If you have a copy of the scriptures this morning, let me invite you once more to turn to the Gospel of John and to the fourth chapter of John's Gospel. And this is the very last portion of John chapter 4 that we're going to look at this morning, whereas previously this chapter had been dealing with the Samaritan woman at the well. We make a transition to tell of yet another event, a miraculous event that transpired in the life and ministry of the Lord. And it's recorded here in John chapter four, verses 43 through 54. Let me invite you as you're able, let's stand together in honor of the reading and hearing of God's word. Again, I'm reading from John chapter 4, beginning in verse 43, wherein the apostle John faithfully records. Now, after two days, he departed thence and 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, ere 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 now going down, his servants met him and told him, saying, Thy son liveth. Then inquired he of them the hour when he began to amend. 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. May God bless once again today the reading and the hearing of his word. And let's join together in prayer. Gracious and loving God, we ask once more that you would give us illumination, that you would give us light. We, even who are believers, we still have our understanding darkened, though it is increasingly being illuminated. as we grow from one degree of grace to another, but we still need the help of the spirit. And so allow the spirit to give openness to our minds, openness to our hearts to receive and to attend to with profit your word today. We ask this in Christ's name. Amen. You may be seated. So we are continuing today to look at the life of Jesus. Again, we have to come back to the Gospels. We preach through different books of the Bible. But periodically, we must come back to the canonical gospels, to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, because these are the touchstones, the authoritative, inspired reports of the life of the Lord Jesus Christ. And one of the things all the gospels tell us is that when Jesus was here upon the earth fulfilling his earthly ministry, that he was, he demonstrated himself to be a man of power, a man who worked signs and miracles and wonders. And this is another one of the miracles that Jesus performed publicly. for the purpose of manifesting his glory. You'll notice at the very end of this account in verse 54, it is identified as the second miracle. And you may remember back from the message earlier in this series in John 2, the water being turned into wine. I noted there that the apostle John, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, uses a special word typically for the miracles of Jesus, In Greek, it's simeon, sometimes translated as sign. Sometimes in the King James Version, that word is simply translated as miracle. But that word is here. This was the second sign that Jesus did when he had come out of Judea and into Galilee. And again, I think I noted before I read the chapter, in John chapter four, much of it, in fact, all of it had been devoted to Jesus' ministry to this Samaritan woman. Remember the woman at the well. And after talking to Jesus and after Jesus had told her about the living water that he could give to her, after he declared himself to be the Messiah, and after he told her everything that she had ever done, remember, she went to the townspeople of the of the Samaritan town where she was from, and she bid them remember to come and see the man, verse 29 of John 4, which told me all things that ever I did. Is this not the Christ? And now we shift from that scene with this woman who had been telling her fellow townsmen about Christ. We shift from this to the scene of a father who has a burden for his son who is gravely ill, even ill to the point of death. And so in some ways, it's going to be another account of evangelism. It's going to be another account of one person bidding others to have the benefits that come from Christ. And certainly as a parent, as a father, I don't think you can read this passage without connecting to some degree with the pathos of it. What would a father not do for a dying son? I can tell you that if one of my sons were at the point of death, my daughters as well, don't want to exclude them. Let me tell you, there's nothing I wouldn't do. I would sell everything that I have I would get rid of my house. I would work as many hours as it would take to acquire the money. I would seek whatever treatment that I could that would help them. Would you not? For a son, here's a scene of pathos, a father who would do anything, is driven to desperation even, to come to the Lord Jesus Christ. So in this sense, this is an account of Christ meeting a human need, but as John tells us, it was much more than meeting a human need in the end. We'll come to that as well. It's much more than meeting, it's Jesus as a man of power who can meet men's physical needs, but he can do more than that. He can give men spiritual life, not just physical life, but spiritual life. So let's turn and let's walk through the passage and then we'll come back and see if we can glean some spiritual truths from it. But first, let's understand the passage to the degree that we're able to. So let's let's walk through