ONE SOLITARY LIFE: THE LIFE OF JESUS 2-11-01

UNIT 3: INTRODUCING JESUS: TAKING JESUS AT HIS WORD

JOHN 4: 43-49, 50-52, 53-54.

PLEASE OPEN YOUR BIBLE TO JOHN 4.

After Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well, He spent two days in Sychar and then went on the Galilee where He had grown up. He stopped at the town of Cana where He had turned the water into wine only a short period before. When He arrived in Galilee He pointed out that "a prophet has no honor in his own country." Origen, the early church father, said Jesus was referring to Judea. Judea was the country of His birth and registration. He was of the tribe of Judah after the flesh. "His own country" was surely Judea.

This proverb contrasts the believing response of the Samaritans with the characteristic unbelief of Jesus’ own people in Galilee and Judea whose reticent faith depended so much on Jesus’ performance of miracles. While in Samaria Jesus had enjoyed His first unqualified and unopposed success. His own people’s hearts were not open to Him, but exhibited reluctance and hardness. John had voiced this in John 1: 10-12 "He was in the world and though the world was made through Him, the world did not recognize Him. He came to that which was His own, but His own did not receive Him. Yet to all who received Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God."

P1. PLEASE READ JOHN 4: 43-49.

The reception in Galilee was likely that of curiosity seekers whose appetite centered more on seeing miracles than believing in Jesus as Messiah…as it had been at the feast in Jerusalem. They had thronged to hear Him, but did not recognize Him as the Holy One of God. Belief involves taking Jesus at His word and relying on His promises even when there is no visible or tangible evidence. The Good News Bible says in Heb. 11:1 "To have faith is to be sure of the things we hope for, to be certain of the things we cannot see."

The Galileans welcomed Him. Like Jesus, some of them had gone to Jerusalem for the Passover, where they saw all the things that He did at Jerusalem at the feast. They had seen the miraculous signs that Jesus did in Jerusalem, but they apparently were like the "believers" in Jerusalem. Jesus would not trust Himself to them because they had only superficial belief based solely on the miracles Jesus did, which they expected Him to keep doing. Jesus’ saying in Vs. 48 seems to have been addressed to such people.

In Cana in Galilee Jesus met a Roman official from Capernaum who wanted Jesus to heal his son. Jesus’ comment "Unless you people see miraculous signs and wonders…you will never believe" apparently included the crowd around Him as well as the officer.

"Nobleman" means Royal Official" and most likely designated someone officially attached to the service of King Herod Agrippa, tetrarch of Galilee from 4 B.C. to A.D. 39. Although tetrarch was Herod’s official title, he did not mind people calling him king.

The nobleman had come the 16 miles from Capernaum to Cana because he had heard that Jesus had come out of Judea to Galilee. This implies that he knew of Jesus miraculous signs. He may have heard of Jesus earlier miraculous sign in Cana and of His other miracles in Jerusalem. But he came because his son was sick at Capernaum. He begged Jesus to come down, and heal his son: for he was at the point of death.

These words show that at this point the man believed Jesus needed to be present to heal his son. He probably felt as Martha, sister of Lazarus, who said in John 11: 21 and Mary repeated in John 11:32 "Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died." That seems to be the case with this father. He is asking Jesus to travel those miles to Capernaum and do something for his son. He was saying, "my son is dying and you have power to heal. You can work miracles. Won’t you come and work a miracle upon him?"

The Lord turned to him and the crowd and said, "Except ye see signs and miracles, ye will not believe." There are so many people like that, who want to see some outward demonstration of power, and then they think they will believe, but the Lord Jesus Christ wants to be received and trusted because of what He is in Himself, apart from any temporal benefit that might come from knowing Him.

I wonder if there are not many who think of the Christ of God as though His great business is to help us. We are sick or in financial trouble, maybe He will show us a way to get well or to make money. If members of our family are in some distressing circumstances and we are worried about them, perhaps if we go to Jesus He will do something for them. Oh, there is something higher than that! He wants us to see in Him the blessed incarnate Son, who came in grace to reveal the Father and who asks our trust and allegiance because we ought to acknowledge and yield ourselves to Him, even if we never receive any temporal benefit whatever.

Real faith in Christ rests upon the fact that He who is God became Man; and in getting to know Him, the Son, we know the Father. I wonder if He could not say to each of us today, ""except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe." How different was the case of those Samaritans of whom we read last Sunday! They saw no miracles wrought, but there was something that so impressed them that they said, "Oh, now we know Him, we have seen Him, we have heard Him for ourselves." This is the work of the Holy Spirit of God today, to make Christ known to men and women, in order that they may trust Him as Savior and own Him as Lord of their lives. To know Him as God’s Son, become Man for our redemption, is eternal life. In fact, Jesus Him self says, "This is life eternal, that they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent." It seems in Vs. 48 that as Jesus addressed the crowd He was testing the man. If the man had turned irritably and petulantly away; if he had been too proud to accept a rebuke; if he had given up despairingly on the spot---Jesus would have know that his faith was not real. A man must be in earnest before the help of Christ can come to him.

Vs. 43-49 reveal at least three things about faith. For one thing, faith is not a blind leap in the dark, as unbelievers claim. Unbelievers claim that they accept as true only what can be proved by scientific means or by rational thought. They accuse believers of gullible belief in things that are impossible. However, faith is not in a vacuum. It is a response to words or deeds of Jesus to the past. The man would not have gone to Cana if he had not heard of miracles Jesus had already performed.

Second, faith perseveres in trusting Jesus in the face of what seem to be delays on the part of Jesus. The man kept asking in spite of what Jesus said in Vs. 48. One reason faith perseveres is that faith is motivated by needs that only Jesus can meet. The father’s dying son kept the nobleman seeking Jesus help.

