Healing an Official’s Son | John 4:43-54
Brian Hedges | March 19, 2017
Bow with me one more time. Father, we’re so thankful this morning that we can truly say, “It is well with our souls.” Our sin, oh, the bliss of that glorious thought! Our sin, not in part but the whole is nailed to the cross, and we bear it no more, bless the Lord, bless the Lord, oh my soul. So, thank You for the gospel and as we now look into it, as we look into those things into which angels desire to look, would You guide us by Your Holy Spirit? Would You open our eyes to see and understand these beautiful, wonderful truths from Your Word? Would you apply them deeply to our hearts and spiritually transform our ways? And would You prepare our hearts for fellowship with Christ at the table this morning? We pray in Jesus’ Name. Amen.
In the best stories of literature, the coming of a long awaited king is often accompanied with a sign. So, for example, in the legend of King Arthur, only the true king can remove the sword, Excalibur, from the anvil in the stone.
Or in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, the true king of Gondor is known by his power to heal. “The hands of the king are healing hands and thus shall the rightful king be known.”
And in a similar way, the Gospels portray Jesus as the true king – the Messiah of Israel and the true Lord of the world – and the Gospels describe the miracles of Jesus as signs – signs which point to his kingship, and point to the inauguration of God’s kingdom on earth, God’s saving reign in the world.
And the Gospel of John, in particular, records a number of these signs – actually calls them signs. And in fact, some people have suggested that the Gospel of John can be divided into two broad sections – the book of signs (in chapters 1-12) and the book of glory (in chapters 13-21).
Well, we’ve already seen the first of these signs when we looked at the story of Jesus transforming the water into wine at the wedding of Cana in Galilee in John, chapter two. And today, we look at the second sign. As Jesus returns to Galilee, he’s been in Judea, he’s now come through Samaria, he’s returned north through to Galilee and we see the second sign in our passage.
It’s John 4:43-54. Let me just read the text:
After the two days he departed for Galilee. 44 (For Jesus himself had testified that a prophet has no honor in his own hometown.) 45 So when he came to Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him, having seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the feast. For they too had gone to the feast. 46 So he came again to Cana in Galilee, where he had made the water wine. And at Capernaum there was an official whose son was ill. 47 When this man heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went to him and asked him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. 48 So Jesus said to him, “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.” 49 The official said to him, “Sir, come down before my child dies.” 50 Jesus said to him, “Go; your son will live.” The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and went on his way. 51 As he was going down, his servants met him and told him that his son was recovering. 52 So he asked them the hour when he began to get better, and they said to him, “Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him.” 53 The father knew that was the hour when Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live.” And he himself believed, and all his household. 54 This was now the second sign that Jesus did when he had come from Judea to Galilee.
This is God’s Word.
Interestingly enough, this is a very simple passage and it was a very hard sermon to prepare. It was one of those that I just couldn’t quite seem to get, even late last night, struggling with it and praying. And then finally, it kind of came into place. And so this is going to be pretty simple. I want to just walk through the story with you and I want to do it by using five key words and those words are crisis, rebuke, grace, power, and faith.
And in each one of those words we’ll look at a certain aspect of this story and I think there are some really important lessons for us to learn about the life of faith and about God’s ways of dealing with us in the gospel and through Christ.
(1) So, here’s the first. Crisis. This passage shows us a common human theme: it shows us a person in crisis. The official’s son is sick, close to death. So, here is sickness. Here is grief. This is something we all face. As the book of Job says, “Man born of woman is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward.” “We are few of days and full of trouble.”
Our lives are beset with sorrows and this story shows us that such sorrows touch all kinds of people, regardless of social rank, regardless of one’s place in the world.
Here is an official. He was probably one of the officials of Herod the Great, or Herod the Tetrarch. He is a man of power. Here’s a man who has servants, so he’s also a man of wealth. But note, his power and his wealth cannot protect him from the ravages of sickness and of death. And so his son becomes sick, and this man’s world is falling apart. His days are filled with worry, his nights are filled with tears. Sorrow treads on his heels.
