Gooding, David: 3 - Knowledge of the Living Lord

That he would heal his son. That is the story that concludes chapter four and therefore stands at the end of the first journey that our Lord made to Jerusalem and to back again to Galilee. We notice that this story was in two parts. Christ heals the nobleman's son without visible signs and wonders, ending with the remark, the man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him, and he went his way. Then there comes a second part of the story. The nobleman eventually sees the evidence that Christ's word was true, and it ends with the remark, so the father knew it was at the hour in which Jesus said to him, your son lives, and he himself believed in his whole house. Now, this also is one of the miraculous signs that our Lord did, and our chief occupation in this session will be to consider the signs in the Gospel of John. But, uh, we for the moment start with this one to complete certain things left over from our first study. This is a sign, therefore, and a sign that, as we investigate it, will indicate to us who Jesus Christ is. You'll see the gospel is written that we might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. Or, if you follow Professor Carson, the other way round, that we might believe that the Christ, the Son of God, is Jesus. But suppose I come, you come to me and you, uh, undertake to prove to me that Jesus is the Christ. I might reply to you, but what do you mean by the Christ? If you come, for instance, to me and say, I can prove to you that Master Grab It All is the best actuary in Nottingham, do you see? I used to say, but half a minute, it's no good your trying to prove to me that he's the best actuary in Nottingham. Don't know what an actuary is anyway, do you see? So you have to set about telling me what an actuary is before you can prove to me that this mister, what did you say his name was, Grabitall or something, uh, is the best of the bunch, do you see? We undertake, therefore, to demonstrate and supply evidence that Jesus is the Christ. Somewhere along the line we shall have to indicate what is meant by the term Christ. And so these signs in the Gospel of John do begin to show us not only that Jesus is the Christ, but what does the Christ mean, you'll see. And here in this story we shall find Christ revealing himself as the Lord of space and time. The story was simply this, that when our Lord got back to Galilee, there was this royal official. His son had taken ill earlier, and the man had tried all he knew how to get him cured, but the boy was seeking towards what appeared to be his end, and the man was getting frantic. He obviously had heard of Jesus, and had heard that Jesus had the power to cure. Of that he didn't need to be convinced, apparently. He already believed that. The trouble was that Jesus was way off down in Jerusalem, and he couldn't get at him, there being no telephones at the time. You'll say, then he heard wonderful news that, uh, Jesus had come back, uh, to Galilee, hadn't come back to Capernaum where the man lived. He was in Cana, some considerable way off. But here, said the man to himself, there's hope here. I could go and ask Jesus to come and lay his hands on my boy and heal him, do you see? So off he set. That must have been a terrible wrench to a father whose child was now at the very gates of death. To turn his back on the child, on the home, and take this journey from Capernaum at the north of the lake, all down the lakeside, and uh, then up the hills, uh, and across to Cana. He did it with all his might and main to get there. Time was of the essence. And he came, says the actual story, you'll see. Uh, he came down and besought him that he would come, that is Jesus would come, that is come all the way from Cana down to the lake, up the lakeside or across the lake, and to the north of the lake, back to Capernaum. He would come and, uh, heal his son, for he was at the point of death. Our Lord replied, this is verse forty eight, except you, and the word is plural, unless you, all you folks around here, see signs and wonders, you will not believe. The man, in effect, replied, Sir, come down ere my child die. Look here, said the father, don't stop there talking theology. My son is desperately ill. Come down, we haven't a minute to lose. You can talk about the theology later on. Do you see? Except you see signs and wonders, you won't. Our Lord said, you've misunderstood me, my man. Your boy is healed. Healed, he said. Healed? Well, yes, you just asked me to, didn't you? Come and heal your boy. Well, I have healed him. Healed him. Yes, and said Christ, the point of my remark was this. You see, trouble with you folks around here, you won't believe unless you see signs and wonders. Your boy is healed. You can't see it, can you, old fellow, because he's way there a- across there, Capernaum. You can't see he's healed. And that was what I was saying. Unless you see signs and wonders, you're not prepared to believe. And if you're not