Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Amen.
[00:00:02] Go ahead. Len is one of my prayer partners. He just feels they have a special word from the Lord for us today. As a congregation, your common everyday life means something to me.
[00:00:16] Every offering given, every tithe given, every marriage, every act of forgiveness, every act of justice toward a neighbor brings honor and glory to My name. And because you know My name, I will protect you. And because you do that, I will answer any question you have.
[00:00:44] And when people watch you, they will know that I'm Creator, Lord and Redeemer.
[00:00:54] Thank you, lamb.
[00:00:59] Let's be encouraged. Amen. What do we hear? God is watching us. He's rejoicing over us as children. Isn't that beautiful? When we do the right things, we honor God, and God will honor our lives for doing those things.
[00:01:14] Well, why don't we stand and we're going to go to the Lord in prayer.
[00:01:20] I want to pray today. This message has a very positive title and it is a very positive message, but we're going to speak on crisis. Anybody experience crisis in your life?
[00:01:33] I'll say this crisis comes to all of us at different moments in our lives. Isn't that true? So how are we going to handle that? We're going to talk about that this morning. So maybe you're here today and that's your experience. You're in a time of cris. This is a season in your life that you're in crisis. I believe you're here for a reason, and I'm going to ask God's going to speak, especially in your soul, but for all of us, because I think we need to prepare ourselves. Because in this life we will have crisis, we will have trials, we will have troubles. So, Father, I thank you this morning. You're a gracious God, and we heard that you're an affirming God. You're an encourager. You're the lover of our soul. You designed us, you created us. And Lord, you are now going to instruct us in Your ways. Lord, give us a heart to hear Your voice. Help us, Lord, to receive words of encouragement and comfort and words of instruction, words that will help us understand and be challenged by what you're communicating to us today. Father, help us to not just hear Your words, but Lord, help us to act on them. And that's what brings about real change in our lives, and we thank you for that. In Jesus name and God's, people said, amen. Amen. You may be seated.
[00:02:50] Young mother who had rebelled against God in her Christian upbringing, wrote these following words. Just a little snippet, she said. On January 5, 2009, by my daughter's Graveside, I asked Jesus to come into my heart.
[00:03:07] I had prayed with a pastor of a local church earlier we had never really been a part of. And I had been thinking a lot about God since that day that Taylor left this earth.
[00:03:18] The moment came at the burial where I thought, this is it? I need God right now. And at that moment, it all came to me.
[00:03:28] Taylor was sent here from God to change not only my life, but my family's life.
[00:03:35] How many know there's nothing like life and death situations that causes us to rethink life, change some of our priorities? Crisis is probably one of the most fundamental means that brings us to a deep realization that you and I are weak and we're needy. We don't have all the answers. We need help.
[00:03:59] I believe it's designed ultimately to bring us to a faith in a loving God, faith in a savior who cares deeply for us. And I believe it's designed to bring transformation in our lives. God is interested in bringing about change within our lives. Randy Alcorn in a book entitled If God Is Good, it's basically trying to answer the questions, if God is so good, why does God let bad things happen to us? It's a great concept. And he writes in this book, he said, you know, armies and hospitals have chaplains, political victory parties, and Academy Award celebrations do not. He goes, Why? Because hospitals and battlefields are offering us a clear view of death, while celebrations tend to obscure that.
[00:04:51] Death seems to draw our attention to what really matters the state of our soul and the God and people who will outlast this life. It's all about people, folks. Death is a wake up call, a reminder that our time here is fleeting. And every one of us, well, we're all going to die. As a matter of fact, Ecclesiastes, chapter seven, verse two, says something very profound. It says, It's better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for death is the destiny of everyone, and the living should take heart to this.
[00:05:29] Then it goes on to say in the next verse, better is the day of death than the day of birth. When I first read that, that's kind of a shocking statement. How many say, that's kind of a shocking statement. Better the day of death than the day of birth. Why? Because when you've come to the end of the journey, you don't have to live through all of the things that you do when you start the journey. And how many know that when you start this earthly journey, there's going to be some moments of pure joy, great moments, pleasurable moments. But there's also going to be difficult moments, painful moments, challenging moments, crisis moments. And you know, at the end, you don't have to face any of those moments, because if you're a child of God, guess what? You're going to slip into eternity where there's no more tears, no more pain, no more sorrow, no more loss. How beautiful is that? You see, death can be a compass to recalibrate our bearings on this life. Often we avoid the issue. We don't take it into consideration. And what happens. So often is we begin to become engaged only in this life.
