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The story is that a few years ago, a young preacher approached the seasoned elder and asked "I want to devote my life to a study of scripture but I want to know where should I begin?" The elder gave the advice, "start with the Gospels and apply those truths to your life and delve off into the depths of those revelations and then proceed forward through the New Testament in your personal, in-depth study -- that's what I did." Knowing that the elder had served God faithfully for over sixty years, the younger then asked, "And where are you now in your personal studies?" only to have the elder reply, "I'm still in the Gospels!"

I know how that elder feels. It's not that we should ignore the rest of the Bible, and certainly we are commanded to not do so because "all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine and reproof and instruction in righteousness" and certainly we must take the "whole counsel of God." But, that said, there is something special about the life of Jesus Christ. Especially when you know who He really was and is. Especially when you grasp the very reason for which He had come to earth. There was a song a few years back that said "there is life in the red letters" and that's how I feel today! He, as God Almighty, is the original author of the entire scripture, but there is something even more powerful when we read the "words" of the Living Word! I thank God for coming in flesh to live among us and redeem us from sin, and for inspiring writers to record those events for us. Let us never forget how precious this Book really is! And let us never forget the life changing power that is still in the old, old story of Jesus Christ and Calvary. It's the oldest story in existence because it was a plan of God before the universe was ever formed, but that old story still brings new life and power into those that believe it!

Of all of the incidences of the life of Christ, the ones that I am particularly drawn to are those encounters where someone with a great need hunted Him down and approached Him. To come in contact and meet the spiritual needs of His creation is the precise reason for which He came and so when we read of someone coming to Him and creation with need meets Creator with unlimited power, it is exciting to me! I am a person with spiritual needs, and so are you. We are born into this world with a void left by the sins of our forefathers. We are all born with a missing piece of God's Spirit and will in our lives. We are as the scriptures say, "born into sin and shaped in iniquity" and so we grow up in our sinful nature and do more things that causes a greater void in our lives. We have been born into sin by nature, but not one of us comes to God with only inherited sins against us. All of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and so by the time we come to Jesus, we have great spiritual needs and wounds and scars and broken dreams and situations that need healing! Some people search their entire life and never realize that the missing piece is Jesus Christ! They never realize that the spiritual void is the Spirit and truth of God working in their lives.

And so if you don't know it, let me just tell you, today, that drugs and alcohol won't fill that void and emptiness in your life. Neither will relationships, sex, money, fame, or prestige. Neither will position or power. It's a God-sized hole in your life because it is caused by God not being at the center of everything. And therefore only God can fill that void! That's why I look at the stories of people with great need seeking Jesus out and I highlight them in my mind because that's the attitude that I want! I'm not going to wait for Jesus to just happen to cross my path one day, but I want to seek Him early and late until I find Him! I want to approach Him with my need and lay it at His feet! Pardon me today if I seem a little extreme in my worship or my spirit or my response to Him because I did not come here to be seen by you or to fulfill a religious obligation. I came here seeking Jesus. I have a need that only He can fill, and therefore I have come seeking Him with all of my heart! I'm not here for the crowd, but I'm here to get Jesus to work in my life!

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Our text in John is the story of such a person seeking Jesus. It is the beginning of Jesus' second year of ministry and He is not yet widely known in Israel. His ministry has not yet reached the proportion of being crowded and mobbed everywhere that He goes. He has just begun to do miracles and teach and preach publicly. And we find that a distraught father approaches Jesus in Cana of Galilee. That he is labeled a "nobleman" tells us that he was an "officer of the king's court." The king in this case was Herod Antipas and so this man was someone with royal ties and who often represented the king of Judea. He was wealthy and well connected in the political arena of the day. He no doubt lived in a big house and wanted for nothing as to the finer things of life. We find in scripture that there were several such "noble men and women" who followed Jesus and so the "red letters" bear out that both the poor and the rich -- the princes and the paupers -- sought and needed Jesus.

You may or may not have a nobleman's bank account and prestige, but the story of this man's approach to Jesus is profitable for all to learn from. I want you to notice first that

Despite his prestige and position; despite his resources and bank accounts; despite his political connections and audience with the earthly king, this man had run into a situation where all of those things could not help him. His beloved son was sick and had deteriorated to the point of death. It was in this time of extreme anguish and trial that brought the nobleman to the feet of the Master. Had there never been any trouble in this man's life it is quite possible that he would have never had an audience with the Savior of the world! Had his son never got sick, he would have probably just continued about in his day-to-day business and never met the King of the Universe!