And some of you know what this is like. Some of you, like me, have confronted situations where you were deeply worried about the health of a child.
I’ll never forget when our oldest son, Stephen, was diagnosed with diabetic keto-acidosis, DKA. He had been wasting away before our eyes for a period of about a week to ten days. He literally looked like a skeleton with skin. The doctors had misdiagnosed him twice. They had run a blood panel and found nothing. They didn’t even want to see him the third time, they said, “Nothing’s wrong with him.” Holly insisted that they see him on a Friday and not wait till the next Monday.
I went with her to the pediatrician’s office. Finally they did a urinalysis and they figured it out and at the same time, we were on our phones on WebMD and we were beginning to figure it out, that he had DKA. This is what they told us. They said, “Don not go home. Go straight to the hospital. Don’t go pack bags or anything like that, go straight to the hospital. When you get to the hospital, don’t check in, go to the fourth floor.”
And I want to tell you, that was a scary ride in the car to the hospital. And a scary couple of days because suddenly, we as parents were faced with the mortality of our own children.
Of course, God was very merciful and Stephen is okay. Many of you have faced something similar and many of you have faced things much harder, much worse, even the loss of a child. And sooner or later all of us do, don’t we? Life is fragile. It’s full of trouble. And those troubles bring sorrows. And those sorrows bring us to the point of desperation. They bring us to a crisis and that’s where this man was. The official—he was in crisis. He was about to lose his son! I’ve even wondered, maybe his son actually had something like DKA, in an age long before insulin. Well, that’s the situation the official faced and his need reveals a pattern, I believe, for many people coming to faith in Jesus Christ.
Here’s a man who came to Christ out of a felt need. But I want you to notice that in coming to Jesus, his true need is exposed. His deeper need, his spiritual need is exposed and that is often the case. A lot of times people first begin to think about God because they’re in a crisis. And they come out of a felt need. Someone’s sick. Someone’s dying. There’s some kind of trouble. There’s some kind of problem in life. I’m suffering. And so we come but when we come, if we truly come to Jesus, the real Jesus, he not only addresses felt needs, he begins to work deeper. He begins to work the deeper places of our hearts. He calls us further up and further in, to use Lewis’ words. He calls us deeper and higher, to use the words we have just sung. And you see that in this story this morning.
(2) So, whatever your felt need may be this morning, don’t miss this—Jesus very often and very mercifully will meet a felt need but he’s always after the deeper problem and that’s why the crisis is followed by a rebuke. Which is kind of surprising. You read this passage and it’s kind of surprising how Jesus responds. Look at verse 48. Here’s this man, he’s come, he’s asked Jesus to heal his son who is at the point of death, and look at what Jesus says, verse 48, “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.”
That’s not the response you expect. It’s almost kind of shocking. Here’s a man in crisis, his son is about to die, he comes to Jesus for help and Jesus seems like a doctor with a poor bedside manner. “Unless you see signs and wonders, you will not believe.” It’s a rebuke. But as Kent Hughes says, “Christ’s words here are mercifully surgical,” because he is going after the deeper problem. The deeper problem in this man’s life is his unbelief.
And we should note here, that Jesus’ words are aimed not just at the official, but they’re aimed at a broader group of people. The verbs in verse 48, “unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.” Those verbs are plural, second-person plural. He’s speaking to a broader group of people—at least the man and his servants--but he’s probably also here addressing the spiritual condition of the people in Galilee.
And I think this is confirmed in the rather cryptic transitional statements in verses 43-46. Let me read those again: 43 After the two days he departed for Galilee. 44 (For Jesus himself had testified that a prophet has no honor in his own hometown.) 45 So when he came to Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him, having seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the feast. For they too had gone to the feast.
It just kind of reads weird. He came to Galilee because he knew that he had no honor in his hometown and then they welcomed him. And he has no honor in his hometown but he comes to Galilee, where Jesus is from—what’s going on here? And I think when you pay really close attention to the sentences, when you pay close attention to what is actually said, you begin to pick up what’s going on.
