Sermon Transcript
with John chapter 4, verses 46 to 54. 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. 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. So Jesus said to him, Unless you see signs and wonders, will you not believe?
The official said to him, Sir, come down before my child dies. Jesus said to him, Go, your son will live. The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and went on his way. As he was going down, his servants met him and told him that his son had recovered. So he asked them the hour when he began to get better, and they said to him, Yesterday at the 7th hour the fever left him.
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. This was now the 2nd sign that Jesus did when he came from Judea to Galilee.
We’ve been in a series in the book of John looking at the many miracles of Jesus. In fact, this is our 8th week of our series, and yet we are only in the 4th chapter of John because there are that many miraculous occurrences in the life and ministry of Jesus. He was known as miracle worker. He had a reputation So much of a reputation that within just a few years of public life, when he was finally arrested and he was about to be crucified, he was on trial, we’ll call it, even though it was kind of a sham of a trial. But at one point in that sequence, Jesus was brought before Herod.
Herod was serving as a regional ruler in the province. Pontius Pilate, the other local ruler who you normally hear more about, he didn’t want to deal with Jesus. So he tried to get out of dealing with Jesus by sending Jesus to Herod, and Herod was excited to have a chance to speak with Jesus because he hoped he would get to see Jesus do one of those miracles that Herod had heard all about. If people knew one thing about Jesus, miracles is the thing that they knew. Jesus performed them All the time.
However, in our series, perhaps surprisingly, as we said we’re already in the 8th week, this is the first week that we will study a miracle of physical healing. And maybe even more surprising, looking ahead, the series will be 18 weeks total, so we’re about halfway through, but out of the 18 total, only 4 of those 18 have some type of physical healing. And of those, each one is different. Today we have a terminal illness. Next week the person’s not in danger of death, but he’s immobile.
He can’t walk. He hasn’t been able to walk for quite some time. Later on, Jesus heals someone of blindness. And the 4th miracle of healing in John, in the book of John, is when Jesus raises Lazarus back to life, which is really more of a resurrection than a healing. So perhaps out of the 18 weeks, only 3 of them are healing.
That might be surprising because from other accounts, you know, other biographies of Jesus that aren’t John, you know, Jesus healed all the time. Matthew, Mark, Luke, they include instances of when Jesus healed everyone in a town. But John doesn’t say that exactly. Instead, he gives specific examples of when Jesus healed, you’ll say, different types of maladies, terminal illness, paraplegia, blindness. And then at the very end of John’s biography, the very last sentence of his book actually, he says Jesus did so many miracles, meaning healings and other types of miracles, so many of them that if every one of them were written down, John supposes that even the whole world would not have enough room for all the books that are written.
So even though John only records 3, maybe 4 specific healings, both he and other authors tell us there were way more than that. And that is likely good news for us because healing might be what we ask for most. Spiritual intervention related to health, we pray about that A lot. Especially if we or someone we love is terminally ill like this child was in our text. I mean, we pray for healing daily.
Even, I bet, even those of us who aren’t religious will probably start praying for our health if we’re really in trouble. All of us, I mean spiritual or not, we instinctively reach out, we reach up, we plead for intervention from above. For our health, for life if our life is in jeopardy. Which means all of us can relate to this text where a father pleads on behalf of his son for a cure, for a miracle. We can all relate to that.
So we’re going to study this passage today, the first instance of healing in the book of John, and as we do we will see what we know about this father, what was healed, which is more than just a sickness, how it was healed, and then how it relates to us. Especially how it relates to us, you know, for those of us who maybe we have prayed and prayed and prayed for some kind of healing and we didn’t get it. How does it relate to those of us who might even be a little angry at God because we have not experienced the healing that we asked for? That’s what we’re looking at. What we know about this father, what was healed, how it was healed, how it relates to us.
Okay, so first, what we know about this father. He’s powerful but helpless. We don’t have extensive biographical information on this dad who comes to ask for help, but we know a little, and the little that we know is very informative. He’s an official, John tells us, or more precisely, the word is royal. Official.
And royal official doesn’t mean that he’s in, you know, in the bloodline to become king. It doesn’t even mean that he’s part of the royal family distantly removed, but it does mean he has a position of influence. He has some status. He has an amount of authority. Additionally, we know he has some money because it mentions he has a servant later on in this passage.
