John's Gospel chapter 4, we pick things up
in verse 27.
Jesus is making his way from the southern
part of Israel known as Judea to the
northern part of Israel known as the Galilee.
There's a region between the two known in
ancient times as Samaria, known today as the
West Bank, inhabited by the Samaritans.
And rather than Jesus with his disciples doing
what was common for the Jews to do,
and that was that the southern section of
Judea to cross the river Jordan to the
Jordanian side and walk up the Jordanian side
and then cross over in the Galilee so
as to not even get Samaritan dust upon
their feet, Jesus goes straight into the region
of Samaria and he proceeds to sit down
at a well in the city called Sychar.
And as we mentioned last week, there was
a 700-year history of just pure hatred
between these two people until, as John tells
us, by the Holy Spirit it became so
great that the Jews had no dealings with
the Samaritans, and the Samaritans had no dealings
with the Jews.
Two completely independent people living in the same
land, forced to live in the same land,
but finding a way that they would not
have to have contact with one another.
And Jesus as a Jew takes and heads
straight into Samaria, in violation of 700 years
of history, and he doesn't go there alone,
he takes his 12 disciples with him, 12
very Jewish disciples, very nationalistic disciples, disciples who
believe that the Jews are the best, the
Samaritans are no good, certainly lesser than us.
And as Jesus goes into that area, he
meets with a woman of Samaria there and
enters into a long exchange with her while
they're off buying lunch, which had to be
difficult for them, having to go into some
Samaritan store, where nobody sees us here, and
you put those sandwiches in a brown paper
bag.
The passage is a beautiful passage in John
chapter 4, one of the most famous evangelistic
passages in the entirety of the Bible, as
we learn from Nicodemus in chapter 3, this
great religious teacher of Israel, that none are
too good to be saved.
From this woman of Samaria we learn that
there are none who are too bad to
be saved.
God has grace for both.
But the passage is also to me a
very, very important discipleship passage too.
We pick it up in verse 27, when
at this point Jesus' disciples came back from
buying the lunch, or getting it wherever, and
they marveled.
This is a slack-jawed, I-can't-believe
-what-we're-seeing kind of word.
It's a kind of shock that it has
a physical effect upon them.
They marveled that he talked with a woman.
So here he is, talking not only to
a woman, but talking to a woman in
the area of Samaria.
I mean, he could at least have the
common decency to talk to a Samaritan man,
but he talked with a Samaritan woman.
And yet no one said, what do you
seek, or why are you talking with her?
They wanted to, but they didn't.
They wanted to scold both her and him.
What are you seeking here?
Why are you talking with her?
Then the woman, the woman then left her
water pot, forgot all about why she'd come
to the well, and she went her way
into the city.
Now Jesus never got the drink of water
he asked for, but he's not going to
complain.
And she went her way into the city
of Sychar, the well being evidently outside of
it, and she said to the men, not
to the women, couldn't gain an audience with
the women with her background, she said to
the men, come see a man who told
me all things that I ever did to
this be the Christ.
And given her sordid background and her reputation
within the city, and it's a small village,
they wanted to further investigate a man who
knew everything about her, because maybe it meant
he knew something about them too.
And so they went out of the city,
this group of men came out, and they
came to him.
Now, in the meantime, his disciples urged him,
saying, Rabbi, eat.
These great pastrami sandwiches, and you've got to
eat this.
I mean, you put this through all of
this.
Jesus said to them, I have food to
eat of which you do not know.
Therefore, the disciples said to one another, has
anyone brought him something to eat?
Somebody slip in and bring him something to
eat, he seems to have lost his appetite.
Jesus said to them, my food is to
do the will of him who sent me
and to finish this work.
Now you have the reason why he needed
to go through Samaria.
And it wasn't a physical reason, it was
a spiritual reason, in order to obey the
Father's will.
It was the Father's will that he go
in and reach this woman and ultimately reach
a village.
And then Jesus speaks to the disciples, because
they were supposed to learn something from all
of this.