You heard Bro. Patrick, our founding pastor, last Sunday say "thank God for heart attacks" because it was the physical condition of his body that caused him to turn back to God and go back to living as he needed. I have met so many people who immediately ask when you begin talking about God, "if there is a God who is loving and merciful, then how come such and such has happened in my life." And then they name some tragedy or suffering or situation or hardship as if suffering in the world proves that God does not exist. Actually the opposite is true, suffering in the world proves that God does exist! Because if we were to take an inventory of you who are here today, it would be probable that without a hardship or a trial that came in your life to the point of overwhelming you, you would not be here today. It was a trial that brought many of you seeking Jesus. It was a trial that caused many of you to shake off spiritual apathy and delve into the promises of the Word of God. It was a situation beyond your control that drove many of you to sit on a pew and first hear the anointed preaching of a man of God.

Without any trials or heartaches in your life, it is very possible that you would have lived your entire life without ever realizing your need for Jesus' power in your life. Without any hurts and disappointments, you would have never sought Him out! And so trials and sufferings in the world are proof that there is a God that loves you, because He loves you enough to not allow you to go to hell in your sins without first coming into contact with a way of escape and His salvation! He knows that you will live for forever one day. He knows that stain of sin on your life had marked you for a devil's hell, but He also knows that without something missing in your life and without obstacles frustrating your life, you might have lived your life in complete ignorance that God loved you enough to come to earth to reach you. You might have live your life in complete ignorance of the devil's plan for your eternity and of a God who has provided a better way! What good would it be to have a perfect life with no trials and yet die lost? And so God loved you enough to allow some things to go wrong in your life. He loved you enough that He cared more for your eternal destination than your temporary comfort!

This nobleman would one day look back and thank God for the illness of his son -- because it brought the whole family to Jesus! Just as many of you can now look back and thank God for things falling apart while you were in sin! Think of what you would have missed out on had God allowed everything to work out easy! Thank God for the needs that drove you to seek Him! And for those of you who have not yet experienced great things in God in your life, could it be that the very trouble that you grumble about today is actually the hand of God seeking to provoke you to get up out of your sin and come seek the Savior? Could it be that the moments that have caused you to shake your fist in the sky and ask "where is God in this?" was actually the hand of God in your life and you just did not realize it? God will only do what He is given permission by you to do in your life. He's a gentlemen by choice. He's not going to barge into your life without your desiring Him to work. He only responds to those who are seeking Him and hungering and thirsting after righteousness. And often He brings an illness or trial to cause you to seek Him, so that He can manifest and reveal Himself to you as you desire!

The nobleman only came physically from about 25 miles away, but in the spirit he came from much further to get to Jesus. Notice that:

He had never met Jesus before. He was not what you would call a "disciple of Christ." He had never seen the miraculous before or heard the Master's teachings. We are not even told if he were religious in any sense. But somewhere he had heard about what Jesus had done for others and it caused a small spark of faith to well up within him. His faith at first was only of an "inquiring type." He believed that Jesus had worked in the lives of others, and so he showed up to inquire if it were possible that Jesus could work in his life! He believed that Jesus had done it in the past, but he wasn't completely sure if Jesus could do it now. He believed that Jesus had done the miraculous for others, but he had come to see whether or not Jesus would do the same for him.

Perhaps there is someone here today with the same type of "inquiring faith" toward the things of God. I could take a show of hands to point out those in this congregation who have experienced and seen the healing power of God themselves. I could take a show of hands to demonstrate to you the multitude that is here today that has received the infilling of the Holy Ghost with the evidence of speaking in a heavenly language for themselves. I could take a show of hands that confirm the power of repentance, having your sins washed away baptismally in the name of Jesus, and receiving and allowing the Holy Ghost to work in your life. I could show you changed life after changed life that testifies that God's promises are true and powerful when obeyed. And perhaps there is someone who came here because -- like the nobleman -- you have heard of such things.

But hear this preacher today: Jesus is here and all of those things that He has done for other people have still not changed your own situation. And they will not until you believe that Jesus Christ can do now what He has done in the past! And that Jesus Christ can and will do for you what He has done for others! Let me help you by reminding you of two short scriptures that say:

The power of what you have heard that God has done for others is this: if you will approach Him with the same faith that they brought, then He will also do the miraculous and supernatural for you! But the reports of others will do no good until you make up in your mind that "I will get up and I will go to Jesus for myself and I will find out for myself with my petitions!" The testimony of others only brought the supernatural because the nobleman was willing to take the step of faith and journey to wherever Jesus was to be found!