Third, initial faith often is imperfect and immature, but it is real. This man believed that Jesus needed to be present with the dying son to heal him. The man cannot believe the cure could be wrought without the Physician coming to the patient; the thought of such a thing evidently never occurred to him. He learned better later, but he began with an immature faith. Everything has to have a beginning, including faith.

Whoso draws night to God one step

Through doubtings dim,

God will advance a mile

In blazing light to him.

P2. PLEASE READ JOHN 4: 50-52.

It must have been hard for the man to turn away and go home with Jesus’ assurance that his little lad would live. He had believed that if only Jesus were there, He could do something, because he had heard of what He had done. Jesus gave him no sign, but He created an opportunity for the exercise of a faith which lacked a sign. Christ, said in effect; "I will not give you a sign; I will give you My word. You will get your sign after your faith operates."

Then we read: "The man believed the word that Jesus spake unto him, and he went his way." What made him believe? I think there was something in the tone of that voice, something in the glance of that eye, something in the majesty and beauty of that face, that made that man say, "Well, I do not know how it is going to be done, but I believe Him, He says my boy lives ." He believed, and went his way. Quicker than lightning the cure came from Cana to Capernaum, and was felt by the dying youth.

Let’s pause here and take a backward glance. They believed in Jerusalem because they saw the signs, and He could not commit Himself to them. In Samaria they said at last to the woman, "Now we believe, not because of your testimony; we have heard Him, we have heard His word, and believe." Now we have the same thing again, "He believed the word Jesus spake."

We must not miss the immediacy of the royal official’s response. When Jesus told him to go his way, he departed. The official may have started back to Capernaum, stopped to spend the night-perhaps at Magdala-and then resumed his journey the next day. That he probably spent the night on his way home is suggested by the statement that while he was still on the way, his servants met him with the news that his boy was living.

It is the very essence of faith that we should believe that which Jesus says is true. So often we have a kind of vague, wistful longing that the promises of Jesus should be true. The only way really to enter into them is to believe in them with the clutching intensity of a drowning man. If Jesus says a thing, it is not a case of "It may be true": it is a case of "It must be true."

P3. PLEASE READ JOHN 4: 53-54.

When the servants met the father they told him "that his son lived." That is exactly what Jesus had said; "Thy son liveth." He had said it with authority, and the man had believed His word, not understanding. I wonder if doubts had kept coming up as he journeyed toward Capernaum; if he kept wondering about that boy of his. "Jesus said it was all right, that he lived, and that it was all right. I wonder if I shall find him alive!" How glad he must have been when the servants brought the good news.

The father inquired of them the hour when he began to mend. In his question the weakness of his understanding is revealed. He could not imagine that the boy he had left at the point of death could have become well immediately. He inquired when he began to mend. They told him that the lad did not begin to mend at all. He was well straightway; "Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him." Suddenly the boy was well. "At what hour?" The seventh. The man at once saw the synchronizing of the word of Jesus in Cana with a fact in his home at Capernaum. The father knew that it was at that hour in which Jesus said unto him, "Thy son liveth"; that the boy was made well.

The father evidently shared his experience with his household. His household would have included his wife, children and servants. Impressed with the royal official’s testimony, the entire family believed. This is the earliest incident in the N.T. of an entire family being saved. Another notable account of household salvation is the Philippian jailer’s life-changing experience in Acts 16:34. What happened to the Roman official should happen to believers today. As our faith grows, we should experience thrilling victories in sharing Christ with others.

If you are keeping count of the seven signs John will be using to prove that Jesus is the Messiah and that people should believe in Him we are now to number 3. The first sign recorded by John was wrought in the realm of creation and joy, at the wedding feast in Cana, when He turned the water into wine. The second was wrought I the realm of worship, when He went into the Temple and cleansed it. Now in the third, power is seen operating in the realm of disease and sorrow.

In this second miracle or sign performed in Galilee we have first of all a revelation of absolute power. We use the word supernatural. As a matter of fact, however, what we call supernatural, is only super-understandable. All this was perfectly natural to One Who like Jesus, lived in unbroken fellowship with God, so that God could operate through Him, as He could not through others. Peter said it well on the day of Pentecost. He said "Jesus, a Man, approved of God unto you by powers and wonders and signs which God wrought through Him in the midst of you." God was operating through Christ. Once we recognize that the "power belongeth unto God," there is no difficulty at all in accepting the miracles of Jesus.

This miracle in today’s lesson had all three main characteristics of Jesus’ miracles. It was an act of power. It was an act of compassion. It revealed truths about God. Jesus healed the dying boy as an act of compassion to call the man and others to faith. This does not mean that Jesus will heal all little boys who are dying, even when people of faith pray. The Bible tells us to trust not only the power of God to heal but also to trust His wisdom and love when our prayers are not answered exactly as we ask. The Cross shows us that God suffers for us and with us. The resurrection assures us that death does not have the final world. The final word is life.

We can better believe, act and grow in faith as we remember: Jesus is totally reliable. We can take Him at His word. Our faith must rest on more than seeing signs and wonders.

Faith involved believing what God says and acting on it even when there is no visible or tangible evidence to believe. We need to continue growing toward a full, mature faith in Christ. Our faith can have a positive impact on other’s lives.

Reflect on the fact that Jesus is always reliable. You can take Him at His word and depend on Him to help you even when there seems to be no evidence to believe.

NEXT SUNDAY WE GO TO LUKE 4 TO HEAR JESUS PREACH IN HIS HOMETOWN SYNAGOGUE IN NAZARETH. A.V. DAUGHERTY 2-11-01.