John 4:43-54 Jesus Heals the Official’s Son
43 After the two days he left for Galilee. 44 (Now Jesus himself had pointed out that a prophet has no honor in his own country.) 45 When he arrived in Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him. They had seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, for they also had been there.
46 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. 47 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.
48 “Unless you people see miraculous signs and wonders,” Jesus told him, “you will never believe.”
49 The royal official said, “Sir, come down before my child dies.”
50 Jesus replied, “You may go. Your son will live.”
The man took Jesus at his word and departed. 51 While he was still on the way, his servants met him with the news that his boy was living. 52 When he inquired as to the time when his son got better, they said to him, “The fever left him yesterday at the seventh hour.”
53 Then the father realized that this was the exact time at which Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live.” So he and all his household believed.
54 This was the second miraculous sign that Jesus performed, having come from Judea to Galilee.
—————————–
Humanly speaking, the odds against our faith surviving are enormous. Think of everything that stands against our faith.
There is sinful human reason. Reason says that most of the things we believe are preposterous. The six-day creation, the flood, the virgin birth, Jesus’ atonement, Jesus’ resurrection-reason won’t support any of them.
Then there’s “the evidence” or, we might say, the lack of it. God tells us in his Word that he loves us, that we are the apple of his eye, that he will never let anything harm us, that every Christian is a king and a priest in Christ. Yet often we look like anything but kings and priests. We seem to have as many problems as everyone else-sometimes more. Sometimes the evidence we see doesn’t appear to support God’s promises at all.
Then there’s our conscience. When we hear God make a promise, our conscience objects: “But I’m a sinner! How can God possibly love me? How can I be the apple of his eye?” The premise, of course, is true. We are sinners. There is no reason for God to love us. Faith finds no ally in a conscience that only judges us.
How can our faith survive? It takes a miracle-just like what happened in our text. I do not refer to the miracle of the official’s son being healed but to the miracle of faith that led the official to ask Jesus for help.