prepared to believe now, you're going to have an uncomfortable hour or two. Because you can't see it. You say, Lord, let me have a word with you, Lord. You know, you're putting this man in a very difficult position, aren't you now? You see, you say he's healed. Well, bless Lord, we believe he's healed, you say so, but the man can't see it. Why can't you give him a little evidence that the your word is true? I mean, do a miracle or two in front of his eyes. But what would that prove? Simply that our Lord could do miracles. The man believed that already. He wouldn't have come to ask for his son to be healed unless he first believed that our Lord could do miracles, and doing just another one wouldn't prove that our Lord had healed his boy. So the whole question now of evidence arises. But notice at what level. The man knew that our Lord could do miracles. He believed that. If he hadn't come to see that our Lord was the Christ and the Son of God yet, yet he believed he could do miracles. But that's why he came. Now this was a different thing. Not to believe that Jesus could do miracles, but that Jesus had healed his boy. What evidence? There's a position of everyone who comes to Christ, actually, isn't it? You're convinced that Jesus is the Son of God, the Christ, and can give you salvation and eternal life, and you come and ask him for it. How do you know you've got it? Ooh, so I felt a big tingling in my toes. Well, yes, so you might. Thank God for that if you did. I- I- is that the necessary evidence or sufficient evidence? I feel a tingling in my toes, but it's arthritis. You see. I, I don't doubt that Jesus is the Son of God, uh, you see, but I've asked him to give me eternal life. How do I know I've got it? What is the evidence you'd look for? The Lord said to this man, your son is well. What's the evidence he's well? That is the point of this particular story, isn't it? And the man, as he faced Christ, and Christ said, look, you asked, and I tell you, I've saved your boy, your boy is well. The man was now faced with a big decision to make. Did he believe Christ? If he did, he would now get up and go without any further evidence, and he would go in faith that the boy was healed simply because Christ had said so. Daring to take the naked word of Christ, that the miracle had been done. I think the human inclination would have been to still stay there. I think I would have had that tempting me to still stay there and get down on my knees and say, but oh Lord, please come. And the Lord would say, I have no need to. But must I trust your naked word? Yes. You say, it happens all along the line. I, I, you're going to heaven. I hope you believe you are. If you're a Christian, you are. How do you know there's a heaven? Have you seen it? Evidence have you got? By the word of Christ. And Christ will call upon you to journey through life, first and foremost, on the strength of his naked word. This is not a cop-out or a get-out. It is a fundamental to our personal relationship with God. The first trouble came when man was persuaded to doubt God's word and then disobeyed. An absolute fundamental condition for our true relationship to God is to be prepared to, uh, believe God just because God said so. And to say before Christ, even if you kneel when you say it, Lord, you say this, but that's not enough, Lord. I want some evidence from you that your word is true, is a little bit, um, unseemly, isn't it? If Jesus Christ is God incarnate, we are to believe him just because he said so. How important that is, how many people rightly have rested their souls for eternity on it. He who hears my word, believes on him that sent me, has everlasting life, shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death to life. So the man believed the word that the Lord spoke, and uh, I picture him going home, don't you? Halfway through the night, you know, when things get creepy crawly and our spirits are low, perhaps he was sleeping under a hedge, I don't know where, whether there were good enough hotels. And, uh, you know, the thought comes, well, I wonder if it's true, I wonder if it's true, and is the boy really healed, and, you know, all that. And all he would have to say, well, but Jesus said so. Jesus said so. I think he did really believe, didn't he, with all his heart, for he didn't get home till the next day. When he got home, he was met by the servants, and here's the second part of the story. And they said, your boy's well. And of course, the father was delighted. The boy was well. Here's the evidence. So yes, there was evidence. Christ is not saying we have to go through the whole of life without any evidence whatsoever. There will be evidence if Christ has given us life, eventually the life will show itself. There will be evidence. So there was for this man when he got home. But then the man being of the calculating kind, he wasn't sufficient to see the evidence in front of his eyes. There was the boy well, so Jesus was right after all. He said to