Look at verse 45, “the Galileans welcomed him, having seen all that he had done in Jerusalem.” You see, the welcomed him, not because of who he was and not because of what he said. Very unlike the Samaritans in the proceeding narrative. They’re not like the Samaritans. They’re not responding to Jesus’ word. They’re not responding to Jesus as the Messiah, they’re responding to the signs. They’re responding to the miracles and Jesus rebukes it. He rebukes it.
Here’s the point. A personal crisis can bring us to Jesus for the wrong reason. We can come to him because we want him to do something for us, not because we deeply trust him for who he is. And that kind of belief is a defective kind of faith. And that’s a thread that runs all the way through the gospel of John. You can see it in John chapter two. Some people believed after Jesus turned the water into the wine and John, the narrator, tells us for Jesus, for his part, did not entrust himself to them because he did not need anyone to tell him what was in man’s heart. He knew what was in their hearts. He knew it wasn’t a genuine heart-felt faith.
Then in John, chapter six, after Jesus does the miracle of the loaves, he feeds the thousands and the people are flocking to him, he rebukes them again. He says, “You’re just coming for more bread!” And that’s what Jesus does here. He rebukes the man and so one of the lessons for us from this passage is that we shouldn’t require signs in order to believe. We shouldn’t even wait until we’re in crisis to believe. That was the situation of this man. And so the crisis is followed by a rebuke, but get this—Jesus is so merciful that he does actually meet us where we are and he begins to work on the real issues of the heart. And that’s what he does with this man.
(3) And so, following the rebuke, you see grace. You see grace. And you see that in verses 49 and 50: 49 The official said to him, “Sir, come down before my child dies.” 50 Jesus said to him, “Go; your son will live.” The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and went on his way.
So Jesus meets the official’s need, but he doesn’t do it exactly as the way the official asks him to. Jesus refuses to come with him. The man says, “Come down with me.” Jesus won’t do it. He won’t go with him. But Jesus actually heals the son. So he meets the man in his crisis. He delivers the man.
I’ve been reading some in the past couple of weeks, an old Puritan named William Bridge. (Not someone I’ve quoted here often--William Bridge.) And William Bridge wrote a series of sermons on that wonderful text called in John one, verse 17, “from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.” And so there’s a series of sermons that are simply called, “Grace for grace.” And I’ve been reading these really for devotional purposes.
And in these sermons, Bridge reminds us that Christ has the same heart towards sinners in heaven today that he when he was here upon earth. He has the same grace, the same love, the same mercy. And Bridge just really presses this home in a way that was deeply encouraging to me.
He says that there’s fullness of pardon in Jesus. So that in the gospels Jesus pardons people before they come to him for pardon. You remember Jesus hanging on the cross? And he says, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
Bridge says that if you look in the gospel, you find that when people were putting forth their highest acts of sin, Jesus was putting forth his highest acts of love. So the very moment when Peter is sinning against Jesus, Jesus is suffering for Peter. Peter’s denying. Jesus is suffering, being tried there in the court on his way to crucifixion.
Not only that, but Jesus, when he was on earth, pardons again and again and again. And Bridge mentions the disciples in the garden. There they are. They’re sleeping. Jesus wakes them up. He goes and prays again. Then they’re sleeping again. Jesus forgives them again. He does this three times. And did you know, have you ever noticed this? That after the resurrection, not one mention of it. Not one.
Bridge further points out that when Christ was on earth, his first was concern was for those who were weak in grace. He came and he said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” “Blessed are they that mourn,” not “Blessed are those who have a deep assurance of the love of God.” And then, Bridge says, “And when any poor soul could not come to Christ, could not come to Christ in Christ's way, Christ would come down to him in his way.”
And he mentions Thomas. You remember poor doubting Thomas? The end of the gospel of John, the other disciples see the Lord resurrected and Thomas says, “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.” And then Jesus comes to Thomas and says, “Thomas, look at my hands. Thomas, look at my side. Place your hand in my hands. In my side.”
