Friday, October 12, 2018

2018.10.12 Hopewell @Home ▫ John 4:43-54

Questions for Littles: How many days did Jesus stay with the Samaritans who were believing in Him (v43)? Where did He go after that? What had Jesus Himself testified (v44)? But what does v45 say the Galileans did? What had they seen? To where did Jesus come again in v46? What had He done there before? What kind of man did He meet there? What had happened to the nobleman’s son? Where was the son? What did the nobleman ask Jesus to do in v47? What did Jesus say to him in v48? But what did the nobleman say was about to happen to his son (v49)? What did Jesus tell the man in v50? And what did the man believe? What did the man’s servants come tell him in v51? At what moment had the son been healed? Who believed in Jesus as a result of this? What does v54 call Jesus’s healing of the nobleman’s son?
In the Gospel reading this week, we were reminded that Jesus’s miracles were not just to make people feel better or live longer before they died. Jesus’s miracles were signs. They announced who He is.

Yes, there is healing love here for a desperate father and a sick son. But there is something more. There is saving love for a household of sinners.

We must never think that Jesus is being rude, when He says things like, “Unless y’all see signs and wonders, you will by no means believe.” Our Lord is perfectly full of the fruit of the Holy Spirit, including gentleness and kindness.

The fact of the matter is that it’s true. We are a hard-hearted people. But did you notice that the nobleman believed before his son had been healed? What was it that caused the man to believe?
It was “the word that Jesus spoke to Him.”

Jesus Himself—His incarnation and death and resurrection—is the greatest sign and wonder. And we and our whole households should believe in Him because of it. And we have that same glorious thing that the Lord used to bring the nobleman to faith: the word that Jesus speaks to us.
Where do we find Jesus’s Word? When, especially, does He speak it to us?
Suggested songs: ARP1 “How Blessed the Man” or TPH172 “Speak, O Lord”

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