And he said, do you not say, there's
still four months and then comes the harvest.
Now that was apparently a common saying in
that day, where people would, something would come
up and they'd say, well, there's still four
months and then comes the harvest.
And it was the kind of thing of
saying, you know, just kind of to be
patient about things.
Listen, don't be in such a hurry.
I mean, there's got, there's some time between
the sowing of seed and the harvesting of
seed.
Four months and then comes the harvest.
I want to raise at work.
Hey, listen, four months and then comes the
harvest.
Relax.
I don't want to wife desperately.
Four months and then comes the harvest.
Relax.
It's not going to all happen overnight.
You have to be patient in life.
There's time between the sowing and the reaping.
So there's apparently a common saying in that
day.
And Jesus declares to them, behold, I say
to you, lift up your eyes and look
at the fields for they are already white
for harvest.
Now, Jesus apparently didn't like the saying four
months and then comes the harvest.
He didn't like the procrastination of it, the
delay of it.
God's people, we can find ourselves too patient
concerning the great commission, concerning the harvest.
Oh yes, four months and then comes the
harvest.
Oh, we're waiting for the revival.
I have been a Christian for 21 years.
There is one word.
I remember when the Lord spoke to Jeremiah
and there, and the one thing, the burden
of the Lord, the burden of the Lord,
the burden of the Lord, the oracle of
the Lord.
And the Lord finally said to Jeremiah, tell
these people, I don't want to hear that
word again.
There's one word I could go to glory
and never hear again, just as a word.
And it's the word revival.
Because every time I hear it, it's some
distance out.
It's always four months and then comes.
The program recently, even within our community with
the lighthouses and all of this thing, and
you had to do this and this and
this and this and this much time doing
each of those things before violates this.
It's always time for the harvest.
God is always working.
He's always eager to reach human lives.
And the fact of the matter, we as
Christians, and I include myself, I don't need
any excuses for procrastination as it relates to
the great commission.
I need a continual fire lit under me
concerning these things.
And so the Lord didn't want them getting
soft, spending their whole life waiting for the
perfect time.
There are people that are waiting decades go
by waiting for the right time, the perfect
time, and it never comes for them.
Because it's always the right time to share
the gospel in the community that God has
placed us in or wherever he has us
in the world to share that gospel.
That's why we're here.
Now, it would have been very, very easy.
We want to deal with these kinds of
things on a purely natural sense.
No wonder why revival is always spoken of
as something that's some distance out, because we
can always look at a city or a
society or something and say, wow, there's a
lot of work that needs to be done
before a move of God can occur.
Now, let me clarify something before I go
on.
I want revival so bad I can taste
it.
But I'm not waiting for it.
I've taken my place in the harvest field
and I work hard there every day.
Then I trust the greater picture to the
Lord.
But it would have been very easy for
these disciples to look at the Samaritans and
to think that there'll be a long process
in being reached.
They'll never understand.
You can't go to those Samaritans.
I mean, the first thing you got to
do is you got to go in and
get them all out of their whole Samaritan
thing, which is wrong.
You got to correct all of their misconceptions
about the Old Testament before we can even
begin to tell them the truth.
And all of these things that we could
be doing look at in our great minds
in terms of what it is that's necessary
before people or a person will be able
to be reached with the gospel and all.
And sometimes we do that and we talk
ourselves out of ever sharing the gospel at
all.
Never get around to just declaring the gospel
and seeing what happens in the situation.
You can analyze yourself right out of sharing
the gospel.
We can do it individually.
I know you've never had this experience and
neither have I, but I've heard that people
in other churches have.
Where you look over at someone and there
is like this thing, your heart has come
up into your throat.
It's so clear you're supposed to share with
that person.
Isn't it amazing?
You know, we walk through life.
You can walk through a mall or walk
through anywhere in the course of a day.
We can walk by 200 people and no
prompting of the Spirit.
I mean, share the gospel if you want
and all, but I mean, there's no like
specific prompting.
And then all of a sudden there's that
one person that you wouldn't have noticed if
your life depended on it.