[00:06:35] The seduction of our society's, prosperity, it dulls us to the ultimate realities.
[00:06:41] Do you know God spoke to the people of Israel in the book of Hosea when he said, when I fed them, they were satisfied. And when they were satisfied, they became proud. And then they forgot me.
[00:06:54] You know, the great temptation in a time of good times and prosperity is that we forget God. How many know that's true? And it's in a time of adversity and difficulty that we're reminded we're weak and we need help, that we tend to pray more and cry out to God. So when trials come, when struggles challenge us, we need to realize we need to mature to the place where we see them not as an enemy, but as an ally to help us to continue our spiritual development, our growth in God. Too many people question when bad things happen.
[00:07:31] Where is God in this? Or does God really love me? Or why would he allow this in my life? But rather than seeing a trial or a cris as a negative thing, which we tend to do, maybe we need to change our perspective. Because, you know, a lot of times we can't change our circumstances, but we can change our attitude. And how many know? When you change your attitude, it literally changes your emotional state of being. Think about it. This is what James tells us. He says, Now, I want you to consider it pure joy. My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, now, I know that's exactly how all of us respond, right?
[00:08:07] Isn't this wonderful? Pure joy.
[00:08:10] We don't think like that. But James is going to explain to us why we should consider them more favorably than we do. He goes on to say, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. It's going to do something to us. It's going to create something in us. Let Perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
[00:08:34] What is he saying? He's saying trials have an ability to help us develop, grow up, mature.
[00:08:41] A lot of us, we don't want to develop. We'd rather live in a comfort zone. We want everything to work out in our lives, right? Come on, let's be honest. And then the trial comes along. We go, Why is this happening right now? Right? But James is saying, listen, God has a know, it's a tool to strengthen our faith, to mature it. Listen, I'm going to say this, that the trial that you're facing right now is designed to help you to face a bigger one further up. Ahead. You go, Pastor. That's not very encouraging, but it is if you think it this way. He's giving you the ability and the spiritual strength that when it happens, it's not going to crush you. You're going to be able to motor through the things that are before your life, and eventually we're going to be in eternity.
[00:09:33] Randy Alcorn reminds us in the same book. He says, to hate suffering is easy.
[00:09:39] To hate sin is not.
[00:09:42] And what God wants to do is switch that that you and I get to a place where we actually hate sin and we don't get so worried about suffering anymore. The natural man draws back from suffering and he embraces sin. That's the unregenerated. That's a non transformed soul. That's what people want.
[00:10:03] They want to embrace sin, but they want to avoid suffering. Whereas when we grow in our faith life, we begin to see the value of the struggles that cause us to see this life as it really is.
[00:10:16] This is a facade, this life. Sometimes we're trying to live and say we want to live and experience everything to its fullness. And I do believe that we can have, in a sense, joy and peace and hope and grace in this life, and we can enjoy this life. But let's not kid ourselves. It's a broken world, and there's sin in it, and there's suffering all around us. And if you're not suffering, you know somebody who is. Isn't that true?
[00:10:49] You can't get away from it. The spiritual man sees the nature of sin as it really is, to see past sin seductions and realizes the depths of despair that sin produces. You know what I notice?
[00:11:02] When we become self focused, when it becomes about us, we become more unhappy.
[00:11:11] Isn't that true?
[00:11:12] And when we realize it's about God and it's about others and it's about an opportunity to serve God and serve other people, we get far happier. It's amazing. We get outside of ourselves. And Jesus talks about know when we have the right attitude. Suffering does not define our lives anymore. As a matter of fact, Peter says, therefore, since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourself also with the same attitude, because whoever suffers in the body is done with sin. As a result, they do not live the rest of their earthly lives for human or for evil human desires, but rather for the will of God. In other words, what he's saying is that suffering is one of God's tools in this world to move us from a self centered life to a life where we now don't just live for our own evil desires, but rather we start to live to fulfill the will of God in our lives. It moves us off a dead center which is ourselves.
[00:12:11] So God uses it as a tool.
