Signs 2: Healing the Official's Son

Good morning, and welcome to Family Worship here at Eastern Hills Baptist Church! It’s good to be here together this morning to praise the Lord and consider His Word as a church family. If you’re joining us online this morning, thanks for being a part of our live stream. I really appreciate the men and women that make up our Audio Visual ministry and the work that they do every week to run the sound and lights, the display and the stream. Thanks for your faithful work, team. And choir and Michelle, thank you for blessing us with that song this morning.

Auxano Survey Time

I’ve been talking about this morning for a few weeks now, and as I’ve said during those announcements, this is a special day in the life of Eastern Hills. Hopefully just about about everyone who has been here this month has heard about this morning and what we will be doing together today. Maybe you’ve been attending Eastern Hills for 50 years or maybe 50 days, this is a family activity that is going to be very important in the months and years to come. We’d love to get some information and input from you before we step into the next phase of this endeavor. Visitors....

A little over a year ago, we realized that we were going to have to do some pretty major repair and upkeep things to the building, and through the conversations that came from that realization, we decided to contract with an architect to walk us through a process of vision, direction, mission, and what God might want to do in the life of the church and how our building helps or hinders that mission. That mission, summarized in one sentence is: The Eastern Hills Baptist Church family exists to connect people to Jesus and to each other.

We voted as a church to adopt the Building Master Plan that was developed as the guiding concept for our future direction for the building. However, this concept is a long-vision, three phase concept, and the first phase is mostly infrastructure issues: fixing and upgrading our lighting system (they are happily working for the time being), changing the building over from evaporative cooling to central air and replacing our in some cases 40-year-old furnaces, upgrading our electrical supply to accommodate these changes, and a couple of other things on the property like a shading structure over the courtyard and making the drainage ditch at the south end of the property more attractive and safe.

But that was only the beginning of the journey that we’ve been on. We also voted to contract with a church consulting group called Auxano who helps churches think through things like this, and for the past few months, a group of church members has worked with Clint from Auxano to really refine the “how and why” of our mission, and to look further out into the future by considering our location, our church culture and focus, and how God might want to use Eastern Hills in a very particular, practical way to advance His Kingdom.

We created a document with that information called the “Case for Support,” and it has been available on our website and in the foyer and office for a couple of weeks now for you to look at, read, and pray through, and I hope you’ve done that. We believe that God has situated Eastern Hills, both the people and the property that we meet on, to be used by Him to do a great work in the lives of others through very practical means, which we are calling “neighboring moments.” These neighboring moments are both about serving the neighbors around our homes, but also about serving the neighbors around this building, our church family home.

This kind of endeavor is going to take time and resources, and what Auxano has helped us prepare for this morning is a church “Campaign Readiness Survey” that we want every family in the church to complete this morning, if possible. This survey will provide us with valuable insight from the church family to help gauge how well we have communicated the direction and vision with the church, perhaps see any blind spots or things we’ve missed, evaluate the overall engagement of the church family, and just give an idea of the initial support that we might have available for stepping into phase 1 of the Master Plan.

The survey is about 20 questions long, and should take about 10 minutes to complete. You can choose to put your name on it or not, and there’s also a place for you to share your thoughts, ideas, questions, or excitement on the survey. The first 13 questions are more general about your engagement in the church, and in fact, you don’t need to know anything about the Master Plan or the Case for Support to answer those 13 questions. Starting with question 14, they get more into the specifics of the Master Plan and the Case for Support. If you haven’t seen the Case for Support, you can see that document on our website, which is ehbc.org, under the Family Life tab, the section titled Auxano Church Partnership.

The surveys will not be evaluated by any of us here, but by the staff at Auxano, who will then compiled the information and give us a snapshot of where we are at this moment, as well as the input that we get from the survey.

Before we get to the survey, I just want to make a couple of things clear: first, married couples are welcome to fill the survey out TOGETHER, but you don’t HAVE to. However, if spouses do choose to fill this out separately, when you get to question 20 especially, make sure that only one of you answers that question, and the other chooses “Spouse already responded.” Otherwise, our information will be skewed. Second, if you aren’t formally a member of the church yet, but you’re engaged in the life of Eastern Hills, we want you to complete the survey as well. Third, nothing in this survey is obligating you to anything, so please be completely honest, because we really need and want your input so that we can wisely evaluate our next steps.

