Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church
## Pastor Dennis Tuuri

John 4:43-54

Please stand for the reading of God’s word. John 4, beginning at verse 43.

Now after two days he departed, then went into Galilee. For Jesus himself testified that a prophet hath no honor in his own country. 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. So Jesus came again into Cana of Galilee, where he made the water wine.

And 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 and besought him that he would come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. Then said Jesus unto him, except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe. The nobleman saith unto him, Sir, come down or my child die. 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. And as he was 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. And they said unto him, “Yesterday at the seventh hour, the fever left him.” So the father knew that it was at the same hour in the which Jesus said unto him, “Thy son liveth and himself believed and his whole house.” This is again the second miracle that Jesus did when he was come out of Judea into Galilee.

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Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for your spirit. We pray that your spirit would use your word, Lord God, to transform us. Help us to understand this text. Help our children to understand it and help us to be transformed by it to your glory. In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

We’re going to talk again today about two different kinds of belief. The beginning of the children’s outline today is the question, do you believe in Jesus? And what does it mean?

Throughout the Gospel of John, as in other portions of scripture, we see this term belief used in different ways. We see it used a couple of different ways here in the context of the nobleman. His belief moves and is transformed, as it were, grows and he progresses. And it seems to me that the way the text is laid out, it wants us to remember what happened in Jerusalem at the feast.

The Galileans were there also and that is brought up here and I think it wants us to contrast the faith of the nobleman and the faith of the Galileans and those who were in Jerusalem and saw the miracles of Christ and believe because of the miracles. So we’ll be talking about that. It’s important to think about these things.

Remember the whole gospel—the gospels occur in the context of really we could say the church, right? I mean people in Jerusalem, people in Galilee, people that Jesus is interacting with for the most part in the gospel are all church-going folks. They’re like you and I. And so texts like this remind us that we have to think through what is our belief. Is it more like the Galileans or the men in Jerusalem or is it more like the faith that the nobleman comes to have him and his whole household?

In this text, another thing we want to do today is in the providence of God—today is that Sunday each year there’s one Sunday chosen and today is the Sunday that men have chosen to celebrate or maybe engage in what’s called the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church.

So again on the children’s outline: ID is International, D is Day of Prayer. International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church. And every year several organizations have combined for several years now to say this is the day that we think the churches ought to especially mark out and the prayer for that day will focus upon persecuted Christians around the world.

So today our intercessory prayer—well the long prayer, the great prayer—will be different. I will do—we will use as a bidding prayer. I’ll mention various things going on in various countries and we’ll pray for people around the world, people who are hurting. And this text seems like, by the providence of God—it wasn’t chosen for this purpose—but they kind of converge today. And in this text we have, you know, a father beseeching Jesus, and he consistently—not more than once, he goes to him several times for the sake of his beloved son.

His son—who is referred to in the text as almost a term of endearment—is used for the son at one point, my little boy. And so we have properly in this text an example of our need to go to Jesus, to go to the father in heaven and pray for other members of the body of Christ throughout the world who are near unto death, are dying for the faith, are being persecuted for the faith. And so we will do that today in the context. We’ll draw some application from this text as a prelude to our prayer of intercession.

Now, of course, what the people that organize IDOP would like is that we not do this just today and that in our homes, in families, in our church, we remember the persecuted church throughout the year.

I provided a couple of handouts that are not out yet. I’m going to bring them out in the context of the meal on the handout table downstairs for our children. One is actually produced by the Voice of the Martyrs. It’s just a simple handout on prayer to action. This is for kids to read as an encouragement to them to pray for the persecuted church throughout the year.

And another handout I brought today is one that I’ve brought this sort of thing before. This is a magazine I get called the Banner of Sovereign Grace Truth. And they always have a children’s page in this. And I had one out last month—the children’s page. And this particular children’s page is entitled “Fear Not.”

And there’s a crossword puzzle on the back with all these verses the children are supposed to look up and put into the crossword puzzle, all along this same theme of not to be fearful. I think they put it out because of the incidents of the last two months in our world, in our country—September 11th events and the following events and anthrax now. And so it’s good for our children to remember to fear not.

And we pray that these persecuted Christians around the world also will fear not.

We have a text today that talks about this young boy near to death, have a fever, doing very poorly. And of course children get very fearful. And so we want to pray that our children not be fearful in those situations. Or rather, that their fear drives them to trust and further belief in the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s what happens to the nobleman and not just to the nobleman—to the boy that was near death as well.

His whole household comes to see that their fear has been given by God to transform them and cause them to have a desperation that exercises true faith—not in the miracle, the visible sign, but rather in the word of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And I’ve laid out the text on your outline in such a way as to sort of accent that.

Let me mention just briefly before we look at the text that this is the end point of this first major section of the gospel. And there’s a very obvious evidence of that—at the last verse, it relates us back to Cana of Galilee. Chapters 2 through 4 form an inclusion—they include Cana, and then Cana referenced here again forms an inclusion that sort of tells us this is one big section of scripture here, and there’s a movement to it. And it’s maybe useful for you to meditate on that movement. There’s lots of things we could say about it. We may say more in the weeks to come, but I mean, for instance, you know, we went from a marriage—a wedding feast in Cana—and then we went to Nicodemus and a consideration of being born again, children. And now we’ve got the Samaritan woman being married to Christ, the well scene, etc. We’ve talked about that. And here we have a child mentioned again.

So we have this theme of marriage and children, marriage and children—the restoration of all things through our savior.

