Is it wrong to honor Jesus as you would honor God the Father?

“Honor the Son”

(John 5:18-47, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, March 29, 2009)

John 5:18-47 ¹⁸ This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God. ¹⁹ So Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. ²⁰ For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing. And greater works than these will he show him, so that you may marvel. ²¹ For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will. ²² The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, ²³ that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. ²⁴ Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life. ²⁵ "Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. ²⁶ For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. ²⁷ And he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man. ²⁸ Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice ²⁹ and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment. ³⁰ "I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me. ³¹ If I alone bear witness about myself, my testimony is not deemed true. ³² There is another who bears witness about me, and I know that the testimony that he bears about me is true. ³³ You sent to John, and he has borne witness to the truth. ³⁴ Not that the testimony that I receive is from man, but I say these things so that you may be saved. ³⁵ He was a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light. ³⁶ But the testimony that I have is greater than that of John. For the works that the Father has given me to accomplish, the very works that I am doing, bear witness about me that the Father has sent me. ³⁷ And the Father who sent me has himself borne witness about me. His voice you have never heard, his form you have never seen, ³⁸ and you do not have his word abiding in you, for you do not believe the one whom he has sent. ³⁹ You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, ⁴⁰ yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. ⁴¹ I do not receive glory from people. ⁴² But I know that you do not have the love of God within you. ⁴³ I have come in my Father's name, and you do not receive me. If another comes in his own name, you will receive him. ⁴⁴ How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God? ⁴⁵ Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you: Moses, on whom you have set your hope. ⁴⁶ If you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me. ⁴⁷ But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?"

The Father and the Son equally honored (18-23)

In the verses just before this passage, Jesus healed a man who had been an invalid for 38 years. In performing this great miracle he attacked two false spiritualities, the first was the spirituality of the “magic” waters near the gate of Jerusalem, where it was thought by many desperate people that the answer for their lives would come from some kind of method or technique that would yield the result they desired. The second was the spirituality that insisted that Jewish traditions brought life and should be followed as God’s Law. It was according to this way of thinking that Jesus was classified as a Sabbath-breaker. Jesus’ healing was a divine work of resurrection life, a work that was a fulfillment of Sabbath and not a violation of it. Jesus knew no sin (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Many Jews were sure that Jesus was in the wrong because He did not keep their traditions in the way that they thought He should. This was not their only problem with Him. They also understood Him to be asserting His equality with God. Though Jesus was very willing to take on a role of functional subordination to His Father in His work for us, there should be no doubt that Jesus taught that He, the Son of God, was just as fully God as His Father in the essence of His divine nature. When John mentions the objection that many Jews had that by calling God His Father, Jesus was making Himself equal with God, John does not go on to deny this claim of full divinity for Jesus, but to support it with various statements and actions of our Lord.

The Son does what the Father does. The Father shows the Son everything He is doing, just as the Son shows the Father everything that He is doing. The Father raises the dead, and the Son raises the dead. Especially in verse 23 we read that everyone may honor the Son, “just as they honor the Father,” and that, “Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.” We honor the Father with true worship. Many, both in ancient days and even now, have come to the very wrong conclusion that the Father will somehow be slighted if worship is given to the Son. This is exactly wrong. The Son is to be honored just as the Father is honored. If a person claims to worship God, but refuses to worship Jesus, then the Lord says that such a person is not really honoring the Father.

The powerful voice of the Son of God (24-30)

Jesus goes on to some amazing things here about Himself. His voice is the voice of the new creation. It is by the hearing of His Word in faith that a person has eternal life. More pointedly, Jesus says here that there are those who are dead now who will hear the voice of the Son of God and live. This can be taken in two ways, both of which are true. When you come to believe in the Father and the Son, you do this by hearing the voice of the Son of God in the Word proclaimed to you, and your souls that were dead, are given new life. The voice of the Son of God has this kind of power for those who will hear with faith. You are born again and grow in faith by the voice of Jesus. The second meaning is this: At His return, it will be the voice of Jesus that will call forth dead bodies from the grave. We should not think of such a thing as beyond His power, since Scripture tells us that by the Word of God all things were made. This second meaning is explicitly affirmed in this passage in the strongest way in verses 28 and 29: Everyone in the tombs will hear the voice of Jesus at His return, and those who have done good will rise to a resurrection of life, but those who have done evil will rise to what is called here a resurrection of judgment.