The scriptures say that we get into His presence by gathering together with two or three in His name. The scriptures say that we get into His presence through praise and worship. The scriptures say that He responds to the mention of His name, and although a sinner's prayer He will not hear, He will not turn away someone who comes in repentance with a broken and contrite spirit. That is how we journey to where Jesus is today. If those things are true, then when people refrain from coming to His house to meet with others in His name, and frown on outward praise and worship, and abhor an altar of repentance where they can humble themselves and approach Him with a right spirit, then the reason that such people do not experience the supernatural is because they have not acted upon what they have heard from others by getting up and approaching Jesus themselves!

He may have been a non-religious person and not had a clue who Jesus really was, but the nobleman did one thing right and that is he came to Jesus himself. Most men of his prestige would have sent a servant in his stead. He could have sent an emissary to "have faith for him." And I'm afraid that the results would not have been the same, because our God is a one-on-one God. For whatever reason, the nobleman did right in canceling his royal appointments and packing his bags and going himself.

Too many people today want the preacher to pray the prayer of faith for them. They want to confess to a priest and have him pray the prayer of repentance. They want to let others praise and worship outwardly until they are ushered into the presence of God. They want the preacher to humble himself and preach with such sincerity that they cannot help but come face to face with Jesus. They are content to let others study and pray and fast and just try to ride along on their coattails. But I've come to tell you today that the reports of what God has done for other people will remain just stories until you yourself become willing to bow a knee in repentance and humble yourself before God. Until you praise and worship God outwardly for yourself. Until you seek His face and cry out to Him for help. Only then will you experience for yourself His awesome power! Thank God for the report of others, but let it lead you to undertake yourself the journey to get into His presence so you can experience it for yourself! Until you make room for God and time for Him to work, your faith in the miracles of others will do you no good!

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As we continue further into our text; I want you to notice that:

It was insufficient for several reasons which I will hurriedly bring before you.

The man rushed up to Jesus and said, "come down to my house and heal my son for he's dying!" He lacked the understanding of the Roman centurion who in "great faith" said to Jesus, "you don't have to come to my house, for I know that you can just speak the word and it be done." This man had in his mind that Jesus had to be physically present at his son's side for the miraculous to take place. He didn't quite grasp the magnitude of the healing ability of the miracle worker before him.

The nobleman also had some preconceived ideas about how it was going to happen if it did so. Jesus' immediate response to the man's statement was "unless you see signs and wonders, you will not believe." In other words, "unless you see smoke and fireworks and lightening and everything works out just like you have decided already how it would be in your head, then you will not truly believe in my ability to do the supernatural."

How often people today come into the presence of God and they come in with a preconceived idea of how the miracle must go if God is to do it. The first problem with that is that there is a God and you are not it and His ways of working go far beyond our intellect. The other problem with that is that your preconceived notions limit God's power. God might be wanting to do a greater work than coming to your house, nobleman, and might be wanting to do the miracle in an even greater way!

If we are to come to Jesus and receive the supernatural, then the foremost thing that we must remember is that it is our job to bring the need with faith, not figure out how He can do it for us! He is the miracle worker and it's His job to perform the "how!" You've got to throw your pre conceived notions out of the window. You've got to trust God even beyond how you have heard that He has done it for others! When you get the Holy Ghost, you might not cry like other people did, but rather laugh for joy or vice versa. When the Spirit causes your language to speak a heavenly language, the heavenly language that God speaks through you might sound radically different than someone else. It may be quiet or loud. You might get it in church or at work or in the broom closet of the fellowship hall like my father did! When you get baptized in Jesus' name, you might feel goosebumps or a warm sensation. Or you might not feel anything except the quiet confidence knowing that your obedience to the Word of God has washed your sins away! God might heal your cancer before chemo or after chemo. He didn't heal the woman with the issue of blood until she had "suffered many things from physicians." He may provide direction now, or a few weeks from now. You may hear your answer through an audible voice or a strong impression or God could use the man of God to preach to you. You may not have the personality of somebody else, but God still wants to use you mightily for the kingdom of God! We've got to realize that God wants to move, trust Him to do so, and stop worrying so much about the "how!" The "how" is His prerogative, not ours!