Another thing we can think about is that there’s this nobleman. A nobleman means a member of the king’s staff, a man of power, a man of influence in terms of the civil state. And that might cause us to remember that earlier in this section we had Nicodemus, a man of influence, the teacher in Israel.

So we have both the prophetic as well as the kingly aspects of the nation of Israel represented in these two men, and Jesus’s interaction with them, of course, declaring himself to be the great prophet and the great king, as we’ll see in this text.

So there’s lots of movements here that we could talk about.

Additionally, this text also serves as a transition text to chapter 5, and some commentators think—the commentary for instance—actually lumps it in the next section as opposed to the section there. And that’s okay. It’s sort of like a chain, you know. So you got this chain link—Cana to Cana—and then you got this next chain and it begins sort of with the same text that ties it back to Cana that also ties it forward. Because now we’re going to have a miracle of healing in this text, and we’re going to have a miracle of healing in chapter 5. And so there’s a transition by using two specific miracles of healing.

And Jesus is going to demonstrate—if we look at this healing and then the next healing—we’ll see that they sort of be taken together as evidence that Jesus is the Lord for life and judgment. And we’ll talk more about that as we get into chapter 5.

So there’s these various ways that God provides this gospel to us in a particular form to cause us to meditate on it. Again, we’re talking about the spiritual disciplines of the Christian life as part of our Wednesday night studies. And this Wednesday night, by the way, we’re just going to have a discussion amongst those that come to talk about how we’re doing on the spiritual disciplines, what are things that get in our way, etc.

Well, one of the spiritual disciplines we’ve been considering is meditation and memorization—two different ones. And meditation—see, on the structure of this text—helps us to understand the great value and the different perspectives that it brings to us in terms of understanding the work of our savior.

So there’s these various things we can meditate on in terms of the structure, the overarching structure that is. But now we want to look at the specific story itself and deal with that, and I’ve given on your outline first of all. I’ve just taken the verses and arranged them in a way to help you sort of see a couple of things. And what I’ve done is the first of all—there’s, I think, you could see it as two little sections.

The first section of verses 43, 44, and 45 speak about his movement to Galilee. You know, Galilee is up in the north, Judea is the region in the south. There are cities up there in Galilee—Cana and Capernaum are mentioned. Nazareth, Jesus’s hometown, is up there in Galilee. Down in the south, this area of Judea, you have Jerusalem where Jesus had come from. So this first section is a little travel narrative that talks about his movement from south to north.

But it’s a couple of verses that have caused scholars, you know, untold thousands of hours of meditation and study trying to figure out what it means. Why? Well, you see, it says, “Now, after the two days, he departed from there”—down there where he’d been in Samaria. Remember, he was going from Jerusalem north. He went through Samaria. So, after the two days he spent in Samaria, he goes, departs from there and went to Galilee.

“For Jesus himself testified that a prophet has no honor in his own country.”

Well, that—see, it doesn’t make sense at first glance why that verse is inserted. What does it mean? I mean, we know what it means. We know that when you grow up in a family, for instance, that people, you know, can be naturally tempted to not think much of you, not think as highly of you as they ought. We know that if we saw Johnny, you know, hit Suzie with a stick when he was three and now was a preacher, we remember what he was like. We remember the difficulties in his life. We knew him real well if we were part of his family.

And so a prophet’s without honor in his own country and his own family. That’s one reason for it. We know more about him.

Another reason is envy. You know, the great story of the prophet without honor in his hometown is of course Joseph. And Joseph had this dream and revelation from God. And when he tells it to his brothers, they want to kill him and they end up selling him into slavery, etc. You know the story. But remember that the motivation there is envy.

Joseph has something, some gifts or abilities that they don’t have. And envy says, “You have what I can’t have. Therefore, I want to take it away from you. You’ve got that nice new car. I can’t afford a nice new car. Hope you get in a wreck.” Or, “I’ll take my key and scratch up your car.” That’s envy. Or I lose the cheerleader contest, so I throw acid in the face of the winner. This has happened. These are real events.

People—one of the great motivations of human sinfulness is envy, and it’s what drove essentially the Pharisees to kill Jesus. They were envious of him. It tells that over and over again in the gospels and Acts.

So envy is another reason. And we know that this is what happened to Joseph. We know that David’s brothers didn’t think real highly of him. They kind of made fun of him when he wanted to go off and deal with Goliath. We know that Paul, you know, was known by his countrymen and they sort of despised him as a result when he became a Christian. We know that Jesus himself—of course, his own brothers and family, for a period of time, you know, he’s without honor to them.

And so we know what the phrase means and we know it is real and we know it’s an important proverb for us to keep in mind. We know it’s going to be—we’re going to be tempted in this way and that we should avoid it.

But why is it here? I mean, he’s going back to his home country and then it says he goes up there because the prophet has no honor in his home country.

Well, some people said, “Well, actually, his home country is Judea. So, he’s leaving Judea because he didn’t have any honor there.” And some people say, well, he’s going to Galilee’s home country. Because remember, when he left the ministry of John the Baptist north in Judea, they heard that he was baptizing a lot of folks, and so he went away. His hour wasn’t come yet. So, he seeks a degree of obscurity. And so, he goes up to Galilee where he won’t be received that well.

Some people said, “Well, this is to explain why he doesn’t end up at Nazareth. Instead, he goes to Cana.”