Verse 27 tells us by our Lord’s own Word that He is the one in charge of judgment as the Son of Man. Here is a distinction between the Father and the Son. Both are fully God, but only the Son of God is also the Son of Man. The Father is not a man, but the Son is. In the councils of Almighty God it has been determined that a Man who would die for men would have judgment over men, and that Man is the God/Man Jesus Christ. He has been given the right of judgment, the right of distinguishing between those who will have one resurrection and those who will have another. Some will be judged as those who have done that which is good, and others as those who have done evil. How can this be? The Apostle Paul tells us that it is by the credited righteousness of Christ that we will be called good, and that this righteousness comes to us by faith in Jesus. This judgment is in accord with God’s will.

Hearing the testimony concerning the Son of God (31-40)

So far we have seen two things. 1. Jesus is to be honored just as the Father is honored. 2. By the voice of Jesus Christ we are given resurrection life in our spirits and in our bodies. These are strong claims. How do we know them to be true? Jesus tells us in verses 31-40. He says that there is “another” who bears true witness about him. He first mentions John the Baptist, as one who brought light from God, and while John’s testimony is true, there is Someone greater than John. The miracles that Jesus is performing show Him to be the One who was sent by the Father. In these signs, the Father is testifying to the fact of the Son for all who will receive this testimony. Finally, the Scriptures bear witness that Jesus is the Son of God and the Lord of the resurrection.

Whether the testimony is the proclaimed Word of God through the prophetic John the Baptist, or the attesting miraculous works of Jesus that have come from the Father, or the Scriptures that can be searched by men who are seeking God, it is Jesus who brings life, and people must hear His voice and come to Him if they are to enter into this thing He calls life. From what He has said so far, this life is something that begins now, and it continues forever. Death is all around us in a world that is under God’s wrath because of sin. The solution for us is to hear the voice of Jesus and to live. Why do we refuse to hear that voice, presented to us in the Word that is even here today? We need life so much, and life is freely offered to us in Christ. Jesus is the way to life. The Father has testified that Jesus is the One. The Spirit testified that Jesus is the One. John the Baptist testified that Jesus is the One. The Old Testament testified that Jesus is the One. The writer of this gospel testified that Jesus is the One. Jesus is the One.

Receiving the glory of the Son of God (41-44)

Jesus Christ is addressing those who are against Him. He is not seeking the praise of men. He does not need it. He knows who He is. They need Him, but they do not have the love of God within them. They certainly claim to love God. When they insist that Jesus is violating the Sabbath command by healing on that day, they think that this is an expression of their love for God. They also believe that God loves them, and they think that there is reason for God to love them because they are carefully adhering to the traditions of Judaism. I ask you this: In this kind of religious system of what purpose is the cross? If we all can be good through our own good works and our keeping of good religious customs that have come down to us through the centuries, why did the Son of God die on the cross?

The fact is that we are not good. There is no one good but God. Our problem with goodness shows up especially in our willingness to receive some great person who comes in his own name as someone special, while we reject the One who comes in His Father’s Name who plainly does the works of the Son of God. To reject Him is the worst thing we can do. There is much that we should repent of. We have broken God’s laws. We have been hateful and unforgiving and in persistent denial concerning our guilt. But there is nothing worse than this, we have refused to hear the voice of the Son of God and live. We turned away from the One who came as the love of God for us, the One who died for our sins. In doing this we turned away from the glory that comes from the only God.

Believing the words of the Son of God (45-47)

The Jews who were against Jesus thought they were for Moses. They even set their hope for life on following their understanding of the Law of Moses. But Moses believed. He wrote of One who would come after him, who was his hope. He wrote of Jesus. It is time for us to believe in the hope of Moses. This coming Messiah was the hope of patriarchs and prophets. He is the only hope with power to bring life. You must believe in the words of the Son of God. This is what God wants you to do. Honor the Son just as you honor the Father. Listen to the voice of the Son of God. Thank Him for the cross, because you know that you needed it. Believe and live.