[00:12:15] Now, in our text today, we're going to find a man coming to Jesus, and I'm going to tell you right now, he would have never come to Jesus if he hadn't been in a crisis. And I'm going to say something to you. I probably would have never come to Jesus if I had not been in a crisis. And there's probably a few other people this room would say pastor, that's so true about me too. I would have never come to Jesus if I had not been in a crisis. But the cris brought me to Christ and that's powerful his broken.
[00:12:46] I think crisis still brings people to Christ, still does it today the main purpose of John's gospel is to bring us face to face with Jesus and what happens when we encounter him in the various circumstances of life. Cris can help us realize who he is and what he has come to bring us, which is simply new life, a different kind of life. Now last week we kind of concluded where Jesus was traveling through a region called Samaria and we came to this little town called Sidekar and a woman, the least likely person, Jesus, revealed himself to her as the Messiah and she told the village and everybody got to know Jesus. And the last verse in that chapter, so beautiful that episode, it says and they said to the woman, we no longer believe just because of what you said. Now we've heard for ourselves and we know that this man really is the savior of the world. That's such a beautiful confession, isn't it? We're Samaritans, but we know that it's not just for us, it's not just for Jews, it's for everybody in the world. Jesus is the savior for the entire globe. I love it. But now Jesus is now going to enter into his own region, Galilee, where he's lived most of his life. And he brings us back to our text here and he says after two days he left for Galilee. The very next verse is fascinating. It says, now Jesus himself had pointed out that a prophet has no honor in his own country.
[00:14:16] I've come to a deep realization. I've never picked up on this before in all my readings through the Gospel of John, but every time now I'm seeing these parenthetical thoughts, these little parentheses where they put a little information in, very important. It's actually going to give us a deeper understanding of the coming story. And the last story actually it's actually showing a comparison between the attitude of these Samaritans whom Jesus came, he was a Jew, they had all kinds of reasons why they may not have connected to him, but they responded to him and Jesus never did. A miracle there, isn't that amazing? They just believed. But now we're coming into his own area says when he arrived in Galilee the Galileans welcomed him and then we get the reason why they had seen all that he had done in Jerusalem and at the Passover feast for they had all been there. In other words they'd seen the miracles Jesus had done. So they were excited. Come on Jesus, let's see know.
[00:15:21] And so that's kind of the background to the incident that we're going to find.
[00:15:26] We're going to find I believe some powerful steps that lead from crisis to transformation. And I'm only going to give you two. And here's what you need to know today if you're in crisis, these are the same steps for us. Number one, it's designed to bring us to Jesus. Your crisis right now in your life is designed to bring you to Jesus, and we're going to see that difficulties, pressures, disturbing situations, many times they paralyze us from doing anything, but they're really designed to cause us to move wholeheartedly towards Christ.
[00:16:05] John Maxwell shared in a message once, and I took this note down. He says, we've all succumbed to our emotions at one point or another, and we will again, and probably soon.
[00:16:15] He said we're emotionally hooked. And when your emotions are in control, you can no longer think logically. You've become emotional. And, you know, cris has a tendency to create high degrees of illogical emotion.
[00:16:33] There's no amens. But that's true. We know that's true, right? And how many know? Surrendering to our emotions in panic mode does not bring about a healthy solution.
[00:16:47] So you got to go get your emotions under control.
[00:16:53] Number one.
[00:16:54] Now, our first response in a crisis should be, what? Turn to Jesus. Turn our hurt over to Him. Turn our confusion over him. Come to Him with our pain. Peter reminds us that we're not to let our emotions go unchecked. As a matter of fact, first Peter, chapter five, verse seven. He says, cast all of your anxiety on him. Why? Because he cares for you. So some of you right now, you're battling anxiety. You need to bring it to Jesus. That's where you need to go with this stuff. He goes be self controlled. Get your emotions under control. He said, be alert. Your enemy, the devil's, prowling around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. What does that tell me? We're in a spiritual battle. Why are we shocked that there are difficulties in our life and we have a spiritual adversary?
[00:17:49] Just a thought.
[00:17:51] And, you know, if I'm doing what God wants me to do, I'm going to be engaged in this battle.
[00:17:58] Because if you're really walking in God's will, you're having an impact for the kingdom of God, and the enemy hates that, and he's going to do everything he can to impede your walk with God. He's going to do that, resist Him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of what, sufferings?
