Taking Jesus At His Word


Scripture Reading: John 4:43-54:

After two days He left for Galilee. (Now Jesus Himself had pointed out that a prophet has no honor in his own country). When He arrived in Galilee, the Galileans welcomed Him. They had seen all that He had done in Jerusalem at the Passover Festival, for they also had been there.

Once more He visited Cana in Galilee, where He had turned the water into wine. And there was a certain royal official whose son lay sick at Capernaum. When this man heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea, he went to Him and begged Him to come and heal his son, who was close to death.

“Unless you people see signs and wonders,” Jesus told him, “you will never believe.”

The royal official said, “Sir, come down before my child dies.”

“Go,” Jesus replied, “your son will live.”

The man took Jesus at His word and departed. While he was still on the way, his servants met him with the news that his boy was living. When he inquired as to the time when his son got better, they said to him, “Yesterday, at one in the afternoon, the fever left him.”

Then the father realized that this was the exact time at which Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live.” And so he and his whole household believed.

This was the second sign Jesus performed after coming from Judea to Galilee.

Learning About the Story

To really interpret this story, we have to check in with John’s timeline and follow the story that’s He’s telling. So let’s go back to John 2:1: On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee…

We don’t know the exact location of Cana; that’s been lost to history. But we believe it was probably a village perhaps twenty miles from Capernaum, which was Jesus’ adopted hometown during His ministry. So here we see Him in Cana, and look at John 2:11:

What Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs through which He revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in Him.

Why did they believe in Him? Because they had seen Him perform a miracle, one that a normal human could not possibly have done. He turned the water into wine. At this point, their faith was largely based on what they had seen Him do.

Now look at the next couple of verses—John 2:12-13: After this He went down to Capernaum with His mother and brothers and His disciples. There they stayed for a few days. When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

The first thing He did in Jerusalem was to cleanse the temple and throw out the moneychangers. Look what the Jewish leaders said in verse 18: The Jews then responded to Him: “What sign can you show us to prove Your authority to do this?”

Well, Jesus did do some miracles and signs in Jerusalem. Look at verse 23: Now while he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Festival, many people saw the signs he was performing and believed in His name.

Why did they believe? They were convinced by His miracles. These were primarily Galileans who had come down to Jerusalem for the Passover.

In chapter 3, Jesus has His nocturnal meeting with Nicodemus, and then look at verse 22: After this, Jesus and His disciples went out into the Judean countryside…

After spending some time in the Judean countryside near the Jordan River, they started for home. But instead of taking the Jordan Valley route, they returned by way of Samaria. In chapter 4, Jesus and His disciples meet the Samaritan woman, as we heard last week during student takeover Sunday.

Now, when you study the Bible, you want to notice what is there. But you also want to notice what is not there. What is missing from Samaria? What is absent? It’s like Sherlock Holmes dog that didn’t bark.

There is no indication Jesus performed any miracles, signs, or wonders. And yet, look at verse 40: So when the Samaritans came to Him, they urged Him to stay with them, and He stayed two days. And because of His words many more became believers.

Notice that! Why did the Samaritans believe? Not because of His works, but because of His words. Not because they saw miracles, but because they listened to His teachings. They believed Him for who He was and for what He said, not just for what they saw. Now let’s go back to our original text in verse 43:

After two days He left for Galilee.

And notice this strange parenthetical statement. It literally is in parenthesis in my version of the Bible in John 4:44:

(Now Jesus Himself had pointed out that a prophet has no honor in his own country).

Why did John add that sentence? The Samaritans honored Jesus by believing Him because of His teaching and because of His words to them. But the Galileans were simply viewing Him as a miracle-worker. The Samaritans accepted Him for His preaching, but in Galilee they were obsessed with His miracles. John is contrasting the faith of the Samaritans with the faith of the Galileans.

This theme is going to unfold as we progress into the story. Look at verse 45: When He arrived in Galilee, the Galileans welcomed Him.

Why? Because…

They had seen all that He had done in Jerusalem at the Passover Festival, for they also had been there.

They had seen His wonders, His miracles.