Well, the story in our text shows us the same kind of grace. As I was looking at how Jesus interacts with the official, I thought of that passage from William Bridge that I read, two or three weeks ago. I thought of that. I was like, “Here’s the official and Jesus meets him where he is.” And in a way he comes for the wrong reason. He doesn’t come with genuine saving faith. Jesus rebukes him. But, then he meets the need and the man believes. It is an amazing demonstration of God’s grace.
(4) So, crisis, rebuke, grace, and then we see, fourthly, power. And you see this in verses 50-53. Jesus says, “Your son will live.” The man believes the word that Jesus spoke to him. He goes on his way. As he’s going down, his servants meet him and they tell him that his son is recovering. And so the man asks, “When did it start? When did it happen?” And they tell him and the man figures up the time and he deduces, it was the same moment when Jesus said he would be healed.
It is an amazing display of Jesus’ power and authority! And it shows us the effectiveness of Jesus’ word. His word is powerful. He speaks and it is done. Jesus doesn’t have to see the situation. He doesn’t have to assess or diagnose. He’s not physician who has to examine the patient before he can prescribe a cure. No tests have to be run. No symptoms have to be spotted. He doesn’t even have to offer a diagnosis, he just utters the word and the son is healed. He skips the personal meeting. He doesn’t even see the boy. (Assuming he’s a boy.) He doesn’t see the son. He skips the journey, skips the spectacle, heals on the spot, from eighteen miles away. And it shows that Jesus has power over sickness and disease. He has power over great distances. He has power to merely utter a word and it is done.
And I think this story shows us implicitly that Jesus has power over unbelief itself. Because he’s just rebuked the man for his lack of faith. “You won’t believe unless you see signs and wonders.” The man begs, “Lord, my son’s gonna die.” Jesus says, “Go, your son will live.” And then look, this is verse 50, “The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and went on his way.” The man hasn’t seen anything yet, but he believes. Here he was, he didn’t believe, now he does believe.
You know, some people think that God has the power to do anything except this one thing—to cause someone to believe. They think that God can do anything except change a person’s heart against their will. Now, the appeal in thinking this is that it seems to safeguard the freedom of someone’s will. But really, it’s just a safeguard to the bondage of someone’s will.
It’s kind of like saying God has the power to do anything for a blind man except for make him see. But you see, sight is exactly what the blind man needs! And to say God doesn’t have power to change the will, is to say that God doesn’t have the power to do the one thing we deeply need. Because the will is what’s wrong. The lack of faith—that’s what’s wrong with us. And that’s exactly what needs to change.
Listen, friends. God has the power to change the will. He can take the unwilling, unrepentant, unbelieving son or daughter, or brother or sister, or friend or neighbor and he can make them willing. He can take the unwillingness out. He can take out the heart of stone and put in the heart of flesh. He can make the deaf hear, and the blind see, and the dead live.
He speaks and listening to his voice
New life the dead receive
The mournful, broken hearts rejoice
The humble poor believe.
Jesus can turn unbelief into faith, he can turn resistance into openness, he can turn bondage into freedom and thank God that he can! Because, if he couldn’t, we’d all be lost.
So, you see the power of Jesus’ word, the effective word of Jesus that creates the response that it requires. And this man in an instant is transferred from the darkness of unbelief into the light of a true and living faith in the Son of God. And it happens by mere word.
(5) And so that leads us to the fifth thing, and that is faith itself. Many expositors on this passage highlight the growth and the development of this man’s faith. So, Warren Wiersbe, for example, shows how the man moves from a crisis faith to a confirmed faith, then to a contagious faith as his household comes to believe as well.
And that’s alright. But the most notable thing about this man’s faith is that it follows Jesus’ word, but it comes before he sees proof of his son’s healing. I think that’s the most remarkable thing about faith in this passage. Again, in verse 50, Jesus said to him, “Go; your son will live.” The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and went on his way.
And he believed before he’s seen anything. Now, listen, he doesn’t have a telephone. He can’t call home and say, “You know, is Johnny doing better?” There’s nothing like that. He has no knowledge of what has actually happened. He just has the word of Jesus and he believes. He believes. What basis, on what basis does he believe? He believes on the basis of Jesus’ word itself. The authority of Jesus’ word.
