In Scott Brown's sermon titled 'A Crisis of Belief,' he explores John 4:43-54, focusing on the nobleman whose son was healed by Jesus. The sermon emphasizes the journey from a superficial belief, based on witnessing miracles, to a deeper, saving faith that trusts in the words of Jesus. Brown outlines the passage by highlighting the phases of dishonor, desperation, dependence, and declaration, demonstrating how trials and tragedies, like the nobleman's crisis, drive individuals to true belief. The sermon argues that physical healings are parables indicating spiritual truths and that genuine faith is not about seeking signs but rather trusting in Jesus' word. Brown underscores that belief in Jesus offers true healing and eternal life, contrasting this with the common superficial belief prevalent in society. The story of the nobleman illustrates how calamities can bring about spiritual awakening and salvation, not only for individuals but for entire families.

The sermon text today is John chapter 4 verses 43 to 54. John chapter 4, 43 to 54. Let's read. Now, after the two days he departed from there and went to Galilee. For Jesus himself testified that a prophet has no honor in his own country.

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 Jesus came again to Cana of Galilee, where he had made the water wine. And there was a certain nobleman whose son was sick at Capernaum. 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. Then Jesus said to him, unless you people see signs and wonders, you will by no means believe.

The nobleman said to him, Sir, come down before my child dies. Jesus said to him, Go your way, your son lives. So the man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him, and he went his way. And as he was now going down, his servants met him and told him, saying, Your son lives. Then he inquired of them the hour when he got better.

And they said to 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. This again is the second sign Jesus did when he had come out of Judea into Galilee. Let's pray. Our Father, we thank you again for this wonderful Lord's Day that you've given us and you've assembled us together.

Thank you Lord for bringing us out to call us together, to worship together, to strengthen one another, to point one another to Christ. And God, I pray that you would cause us to be like this nobleman, that we would hear the words of Jesus and that we would believe them. God, send your Spirit that we as a people would believe, open up our hearts and our minds to understand, to receive, and to believe what you say in your word. Give strength to our elder as he preaches your word. Give us grace to receive it, God, and may you be glorified in all of this.

In Christ's name, amen. Before us here is a story of a family who believed in the midst of an unbelieving people. The most important question that's ever been uttered is the one that we read about in Isaiah 53, who has believed our report and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? We see a picture of that here. Jesus and his disciples have moved from Sychar, the woman at the well, and this great awakening that occurred there, and now they've arrived in Galilee where Jesus saves a boy from physical death, but his sickness leads to something greater, and it leads to the salvation of his whole family.

And this is the second sign that Jesus gives, as reported in the gospel of John. And these signs are given to show us why we ought to believe in Jesus Christ. Because the most wonderful, powerful, helpful thing that can ever happen to you is that you get the gift of belief that God gives it to you that's why that question who has believed our report is so important because everyone doesn't believe and people believe in different ways and those ways are are profiled here in this passage and I I've I've outlined this passage with five basic thoughts that explain four phases of a crisis of belief. Now there are different ways you can outline this passage. I probably outlined it five different ways, but as the morning wore on, I ended up outlining it this way.

I wanted to identify the critical matter here, the heart of the story. While it's wonderful that a boy was healed that's not actually the main point the main it's astonishing but it's not the most astonishing thing. The most astonishing thing is in verse 50. You see those words? Three words.

The man believed. The man believed. I think that's the heart of the text. So you have Jesus, he saves this boy from physical death and his sickness did to his family what sickness maybe has even done to your family. It's driven you to Jesus.

It's caused you to cry out to him. You know, many people have been saved because of a sickness, because of a wreck, because of some tragedy. And We often look at our tragedies wrongly, but our tragedies actually are meant by God. They're ordained by God as something good to drive us to that place where when we hear the question, who has believed our report, we find ourselves in the place where we say, I believe. I believe your report, Lord.

And so we have this physical healing. Now physical healings, and we've spoken about this many times as we've been in the Gospel of John, but physical healings are parables. They are amazing, but they're not the most amazing thing. Every physical healing points to a particular way that Jesus heals his people spiritually, And that's what we find here. The meaning of the miracle is this.

Jesus has the power to snatch people from the brink of death and bring them into his kingdom. And it happened that an entire family came. And so we have these miracles in the Gospel of John. There are only nine miracles in the Gospel of John, very different. Go to Luke, there's a miracle on every other paragraph.