it and exposit it. And we start again in verse 43. And, uh, throughout John's gospel, occasionally there are these kind of time signatures that we're, we're, we're, we're, we're not told everything that Jesus did, but we're told, uh, sort of, uh, an account. And sometimes it's given the day by day. And so here in verse 43, there's one of those time signatures. Now, after two days, He departed thence and went into Galilee. And I'm assuming here that the after two days refers to the fact, remember that he spent two days with the Samaritans who had come out at the invitation of the woman. And so if you look back in verse 40, it says, now, when the Samaritans were coming to him, they besought him that he would tarry with them. And he abode there two days. Again, I think we noted at the time that these men, the Samaritans, aren't immediately converted, but even the Lord patiently for two days abides with them, spends time with them. And so the two days elapse, he fulfills the ministry that he had set out to accomplish among them. And he turns and he returns the journey that he was on. And remember, the context for this is Jesus of Nazareth. Nazareth is in Galilee, the northern part of Israel. And remember, he had traveled down to Jerusalem, which is in the south, for the Passover. Because he was perfectly keeping the law, passages like Deuteronomy 16, 16 said every Jewish male was supposed to go to Jerusalem to the temple for the Passover. Now, having gone there for the Passover, having stayed there a while and doing things like talking to Nicodemus, he decides to return to Galilee, sort of his home base. In order to get to Galilee, what does he have to do? He's got to cross through Samaria. And that's where he had met the Samaritan woman. And now, having stayed two days there, He resumes the journey going back to Galilee, going back to his homeland, the land where he had been Although he was born in Bethlehem, the land where he had been raised back to Nazareth, where he had grown up in the synagogue, places like Cana, not too far away, where he had performed the miracle of turning the water into wine. And we see this, if you look back in John four, verses three and four, we were told about this journey. He left Judea and departed again into Galilee and he must needs go through Samaria. So we're resuming now this journey of him returning. to Samaria. And then I think we're to presume that he arrives there. We're not told exactly where. I think there's good reason to believe, based on what is shared in the other Gospels, that he went back to Nazareth because there is shared in verse 44 a sort of a proverb, may have been a proverb that was known, probably wasn't something that Jesus himself coined, but he picked it up and he used it effectively. And this is the proverb that he shared or testified, used to point to himself. It says in verse 44, for Jesus himself testified that a prophet hath no honor in his own country. A prophet hath no honor in his own country. And here I think Jesus is describing probably something that happened, all that is told, that when he went back to Nazareth, Not everyone there readily received his ministry, which had now broken out into the public. And also what's happening here is there's an anticipation of the fact that Jesus will be rejected by men. He will be rejected by and large by his fellow Jews, by the persons in Galilee. In 1940, the novelist Thomas Wolfe published his probably best known work titled, You Can't Go Home Again. And in that book, he tells about a successful writer who returns to his hometown, but he is rejected and villainized by the people with whom he grew up. I know I've spoken to more than one man in ministry who shared about how hard it was for him to witness to his own family and sometimes to his own childhood friends. Have you ever experienced that? Do you want to be a minister to have that experience? Maybe you became a Christian and you go back to people that in your family that you grew up with, or maybe you go back to people from your neighborhood and you try to tell them about the change in your life. And they're like, we know you. We we know what you're like now in Christ's case It wasn't that the townspeople knew anything sinful that Jesus had done because he was without sin but still they had known him as a lad and They also known him before his public ministry had broken out into the open. He had consciously veiled himself He had not revealed himself to be the Christ. I And we've already seen, remember what Nathaniel said, can anything good come out of Nazareth? Even the people of Nazareth didn't expect the Messiah would be in their midst. And so there was this rejection of Christ that was taking place. Those in Nazareth, again, had known Jesus before his public ministry, and now that his public ministry has begun, they are doubtful, they are incredulous about his claims. Now I want to pause here for just a moment. This statement that Jesus makes here in verse 44, for Jesus himself testified that a prophet hath no honor in his own country. If I could just pause for just a second, reflect on that verse. I believe this type of verse It becomes one of the strongest evidences for what I could call the reliability or the truthfulness of the Gospels, the truthfulness of the Bible. Why? Because this