Healing Brings Salvation - [John 4:43-54]

What would you do if you had the power to heal? If you had the

God -given power to heal people, how would you use it? I don't know why, but I spend my time thinking about things like that.

I have really no good excuse because it's not going to happen, but I do think about it and I think, you know, the first thing

I'd do is I'd go to the children's hospital. Then I would empty it. I'd go to the cancer wards and I'd empty those.

I'd go to the veterans' hospitals and I'd empty those. In fact, I think by the time I was done, it would be a very full day.

But I also think, you know, there's one other little precaution I would take. I'd go to the uniform store, buy myself some scrubs, have a name tag made up.

I would look so doctor that you would want to call me doctor. Have a stethoscope on or whatever.

You know why? Because I think if people found out what you could do, I've said this before,

I don't think you'd get any rest. They would, you know, drag you off. There'd be people in Mexico, you know, their cartels, the drug cartels or the

Russian mob or whatever would come up and grab you and take you to save somebody down there. You'd be dead in weeks because you get no sleep.

Now, people claim in Christianity today to be able to heal. They claim that they have that gift and there really is a lot of confusion in Christianity these days about it.

Some basic questions. Does God still heal? Can He still heal?

The answer to both of those, I believe, is yes. But here's the tricky question.

Does He use people to heal in the same way that we see Jesus healing and we'll see this today?

I'd invite you to open your Bibles to John chapter 4. Does He work like this anymore?

Does He work like He did with the apostles anymore? Well, one well -known televangelist who's married to another well -known televangelist, she says this and I excerpted from a much longer piece.

But she cites Proverbs chapter 4, don't turn there, but I'm just going to, because she'll quote part of it here in a minute, she, there's a little clue.

Proverbs chapter 4 verses 20 to 22, she says, explains this process for healing.

It says, quote, talking about Proverbs, my son, attend to my words, incline thine ear unto my sayings.

Let them not depart from thine eyes. Keep them in the midst of thine heart for they are life unto those that find them and health to all their flesh.

She says the Hebrew word translated health here means medicine. Healing scriptures are

God's medicine for your body. So take that medicine daily. Be relentless about it and take your healing.

Is it good to read the scriptures daily? Yes. Do they have benefit to you?

Yes. Is Proverbs chapter 4 concerned with physical healing? No, it's concerned with spiritual health.

You want to know how to keep your eyes focused on God? Stay in the word of God.

The Bible is good for our health, but it's for our spiritual health, not our physical health.

But she goes on. She says this. The fact is, as a child of the living God, you are more than a conqueror in Christ.

Romans 8 37. Is that true? Yes. Now, is this true? So if you're believing for healing, you can kick the devil out of your life with the word of God.

The presumption is obviously that it's the devil making you sick. Is that true?

No. She says, if it takes time to obtain a complete healing, don't give up.

Be determined to persevere until you win. And don't fall prey to self -pity or seek sympathy from others.

That is not what you need. Faith is what you need. Faith is what you need.

Faith will heal you. That's the theory. That's the formula.

Bind those demons, kick the devil out of your life. Again, that's not what we're going to see today.

But beyond the context of those passages, which she obviously has wrong. Is that how the

Bible presents healing? No. Is it how it presents faith?

Is faith something you just, you get what you want from God no matter what?

No, that's not faith. What I also wonder about sometimes is, how are faith healers ever going to die?

Right? We all know that we're all going to die unless the Lord returns first. But how are they going to die? Because they're going to bind

Satan, cast off the demon. They're going to get rid of that cough. They're going to get rid of cancer. They're going to get rid of whatever it is that they have.

How are they going to die? And yet they do. One by one, they die.

But getting back to terra firma, back to scripture. Is there a connection between faith and healing?

If people are healed, do they necessarily believe? And do those who believe necessarily get healing?

Certainly there can be a connection between healing and faith. But it's not like the false teachers would have it.

Jesus did nothing like what Mrs. Copeland described. But he healed, and he healed completely.

