FBC Daily Devotional – September 10, 2021

Faith Baptist Church

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Well, a good Friday to you. Can you believe we're at the end of another week already? So the first full week of September is just about behind us.

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Wow, it's incredible. Well, we read today in John chapter 4 and I was struck by this account of Jesus healing the son of the nobleman from Capernaum.

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A nobleman would have been somebody with some kind of a royal position. He had a role in government affairs of some kind.

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We don't know if he was Roman or Jewish, but he was nevertheless some kind of government official, a royal authority.

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So he comes to Jesus while Jesus is in Cana. The guy whose son is sick lives in Capernaum.

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That's about 15, maybe 18 miles away as the crow flies. And he finds

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Jesus. He hears Jesus is there. He comes to Jesus and asks Jesus to come home with him because his son is sick and is about to die.

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Would he please come and and do something about this? Jesus says, all is well.

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Go home. Your son is well. As you read the story in verses 46 to 54, that's exactly what happens.

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The guy goes home. The nobleman goes home. And while he's on his way home, he's met by his servants and they tell him, they're astonished.

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They say, your son is alive. Your son's alive. Well, when did he get better? And they told him yesterday about this time.

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And the nobleman realizes that's just the time that Jesus told me my son would be better.

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And so he knew that it was Jesus who had healed him. Well, the thing about this account, there are several things about it that really strike me.

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The fact that Jesus could heal a specific person who is at the point of death, who was yet several miles away from where Jesus was, it tells me a lot about him.

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It highlights in the first place his compassion, that he would care and really be concerned and burdened over the burden that this father is carrying when he comes to Jesus with his weighed -down heart.

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He's compassionate. But it also shows us his power, doesn't it? His power that he could actually do something about it.

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You know, just what was it now, a week and a half ago now, there were 13 of our

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American service members who were killed in Afghanistan by that suicide bomber.

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And I'm sure many of us felt a great deal of compassion for the loss of life for the parents of those young people, really.

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I think almost most of them were about 20 years of age. I heard about three or four different accounts of the parents and how they responded in just utter heartbrokenness, as you can well imagine.

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And my heart went out to them. But you know what? There wasn't a thing in the world

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I could do. Not a thing. I had no power to do anything for the sake of those parents.

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But Jesus had not only the compassion to care, but he had the power to do something about it.

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And yet, it's another thing to have compassion and power, but not have the authority to do something about it.

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I again, you know, I hate to keep going back to this thing in Afghanistan. It's still so fresh in our minds.

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But I think about the power that we had available to us as a nation, as a military.

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What we could have done, but those in charge over there were not given the authority to do the things that we actually had the power to do.

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Things that could have saved lives. Well, Jesus was compassionate, powerful, and authoritative.

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He actually had the power and the authority to use that power. That's what, that's why he could say, go in peace, your son is well.

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And then, what also strikes me here is his infinite knowledge. Here's a man whom

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Jesus had never met, from a place in Capernaum where Jesus had never been.

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Well, Jesus had been Capernaum before, but never to this man's house. He had, he had no,

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I mean, from humanly speaking, no idea who this man's son was.

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And yet, here we see evidence of his infinite knowledge, that Jesus could, that Jesus, on the base of his compassion and his authority, could target his power, direct his power to a specific individual whom he could not see with his physical eyes, and who was 18 miles away.

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And that power healed that young man immediately.

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That is incredible. What infinite knowledge, what power, what authority, what compassion our

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Savior has. And I don't say he had, I say he has.

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You and I can't see him today, and yet he sees us. He feels our pain, he has the power to do something about it, and he has the authority as well.

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And that which fits into his plan and purpose for our life, that is what he will do.

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What a, what a wonderful Savior is Jesus, my Lord.

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We thank you, Father, for our Savior, who is not only compassionate, but he is all -powerful, he is all -knowing, and he has the sovereign authority to employ that knowledge and that power to accomplish his purposes for our good and for your glory.

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We thank you for him, and we pray we would trust him more day by day.

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We ask it in Jesus' name and for his sake. Amen. All right, well have a wonderful rest of your

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Friday and weekend. Of course in a couple days we'll gather together as God's people in the

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Lord's house and worship him. And I trust as we learned was yesterday that we worship him in spirit and in truth, and look forward to that.