is not particularly flattering, is it? Historians talk about something called the criterion of embarrassment. And that is, they say if someone's writing the history of a famous political leader or a military leader and he's one of his followers, what's the tendency of that person? The tendency is going to be not to share things about that person that aren't exactly flattering, right? There's gonna be kind of a glamour shots version of the person's life, you know? A photoshopped version of that person's life. But here's the amazing thing. John, the apostle, is a disciple of Jesus, and he's giving us a record of his life. And he tells us. In all honesty, that the people of Galilee, many of them rejected Jesus and did not accept his claims to be the Messiah. So much so that Jesus quoted a proverb, a prophet. Is not honored in his own hometown and his own homeland. And you know what this says to me? It says to me that, first of all, it proves the historicity that it happened exactly this way. And John wasn't ashamed to record this because he knew who Jesus is. And he knew the astonishment of this, that Jesus, in fact, is the Christ. And so I love the truthfulness of this gospel account. I love the gospel. They hold nothing back. They tell us the the unvarnished truth about the life of Christ. This proverb again, as Jesus quotes it here, he testifies, a prophet hath no honor in his own country. We know that this was apparently something that Jesus said frequently. It is one of the sayings that is recorded in all four of our gospels. It's in every one of our gospels. And I've noted before that John is has a lot of unique things within it. And some things in Matthew, Mark and Luke are not recorded in John. But this is an example of something. that appears in all four of our Gospels. In Matthew's Gospel and in Mark's Gospel, what they record is very similar, a very similar occasion when Jesus gave this teaching, we might call it, And it's found in Matthew 13, verses 54 through 58, in the same passages is recorded a parallel in Mark 6, verses 1 through 4. Let me just read how Matthew records it, gives a little more detail. It says in Matthew chapter 13, verse 54, and when he, that is Jesus, was come into His own country, He taught them in their synagogue, insomuch that they were astonished and said, Whence hath this man this wisdom and these mighty works?" That's little Jesus. He grew up in the carpenter's home. Where does He get this wisdom? How does he do these works? And then this is Matthew 13, verse 55. They say, Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary and his brethren, James and Joseph and Simon and Judas and his sisters? Are they not all with us? Whence then hath this man all these things? There's a lot of irony in that, because they're asking, isn't this the carpenter's son? No, he's not. He's been born of a virgin. Joseph is just his foster father. And by the way, we also learn about the ordinariness of Jesus's upbringing. This is why other people would not have immediately have known his identity. He had his half brothers who were there, James, Joseph, Simon, Judas. He had sisters, were not given their names, but it's in the plural. This means Jesus was raised within a household of at least seven siblings, himself included, at least seven. And so they're wondering, what is this? This ordinary boy, this human, this man is the Christ, whence then hath this man all these things? And it says in Matthew chapter 13 and verse 57, and they were offended in him. It's the verb scandalizo, they were scandalized by him. And then Matthew 13, 57 says, but Jesus said unto them, a prophet, is not without honor saved in his own country and in his own house. And it says also in Matthew chapter 13 and verse 58, and he did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief, because of their lack of faith. He chose not to do many works, probably because he did not want them to become confused about what he was about and to look at him simply as a wonder worker. That's Matthew and Mark's account, Luke, gives us an even fuller account of what happened when Jesus went into the synagogue at Nazareth. And this is recorded for us in Luke chapter 4. And Jesus goes into the synagogue on the Sabbath and he is given the scroll of the book of Isaiah. And it says he opened and he read from Isaiah 61. This is in Luke 4, verse 18. The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. And then after he finishes reading this, we're told in verse 21 that he began to say to them, this day is the scripture fulfilled in your ears. And then in verse 22 of Luke four, it says, and all bear him witness and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth. And what do they say? Is this not Joseph's son? And we're sitting there reading it. We've read Luke one and two and we're like, no, he's not Joseph's son. He has come about by the Holy Spirit. He has been conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary. And then Jesus says, verse 24, and he said, Verily I say unto you, no prophet is accepted in his own country. So this is a key saying. It's in Matthew. It's in Mark. It's in Luke. Here it is in the gospel of John. And now we know some of the backdrop that this likely happened, especially in Nazareth. And even within John's gospel, we already had an