I’m not sure why it’s here. But I think that if you look at the text the way I’ve laid it out for you here—if we look at 43, 44, and 45 as a unit—we read that in 45: “So when he came to Galilee, the Galileans received him, having seen all the things he did in Jerusalem at the feast, for they also had gone to the feast.”

So we’ve got: he’s going to go to Galilee, prophet without honor in his home country, and the Galileans have received him when he goes there. And then the next verse is going to talk about Cana. So there’s a little section here on Galilee, and I think it’s something very important that’s told us here in understanding properly this story.

And what’s important here is that the Galileans are identified with the people of Jerusalem at the feast.

Now, you may not remember this, but in chapter 2, we read about these folks. We read about these folks in John chapter 2, verses 23, 24, and 25.

“Now, when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover in the feast day, many believed in his name when they saw the miracle which he did. But Jesus did not commit himself unto them because he knew all men and needed not that anyone should testify of man for he knew what was in man.”

Remember when we talked about these verses, we said this does not mean that these people became regenerate and were committed disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ. There’s a common theme that the Gospel of John plays out, and that is that people see these miracles and they love them and they like Jesus for the miracles and they want the bread and the circuses. They want whatever he’ll give them. They want to be dazzled and entertained, but they really don’t want to submit to Messiah.

And some people come to church for that reason. They want various things out of church. They want to be entertained by the sermon. They want their philosophical minds to be engaged by, you know, a preacher, or they want to see neat things happen. They go to a charismatic church. They want to see signs and wonders and stuff. People like that.

But Jesus reminds us here that’s how people are like in their fallen state.

So, I think what this text is doing with this prophet without honor stuff is saying that up in Galilee—it’ll be like in Jerusalem. We’ll have a group of people who receive him, as the Galileans did. But their reception of him is not really the sort of faith that is saving faith or that is mature faith. That’s going to be evidenced by the nobleman. And that won’t come about by seeing miracles. That’ll come about by the nobleman believing the word of Jesus as opposed to seeing the miracles of Jesus.

So I think that’s why that text is there, and that’s why I’ve kind of blocked it off that way for you—to see it as a unit, to see that the brackets for that middle statement is this Galilean reception and him going there, which ties the Galilean reception back to the events at the feast in Jerusalem. And they’re just like the people in Jerusalem.

So Jesus then goes to Cana in Galilee. And Cana is—we’re going to hear here about Capernaum. Capernaum is another city. These are two cities in Galilee about 20 miles apart or so. Galilee is up in the northern area, and these cities of Cana and Capernaum are there about 20 miles apart.

So did the Galileans believe in Jesus? Well, it depends on your answer to our first question of the children’s outline. What does it mean? Yeah, they received him. They had a belief in him. They believe something about him.

I had a Jehovah’s Witness at my door yesterday, and you know, he was talking about how, well, we believe in the Lord, you know, and we believe in Jesus Christ. You know, the point is, well, you may say you believe something about him, but when you believe in a created being named Jesus, you’re not really believing in the Jesus of the scriptures.

So, these people, the Galileans, have a degree of reception or belief, but it’s not what we would want to see demonstrated in the life of our families and our church. That’s going to be demonstrated by the noblemen here.

Okay. So, Jesus then moves on to the city of Cana. And this next section I have together as a section. I’ve laid it out in a way that I think will help you to see what I think, at least, is the center part of this text and what’s the important element of it, particularly since we’ve been set up by this Galilean reception tied to the miracles that they saw.

And this theme will go on, of course, in chapters five and six, etc. In chapter five, he’s going to heal a lame man. And I don’t even think the lame man comes to a true belief in Jesus Christ. He’s going to feed the 5,000, but they’re going to not want to follow him. They just want the bread. They want the miracles, you know. And so, this is a common theme that runs throughout this.

And so, the nobleman is in contrast to the rest of the Galileans that are mentioned here.

And I think the center part of this text is the nobleman coming to believe in Jesus and believing in his word as opposed to believing in the sight of miracles. Okay.

So, verse 46 then begins this section. “Jesus came again to Cana of Galilee where he had made the water wine.”

If you look down at the last verse, verse 54: “This again is the second sign Jesus did when he had come out of Judea into Galilee.”

So we have an inclusion here. This clearly marks this text together. He was in Cana where he turned the water into wine. And now he does the second miracle of some type here at the end in Cana.

People have talked about this second miracle stuff too, because we know that miracles were done in Jerusalem at the feast. That’s what those people in Jerusalem and Galilee were responding to. So we know other miracles. So why does it say this is the second one?

Well, maybe it’s the second in Galilee. But I think the important thing for us—remember, we talked about the numbering of the days in John chapter 1 and to begin to set out this sequence of days for us, so that we think in terms of a week, seven days being played out, a new creation. Well, I think this text, among other things, tells us to keep track of the miracles in the Gospel of John.

You heard the first one. Now I’ve just told you the second one that I want—that I’m recording in this go. That’s what I want you to keep track of. And if we kept track of them, when we will, over the course of this gospel, we’d see that there are seven, yay, eight miracles. And we’ll get to that. I’ll show you some diagrams later on.

There are seven miracles that Jesus performs. And then there’s Jesus’s resurrection at the end. And if we include Jesus’s resurrection, we have a sequence of eight miracles—moving from water into wine at Cana to the great event that accomplishes that transformation and glorification of human life. That’s pictured by that event, the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The second miracle is this healing of the mostly dead son. And the seventh miracle will be the resurrection of a stinking dead man, Lazarus, who has been dead so long he smells. Okay, so we go from nearly dead to the resurrection of Lazarus, who was not only totally dead, but then dead for several days. And Jesus deliberately wants him in the grave for several days, as we’ll see when we get there.