He’s a man of means. He’s someone who can make things happen. When he calls, people pick up the phone. And his son is sick. His son is so sick, in fact, that it looks like he’s going to die from this illness.
Lastly, we know that he cares for his son. We know that he cares. He’s not like a distant, removed father. He’s an involved father. He cares about his son because he travels from Capernaum to Cana, which is 20, 25 miles.
He didn’t send his servant to go talk to Jesus, he wanted to talk to Jesus himself in person. Maybe because he wanted to take matters into his own hands, maybe he didn’t want to risk the important assignment to someone else, or maybe he thought Jesus would be more likely to grant the request if someone of his status asked as compared to, you know, a lowly servant asked. Who knows? But it’s clear he cares about his son. Otherwise he wouldn’t have traveled this 20-plus miles to Jesus.
That’s what we know. He’s a man of means, son is sick, cares about his son. That’s what we know. But we can safely presume more. Because imagine you are a person of influence, money, status, and your son whom you love is sick.
What would you do about it?
Everything is the answer. You would do all you possibly could for healing for your son. You’d call every doctor in town, you’d get him the best medicine, the best treatment, you’d make sure he had access to the newest clinical trial, you’d use your power, money, influence to do whatever you could. Of course you would! So that’s what this father has done, but it hadn’t worked.
Even with all the father’s resources, he’s helpless. He cannot solve the problem for his son. He needs outside intervention, which is why he comes to Jesus. In many ways, this father, he is a picture of us, we’ll say, of our modern society. We are collectively, similarly powerful but helpless.
Now we don’t feel very helpless because we have advanced so far and praise God we can cure so many diseases, we feel empowered. You know, new technologies make it seem like anything is possible. But we are more like the helpless aspect of this Father than we might think. Because even as far as we have advanced, there will come a day when every single one of us, there will come a day, it’ll either be on our deathbed or before, probably before, but there will come a day when no matter how many resources we have, no matter our technological prowess, we will arrive at a problem that we can’t solve. And there will be nothing that we can do about it.
We will be helpless. We won’t feel powerful. We will feel powerless, and our only hope will come from outside intervention. We will be in this father’s shoes someday, and when he was in that position, he traveled to Jesus in hopes that Jesus might do what what he could not. Which brings us to what was healed when he went to Jesus.
What was healed? It’s so much more than sickness. It’s death turned to life, a future provided, and separation turned to reunion. When Jesus healed this son, much more was set right than only making a sick kid well. Jesus put back to— much more back together than that.
Or to say it another way, when Jesus put the sickness back right, it resulted in other things being set right as well. As we’ve said throughout this series, if you haven’t been with us, this is what miracles do. Or it’s one thing that what they do— they set right what has gone wrong. Each week we’ve said Jesus’ miracles were not a random act of power, certainly not random, and they were more than simply evidence of Jesus’ identity of being God in the flesh, which he was, he is. More than that, miracles, they fix something.
Something that should be different, something that is out of joint. Miracles restore what ought to be. And here, with this father and son, we see Jesus, he turns death to life, he provides a future, and he turns separation into reunion. In each case, Jesus takes what shouldn’t be and he turns it to what should be. We’ll take those one at a time.
So first, and more obviously, death to life. This child isn’t only sick, it’s more serious than that. This child will die. The illness is more than pain and suffering for a season, it’s terminal, which means the child was not only healed from infirmity, he was saved from the clutches of death. And death— this is a Christian claim— death is something that is wrong with the world.
Death is not the way it ought to be. Even though we say things like, death is natural, it’s part of the human experience, death is just a part of life, we say those things as if we believe that death is supposed to happen. As if it is inevitable and always has been. But the Christian claim is death is not supposed to happen. It is not natural.
It shouldn’t be part of the human experience. We believe that God intended us for life. In the biblical story, death was not natural at the beginning. At the beginning, we were meant to live forever. If you told our earliest ancestors, death is inevitable, it’s just a part of life, they would have said, no, it’s not!
Not unless we mess this whole thing up! Death will only happen if we ruin the goodness that God made. Well, they ruined it. They walked away from the source of life, which is God. Sin entered our story, and therefore death entered into the human story, and it’s been around ever since.