[00:18:21] Oh, this is not, oh, I'm the only person suffering. You know, when we look over this, almost 8 billion people on the planet, there are people, believers, suffering all over the world, and some of you are suffering. The suffering in other parts of the world are different, but every believer, you're not immune from these things. That's what we need to understand. He goes on to say, and the God of all grace who called you to his eternal glory in Christ. After you have what suffered qualifies a little while.
[00:18:57] Thank you, Lord.
[00:18:59] How many go? Thank God it's not endless, right? A little while will himself restore you and make you what?
[00:19:08] Strong, firm and steadfast. So what was designed to destroy, weaken, discourage. God is saying, no, if you come to me, you bring this stuff to me, the end result will be you'll be stronger, you'll be more completely committed, firmer, and you will be more steadfast. You'll have grown through the experience. That's what he's telling us.
[00:19:35] So we develop spiritual muscle. Now, let's pick up the story once more. He visited in Cana in Galilee, where he had turned the water into wine.
[00:19:44] And there was a certain royal official who suddenly sick at Capernaum. Now, the royal official, that means this person's in the king's court, well, that would mean he's probably working for Herod Antipas. There was three Herods at the time, remember the father had died and it was separated by his sons and he named them all Herod. Isn't that yeah, right, but this is Herod Antipas. He's in the northern part. And so the royal official so what is telling me is he's probably not somebody that's really that interested in what's going on, in a sense in the ministry of Jesus. He's not a follower of Jesus. But how many know when you have a cris, you start thinking differently. And so Capernaum is about 25 miles from Cana, and when we learn from John that when he hears that Jesus is nearby, rather than send a servant, this tells you how critical the situation is. He himself goes, he could have sent a servant, but he didn't. Now he comes to Jesus because he's desperate.
[00:20:49] And I think desperation causes us to do desperate things. His son is dying and he's probably done everything he can think of and he doesn't know what to do. But he hears that Jesus is healing people. So I'm going to go talk to Jesus, I'm going to try to drag him to my house and see if he can do something right.
[00:21:08] Now we know that cris doesn't always lead to faith, but it can lead to stronger faith if we can move past the pain in our life. You know what, we get fixated on our problem.
[00:21:20] How many say that's true? We get fixated on our pain. It's understandable, that's human nature. But what we need to do is get our eyes off the problem, begin to look to Jesus for the answer. And there's so many great stories that bring this know. Peter was walking on the water. Remember the winds and the waves came. He took his eyes off Jesus, he put it on the winds and the waves. What did he do? He started sinking.
[00:21:45] That's a metaphorical lesson to all of us that you and I need to keep our eyes on Jesus in the middle of our troubles and not let them drown us and overwhelm us.
[00:21:58] John Maxwell, years ago, he was speaking on a motivational tape on how change comes about in our lives. And he said, there's three times that change is enacted in our lives, and here they come. Number one, when we learn enough that it empowers us to change. Number two, we hurt enough that it motivates us to change. Or number three, we grow enough, we're able to change. Very interesting. But how many see, sometimes we have to hurt before it motivates in order to change. And hopefully one of the beautiful things about I'm going to advocate for why it's so important to be in church every week, because you're learning and it's empowering and you're growing. Amen.
[00:22:39] And sometimes when you have this information, then it helps you so that you don't come unglued when the problems are hitting you because you've got the information how to respond in that situation. And you may not be in a crisis right now, but this is good information to help you so that when you get to the moment of Christ, you go, oh, yes, run to Jesus. That's the right response. And then we'll give you the second one in a moment. Prayer is always this first step away from the problem and pain that ultimately brings us to a place of surrender to Jesus. So when the man heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea, he went to him and he begged him to come and heal his son, who was close to know in the Greek verb in our text, this idea of begging.
[00:23:29] Well, first of all, there's certain tenses in the Greek language, and the active present tense is kind of the emphasis. Okay, so what's the active presence? First of all, it says when Jesus had come, Jesus was coming. When Jesus comes, you can expect something to happen. When Jesus comes into a situation, change it's on its way.
[00:23:53] I like that.
[00:23:55] How many say, let's bring Jesus to the situation. Let's get him here, right in our lives, in our thinking, in our minds, in our hearts. When we're praying, we're connecting. When we're crying out to God, what we are doing is bringing Jesus to the situation. It's going to have an impact. The man comes to Jesus and he starts begging again.
