[AI translation] There is an apparent contradiction in the way this story is told in the Gospel. We read that Jesus "went out from Samaria and came into Galilee". Galilee was His native land, where He grew up, where He spent His youth, where He set out from. So now He is there again. And Jesus himself says of Galilee, "A prophet has no honour in his own country." (Jn 4,44) And when the apostle John describes this, he continues immediately afterwards, "When therefore he entered into Galilee, the Galileans received him, because they had seen all that he did in Jerusalem at the feast." (Jn 4,45) So what is the situation here? Did they receive him or did they not receive him? Did Jesus have honour or did he not have honour in Galilee?Well: the fact is that he was received as a miracle worker, but not received as a prophet. So he was received: because word had already got out of the miraculous healings he had performed in Jerusalem. The villagers were already beginning to feel a little proud of him. They wanted the miracle worker, for they could use him, but as a prophet he had no honour among their people! They were eager to see Jesus as the healer of the sick, but they could not believe in Him as Saviour.
It is like what happened to Michael Munkácsy when he came home from Paris to his village after his world successes, and there his godmother said to him, "I heard what a great painter you have become, now paint my porch, Michael!" Now do we understand why Jesus says that the prophet has no honour in his own country, even though "the Galileans received him"? Someone once called this the so-called "Galilean faith". What does it consist of? It is that we need Jesus' healing work, but not His saving blood; we need His help, but not His death; we need His work, but not His person; we need Him as Physician at the sickbed, but not as Saviour on the cross. This is that certain Galilean faith, this is what it means to receive Jesus in a Galilean way.
In such a situation, against such a background, we now see quite differently, do we not, the royal chieftain who lived in Capernaum in Galilee, who had a son who was terminally ill, and who, when he heard that Jesus, the miracle doctor, was here, not far from Capernaum, just 30 kilometres away in Cana, quickly went over to him to ask him to go with him and heal his son, for he was dying. Let's just stop for a moment at the fact that this man had to go to Jesus because of his son's illness. If it had not been for the great fright at home, if trouble had not come to the house, it would obviously not have occurred to this distinguished gentleman to come to Jesus! Oh, blessed misery that drives a man to Jesus! Oh, blessed trouble, suffering, sickness, which, when it comes to a house, makes a man forget to argue, reason, doubt, and learn instead to pray, to turn to God and ask! It would certainly be good if we did not forget that when some need, some trouble, comes upon us, the Lord may have many different intentions, but His main intention is always, most certainly, to send us to Jesus again. Perhaps we have strayed very far from Him, or perhaps we have lost our first love, or perhaps we have become very arrogant and conceited again - or perhaps we have never really found Him.
So the overriding purpose of all trouble is to force us to come to Christ with Him, to be humbled before Jesus Christ. What He will then say or do, how He will receive our petition, is not important for the moment. The important thing is that the soul comes, that it comes before Christ with its misery!
Once the soul is truly there in the presence of Christ, Christ will do his work with it! Here again, we see Jesus unmasking this royal ruler of Capernaum. He immediately sees in him that this man's faith is typical of the so-called "Galilean faith", and he tells him so in very harsh words: "Unless you have seen signs and wonders, you have not believed" (John 4:48).
Why does Jesus speak so dismissively, so harshly, when a father appeals to him on behalf of his terminally ill son? For it is so touching that a man should come to Jesus with his trouble and ask him for help! What was wrong with this man's faith? The sin in turning to Jesus was that he could seek nothing from Jesus but visible help: healing for his son! Let us try to elaborate, what does this mean?
a) A selfish faith that wants to use Jesus, wants to use the heavenly, mysterious powers in Christ to solve the problems of his troubled life. Look at yourself, Brother, doesn't your faith have this problem, this sin, that you want to use Him to fix something in your life that you can't fix, to help you get out of a hole where you can't get out? For example, maybe there is a woman here who has pleaded with the Lord for her husband not to be rude, because life is so much more comfortable when the husband is not rude. Well then, come on Jesus, work a miracle: let the rude husband be tamed! But it's the same when you want to believe so you don't get so upset. For surely your own nervousness is a nuisance to yourself, Jesus could really take it away, how good it would be to have a nice conversion, and then enjoy not being nervous! How much better you would please yourself if you could manage not to be nervous! It would even be worth converting for that! You might even ask the Lord! Work a miracle in you, because it would be so much better for you! Or perhaps you pray for your wife to be converted, because then she will change your ways! - That's how a man can take advantage of the most sacred things, or at least that's how he wants to do it, but he can't! If the miracle doesn't happen afterwards, if there is no encouraging sign, then faith collapses! That is why Jesus says: "If you have not seen signs and wonders, you have not believed!"
b) Then it is also a sin in such a faith expecting a miracle to belittle Jesus, to greatly diminish His glory. He is, as you know, looked upon as the One who came to heal all sick people, to drive out all ills, to solve all miseries. It is true that there are many cases of healing in the Gospels, but Jesus did not heal all the sick, make all the lame walk and all the blind see! No matter how many wretches he had compassion on, there were still more whom he did not heal than whom he did. He only did healing work when he saw that the time had come for it. We rob Him of His true glory if we simply expect Him to heal our sick now. As if He had come into the world to bring physical healing to all sick people. Yet how often do serious Christian people get into spiritual conflict because their pleas for healing are not heard!