anticipation of this. If you look back in John chapter 1, verse 11, what did John say in his famous prologue? He said of the word, he said, he came unto his own and his own received him not. He had not been accepted by sinful men. He had not been accepted by his fellow Jews, by his fellow townsmen. And of course, we could go even further back than that. We could say the prophet Isaiah prophesied this in the Old Testament, years before the incarnation, years before the Word became flesh. In Isaiah 53, in the so-called Suffering Servant Song, in Isaiah 53.3, Isaiah could say, of the Christ, He is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him, He was despised and we esteemed him not. That's talking especially about what will happen to him on the cross, is the shepherd will be stricken and the sheep will scatter. And this is why John isn't afraid to record this, that men did not honor Jesus as a prophet. Why is he not afraid to put it in there? Because it fulfills what the prophet said would happen to the Christ. And so here, again, this saying of Jesus is dripping with significance. It anticipates, it expresses, it anticipates the misunderstanding, the rejection that he will suffer. But he was not dishonored by all. He was welcomed by many. And this is also described for us beginning in verse 45, where it says, 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 into the feast unto rather the feast. And so here we hear perhaps out of Nazareth and other places in Galilee, Jesus seems to have been well received, particularly by Galileans who had also been down at Jerusalem for the Passover. And we might remember what Jesus had done there. It's recorded for us in John chapter two and chapter three. Remember, he had symbolically cleansed the temple. Remember, he had challenged those around him when they asked for a sign. He told them, destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it again. And they completely misunderstood what he was talking about. He was talking about later his death and resurrection. But there's no mention in John 2 and 3 of Jesus doing any miracles. Perhaps he performed some miracles there that were not recorded, that these persons had seen, or perhaps there had just been in his being, in his person, in his words, in his teaching, sufficient demonstrations of his authority that had impressed his fellow Galileans. And so in verse 46, we are told in particular that he went to Cana of Galilee. Again, he's received by many. So Jesus, it says, came again into Cana of Galilee, where he had made the water wine. Now, these persons would have been expecting Jesus perhaps to do a miracle. Maybe they thought of him as a miracle worker, merely a miracle worker. And so maybe there's something crass about this. They sort of want to use Jesus to some sort of end to gain what they would like to receive from him. And because this, again, had been the site of his first sign, his first public miracle. And no sooner is he in Cana of Galilee, but an opportunity presents itself for a display of his glory. And again, this is what miracles must be seen as. If you look back in chapter two, verse 11, where it describes the turning of water into wine, Notice there how it describes the purpose of that miracle. This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee and manifested forth his glory and his disciples believed on him. The purpose of a miracle isn't just to do a wonder work, but it is to manifest his glory and to draw men to believe in him. And this opportunity for another sign presents itself In the second half of verse 46, where it says, and there was a certain noble man whose son was sick at Capernaum. And so he has a man who apparently is in Cana of Galilee, but he has a son that he's left back in the town of Capernaum. And this man is described as a nobleman. There's some question as to how properly this word should be understood. The Greek word is basilikos. It's close to the Greek word for king. So he was apparently someone maybe of royal blood, someone who was connected with the court. Maybe he was a Herodian. And so he was a nobleman, and he had a son who was sick. The word for son that is used here in Greek is simply Huyas and it can refer to a son of any age. So if we just said this, the son could have been 30 years old and son could have been 40 years old. We don't know exactly the age of the son, but later on in the passage, the son is going to be called in verse 49, the man's child. And there the word paideon is going to be used. And that's a special word that means a young child, even an infant. And so from the context, we know that this man's son wasn't even a teen or older man, a young man, this was a child and perhaps even a nursing infant and this child was sick. And in verse 47, we're told that the desperate father hears that Jesus has returned to the land of Galilee, and he seeks him out to heal his son. Look at verse 47. When he heard that Jesus was come out of Judea into Galilee, he went unto him and besought him that he would come down and heal his son. for he was at the point of death. And I think there's some meaning in the way that this is described. It's described in great detail. It uses very specific language. It says he besought him. This is the language of pleading. This is the word of asking. Again, it's