[00:24:19] What we need to understand is that faith in God makes what is impossible possible.
[00:24:26] You know, God's moved by faith. Faith. Pleases, God. Matter of fact, Hebrews tells us that without faith, it's impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him, number one, has to believe that he exists, first of all, and that he rewards those who what?
[00:24:42] Earnestly, earnestly seek him.
[00:24:46] There's a passion about this thing. We're not going to let Jesus go. And I think of the story of the woman whose daughter was tormented by demonic spirits, and she was not a Jewish lady. He was up northern part of Israel there up near Tyre Phoenician territory, she's crying out to Jesus to do a miracle. And this is what Matthew tells us. He didn't answer a word. How many of you ever felt like God sometimes doesn't answer you're praying and nothing's happening. How many of you ever had that experience? It's like silence. So his disciples came to him and he urged him, send her away. For she keeps crying out after know.
[00:25:30] Well, eventually Jesus does respond. Why? Because she's persisting in her cry. That teaches me a lesson, persistence.
[00:25:39] Then the woman came and knelt before him and said Lord help me. She said, jesus now responds to her, he's not silent anymore. But he gives her this answer that's not right to take the children's bread and toss it to their dogs. How many? Go, that's not the answer I want.
[00:25:57] Hey, I have a need here and you're telling me you're not going to do anything? I am not letting you go. Jesus, this is so critical that you do this. So what is her response to this? Most of us agree, okay, walk away. No. She comes up with a response. Yes it is. Lord, even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table. In other words. Yeah, that's true. You're not going to give us non Jewish, non covenant people. Maybe what belongs to your covenant God, but listen to me, the image that Jesus used of crumbs coming off the table, she goes, I like it, I'm seizing to that. And even the dogs get the crumbs from the bread. They may not get the full meal deal, but they're going to get something. And I need something from you and Jesus. It's so beautiful. He says to her, woman, you have great faith, your request is granted. And her daughter was healed from that very hour. The very hour. How many? That's beautiful. What was Jesus doing? He's drawing faith out of her. What their trials and cris designed to do? Draw faith out of us.
[00:27:15] What's in you will come out of you. And if you are developing your faith, faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of God. We're developing this faith, what happens? We start seizing the promises of God, we start hanging on. We start appealing to God's very word back to him and it's powerful.
[00:27:36] So what's Jesus'response to this nobleman? He says unless you people see miraculous signs and wonders, you will never believe. Gotta go back to that parenthetical thought. It said that this prophet is without honor in his own country. What Jesus is basically saying is all you guys want to do is see know, thinking back to what had previously happened, there were no miracles and people believed in him. Now he's in his own home region and people don't really believe. And I believe that Jesus knew that this man didn't really believe that Jesus was anybody of any significance. All he had was a need. And he knew that Jesus was capable of healing people. That's all he was concerned about.
[00:28:21] That's interesting, isn't it?
[00:28:24] Here we see John is making that comparison between the Samaritans and the Jewish people living in Galilee. And Don Carson says the welcome of the Galileans displayed was so dependent on miracles unlike the faith of the Samaritans. Therefore, on visiting canaan being petitioned to perform a miracle jesus detects in the royal official a welcome and a faith that desires a cure but that does not fully trust him. How many know there's a big difference between asking God for your help a temporal help rather than an eternal saving faith. Do you know there's a big difference? I've met a lot of people. Would you pray for me? I want this. Would you pray for me? I want that. But they're not asking. I want to know God. They're not asking, I want to surrender my life to God. I just have a need. I want God to fill it.
[00:29:12] Come on. A lot of know come to the church. Please help us with this. Please help us with that. But they're not saying, Please, I just want to know God. That's a different cry altogether.
[00:29:24] Indeed, the royal official in Jesus'view exemplifies what is wrong with the Galileans as a whole? Jesus'rebuke is in the plural, so he's not just addressing.
[00:29:36] He says, unless you people he didn't just say, unless you see miraculous signs. He says, unless you people There must have been people standing around when he said it. He was actually speaking to his countrymen. He was speaking to his peers. He was speaking to the people in Galilee. You guys are only interested in the miracles. You're not really understanding that these miracles are signs to point you to a greater reality and that Jesus is actually the savior of the world. That's the greater reality.