But God gives you the eyes to see
Him.
He's at work.
And there's that sense that I am to
go over to that person and tell them
about the love of God or whatever it
is that God is putting on my heart.
I've done that.
You walk up to somebody, you don't know
them anywhere, and you say, I don't have
the slightest idea what is going on.
As it relates to you or God, I
don't know if you even know who God
is.
All I know is that He has told
me to tell you that He loves you.
And then there's that place where it can
be part of a long progression and an
important part of the progression.
But I also know what it is to
have that happen in my life and to
look at the thing.
And before I even begin to take a
couple steps, I can just look at them
and tell they're not ready for revival.
I mean, you can just tell that you're
going to have to talk with them about
this thing and then do this thing and
this thing here and all before they'll ever
be ready.
This woman in Sychar, you could have never
dreamed, ever dreamed, that she was one conversation
away from becoming a Christian.
Nobody could have known but God Himself that
that entire village was one conversion away from
being reached with the gospel.
And we think we know so much.
I think I know so much.
I'll leave you out of it.
To the natural eye, neither of them looked
ready, and they were completely ripe for the
harvest.
The importance of just following that directing of
the Father, even as Jesus did, in His
own way, higher way than us, but still
there's that leading and then doing what He
calls us to do.
Now, the time of the year...
I'm sounding a little angry tonight.
I'm not really angry.
It's the time of the year that all
of this is going on is April-May.
There were no crops in the field that
were ripe for harvest at that time.
Jesus is not talking about a physical harvest
of grain.
It appears that what He is talking about
is He has His disciples turn to look
at the fields that are white on the
harvest, and He has them turn to look
and to see this woman and all of
these men coming from Sychar out to the
well.
The men probably wearing these white turbans on
their head, and they look like these sheaves
of wheat, stalks of wheat coming this way,
and Jesus is talking to them about a
spiritual harvest that is there.
I have always loved the fact that in
all of this, Jesus took His disciples into
the middle of all of this incineria, despite
that long history of them not having anything
to do with one another.
Jesus is modeling something for them, and they
had doubtless fallen into the Jewish side in
the same way that the Samaritans had fallen
into the Samaritan side of this age-long
kind of conflict that was going back and
forth.
I think what the Lord was doing in
this situation was He was bringing His disciples
into Samaria with Him.
He was going to save that woman and
that village, but also to teach them something
about being ambassadors, being ambassadors of His.
The interesting thing about an ambassador is that
ambassadors go where they're told to go, and
they say what they're told to say when
they get there.
That's the mark of an ambassador.
An ambassador understands about themselves that they no
longer represent themselves in this world supremely, but
that by virtue of becoming an ambassador, even
on purely the physical realm for another nation,
that they no longer supremely represent themselves any
longer, but now they have, by virtue of
becoming an ambassador, that they live to supremely
represent the kingdom and the king of which
they are ambassadors.
Then what happens in terms of their rights
and their ideas and their thoughts and their
prejudices and all of these things?
Those things become subservient to the kingdom that
they're representing and the king that they're representing.
Ambassadors understand that about being ambassadors, and every
single one of us in this room that
knows the Lord, we are called one of
the titles we have in the scriptures is
that we are ambassadors for Christ.
When we became Christians and became ambassadors for
Christ, we accepted that responsibility that we no
longer represent ourselves in this world.
We represent a king and a kingdom.
And in becoming an ambassador of Christ, we
have agreed to become a blessing to all
peoples in this world.
And we have agreed not to fall prey
to all of the divisions that mankind places
upon their fellow man.
We have agreed to see people the way
that God sees people, as men and women
that have been created in his image.
And the subcategories of that great single group
is those that are saved and those that
are unsaved supremely.
I know God has a thing that he
is doing with the Jews as it relates
to the last days.
But in this dispensation, he sees people as
saved or unsaved.
And he's teaching these disciples to forget the
outward appearance, forget the histories.
Don't get pulled into this junk as my
ambassadors.
Take my message to everyone, Jew and Gentile
alike.
