The Nobleman’s Son (John 4:43–54) — A Sermon by R.C. Sproul

0:01 For those of you who are too cold and those of you who are too warm, hear now the Word of God. We're reading again from the gospel according to St. John, and this morning we're looking at the fourth chapter, beginning at verse 43 and reading through the end of the chapter at verse 54. John chapter 4, verses 43 to verse 54. Now after the two days He departed from there and went to Galilee. For Jesus Himself testified that a prophet has no honor in his own country. And so when He came to Galilee, the Galileans received Him, having seen all of the things He did at Jerusalem at the feast, for they also had gone to the feast. And so Jesus came again to Cana of Galilee where He had made the water wine, and there There was a certain nobleman whose son was sick at Capernaum, and when he had heard that Jesus had come out of Judea into Galilee, he went to him and implored him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death.

1:22 And then Jesus said to him, unless you people see signs and wonders, you will by no means believe. And the normal man said to him, Sir, come down before my child dies. And Jesus said to him, Go your way, your son lives. And so the man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him, and he went his way. And as he was now going down, his servants met him and told him, saying, Your son lives. And then He inquired of them the hour when He got better. They said to Him, Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left Him. And so the Father knew that it was the same hour in which Jesus said to Him, Your Son lives.

2:16 And He Himself believed, and His whole household. This again is the second sign Jesus did when He had come out of Judea into Galilee. He who has ears to hear the Word of God, let them hear. Let us pray. Our Father and our God, impress upon our minds and upon our souls the significance of this narrative that reveals to us the power and the compassion of our Lord Jesus Christ. Help us to see past the works to the person who did them, that our faith indeed may rest in Him.

3:10 We ask it in His name. Amen. A couple of years ago, I mentioned to you an experience I had in seminary with a friend of mine who was a classmate who had graduated from MIT and was MIT's valedictorian, and he was the most brilliant young man I had ever met with an IQ that measured over 180. He had come to a seminary embracing Orthodox Christianity, but being deluged by higher criticism, he lost his confidence in the trustworthiness of the Bible. And as we were talking together during our senior year, I was talking to him about this and I told him that I still was persuaded in the divine inspiration of sacred Scripture. And he said to me, R.C., how can you do that when the Bible is filled with contradictions?

4:13 And I said to him, I said, maybe I'm blind, but I haven't noticed that the Bible's filled with contradictions. He says, well, they're all over the place. And I said, well, let me ask you to do me a favor. And I looked at my watch, it was like 1 o'clock in the afternoon, and he said, what's that? I said, well, it's 1 o'clock now. How about let's meet back here tomorrow at 1 o'clock, and you give me a list of 50 contradictions that you find in Scripture. And with all the criticisms you've heard around here in the last three years, and your statement that the Bible, which is a big book, is filled with them, it shouldn't be a difficult task to come up with 50. And so he agreed to the challenge. The next day he showed up at 1 o'clock to the place where we had stood the day before, bleary-eyed, unkempt, confessed that he had been up all night, not only searching himself the Scriptures to list these contradictions, but he enlisted the help of other skeptics in this task.

5:20 And as hard as they searched, they could only come up with 30 of them. And I said, that's fine. I said, 30 is enough to persuade me that it's not the inspired Word of God, so let's look at them. And one by one, we examined together these alleged contradictions in sacred Scripture. And he, having been a student of philosophy, was aware of the laws of logic, the laws of immediate inference, Venn diagrams, and that sort of thing, and we subjected all of these difficult discrepancies of passages in the Scripture to the tests to see whether they had in fact violated the law of contradiction. And not simply to my satisfaction, but to His, we're able to resolve every single one of these alleged contradictions. And when we were all done, He said, well, see, the Bible's filled with contradictions.