We all come to God at first with preconceived notions about how He works that must change in order to receive truth. Jesus' rebuke to the man "unless you see signs and wonders, you will not believe" was fairly harsh. But the man did not let the correction of his errant preconceived ideas deter him from hanging around and trusting Jesus! When you come to God and His Word identifies an idea or tradition that is not true and that needs to change before you can get everything that God has for you, don't get mad at the correction and bristle at the rebuke, but thank God for it and respond to the reproof of His Word, because it is trying to set you up for the miraculous!

The man had heard that Jesus was a great prophet and miracle worker, but he did not realize that Jesus was the Christ; the Messiah. He came to Jesus as a 911 call, calling for help in a time of crisis. To his mind Jesus was the miracle worker that could make everything better and it never in his wildest dreams had crossed his mind that Jesus could be God in flesh! And that is another reason why Jesus rebuked him when he first approached: "unless you see signs and wonders, you will not believe." Where was the man's faith lacking? He believed Jesus could do the miracle, or he would have never approached Jesus, but the issue was that He did not believe that Jesus Christ was God Incarnate. His faith was such to believe Jesus could heal the sick, but not necessarily that He was the master of all of the universe. He acknowledged Jesus' physician abilities, but at first missed that Jesus Christ should have been acknowledged as the Master of every area of his life.

Had the man stayed at that level of revelation, I do not think that he would have received his miracle. But the next verse relates how that the man said "Sir, come down before my child dies." The word translated "sir" there in the Greek is not just a title of respect like we use "sir" today. But to quote the Greek scholars of the UBS Greek text compilation, "the Greek word here for 'sir' can respond to the Christian term, 'Lord'." That is why some modern English translations have in this verse the father saying, "Lord, come before my son dies." Notice that he was still erring in his preconceived idea that Jesus had to come to his house in the physical sense, but his revelation that Jesus was "Lord" and "Master" of everything made up for his misconceptions! When he got a revelation of who Jesus was, then he got his miracle despite his preconceived ideas as to the "how."

Why didn't Jesus go back to his house with him? I think that Jesus was teaching us a principle that if you really know who He is and acknowledge Him as "Lord," then you know that Jesus does not have to be bodily present in order to perform miracles! Even some people today say "I'll only believe if a physical figure of Jesus appears before me to do the work." To which I say, "you have not yet got a revelation of who He really is!" When He is the Lord of Lords and King of Kings in your life, then you know that He does not have to be physically present to do the work. He can be in heaven, and we here on earth, and yet just speak the word and it be done! He is coming back one day in bodily form, but you'd better not wait until that day to believe in Him for a supernatural work, because then it will be too late! Somebody needs to get the revelation that Jesus is more than just a historical figure who was a good teacher and performed miracles, but rather He is the one God of Israel come in the flesh and is resurrected and alive evermore and I can't see Him, but I can sure feel Him and I've learned when you know who He is, He works even when He is not present physically!

The greatest need of the man was not for his son to be healed physically, but for he and his family to be saved. They were living in the time of law, and they were not in the era of Grace, but part of the Law of Moses was to believe in the Messiah when He came. This man needed to believe the Jesus was the Savior of Israel in order to be saved. He did not realize it at first, but that was a far greater need than his son's life being spared. It is possible that his son was young enough not to have reached an age of accountability and so would have passed into eternity into the hands of God saved regardless. But not so for the nobleman. He was definitely old enough to obey the Laws of Moses, and yet he had not believed that Jesus was the Christ. And what does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and yet lose his own soul!?

Notice the repetition of the phrase that the nobleman "believed" in our text. Verse fifty says that when Jesus said "go thy way, for your son has been healed," that the man believed. In other words, the nobleman believed Jesus that his son was better. But look at verse 53 which states the nobleman "believed, and his whole house." This is not a reference to believing that Jesus could heal the son, but rather a reference that they believe that Jesus was the Messiah. The man and his house became followers of Christ and recognized Him as the Savior of Israel! He had come to Jesus simply desiring the physical healing of his son, and left with so much more, the spiritual healing of his soul!