Go to Matthew, they're all over the place. Mark, Jesus is healing over and over again. But in John, There are only nine of them. And so far there's been one miracle that we've read about. It's the turning of the water into wine.

And there Jesus is proclaiming that He's really the only one that brings out wine that satisfies forever, and He's sufficient for a wedding. And now we learn that He alone is sufficient to meet the needs of those who have a son who's dying. In death, in the grave, he alone is sufficient. In a wedding, he alone is sufficient. At a birth, he alone is sufficient.

At a graduation, at anything, He alone is sufficient. At a worship service, He's the one. So, the healing is a sign. Now, these signs are also designed by God for a particular purpose. You know what they're designed for?

They're designed to soften your heart. They're designed to draw you in. These signs are meant to lure you, to disarm you, and to show you the goodness of Jesus Christ. Nobody ever had such tenderness toward a little boy like Jesus. Nobody ever had such tenderness toward a family like Jesus.

Nobody ever had such tenderness toward a desperate father. That's what we have here, as Jesus. Nobody. And I pray that these miracles would just draw us in, lure us, disarm us, soften our hearts to help us to see the beauty and the love of Jesus Christ. And this is John's motive for writing.

We know why he's writing these things. In John 20 verse 30 he says, I write these things that you might believe and that in believing, you might have life in his name. So he's writing so that you'd have life so that you and I would give up our small lives and find ourselves seeking the treasures in the kingdom of heaven. Now one more thing before we dive into this text. This is, as I said before, this miracle is an illustration.

It's a type. It's a picture of something greater. And one of the things I don't want us to miss as we read through the Bible, and I hope this helps us read the Bible together and hear the Bible read to us together and how we experience the reading of the Word of God in our own lives. And it's this, is that God is always giving us two things. He gives us doctrine, He gives us facts, He gives us didactic teaching, He gives us principles, He gives us didactic and descriptive words and phrases that should help us help shape our thinking, right?

He wants to change the way we think. God begins with our thinking and he continues on with us to renew our minds, to transform our thinking. That's what it means to be a Christian. But he doesn't just deal with your thinking, he gives these graphic illustrations, he brings examples And the healing of the blind man's, I mean, the healing of this man's son is a picture. The Bible doesn't limit itself to just didactic instruction of principles and commands, but it gives illustrations, really graphic illustrations.

So here we have actually both of these mixed in this passage of Scripture. And so the condition of this boy is a parable. And there are many illustrations like this. You know, there are healings of leprosy in the Bible. Why?

Well, leprosy is really a picture of sin. Leprosy is bad news, but sin is worse news than that. And the Bible gives us many illustrations of various kinds of healings. Healing the blind, healing the lame, healing the lepers, healing the sick, raising the dead. All these things are just illustrations of doctrine.

And so we're given far more than just words and phrases on a page. We're given life, living examples to help us understand. Now, again, before we jump into the text, I just want to say it again in maybe a different way that I've already sort of tried to say this. The healing is astonishing, but it's not that astonishing. The Healing is not the main point.

The healing points to the main point. And that is that there is true healing in belief, in true belief. And that's why the question, who has believed our report, is always going to be the most important question that we ever hear. Do you believe? Have you believed his report has the Lord softened your heart has he disarmed you as he made you give up?

The foolishness of this world is he drawing you you know is he Is he luring you in with his love? That's how he lured me in. He lured me in with his love and his mercy. And I think that's what's happening here too in this passage. Okay, let's move into the flow of the text here, and as you can see, I've broken this up into four sections.

And first, there is, in this crisis of belief, there is dishonor. The honor that was not given to Jesus in Galilee. And the second is the desperation, the desperation of a father. The third is dependence, the dependence that this man finally found in the Word, in the very Word of Jesus. And then finally the declaration.

It's a sign. It's a sign to be declared. So let's begin with this matter of the dishonor that we encounter in the record in Galilee in verses 43 through 45. So he goes to Galilee, And there's this geographical time stamp that's here. The disciples have been traveling.