And we're going to see that this morning. Now, just by way of review. The apostle

John, who wrote this gospel, was an eyewitness to the ministry of Jesus. He was there from the beginning to the end, about three and a half years.

And he had really an intensive discipleship relationship with him. Now, given that John describes himself as the disciple that Jesus loved.

It's fair to think, fair to speculate a little bit. That he thought of himself as a good friend of the

Lord's. Further, as we study the life of Jesus. What do we see over and over again?

That when significant events take place. Whether it's the Mount of Transfiguration. Whether it's various times of intensive training.

Who does he select to come with him? It's Peter, James, and John.

They're the ones who spend the most time with Jesus. And so now, many years after the other three gospels have been written.

John sits down to write his gospel. And he has a particular focus.

He wants every reader to understand that Jesus is the Christ. The Son of God. And God himself.

Fully God and fully man. In fact, when he writes this. What he does is he selects different vignettes.

Different scenarios out of the life of Jesus. To illustrate, to underline one thing.

The deity of Jesus Christ. And so we come to John chapter 4 verses 43 to 54.

And we'll do a little more review as we go. He's just leaving Samaria is what we're going to see here.

After the two days that he spent with the Samaritans. He departed for Galilee. For Jesus himself had testified that a prophet has no honor in his hometown.

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. So he came to Cana and Galilee where he made the water wine.

And a Capernaum. There was an official whose son was ill. 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.

So Jesus said to him. Unless you see signs and wonders, you will not believe.

The official said to him. Sir. Come down before my child dies.

Jesus said to him. Go. Your son will live. The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and went on his way.

As he was going down. His servants met him and told him that his son was recovering.

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.

The father knew that. The father knew that was the hour when Jesus said to him. Your son will live.

And he believed. All right. And he himself believed. And all his household.

This was now the second sign that Jesus did when he had come from Judea to Galilee. Now, this morning we're going to see really.

It's basically a good drama. It's got three acts. An opening act. Middle acts.

And a finale. And I have a really simple outline. It's so simple that it came to me while I was in the gym.

I like to look at the verses I'm going to preach while I was there. And on Tuesday, I just thought, you know what?

I'm not going to embellish this. This is pretty simple. So our first point is reputation.

Second is request. And third result. Three R's. Reputation. Request. Result.

And we're going to see this morning that Jesus heals completely. But he is never focused on merely the physical.

For those here who are saved this morning. You're going to be affirmed in your faith of who

Jesus is. For those who are unsaved, you're going to see his mastery over everything that is created.

No one could do what Jesus could do unless he was fully God. And isn't that the purpose of the gospel?

To demonstrate that. First, his reputation. Verse 43. After the two days, he departed for Galilee.

For Jesus himself had testified that a prophet has no honor in his own hometown. 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. Now, as we're going to see more and more as we walk through John.

More and more as we go through the ministry of Jesus. He really was not interested in building for himself a big congregation.

His ultimate goal wasn't to have six meetings every weekend.

Six services every Saturday night and Sunday morning. In other words, he was not a church growth guru.

Things had gone really well in Samaria. He had gone from what we consider when he stopped at the well.

Who knew who he was? No one. But the woman didn't know him.

In fact, what does she say at one moment where he reveals himself to her? Basically, she says,

Sir, I perceive you are a prophet. He goes from being a complete unknown to by the time he leaves.

The men of the village consider him what? The savior of the world. So he leaves them in spite of the fact that things are going well.

And really, he went from in the beginning. There would have been this antipathy, this angst, this animus between the

Jews and the Samaritans. They would not have liked him. In fact, we could say this. He went from being foe to guest to savior and enemy and opposition to the

Samaritans. The Jews and Samaritans did not get along for reasons that I've enumerated before. And then he went to honored guests.

They insisted after they heard the testimony of this woman that he stay with them. He did for two days.

Then finally, as he's getting ready to leave, they say that they know that he is the savior of the world.