[00:30:08] In other words, the royal officials desire and want for a miracle is motivating him. But once his desire's, want is met will it address the greatest need in his life?
[00:30:18] That's the real question. You see? I don't know. Did I say this last week? I can't remember. Sometimes I speak number of times and I go, Where did I say this? But I've been doing this little course on editing and I discovered something about writing. You have to have tension.
[00:30:38] That's obvious, right? Keep the reader interested. And one of the things that is presented, especially in fiction is the idea that you have a character who has a want. And what you're trying to do is help them come to a realization that what their want is and what their need are are two different things. That's part of the tension that you create in a protagonist. I thought this was very fascinating because what this editor said is every character has a flaw. And what you're really doing is developing and helping the character develop. In front of your eyes as a reader, you're seeing that happen before you that they think, this is what I really want. But in reality either they receive it or they don't or whatever. But they come to the conclusion in their life that what they really needed was something totally different than what they thought they wanted. And I really am convinced that's true of most people.
[00:31:27] We think we know what we want in life, but what we really need is something far different. And I'm going to argue that a lot of people think they want this kind of a life. They want this kind of a situation if I'd only have this, I'd be happy. And that's not true. What they really need is to know God personally and to have the greatest need in their soul met and that's union with God and that changes the way we live. We now begin to have eternal life, which is not a life that begins when we die. It's the kind of life we receive when Jesus comes into our life. It's a life of peace and joy and hope and love and grace. And it changes the whole direction and orientation of our lives.
[00:32:12] It's very powerful.
[00:32:15] So will this miracle bring this man to faith in Jesus as the savior of his soul?
[00:32:24] Will he come to serve Jesus not for what he receives, but because of who Jesus is?
[00:32:33] This is the question Jesus is raising not only for that royal official, but he's raising that question to us.
[00:32:41] Not only the people in the province of Galilee 2000 years ago. It's a question he's raising to you and me. Why are you serving what you can get out of it or for who I am? You see?
[00:32:53] Do we serve Him for what we get out of it or because of who he is? Will we serve Him at whatever cost to ourselves? Do we have a superficial or a genuine faith? And why am I saying this? Because trials have a way of answering the question.
[00:33:12] You see, when it's starting to cost you something, when you're going through a difficult time, instead of giving up on God, that's just telling.
[00:33:20] It's an indictment to the person. It's not that God is bad. It's showing you where you're really at when life is not making sense, when I don't understand, when I feel forsaken all of a sudden I'm going through this difficult time. Do I have an understanding in my life that God, you are so real? Yes. I do not understand. You know, I preached the entire book of Job and as I was going through that series, I had this epiphany moment at the end when Job is demanding, he's demanding. He's mad at God. He wants to put God on trial. He says, I've done everything you've wanted me to do and my life is a mess. What point is it in serving you? I want to put you on trial. God, I want to ask you these questions. Why are you letting this happen to me?
[00:34:07] This kind of sounds like a person in crisis.
[00:34:10] God goes. Before I answer any of your questions, Job, I just have a few for you, okay? Where were you when I did all these things?
[00:34:22] By the time God gets done asking the questions, job realizes how foolish he had been.
[00:34:28] He said, God, that was unwise of me. Forgive me. And then I raised the question. I said what? Would you rather have answers to all of your questions, or would you rather have the presence of God in your life?
[00:34:46] Because, you see, when God's presence is there, we don't need all the answers. What we need is the presence of God. I'd rather have God's presence in my pain and my difficulty than have all of the answers to my problems. I'd rather have him.
[00:35:00] And you know what? That's exactly what happened. God came to Job. I love that God wants to come to us in our crisis.
[00:35:10] Now, the official says to him, come down before my child dies.
[00:35:16] Okay, let me move on to the second step.
[00:35:21] Whoops.
[00:35:23] One too far. Let's go back two steps. One, it brings us to Jesus. Two, it brings us to faith in God's word. In other words, here's where the next? Yeah, we're good about maybe coming to Jesus. Maybe we're good about praying about it, but listen to what Jesus says to this man. I think we're going to learn something. When we act on the Word of God in obedience, it means we're really putting our trust in God and something begins to happen. As a matter of fact, the Bible says this in the book of Romans, that faith actually comes from hearing the message, and it's heard through the word of Christ. Or hearing comes by hearing God's word. Now, notice what Jesus does. He challenges this official to act in faith. He says to him, Go, your servant will live. Sorry. Your son will live. Go, your son will live. Wow.