They started in Judea where Jesus turned the water into wine. And then they've traveled to Samaria where Jesus met a woman at the well and she stayed there. They stayed there for two days and ministered to the people in the city because of the revival that broke out as a result of that woman going back in and telling about Jesus. And now they're on to Galilee. And so this geographical note here in verses 43 through 45 really speaks to the fact that this is the beginning of what observer scholars called the Galilean ministry.

So Jesus is now entering into what is called this phase of the Galilean ministry. Matthew and Mark and Luke give tremendous detail. John gives very little detail of the Galilean ministry. And it lasted about a year and a half. There are 240 towns and cities and villages here in this region, And Jesus is selflessly visiting these cities, but there's a crisis of dishonor in these cities.

And You know, Jesus is traveling through the cities. He's not building cities. He's visiting and preaching in cities. He's actually building a city that's not made with hands. And so he's preaching throughout the cities in Galilee.

But We only have a very small snapshot in the Gospel of John about the Galilean ministry. So he goes to Galilee and he recognizes the fact that he has no honor there. Perhaps it was because, why would he do that? Why would he go to a place like that? Why would he go where there's dishonor?

That he would be rejected out of hand? There probably are different answers to that, but I want to suggest that it just possibly just could be that Jesus' love for the hard-hearted doesn't keep him away. He's not put off by hard-hearted people. Now it may be that he was experiencing so much popularity in the other regions that they wanted to make him king and his time had not yet come. So we're not exactly sure why he would go to such a place, but in verse 42 we read of the problem, a prophet has no honor in his own country.

He's quoting a proverb that was popular in that day, and he goes to his own country. That word, you know, most likely means home place or fatherland. The place he grew up, the streets that he used to you know to walk around. And you know we have a similar way of expressing this, this idea that a prophet has no honor. You know what it is, it's in your mind, you're probably thinking of it right now.

Familiarity breeds contempt. And so he went back to the place where he knew the roads and he grew up there. You know, there's a certain happiness of going back to your home place, isn't there? And you drive those roads and it brings back so many memories and things like that. But if you go back there and people don't like you, you know, and you experience contempt, it kind of dulls the joy.

But Jesus went back there and the familiarity bred contempt. And so people's hearts were hard, But Jesus went to seek and save the lost. He's not afraid to win over the resistant. He's not afraid to put his arm around the cold shoulder. He's not against looking in the eye of the person who's just shrugging his shoulders, because he loves them.

He's persistent, and he goes after them. And it's interesting, he actually does a miracle there. You'd think, well, why would you don't do a miracle there? But he does a miracle there. And I think he's just accommodating to their unbelief and to give them more reason.

And it says that the Galileans received him. Do you see that phrase? I take that to mean that they received Him because they'd heard about all this healing. In fact, Jesus was in Canaan now. He turned water into wine there.

Word had spread. So they received him in that way. But this kind of dishonor gets in the way of disbelief, gets in the way of belief, because that's the heart of the matter. And we all ought to ask, is there that in my heart, the unconverted have a dishonor toward God and the things of God? Familiarity breeds contempt.

Sometimes it happens with children who have just grown up in a Christian family. They've heard it all. I mean, they really have, they know, they can give you all the answers, you know, but sometimes they're not converted. You know, I've interviewed lots of young men, you know, for our internship over the years, and here's what I've discovered. Almost anybody can give you the gospel the way it really is, but not everybody has really embraced it in their heart.

It's True. Being able to spout out the gospel is not the same as embracing the gospel and loving Jesus in your heart. It's not the same thing. Because familiarity often breeds contempt. And that's what they were experiencing here.

But not only does dishonor get in the way of belief, there's more. And we find that in the next section, in verse 46 to 48, Desperation. Here you have in verses 46 and 48 a desperate father who is seeking Jesus for the healing of his son. And so in verse 46 we read, So Jesus came again to Cana of Galilee where he had made the water wine. So this was a two-day journey, they'd been traveling, and there was a certain nobleman whose son was sick at Capernaum.

And so Jesus is in Cana, And the nobleman apparently hears that Jesus is in Cana, and he travels probably 18 miles. It's probably from here to, you know, south of downtown Raleigh or Briar Creek. That was about the distance that he came to find Jesus. He was motivated. His son was dying and you know what that's like, you know, you don't want to leave someone's side.