Questions for meditation and discussion:

1. How is Jesus the same as the Father?

2. How is Jesus different from the Father?

3. What are the various testimonies to Jesus presented in this passage?

4. How are we to understand the concept of Father and Son within the Godhead?

What kind of healing do you need most?

“Do you want to be healed?”

(John 5:1-17, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, March 22, 2009)

John 5:1-17 After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. ² Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades. ³ In these lay a multitude of invalids- blind, lame, and paralyzed. ^{4 5} One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. ⁶ When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, "Do you want to be healed?" ⁷ The sick man answered him, "Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me." ⁸ Jesus said to him, "Get up, take up your bed, and walk." ⁹ And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked. Now that day was the Sabbath. ¹⁰ So the Jews said to the man who had been healed, "It is the Sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to take up your bed." ¹¹ But he answered them, "The man who healed me, that man said to me, 'Take up your bed, and walk.'" ¹² They asked him, "Who is the man who said to you, 'Take up your bed and walk'?" ¹³ Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, as there was a crowd in the place. ¹⁴ Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, "See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you." ¹⁵ The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him. ¹⁶ And this was why the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. ¹⁷ But Jesus answered them, "My Father is working until now, and I am working."

A very long-term disability (1-5)

The nation of Israel was the creation of God. It was God who made the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to be who they were. He brought them to Egypt for several generations, and He delivered them out of Egypt in the days of Moses. He gave them the Law, part of which included the details of three major feasts when they were to gather every year at the place of God’s choosing. He instituted the sacrificial system and gave them a way of life that was distinct from the other nations. He gave them the land of Canaan and, after many centuries, He brought them out of that land because of their persistent idolatry and wickedness. He even restored them back again to the land in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, but the story of evil continued to cling to them even after that time. At various points in their heritage they seemed to lose sight of the Word of the Lord entirely, and by the days of Jesus, so many of those who seemed most faithful to the Lord were actually the furthest away from Him, with a complete dedication to their own traditions, and a way of life that pointed only to their own self-righteousness. When the Son of God came to save them, they turned against Him so decidedly that they began to plot His murder. They had a very long-term disability. They had the crippling disease of sin.

The story of sin is much older than the nation of Israel. From the creation of mankind, sin has brought with it misery upon all the nations and peoples of the world. One of the most troubling symptoms of this illness is that those who are afflicted, though they have some awareness of their many symptoms, they are not entirely aware of the underlying disease, and they are not always sure that they want to be cured. Like the man in this account at the pool of water by the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem, many have developed a pattern of life where there is some ritual recognition of sin, but the way that they deal with their misery is so faulty that it only serves to reinforce the hopelessness of their lives. It is easy for people to settle into that kind of life in such a way that they hardly imagine that there could be anything better. This man is taken to a pool where people believe that healings take place, and it seems that He has been coming there for quite some time. Perhaps some of the invalids there receive money from people who would want to be charitable to the desperate, and maybe this is the only way this man can get by. He is not really expecting anything good. He has been disabled for thirty-eight years. Are you expecting anything good ahead of you? Do you have some knowledge of your troubles, and find that you have carved out some way of getting by, that allows you a lifestyle of complaining without being too crushingly disappointed in front of others?

A very important question (6-7)

It is into this sad state of affairs that our Lord arrives, not just that day at the pool by the Sheep Gate, but into this world and into our lives. His question is a very important one for you to consider. “Do you want to be healed?” The man in John 5 answers Jesus in a puzzling way with a reply that has nothing commendable about it that we can point to. There was a practice among those who needed to be healed to gather in that place, where they believed that the first person to get to the pool when the water was stirred up would be healed. This was apparently such a strong understanding among people, that someone copying John in very early days, added verse 4, which was not in the best and earliest manuscripts of John’s gospel. That verse explains what people were thinking there, that if you were the first to get there, you had the best chance for what you wanted. Of course, this man could never get there first, and he had grown used to that situation. When Jesus asks him this important question, “Do you want to be healed?” he assumes that Jesus is talking within the system of the way that people were seeking healing at the pool.