So there’s this correspondence among the miracles. There’s a movement—water into wine, to the great event that creates the new creation, the resurrection of Christ, raising of a mostly dead son to now the resurrection of Lazarus who was totally dead. And so the numbering of these miracles—God wants us to think of what miracles he records for us in this gospel and again to meditate upon them and meditate upon the correspondences of them one way or the other.

We’ll see, for instance, that the third miracle is the lame man in John 5. And the sixth miracle is the healing of a blind man. So the lame and the blind are restored in positions three and six of an outline and they correlate.

And we’ll see that, I believe at least, the man in John chapter 5 doesn’t evidence true belief. He’s like these Galileans, Jerusalem men in Jerusalem. But the blind man—he will worship Jesus. He’ll fall down and worship him as a result of his healing.

So a movement in the gospel—a progression, a beautification, as it were—a movement, a progressive upward movement in terms of the description of this new creation.

Okay. And then the next segment I put in there—the last half of verse 46—”There was a certain nobleman whose son was sick at Capernaum.”

So the problem is presented at first of a nobleman with a son who is sick. No one’s okay, but the son’s sick. And at the end of this, we read that not only did he himself believe, but his whole household believed. So the man and his son, and in fact, his whole household are moved to believe.

Something happens to the man. He comes desiring his son. He’s got a problem with his son. Just his son. But by the end of the text, he’s been moved to understand that his problem was with his entire family. His whole family was on the edge of eternal death. And so by the end of the text, he’s moved from just a discussion of his son to now his whole household comes to believe.

Then in verse 47: “When he heard that Jesus had come out of Judea into Galilee, he went to him and implored him to come down and heal his son for he was at the point of death.”

So here, see, the representation is he wants his son to be healed. But by the end of this text—balancing that, you know, before his household is stated as coming to believe—he himself has come to believe. He, being the head of his household, understands by the end of this text that he had a greater need than his son’s physical death. He had the eternal death of himself and his family that had to be coped with. And so he becomes a very central figure in the context of what happens here.

And then verse 48: “Jesus said to him, ‘Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will by no means believe.’”

Okay, so this is again, you know, Jesus always does stuff that we don’t expect. This is certainly a story about compassion and a father pitying his children—that we just sang about in the Psalms—and we’ll talk about that. But you know, Jesus doesn’t seem very compassionate here, does he? Sort of rebukes the man.

There’s at least a mild reproof or rebuke here, because Jesus is far more concerned about eternal destinies and what is—what is—the origins of death and illness in the context of the world than he is about simply bringing this kid back to life.

And the question is: what are we more concerned about? What would we rather see happen? You know, well, of course, we’re going to say we’d rather see a man converted. But you know, all too often in our Adamic nature, we’re like those Galileans in Jerusalem. What we really want is miracles. We want neat stuff to happen. We want to win the lottery. We want to be raised back to health immediately, whatever it is.

But Jesus doesn’t let it be like that. He challenges the man. As one commentator puts it, Jesus stands between the father and his son. Now, he doesn’t come right to the rescue here. Instead, he begins to drive home what the nature of true belief is.

Now, in Jesus—Jesus definitely addresses the nobleman. It says Jesus said to him, but he uses the plural, the “you” there, plural. “Unless you all—unless you all people—see signs and wonders, you will by no means believe.”

So he’s addressing the wider context. He’s addressing these Galileans who just see signs and wonders and as a result receive him or believe him, as the people in Jerusalem did. So he’s lumping this man in with those people. You see, apart from the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, we’re all that way. That’s what we all want. We all want to be dazzled and entertained and have our needs met, you know. And that’s what we’re trying—that’s what Jesus is rebuking here.

The nobleman responds. And by the way, I should mention—the way I’ve sketched out the outline here—indeed, he will receive a miracle, right? I mean, Jesus does miraculously heal his son from a distance. And that’s told to us, you know. And the miraculous nature of that I put in a balancing position on your outline: “When he went his way and as he was now going down, his servants, they met him and told him, ‘Your son lives.’”

So, and then I’m sorry, verse 53: “His father knew that it was at the same hour in which Jesus had told him, ‘Your son lives.’”

So, there is a miracle, and the demonstration of that miracle, you know—Jesus does counter that. And so, there is a miracle that’s going to happen. But first, Jesus needs to have something else occur in this man’s life.

Well, so the nobleman hears the reproof, and he is now comes to a point of desperation.

“The nobleman said to him, ‘Sir’—calling him Lord, that’s good. ‘Come down before my child dies.’”

This is a command, an imperative given by the nobleman to Jesus. And you know, we can—we can, you know, sort of say, well, what Jesus does in the next verse is he gives him an imperative. So the nobleman says, “Come down and heal my son.” And Jesus says, “Go.” He commands the nobleman, “Go, your son lives.” So Jesus answers his imperative with another imperative, restoring the proper order of this.

But I think that the imperative used by the man is an indication of the tremendous desperation that he has come to recognize. He knows that his son is going to die. He knows that this is the man who must heal him, the only one that can heal him. And he comes to an understanding of his great desperation in the middle of this text.

Jesus then tells him, “Go your way. Your son lives.”

And then I—what I see is the center part of this narrative, verse in the last half of verse 50.

“So the man believed the word that Jesus said, said to him or spoke to him.”