So why leave? Things are going great. Well, there's the easy answer because it's the father's will, right?

It's in God's plan for him to leave. But it's also because the Samaritans, things are going so well there, they're never going to hate him enough to crucify him.

Ultimately, the cross was not something Jesus could avoid or even wanted to avoid.

He had to go where he would be hated. Now, what does verse 44 mean?

Well, first, we have to understand what hometown means, homeland, fatherland, his own country.

It really is the place where he was raised. If I tell you that I was born in Canoga Park, California, that's true.

And by the way, if you Google it, you'll find out Canoga Park no longer exists because now it's North Hills, which

I only mentioned because it's neither north nor are there any hills there. But that's not my hometown.

My hometown would be West Covina. That's where I grew up. That's where if anyone knew me, that's where they would know me from.

It's my neighborhood. That's where I grew up. And that's the point here. That's what he's talking about. His homeland was not

Samaria. It was not Jerusalem. And think about it. He was honored in Samaria.

So that's not what he's talking about. He had been sought after in Jerusalem by Nicodemus. Even in Judea, out kind of in the wilderness, he had more people coming out to see him than John the

Baptist did. In fact, why did he even leave Judea? You remember what the text said? Because he got word that what?

The Pharisees were going to come out because he was drawing these crowds. They were going, well,

OK, we already checked out John the Baptist. We know he's not the Messiah. But now look, Jesus is getting more people than John the

Baptist. Maybe we have to worry about this Jesus fellow. And that's when he left.

Now, where could he go where maybe he wouldn't be such a big deal? Home. That's what

I do. You know, whenever I want to feel like nobody, I just go home and say it's easy. It's very reminiscent of Matthew chapter 13.

You don't have to turn there. I'm just going to read a few verses here. Verses 54 to 57. And coming to his hometown, he,

Jesus, taught them in their synagogue so that they were astonished and said, where did this man get this wisdom and these mighty works?

Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary? It are not his brothers,

James and Joseph and Simon and Judas. It are not all his sisters with us.

Where did this man get all these things? And they took offense at him. But Jesus said to them, a prophet is not without honor, except in his hometown and in his own household.

This is the Jesus that we've known for his whole life. And now we need to learn all this stuff.

Where does he come off with all this authority? But back to our text in John chapter 4, it kind of seems like, you know, you can, if you just kind of read this and then just kind of picture it in your mind, that's what

I do. That's why I read so slowly. Don't do that. You would get what?

The idea that maybe there were these banners. They welcomed him. They're all excited. You know, Jesus is coming home.

Welcome home, Jesus. Well, why were they excited at all?

Why was there kind of a buzz at all? Because they knew what he had done. It wasn't because of who he was.

It was because of what he had done. And that will be completely clear by the time we get to the end of chapter 6.

He goes to Galilee again. And by the end of chapter 6, nobody's following him anymore.

But back to our text, it says he was welcomed in Galilee. Well, did they honor him?

One man sums it up well. He says, outward enthusiasm. In other words, whatever banners, however they greeted him, whatever was going on.

Outward enthusiasm, often for selfish purposes, is not honor. You celebrate all you want.

What do you believe about who he is? You're not honoring him if you don't believe in the person of Jesus Christ.

Now, the feast to which they refer, they know what had happened in Jerusalem at the feast. Well, what is that? It wasn't the wedding feast at Cana, where he turned water into wine.

Nobody knew about that except for a few of the disciples or the disciples in Mary. So that wasn't the feast that they're talking about.

The feast is the Passover feast. The Jews, many of the

Jews, a good number of them, would go to Jerusalem for the three major holidays of the year.

Passover, Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles. And it's likely that a good number of the people from Galilee had been down in Jerusalem during the feast of the

Passover. Say that real fast. Feast of the Passover, when this happened back in chapter two.

Now, when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover feast, many believed in his name, listen, when they saw the signs he was doing.

But Jesus, on his part, did not entrust himself to them because he knew all people and needed no one to bear witness about man for he himself knew what was in man.