Why was Jesus there that day? Why does He speak to a man who has no sign of faith in him, a man who cannot even give a simple “yes” to a very important question? The Lord has come to this spot of tragedy and strange religious expectation. He has come to a place where people are waiting for the water to stir, with the understanding that the first will be first. The first one to get to the water will be the first to be healed. Jesus is coming as the real answer. He comes to a place where people were used to an answer that could not be the real one for mankind. He is entering into a place of crazy ideas and hopeless religious paralysis. He is coming to a place of some strange sort-of Jewish superstition, and He picks one man who had been there forever, and He says, “Do you want to be healed?”

Walk (8-9)

Jesus power is not the power of ritual or the custom of some superstition. It is definitely not the power that rewards the one who can run the fastest. His power is the power of the eternal Word, a power that is inherent to His divine nature. His power is the power that speaks, “Get up,” and a man is healed. It is a power from heaven, and it is a power that is fully manifest in heaven, but it is a power that came to earth when the Lord came to relieve us of a very long-term disability. It is a power to walk, a power to be freed from the bondage and paralysis of sin.

The human body is designed to do a lot of walking, and we have probably gotten ourselves into a lot of trouble by deciding that we will get much more done if we don’t have to walk quite so much. Walking is the right speed for human beings. When you are able to walk, you get to go from place to place observing things. You can enjoy some of the beauty and the fresh sweetness that might cause you to think about the Creator. You can even walk some when it is night, and gaze into the heavens, and wonder. It is very hard to be stuck some place, in some prison of pain or oppression where you are not able to walk. All of life is a walk, and as those who have not only a body, but also a spirit, we want to be able to walk by the Spirit of God. At our best, we would rather not walk alone. We want to walk with someone, someone who knows us, and who loves us, someone who rescued us because He delighted in us (Psalm 18:19). We want to walk with Him who asks us, “Do you want to be healed?”

It is alright to ask Him questions too. He has His own way of bringing satisfying answers that may not first seem to be answers, but the more that we walk with Him, we find out that His answers were better than our questions. It is alright to ask Him what He means by “healed.” Is it just for the body, or will he heal the heart and the mind? Is it just for now, or is it for more than now? If we believe in Christ only for this life then we are to be pitied (1 Corinthians 15). There is so much more than now, but life is always lived in the moment. Yet Jesus came from heaven to heal us forever. In that forever, not only will we walk without pain physically, we will find that our souls are restored, we will walk with Him beside still waters, when the shadow of death is only a memory. Do you want that kind of healing, a healing that will last forever? Jesus is the only way to have that kind of healing, because He is the only way to heaven, and heaven is the place of the most perfect rest, a rest in God that is active and fruitful.

Sin and the Sabbath – Sin no more (10-17)

If Jesus had just said to the man “walk,” a controversy would not have erupted that day, a controversy that ultimately leads to the cross. He heals a man and tells him to take up his bed. Jesus is confronting more than one false religious system that day. That’s why He instructs the man to pick up his bed. Our Lord knows what He is doing. He is not concerned with general cleanliness and order by the pool at the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem. He is not motivated by civic pride. He is deliberately provoking those who have so twisted the Law of God, as to make simple actions like this one a violation of the Lord’s commandment that we must remember the Sabbath day.

The Sabbath day has always been about heaven. Man cannot really rest until the problem of sin has been fully and perfectly addressed. Christ, in both His first and second coming, is bringing Sabbath to earth. In His first coming He comes to conquer sin through His death on the cross. He kills sin and death through His own death. In His second coming, He carries away the dead carcass of sin and death forever in the fullness of the resurrection that brings us the new heavens and the new earth. Jesus is all about Sabbath, and He really does not understand why you don’t want Sabbath now. It is so good for you. Don’t you want to be healed?

There were many Jews that did not want to be healed with the healing that Jesus was bringing. They had made the day of rest into a day of crazy regulations, designed to show everyone else that you were keeping the Law of God. That’s not rest, and it does no one any eternal good. True Sabbath only begins when you rest in the One who kept the Law of God for you, and who rose again from the dead so that you could know that you don’t have to wait to go to heaven to walk in that rest now. True Sabbath cannot be experienced by those who insist on fighting with Jesus and everyone else about the Law. Sabbath comes from receiving Jesus in His office of Law-Keeper and Debt-Payer, and then in getting up, picking up your bed, and walking in the freedom that is ours in the living and reigning Son of God. Brothers and sisters, sin no more, it will only make you tired. Reject every false system of religious rest, and join our good Lord and Savior in the work that He is engaged in with His Father, a work that is most consistent with our true health and rest. Why should something worse happen to us in this life or the next? Jesus has conquered sin and death. We have been healed forever. Don’t you want to be healed forever?