They might die while you're gone, but he left and he went to find Jesus. He was so desperate. And now when you're in desperation like this, it's always easy to turn in the wrong direction. You can turn to despair, you can turn to drugs, you can turn to a manner of vanity, you can turn to entertainment, whatever it is. You know, difficult things often cause us to turn one way or another.

That's really important to know. Which way do you turn? Well, how about this one? I'm just gonna assume that there's calamity in almost everybody's life here to some degree. I know personally That's true of a lot of you.

And you're bearing burdens. And you know, where are you going? Where are you turning when there's a trial? When there's a calamity, when there's a hardship, when there's a disappointment, when there's a loss? Maybe when there's a death or an impending death, where do you turn?

Everything hinges on that. And so this man, he, who's a nobleman, he's desperate for a son, he's desperate for Jesus. Now this, he's called a nobleman, which probably, he's a king's man. He's most likely directly in the service of the king, most likely a member of Herod's court. Right in the middle of Herod's court is a man who wants to go find Jesus.

That's astonishing. Herod wasn't exactly a Christian-oriented person. And you know, Herod, this was Herod Antipas, who was the son of Herod the Great. This is the Herod that John the Baptist denounced. This is the Herod who had the daughter Herodias.

Herod was afraid of John and Jesus, and Herod thought that Jesus was John the Baptist coming back from the dead to get him, okay? And this nobleman, this king's man is in his house, And, you know, Herod was very unfriendly. You know, Herod was in Tiberias. Jesus never went to Tiberias. And he did many miracles in Capernaum.

But he was most likely a rich man. He had resources. He had a household. That wasn't, by the way, just his children and his wife, most likely. Household was broader than the way that we use it.

And it can include employees and servants and all manner of helpers that are in that house. And so he's drawn to Jesus. Now, you know, the Bible says that it's difficult for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven. But sometimes hardship even can break the heart of a rich man. I'm reminded of the the biography of a woman in the 18th century, the Countess of Huntingdon.

She was a key figure in the English Great Awakening in the 18th century. She was one of the wealthiest women in England. At age 26, her husband died, leaving all of his wealth to her. She became a Christian. Well, her husband died a little later.

She became a Christian, and she deployed her wealth for the building of hundreds of churches. She supported George Whitefield, John Newton. She supported the great revival of the 18th century. And the Wesley's and others were helped by her. She was very rich, but it's interesting, she says she was saved by the letter M in the Bible, the letter M.

Not many rich. Not many rich. And she was referring to 1 Corinthians 1.26, not many of you were wise according to this world, not many powerful, not many of noble birth. And she said, Blessed be God, it does not say any mighty, it does not say any noble, it says many mighty. I owe my salvation to the letter M.

If it had not been not any noble, there would be no countess." So, he's a rich man, And it seems like God's really drawing him even though he has power and position. The sickness drives this nobleman to Jesus. Look at 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 the sick boy is in Capernaum, Jesus is in Cana, around 18 or so miles away, and of course Jesus has turned water into wine in Cana and now he's back here. Now there are a few things that we can just observe that I don't think are the heart of the matter but they're helpful.

Sicknesses can fall upon the young. And in this case, a sickness of a child was actually designed to drive a family to believe in Jesus. And we often think that sicknesses and trials are so tragic, but what God ordains is always good. His will is just and holy, and He does everything to draw men to Himself. So that question would be answered rightly, Who has believed our report?

Interesting, you know, here in this story the younger one seems like is going to die before the older one. You know, usually it's not that way. But here the roles are reversed and a child is dying and a parent is taking care of that child. So a parent is standing in the way of death, of sickness, this is what parents do, and so he's desperate. The nobleman seems to have false assumptions in his mind about Jesus.

It seems like he thinks that Jesus has to be physically present for healing to take place. But that's a false assumption because the healing that Jesus brings is supernatural and it's done over many miles and I think this man is realizing his riches cannot solve his problems, that money cannot reach many of the problems that he has, especially this one. There are many times we think that if we just had enough money we could fix all the problems, we could bring what we need to bring. But that's not true. Money doesn't fix everything.

And it's not able to fix this problem here. So this man is like every father or mother, crying out for their son. There are many examples of this in the Bible of fathers crying out for their sons. And you have David, Absalom, oh, Absalom. You have many places where you find parents crying out for their children.