As we stated before, God often uses tragedy and trial to bring us to a place where we seek Him and acknowledge our need for Him! And, like the nobleman, we come to God seeking help from our fiery trial and find not only the help that we needed, but so much more: through it all He has revealed Himself as Lord and Master of our life! How many have come to God looking for healing for the past and not only found that but also eternal life!? The scriptures say that when the Queen of Sheba came to see Solomon that she brought gifts to "impress" him and instead received gifts from him that made her offerings seem puny! Instead of her blessing him, he blessed her in a greater measure than she even came seeking! And Jesus said that He was "the greater than Solomon!" And so realize today that when you truly come to Him with your trial, that you will never leave without having received far more than you even imagined that you wanted! In the end, the blessings that we receive from Him far outweigh the trial that provoked us to go to Him in the first place! If you don't feel that way, then you have not truly come to Him to let Him work in your life! Don't delay, come and give Him everything and then prepared to be blown away by what you receive in return!

Maybe you've heard a "so-called" Christian griping about what "they had to give up." I want to declare to you that they are not a true Christian because they have not obviously partaken of the full salvation of God. I've never heard of a lottery winner who paid twenty dollars for a ticket and then won the 100 million prize, get mad at the officials because they had to "give up" their twenty bucks! And so it is with God: did I have to sacrifice my will to serve Him? Of course! Did I have to change some things about my lifestyle? Absolutely! But was it a horrible experience? No way! Because the blessings that I have received make whatever I had to sacrifice seem like pennies to the great riches of God! We need a fresh revelation of how great heaven really is, and what a precious treasure eternal life really is, and what a joy it is to have the Holy Ghost! I haven't given up anything, because when you come to Him, you always leave with far greater than what you first needed!

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When Jesus spoke those words to the nobleman, we find that he truly believed because he immediately obeyed Jesus' words. Jesus said "go thy way because your son has been made whole," and the man turned and walked away confident that as he obeyed, Jesus would do as He had said. That's important to remember: it was not just the word of Jesus that brought the supernatural, but the man's obedience to that word! I have said it over and over again: you cannot separate faith and action. Only he who believes, obeys, and only he who obeys, believes. If you truly believe in Jesus Christ as your savior, then you will repent and be baptized and receive the Holy Ghost as He commanded! The proof of faith lies in when you act upon it before you even see it done!

Do you believe that Jesus can save you, then you will believe Him when He said "unless you repent you will die in your sins." If you really believe Him, then you will believe Him when He says "he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved." If you really believe Jesus' words then you will believe Him when He said "this spake He of the Spirit that they that believe on Him should receive" and that "these signs shall follow them that believe . . . they shall speak with new tongues!" If you truly believe what He has commanded, then like the nobleman, you will respond with action of obedience towards what He has said!

And I close with this last thought:

He returned home, but rather than traveling all night to see if it really came true, he spent the night and journeyed home the next day. When he met the servants in the way, they said "yesterday at the seventh hour, he was healed." True, the Jewish day started at sundown, but it would have been strange for even a Jew to use such phraseology if a night had not passed. As I studied this passage, this week, many scholars noted that in the original Greek it is implied here that the man stayed the night in Cana and then journeyed back to Capernaum the next day. In other words, he did not leave Jesus and breathlessly travel all night to get back to see if his son was touched, but he went to sleep confident that God would do as He had spoken.

Our other text prophesied of Jesus Christ when it talked about the "chief corner stone" that would be laid "in Zion." We know that it was talking about Jesus Christ as being a sure foundation because Peter told us that in 1 Peter 2:5-6. But we tend to gloss over the last part of that verse:

The word for "haste" there is "to act speedily" and the whole idea is of someone in a house built upon a sure foundation and when the storms come, he does not run away from the storm, because of his confidence in the refuge.

"He that believeth shall not make haste." If you truly believe in Jesus Christ as this nobleman did so that you act immediately on His word, then there is no reason to rush home to make sure everything turned out alright, because you can have the calm assurance that everything will be as He said it would be! If you believe and obey His commandment along with that belief, then you can rest assured that it will be done as He has said that it will be done! You do not have to make haste. You don't have to rush every few moments to see if it's true. You don't have to worry. When you obey what He has said, it will be done as He has said!

And so I close this message today by telling you: every promise in God's Word is for you, today. But it is not enough for you to say that you believe that, for you must act in obedience upon that Word. But if you will do so, then you can be confident that He will do as promised in your life! If you believe and obey, today, then you can confidently say with the scripture:

If you will act as the nobleman did and believe and obey, then you can go about your way with ease, knowing that there shall be a performance of what God has spoken! Let us come and emulate the faith of the nobleman!