Questions for meditation and discussion:

1. What was the religious system like that was happening at that pool in Jerusalem?

2. How does Jesus address this false religious system?

3. Why was the bearing of a bed not the same as the kind of burden-bearing that was a Sabbath violation?

4. Do you want to be healed forever? How does that desire show up in the way we live our lives now?

Is seeing necessary for believing?

“Your Son Will Live”

(John 4:43-54, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, March 15, 2009)

John 4:43-54 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.

From Samaria to Galilee (43-45)

In the second chapter of John’s gospel, Jesus was in Galilee at a wedding in Cana. That was where He turned the water into wine, and the steward said it was the best wine, though it had been surprisingly saved for last. That is a good principle for you to believe; with Jesus, the best wine is saved for last. Jesus did not stay in Galilee forever, though we are told that he was there for a few more days in another town. But in John 2:13 we read, “The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.” That was what Jews were supposed to do. When the Passover came, they were supposed to travel to Jerusalem. When John says that Jesus went up, don’t be confused about the direction in which He was travelling. Galilee is in the north. Jerusalem is in Judea in the south. To go from Galilee to Judea meant travelling in a southerly direction, though going to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem meant travelling up, and there is something right about thinking of Jerusalem as up from everywhere else. Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now He was returning to Galilee, going through Samaria, as we saw earlier in this chapter.

You may remember that Jesus had caused quite a stir in Jerusalem at that Passover. At this beginning of His public ministry, the Lord cleansed the temple using some kind of whip or scourge. In verse 23 of chapter 2, mention is also made of signs that were performed on that occasion: “Now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing.” This must refer to miracles, though the details of these signs are not given to us, since John will focus at length on only seven signs throughout His gospel. We are told here at the end of chapter 4 that the miracles in Jerusalem had an impact on the people that had travelled up from Galilee to Jerusalem to the Passover feast. Jesus had taught the disciples that a prophet had no honor in his hometown. Now they were welcoming Him because they had seen what He could do in Jerusalem. They must have been eager for Him to do these same things back home, for they had gone in a large group to Jerusalem for the Passover.

It should not surprise us that large groups of people would travel together back and forth to Jerusalem from as far north as Galilee. Remember that in Luke 2 we learned that Joseph and Mary travelled from Galilee every year with a large crowd from Nazareth. It must have been a large crowd because they did not immediately notice that Jesus was not with them when He stayed behind at the temple in Jerusalem at age twelve. It was some time before they even realized that He was not there with them, and they had to go back to Jerusalem in order to find Him. When they did, He said to them, “Why are you looking for Me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” Of course Joseph and Mary had been extremely concerned.

Unless You See Signs and Wonders (46-53)

Parents care about their children. They don’t always know how to show it. More specific to the miracle that we are about to consider at the end of John 4, fathers care about their sons. When Jesus came back to Galilee after leaving Jerusalem and travelling through Samaria, He was met by a father who was deeply concerned about his son. This man was some official, but I don’t think that makes a difference. This is about a father and a son, and the son is at the point of death. Some miracles happen because a person is pleading for himself, like when blind Bartimaeus cried out for his own healing, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Other miracles happen because someone pleads for another person. Very often that other person is a child, and a parent is doing the pleading. In that case, it is never the faith of the child that is determinative in the narrative of what happens, but the faith of the parent.

Parents can hardly help but have expectations for their children. From the moment a son is born, a father is thinking. When the son is at the point of death, as in this case, something has gone horribly wrong, something that is not at all in accord with the father’s hopes and dreams. This father needs Jesus to come down and heal his son. It is at this devastating emotional moment that the Lord of compassion says something that sounds surprisingly like a rebuke. He does not say it into the air or to no one at all. We are told that Jesus says these words to him, “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.” Jesus knows that the man is distressed. That must be obvious. Of course He is not being nasty to this man at the worst moment of his life. The Lord must have a good point to make that would help this man now. Jesus wants to take away this father’s distress. It may help us to state the Lord’s words as a positive instruction, something like this: “You should believe even if you don’t see signs and wonders.” Jesus is calling on this man to believe that his son is well even when he is not yet able to see that his son is well.