Jesus did not entrust himself to those people. He didn't reveal himself to be God in the flesh.

They just saw the signs that he was doing. They were intrigued by them. Remember, that's why Nicodemus comes to him in chapter three.

He says, no one could do what you did, except if he's from God. That's why

Nicodemus came. But some of these people saw those signs.

Jesus didn't entrust himself to them because he knew what was in their heart. They were just excited about the signs. And that's what's going on in Galilee.

They're excited because this man who did these great things in Jerusalem is now in Galilee.

Maybe he's going to do something here. Let's all buy tickets and see what happens. But clearly,

Jesus has a reputation. His fame precedes him. And that leads to our second point, the request.

Look at verse 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. 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.

Now, for some who are a little bit younger of a different generation than me, I mean, you know,

I'm of the generation where kind of cutting edge technology was eight track tapes. So sad, you know, the song would fade out on one track and then fade in on the next one.

There would be bleed and never mind. If you're old enough to remember, you understand what I'm saying.

They were catastrophic. But today's generation, I mean, just imagine for a second.

I know this is hard, kids. No Twitter, no Facebook, no texting.

But wait, even for those of us who are a little bit older, it gets worse. No TV, no

Internet, no radio, no newspapers. Who reads a newspaper anymore?

But there were none of those. So, not only did word get around, but, you know, for just a second, you have to go, well, how did people even survive?

You know, without all this constant bombardment of information. Well, they did it the old -fashioned way.

They gossip, they spoke, word spread.

And again, it's important to consider the times in which Jesus is appearing here. There was buzz about the

Messiah. Remember, they'd gone out, the religious elite had gone out to investigate

John the Baptist to see if he was the Messiah. And again, when they're getting concerned about Jesus, they were going to go out and talk to him, but it wasn't time yet.

So there's all this hubbub about a Messiah, and here's this man who is doing these signs.

So it's a big deal. There's quite a commotion about him. He'd certainly made a splash in Jerusalem.

Again, that's why Nicodemus went to him. He had a huge impact in Judea, out in the wilderness, and then in Samaria.

And now he'd returned to the place of his childhood, his hometown, and word had spread. And that this official was in Capernaum is no surprise.

He would have worked for Herod. And Capernaum was a place where taxes were gathered. There was probably a little military outpost there.

So it's not unusual that either a representative or a relative, somebody to do with Herod would have lived there.

And this government official had heard enough about Jesus to travel 14 miles with his son basically on death's door to ask him to come and to heal his son.

Now, this could have been a combination of Jesus' reputation and really just a father's desperation.

Our text, if we look at the Greek, would tell us that the man was begging, begging Jesus. There's an intensity, a constant nature of asking that would...

He was desperate. This father was just desperate. He was begging, and this was not a man who was given to begging.

He was used to asking for something and getting it. He was a man to whom deference was given.

But in this case, he goes to Jesus and he is persistent.

Why? Because his son was literally about to die. That's what the Greek would tell us.

He was about to die. He's on death's door. And if you're a parent, you can readily understand the man's emotion.

Everything that they knew about medicine, which wasn't as much as we think we know about medicine. And here's his son on the verge of death.

What's he going to do? And he's like, I'll do anything. I heard about this man who can do wonders.

I'm going to go see him. There is pathos.

There is emotion. There is turmoil. This is a moment of crisis, as it were, for him.

But even so, this man had made two false assumptions. First, that Jesus would have to go with him down to Capernaum to heal him.

And secondly, that if the boy died, there'd be nothing Jesus could do. We know that from other texts that that's not correct.

But this royal officer didn't know that. So look at Jesus' response to verse 48. So Jesus said to him, unless you see signs and wonders, you will not believe.

Now, one thing that's kind of not obvious by just looking at the text there is, you know, you'd think you read that Jesus is just rebuking this man.

But it's more than that, because the you in Greek is plural. So it's more like you, you're emblematic of the larger group of Galileans who won't believe unless there are signs and wonders.