But what happens here is that the sickness is the means that God brings to bring this man to Jesus. And so God uses trouble and disturbances in our soul for particular reasons. J.C. Ryle said this, affliction is one of God's medicines. Family troubles can cause salvation in a whole house.

That's why David said it was good that I was afflicted. Some of you even this week have experienced some really difficult times with your children. And affliction is one of God's medicines. It drives everybody to the Lord. Distress draws us to God.

It's designed to humble us. This is why we read in 2 Corinthians 12 that God gave Paul the thorn in the flesh. God gave him that thorn in the flesh to humble him, to keep him from exalting himself. And God sent that affliction to glorify himself and to bring the Apostle Paul into a greater sweetness of happiness that only comes from humility. And so he gave him a thorn, and you know, that thorn, what God was telling Paul is that thorn's not coming out.

It's not coming out. You can try to pull on it. You've already prayed about it, but it's not coming out. That happens. God sends those things to drive us to Himself.

Now, Jesus responds to this man And he says, unless you people see signs and wonders, you will by no means believe. And unless you is in the plural, unless you see signs and wonders. In other words, unless y'all, you know, all y'all out there, All y'all Galileans, that's what he's talking about. And John is just declaring that the people in this region don't honor him because they're looking for signs. That's the kind of belief they have.

Give us a sign, give us a show, give us a healing. We'll believe if something amazing happens in our eyes, you know. That's the kind...this was the crisis of belief that they had there in Galilee. And they believed in Jesus, but not with a saving belief. They believed that Jesus was awesome.

That's kind of what they, that was as deep as it was. You know, they believed he was born, they believed he healed people, But it wasn't personal to them. They had a particular kind of belief. This is another element of the crisis of their belief. First of all, he was without honor, but also the only way they really honored him if he did something really hot for them.

You know, what have you done for me lately?" was their kind of faith. I believe in Jesus. Lord give me more. That was their disposition. And they kind of had a technical belief.

They believed in his miracles, you know. You know, a little bit like, maybe like Nicodemus. Remember what Nicodemus said? He said, no one can do what you do unless God is with them. It was like Nicodemus.

It was a technical belief. He saw the miracles. He thought they were awesome. But they didn't love him and want to follow him and want his authority over them. There's a big difference between saying, yeah, I believe Jesus is the Son of God, you know, I got baptized.

There's a big difference between that and somebody who really loves him. Now this is the most, I think that this might be the most common way to believe. It's the most dangerous way to believe. This way of believing exists today. It's the majority kind of belief that exists in our country.

You can't hardly talk to anybody in America without them saying they're a Christian. But they believe with this kind of belief. They believe, but they don't believe the way the Bible speaks of belief. Now the word believe or belief or believing occurs around a hundred times in the gospel of John. That's why this is often called the gospel of belief because belief is really the heart of the matter.

In other words these things are written that you might believe that Jesus is the Son of God and that you might have life in His name. So everything is written for that purpose. And so when you encounter this word believe in the gospel of John, you're coming really to the heart of the message of John. Here's an illustration of that. An illustration of a different kind of belief than the belief of the Galileans.

Hebrews 11, beginning in verse one, Now faith or belief is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. So faith is not seen. Faith is, faith is not, does not require a miracle. It's not seen. True faith believes on the Word of God.

Faith doesn't even need evidence because it's based on a heart that's changed to believe. So that's why he says faith is the substance of things hoped for. You start hoping for what you cannot see. You know, we love him even though we don't see him. And I think, You know, Jesus is enlightening them of their error, that their belief is really pretty much a show-me belief.

And that's the heart of the problem. They wanted a miracle, they wanted a breakthrough, they wanted to be moved, They wanted to be jacked up and enlightened and they wanted it, you know, they wanted to have an experience That's kind of what people are looking they want an experience today They want something that can be seen, you know, and you know one kind of faith just says Jesus is amazing. Don't you feel his amazingness? But Jesus knew that this was the nobleman's problem, that he just believed that Jesus was a miracle worker. That's why he was looking for Jesus.

He didn't really want to become a disciple of Jesus. When his son got sick, he just wanted to get his problem fixed. He wanted some help, you know. This happens all the time. People start going to the church and they say, well, you know, I'm depressed.

