“The Bible’s Children: a nobleman’s son”
John 4:49
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus.
It was October 21, 1975, and the Boston Red Sox were trailing the Cincinnati Reds by three runs in the eighth inning. It was Game 6 of the World Series and they needed a win to stay alive. And though another player, Roger Moret, was scheduled to bat, team coach and manager, Darrell Johnson, sent Bernie Carbo in instead.
Which was a big mistake.
You see, though no one knew it, Carbo was high on drugs. Years later, in an interview in April of 2010, he admitted it. He said, “I probably smoked two joints, drank about three or four beers, got to the ballpark, took some amphetamines, took a pain pill, drank a cup of coffee, chewed some tobacco, had a cigarette, and got up to the plate.” And he said, “I played every game high. I was addicted to anything you could possibly be addicted to. I played the outfield sometimes where it looked like the stars were falling from the sky.”
And though he somehow managed to hit a clutch home run helping to win the game, it was, for all practical purposes, the end of his career.
In the days that followed, both his father and mother died, his wife divorced him, and he was spending $32,000 a month on cocaine. And after losing all hope and feeling completely worthless, he sat at home, ready to take his own life.
But that’s when a friend named Dalton Jones came and said, “You need Jesus.”
And wonder of wonders, he did come to Jesus. In 1994, after suffering yet one more relapse and plunging into deep guilt and despair, he met Tammy, the woman who would become his wife. He said, “She reminded me about Jesus and the atonement for sins through His death on the cross. And I believed once more that His blood was sufficient to cover all my transgressions and that we can depend on Him for the grace we need to overcome the strongholds of addiction or any other habitual sin.”
And now after being married for close to thirty years, he said, “Not only does Jesus Christ offer the way out, but He also offers the way into a life more joyful and abundant than anyone can imagine. Truly, our God is an awesome God.”
If you want to know more, you can read about him in his book called Saving Bernie Carbo.
And in the book of John chapter 4, we meet a man who was very much like that. I’ll start at verse 46: “So He, (that’s Jesus), 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” (John 4:46-47).
As all of us know all too well, sickness and death have no respect for either age or person. They strike the young and the old, the rich and the poor, and everyone in between.
And neither do I have to tell you that it’s every parent’s worst nightmare, knowing that somehow, someday, in an accident or by an illness, our children could be taken from us. No parent should ever have to bury their child.
But it happens. In fact, the very first recorded death in the Bible wasn’t a father; it was a son--when Cain killed Abel.
And when your child is sick, you don’t care about odds, percentages, or anything else. You just want to know one thing--is my child going to be okay? And you’ll do absolutely anything you can to make sure your child is okay.
As someone once put it: “You’re only as happy as your least happy child.”
So it was for this man in our text.
I’ll read the first verse once more: “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” (John 4:46).
By this time, Jesus had become known throughout Galilee. Just as soon as He changed water into wine, word about Him spread even to a small fishing village on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee, population 1,500, a little town called Capernaum. And there, the Bible says, was an official whose son was sick.
Let’s look at that word “official” for a moment. “There was an official,” the Bible said.
While the English Standard Version translates it as “official” and the King James Version says “nobleman,” literally the word means “king’s officer” or “royal official” or “man of the king.” And since the man lived in Capernaum, it’s most likely he served in the court of King Herod Antipas, the Tetrarch of Galilee and Perea, son of Herod the Great.
And since the man served in the king’s court, it’s easy to say that he was rich, powerful, and influential. He was in the upper crust, a power broker, a man others feared and respected, a man accustomed to giving orders and having them carried out.
You see, in his world, he answered only to the king and the king answered only to Caesar. So if there was anything he wanted done, it was done for him. If he had any kind of request, all he had to do was to ask for it and his will would be done. People came to him from far and wide to have their problems solved.
But now, all of a sudden, he had a problem that couldn’t be solved--his son was sick.
Can we stop there for just a moment? Not only do every one of us have troubles, even the rich and powerful have troubles too. In fact, no matter how much money you have, you could never reach a place where you don’t have any troubles. Behind every smiling face is a story of sadness, heartache, and heartbreak.
Now we don’t know all the details of his son’s sickness. The Bible doesn’t say. All we know is that the boy wasn’t just sick. He was so sick, he was about to die. And this man who could normally do so much, suddenly could do nothing to help his son. So the only thing left to do was to watch and wait and pray.