This is just basically a signal or a word about the hardness of the

Jewish heart. And it's not any kind of formula or an encouragement for signs and wonders.

In fact, it's exactly the opposite, right? This is an indictment. And really, it's saying, well, which is better?

Let's put it this way. Which is better, to want signs and wonders in order to believe or to believe without them? You know, what is faith?

Faith is based on signs and wonders, or faith is the conviction of things not seen. It's the latter, right?

One man provides a better translation. He says, unless you people see signs and wonders, you will definitely not believe.

Because that, when he says definitely not believe, it is the strongest way of saying that there's absolutely no chance that these people will believe.

He's trying to really underline, undergird the hardness of their hearts and to stress it.

But this man has begged for Jesus' help and basically received a rebuke, even if it's a community rebuke, for his lack of faith.

So what does he do? He begs some more. Look at the text. Verse 49. The official said to him, and I mean, this is almost hard to say.

You can almost hear the man's voice breaking. Sir, come down before my child dies.

Now, before he talked about him as his son, we'll hear there really is a tenderness and an affection in it.

And it's as if he were almost addressing him by his name. And he's just, you know, talking the picture in his mind of his little son, however old he is.

You know, he might be 17 for all we know, but however old he is, he cares deeply for him.

And he's very concerned. And he says, please, please come with me.

So we've seen the reputation. Secondly, the request. And third, the result.

Look at verse 50. Jesus said to him, go, your son will live.

Now, this is kind of a surprising response. The man is insistent upon Jesus coming with him, right?

But Jesus replies with something that on its face, when we read it, we can just go, well, it's just a prediction.

It's really kind of matter of fact. You know, he could say something like, give little

Jimmy two child's Tylenols and let me know how it goes. You know, I think he's going to be fine.

Be like me saying, you know, I think this afternoon is going to be kind of warm and humid. Okay. But that's not it.

This isn't a prediction. This isn't, you know, in my opinion, he'll recover.

This was Jesus announcing to this man, the power of God was already in action.

It already happened. The young man did not need to come to a packed auditorium on a

Friday night to be healed. Jesus didn't need to go to him. All that had to happen was God.

God took care of it. At that very moment, 14 miles away, God healed this man's son.

The NAS does a great job here. It just says, go. Your son lives.

Go. Your son lives because that's exactly what it says here. Lives as in he's living now.

He's going to keep living. He's not on the verge. It's the exact opposite of what this man is predicting.

He comes to him saying, my son is about to die. And he says, Jesus says, he's living.

He's in a constant state of living. He's going to continue living. Look at the official's response.

Verse 50, second part of it. The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and went on his way.

No more begging. Come on, you have to come with me. He didn't ask for any kind of confirmation.

He had seen nothing, no sign, no wonder. And yet he believed.

And what did he believe? The text tells us the word that Jesus spoke to him. Isn't that how we are to act?

We are to believe God's word. We're to take him in his word. And that's what he does. He goes, OK, I'm going to do exactly what you say.

I'm going to go see my son. He gave evidence that he believed Jesus by doing exactly what he said.

Now, there's some debate between scholars as to the time, and I'm going to address that in a minute. I'm pretty convinced, though, that when it says the seventh hour, it was 1 p .m.,

which would be the Jewish reckoning, right? The sixth hour is noon. Seventh hour is 1 p .m. But some think it was 7 p .m.

when the healing took place. And I'll explain this in a second, but I don't really think it's important.

What's important is that... Well, I'll let the text explain what's important, then we'll talk more about it.

Verse 51, as he was going down, his servants met him and told him that his son was recovering.

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.

Now, Capernaum is below sea level. It's at the Sea of Galilee. And Cana has a little bit of elevation.

So indeed, when you go from Capernaum to Cana, you are going down. And when the...

Or from Cana to Capernaum, you're going down. So if you're going from Capernaum to Cana, you're going up kind of thing.

So the servants are coming up the road.