But I think the Lord was ministering to
them.
This whole world is full of people like
this woman that you wanted to ask, why
in the world I was talking to her?
Why do you think I was talking to
her?
So she could know the things that you
know, but that you, because of your prejudice,
would never tell her.
And it is very easy for Christians to
write off vast segments of the human population
and their own heart because of their bigotry.
And it doesn't have any place in the
life of a believer.
There's neither bond nor free, Jew or Gentile,
Scythian, barbarian, Christ is all, in and all,
Paul wrote to the Corinthians.
There was a time a while back where
one of the big men's organizations was into
this whole reconciliation thing in the body of
Christ.
And they began to talk about Christians as
black and white and all of these different
kinds of things.
I just checked out.
I'm a Christian.
I am not a white Christian.
I happen to be white, but I am
a Christian.
And this whole thing within the body of
Christ of using these things and looking at
these, that is stuff that comes from out
there and inside of us.
There's enough problems with it not to have
people involved in all of that.
I remember I was watching a while back.
I've got to return the video series on
the America's century, the 20th century.
And they showed the clips from the civil
rights movement in the 1960s with the whites
and the blacks.
I wept.
That's in my lifetime, born in 1955.
And I didn't have power over the United
States then like I do now.
But we're talking about the South and the
Bible belt of the United States of America.
And I thought to myself, what Bible are
they reading?
And these Christian groups, they're not really Christian
groups, but they align themselves with Christianity.
Of course, when you're illegitimate, you always align
yourself with the most legitimate thing you can
to take eyes off of your illegitimacy.
But these groups that claim to be Christian
groups, and they are absolutely prejudiced against the
Jews, anti-Semitic to the core in every
way.
It cannot be.
One cannot be a disciple of Jesus Christ
or an ambassador of his and be that
way.
We will have had a successful night tonight.
If we were to close the study tonight,
and not one of us would leave this
room seeing people any differently than the way
that God sees people.
And we all deal with it.
We all deal with it.
And so Jesus is teaching them these things,
and he brings them into the middle of
all of this.
And he says, the fields are white in
the harvest, but you don't see it, because
you don't see things the way that I
see them.
And he who reaps, receives wages and gathers
fruit for eternal life, that both he who
sows and he who reaps may rejoice together.
For in this, the saying is true, one
sows and another reaps.
I sent you to reap for which you
have not labored, others have labored, and you
have entered into their labor, speaking of the
prophets.
So no one, or I shouldn't say no
one, but very few people come to know
the Lord the first time they've heard the
gospel.
Show of hands, how many of you received
the Lord the very first time someone spoke
the gospel to you?
Just a quick show of hands.
One, two, three, four, five.
All right.
Now, I know most of these people, so
I can tell you guaranteed that they did
not come into the kingdom independent of tremendous
labor in prayer.
You saw their hands.
I had the honor of officiating at a
coronation service a couple of weeks ago.
The mother who prayed and prayed and prayed
for her son and for her grandchildren and
the loved ones around that family, they answered
prayer.
So many of them, all of them that
I know of, now come to the Lord
in all from the night before she went
to be with the Lord.
She sat in this room the last time
we had communion, sat in a chair in
this room, and sitting alongside her was her
family, her son, her daughter-in-law, and
her grandchildren alongside.
I mean, what better blessing in taking communion
together, what better way to go into glory
than to have that have been your final
night when you're a person that loved the
Lord the way this woman loved the Lord.
And yet behind all of this important thing
that happened in individual life, people praying.
And so when a person comes to know
the Lord, there's reward that goes out all
over the place.
The person that shared the gospel with the
person, and then they said, shockingly to the
person that shared it, that they want to
receive the Lord.
And they walk away thinking, wow, I am
some kind of an evangelist.
And they don't know that the Lord has
brought 187 people over the last four days
to tell that person in the mall that
God loves them, and that parents and grandparents
have been praying for them for three decades.
So the whole thing is in the mix,
and that's why you and I can't be
discouraged when we share the gospel with someone.