Sound familiar? How often it seems that, when things are going well, we forget about God. But when life tumbles in around us, we suddenly start looking to heaven for help.
In the words of pastor and author A. W. Pink, “It is well when trouble leads a man to God, instead of away from God. Affliction is one of God’s medicines.” To put it another way, just as there are no atheists in a foxhole, there are no atheists in an emergency room either.
So now that this royal official, this “man of the king,” had no one else to turn to and nowhere else to go, what would he say and what would he do?
And that’s when, out of the blue, he heard about a Man who not only could turn water into wine, but had the power to heal the sick. So he wondered, hope against hope, was there something, anything, that He could possibly do to save his son? Instantly, he decided to go see Him.
His plan was simple. He would meet Jesus face to face, explain his son’s sickness, and then ask Him, (beg Him if he had to), to come all the way back to Capernaum so He could heal his son. He was, after all, a man of action, of decision, of courage in the face of uncertainty. And if there was any chance that this Man called Jesus could somehow help his son, he wouldn’t simply send a servant. Instead, laying aside all power, rank, and authority, in complete humility, he would go to see Jesus himself.
And as he traveled those long dusty roads all the way from Capernaum to Cana, a full twenty-two miles away, he rehearsed over and over again just what he would say--short, simple, bare bones, matter of fact. “Jesus, my child is dying! So would You please come, before it’s too late, and heal my son?”
And what did Jesus say? He said in verse 48: “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.”
Which, if you don’t mind me saying, is pretty strange! I mean, the man asks, literally begs, for healing, and Jesus says, “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.”
So what’s the deal?
Apparently, Jesus wasn’t speaking to the man. He was speaking to everyone else.
You see, this Jesus, this “miracle Man” had just changed water into wine. So, at least they thought, if He can do that, I wonder what else can He do? And going along for the ride, much like a carnival show, they said, “Hurry! Hurry! Gather ‘round! We believe in You, Jesus, but please, if You don’t mind, let’s see some more miracles just so we can be absolutely, positively sure!”
And what did Jesus say? What did He do? He said in verse 50: “Go, your son lives.”
And that was it! With a power and authority like no other, even from twenty-two miles away, Jesus said, “Your son lives.” And guess what? He lived!
The story is told of a man who was sitting on the banks of a river when he happened to notice a very small little fish that looked very worried and upset.
The man asked the fish, “What, little fish, are you so worried about?”
The fish replied, “Don’t you know? I have become so very thirsty. And I’m worried that, as thirsty as I am, if I drink my fill, I might drain the river dry!”
So the man tried to explain to that very little fish just how big the river really was. But try as hard as he might, he just couldn’t get the fish to understand that there was no possible way he could ever, ever drink the river dry. There was just far too much water and he was just a small, little fish.
Later that night, as the man knelt beside his bed in prayer, he prayed, “O Lord, I have so many problems and I’m afraid to ask for Your help in all these many problems. And though I believe that You will help in some, I can’t believe that You would help in so many.”
But that’s when the man remembered that little fish that thought he could drink the river dry. And that’s when he realized that there was no possible way he could ever ask too much of God or that His grace and mercy might ever run dry.
So what can we do? Just like that royal official, that “man of the king,” we too need to come to Jesus. And there we’ll find unending grace and an unending supply. Never, ever could we drink His river dry.
So what does all this mean to teach us? I’ll leave you with two things. The first is this--if you think about it, there were two miracles that day. The first was the healing of the son, and the second was the healing in the heart of the nobleman, for though he had nothing else to go on but the words of Jesus: “Go, your son lives,” he believed.
And sometimes, we too have nothing but the words of Jesus. And the question is, will you too, just like that nobleman, believe?
And the second is this--whether we realize it or not, God has a plan. Even in the midst of our circumstances, no matter how desperate they might seem to be, it’s then that we discover that Jesus is as good as His Word. And only later, as we look back on it all, can we, by the grace of God, say, “If it had not been for the Lord, I wouldn’t have made it all.”
As Paul once wrote to the Romans: “And so we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. And not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering helps us to endure. And endurance builds character, which gives us a hope that will never disappoint us. And all of this happens because God has given us His Holy Spirit, who fills our hearts with His love” (Romans 5:3-5).
As You moved, dear Father, in the heart of a nobleman and his family, so move among us today. Strengthen our faith that we might find in You both our peace and our hope, for the sake of Jesus. Amen