He's going down the road. Now, it's obviously... Or it's pretty clear. It's implied in the text that the servants, really slaves.

You notice how they always try to avoid that word in the text. It gets ugly. We don't like to talk about slavery, but it was a fact of life there.

But the slaves really liked their master. They cared about him. If they didn't, they could have stayed there. They could have stayed home.

And just kind of like, well, when he shows up, he shows up. But they're excited. They're shouting at him.

They want him to know. And I have to say that I really did not like the ESV here, where it says he was recovering.

You know, it makes it sound like the boy was moved. He was in intensive care. And now we've moved him to his own private room.

He's taking fluids. He's able to, you know, eat some of mom's chicken noodle soup, and he's going to be okay. That's not the picture.

The Greek, just as Jesus said, he lives. They say he lives.

So the picture is he's coming down the hill. They shout, you know, your son is living.

He is alive. He's going to stay alive. Everything we thought was going to happen is not happening.

What was wrong with him has been removed. He's healed. Is it any wonder that the father asked when his son started to feel better?

He hears the exact same words. Jesus said he lives. These men say he lives.

And he thinks this isn't a coincidence. So he says, well, when did he start to get better?

And they tell him it was the day before at the seventh hour. Now it's that day before thing.

I think that twists the scholars all in knots because they try to push it later so they can explain why this father delayed.

Well, the problem is we don't really know. There are a lot of reasons why he could have been delayed. He could have been obligated to, you know, attend to his hosts.

We don't know what's going on. And there's no reason to read into it. Here's what we do know. That John nowhere else ever uses the reason they come up with a seven o 'clock time is that that would be the seventh hour by Roman reckoning.

But John never uses that. And so I don't think he uses it here either. I think this is one o 'clock and we don't know why he waits till the next day.

Maybe he was older and he got tired. We I couldn't do 14 miles twice in one day, no matter how excited

I was. And besides that, if you think about it rightly, if he if Jesus says your son is going to live, go and he goes, well, then what?

He believed Jesus. So what's the rush? Nevertheless, he sets out the next day and then he's met by his servants.

So whether it's 7 p .m. or 1 p .m., doesn't change anything. Now, up to this point, we could not have known for sure that the man was saved.

Yes, he believed Jesus. But here, everything changes in verse 53. The father knew that that was the hour when

Jesus had said to him, your son will live. And he himself believed and all his household.

That's a key statement there. Because it wasn't just that they believed that he was healed. They already knew that they'd already seen that.

This is salvific. He himself believed they believed in Jesus.

They believed he was who he was. They didn't believe in his works. They believed in the person.

Now, reflecting on his encounter with the Lord, thinking about how Jesus has said his son was living as opposed to dying, how his son had just made a complete turnaround at that very moment.

God used that to quicken him, to cause him to believe. Now, the official would believe, but it wasn't just him.

It was all his household. Now, what does that mean? All his household? Does that mean, you know, if there were babies or, you know, let's say there were future children in the family, did that mean that they were automatically saved?

No, and that's not the point. There are some who like to say that, you know, everybody entered the covenant because the father entered the covenant.

That's not the point. In fact, one commentator said it this way, who's Presbyterian, by the way.

He says, if there were any who had arrived at the years of discretion, they believed, what did he mean?

He meant the slaves. He meant any children, any relatives, the wife, everybody in the household believed.

Now, that wouldn't include children who weren't of the ability to grasp the gospel, the ability to understand who

Jesus was. And that's not the point here. But moving on to the text,

John wants us to know that this is the second miracle, the second sign that Jesus performed in Galilee.

Verse 54, this was now the second sign that Jesus did when he had come from Judea to Galilee.

The first was turning water into wine, right? The first had occurred in close proximity to Jesus.

The water's right there, and he changes it into wine. This one was at a distance.

The first had involved an inanimate object. This one had been performed on a human being.

The first was a minor kindness that avoided the host being embarrassed by running out of wine at a wedding.