This instruction, even though it is spoken to this one man, is spoken not with the singular you, but with the plural you. It is as if He is looking into this man’s eyes, but He is saying to all of us, “You all should believe even if you cannot possibly see what you are asking for.” This experience is not only the experience of one man in Galilee. Any parent that lifts up a sick or troubled child to Jesus in prayer may be asking for a result that he cannot see. Many things have to do with timing. What we ask for will come, but it will come later. Many answers to prayer, like this one, cannot be seen because of distance. The boy is healed at the time that Jesus speaks, but he is healed in another place, and the father cannot see it quite yet, though Jesus is calling him to believe in what he cannot see. Many heartfelt requests remain unseen because there is no way that we can see what is going on now, because the request is made on earth, and the healing is given in heaven. This is not an unusual thing. This happens very often. It is more unusual when we get everything that we ask for now. When Jesus was ministering on earth, He was ministering heavenly signs. The Lord answers our prayers all the time, but very often the blessing is in heaven, and we still are called to believe, even though we cannot see. We do not want to be so earthly minded that we are no heavenly good. We do not want it said of us, “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.”

Every distraught father or mother who lifts up a child to Jesus, should do so believing. Sometimes our prayers will be answered here and now, but sometimes it will not be here and now. It is of the essence of who we are as Christians that we keep on believing that our prayers have been heard by a loving God with great and sure intentions of resurrection blessing for his people, especially when we do not see what we desire here and now. The words that we need to hear are those powerful words spoken by our Lord that day. “Go; your son will live.”

It is not easy to believe what you do not see. Some people have decided that they will only believe what they see. Those people do not believe in very much. We do need to hear in order to believe. We do not need to see, at least not today. We hear the Word about Jesus, about His signs, about what He came to do, about His death, and about His resurrection, and like King David of old who said somewhere that he would dwell in the house of the Lord forever, when his infant son died, we need to say with him, “I shall go to him, but he will not return to me.” He believed what He heard from God’s word, though He did not yet see it. Now David does see. The official in John 4 believed before he saw, but then later he saw, and he believed again, and his household believed with him. Jesus knows that we need to see eventually, and we will see. That will be a great day, when we see that Jesus is our yes.

The Second Sign (54)

On what basis do I make the claim that there is something here more than just one father who believes what Jesus says and one son who is healed? Could it be the case that there is no general point being made here, and that we are making too much of a specific event that simply took place and was recorded so that we could know that Jesus could heal at a distance? First, we need to remember that we are always told to believe when we ask Jesus for something we understand to be consistent with His holy and compassionate will. God is our God, and the God of our children. David was not being presumptuous when he said that he would see his son again. He had been given true faith to ask, and he was obliged to believe in faith that he would receive, though it had become clear by the child’s death that he would not receive here and now. He knew that he would see his son again.

More to the point, John 4:54 suggests a more general application to the resurrection promises of God. Here in our final verse we have some words that place this one sign within the context of the seven signs that are given to us in John’s gospel. Jesus must have performed thousands of miracles during his days on earth. John picks out seven that he particularly calls signs. The first was the sign of heavenly wine showing up at an earthly wedding. The seventh sign comes three days after the death of our Lord, the sign of an immortal heavenly man appearing to his disciples after fully dealing with our wretched sin. The miracle at the end of chapter four is said to be the second of John’s signs, the sign of a son who will live when a father asks Jesus in faith. All of the seven signs are heavenly signs. They tell a heavenly story by way of visible earthly manifestations. When we hear these words, it is as if we are given the blessing of seeing, because it does help us when we see. We are called by God to pray, believing that we will see, if not now, then surely one day. Fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, friends, and fellow-laborers in the good news of the cross and the resurrection, hear the word of the Lord, pray, and believe. “Go; your son will live.”

Questions for meditation and discussion:

1. Describe the movements of Jesus to and from Jerusalem in the first four chapters of John’s gospel.

2. What brought this official to Jesus that day, and why does Jesus response to him seem surprising?

3. What lessons are being taught in this passage that go beyond one miraculous healing?

4. What does it take for a person to believe? Is it necessary to see in order to believe? Is it necessary to hear?

How can I make a difference for eternity?