How many did we have?
Five people in the room?
Out of a room of 400, and however
many more in the overflow room, that means
the rest of us heard over and over
and over and over and over again before
the light finally went on.
And so the important encouragement to us that
it's not all going to be, you don't,
we don't, any one of us doesn't always
get to be harvest, but it doesn't mean
that we're not a part of the harvest.
Because that coming in and saying what you
said, or they yelled at you and threw
their hard hat at you at the job
site and everything, was an important part of
them, you know, getting to the place that
one day, and you don't know it, but
three years later, in Timbuktu, they're going to
accept the Lord and you're never going to
know about it until you get into glory.
That's the way that it is.
And so the importance of showing and showing
and showing, and then all of us take
our place, and all of this, and the
reward is all equal.
And many of the Samaritans of that city,
they believed in Jesus because of the word
of the woman who testified, he told me
all that I ever did.
Now this woman is already an effective evangelist,
and new believers are the most effective evangelist,
because they still have some non-Christian friends.
So here they have, all right, that was
a low, that was, okay, that's, I'm sorry
about that.
That was my, okay, just give me a
moment.
So here she is, she doesn't know any
theology at all, but she has a testimony.
So she goes and she tells them, and
people believed in the Lord as a result
of it.
And so when the Samaritans had come to
him, they urged him to stay with them,
and marvel of marvels, he stayed there two
days.
We know nothing of the excitement level of
the disciples as it relates to this.
And so what do the Samaritans do?
Right in front of those twelve apostles, they
show Jesus more hospitality than he ever saw
in Jerusalem, and that he ever saw in
Judea.
And the light begins to go on for
these guys.
These are people, these are people too, these
are good people too, good relatives in the
world.
I've misunderstood them, I've branded them all with
this long history.
But here they are, we couldn't get out,
nobody would offer us, nobody wanted us to
stay in Jerusalem.
Here they are, they invite us, and we
stay for two days.
I think that there's something important about getting
around people that we don't understand very well,
that produces some compassion.
And many more believed because of his own
word.
Jesus began to teach them, and then they
said to the woman, now we believe, not
because of what you said, for we have
heard for ourselves and know that this is
indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world.
An interesting thing has happened in this whole
progression in John chapter 4, because it's just
this progressive revelation.
It begins with the woman, and she begins
by addressing Jesus as a Jew.
Then, as the conversation goes on, she comes
to realize that he is a prophet.
And then the progression occurs, and she realizes
that he is the Messiah.
Then the village realizes that he is the
Christ and the Messiah, and finally the progression
works all the way to where they are
calling him the Savior of the world.
Which is evidently the message that he taught
them in that village, was that he came
not just to save the Jews, but to
save the world.
They were saved there, in that city.
Now Philip is going to come years later,
isn't he, in the book of Acts.
Wow, things are going to go like crazy.
Well, listen, when Jesus has been your forerunner,
it makes things easy, doesn't it?
So they recognize him as the Savior of
the world, and that's the way that it
is.
Sometimes these things just come by layers for
people.
They did for so many of us in
this room.
After two days, he departed from there, and
he went to Galilee, where Jesus himself testified
that a prophet has no honor in his
own country.
Now Jesus' own country, evidently what's being spoken
of here, is Judea, the south.
Now he was raised in Nazareth, in the
Galilee, but he was born in Bethlehem, in
Judea.
And so he had been down in the
south, in Judea, hadn't received any honor from
the leaders of the people there.
So when he came to Galilee, up to
the north again, the Galileans, they received him,
having seen all the things that he did
in Jerusalem at the feast.
They came back up to the Galilee, and
they said, you should have seen what Jesus
did down there.
I mean, he cleared that temple.
There was oxen, and doves, and sheep, and
lamb, everything in all kinds of different directions,
you know.
And now they're excited, you know, he's made
the headlines in a good way.
And so he comes back up there, and
they knew what he had done at the
feast, for they had also gone to the
feast.
And then the third, or rather the second
miracle of John's gospel, verse 46.