himself, ah yes, but I- it'd be very interesting to know just exactly when was my boy healed. Mm-hmm. So he did a bit of asking of the servants, you see. He said, yes, that's marvelous. Now tell me, um, when exactly was my boy healed, you see? And they said, well, yes, about the seventh hour it was. The man began to count on his fingers. And he came to the conclusion it was when? When was it? He says when he believed the boy was, it doesn't say so. Well, when was he healed? Well, he knew that it was the hour that Jesus said your boy was healed. Do you know, up to that point, the Bible hasn't actually e- explicitly told us that the man believed. Has it? He just came to Christ and asked him to heal his son, and it doesn't say he believed yet. Our Lord said, our son liveth. Mm. And then the man believed. So tell me a thing about this, because I'm a practically minded man myself, you see. When was the boy actually healed? Was it when that Jesus said it, or was it when the man believed? I mean to say, did Jesus say to himself, I'm going to say your boy is well, but of course, whether he's well or not will depend on whether the man believes, you see. So I'm going to say your son is well, but I won't make him well. I shall say your son is well, uh, and then see whether he believes, and if he believes, I shall make him well, and if he doesn't believe, I shall say, well, no, that was a false move, that was, he isn't actually well at all. Which way around was it? Well, here's scripture telling you. When did it happen? When Jesus said it. You'll say the Bible doesn't explicitly say the man had believed before, but of course he had, hadn't he? The very fact he left home, having tried everything he could try, all medical recipes, all had failed. His last hope and his only hope was Christ, and turning his back on the home and the boy, he set out on the journey to seek Christ. That is what the theologians call repentance. Giving up hope in all else and coming to Christ as your sole hope, that is repentance. And he came to Christ in that frame of mind and asked him to come and heal his son, and the Lord healed him forthwith. And the Bible has it elsewhere on record, whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. And when he called, the Lord saved his boy. The question about evidence arose because it was at a distance. Therefore, it becomes important to know when was the boy actually healed? When the man saw the evidence? No. The boy was actually healed when our Lord spoke the word. In the course of my life, I've met many people, some of them a bit old in the tooth, like me. And in older years, even in middle life, the change of life and all that kind of thing, and the depressions that sometimes come with it and the, the doubts of life and the pains of life. People will say, but you know, can I be sure I'm saved? You say, well, when were you saved? Well, I, I, I made a profession when I was in the Christian Union, that's uh fifty years ago, thirty years ago, but was I really saved then? Did I believe the right way round? And how do I better start believing again or something? You perhaps never have met them. You are in the prime of youth and vigor and vitality. But some people go through that. When did I, when I saved, and did I believe well enough and powerful enough and the right kind of faith? And then they go through all kinds of antics trying to work up the right kind of faith so they can be sure they've believed and are saved. The answer is, it's not because you showed the right kind of faith. The answer is that you came in true repentance with Christ, your only hope, and you asked him to save you. And whosoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. You have his word for it, his naked word for it. We are to believe his word. And as we travel onward, we shall eventually see the evidence. Reminds me to say something about... Oh, shall we look at the first story? That was in two parts, wasn't it? Yes, you will remember, is the story of the first journey. And, uh, uh, we've come to the end of it, so we're now going to look back at the beginning, to the story of the cleansing of the temple, you see. We notice that that is in two parts. We notice the formal structure. The interesting thing is, if you will look at this second bit, it has to do with evidence, and it has to do with the question of delayed evidence, doesn't it? When our Lord cleansed the temple, the authorities came around and they said, what sign do you show that you do these things? And the sign, the evidence of his authority was given by Christ to the, to the, the temple people in these terms, destroy this temple, I will raise it again in three days. He was speaking not of Herod's temple, he was speaking of the temple of his body, of his death and resurrection. He was appealing, therefore, to the evidence of his resu- death and resurrection. That is, of course, the ground of all true Christian evidence. By definition, the evidence that he was offering them could not be