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.
How many times has it happened that you have come to the Lord and poured your heart out for what you were certain you needed, what you were certain the Lord just had to do…only to have Him do or give you something very, very different?
Or how about coming to the Lord with a request and the Lord seemed to answer you by pointing out your sin…you are deeply convicted instead of comforted and THEN He gives you the desire of your heart, even MORE than what you asked for?
Sometimes, even when our faith is weak, even when we might be misdirected, and we are not riding on the heights of the land and yet, the Lord, in His compassion, meets us, corrects us and give us abundantly more than we could think or imagine.
Our text is fairly simple. We have a contrast between true and false faith as well as the Lord’s mercy toward weak and tottering faith and they are not the same thing. Jesus is so kind, so condescending, and we see him take this situation for what it is…he doesn’t despise the man’s lack of faith or criticize it, but rather, He honors it.
The nobleman comes to Jesus, he comes with many misconceptions, he comes with a grand lack of understanding. The Lord continued his interrupted journey northward to Galilee. In Samaria, of all places, the Lord had been received joyfully by a large number of people. They had believed in him as the Messiah and the Savior. But now he came back into the territory of his own people. And the point is made explicitly at the beginning of the section, there in v. 44. “Jesus himself had pointed out that a prophet has no honor in his own country.” Unlike the Samaritans, the response to him among his own people was, at best, ambiguous. [Carson, 236]
When we read in v. 45 that the Galileans “welcomed him” we are already thinking that this welcome, like the enthusiasm of the Jews for him when he was still south, in Judea…BUT this is something the Lord would not take too seriously.
Jesus, we are told, knew what was in a man and he didn’t entrust himself to men. That is what we read at the end of chapter 2 and that is what we find here again at the end of chapter 4.
As verse 45 goes on to explain, the enthusiasm for Jesus in Galilee was the result of these folk who had seen his miracles in Judea…In other words, their enthusiasm was superficial only. There perhaps is a bit of irony in that statement, “the Galileans welcomed him.”
The nobleman comes to Jesus with many misconceptions, he comes with a grand lack of understanding. He comes needing a sign, a miracle, and thinks that Jesus had to be physically present to do that which he hopes Him to do. He also seems to believe that if Jesus doesn’t do something before death, then Jesus can do nothing at all, that the physical is what matters, the healing of the body.
The Lord detected in the man’s plea, however sincere, an interest in a cure…this official had a belief that Jesus, the famous miracle-worker, could cure his son, but that is not the same as saying he has a personal interest in Jesus as the Son of God, the Messiah, the Savior.
The man just wanted Jesus to cure his son, he wasn’t interested in larger questions and he certainly wasn’t thinking about surrendering his life to Jesus. He is taken over by the moment…and who can blame him…his son was dying and he would do and try anything that he might not lose him…as any of us would.
The Lord’s reply was curt and amounted to a rebuke. But, it was addressed not only to the man himself but to all the Galileans. These people were interested in Him for much the same reasons…they were interested in his miracles, but not his mission. They thought of him as a magician, not as the Son of God.
In John 6 after one of his greatest miracles, the feeding of the 5,000, the people were forced to choose between a true following of Jesus, an abandon to their life to embrace Him and His life, for that is what Jesus required… they abandoned Jesus, his miracles notwithstanding.
They were glad for the miracles, they wanted the miracles, but not if it meant confessing Jesus as Lord, and giving up themselves to Him and making their life in imitation of His life.
John makes clear that even miracles cannot produce a living faith. Such is the blindness of the human heart in sin. Judas saw the Lord’s miracles; good grief, there is even evidence that he performed miracles himself in the Lord’s name, but he did not have a living faith in Christ.
I sometimes wonder what would happen to the church, if Jesus Himself told us what a true following of Him, a true Christian life were to look like in each of our lives…very specific instructions for each of us…Exactly where and how we are getting it wrong, and exactly what in each of our lives must change, immediately. I wonder how many of us would think He was asking too much? Well…of course He has told us exactly that…and far too many Christians have in fact, decided that He asks too much.
So, when Jesus said here that the Galileans wouldn’t believe unless they saw miracles he was not saying that miracles would produce a sincere and living faith in them, in fact just the opposite. He is saying that the emotion and shock at the miracles was producing an enthusiasm but not a sincere and real faith.
John will speak of this superficial faith and will call it by the name “faith”, but it is not real faith. We see that here and in 2:23, where He speaks of the Jews believing in the Lord’s name, but he clearly does not regard that believing, their so-called, “faith” as genuine and that, is precisely the problem…and that is the modern problem for the church of Christ.
You see, the issue is not a distinction between faith and no faith, or the distinction between belief and unbelief… that is not what has diluted and damaged the church. All of us know the difference between an atheist and a Christian or a Muslim and a Christian or a secularist and a Christian.
The problem is that many who call themselves Christians and are regarded as Christians and who take their place in a Christian church have a faith that is insincere, even false. It only poses as faith, but it is not true and living faith.
To be continued…
Prayer: Father, I know that you control all things but still I often give way to fear and doubt. Please forgive me that my faith is weak and the fear of man, circumstances and the unknown weighs me down. Strengthen my faith so that in counting the cost, I would follow You wholeheartedly, through Jesus Christ my Lord, Amen.
Hymn: O God Beyond All Praising