You know, I need some help on that. I need friends, so I'm going to go to church. I need business, I'm going to take 50 business cards to church and pass them out. There are all kinds of reasons that people go to church, but it's usually because they want something for themselves rather than to become a disciple, a follower, a servant, a slave of Jesus Christ. That's a completely different kind of belief.

The nobleman, I believe, at this phase and this crisis of his belief, he was just kind of looking for help. Now, God uses that. But belief is the basis of salvation, not necessarily some kind of temporal help. And that's why in John 3, 16, you know, Jesus says, for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever would believe in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." And so this is the most...this is illustrating the most common form of unbelief, and it's the most dangerous form of unbelief, where the revelation of God is not enough. The words of God are not enough.

There are just different kinds of unbelief, belief in the facts, belief that Jesus is the Son of God. James says that even though demons believe and they tremble, that they believe kind of like the way the nobleman did when he was chasing down Jesus to get his problem fixed. And everybody understands why he would do that, but there's a belief that trusts. And it's the kind of trust that believes that God is good, that he's a rewarder of those who seek Him. Hebrews 11 verse 6 speaks of this.

He says, But without faith it's impossible to please Him, for He who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is the rewarder of those who seek Him. Faith that is saving faith is the kind of faith that believes that God is a rewarded that believes that God really is good He's better than everything else He's superior his ways are best You know that's what That's a change that happens in people's hearts, and that's why they turn away from worldliness, because they believe that, that don't hit no much as they say back now down there where I live. You know, It doesn't work. It just doesn't work. It's bad.

And when you come to that realization, you're on the precipice of true faith. And, you know, with the heart one believes. And in Romans chapter 10, we see about that, that this heart of belief, it believes, but it destroys shame and involves the heart. And that's why Paul said to the Romans, he said, for with the heart one believes under righteousness and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the scripture says, whoever believes on him will not be put to shame." In Romans chapter 3, we learn that this kind of believing is just like faith, and it requires faith.

And so Paul says to them in that church, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ is to all who believe. And then later on in verse 26 in that chapter he says that that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith. So faith, true belief, it's justifying. It delivers you from shame. It's from the heart.

It's something deeper than just believing in facts about Jesus. You know, Jesus has already said this in the Gospel of John because there's this matter of receiving and embracing and internalizing him, which is spoken of in John 1 verse 12, but as many as received Him, to them He gave the power to become children of God, to those who believe in His name, who were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." But this receiving is not just a perfunctory yes, I receive you Jesus into my heart. That's not what this is talking about. He's talking about an embracing and entering into a love for, a desire for, to really receive into your life, receive every part of Him into your life, not just the part that you like, but everything. You leave everything and follow Him.

That's what receiving is. It's not an act of speaking, I received Jesus. And there's this promise, you know, of God, whoever believes will have everlasting life. That's in John 3.36. He has everlasting life.

That's in the present tense. That means if you believe with saving faith, you have everlasting life at the moment you believe. You've stepped into eternity. Like you don't have to die to enter into eternity the moment you're converted you receive The kingdom of heaven and you actually enter into eternal life because a supernatural change has taken place And if you die it doesn't even matter you're just gonna step from one world and another your body's gonna go into a grave and you're going to step into the world that you've already been living in only exponentially beautiful. And you won't perish but you'll have everlasting life.

So this nobleman was having a crisis of belief. His belief system was changing. He believed in miracles. Now he was going to believe in the Word of God. The miracles do soften the heart, but they don't save you.

The miracles can lead you to see how good Jesus is, but it's only true belief that can save you. And I think the nobleman is going through this process. And you know, you You know, you find this in the story of Lazarus in John 11, where Jesus says To Martha, he says, I'm the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.

And then Jesus looked at her and he said, do you believe this? He'd been in her home many times and now he is looking at her and he is saying, Do you believe this? Because that is the most important question. Who has believed our report and to whom has the arm, the strength, the beauty, the life of the Lord been revealed. And then she said to him, yes Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who has come into the world.

You know, the Bible gives many warnings for the dangers of unbelief. In Hebrews chapter 4, We learn that if you have belief not mixed with faith, then you will not enter his rest. I think this is the transition this nobleman is going through, but he at this point in the narrative is possessing the most dangerous kind of belief, the belief that does not save. But then we find, you know, this man, he's in such anguish, he cries out, and he says, Sir, come down before my child dies. I was tempted to give a sermon with this title, Come Down, Lord, Come Down.