a scene of great pathos. Remember, all this is happening before the days of modern medicine. There is very little that can be done by naturalistic means to heal anyone, although they had physicians in that day. Luke was the beloved physician, for example, but there was very little that could be done. We hear later on that the child apparently had a fever. Fevers can be dangerous. Remember, this is the age there's no aspirin. There's no medicine that can be given to lower a fever. And so this child, a high fever, could take the life of the child. The father is desperate. Desperate times call for desperate actions. Again, the seriousness of the situation is emphasized by what is said at the very end of verse 47, for he was at the point of death. What would you do if one of your children was about to die? I'm telling you, wouldn't you move heaven and earth? Wouldn't you reach out to any by any means that you could avail yourself to, to save the life of your precious child. And the fact that it was a child, an infant, think of the weakness, the vulnerability. That's what's so bad when you have a child that's sick, right? Is you feel helpless. They're helpless and you feel helpless. And so we see the desperation of this man. In verse 48, Jesus then speaks to him. And it says, the start of verse 48, then Jesus said unto him, these are the words that Jesus is speaking to this man. The interesting thing is though, if you read the part that he says, It's all in second person plural. So he's talking to this man, but there are other people around who are listening. And so in effect, what he says to this man is really meant to be a teaching opportunity for all those who are listening around. So he says to this man, except ye, that is y'all or you guys, whatever, except you see signs and wonders Ye or y'all or you guys will not believe. That's a very interesting thing that he says here. It's odd. He has performed miracles. He's about to perform a miracle. He's gonna demonstrate his power. He's gonna manifest his glory. But before he does it, there's a rebuke that is offered. to those who only want to see such things or to people who think that such things can be the sure foundation and the basis for belief in Him. I see in this statement really a rebuke for much that transpires among so-called charismatic Christians, people who seek a miracle. I'm claiming my miracle today. If you think that God is obligated to do some kind of miracle before you will place your faith in Him, that's misguided. What if He doesn't do a miracle? Are you setting up some kind of condition that God has to satisfy in order that then you would do Him the honor of believing in Him? Whoa! You have put yourself in the place of God. That's idolatry. And that's, I think, why Jesus offers this stern rebuke. He's not really rebuking this man. This man's just the occasion of this man's heart, but he's using this. Christ is always using opportunities like this to teach the wider principles and the deeper truths. In verse 49, then, the nobleman responds. Verse 49, the nobleman saith unto him, Sir, come down, e'er my child die. Sir, come down, e'er my child die. It's interesting, the word here that's rendered in the King James Version is sir. I pointed this out before, there's a double meaning of this word. It's the word kurios in Greek. Same word we sometimes render as Lord. And it can mean sir or master, but it also means God. And so it plays an interesting role here. His language, he's saying something about Jesus that I don't know at this point he really fully understands, but he's calling him Lord. Lord, come down ere my child die. And how does Jesus respond? Look at verse 50. Jesus saith unto him, go thy way, thy son liveth. And a lot of interesting things about this. It's another example of the fact that Jesus does not act at the direction of men. Men don't tell Jesus what to do. Sir, come down, ere my son die. Go, your son lives. He doesn't, act at the beckoning of men. He doesn't go. The other thing that's interesting about this is that from the perspective of just Jesus performing a physical miracle, It's actually a greater miracle than if he had gone to Capernaum and touched this child and raised this lad back to life. It's a greater miracle because it's a healing that is done from a distance. And if you read through the gospels, you know that Jesus often performs healings and miracles in many ways. Often he uses physical touch. Often he also uses earthy outward symbols, not because he has to use these things, but I think it's sometimes like, you know, an adult speaking to a preschooler and you get down on their level and you use You use earthy things to teach, and Jesus sometimes uses such condescending methods or means. For example, in Mark chapter eight, verses 22 through 26, Jesus heals a blind man at Bethsaida. And it says there that he spits on his eyes. And then he touches his eyes, not once. He touches the man the first time and he sees men like trees walking and he touches him a second time. And then he looks up and he sees things clearly. Could Jesus not have healed the man without spitting on his eyes and touching him twice? Of course he could have. But he did it to be seen, to manifest his glory in a peculiar way. Similarly, we'll see later on in John chapter nine, verse