Ever since, but it was not meant to be that way. Death is a disruption of what ought to be. It’s like a plague or a curse, and same with any other plague or curse. You know, we don’t say about plagues and curses, well, it’s just part of life. No, we say, we need to fix this.
This isn’t right.
And even if you aren’t a Christian, you probably have that same instinct in your heart. You probably sense there is something wrong with death, because when you have a loved one pass away, it’s not just sad, it’s tragic. It can feel unfair. We say, why didn’t we get more time? I mean, we— down in our bones, we know life should— it’s supposed to continue.
We know it should be, it’s supposed to be more than, you know, we’re here for a little while and then we die and then our bodies rot in the ground.
Like something feels off about that.
I remember I was a fairly young kid when Lion King first came out in movie theaters. Sorry for spoilers if you haven’t seen it. It’s been out for a minute. Okay, but at one point, as you probably know, the dad lion, Mufasa, he explains to the son, his son Simba, about the circle of life. He says, you know, lions eat the antelope, but then the lions die, and then the lion carcasses become fertilizer for the grass, and then the antelope eat the grass.
And then the lions eat the antelope again. You know, it’s the circle of life! And then the whole safari bursts out into Elton John’s song.
And we’re supposed to feel, the idea is we’re supposed to feel, isn’t it beautiful that we’re all connected?
I was a pretty little kid and I thought, that’s not right. I don’t— I don’t— I haven’t seen a whole lot of the world yet, but I don’t think I should be okay with becoming grass fertilizer. Like, that’s not beautiful. That’s tragic. Right?
That’s it? That’s all life is?
We just decompose? And that’s song-worthy?
We’re like, that’s not right! Even Simba knows that. You know, the young lion, the son, later on in the movie— sorry again, spoilers— his dad dies. Mufasa dies. And when his dad dies, Simba doesn’t break into song, the circle of life!
You know, it’s all part of the plan. Isn’t it wonderful? Dad’s going to make some really green grass over there.
Simba doesn’t say that. You don’t say that. You don’t believe that. Even if you’re not a Christian, you’re not a spiritual person, you know something’s wrong about that. Right?
Even at the end of the movie, I mean, it kind of works out for Simba. It’s, you know, quasi-happy ending. Simba has a kid, they play the song again at the end of the movie, Circle of Life. We say, oh, isn’t that kind of nice? But you know what?
It would have been a whole lot better if Mufasa was still there helping with the grandkids. You know, those kids ask, where’s Grandpa? Oh, he rotted before you were born. The circle of life!
Come on! That’s not right!
In your heart you know there is something wrong with death. Wrong.
The Christian story resonates with you whether you’re a Christian or not. Jesus’ miracle restores what is meant to be. He turns death into into life. That’s one layer of what he heals. Second layer, this child has a future.
Really, when anyone dies we call it a tragedy, but especially so when someone is young. When someone dies at a young age we say their life was cut short. They were robbed. They missed out on so much. Now we might say that about older people too, like Mufasa.
We say, man, I wish he could have enjoyed his grandcubs. But when it is a child, we feel it more. Probably because they’ve missed more. We know they’re meant to grow up, live a life, experience love, friendship, bravery, accomplish things. Death robbed them of that.
They should have a future. It’s what is meant to be. If they don’t have a future, there’s something wrong with that. It’s out of joint. And this father with his son on the deathbed would have thought the Same thing.
My son should grow up, have a life. I don’t want him robbed of that. Maybe the dad hoped the son would become a royal official like him. Maybe the son would blaze his own trail and dad would be so proud. But whatever might have been is now lost, or seems like it will be.
That’s wrong. Jesus’ miracle fixes what is wrong. The son’s future is restored, it’s not cut short. That’s the second layer of healing. Third layer, turning separation into reunion.
Perhaps the saddest aspect of death is the separation. The person we love isn’t here anymore. We can’t be with them once they are gone. No more talking, laughing, hugging, doing the things that we love doing together. That’s probably what hurts the most, it’s their absence.
This father doesn’t want to lose his boy.
That’s the looming pain on the horizon. And even though it hasn’t happened just quite yet when this father goes to see Jesus, like at this moment, son’s still alive, but the sickness is so bad it seems certain that they will be separated. So the father is already You know, feeling that loss. It’s— people will tell you with terminal illnesses we grieve before we lose the person. With a sudden death we grieve after we lose the person.