[00:36:20] Now, Meryl Tenney brings out the possible conflicting emotions in the heart of his father. By dismissing the official with the statement that his son was alive, jesus creates a dilemma of faith, which is, I think, good. If the father refuses to go to Capernaum without taking Jesus with him, he will show that he didn't really believe what Jesus said and probably wouldn't get any benefit from his unbelief. But on the other hand, if he followed Jesus's order and began to return to his dying son with no outward assurance that he would recover, he was now forced to make the difficult choice between insisting on evidence and thus showing disbelief and of exercising faith without any tangible proof to encourage him. You see the dilemma? He's now in a dilemma called the horns of the dilemma. And we all get to this place. Are we going to trust God or not. Right now, other writers come in a different way, and they say the fact that the Father left was an expression of his confidence in Jesus'words. But let's take a look at what happens.
[00:37:25] The man took Jesus at his word and he departed. So he did act on what Jesus had said.
[00:37:34] I think that's a challenge for us today. Will we act on God's words? Well, what happens if I don't know the words? Well, then you don't have anything to act on. This is one of my great arguments why we should all be daily Bible readers. We need to know what it says so we can act on those words. And, you know, the more you study the Scriptures, the more you read them, the more they get inside of you, the more you begin to walk in obedience and do what it says. Pretty soon you start walking in a certain way. You start thinking in a certain way, you start behaving in a certain way. Eventually it becomes a part of who you are.
[00:38:09] Does that make after a while you're not even thinking about you're just doing you're doing the right thing because you've been feeding this stuff so long in your heart and mind that it becomes a natural outflow now of how you're living. It's very powerful. It's coming from within. The change and the transformation is coming from within. Then he's on his way home, and it says while he was still on the way, his servants met him with the news that this boy was living.
[00:38:37] Okay? Now, Craig Keener, who's a New Testament scholar, he says this is it possible that John intends the restoration of life here as an allusion to Christ's gift of eternal life? And I think the answer is yes. And the reason being is because usually the word that is translated, eternal life is actually translated in this text of Scripture. He is living. It's not just he's physically living, but there's something even more dynamic being conveyed here. He's experiencing the kind of life that God wants to give. I like that. Do you know there are a lot of people that are physically living, but they're not living at all. They're spiritually dead. They're alienated from God. They're lost in their trespasses and sins. Their whole life is focused in on themselves, and they're embracing the values of the society because that's all they have to embrace. But Jesus has come to give us life, and that more abundantly. It's a quality of life. Eternal life is a quality of life where we walk in joy and hope and peace. Now, Father says to the servant, he inquires as to the time when the son got better. And they said to him, yesterday at one in the afternoon, the fever left him. And the Father realized that this was the exact moment, really time at which Jesus had said to him, your son will live the moment Jesus spoke, his Son was restored.
[00:40:05] How many go that's powerful. The moment Jesus said, Your Son will live, immediately the fever left him.
[00:40:12] That's how powerful God's word is.
[00:40:15] And he said, Go home. He's okay.
[00:40:19] And he acted on God's word. So what was the outcome of this?
[00:40:24] So he and his whole household believed. What do you mean they believed? They believed that Jesus wasn't just a healer, but that Jesus was the Savior, their Savior, the Messiah. This miracle led them to faith. That's what it was designed to do. Now, this miracle was designed to bring a life, transforming faith into their lives.
[00:40:53] Do you know, I've said it. Our crisis are designed to do what? To transform us. That's what they're designed to do. We can see the positive outcome here that led to faith.
[00:41:04] But what happens when what we desire doesn't materialize? How do we handle things when things don't improve? Or maybe they get worse?
[00:41:14] Okay, how do we handle those moments when we don't understand what's happening? The trial is still designed to bring us to Jesus job. I said already had that encounter that changed his understanding of God and ultimately changed Him.
[00:41:31] I think God is interested in changing us.
[00:41:36] How many of you right now are going through a great trial?
[00:41:40] What are you going to do?
[00:41:42] Here's the answer.
[00:41:43] Run to Jesus.
[00:41:45] Run to Jesus.