You know, That's a prayer you've prayed many times. Lord, come down. Rescue me from this situation. Rescue my child. Rescue my mom.

Rescue my dad. Rescue my friend. Come down. Lord, come down. It's an appropriate prayer.

It's one of the truly beautiful prayers in the Bible. Interestingly enough, does Jesus answer his prayer? He says, Lord, come down. And what does Jesus do? He doesn't come down.

He doesn't obey Him. He doesn't fulfill His request the way He wants it. Jesus is wiser. This is the glory of unanswered prayer. Jesus, whatever He does is good.

He might not come down the way you called for him to come down, but he's down. He's come down, believe me. We're often so wise in our own eyes that we miss what God is doing And we don't accept what he's doing. Well then, there's this shift of belief, this crisis of belief, I believe, finds its way into sweetness for this man and his whole family. And here in the third section, you find his dependence in Jesus' word, dependence.

You know, you can see these, this progression. You have the dishonor, you have the desperation, and now, Now you have dependence on Jesus' word. Here we find ourselves getting into the region of what I believe is true saving faith for Him. Jesus said to Him, Go your way, your son lives. So the man believed, the man believed, but what did he believe?

Not the hype, not the show, not the miracles. The man believed the word. He believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and he went his way. He believed the word. He didn't question it anymore.

He wasn't fighting anymore. The spirit of dishonor had just fled from his soul, and he believed the word that Jesus said. That's the most life-giving thing that can happen in your soul, is when you finally are softened, disarmed, to the point where you believe His Word. And that's what you want, and you want His Word to guide you wherever he takes you in his word. And then he went home after he believed, and he was going home and his servants, He had servants, he had resources, and they met him and they told him, can you imagine what he was thinking when he saw them coming down the road?

Good news or bad news? He's dead. He probably thought, like you and I would, when he saw his servants a far off and couldn't see the looks on their faces, they were probably walking pretty fast, right? He probably thought, my son's dead. That's what we do.

But that's not what they said. They said, your son lives. Wow! Maybe that's the climax. I don't know.

The climax probably is, so the man believed. But boy, after that, you know, there's just this remarkable happiness that's breaking out all over the place. And then he inquired of them the hour when he got better. And they said to 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 then this phrase, and he himself believed, and his whole household. So everybody ended up believing with the same belief that their father had been given. And again, you know, what would it take for you to believe? Would it be enough that Jesus would tell you that there's healing out in the distance and you'd believe Him? You would just believe the word that He said.

Maybe you can't see everything in front of your face, but He's saying there's healing out in the distance there. It's coming. Do you believe that? You know, do you believe that I've gone and prepared a place for you in heaven? Do you really believe that?

Do you believe it without seeing it? Do you have that kind of saving faith? So this man was moved from a philosophical, technical position that Jesus was a miracle worker and an amazing person to a person who had put his trust in him. You know, God does use sickness in trials, doesn't he? Remember when Jesus was in Matthew's house, and all these really messed up people were there and he said it's it's only sick people that need a physician and that's what this man got he got the great physician.

Sickness is good in this sense. It draws us to the great physician. Here this man inherits court and he believes. You know, I think at this place in this passage, I would just say that it's so appropriate for us to pray that the gospel would move through our whole families, just like it did this family. Do you want the gospel to move through your whole family?

Maybe you know your children, they know it all. They might know more than you in some areas, but they don't know Jesus. And it's right for us to pray that the gospel would just sweep our whole families, our whole household, everybody who works for us, everybody who ever did, everybody who ever will, will find Jesus in our house. And then there's this declaration. I'm calling verse 54 a declaration.

This again is the second sign Jesus did when he had come out of Judea into Galilee. It's a sign. A healing is just a sign. It's a pointer to something greater. A dying son is a picture of something greater.

A family unconverted is a picture of something greater. A hardship, a difficulty, a tragedy, a tremendous heartbreak, even as great as the impending death of your son, is meant to point us to Jesus Christ. Everything is meant to point us to Jesus Christ. Everything is meant to point us to him. Whether you're at a wedding, Jesus is there to point you to living water and to wine that always satisfies.

