WINE, A MAN, AND A WORD FROM GOD

WINE, A MAN, AND A WORD FROM GOD
John 4:43-54

Dr. Chuck DeVane, Pastor
Lake Hamilton Baptist Church
Hot Springs, Arkansas

March 1, 2020

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.
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.
— John 4:43-54, ESV

The first time Christ came to Cana in Galilee it was all about wine, women, and song.  He turned plain water into fine wine.  A woman, His mother, Mary, asked Him to do it.  When He did, the headwaiter sang its praises as the wedding celebration continued.  In John’s Gospel, this is the first of seven specific “signs” pointing to the truth that Jesus Christ is Lord.  

Cana posts the second “sign,” too.  It seems the legend of the wine provoked a request from a man this time, a father from Capernaum.  He has walked over twenty miles and climbed a high mountain to reach the Lord.  He has lost his song because he is losing his son to some terrible sickness.  Jesus does not make more wine, nor offer him a song, but gives him something infinitely more valuable.  Jesus Christ gives him His word, and His word is the word of God.

The word of God comes to those who honor the Lord Jesus Christ

The citizens of Cana welcomed Jesus but they did not honor Him.  Jesus had the same problem in His hometown of Nazareth, almost adjacent to Cana, where they would also welcomed Him before trying to throw Him down a cliff.  Chaucer famously wrote, “Familiarity breeds contempt,” and this was true even of the Messiah, especially where He grew from childhood to manhood.

Jesus eventually set up His earthly ministry headquarters twenty-two miles away from His home town in the fishing village of Capernaum.  Here we may have a clue as to why.  John’s second “sign,” and one of the earliest miracles Jesus performed, was for a son of Capernaum, whose father gave Jesus the honor He is due.  

The unnamed man was an “official,” a word which stands for a king or a member of the king’s court.  He would have been a member of the ruling class of mostly Gentiles, who lorded themselves over the Jews in Palestine.  He was a man of means and power, way above the Jewish peasants of Galilee.  He was honored wherever he went, but now he bows before a Jewish carpenter’s son, and in his own way honors Jesus as God, because he asks Jesus to do something only God could do.

Until a man humbles himself before the Lord, he will never get a word from the Lord.  This man from Capernaum did, and did.

The word of God comes to those who ask the Lord Jesus Christ

Jesus said, also at a point early in His ministry, “Ask, and it will be given to you …” (ref. Matthew 7:7ff).  His half-brother, James, would later write, “You do not have, because you do not ask” (ref. James 4:2).  This man asked, and it was a big ask.  He asked God to do something only God could do, namely heal his sick and dying son.

God’s grace saves, granting eternal life to those who were dead in their sins.  How can a dead man ask for favor from God?  It is he first impulse of faith, “For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (ref. Romans 10:13; Joel 2:32)!  God is sovereign, yet salvation is for those who ask.

God’s providence provides for us in so many ways, for as Jesus said, “Your Father knows what you need before you ask him” (ref. Matthew 6:8).  But as soon as Jesus said this, He turned right around and taught us to pray, to ask God for things, with the right words and the right spirit.  

This official from Capernaum asked.  Had he not, God’s sovereignty notwithstanding, he would not have gotten a word from God and his son would have never been healed.  Until a man asks something from God, he will never receive anything from God.  So, honor God, by asking God, and then will come the hardest part.  You have to trust God.

The word of God comes to those who trust the Lord Jesus Christ

The man asked Jesus to “come,” but Jesus told the man to “Go.”  

My youngest daughter, Courtney Grace, was only 11 when she came home from space camp with a what seemed to be a cold, maybe the flu.  We took her to our family physician, Dr. Bennett, who ordered a chest x-ray, then a helicopter flight to the nearest major medical center.  At first I thought it was a bit much for a cold or flu, but I trusted the word of our doctor.  By the time we arrived, one of her lungs had collapsed and the other was in danger of collapsing.  She spent ten days in the hospital with a tube in her chest.  I trusted the good doctor.  I trusted the Great Physician.  She lived.

Jesus did not go to Capernaum with the man.  Jesus did not send a helicopter to fetch his son.  Jesus simply gave the man His word, “Your son will live.”  What did the man do?  “The man believed the word that Jesus spoke.”  
There is that word again in John’s Gospel, “believe.”  Once again it is a verb, once again in the active tense.  It means to trust and obey, constantly, as if your life, or your child’s life, depends upon it.  

This was not an easy thing for this man to do.  Trusting and obeying God seldom is easy.  This man could not make the eight or nine hour trip back home that day.  He had to wait until the next day to see if his son was alive.  He had trusted Jesus to heal him.  Jesus gave him His word He would.  And of course, He did.  

Faith is trusting God to do what only God can do, and trusting God to do it, whatever it is, according to His will (ref. 1 John 5:14).  God’s ultimate will is to save His people and bring them home to Heaven.  He is going to do whatever He must do to accomplish His will.  This temporary healing of the Capernaum official’s son (the young man would get sick again, eventually become an old man, and die), furthered Christ’s cause of salvation.  

Sometimes we have prayed and asked God to heal, and God’s will was to take our loved one’s life into the life to come.  We honor God when we ask God, we ask God to do His will, not our own, and trust that God will work out all things for ultimate good (ref. Romans 8:28ff).  What matters is that we honor God, we ask God, and we trust God to do the right thing.  And He will, according to His word.

The word of God saves those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ

Please understand that the best part of this story is the end, not the beginning or middle.  John’s second sign points not healing from sickness, but salvation from sin.  This man believed twice, and was saved once, and once is all it takes.

At the end of the next to last verse, “And he himself believed.”  He trusted, he surrendered, he committed, not merely his son to the Great Physician, but mainly his soul to the great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.  The healing helped, for it was a “sign” to point him to the Messiah.  It is a “sign” for you and me, too, and for all who read the Gospel of John.  

The question is, do you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ?  Do you believe He was, is, and always will be God?  Do you believe He is the Son of God and the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world?  Do you trust Him to save you and give you eternal life?  Will you give Him your life, from now to eternity, and trust and obey Him with every person, place, and thing in your life?  Only when Jesus is your Lord can Jesus be your Savior.

And, the soul you save may not just be your own.

The word of God spreads through those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ

“And he himself believed, and all his household.”  

Remember “E Unum Pluribus,” the Samaritan woman at the well we met in the previous text?  Out of one who came to faith, many came to faith in Jesus Christ.  Here she is, or he is, again.  Out of his faith in Jesus, his whole household came to faith in Jesus.  Salvation, especially when it spreads, is a wonderful thing.

Jesus had not even physically come to their house, yet.  The Lord would take up headquarters in Capernaum.  Simon Peter’s house was there.  The Zebedee’s, James and his brother, John, our Gospel writer, had their fishing business there.  And this royal official’s house was there, the man Christ first met in Cana of Galilee, where this second “sign” occurred.

Can you imagine the joy in that house when Jesus walked in, when their faith became sight?  Can you imagine the joy in your heart when you walk into Heaven, into Jesus’ home, your home, forever?  

Heaven is for those who trust and obey the gospel of Jesus Christ.  Honor the Lord, ask the Lord, and trust the Lord.  This is the word of the Lord.  Thanks be to God.