So we have the belief in miracles and signs and wonders on one hand as opposed to a belief in the word of God. So on one hand, Jesus isn’t just going to be a miracle worker. On the other hand, his word does produce miracles. He does miraculously heal this boy. And so the picture to us is that yes, the deepest needs that we feel in our moments of desperation, you know, the great needs that come across our lives are ones that the Savior can and will meet. But he will only meet them in the context of a relationship with him that takes him at his word—that believes in his spoken word as opposed to these miraculous signs and wonders.

So, this nobleman is brought to a comprehensive belief in the Lord Jesus Christ. Even here, it grows as the text goes on, but this is the pivot point. The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him.

Now, there’s lots of people that want things. I suppose some of you heard—I know a few of you did. You sent me emails—that there was a great rally to be held in New Delhi today at which supposedly between half a million and 1 million of the Dalits—uh, people in the Hindu sect, you know. Hinduism is a religion in India that most people believe in. Hinduism has a cast system, and there’s a group at the bottom called the untouchables.

Now they call themselves the Dalits, which means the oppressed. And they’re organizing politically now. They’re tired of—they’re not going for that anymore. The modern media being what it is and this—that isn’t the way the world it should be. So the question is: what are they going to do? And there was a big rally held today at which, supposedly, I had heard originally that Hinduism, Buddhism and Christianity would be presented to a million people meeting in New Delhi.

And so there’s movement going on which we should be grateful to God for. But you know, I read the press accounts this morning, and only about 6,000 showed up. I think the police made them change the venue. And then there’s reports that they prevented a lot of the untouchables from reaching there. So only 6,000 showed up. And what it was—a mass conversion to Buddhism.

See, they’re still at the point of saying that their needs are more important than submission to the Lord of Lords and to his word. They want political power. They want not to be oppressed. But they’re not in enough state of desperation to cry out to Jesus for deliverance. They instead go with Buddha.

And so they’re kind of, you know, with the Galileans and people of Jerusalem.

Now, we shouldn’t lose heart at that. Over the next six months, leading up to elections I believe in May, they’re going to be monthly meetings of these mass conversions, and Christian message is being proclaimed at these meetings. And so it’s a tremendous time of opportunity for the gospel in India. You know, there’s—I think—well, who knows? I’ve read accounts between 150 and 300 million Dalits in India. So at least 150 million who are now—most of them, I guess, represented by their leaders—are thinking through, “Yeah, this isn’t working out.” Good.

So, tremendous state of opportunity, and we should be praying for India. But see, it’s like this text says: they’ve got to come to belief in the word. Then indeed, God moves. Jesus moves to meet the man’s need.

“Went his way. And as he was now going down, his servants met him and told him, saying, ‘Your son lives.’”

So, their word is an echoing of Jesus’s word. He says, “Go your way. Your son lives.” His servants meet him and say, “Your son lives.”

“Then he inquired of them the hour when he got better, and they said to him, him yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him.”

“So the father knew that it was at the same hour in which Jesus said to him, ‘Your son lives,’ and he himself believed and his whole household.”

So his belief in the word of Christ grows and matures—correctly interpreting the providential events in his family’s life according to the word of the savior. So it’s not wrong to look at God’s actions in the world—miraculous or non-miraculous—and interpret them and to see our faith grow. There’s nothing wrong with our faith growing and maturing as a result of what God does in the context of deliverances. And in fact, it’s a very good thing to do. It’s an important thing, you know, to remember the prayer requests that God has granted to you, to remember his providential acts. It’s a way to increase faith both in ourselves and those under our covenantal authority, our households.

But the core is a belief in the word of the savior, not a belief in the external signs and wonders and miracles.

“This is again the second sign which Jesus did.”

And I—and I mentioned that this is—this is, by the way, the beginning point of this whole household belief that will characterize the New Testament. In the Book of Acts, chapter 10, chapter 11, chapter 16, chapter 18—a couple places in 16—we have whole households come to the faith. And here is the origins of that wondrous thing that God does in these wonderful blessings of the New Testament where whole households are brought into the faith as a matter of course, not a matter of, you know, this is outside of the norm, but it seems like it’s kind of the norm.

And so the New Testament blessing period is given to us here.

So did the nobleman believe Jesus before or after he saw a miracle? Well, his saving faith—we would say his belief in the word of Jesus—is before he sees the miracle, right? And that’s the way it is. This text is not given us to cause us to desire to want miracles in our lives. You know, that’s exactly the wrong thing to take away from the text.

Some people do that, though. They read these accounts of miracle. “That’s what I want today. I want a miraculous healing. I want this. I want that.” When the whole point of the text is that those things came at a particular point in redemptive history as signs of who Jesus was. They were certainly wonders. They’re signs of the coming of Messiah. But the point is that’s not what you want. What you want is belief in Jesus’s word.

And that word then moves to bring about the answers to all the difficulties that we have in our life.

Martin Luther said of this text: “Although the Lord performed miracles and signs to make himself known, to lead people to faith in him—important phrase: to lead people to faith in him—the underlying purpose was to focus their attention on the word rather than on the signs which served merely to attest the truth of his testimony. Faith must rest on the word of God.”

You know, this text, as I understand the Galilee in reference to Jerusalem, puts, you know, a negative cast on people that want to see signs and wonders. Wonders.

Now, the man didn’t want to see signs and wonders ultimately. He wanted his desperate need met. And the Lord Jesus Christ certainly does that. But the whole point of the text, I think, is to cause a focus on the word of Jesus and a belief in that as opposed to a desire for extraordinary signs and miracles.