instantaneous. It had to be delayed, didn't it? His resurrection wasn't going to happen for the next three years or so. Delayed evidence, therefore. And it is important that the- we see the point of the evidence. The evidence was delayed until the actual resurrection of Christ. That is important historically, as we shall find it in later studies. Jesus was God's last messenger. He is God's last. But the vindication that he is true, the utter evidence, the final evidence that he is true, is his resurrection from the dead and the coming of the Holy Spirit in the name of Jesus. So that the historical evidence of his resurrection could not have been available to the people at the beginning of his ministry. Our Lord cites it nonetheless, so that not only should the disciples remember that he had said it and they believed, the multitudes of others should know that he had made this claim. And now it was fulfilled when he rose from the dead. Historically delayed evidence, if you might put it that way. This man is delayed evidence as well. The evidence that his boy was healed, first the naked word of Christ, but the actual evidence in front of your eyes that the thing had taken place had to be delayed in the nature of things until the man got home. This is not a question of history, it's a question of experience. At what point in the man's experience did he see the evidence that the healing had taken place? With that, therefore, miracle, we now pass to the other signs in the gospel by John. Let's put the list of them just to remind ourselves of where they occur through the gospel. The gospel, as we noticed this morning, is a series of journeys, but the miracles are not equally distributed through all the journeys. Sometimes they cluster in one and a very few in others, you'll see. Here they are, the turning of water to wine, wedding in Cana of Galilee at the beginning of chapter two, verses one to eleven. Then the healing of the official's son at the end of chapter four that we have just considered. Then in the first verses of chapter five, the healing of the m- man a- at the, uh, pool, the paralytic healed. Then in, uh, chapter six, first the feeding of the five thousand. Then after that, the second miracle in chapter six, the walking on the sea. Then no miracle in seven and eight, but another miracle in nine, chapter nine, sight given to a man who had been born blind. Then again, uh, that's 9, no miracle in ten, but in eleven, the miracle of the raising of Lazarus out of the grave. And now, uh, to swim against a tide, excuse the metaphor in this context, uh, you'll see I've included the miracle in chapter twenty one. I personally believe that chapter twenty one is an integral part of the Gospel of John. I've hinted at some evidence already. But the reason why many people don't include this in the signs is this, that, uh, at chapter, uh, uh twenty, John says, now many other signs did Jesus in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book. These are written that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and believing have life in his name. And that comes, uh, in chapter twenty before chapter twenty one tells you of this further miracle. And therefore, the pundits will say that this miracle is not meant to be one of the collection of signs. If it were meant to be one of the collection of signs that generally mark these things are written, these signs are written that you might believe will come at the end of here instead of coming here. And my reply to that is, that's a very interesting argument indeed, but it's not necessarily correct. Uh, for this reason, you'll see, that the first lot of miracles are written, it explicitly says, that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and believing that, proceed to the next step and have life. It's written, therefore, for people that don't get have life. Peace be to all those that say to the contrary. Eh, you'll see. But, uh, it's written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and believing, have life. This miracle was done to a bunch of believers. They didn't need convincing that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God, that they believed already. It's a miracle nonetheless, and included for different reasons. These then are the miracles, and I want to turn first to talk a little bit about the nature of the evidence they give. What are these miracles? They were historical events. They were actual miracles. That I am not d- uh, uh, uh, denying or minimizing. I wish I had the time to discuss all the scientific questions that they met- that may rise- raise in your minds. I must content myself to give my personal belief they were actual historical miracles. They were more than that, however. Being miracles, they of power, they were also signs, as John indicates. They were, in a way of being, uh, parables as well as miracles, enacted parables. And that you see, if you remember the one in chapter six that we talked about in our first seminar, when our Lord