[00:41:47] Persist in your cry. Despite setbacks silences and discouraging circumstances persist. We need to keep remember the woman, she persisted. The results are going to be a stronger faith and a transformed life. That's what happens. Let's stand.
[00:42:13] So with every head bowed this morning, maybe you're here today and you're saying, you know, Pastor, I am walking through a crisis moment, and I'm saying to you this morning, run to Jesus.
[00:42:35] I'm saying to you today, persist in your cry to Him.
[00:42:43] Allow that difficulty and that crisis and that challenge in your life to be the thing that becomes the strengthening agent in your soul that you're going to get through this.
[00:42:59] I love that hymn, Amazing Grace. There's a line that goes as you sing along, stanza too. Through many dangers, toils and tears I have already come listen, there's going to be dangers up ahead. There's going to be toils that's work and there's going to be tears. There's going to be suffering and sorrow. Through many dangers, toils and tears I have already come.
[00:43:30] There's no less days than what we will sing God's praise. Isn't that beautiful?
[00:43:37] See, God can keep us to the very end. How do you know that? Because he's the author and he's the completer or the finisher of our faith.
[00:43:49] Folks, this is a long run.
[00:43:53] This is a lifetime run. Sometimes.
[00:43:57] I've been a pastor a long time. I've seen Christians start up and go and then all of a sudden they flag out, and I don't know where they end up. Some of them, they got disappointed they took offense. They did all kinds of stuff. I keep thinking to myself, there's a verse of scripture, and I was a new Christian and said, remember reading this? Psalm 119, verse 165.
[00:44:21] They that are easily offended do not love your law.
[00:44:25] I just wrote in my little mind, I said, if I love God's law, I will not be easily offended.
[00:44:34] Be a lover of God's word. Be a lover of Jesus. Be a forgiver, be a person purposing in your mind to run this race and complete it and to experience the joy of going through this life of many difficult twists and turns and tears in your eyes. And you get to the end and one day you'll be standing in his presence, and then you'll say, it was worth it all.
[00:45:02] It was worth it all.
[00:45:06] But you're here this morning. Maybe you're in a crisis. Is that you? Just raise your hand. I want to pray with you today. You're in a crisis right now. Just raise your hand.
[00:45:15] Okay, a few of you. Yeah, some of you.
[00:45:19] See, I got my hand up.
[00:45:22] People think, oh, the pastor, he never has a crisis. Listen, when you are on the front lines and fighting a war, bullets are flying.
[00:45:34] The more effective and fruitful you become in your Christian life, the more intense the warfare becomes. I'm going to be honest. That's true.
[00:45:43] And you know what? I feel like we are just moving forward. We are. Oh, there's opposition, there's battles, there's this, there's that. And I know where it's coming from, from the other side.
[00:45:57] And it just makes me want to just dig in and get stronger. Amen. So I'm not telling you something I'm not experiencing. This is real, folks. I've been here many times, and Jesus is faithful. I want us to lay down our burdens right now. So you have a burden in your heart. Maybe there's a concern for somebody else. Just take your hands out of your pockets for a minute. Just open your hands and put them down like I've got them and say, Lord, I'm laying my burdens down right now. I'm laying my pain down. I'm laying my crisis down. I'm laying my anxious thoughts down. I'm laying my sorrows down. I'm laying these down because I know that you're going to pick them up. You're going to carry me through this season, and I'm going to get stronger. I'm going to get stronger in my faith in you, my confidence in you. You're going to strengthen me. You're making me more like you. You're in a transforming process. We are struggling in that little cocoon. God is changing us. You know that transformational point where we're struggling in the cocoon. God is allowing it to happen for a purpose because he's transforming you, and he's making you more like Him. He's making you to trust Him more and more. He's bringing you through. Boy, I tell you, job did have no idea what was going on, but God brought him through. God brought him through, and he blessed him at the end greater than he was before. He became a different person, a better person. He was a good person, but he became better. God's going to bring you through. So let's pray. Lord, I thank you that you're going to bring us through. I thank you that you're strengthening us. I thank you that you're transforming us. I thank you that we can put our faith in you. I thank you that we can have our eyes on you and not the problems, not the storms, not the difficulties, not our pain, not our brokenness, not the challenges that are lying around us. But, Lord, our eyes are fixed on you, and our confidence is in you today. And we thank you for bringing us through. In Jesus name, amen. God bless you. As you leave this morning.