So this father would have already been grieving the loss of his son when he goes to see Jesus, and into that anxiety Jesus’ miracle provides reunion. What do you think it was like for this father and son when the father arrived home. What was it like when he walked in the door and his son was okay and they saw each other? After being certain that they would lose each other, now they have each other. They’ve been returned to one another in a sense.
What was lost was found. Imagine he walks in the door, Of course they hug each other. They probably wept. It was reunion. The miracle is so much more than healing from an illness.
It reversed death, it provided a future, it created reunion. That’s what was healed. Now, how was it healed? It’s by Jesus’ word. Jesus heals the son just by speaking from 20 miles away.
Jesus did not travel with the official back to Capernaum to see the son, even though the official asked Jesus if he would. Verse 47, again verse 49. Apparently this father thinks Jesus needs to be in the presence of his son to heal his son. You know, like a doctor. Maybe Jesus will do some CPR, administer some medicine, do some kind of ritual.
You know, grab the son, shake the illness out, who knows? But the father says, you need to come with me. Do your thing. Which means, let’s give the father some credit, he must have had some amount of faith in Jesus already, otherwise he wouldn’t have traveled to see him. He clearly believes Jesus can do something, but he has no idea the extent of who Jesus is and the kind of power that Jesus has.
It doesn’t seem to cross his mind until Jesus says it, and then he believes it, but he doesn’t seem to realize that Jesus could heal his son from right where he was with only a word. But that’s what happens. Jesus says, go, your son will live. And the son lives. It is— was and is effortless for Jesus to set this wrong right.
Effortless. That’s the power of Jesus’ word. His word can create what should be, create goodness. Or to look at it from the other side of the coin, his word can cease whatever needs to be ceased. In this case, Jesus’ word ends sickness, it ends death, it ends separation, and it creates health, life, future, a reunion.
Just a word. And whatever is out of joint, whatever is broken, it is set right. That’s Jesus’ word. We see the power of Jesus’ word throughout the entire biblical timeline because in the beginning when God created, how did he create? By speaking, by his word.
He said, let there be light, and there was light. And it was good! Goodness resulted from word. He said, let the earth sprout vegetation, fruit-bearing trees, and it happened, and it was good! Again, good!
On the flip side of the coin, it is His word that overpowers even the worst kinds of brokenness, corruption, evil. If you didn’t know, at the end of the biblical story, Jesus comes to set every wrong right. He holds every injustice accountable. He decimates all the evil and wickedness in the world. How?
How does he do that? If all wickedness is ended, I mean, does it require some kind of epic battle between the forces of good and the forces of evil? You know, some kind of Infinity War? Everyone against Thanos? The whole universe against evil, and one side barely defeats the other side through great struggle.
It looks like it’s going to go one way, and then it goes the other way. Is that what it’s like when Jesus comes back and ends evil?
No. He shows up, speaks, and it’s over. 2 Thessalonians 2, and then the lawless one will be revealed whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow. How? How will he overthrow it?
With the breath of his mouth, and it will be destroyed by the splendor of his coming. Or Isaiah 11, he will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked. That’s it. It’s just a breath, just a word, and evil and wickedness are done! There’s no Infinity War.
Jesus just speaks. Just like Jesus spoke and this illness was over. What the father could not do, even with all of his influence, Jesus did with only the breath of his mouth. That’s how it was healed. Now what does all this mean for us?
You know, if it’s so easy for Jesus to heal, to set wrong what— or to set right what has gone wrong, if it’s so easy, why do some people not get their miracle even though they ask like this father asked? I mean, we’ve probably all known someone who beat the odds with some illness, maybe like with cancer. It might have even seemed quasi-miraculous that they recovered. We all know that person, and we say hallelujah. At the same time, we probably all know someone who passed away way too young.
They did not get the miraculous outcome. Maybe even though, you know, the person came from a praying family, a family that asked Jesus 1,000 times for healing, and yet was not healed. How are we supposed to live with this? Just hope, you know, we and our loved ones are among the lucky ones?
I know for some of us reading a story like this can be painful because we didn’t get our miracle. Our hearts might not lift when we read of Jesus healing someone else. They might sink because we think, why not me? Why not for my illness? Why not for the people I love?
What does this mean for us, especially if our hearts are low?
Miracles are a window into our forever with Jesus.