So let me give you the instructions, and then pray, and then really as an act of worship as a church: us together taking part in what God is doing in the life of this church family.

The most efficient way to do this is for everyone who wants to take the survey to get their cell phones out, and we have a QR code that you can use to get directly to the survey on your phone. So you’ll just get your phone out, open up your camera, and aim it at the screen, or if that doesn’t work, you can use the QR code on the front of the EHBC Life (bulletin). It should ask you if you want to open it in your browser, and then you can start filling it out. That link on the screen is where the QR code points to if that method doesn’t work or if you’re joining us online today and watching on your phone. There is also a direct link on our website, which is ehbc.org, then look at the Family Life tab and select Auxano Church Partnership.

If you don’t have a smartphone or don’t want to use your phone to take the survey, just raise your hand and we’ll get you a paper copy. If you use a paper copy, just raise your hand when you’re done, and we’ll collect them.

Pray, thanking God for the ability for us to join together as the body in this time of worship, and ask for His guidance as we take the survey together.

We’re going to play some background music so you can focus on this and let’s begin taking the survey.

Opening

Thank you for participating in this special event in the life of our church family.

And now, we are still going to look at the Bible this morning, but I promise that it will not be as long of a message as I might normally preach. Last week, we kicked off our new series, Signs, where we are looking at the seven signs that John recorded in His Gospel to show that Jesus is the Messiah, and we opened the series with the understanding that it is dangerous to ignore or misinterpret the evidence that Jesus is God and Christ. We saw the first sign, when Jesus changed the water into wine at the wedding in Cana, and I guess you could summarize last week’s message with the phrase, Jesus is better. Better than anyone or anything we could possibly follow after.

This morning, we will consider the second sign that John recorded, which also happened in Cana of Galilee. Let’s stand in recognition of the Word of God as we read our focal passage together, John 4:46-54

John 4:46–54 CSB

46 He went again to Cana of Galilee, where he had turned the water into wine. There was a certain royal official whose son was ill at Capernaum. 47 When this man heard that Jesus had come from Judea into Galilee, he went to him and pleaded with him to come down and heal his son, since he was about to die. 48 Jesus told him, “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will not believe.” 49 “Sir,” the official said to him, “come down before my boy dies.” 50 “Go,” Jesus told him, “your son will live.” The man believed what Jesus said to him and departed. 51 While he was still going down, his servants met him saying that his boy was alive. 52 He asked them at what time he got better. “Yesterday at one in the afternoon the fever left him,” they answered. 53 The father realized this was the very hour at which Jesus had told him, “Your son will live.” So he himself believed, along with his whole household. 54 Now this was also the second sign Jesus performed after he came from Judea to Galilee.

PRAYER (Fires and sister churches affected by them; Celebration Baptist Church in Rio Rancho, Jesse Parker senior pastor since January of this year)

We all have to make decisions every day. Some of those decisions are bigger and more difficult to make, decisions which might have a profound impact on our lives from that moment on. We are generally more cautious with that level of decision. I’m thinking decisions about whom to marry, what job to take, buying a house or a car. These decisions can be huge. And there is kind of a path that we go through as we make these kind of huge decisions. The four steps are: AWARENESS->UNDERSTANDING->APPRECIATION->OWNERSHIP.

I’ll use the idea of buying a house to break this down. When you want to buy a house, before you even start looking, you have some idea of what you want in a house, so you can only look at houses that fit a general set of criteria. As you look at the various listings that fit your criteria, you be come AWARE of the various houses that are available. Then you start to consider the different aspects (size, location, price, bedrooms, etc.) of the individual houses so that you have UNDERSTANDING of the options. As one house rises to the top of the ones that fit your criteria, you gain an APPRECIATION of that house: you start to envision what it would be like to live in that house, the ways you would organize, etc. And finally, you purchase the house: you enter OWNERSHIP. And with ownership comes passion. It’s YOUR house.