And so Jesus came again to Cana of
Galilee.
That's where he did his first miracle, that's
recorded in the gospel according to John, the
turning of the water into wine.
And there was a certain nobleman whose son
was sick at Capernaum.
Now this nobleman is, the language that's used
here is not that he is a Roman
official, but that he is a nobleman, or
an official associated with King Herod's rule.
But as a nobleman, he is a man
of tremendous privilege.
He's got a great title, he's got great
job security, he's got a great income.
He has the kind of job and position
that allows him to have some insulation in
life.
He and his kids, doesn't matter how bad
the famine is, they eat.
And they never worry about whether they'll eat,
or whether they'll have clothes.
He never has to worry, nor do his
children, with whether they're going to be able
to have a job, a good job when
they grow up.
These things are set for the children of
noblemen.
But I'll tell you something, noblemen, just like
everybody else, they have their problems in life.
And this problem is going to center upon
his son.
There are certain things that come in life,
there are no respecters of persons.
I don't care what a title is, or
what the money is, or the what, or
the what, or the what, what is.
When these things come, there is no fending
them off.
And as a parent, it becomes a job
for one who is greater than us.
I'm not going to ask for another show
of hands here tonight, but I'm in a
little bit of that mood tonight, just a
show of hands.
Just, if you'd like to have a show
of hands, go ahead and just, okay.
All right, maybe I'm the only one in
that mood.
Thank you, Ken.
But it's so interesting, and one of the
things I love, I'm so glad that the
Lord has planted us in this city of
Modesto, and that we've been able to be
here for a long time, and has a
lot of grace on his part to do
that.
And one of the things that's interesting is
you get to watch these cycles in people's
lives.
You get to watch young people, you get
to watch all kinds of people.
But one of the things that you watch
is sometimes a person, here they are, they're
coming to the church for a while, they
have kind of a nominal relationship with the
Lord, or what, it's not real, and they're
coming here because, you know, Dad will make
life miserable for them if they don't come.
Or Dad comes because Mom will make things
miserable for him if he doesn't come, or
all the way around the whole thing.
And it's interesting that sometimes when they become
emancipated from Mom and Dad's rule, or whatever
it might be, and they head out, and
you don't see them for a long time,
then when do you see them next?
They got a baby in their arms.
Because when you have a baby, all of
a sudden you think to yourself, now what
do I do?
How am I supposed to raise this little
one?
What am I going to raise this little
one in?
And oftentimes that person is fairly well scarred
now because of choices that they've made, and
they realize, I want to raise my child
in the things of the Lord, and so
they come back.
And so often problems with the children, or
things, you know, physical, or things, you know,
whatever it might be, they bring a person
back to the Lord, just even having children.
So here's this nobleman, his son is sick
at Capernaum.
Capernaum's 27 miles away from Cana of Galilee.
And when he heard that Jesus had come
out of Judea into Galilee, he went to
Jesus, and he implored him.
This is a desperate man.
Implored is a desperation word.
He implored Jesus to come down and to
heal his son, for his son was at
the point of death.
Now we read about it, and if we're
sitting here tonight, and none of our children
are at the point of death, it's like,
all right, when's he going to get done?
I think he's going to go the full
hour here tonight, or will he stop at
the end of chapter four or what?
And the bets are going along the aisle,
and the whole thing, and the deal.
But I mean, so the urgency of the
passage, we can kind of miss it.
But it's another thing.
When your child is sick on the death,
and there's nothing you can do about it.
And he's heard about the Lord, and his
miracle working power, and he comes to him.
Now he is under, and this is one
of the things that he's going to learn
about Jesus here, and one of the things
that's a revelation of Jesus in this passage.
He is going to learn that Jesus does
not need to be physically present on the
scene to heal the child.
He wants Jesus to come the 27 miles
to Capernaum with him to heal the child.
Jesus is, before this whole thing is going
to get done, not only is this man
going to know, but we're all going to
know that he does not have to be
physically present in order to do that.