There will come a day when all of us who belong to Jesus will get our miracle. What seemed like didn’t happen when we asked for it, it will happen. There will come a day when every sickness will be cured. The dead will be raised as Jesus was raised. There will be a day, Revelation 21, when there is no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things will have passed away.
Even the earth will be made new as Jesus was made new, and we will have our reunion. We will walk in the door. We will have that moment where what we thought was lost will be found. The healings in Jesus’ earthly ministry are little tastes of that future day, of the goodness that will be restored. And if we pause to think about it, that future day is the only real hope any of us have.
Any of us. Even those of us who receive— we really should call it a temporary miracle right now— even if we receive that, That future day is still our only hope. Like this father and his son who was cured, it was really only a temporary miracle, because as wonderful as it was, we know if we think it through, that healing didn’t last. We know what eventually must have happened. One day both the father and the son will be on their deathbed again, which means the real problem wasn’t fixed.
Eventually they both know, I mean they both— as soon as the son’s healed, they both know there’s a bittersweetness to it, Because they both know one will still bury the other one someday. It’s just a little bit down the road. That day, that will loom over their lives. Their future reality will loom over their lives. They will try to ignore it, but ignoring a problem that’s coming, that’s not a real comfort.
That’s denial. For us to have real comfort, what we need is for death to be gone forever. What we really want is never to be separated again. I mean, we don’t only want 10, 20, 30, 40 years. We don’t want that.
What we want is a future without end. And if we don’t get that, if we only get a temporary miracle, it hasn’t solved much. It only delayed our grief. Frankly, if we’re satisfied with only a temporary miracle, We’re far too easily satisfied. We haven’t thought it through.
The miracle we really need is for death to be destroyed completely, not just delayed 20 years, like the institution of death eliminated, a real future provided, an infinite future. That’s the miracle we’re all waiting for. I mean, the temporary one’s nice, but we need the big one.
And Jesus provides it. He earned our future for us. He earned our infinite forever. He did the work to eliminate death. The Eternal One took on our death and overcame it so that one day it could be eliminated.
On the cross, Jesus took all the brokenness of this world so that it could be healed. He took all the sin, I mean, of our first ancestors. He took ours. He carried all of it so we could be cured of all of it. Have you asked Him to carry yours?
Have you asked Him for the miracle? The big one?
Have you prayed, take my brokenness, take my sin, take my death. I need to be redeemed of all of it. Save me.
Have you prayed anything like that?
If you have, He will. He never turns anyone down.
I don’t know if you’ll get the temporary miracle or not, but you will get the one that we all really need, the big one, to be part of the restoration of all things.
And if we know that restoration of things, all things is coming, if we know that we will get the big one, It is enough to comfort us even when we are grieving a loss, and we won’t stop grieving really, but that future day, that future restoration will be enough to hold us even when we grieve if we didn’t get the temporary miracle. I’ll give you a quick story, then we’re done. One of the most influential people in my life, he was my— once upon a time 20 years ago. He was my preaching professor. We still call each other— he’s my Yoda, he’s my Papa Smurf.
Dr. Robert Smith Jr., he has endured so much in his life. He lost his first wife, after that he lost one of their sons, but even with all those tragedies and more, this man has a well of joy that seems to just get deeper whenever another tragedy happens.
So I asked him about that. I’m like, what is this joy that clearly you’re drawing from to replenish you? Clearly something is holding you together when life’s falling apart. What is that? And he said, I know one day I will see in time what has already been confirmed in eternity.
One day I will see in time what has already been confirmed in eternity. In other words, he’s waiting for history to catch up with forever, and he knows that it will.
Everything lost will be found. There will be a reunion, and that reunion will somehow be sweeter than it would have been if there had never been separation in the first place. That future day gives him hope in the present, even when his present is difficult. It can do the same for all of us if we look to Jesus, trust him, know that as he came out of the grave and was restored, someday all will be that belongs to him. The big miracle is coming.
May the hope of that day fill your heart this day and until then. Let’s pray. Father, thank you that Jesus came to rescue us, that he didn’t come to set one thing right, he came to set all things right, and that he will, and we have confidence of that because of his resurrection. As he was raised, so will we. And in a sense, so will the earth.
All will be redeemed.
Give us the hope of that future day today, Lord. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.