While any analogy is going to fall short when we try to use it to illustrate the eternal truths and weight of the Gospel (certainly trusting in Jesus is substantially different than buying a house or a car), this is kind of what we see in our focal passage this morning with the royal official from Capernaum.

To very quickly catch us up from last week as far as the Gospel of John is concerned:

After the wedding, Jesus went to Jerusalem for Passover, and there He cleared the Temple of the money changers, and then predicted His death when asked what sign He would give for His authority to do such things. He also did miraculous things there during the Passover festival as well, as evidenced by John 2:23.

John 2:23 CSB

23 While he was in Jerusalem during the Passover Festival, many believed in his name when they saw the signs he was doing.

Then in chapter 3, He had His evening chat with Nicodemus, where Jesus told him, “Unless someone is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” (John 3:3) There was a slight issue with John the Baptist’s disciples, and that prompted John to say about Jesus: “He must increase, I must decrease.” (What time is it? 3:30) From there, Jesus went to the Samaritan village of Sychar, where he met the woman at the well, and revealed His identity as Messiah to her by saying, “I, the one speaking to you, am He (Messiah).” She goes into town and tells her fellow Samaritans about Him, and many from the town believe that He is the Savior.

So just before we arrive at our focal passage, we see Jesus return to Galilee after staying in Sychar for a couple of days. I didn’t put this in the focal passage because we don’t actually meet the royal official just yet. But it’s important for especially our first point:

John 4:43–45 CSB

43 After two days he left there for Galilee. 44 (Jesus himself had testified that a prophet has no honor in his own country.) 45 When they entered Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him because they had seen everything he did in Jerusalem during the festival. For they also had gone to the festival.

So Jesus returns to Galilee, knowing that a prophet has no honor in His own country, and while they welcome Him, there is still not comprehension of who He really is. This brings us to our focal passage and the royal official.

1) Before the sign, the official was AWARE of Jesus.

This royal official could have been a Jew or a Gentile, we cannot be sure. In fact, we know only three things about this royal official as we first meet him: 1) He serves in the court of the Tetrarch of the province of Galilee, Herod Anitpas. This is the same Herod that would have John the Baptist beheaded. 2) He lives in Capernaum, which is on the northern coast of the Sea of Galilee. 3) He has a son who is gravely ill. These are borne out in verse 46:

John 4:46 CSB

46 He went again to Cana of Galilee, where he had turned the water into wine. There was a certain royal official whose son was ill at Capernaum.

But what we learn from the beginning of verse 47 is that this royal official was AWARE of Jesus.

John 4:47 (CSB)

47 When this man heard that Jesus had come from Judea into Galilee...

Others were fully aware of Jesus. Back in chapter 2 when Jesus was in Jerusalem for Passover, we see the sellers were aware of Him, His disciples were aware of Him, the Jews were aware of Him. In John 3, we see that Nicodemus was aware of Him, John the Baptist and his disciples were aware of Him. In John 4, we see that that Samaritan woman became aware of Him, as did everyone in her town.

What we saw in verse 45 is that Jesus was known all over the Galilee, so this royal official being aware of Him is not surprising. Perhaps he had heard about the wedding. The Galileans were talking about how Jesus had disputed with the religious leaders in Jerusalem at Passover and the signs that Jesus had done there.

You might be here today, and you’re aware of Jesus. You’ve heard His name uttered by people, both as a name and as a cuss word. You’re aware that He was a historically real Person that the Bible talks about, and that people believe is their Savior. You might even be aware of His crucifixion and the reports of His resurrection. But like the royal official, that’s as far as you go. You’re aware. You’ve heard of Jesus.

That’s a good place to start, just like it was a good place to start for the royal official. However, if the reality of Jesus doesn’t become a relationship with Jesus, that awareness is actually useless… just another piece of trivia. Which takes us to the official’s next step:

2) Before the sign, the official UNDERSTOOD something about Jesus.

If this royal official was in fact a Jew, he would have gone to Jerusalem for the Passover, and so maybe he had seen what Jesus had done there. Regardless, he understood Jesus to be someone who could do, or least had done, the miraculous. And his son was sick and time was short, so he went to Jesus.