“Harvest”

(John 4:31-42, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, March 8, 2009)

John 4:31-42 ³¹ Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, saying, "Rabbi, eat." ³² But he said to them, "I have food to eat that you do not know about." ³³ So the disciples said to one another, "Has anyone brought him something to eat?" ³⁴ Jesus said to them, "My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. ³⁵ Do you not say, 'There are yet four months, then comes the harvest'? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest. ³⁶ Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. ³⁷ For here the saying holds true, 'One sows and another reaps.' ³⁸ I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor." ³⁹ Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony, "He told me all that I ever did." ⁴⁰ So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. ⁴¹ And many more believed because of his word. ⁴² They said to the woman, "It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world."

My food is to do the will of Him who sent me. (31-34)

There is an expression that the health insurance industry has come to use in order to speak about the limit that they are willing to pay a doctor or hospital for any given procedure. The phrase is “reasonable and customary charges.” We hardly ever think about the individual meaning of the words in this phrase. We know that the companies are trying to say that some people charge too much in their opinion, and that they will not pay these charges. These two words mean different things. At root, the word “reasonable” has something to do with what is right according to sound reasoning. “Customary” is what people tend to think of as normal in a given place and time, according to custom, even if it is not actually reasonable. It is possible that within the Lord’s church we could all get used to lives that are certainly customary, but are not at all reasonable ways of responding to the love of a great and holy God. In this passage we see Jesus doing just the opposite. He lives His life in way that is in accord with the highest standards of reason and truth, but the life that He lives is extremely unusual, different than what His disciples expect of Him, and not at all customary for the society in which He lives.

It is a very normal thing for people to order their lives around their need for food. The disciples are urging Jesus to eat, because they are on a journey. They know that he needs the nourishment that comes from partaking in daily bread. Jesus knows how to enjoy a good meal, but He is preoccupied with other matters, and these matters are more important to Him right now. “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” They can only think about what is customary. “Has anyone brought Him something to eat?” He speaks to them concerning the only reasonable way that a perfect Son could respond to a perfect Father. He says, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work.”

Jesus Christ has come to do the will of the Father in accord with the plan of the Father and the Son to bring about the fulfillment of our redemption. He is moving toward the accomplishment of the Father’s work, a work given to the Son, a work where Jesus will be the Lamb of God who dies for us. His cross is part of a larger plan of something the Bible calls “salvation.” This is a very big concept that involves the complete repair of the massive breach between heaven and earth caused by sin, a breach that cannot be repaired without the death of Jesus. The pathway to the cross has taken Him on this day through Samaria and has led Him to have a remarkable conversation with a woman of Samaria. Nothing about all of this is customary, but it is all perfectly reasonable.

It is not customary for a Jewish man to have a spiritual conversation with a Samaritan woman. It is not customary for Him to identify Himself so clearly as the expected Messiah. Especially, it is not customary for any father to send his son on a mission that means certain death. Yet this last point is very reasonable. The facts are plain for your consideration. Our salvation could only be accomplished by satisfying the just demands of a holy God. Only a perfect sacrifice would do. Only the Son of God could accomplish this mission. While all of this is completely unusual, it is not built on any system of lies, nor does it violate the dictates of reason, but upholds them. The cross is not unreasonable, but it is astoundingly generous. Jesus will accomplish His work for the Father and His service for you. This is His food, and He insists on talking about it to His disciples.

The fields are white for harvest. (35-38)

Jesus has some other things that He decides to tell His disciples, things about what He is doing and about what they will be doing very soon. He changes the subject to the idea of a harvest in order to teach one or two further lessons as a crowd of Samaritans walks toward Him. He is preparing His disciples to be engaged in a harvest of people, people who are to be a part of the kingdom of heaven. Jesus is doing something of this harvesting of people as a sneak preview during this trip through Samaria, and He wants to make a point about timing. Those who grow crops know that it is a very ignorant farmer who has no concern about the timing of the harvest. To harvest the crops too early or too late is to seek financial ruin. It is a tremendous investment for someone to buy some land, till the soil, plant the seed, water the plants, and then finally harvest the crops. God has made an enormous investment in this plan of salvation. Everything since the fall of Adam is a step toward our full salvation. Jesus is saying to His disciples that the reason why He has been conversing with the Samaritan woman is because the harvest is now.

