• Passage where Jesus return to the scene of the wine. The wine that had formerly been water. Most in the church have some issue with that first miracle and would rather Jesus would have turned wine into water
• LIQUOR STORE MIRACLE: Take that(bottles of water expensive too)
46 Therefore He came again to Cana of Galilee where He had made the water wine.
Hard for Jesus to leave Samaria considering how well he was received Revival breaking out – the people were gladly listening to him
There wasn’t the general sense of religiosity that he experienced in Jerusalem.
But now he was going to head back towards Galilee – a place where he wasn’t well received - Cana was about 3.5 miles north of Nazareth, Jesus’ home town.
44 For Jesus Himself testified that a prophet has no honor in his own country.
WHO NEEDED A MIRACLE? And there was a royal official whose son was sick at Capernaum. 47 When he heard that Jesus had come out of Judea into Galilee, he went to Him and was imploring Him to come down and heal his son; for he was at the point of death.
A man went into a drug store and asked the pharmacist if he could give him something for the hiccups. The pharmacist promptly reached across the counter and slapped the man’s face. The man said, "What in the world did you do that for? The pharmacist said, "See, you don’t have the hiccups anymore!" And the man replied, "No, but my wife in the car still does!"
Here is a man seeking the answer to the problem of someone else and yet he ends up gaining something very dramatic himself.
"nobleman" signifies a royal officer: he probably belonged to Herod’s court;{ Gentile ) He was from Capernaum which was about 20 miles from Cana - about a 6-7 hr walk
• Money and position cannot protect the rich and powerful from the normal trial of life and death that effect every person and family.
ARAB PROVERB: Grief is a black camel that kneels at every tent.
• He ‘implored’ or ‘begged’ Jesus to heal his son. With his means he had probably had the best doctors already do all that they could.
Concern for our kids brings out the best in us. Coming back from Tyler(Hosp) and unloading car. Hannah asks to leave running so she can get her school stuff out. I am almost to the door when I hear her yelling for me. I turn around and she is in the back seat of a car rolling back down the hill towards the highway. I headed that way and noticed that the car is now heading for two large trees. I run toward the car, catch up to it after rolling about 100 feet, open the driver door and dive for the brake pedal and stop the car 2 ft from the tree with Hannah in front of the tree thinking she might put out her arms and stop the car by bracing herself on the tree. Cost Lynne here coffee but she didn’t complain.
• This nobleman had tried everything and now he hears that Jesus, the one who had turned the water into wine was now back from His trip to Jerusalem. Sometimes one miracle doesn’t make that much sense but it sets up the one to follow.
• Jesus makes an observation that transcends His conversation with the Nobleman. Not sure how much of this the Nobleman even heard because his total focus is on his child.
• Surrounded by a crowd waiting for the next miracle to unfold.
48 So Jesus said to him, "Unless you people see signs and wonders, you simply will not believe." (Samaritans did not demand a miracle to believe)
• WARNING: About building our expectations of God too much around signs and wonders. God can do anything, heal anything, nothing is impossible but that is not what knowing Him and living for Him is all about.
• FAITH often begins with a point of crisis. Not always people of faith in the midst of the sunshine. Few people grow deeper when the days are sunny.
WHAT MIRACLE WAS NEEDED? 49 The royal official said to Him, "Sir, come down before my child dies."
• What a horrible place to being with a child slowly slipping away and in desperation you are grasping for any solution you can find.
• This Father’s desperation had created some things to be now true about him that probably were not apart of who he was before.
1. A PERSON WILLING TO RISK REPUTATION: Gentile, high position…etc and willing to pursue Jesus and humble himself to ask Jesus to heal his child.
2. A PERSON WILLING TO EXERCISE FAITH:
Faith is vital. It is the medium of exchange in the kingdom of heaven. No faith, nothing to spend. You are a popper without faith.
Jesus said, "According to your faith be it unto you" (Matthew 9:29).
50 Jesus said to him, "Go; your son lives." The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started off.
Jesus healed in many different ways so as to no leave us with any set pattern lest we start to worship and apply it as the answer rather than seeking God’s choice of ways.
• Made mud from spit/Dip in pool, sins are forgiven, get up and walk, let die and raise from tomb/10 lepers start walking to priests/snake on pole
Amazing call to faith, ‘Go, your son lives” Then Jesus must have continued on His way.
* Jesus didn’t give the crowd the miracle they wanting to see but to the man He gave the miracle he wanted to believe.
OT Account: Naaman coming to Elisha seeking healing from his leprosy. He is told to do something very simple and is offended that there was not some big production of healing done but a simple request from Elisha that he go dip in the Jordan 7 times.
Today he could find a big production: Push backwards, wave coat, hand on TV
3. A PERSON WILLING TO EXERCISE GREAT FAITH: believed…started off
Meanwhile, 17 miles away in Capernaum, in a room with people crowded around a dying boy waiting for his father to return with some type of hope a miracle occurs. The boy suddenly starts to improve and not just improve but a complete turnaround.
Augustine put it this way: “Faith is to believe what we do not see, and the reward of faith is to see what we believe.”
• HEB 11:1 – literal application – already done but had yet to see.
WHEN DID THE MIRACLE HAPPEN? 51 As he was now going down, his slaves met him, saying that his son was living.
• They must have been shocked to have him answer them with something like, ‘I knew that’. He asked a question which nails down the miracle with Jesus.
52 So he inquired of them the hour when he began to get better. Then they said to him, "Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him." 53 So the father knew that it was at that hour in which Jesus said to him, "Your son lives "; and he himself believed and his whole household.
• This amazing miracle occurred at just the moment that Jesus has told him to return home and his son lives.
• Walked until past 6PM(new day) or stopped for night
• His journey of a faith driven by desperation led him to a journey of faith leading to restoration. Now it was not faith for the healing but in the HEALER.
Oswald Chambers speaks to this point: “Faith for my deliverance is not faith in God. Faith means, whether I am visibly delivered or not, I will stick to my belief that God is love. There are some things only learned in a fiery furnace.”
• The difference this miracle made: Boy healed, man and family saved. Crowds and servants given a great demonstration of the power of God. Jesus gave the man much more than he asked for.
54 This is again a second sign that Jesus performed when He had come out of Judea into Galilee.
The first miracle performed in Cana when Jesus turned water into wine was at a time of family celebration.
Here, His second miracle was performed at a time of family devastation.
Whether you are experiencing times of gladness or times of sadness, Jesus is the Man for the moment.
For 29 years Tom Landry was the head coach of the Dallas Cowboys. He was also a strong Christian and for many years was on the board of Dallas Theological Seminary. When asked to explain his philosophy of coaching, he said that the job of a coach is make men do what they don’t want to do so that they can achieve what they’ve always wanted.
God uses circumstances of life, hardship and trials to bring out of us and put into us all that works together to make us the people that our hearts truly desire to be.
This man thought he had it all. ROBIN LEACH would have probably visited his home as a lifestyle of the rich and famous. But this man did not have the only thing that would make him truly rich. NOW HE DID.