Here’s the principle: faith follows the word. This is always the pattern in Scripture. “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17).
Or take those words from Hebrews eleven, that great “hall of faith” in Scripture: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” You see, that’s the difference between faith and sight. Paul says, “We walk by faith and not by sight.” Faith does not see and yet it believes. Faith does not say, “Seeing is believing.” Faith says, “Believing is seeing.” And faith lays hold of the word and says, “On the basis of this trustworthy word from this trustworthy person, I will believe.”
And do you remember what follows in Hebrews eleven, following that statement, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen?” What follows is the record of those Old Testament saints who believed without seeing, who lived by faith.
Here’s Noah. And God says, “Build an ark.” There’s no clouds in the sky. Doesn’t look like it’s gonna rain. Certainly doesn’t look like there’s gonna be a devastating flood. And Noah believes the word of God and he builds.
Or Abraham. God tells him to leave his homeland and go to a country that God will show him. He doesn’t even know where it is and he goes and he lives in tents for the rest of his life, because he’s looking for a city whose maker and builder is God.
Or Sarah. God tells her she will have a son, even though she’s barren. She’s an old woman, she’s past the age of child-bearing. And the text tells us, “By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised.”
That’s the heart of faith. It’s considering him faithful who has promised. Faith follows the word. Faith locks into the authority of the word and the authority of the one giving the word. So these Old Testament saints—they died in faith, not having received the things promised. They saw them from afar. They didn’t see them up close and personal. They didn’t see them with the eyes of the flesh. They walked by faith, not by sight.
Well, you see this man, the official, does the same thing. He believes before he sees and only afterwards does he see. And there might be that there’s someone here this morning, that the big obstacle for you in really fully giving way to Jesus is that you’ve got the order reversed. And what you’re essentially saying is, “Until I see, I won’t believe.” When Jesus says, “The order is believe and then you’ll see.”
Faith is not based on the tangible proof of scientific evidence. Faith is based on the authority of a trustworthy person whose powerful word creates the response that it requires.
So, in summary, this passage shows us a pattern, really. Crisis, that will bring us to our knees. Crisis that creates the opportunity for God to work. But, a rebuke for unbelief. But then, coupled with the rebuke, incredible grace and mercy as Christ reaches down to the level on which we live and meets our needs. And then power, the powerful effective word of Christ and the response of faith.
Where does it find you this morning? Does this passage find you in a point of crisis? If so, come to Jesus, seek Jesus, hear Jesus, but notice that this Jesus and all of his complexity is both tough and tender. Here’s Jesus who is hard on unbelief and who is tender to humble, broken people who come to him. And then respond in faith. Let’s pray.
Heavenly Father, every one of us at some point in our lives, finds ourselves in a situation much like the official. We find ourselves in personal crisis with a deep felt need. The reality is that regardless of the nature of our felt needs, we all have a deeper spiritual need. We have a need for faith. We need our blind eyes to be opened, our deaf ears to be unplugged, our hard hearts to be made soft. We need the gift of faith. We thank you for this assurance from your word that faith comes from hearing and hearing from the word of Christ. We thank you that scripture tells us that we are saved by grace through faith and that’s not of ourselves, it’s the gift of God. That it is given to us to believe in Christ. That the Lord opened Lydia’s heart so that she tended to the words of Paul. This pattern over and over again that you are the God that creates light out of darkness, life out of death, faith out of the void of an unbelieving heart.
Thank you that you have done that in our hearts. That you have spoken life and light into our hearts. That you have shined out of darkness to show us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. And Father, our prayer this morning is for anyone who has not believed that today would be the day that they would believe and that the word would evoke the response. So that bubbling up in the heart, perhaps in surprising way, completely unexpected, there would be a new found trust in the strong, mighty, gracious Savior. And do it, Lord, we pray.
As we come now to the table, may we come with faithful hearts. May we come with arms wide open to Jesus and all that he gives to us. May we come bringing ourselves and may we come receiving all that Jesus is for us. And we pray it in Jesus’ Name. Amen.
Brian G. Hedges