The final harvest is completed in the resurrection of the dead at the return of Christ, but the resurrection age is breaking in already in the New Testament era of the gospel. The time of preparation for resurrection life in the Law is coming to a speedy conclusion. Jesus will be sending His disciples out into the world with the message of resurrection life now. You and I are in the resurrected Jesus now. We have experienced the soul life of the resurrection now. We live by faith in the Son of God now. The facts of the system of salvation through the provision of the Son of God are opened up to us now.

Nonetheless, we are not living lives that are consistently reasonable concerning these matters. We imagine that it is possible to live customary lives. The customary life of the world is to live in denial of the fact of God. That kind of life is completely unreasonable. The customary life of a complacent church living in such a world is to care much more about our jobs than we care about our salvation. The customary life for almost everyone everywhere in our day is to live as if there is no harvest happening right now. The customary way for people to live is to imagine that death will never come, until it has caught them, sometimes very much by surprise. But this is not in line with the truth, and it is a completely unreasonable way to live. The harvest is now, and the church is a team of those sowing seed and reaping fruit, a team that is to be engaged in the harvest. Some will be sowing gospel seeds, and others will be gathering fruit for eternal life. No one should ignore the fact of the harvest.

This is indeed the Savior of the world. (39-42)

As if to prove the point that the harvest is now, a portion of that harvest is coming down the road to Jesus. This harvest started earlier when Jesus planted a seed in His conversation with a Samaritan woman. He had revealed Himself as the Messiah. Now the woman who had left her water jar at the well is returning with a crowd of her fellow-Samaritans. What follows is two days of ministry, where Jesus is able to present Himself to these outcasts as their Messiah. They have more than the testimony of the woman, although she certainly did her part. Now they have heard at length from Him. He has sown the seed of the Word among them, and many have believed.

They come to a very important conclusion stated in the final words of our passage. “This is indeed the Savior of the world.” There is much in this statement. It insists that the world is in great trouble, so much so that it needs a Savior. God has not simply provided a Savior, but He has come as the Savior in the person of Jesus Christ. Finally this Savior who has come from the Jews has come for more than the Jews, since He is given as the Savior of the world. This is nothing less than the coming of our complete salvation in Jesus Christ alone.

That is a massive truth for you and I to hold on to in the depths of our beings. Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world. Do you believe this? If you are not sure whether or not you believe this, I wonder whether your confusion concerning Jesus is reasonable. Have you considered the fact that this world could not have sprung out of nothingness? Do you have some explanation for the many revelations of Jesus, the cross, and the resurrection that are contained in the Old Testament? If these passages are not about Jesus Christ, what is their possible meaning? Have you considered the consistent message of the Bible in the sovereign plan of God for the salvation of the world through His only-begotten Son? Have you adequately considered all the mercies of God that have caused you to hear the word of the Lord this day? Is there some other plan that you have for eternal life that is better than the one that God so clearly has presented in the Scriptures, a plan that cost Jesus His life? Are you really ready to reject the wonderful love of God for you, just to do what seems customary in the world around you? Is your confusion about Jesus reasonable? Take another look at Jesus. Read the Scriptures with me and I will pastor you back to health by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Finally, for you who firmly hold to the truth of a complete salvation in Jesus Christ alone, I offer this modest question for your own consideration. Is your life a reasonable reflection of this overwhelming truth that you profess? Would it be fair to say that your life is very customary, but not reasonable enough? One way to think about the salvation that we call “heaven” is to remember that it is a place where we will finally live in complete conformity with the truth that we profess. Not only that, but all the residents will live in that kind of way. It will be a place where it will be completely customary to live your life in a way that is a perfectly reasonable reflection of the wonder of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Let us live that life now. May our eyes be opened to the beauty of the cross, the power of the resurrection, and the opportunity of the harvest all around us, as followers of the One who said, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.”

Questions for meditation and discussion:

1. In what ways are Jesus’ words and actions in John 4 not customary?

2. Why is the cross reasonable?

3. What are the reasonable implications of the gospel for our life as a church?

4. How can a person make a difference for eternity?