The second was life changing, not just for that son, but for everyone in the household who would come to faith.

Now, in other healings, how did Jesus do it? Well, it was by touching them or by them touching him or him giving a command.

This one, this is a simple statement that he made that was affirmed in heaven by the father taking action.

Now, is there a connection between faith and healing? Well, in this case, he healed and the people came to faith, but that's because God used a powerful action on his part to prove a particular messenger was approved to speak for him.

He proved Jesus was who he said he was. But today we have the word of God and God no longer works like this.

Pastor Harry last week preached Hebrews one just after the part where it says, you know, in past days and past times,

God, the father spoke to our fathers in many ways, but now he speaks to us how through his son,

Jesus Christ, we have the word of God. We don't need signs and wonders. Peter says what better than the greatest experience ever going up to the

Mount of Transfiguration and seeing the glory of the revealed Christ. We have something more sure what the word of God.

Now, again, considering what John is illustrating or consider what

John's illustrating, that Jesus really is Lord over nature as creator.

He alone has power to revive the near dead and even those who are dead. He doesn't need to be near them.

He can be 14 miles away and still raise the dead or the near dead, which is good news because each of us come into this world, what spiritually stillborn, spiritually dead, not alive is because of the finished work of Jesus Christ that we can be made alive.

Now, this week ago, Saturday, I received an email from one of my uncles who works for the

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints, also known as the Mormon Church. He works in Salt Lake. He said in this email, he said, how do you guys, how do you

Christians believe that you obtain grace? How do you obtain grace? Here's how we obtain grace.

We work, work, work, work, work. And then when we're done, he didn't say this, but this is the moral model.

When we're done, when we can't go anymore to obey the gospel, that's Mormon language, you know, to, to live out the gospel is the gospel, something we'd live or is it something that has been lived?

It's something that's been lived. It's something Jesus Christ did for us. He says, how do you obtain grace?

Because for us, grace is we work and then God picks up our slack and he finishes the race for us.

Jesus Christ ran that race. Jesus Christ finished it.

Grace is not something we deserve. It's not something this man deserved. In fact, if we think about him, the, the people associated with Herod and the government, they really represented what?

The Roman Empire. They would not be beloved. There's no reason for Jesus to look favorably on him or any

Jew for that matter. The Samaritan woman, there's no reason for her to get grace. She was a sinner.

She was a Samaritan. She was a woman. Which in those days, again, was not all that good.

Nicodemus, why did he deserve grace? He didn't. Grace is not something we deserve.

It is undeserved. The grace of God that takes us from being spiritually stillborn, being dead, causes us to be made alive, raises us, seats us with Christ in the heavenlies.

That's grace. That's saving grace. And it's by believing in the person and work of Jesus Christ that we may be saved.

Let's pray. Father in heaven, even as we look this morning, at your work in the life of one family.

This man, so sorrowful, so hopeless, so desperate.

All he knew of Jesus Christ was this was a man sent from God who could work wonders.

But the Lord answered his prayer. You answered it. You healed this man's son. And as a result, you brought an entire family to yourself.

You adopted them. Father, there are people here today, maybe people who have been caught up in signs and wonders and healing and all these kind of things.

Father, I pray that you would open the eyes of those here that this is the

Lord Jesus Christ isn't about having our best life now. It's not about deliverance from illness, deliverance from suffering.

Not in this life. Our home, our hometown is heaven.

Where you've promised that there will be no tears, no suffering, no sin.

None of the results of sin. For anyone who does not know you,

Father, I pray that today would be the day that they would say to themselves. I believe Jesus is.

Who he said he was. That they would turn from relying on themselves, thinking that if they get close enough,

God will make up the gap that he'll finish it. That we will realize that salvation is from beginning to end all about Jesus Christ, his life.

Lived out perfectly for us, his death in our place, paying a penalty that we could never pay.

And his resurrection on the third day. What a glorious truth. Father, cause us to focus our energies on that and not on all the spurious notions of miracles, wonders and signs.