I believe Jesus was very aware of this dichotomy, and He was not happy about it. The Galileans were only interested in His miracles, not in His message. Their faith was based on what they had seen, not on who He was or what He was saying. So now He is going to give them a lesson about it. This is very subtle, but I don’t want you to miss it.

Once more He visited Cana in Galilee, where He had turned the water into wine. And there was a certain royal official whose son lay sick at Capernaum. When this man heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea, he went to Him and begged Him to come and heal his son, who was close to death.

“Unless you people see signs and wonders,” Jesus told him, “you will never believe.”

Do you see why Jesus responded this way? I don’t believe He was speaking just to the man. He said, “Unless you people….” He was speaking to all the bystanders who were ready to hike 20 miles with Him to see another miracle.

The moment this father asked Jesus to come and heal his son, everyone’s pulse sped up and they said, “Grab your friends and let’s go see this!” Jesus turned and said to them, in effect, “I wish you people would believe Me for who I am and what I am saying. All you want is another miracle. You have a miracle-based faith.”

The Samaritans have believed without miracles. There’s no evidence of Jesus having done a single miracle in Samaria, apart from His divine insight into the Samaritan woman’s past. Yet they believed in Him for who He was and what He said. Back in His own country, people weren’t as interested in His message or His person. They just wanted to see the wonders He performed.

Jesus is weary of that. So He turned the tables. Look at verses 49-50: The royal official said, “Sir, come down before my child dies.”

“Go,” Jesus replied, “your son will live.”

Let me translate that for you: “Go back home. I have just healed your son. He’s twenty miles away, and you can’t see him. But I’ve just sent My power shooting through the air, and at this very moment he is jumping out of bed as good as new.”

This took place precisely at one o’clock in the afternoon. At that very instant the words of Jesus Christ flew with the speed of light across the hills of Galilee, and suddenly at the very same instant, the boy’s fever dropped from 105 to 104 to 103 to 102 to 101 to 100 to normal. At that very moment, the boy’s strength came back and he jumped out of bed as though he had never been sick. The man could not see it. He could not know it by visual evidence. He could not see the miracle.

But Jesus said, “Go back home. Your son is already better. I’ve just healed him by telepathy.”

Look at what it says:

The man took Jesus at His word and departed. While he was still on the way, his servants met him with the news that his boy was living. When he inquired as to the time when his son got better, they said to him, “Yesterday, at one in the afternoon, the fever left him.”

Then the father realized that this was the exact time at which Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live.” And so he and his whole household believed. This was the second sign Jesus performed after coming from Judea to Galilee.

John uses the word “sign” meaning that the miracle itself points to greater truths for us to learn. So put all this together. What is John teaching us? Well, let me sum it up for you by taking you to the climax of the Gospel of John in chapter 20. Look at John 20:24ff:

Now Thomas (also known as Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!” But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in His hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.”

A week later His disciples were in the house again and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” Then He said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see My hands. Reach out your hand and put it into My side. Stop doubting and believe.”

Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”

Then Jesus told Him, “Because you have seen Me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

There is the lesson.

And I want to unpack this lesson with three statements of application.

Living Out the Story

First, Our Faith is Based on Who Jesus Is and What He says, Not Simply What He Does. Honestly, sometimes the Lord Jesus don’t do what we expected Him to do. We don’t always understand, and God doesn’t always answer our prayers with instant gratification. I keep a prayer list that goes back now for many years. Some of my prayer items are answered the very next day. Others I’ve been praying about for years and they are still outstanding. But I often think of the great hymn by Charles Wesley, seldom sung now. It says:

Faith, mighty faith, the promise sees

And trusts in God alone.

Laughs at life’s impossibilities

And cries it shall be done.

Job prayed, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.”

I’ve been reading a book about the global persecution of Christians in the world, and it told the story of a man named Negasi, who lived in Southern Ethiopia, where he served as a pastor in a heavily Islamic area. One day, a group of local Muslims grabbed him and demanded he renounce his faith. They gave him one week, and at the end of the week they were back. One of them held a sword over Nagasi’s neck. Do you know what he said to them:

“If I die, my son will be a preacher. If you scrape my flesh, whoever touches it will become a Christian. And at the place where I die, a church will be built.”