1 Corinthians 1:22 says: “The Jews seek signs, and Greeks seek wisdom. But we preach Christ crucified, an offense to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks. But for those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.”

So many today want demonstrations, want miracles, falsely believing that if we have enough miracles, if there’d only have been a couple of miracles in New Delhi this morning, maybe then people would have not gone to Buddhism but to Christianity.

And this simply is not true. This is simply not true. And Jesus goes out of his way to tell us it’s not true.

In Luke 16:29, in response to the man who wanted somebody raised from the dead sent to his brothers—he’s in hell suffering—Jesus told him, “They have Moses and the prophets. Let them hear them.”

To this, the rich man objected, saying, “If one went unto them from the dead, they’ll repent.” Luke 16:30.

The crushing reply of our savior was: “If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.”

Miracles support the affirmation that Christ is the word of God. They must never replace that affirmation—the centrality of our belief, which is demonstrated in the nobleman’s belief here. The sign points to something or someone beyond itself. The sign is a revelatory event.

A sign-based faith is shallow because it never comes to rest in a person. It comes to rest instead in miraculous events. It’s constantly dependent, that kind of faith, upon external experiential evidence as opposed to the word of the savior.

All right, let’s draw four brief comments from the text.

First of all, this is certainly a story of compassion and prayer. We don’t want to miss that. It’s not the central aspect from one perspective, and I guess in a way, from another perspective, it is.

We just sang Psalm 103 that talked about how God pities us as a father pities his children. The compassion of a father for his child is something that’s affirmed as a good thing in the Psalms. It really comes to us because the great father in heaven and the love and concern he has for his beloved. And so it’s the proper thing to see in the image of God. We have a pity for our children.

And yet even this is not untouched by the fall. Men are frequently stony-hearted toward their children. And sometimes men will—even if asked for a fish—will give them a stone. Our savior wasn’t saying that never happens. But he’s saying that man in his redeemed state, man in his original creation in the image of God, would never do that. But we know that pagan men do. We know that abuse really does occur in the context of homes in our country and around the world.

We know that in some countries it’s actually systematized abuse, such as the cast system in India, where people are born into a particular family and their parents train them that’s who they’re to be. They oppress them.

So, so we don’t want to miss the fact here that in the context of the church, we should have men who are exhorted on a regular basis to have compassion for their children and to plead the Lord Jesus Christ repeatedly for the well-being of their children.

And I would just ask all the men—and actually the wives as well, the mothers, you know—how many times this last week did you go to Jesus for your sick child? “Well, my child wasn’t sick this last week.” Yes, he was. And you know he was. You know that he struggles with sin just as you do. You know that sin is a blight on his nature. It’s a dis—it’s a blight on the reputation of Christ. You know that it interferes with his fulfillment and joy that he should find in the context of his calling as a Christian.

How many times have you besought the Savior this last week for your children?

He had this prayer service three or four weeks ago for our fathers. I think Jeff mentioned that he actually has took that liturgy home, reads through it in family worship on occasion. It’s a reminder to himself. You see, we reflected in the liturgy what the word of God says who we are as Christian householders. And we can either walk in accordance with what that mirror of the scriptures tells us who we are, or we can walk away as idiots, fools, and forget who we are in Christ and never pray for our children.

What do you do today? The mirror has been held up. This nobleman is a picture of a good church-going guy. That’s who you are. And you should have a tremendous degree of compassion for your children that leads you on a regular basis to beseech the savior for well-being and for his spiritual well-being.

“Like as a father pities his child, the Lord pities them that fear him.”

That’s the context, by the way, of the great promise in verse 17—that the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him and his righteousness unto children’s children, to such as keep his covenant and to those that remember his commandments to do them.

Do we remember the commandment to have great compassion upon our children and reach out to Jesus in prayer for them?

And then do we see our obligations to our not our children but our brothers in Christ—as we talked about today in terms of this International Day of Prayer? We have a father beseeching Jesus for members of his household. We are part of the household of Christ, and it’s an appropriate thing for us on a regular basis to go to Jesus, particularly for those members of the Christian community who are suffering, who are nearing to death, are actually dying for the faith, or are suffering through other kinds of persecution in the context of the world.

This is an important application of this text which we shall enter into today.

Dads should talk to Jesus. They should talk to Jesus about their kids. And it’s not wrong to ask God several times to do something. That’s what the dad does here. It’s his repeated requests of Christ that seem to be linked to Jesus answering it. He doesn’t say yes the first time. A part of that is he wants the man to come to an understanding and belief in his word. He’s maturing him. But whatever the reason, the point is that Jesus reinforces the correctness of going to him several times on behalf of a particular difficulty for our—for our children or ourselves.

So it’s not wrong to ask for something several times.

And Jesus—the tremendous, of course, the great sign here of God’s—of Jesus’s divinity—is that he heals from a distance. You know, he barely touched them, but he’s 20 miles away. And his word has affected healing at a 20-mile distance. He is God. Jesus does not have to be with us to heal us. And so again, there, you know, “Well, just if Jesus was here, things would be better.” No, Jesus is in heaven. He speaks to the father on our behalf. He doesn’t have to be here to grant our requests.

Jesus heals at a distance. And the children we’ll pray for today are Christians who hurt all over the world.

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Second, proper application of this text is: it’s a story of distance and mission. And I’ll just briefly touch on this.