6:19 I said, what's 30 times zero? When I went to school, 30… He said, but look at all of the gymnastics that you had to go through to prove that they technically did not violate the law of contradiction. I said, that's right, so that we could exonerate God's Word from the slander that it's filled with contradictions. That's what we've had to do. The fact that there are tensions and discrepancies and difficult-to-harmonize passages in a book that thick, even if we had it delivered from a parachute from heaven, that shouldn't surprise anybody. But the fact that there are actual contradictions, that's a serious charge. And so we parted, friends, on the issue at that point. But I mention that for this reason. In verse 43 of the text, we have another one of these passages in the New Testament that the critics jump all over to indicate that the Scripture is filled with contradiction. Let me point it out to you.

7:18 Verse 43, where we began today, said, Now after two days he departed from there and went to Galilee. For Jesus Himself testified that a prophet has no honor in his own country. Now John inserts here the testimony of Jesus, quoting the ancient proverb, a prophet is never without honor in his own country. And then in the very next sentence, John says, so when He came to Galilee, the Galileans received Him. In fact, the force of the text here is the Galileans welcomed Him. Now wait a minute. We just read that the prophet's not without honor except in His own country. Jesus comes to His own country. He's come from Judea.

8:11 He went to Samaria. Samaria certainly wasn't his own country. Now he goes back to his hometown. He goes back to his homeland, and he receives this enormously warm welcome, according to John. And so the critics look at that and say, see, the Bible says the prophet's not without honor except in his own country. He comes to His own country, and He receives all this honor. What do you do with that? Well, you ought to see the gymnastics that scholars go through to reconcile those two lines. But before I try to join the gym, let me say first of all, it would be surprising to me if John contradicted himself. That's bad enough. to do it one sentence after the next one and be involved in a blatant contradiction, how stupid would he have to be?

9:11 He wouldn't need, never mind the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. If he had no inspiration, it would still be incredibly stupid to contradict himself in two statements in a row. So before I leap to the conclusion that the apostle is falling into a contradiction here, Let's see if there are any other alternatives. Well, many scholars believe that what John the writer is saying here is that the reason why Jesus went to Galilee was because He had gotten into trouble and had encountered serious hostility from the officials in Jerusalem. And so he was leaving his home country, Judea, to escape the hostility of the people there because they weren't honoring him.

10:03 And he was going to a place that was more conducive to his public ministry, namely Galilee. And they say, after all, Jesus was born in Bethlehem, and Bethlehem is in Judea. And so there's no contradiction whatsoever, and many scholars take that position. The only problem with that is that in John's gospel and everywhere else in the New Testament, even though Jesus was born in Bethlehem, the Scriptures speak of His place of origin primarily in terms of Nazareth. That's where He grew up. That was where He was known. That was His home. And so, you know, it's a little bit iffy here to get away from this saying that He's going there because He has no honor in Jerusalem, so He's going to Galilee, which is really where He grew up. And then that's where the conflict is. If this is His homeland, And they say that the prophets never without honor except in his home country.

11:09 And the next statement is, and the people came out to welcome Him. Well, if we take the position that the term for homeland refers to Galilee and not to Judea, then we have to reconcile and resolve this tension. You may not be interested in this kind of detail, I don't know. This is the kind of stuff I love to dig into, you know, and so bear with me for a minute. But there's something here that is important for us to understand not only this text, but everything that comes afterwards in the Gospel of John. We don't know in what sense or nuance John writes the words here, quoting Jesus' statement about a prophet not being without honor except in his own country. Like I've said to you before, we don't have the advantage of listening to the tone of voice that people use when they speak in the Bible or to see their facial expressions or their gestures.

12:10 do we get the editorial comment that will say, well, Jesus spoke in a loud voice and so. So sometimes we see in the text statements that if you read them in their bare content, mean one thing, but if you understand that they're said in irony or sarcastically, then they yield a completely different significance. And just for the sake of argument, Let's suppose that Galilee is the homeland. And then when Jesus comes there, John says the people came out and they received Him or welcomed Him. Suppose that statement is made sarcastically, because if you see the thrust of the narrative that we're reading and what follows afterwards, that is an ongoing problem in Jesus' ministry, especially in Galilee, that people, yes indeed, they welcome Him for a moment when they are looking for signs and wonders.