John 4:47 CSB

47 When this man heard that Jesus had come from Judea into Galilee, he went to him and pleaded with him to come down and heal his son, since he was about to die.

This trip was a difficult one, and we see the father’s desperation in a couple of different aspects: First, he leaves his very ill son (who was about to die, according to the text) to go see Jesus. He wouldn’t have wanted to leave his son for any reason but to go get help, and that’s what he did. Second, the trip was not a short one: MAP The trip from Capernaum to Cana was 18 miles, and not just flat 18 miles, but uphill for 18 miles. Capernaum is situated at about 700 feet below sea level, and Cana was in the hilly country to the west, sitting at about 300 feet above sea level. This is several days’ journey there and back.

So he makes this trip in order to get Jesus to come down to Capernaum and heal his son. He shows that he had some understanding of Jesus’s power, and that’s really what he wants in this moment. He wants access to Jesus’s power, not His Person. We’ll see this theme come up again in a later sign.

Jesus knows this, and in fact, He knows it about the Galileans generally. So He speaks to everyone there:

John 4:48 CSB

48 Jesus told him, “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will not believe.”

Remember what we saw in verse 44:

John 4:44 CSB

44 (Jesus himself had testified that a prophet has no honor in his own country.)

Jesus knew that the royal official was looking for Jesus to just come and fix his problem. He wasn’t yet interested in anything more. He understood something about Jesus, but He didn’t want a Savior—he just wanted a healer.

I wonder how many in the church are in this same position? We understand that Jesus lived and died on the cross for our sins. We even understand that He rose from the grave and beat death. We get that Jesus is powerful, just like the royal official did.

The issue is that while we have an understanding of who Jesus is, that information is just in our heads. It hasn’t changed anything about our hearts and lives. I mean, we’re cool with Jesus being the One that we call out to when we’re in a jam, but otherwise, He doesn’t have much sway over our lives. He’s OUR servant, instead of the other way around. Jesus is just an app on the smartphone of our lives. We use Him when we need Him, but otherwise, it doesn’t really matter to us if He’s there or not.

Again, the royal official has gotten closer. He has an understanding of what Jesus is capable of (or so he thinks). But still, he hasn’t arrived at the place of trusting faith. If we haven’t either, it doesn’t matter how much we understand ABOUT Jesus. We’re still lost. If we haven’t actually surrendered to Jesus, turning from sin and attempts to justify ourselves, we are still separated from Him. We need to repent and surrender.

So the royal official takes another step toward faith when Jesus performs the sign:

3) When Jesus performed the sign, the official APPRECIATED Jesus.

The official receives the confrontation of Jesus’ response with an interesting twist of submission. He changes his approach to Jesus slightly. While he still basically commands Jesus to come down, this royal official calls Jesus something that I doubt he called anyone else by Herod Antipas. In the Greek, he calls Jesus kyrios: “lord” or “master.” This changes the tone of the imperative “come down” from what seems like a demand into more of a plea for Christ’s mercy:

John 4:49–50 CSB

49 “Sir,” the official said to him, “come down before my boy dies.” 50 “Go,” Jesus told him, “your son will live.” The man believed what Jesus said to him and departed.

Jesus responds by giving a command of His own: “Go home. Your son will live.” This royal official is left with a choice. Believe and submit (and thus, leave), or keep pressing, demanding that Jesus comply.

He leaves, without making further demand or argument, without question, and without any proof that Jesus is telling the truth. He has reached the point of appreciation. Not like “thanks!”, but more like “I get it.” He appreciates that it is Jesus who is in charge of this situation, not him. He appreciates that if Jesus is powerful enough to heal his son, then Jesus is powerful enough to declare that the child will live, and he will live.

I think this is the place that a lot of the people in the church find themselves. We “get” Jesus—We know who He is and we believe in His power, we believe He died on the cross and rose again. We have made a profession of faith in Him as Savior and Lord, and we’re even taking action: we’re choosing to follow, albeit shakily perhaps. We’re willing to call Jesus “Lord,” and trust in His work, surrendering to His commands. We’re saved, but still there is something missing: passion.