six, Jesus will heal a man born blind. And again, he'll use some outward earthy signs in the performance of this miracle. As you look there, it will say, and when he had thus spoken, he spat on the ground and made clay of the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay. So Jesus performs miracles in different ways, sometimes with touch, sometimes with spittle and clay and outward things. Here, however, Jesus shows and demonstrates that he does not even have to touch the infirmed one or even to be in the Son's presence in order to heal him. He doesn't even have to see him. He just speaks the Word and it is done. Just as God the Father at creation could say, let there be light, and there was light. And of course, what's the not so subtle meaning that comes through? Who could do this? Who could possibly do this? Well, only God could do this, right? How does he have this authority? Because he is the word made flesh. Here's another gripping thing about this miracle. Jesus declares that the man's son, his child, is alive, he will live. But how does this man know that it's true? What evidence does he have? What proof does he have? with the child being at a distance, that this has actually happened. And yet, this is very striking, look at the second half of verse 50, it says, and the man believed the word that Jesus had spoken unto him, and he went his way. What's striking about this is it's an example of believing without seeing. His faith in Christ's accomplishment of the miracle preceded the proof or the sight of it. And something is being said here, isn't it, about the essence of faith? What is faith? You know, the Faith Hall of Fame in Hebrews chapter 11? where the author of Hebrews goes through and talks about all the godly men of the past. By faith, Abraham did this and that. By faith, Moses did this and that. That whole chapter starts in Hebrews 11, 1 by saying this. What? Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. This man believes that Jesus has done what he said he would do to his son. He believes that his son is living. And then we have the proof that is given. Look at verse 51. And as he was now going down, the nobleman is going down, his servants met him. By the way, the King James rendering here is servants. The Greek word is douloi, his slaves. Tells us something about the man's status, his power. His slaves met him and told him, saying, Thy son liveth. So he gets the good news, the confirmation. This is actually it happened. And then in verse 52, it says, Then inquired he of them the hour when he began to amend. What time was it that my son began to get better? What time was it they began to improve? And they said unto him, Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him. So apparently a day has transpired. The man has been traveling back to Capernaum. And the servants meet him. Imagine their gladness. This is why they're coming out. They meet him on the way. Your son is alive. When did it happen? At the seventh hour. That probably means seven hours after daybreak. So about one o'clock in the afternoon. And he thinks, that was exactly when Jesus said this to me. That was exactly, it all lines up. This is exactly when Jesus has spoken to me. That's when the fever had left him. This is the confirming evidence of the miracle, and that is stated for us in verse 53. So the father knew that it was at that same hour in the which Jesus said unto him, Thy son liveth and himself believed and his whole house. The man's faith was now buttressed by evidence. As he understands that his son was healed in the very hour when Jesus had spoken, yea, commanded that he should live. We should meditate a little bit on the very last statement there in verse 53. And the man, the nobleman himself believed at his whole house. We've already been told one time, didn't we, in verse 50, that he believed the word that Jesus had spoken unto him. But now something else has happened. It's not just that he trusted that Jesus would actually heal the boy, but now he's come to some other kind of belief. Calvin, in his commentary on this verse, cites this as an example of what he calls the progress of faith. And we've seen this before in John's gospel, haven't we? That God often works slowly in men's lives and hearts. There is progress of faith. He had believed Jesus' word in verse 50, but now something deeper has transpired. Calvin notes here, thus, not only does he believe that his son will be cured through the kindness of Christ, but he acknowledges Christ to be the son of God and makes a profession of faith in Christ's gospel. Notice also that this affects not only the man, but it says that his whole house believed. His whole house believed. This is an incidence of what we come to know in the New Testament as household conversion. The household. in these days might have encompassed not just our idea of a nuclear family, a husband and wife and 2.4 kids and 1.5 pets or something like that, but the household was thought of much more broadly. It could be one's parents and extended relatives and one's employees and in this man's case, his servants, and it could encompass the siblings and other people within the household. Not only does this man come to trust in Christ, but also the members of his household do. This event anticipates something that