We don’t know if this officer of the state, this nobleman, this king’s servant, was gentile or Jew—probably Jewish. But the text is written in such a way as to bring other gospel healings to mind. And in fact, some commentators think it’s the same healing of the centurion’s servant, which I think ridiculous. But there’s enough commonality in the stories—and I’ve given you the references here—to the centurion’s servant being healed in Luke chapter 7, for instance, that people have seen a correlation between these two.

Remember? This centurion has the servant—the slave—that he wants healed. And Jesus is actually willing to go to his house, but the centurion says, “Just give the word. I’m a man under authority. I understand authority. Just speak the word, it’ll be done. I know.”

You see, he demonstrates that belief in the word of Jesus that the nobleman demonstrates in our text. There’s a correlation here.

Well, the correlation is to a centurion, a Roman guy, being healed or a servant being healed. So, there’s a picture of mission to the broader world—at least in the correlation of this text, to those about the centurion.

And then the other—the only other case of long-distance healing as it were—is the Syro-Phoenician woman in Mark 7. And again, there, she’s got a demon-possessed girl. And Jesus tells her—tells her, as he told the nobleman—”Go thy way. Go away. The devil is gone out of your daughter.”

So a distance healing, same repeated command. There’s correlations here of this nobleman’s son to the Syro-Phoenician woman and the centurion’s servant that reminds us that this is about distance and mission. Jesus is going to save the whole world.

Another—commentators have recognized that what we have here is really a citation from 1 Kings 17:23. In 1 Kings 17, Elijah goes and heals a woman’s son, and he tells her, “Thy son liveth”—the very thing, same thing that Jesus tells the nobleman here, “Thy son liveth.” So again, there we have these connections that help us to understand that as we know our scriptures—we’ve read Matthew, Mark, and Luke—that’s the assumption when you read John. We’re going to put these things together and say, “Yeah, this seems to have a hintedness of worldwide mission and distance.”

And of course, the very placement of it reinforces that this is a bridge text—between Samaria and the healing of the man in Jerusalem—who really won’t come to exercise saving faith in Christ—and the Samaritans, did, with what they didn’t need signs like the Jews had in Jerusalem. They believed his word.

And so this man is a picture of that belief in the word as a bridge between Samaria and Jerusalem, where they reject his word.

And so again, here, it seems like this text is a reminder to us that indeed, this is a text about worldwide mission.

Indeed, this very citation—where it says, you know, a prophet’s without honor in his hometown—where else is that used? Well, where else that is used is in the account of Jesus in Luke 4.

In Luke 4, we read in verse 24: “He said, ‘Verily, I say unto you, no prophet is accepted in his own country. But I tell you of a truth, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elias, when the heavens were shut up 3 years and 6 months, when great famine was throughout all the land. But unto none of them was Elias sent, save unto Zarephath, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow.’”

In other words, the picture here of a prophet without being honored in his hometown is a picture that the gospel will go to the Gentiles and that worldwide mission is what’s going on here.

Indeed, that’s what Joseph is all about, right? Jesus is the son of Joseph—not just Joseph, his biological father. He’s the greater Joseph. And that was is a term used to designate the coming Messiah, the son of Joseph.

So when Jesus says that the text tells us that he’s the son of Joseph and a prophet without honor in his hometown and references Elias going outside to Tyre and Sidon, then we’re to remember that Joseph left Canaan and went to Egypt. And what happened? Well, the whole world converted. All the world becomes saved. Pharaoh feeds the whole world through the opacities of Joseph. He comes to bless—he’s blessed, rather, by Joseph, his father, by the God of Yahweh.

So what we have here is a picture that, okay, we’re going to be going into a portion of the gospel where he’s going to be rejected by his own. But that gospel is going to be effectual for bringing about new creation and mission.

So those things are appropriate applications, I think.

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But the great application here is that this is a story of excitement and death, of desperation and life, the thrill of defeat and the agony of victory. And no, I—it’s not a typo. We think of it as “the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.” But in the Christian life, of course, it’s the agony of victory and the thrill of defeat.

Yeah. You know, this guy is contrasted, as I said, to the Galileans and the men of Jerusalem. But what’s the difference? What does the text tell us is the difference between the Galileans and the people at Jerusalem who saw the signs and had shallow faith—that wasn’t real faith?

Well, the nobleman believes in the word of Jesus. That’s the operative difference in terms of the—how the belief is described, right? But what brings him to the point of belief in the word of Christ?

It’s not victory. It’s not a life that just needs a little more tacked on to it. It’s not a life of just normal everyday sort of going about one’s business and growing up—”Yeah, I believe in Jesus.” No, it’s a sense of desperation on the man’s part. His son is going to die. And it is that desperation—that felt need, to use a modern term that people use—that deeply felt need—that there was no hope for his son apart from the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

I think that’s what the text is trying to tell us distinguishes his faith from the faith of the Galileans and Jerusalem people.

And you have to ask yourself today, you know: Is Jesus just sort of part of your life that’s sort of tacked on to the whole thing, and you could do with or without him, and your life isn’t really that focused upon a deep love for him? Or are you really a sinner—you know, a sick person who needs to be healed by the Savior?

Jesus, the great physician here, comes to heal not the well, but he comes to heal the sick. See, he comes to heal the lame because that’s all there are. There are—everybody’s sick. Everybody’s lame. Everybody’s blind. The problem is that some people are walking around hooked up to some computer that’s playing a program for them somewhere that makes them think that they’re okay. Use a Matrix analogy. We have these illusions, these self-deceptions that we’re okay, you know. And God punches right through that illusion at certain times in our lives and brings us to a sense of deep desperation.