"If ye see no signs and wonders, ye believe not!" The Lord is saying, "Men, beware! It is not true faith that only turns to God when it needs help to get out of some trouble, and then doubts and is immediately shaken if it does not immediately see the signs of God's miraculous help! Such a faith expecting miracles, asking Christ for all kinds of visible signs and wonders, is not faith at all, but selfishness! Such a mighty Lord as our Christ expects more from his disciples than the cheap faith that trusts in him only when he gives visible proof of his help. "Except ye see signs and wonders, ye believe not." The emphasis here is on not believing! Note that those who have so believed have not really believed. And many times it is precisely because the Lord does not give signs and wonders that you will find out for yourselves that you have not really believed!
What sign or miracle would you expect from the Lord that you think would confirm you in your faith? For example, that the patient you prayed for would be healed?! A precious sign, indeed, and it may strengthen your faith, but only until the person falls ill again, or perhaps dies - for he too must die one day. Do you think that if God did everything according to your wishes and requests, it would be better for your faith, then you would be able to believe better? What if it should turn out that you had been harmed in the fulfilment of your own wish?! What would happen to your faith then?!
If you need signs and wonders to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, look not for them in such occasional help, but in the greatest sign and the most sublime miracle! For there are signs and wonders! The sign of your salvation, the sign of the forgiveness of your sins: the cross of Christ! It is the only sign, the miracle of thy justification and the assurance of thy eternal life. The resurrection of Christ - that is the true miracle! If you do not believe when you see this sign and wonder, you will never believe when you see any other sign and wonder! True: Jesus can help you out of your trouble, He can heal you out of your sickness, but not only that, but above all and above all, He can save you and redeem you. He can deliver you from eternal hell and redeem you to eternal life! And that is why he came! Not for anything else! If you get something else from Him, such as a healing from an illness: that is just extra. But you can't start with the extra!
Later in the narrative, something great happens: 'The kingly man said to him, "Lord, come before my child dies. Jesus said to him, 'Go, your son is alive. And the man believed the word that Jesus had spoken to him, and went away." (Jn 4,49-50) Jesus now deepens this man's faith: he does not go with him, but gives him - a promise! He sends him away with a short saying, "Go, your son is alive!" What would you say if the doctor sent you away from his office with such a sentence? If he had at least given you a bottle of medicine, or some ointment, or a pill, or if nothing else, some advice! At least he would have told you what to do when you got home! But none of that! Just a promise! Well, now, now it comes to the point: can this man believe in the mere word of Jesus?! "And the man believed the word that Jesus said to him, and he went away!" Now he no longer turns to Jesus expecting a miracle, but now he relies on the royal promise of Jesus alone!
Do you believe the word, the Word, what Jesus says, what He promises?! Do you believe that His blood will cleanse you from all sin? Do you believe what He said, that your sins are forgiven you? Believest thou that he who believeth in him, though he were dead, yet liveth? So it's not a question of whether you can believe by seeing and experiencing all these miracles - it's a question of whether you can believe on the word of Jesus alone, without seeing, without experiencing! The father in the story believed and left! And he didn't go home immediately, but it is clear from the narrative that he didn't go home until the next day, about 24 hours later. So he believed, he believed so much that he could wait 24 hours in such a serious case. He did not doubt that what Jesus said was true! And after 24 hours he experienced a happy miracle!
Brother, whatever trouble, whatever suffering, whatever misery, whatever sorrow, whatever sadness you are sitting here now, I wish you could hear the encouragement, "Go, your son is alive!" Mourners, who have prayed for a loved one and "yet" he is dead, would that you would hear now, as Jesus says, "Your son, your daughter, your mother, your spouse, your brother lives! Will you be so comforted by His word that you can wait until you see the promise fulfilled, 24 hours, or 24 days, or 24 months, or 24 years! Will you believe that His promises are true and amen?!
"And as he was going, his servants came and told him, saying, 'Your son lives. And he found out from them the hour in which he was relieved, and they said to him, 'Yesterday at seven o'clock the fever left him.' And he believed, and all the people of his house." (John 4:51-53)
So when he returns home, he will find that Jesus' promise is a royal command that has given his son new life! A great miracle happened to the son, he was healed, but an even greater miracle happened to the father: he became a believer! He no longer believed in order to receive something, but because what he had already received had bound his soul to Jesus forever! When he was able to rely on the word of Jesus instead of waiting for miracles, his faith deepened into faith in the person of Jesus, that is, true faith, true saving faith!
That is how he wants to deepen your faith! If the Lord has now spoken to you, believe also in the word that Jesus has now spoken to you, and so go on from here to the fulfilment of the promises!
Amen
Date: 26 November 1950.
Lesson
Jn 4,43-54