The crowd let him go. This was a man who didn’t have a miracle up his sleeve. He just knew and trusted Jesus. That was his Job moment—though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.

Another great hymn says:

Oh, for a faith that will not shrink,

Though pressed by many a foe,

That will not tremble on the brink

Of any earthly woe!

And that brings me to the next lesson:

Second, Faith is Taking Jesus at His Word.

That is the definition of faith right from the text of the Bible itself—the man took Jesus at His Word. In my library I have some books by B.B. Warfield, who was one of America’s most famous theologians and who taught at Princeton Seminary until his death in 1921. Most people who read his books don’t know his story. B.B. Warfield married a young woman named Annie, and they traveled to Germany for their honeymoon. If a freak electrical storm, Annie was struck by lightning and suffered paralysis. From her honeymoon until she died in 1915, Annie battled paralysis, and Warfield cared for her. He seldom left home for more than two hours at a time.

But he had a verse of Scripture that you may very well know: Romans 8:28—for we know that all things work for the good of those who love God and for those who are called according to His purpose.

And if you got to B.B. Warfield’s extensive writings, here is what he said about that verse:

The fundamental thought is the universal government of God. All that comes to you is under His controlling hand. The secondary thought is the favor of God to those that love Him. If He governs all, then nothing but good can befall those to whom He would do good…. Though we are too weak to help ourselves and too blind to ask for what we need, and can only groan in unformed longings, He is the author in us of these very longings…and He will so govern all things that we shall reap only good from all that befalls us.

The most basic, most fundamental, most elementary thing I have ever learned in my Christian life is to find a promise from God whenever I’m in panic or pain, and to take Jesus Christ at His Word.

Third, Faith is the Spiritual Commodity that Sustains Us Between the Time the Promise is Given and the Time it is Fulfilled.

Here is the question. How do we keep up our spirits and maintain our morale during tough times? How do we persevere with a smile and with joy in our hearts? There is only one way—taking Jesus at His Word.

I have a great friend who is a retired Southern Baptist pastor named Richard Hipps. Years ago, he and his wife were missionaries to Brazil, but their youngest daughter died at the age of four. They decided to stay in the United States and to serve as pastor of a church. Richard poured himself into that work until he was exhausted, and he fell into a deep period of depression and anxiety. He began having panic attacks. At first he tried to keep it secret, but finally he told his wife Patricia and the leaders of his church, who began praying for him.

This went on for about a year, and one day he got in his car to go to an associational meeting. He pulled off Interstate 40 and paused at the yield sign to turn right. In his peripheral vision, he saw a man standing at the intersection holding a sign. Something about it nagged at him, and he turned around and drove back to where the man was standing.

As Richard approached, he was surprised to see that nothing was written on the man’s sign. Richard reached through the window to give the man some money, but the man gently took his arm and pushed it back into the car window. “I do not need your money, but thank you. I am here to tell you one thing. You are going to be better. The depressions will soon pass. So do not worry. OK?” And the man smiled at him.

Richard was so stunned he could hardly say, “OK.” He drove off, asking himself, “What just happened.” He turned the car around to talk to the man again, but no one was there. Within the space of two minutes the man had vanished.

Richard didn’t go on to the associational meeting. He went back to his office, saying, “Thank You, thank You. Thank You for letting me know that I will be better soon. Thank You for sending me this angel! You are so good. Thank You, thank You, thank You.”

God doesn’t usually send us angels, but He gives us the same message in the Bible. In the Gospels Jesus said:

  • Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes. Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or gather into barns, and yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?
  • Take courage, it is I. Don’t be afraid.
  • Whoever believes in Me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.
  • Peace I leave with you; My peace I give unto you—not as the world gives give I unto you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.
  • For we know that all things work together for good to those who love the Lord and who are called according to His purpose.

Faith is believing in Jesus because of who He is and what He says.

Faith is taking Him at His Word.

And faith is the spiritual commodity that sustains us between the time the promise is given and the time it is fulfilled.

Faith—is the victory!