He just says the word, and it's done.
So he wants him to come down and
to heal his son.
And Jesus said to him, unless you people
see signs and wonders, you will by no
means believe.
Now this is interesting, because when he speaks
there, Jesus doesn't say, unless you people, the
reason the people is an insertion there, and
it's in italics, and so it's not in
the original, the reason it's there is because
the U is plural.
Jesus is talking to the man, and he's
talking to the entire crowd now, and he's
rebuking them because they'll only believe if they
see signs and wonders.
Now, clearly, and this is a characteristic of
the gospel according to John, clearly, Jesus is
not interested in developing a faith in people
that is dependent upon signs and wonders.
He's obviously not happy with it here, and
yet he wants to heal the nobleman's boy,
and he's going to do that.
But he's going to do it in a
way that does not build a dependence or
a faith by the Father in signs and
wonders, because he's going to give the man
his word to believe, and if the man
will believe his word and act upon his
word, then in acting upon his word, he
will see the miracle.
He won't produce it, he'll see the miracle
that's been done.
And so the Lord is so careful to
keep, even in this situation, building people's faith
upon the word of God supremely, not upon
signs and wonders.
The nobleman said to him, Sir, come down
before my child dies, and Jesus said to
him, Go your way, your son lives.
That is what Jesus speaks to the Father
concerning the situation.
That's his promise.
We can read the entirety of this book
the way that this man could read that
promise.
And he gives the man his word, and
there it is, that decisive moment.
Will this man believe Jesus or will he
not believe Jesus?
And if he believes Jesus, then he will
head for home and discover Jesus' promise to
be true.
It's beautiful, very wise.
How the Lord, the way he works to
keep us healthy and our foundation built upon
the right things, and so the man did
what?
Believed in signs and wonders, and no, the
man believed the word that Jesus spoke to
him.
And then, not just an intellectual belief, but
a belief all the way down to the
core, affected his actions, and he went his
way.
And as he was now going down, his
servants met him and told him, saying, Your
son lives!
You know, I think you could add a
lot of exclamation points after that particular thing
in the Bible there.
You can imagine they come running to him,
Your son lives!
You know, maybe not just like that, but
I mean, there's a lot of excitement for
sure.
And then he inquired of them the hour
when his son got better, and they said
to him, yesterday, at the seventh hour, the
fever left him.
And so the father knew that it was
at that same hour in which Jesus said
to him, Your son lives!
Imagine what an impact that had upon him.
And he himself believed in his whole household.
He tells the story to them, and they
all trust in Jesus as the Messiah, the
beautiful fruit of it.
And this again is the second sign that
Jesus did when he had come out of
Judea into Galilee.
The first miracle, the turning of the water
into wine, was a miracle in which Jesus
took and demonstrated his love for and his
blessing upon an institution of God, marriage.
The second miracle, the healing of this nobleman's
son, was a miracle that demonstrated Jesus's love
for the other institution of God, the family
unit.
The beautiful thing that speaks to us here
all through the ages, how it has encouraged
parents, how the Lord loves our children, and
how we need to know that as we
raise them.
He longs to bless them, and he knows
what we go through in raising children.
It's a difficult, difficult thing to do.
I've told the kids, you know.
Don't I have told the kids?
Yes, I have.
Things get fuzzy at this age, you know.
It'll be fun in 30 years, won't it?
Who are you?
Where am I?
I think the single hardest thing and most
rewarding thing that Karen Knight has ever done
in life was raising children.
Nothing was harder, and yet nothing was more
rewarding.
And I'm so thankful that the Lord caused
us to come to know him as early
in that process as it possibly could almost
be.
We weren't believers for the first couple of
years of our oldest daughter's life, but such
a blessing for us to realize tonight as
parents that the Lord loves us, and he
cares about us, and he loves us.
We're not in this alone.
We can take things to him.
And what does the Father do?
It's intercession, isn't it?
He takes the needs of his family to
Jesus, and then trusts Jesus to do what's
right in the situation, and he'll always be
faithful to do that.