4) When the official experienced the sign, he took OWNERSHIP of the Gospel.

This official had believed what Jesus said, and believed that it had happened. The next day, he was walking back down out of the hill country the long 18 miles when his servants met him on the way home with news of his son’s recovery. And what flowed out of that moment was where his ownership of the Good News was born.

John 4:51–53 CSB

51 While he was still going down, his servants met him saying that his boy was alive. 52 He asked them at what time he got better. “Yesterday at one in the afternoon the fever left him,” they answered. 53 The father realized this was the very hour at which Jesus had told him, “Your son will live.” So he himself believed, along with his whole household.

When he asks, he finds out that at the exact time that he had his conversation with Jesus, his son was healed. He’s all in. Jesus has proven His authority and power beyond what this royal official could have expected, and he responds to that with not just a reaffirmation of his belief in Christ, but in the declaration of his faith in Jesus to everyone in his household, including the boy who had just been made well. While the physical regeneration was important, the spiritual regeneration was most important. We see then that the official’s ownership of the Good News of the kingdom of God meant a passion for telling others about who Jesus is and what He had done, and the result was changed lives.

This is the point that we are supposed to be at, brothers and sisters. The place of ownership of the Gospel: that the work of the Spirit through faith the Gospel impacts all of the other areas of our life: how we talk, how we work, how we are entertained, how we see others, how we serve our neighbors, how we act, how we think. This is the stage of ownership: when work of Christ isn’t simply flowing to us, but through us. When Jesus and our relationship with Him becomes the driving force of our lives.

Do we have this kind of passion for the Gospel? Are we so enthralled by the beauty and grace of God, shown through what He has done in Christ, that we have a burning desire to both live out the Gospel and to passionately declare it to others? I confess that I don’t always have this driving passion in my own life. What will it take for all of us to have this kind of ownership, and thus this kind of passion? What is keeping us from it? What holds us back, holds us down? We must repent of this, surrender again to Christ, and draw near to the Lord, that He would draw near to us (James 4:8).

Closing

This was the second sign that Jesus did that John references being done to prove that He is Messiah and that He is God.

John 4:54 CSB

54 Now this was also the second sign Jesus performed after he came from Judea to Galilee.

This sign brought a royal official from awareness OF Jesus to a passion FOR Jesus. What will it mean in YOUR life today?

First, if you’re hearing this and you came in without any knowledge of who Jesus is, you can no longer say that you are unaware. You’ve moved into the first stage of our illustration: You are aware of Jesus.

If you’re in the aware or understanding crowd and you know you’ve never surrendered your life to following Jesus as your Lord and Savior, even if you’ve been in the church for 50 years, today is the day to repent and believe the Good News! Jesus died for your forgiveness and He rose again for your eternal salvation. Surrender to Him as Lord and Savior, trusting Him with your forever this morning. We’ll be down here to talk with you about that, or if you’re online, send me an email.

If you’re in the appreciation crowd, and you’re a believer but you’re just not taking full ownership of the Gospel, you just don’t have the passion for Jesus. The solution is to repent, get in the Word, and fall in love with Jesus again. You can pray where you are, come to the steps, or pray with one of us.

If you have been looking for a church where you can grow and serve, and you believe that Eastern Hills is that church, then I’d love to set an appointment to sit down and talk with you about that, answer any questions that you have, go through our Statement of Belief together, and just spend time getting to know you. Come and let me know.

You can also use this time of invitation to give as the Lord leads you. Give online through our website or mobile app, or give in person using the plates by the doors as you leave.

PRAYER

Closing Remarks

Voter info booths in foyer

Business meeting tonight at 5:30, need a quorum.

Bible reading 2 Kings 9

Instructions for guests

Benediction

Ephesians 3:16–21 CSB

16 I pray that he may grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with power in your inner being through his Spirit, 17 and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. I pray that you, being rooted and firmly established in love, 18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the length and width, height and depth of God’s love, 19 and to know Christ’s love that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. 20 Now to him who is able to do above and beyond all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us—21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

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