will be widespread in the early days of the Christian movement, the winning of whole families, whole households to Christ. Now, our Presbyterian friends like to take such passages as evidence for infant baptism. But there's no direct evidence for such that is forthcoming. In fact, if anything, there is evidence for quite the contrary. And if you're ever in a conversation with a Presbyterian friend regarding household conversions, you should turn over to Acts chapter 16. There's an account there of the conversions of two persons and then later on of their households. It's the second that ought to make our ears perk up. But let's look at both of them quickly. Acts 16, verses 14 and 15 is the conversion of Lydia, the seller of purple. And this is a great verse, verse 14, for talking about the doctrines of grace and how God sovereignly saves people. Because it says of Lydia that the Lord opened her heart and she attended unto the things which were spoken of Paul. That's in verse 14. Then it says verse 15 and when she was baptized and her household, she besought us saying, if you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house and abide there. And she constrained us. So she was converted, but also members of her household. And then look as well in Act 16, a little bit later on after Paul and Silas are in the jail and they're praying and singing at midnight and there's an earthquake and the jailer thinks that everyone has escaped and he's about to take his own life. Paul and Silas tell him, no, we're still here. And the man cries out in verse 30, sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they tell him in verse 31 of Acts 16, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shall be saved in thy house. And then it says, what in verse 32, and they spake unto him the word of the Lord and to all that were in his house. And he took them the same hour of the night and washed their stripes and was baptized. He and all his straight way. The key verse here is verse 32. They spoke to the man and they also preached the word to those in his house. That meant that those in his house were who were converted, were persons who were capable of hearing the preaching and teaching of the word. And there's not one mention, nary a mention of infant baptism. Well, let's go back to John chapter 4. Not only is the nobleman, not only has he become a believer, But through him, apparently members of his household, extended relatives, maybe his parents, the siblings of this sick child, his servants, they come to know about Christ. And we see here an evidence of what we could call a domino effect that often happens within families. One person becomes converted and then another person and another person falls for Christ. Think about earlier in John's gospel, John 1, verses 40 through 42, how Andrew went to his brother Peter and said, come and see Christ. Think about James and John, the sons of Zebedee. Think about Paul's letter to Timothy in 2 Timothy 1, 5, where he mentions Timothy's godly grandmother, Lois, and his godly mother, Eunice. Somehow there'd been a domino effect. Maybe Lois was the first one to become a believer. And then she influenced her daughter, Eunice. And then Eunice influenced her son, Timothy. And Timothy was used of God to preach and teach the gospel. God doesn't always carry out his work through families, but he will often do so. My grandfather, my father's father, And one of my uncles were converted at the same time. And they were both baptized in a little country church near Burnsville, North Carolina. And it made all the difference in our family. See, I wasn't born, but it made a huge difference in my family. It had generational impact. My grandfather was converted. And one of his sons, who was my uncle, Ray, who actually went into the ministry, went to the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, went into the ministry. And guess what? He had an influence on another one of the brothers, whose name was Joseph. He also went into the ministry. And guess what? The two of them had an influence on my father, who became a believer and then was called into the ministry. Domino effect. blessings for generations. I'm the recipient of that. The Lord works in these ways. He worked through your household to bring the gospel, to bring blessing, to bring abundant life. The Lord was pleased to begin to set off that chain reaction blessing right here within the household of this nobleman. Well, friends, let's go back. And let me draw, if I can, a few points of spiritual application, although I think we can already see much, can we not? But let me trace, if I can. I don't want to tell you how many there are going to be. I don't want you counting ahead. But hang with me for these gleanings. First, spiritual application. We see in this passage the power of Christ to do as He pleases. We see in this passage the power of Christ to do as He pleases. we might rightly speak about the sovereignty of Christ. We talk about the sovereignty of God, but we talk about the sovereignty of Christ. Here we see he doesn't have to be physically present, but he can work his power in men's lives from a distance. And that is especially comforting in this age, because we don't have Christ here on the earth with us right now, do we? Until he comes again. He's at the Father's right hand. But guess what? Out of our sight, he can still come to us with boldness and power and bring blessing to us, even as he did to the nobleman's son. Second, gleaning. Though Christ can do as he wishes, we should not presume to make his performance of miracles some kind of condition for our belief. This is what we need to learn from the rebuke that's given there in verse 48. Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe. We are not to attempt to try to straitjacket the Lord Jesus Christ with some kind of conditional faith. We are not to negotiate with Christ. We do not say to Christ, well, if you do this for me, then I'll do this for you. It doesn't work that way, friends. He does as he wishes. and we are to be submitted to him. Third gleaning, like this nobleman, we should seek the Lord on behalf of the needs of our children and our loved ones. We should not only intercede in prayer for their physical needs, but most importantly, for their spiritual needs. As parents, I think we do have an obligation to provide for their physical needs. Parents should want to provide the food and the clothing and the education. They should want to set their children on the right tracks in life so that they would be able to establish their own household and they would be able to have a profitable career and so forth. But do we make as much provision for their spiritual lives? Because listen, friends, they can gain the whole world and lose their souls. How much provision are we making for their spiritual lives? And this nobleman becomes a model for that one who came pleading to Christ for the life of his son. Fourth application, as with the nobleman, the Lord may use difficulties and adverse circumstances like the grave illness of a child to draw us to himself and to make us cry out to him. Calvin, in his commentary, notes that this man was humbled by the dread of losing his son. And he adds, we find the same thing in ourselves, for we are astonishingly delicate, impatient, and fretful until subdued by adversities when we are constrained to lay aside our pride and disdain. This nobleman probably would have never sought Jesus out had his son not been at the point of death. Sometimes the Lord can bring adversities into our life, not because He's mean or vengeful or He wants to do something evil to us or to anyone else, but sometimes He brings adversities in order to subdue us. Because it's only then when we're broken will we cry out to Him. Fifth gleaning, we must trust that Christ will do what He has promised, even when we do not see the immediate evidence of it. This is what the nobleman did. Christ said, your son lives. And he believed even though he didn't see the immediate evidence of it. That is the essence of faith. We may not see immediate answers to our prayers. We may not see immediate answers to our petitions for healing, physical or spiritual. And in fact, they may never take place in this life. But that doesn't mean we abandon faith in Christ. How many of you ever been to a funeral of a Christian who suffered with some disease, cancer, something like that? And it's really not false for God's people to stand up at the end and say, the healing has taken place. It didn't take place in the way we might have wanted it, with the restoration of this person's physical life, but Glorification has taken place. The promise has been fulfilled. He's faithful. He will do it. Sixth gleaning. We may recognize evidences of God's word fulfilled when they are made apparent to us and praise him for them. Now, The man believed, but then when he came back, the servants told him and it was confirmed. And sometimes we will have evidences that God's promises to us have been fulfilled. When that happens, this should be not the basis for our faith, but it makes our faith all the more deeper and sweeter when it happens. And we should praise God for these evidences when they are given to us. Seventh and finally, final gleaning. We are to pray that the Lord would work throughout our own household, our whole household. Calvin says of the nobleman after he came to faith, his whole family joins him, which was an evidence of miracle. Nor can it be doubted that he did his utmost to bring others along with him to embrace the Christian religion. You think about this miracle, we often call it the healing of the nobleman's son. But it could also be called the healing of the conversion of the nobleman's household. That's really probably the core of what the story is about. It's the story that the conversion of this man's household. And we're back finally with this last application to this theme that I think we've seen all throughout John chapter 4. It's a theme of evangelism. What did we see earlier? The Samaritan woman. a model of evangelism, a model of witness, bearing witness to Christ, inviting people to consider the claims of Christ. Here now is another kind of evangelism, that which transpires within households. And what father, what father, what mother will not so pity their children that they will not go to Christ daily for them? and say, Sir, come down ere my child die. Sir, come down ere my child die. That's the prayer of a man who wants not only the best physically for his son, but also the best spiritually for him. Amen? Let me invite you to stand together.