13:19 they welcome him for his miracles. But there is no honor given to Him as the Messiah in stark contrast to what we've just studied that took place in Samaria, that after the Samaritan woman discovered that Christ was the Messiah and she went and told the people of the village, and they all came out and they embraced Him as the Messiah. It hadn't happened in Galilee, and it certainly hadn't happened in Jerusalem either. And so we have this record of people like the noblemen who come out seeking Jesus for His power and for His gifts. And let me stop right here for just a second. This is not an isolated incident that took place two thousand years ago in Galilee. It happens all over the place in our own day where people come rushing to hear the gospel, quote, for what they can get out of it.

14:32 They'll come to Jesus for a blessing. I've talked to people who have gone to faith healers who have no more desire to learn the things of God than the man and the moon, but they'll say, look, when you have a disease that's chronic or incurable, you'll try anything. And there were people in Jesus' day who were desperate with their afflictions, and the word got around that He was a healer, that He was a miracle maker. And these people unabashedly sought Him out. They pursued Him for the benefit they could derive from Him without any sense of repenting of their sins, without any sense of receiving Him as Lord, without any purpose of receiving Him as the Messiah or as the Savior.

15:30 And John shows us this time and again throughout his record of the ministry of Jesus. So let's look what happens here with the nobleman and his son. So Jesus came again to Cana of Galilee where He had made the water wine. Now remember, that created a stir, His first sign that He had done at Cana. Now that reputation gets around the community. And there was a certain nobleman whose son in the same region was sick at Capernaum. and when he heard that Jesus had come out of Judea into Galilee he went to him and implored him to come down and heal his son for he was at the point of death. Do you have to be a Christian? to want to beg somebody to heal your child if your child is dying.

16:34 Most of us would go to a fortune teller if we thought it would do some good if our child was dying. And here we have a nobleman, a man of wealth, a man of status, who obviously had at his fingertips all of the ability to bring the best physicians to bear on his son's serious illness, an illness that apparently was unto death, and nothing availed. And He was desperate. And he heard about the miracle at the wedding feast of Canaan. He probably didn't believe it unless maybe he was there. But now he has a need, a need that is so pressing that it's consuming in his life, and he's heard of Jesus by his reputation, and he goes to Him, and the Scripture uses strong language here, he implored Him, please come with me.

17:38 He's thinking, maybe if I can get this miracle worker to come to my house, he can save the life of my son, and so he begs him to go home with them. You notice that Jesus refuses the request. That wasn't very politically correct. You would think if Jesus really cared, and if Jesus really had compassion, and He sees this man who is in absolute agony about the life of His Son, that Jesus would say, come on, I'll go along with you. I'll go home and see what I can do. If I can help, I'll help.

18:25 I think Jesus recognized clearly that this man came to Jesus out of this earthly need, which had nothing to do with a desire for salvation. And so Jesus said to him, unless you people see signs and wonders, you will by no means believe. Is that a stern rebuke from our Lord? You won't believe by any means whatsoever unless you see the miracles. Unless you see the signs and wonders, you will not believe. This is the Jesus who later on would rebuke those who were walking on the way to Emmaus who were in skepticism and in despair after His death in Jerusalem, and He said, O foolish slow of heart to believe, have you not read the prophets?" And then beginning with the Old Testament, Jesus went through the Scriptures and showed them that had they believed the Scriptures, they wouldn't have needed the resurrection to attest His truth. But we're like those people. We have calluses on our heart. It's like we've all been born in Missouri, and we're not going to believe or trust our souls to Christ unless we see with our eyes and hear with our ears and see Him do His stuff.

20:06 And there's a lot of that in the world today. And so Jesus is not very complimentary when this man is beside himself, and Jesus takes this opportunity to rebuke him and all of his friends. Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will by no means believe. Now the nobleman doesn't waste any time arguing the point with Jesus. Listen to what He says, sir, come down before my son dies. Now, I don't want to get involved in any discussion here about theology.