And if your son is dying, it's there to point you to Jesus. And if it doesn't point you to Jesus, you'll have no hope and you will be dashed. But Jesus is sufficient for the death of a son or a daughter or a wife or a mother or a father or an uncle or a grandfather, he's sufficient. And I think that just leads me to make some applications further about this. Just taking a step back and looking at this whole narrative, you know, everything that happened here happened because of a tragedy.

It was a tragedy in the making, and we should never despise tragedies in the wrong way, because God uses calamity to bring people to Jesus. He did it in this narrative and he's done it many many times. I would expect that many of you came to Jesus because you reached a crisis and you couldn't take it anymore And it was so hard that you finally turned to Jesus and guess what? He was right there with open arms. You dishonored him.

You thought he was just nothing to you, really, except a miracle worker over there for your family or somebody else. He's a religious, crazy people. But then something came into your life, and maybe it was because you were abusing drugs or something like that, or you sinned so grievously, and life got so hard, and God actually brought trouble into your life to drive you to him. Tragedy does that and you know Look at the troubles of your life. They're all designed by God.

They're customized They're personalized to help you be relieved of the sin that's hurting you to turn you to Jesus This family just could have continued on its repetitive life of vanity vanity all is vanity one one generation comes one generation goes the Sun comes up and it goes down the wind blows the rivers flow you know and life just goes on and on but it took a crisis it took the near death of his son to stop the vanity. And is God doing that for you? Now is it possible that something has come into your life that's so hard and so defining and you don't even know what to do, but God is bringing you to the brink of His arms so that you would believe and give up and turn to Jesus. The worst thing is often the means to the best thing. The hardest things often lead to the happiest things.

That's exactly what happened here. And I know it's happened to many of us here in this place. And you can see this all over the Bible think of Job think of Hezekiah he gets this this threatening letter from a gigantic king and army and he spreads out the letter before the throne of God in the temple he says there it is Lord And God mysteriously kills a hundred and eighty-five thousand Assyrian warriors right outside the gate of the city in the middle of the night. And after spreading out that letter, they walked out and saw these dead bodies. The calamity drove him to God, and that's what's important.

Think of Ezra and Nehemiah. Think of the man with the epileptic son, the woman who cried out, O son of David, come and heal. Think of the woman with the flow of blood for twelve years, Jonah in the belly of the whale. Every disappointment is an appointment by God, an appointment with Jesus Christ. Desperation can be good, but only if it leads you to a good shepherd.

The second thing that I want us to recognize here is that healing doesn't happen by human means. Psychology won't help you, vacations won't help you, getting a new wife won't fulfill you, finding a better spouse. The kind of healing we need comes from spiritual means. God does it. He does it across the miles.

He does it by His own power. The third thing is that Jesus hears the entreating. He hears the begging. This man who really didn't believe with right belief, but God God hark into his prayers Even even your sinful prayers God will because he loves you He'll move he'll move None of our prayers are ever perfect. Nobody ever uttered a sinless prayer.

Nobody did. But God is so kind. Blessed are those who have not seen yet believed. So, this makes it very clear that Christianity is far more than a doctrine. It's far more than ethical commands, it's far, far deeper than moral behavior qualities.

It's life, it's a way of life, it's existing in a real world. A life where people die and where fathers are desperate and where people are unconverted and there are people who dishonor Jesus, and people who are just looking for a show. And Christianity is designed to bring healing into all those areas of this life, that his kingdom can be seen and heard and smelled and touched and tasted. It's known, it's felt in the heart. And so the condition of this boy is a parable, an illustration of what it's like to be delivered from the grip of sin and a whole family delivered from the grip of sin.

And it happens really On the hinge of one word, believe. The man believed. So do you believe with saving faith? Have you received Him in the way that You have put your trust in Him and you want Him. You pursue Him.

You love Him. You want His authority. You want to obey Him. You want His Word to guide you. That is what saving faith is.

And that's the kind of faith that was given to this family. What a blessing. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for this remarkable story where the desperation of a father turns into the salvation of a family. You are so kind.

Thank you for bringing us calamity so that we would turn our heads to you, our only hope, the fountain of living waters, the resurrection in the life, the living bread, the living water, and the only light which is true light in this world. Thank you, Lord, for drawing us, for disarming us so that we might know you with saving faith. Amen.