And that deep desperation is the grace of God to bring us to real faith, further faith, mature faith in the word of the savior. And then he meets our needs.

So I think the text is a reminder to us that really, you know, if we think that the Christian life is all about victory and not about suffering, we’re just wrong. And it’s the grace of God that taught our heart to fear, and grace the fear relieved.

See, now we’ve just gone through a situation in this church. Had a great celebration Friday night. Kind of felt the place was baptized in celebratory joy Friday night at the Hayes party. And we had a sick son, right? One mirror to death. You know, the operations of the protocols hadn’t been right. Adam’s dying on us here. And we had a father crying out to God who sought first healing from Christ. Who had myself and Peter Leithart lay hands on Adam and pray to God that he would bring healing.

See, Doug H. is at a point of desperation, you see. And it’s that desperation that Jesus wants us to go through at times to re-solidify ourselves to the rock, the Lord Jesus Christ, because we tend to just think we’re doing okay. Most of the time we tend to get like that.

We come to this table. Do you think you need it? I hope you think you need it. I hope you want to come to this table. And if I was to stop you from coming to this table, you’d say, “Why, Pastor Tuuri?” You see, you should be wanting to get here.

Because this represents really what our story is all about. That Jesus gives himself to us. See, that’s the point. Jesus doesn’t give just healing to the boy. He gives himself. He is life. And he gives himself to the father and to his house. And he gives himself to those people that have been brought in his sovereign grace to a point of great desperation and an understanding of their need for salvation only through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

You know, kids, I know you think we kind of—some of you teens think we’re a little hard on you last six months, nine months. This is all we’re talking about really. And we need to remind ourselves that this kind of thing happens at certain points in a person’s life. This is what we want to see in our children though—an understanding of their absolute desperation for well-being in life apart from the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, I think you teens have that. I think sometimes we just want to see it evidence sometimes, you know. And that’s probably why we have some of these discussions that we do, that maybe some of you get a little tired of hearing.

C.S. Lewis put it this way in his book A Grief Observed: “You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It’s easy to say you believe that a rope is strong enough and sound as long as you are merely using it to court a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn’t you then first discover how much you actually trusted it? Only a real risk tests the reality of belief.”

See, if we understand our desperation, then we understand the truth or lack of truth in our acceptance of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

You know, the Dalits there in India, they’re just not desperate enough yet. In fact, it’s probably their relief from desperation—they need some political power going and make things better in their country—that’s keeping them from coming to the Savior. So, be interesting to see how God uses that series of events now with Buddhism. And maybe they’ll have to go through 500 years of suffering under Buddhism. Then they’ll get desperate. And then they’ll remember that we’ve tried every other—as Jim B. Jordan calls them—trash gods of the unbelievers before they finally turn in their desperation to the true source of life and the only source of life, the Lord Jesus Christ.

“It was grace that taught my heart to fear. Grace my fear relieved.”

We prayed not just that Adam would get better. We prayed that God would use those events to build his character. You know, the word martyr comes from the Greek word that’s witness. Witness is how we translate it usually. And the martyr is one who witnesses to Christ. And we think of it as actually coming to physical death. But everybody’s a martyr in the sense of witnessing to Christ in the context of difficulties.

And God in his grace answered those prayers. And in that family—that whole household—grew in their dependence upon Jesus and in their witness to the reality of Christ through their sense of desperation for the poor health that Adam had been—graciously given, been given by God, as it were, to bring him to maturation and further health.

So, who is really saved by the end of the story—the nobleman or his son? Well, they all were. They all were, you see. Because salvation came to mean something more than just physical health. In his desperation, finally, one last comment that we have here is a story of the supremacy of King Jesus, the man of power, the beloved son of the father.

Behind this, of course, is—we see Jesus who is the beloved of the father. And we see Jesus who is the true man of power. He’s the great teacher in contrast to Nicodemus. This is a man who’s big, powerful, influential—the nobleman, king’s guy, basilieus—same word for basilion, fortress or king. Strong man of power here. See, but the only way this man of power is moved ahead is by becoming a man of hopelessness, powerlessness, and going to the true source of power in life, the great king of kings, the Lord Jesus Christ.

We have here transforming trust on the part of this now powerless man. Not just a doctrinal belief of abstract concepts about Jesus, but the kind of trust that issues from one’s laments and one’s repeated prayers. This nobleman, this man of power, and we all think that we have power, had to humble himself, surrender himself, as it were, to the word of the Lord Jesus Christ, who alone has power over life and death—Jesus. And the great physician comes to heal the sick.

So what is our belief system today? Are we Galileans? Are we Samaritans? Are we like this nobleman? Or are we like the people from Jerusalem? He’s had now not just no one, but the Samaritans—is a picture of the same thing, a belief in the word of the savior. And those people who in their desperation turn to Christ—those are the people whose belief grows and matures as all actions that God providentially accomplishes in the world redound for their health, their well-being, and their maturation in Christ.

Surely the Lord pities us as a father pities his children.

Let’s pray.

Father, we thank you for your great love. We thank you that in that love you chastise us. We thank you that in that love you break through all the ways we’ve learned to suppress the truth of God and unrighteousness to bring us to desperation at times. We thank you, Lord God, for fear and desperation, knowing that indeed it’s part of your way of grooming us and maturing us into a deeper faith and belief and love for the Lord Jesus.

In his name we pray. Amen.