
through the written Word. Someone made a statement this
weekend. Not to me, but I read it. that many of the charismatic
leaders, this is the statement, have proven that God is still
active and at work in the world today. And before I could even comprehend
what he's trying to say, a hundred people just ripped it apart. You know what proves that God
is active today? That His Word is taught. And God can do more in a solemn
moment hearing the hum of lights and the whisper of the wind outside
through the hearing of His Word than He can do with a million
fiery pillars, and with a billion miraculous healings, and with
the feeding of every hungry man, woman, and child on the face
of the planet. Because after the food is gone, after the smoke
clears, and after the healing leaves and they die anyway, There's
no faith and there's no future. But through the words of Christ,
we have a future that is imperishable and unfading and according to
God and kept in heaven. Who? You, who are being kept
in heaven by the power of God. Do you believe in the gospel
of grace? Let's pray. Father, You have
sent Your Son to live in place of us. to live in obedience
to You, to live and to fulfill the law
of Your holiness. And Your Son lived and then ministered
and proclaimed the mercy and the news that is very good of
His work and of Your work. And then He fulfilled the purpose
for which You created the cosmos and He died on the cross and
He was raised to life. calls us to believe, Father. And Lord, seal us and preserve us in that
faith. I thank you, Lord, for this day,
for this moment, for this very present second that we are contemplating
the majesty and the miracle of life and let us not put our flesh
and intellect in the way to think that it's just a simple textbook. It is Your Word divinely written
and divinely sent through the mouths of fleshly people so that we might see You do the
miracle of rebirth. Father, there is only one Gospel
One Truth, One Savior, One Lord, One Baptism, One Spirit as we
see in Your Word. There is only one faith. And
it is faith in Jesus Christ the Righteous, who is our righteousness,
who satisfies Your wrath against us, who has paid our debt to
You, and in whom we have life, and from whom we gain wisdom,
and by whom we walk by faith. Let us love You deeply, and love
Your Word deeply, and love each other deeply, as we labor with
joy in the midst of a dark and broken world. First, Lord, that
You would save many out of it. And Father, secondly, that You
would sustain us in it. We believe Your Word is true.
We trust in Jesus Christ. And it is in His name that we
pray. Amen. Amen.