fed the people with bread, multiplying loaves and fishes, he then proceeded to talk to them about himself as the bread of life. Now that is very important. That shows you how our Lord would, when occasion called for it, interpret his own miracle. The miracle was at the first place then a miracle to call attention to his, uh, uh, more than human powers. He could feed the crowd with physical bread. But the miracle was meant to lead on to something deeper. And you see that by the s- what the story tells you in chapter six. Uh, our Lord, after the miracle, crossed the sea, and his disciples likewise. Then in chapter six and verse twenty four onwards, the crowd came seeking Jesus, and he said to them in verse twenty six, you seek me not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled. Now notice that remark. That's chapter six and verse 26. You didn't see signs. You ate of the bread and were filled. What does our Lord mean? They had seen the miracle, hadn't they? They had eaten the fe- fish and the bread, and they knew it was a miracle because now they've come seeking for more. But that's precisely the point, says Christ. You come seeking for more. More what? Well, more bread, another free breakfast, another free lunch, more fish, more bread. Well, then you haven't seen the signs, said Christ. You may have seen them physical miracle and felt your stomach filled, but what you failed to see is the sign, that is, the significance of the miracle. For the significance of the miracle was not the physical thing, it was a sign to point to Christ as the bread of life. How dumb and stupid they were, you say. To see the miracle, to profit from it, to find the satisfaction of the fish and the bread, and not even to stop and ask that hand that performed the miracle. Who was he that that hand belonged to? What kind of a person was he? The miracle, in another words, was meant to lead to the person and discover him as the bread of life. To see the miracle without coming to see what it was pointing to is useless. And there lies an answer to some of our critics. If Jesus had the power to feed the hungry, he, they say, there's plenty of hungry in the world in those days. Why didn't he drop all this preaching stuff and go around the world and feed the poor and hungry with his miraculous powers? Wouldn't that have been better Christianity? They say the same to us, don't they? All your preaching, why don't you stop your preaching and get on with feeding the poor and hungry? Are there not millions starving? If you were truly Christian, you'd drop the preaching. Isn't that what they say? They say it to me anyway. And the answer to it? Well, Christ certainly had the power. But then you'll say these men weren't starving among the point of death. They'd enjoyed the physical miracle, but were prepared to come no further to find the one who stood behind the miracle. They were not interested in a personal relationship with him. We use an analogy. Suppose, madam, one of these days, for some unknown reason, you invite me to dinner, you'll see, and I come to dinner, and of course you sit me down at the side of honor beside you. There you are at your head of the table, you'll see, and we start the dinner, you'll see? The hors d'oeuvre and soup and whatnot. And to get things going, uh, you say, uh, you know, it's been a beautiful day today. What have you been doing today? Don't take any notice of you, madam. Keep labeling the soup into the jaws. This is an odd creature, this. So somewhere about the middle of the meat course, you say, um, another attempt, um, where did you go on holiday this year? And I keep nibbling away at the, uh, the joint, you'll see, of lamb. Take no notice of you. So it's decidedly odd. Um, comes about the, uh, uh, the the sweet, you'll see. You make one last attempt to develop some conversation. Have you read any decent books recently? And I lift up my head from your beautiful crème brûlée, you see, and I, I, I say, look here, madam, I'd like you to know something. I think your cooking is delightful, magnificent, called en bleu and beyond it. And the aesthetics of the way you set out the table are absolutely magnificent, the color scheme glorious, and even the broccoli green matches the preppers red, you say, they're marvelous. I, I, I get that, you see. And that Rembrandt on the wall, oh, it's delightful, it sends me into raptures. I, I, I, I enjoy these things immensely. I want you to know, madam, but as for you, I'm not interested in you. I'm just interested in this food. What would you do, madam? Reach for the ejector button, I think. What a tragedy when the host is God himself. And we take his gifts, be they physical or aesthetic. And we have no interest in God. The old word comes to us from Deuteronomy, doesn't it? Man shall not live by bread alone. That's not meant to be a restrictive of man's joy. That's meant to be an enlargement of it. Life is more than bread, and life is more than music, and life is more than intellect. These are all God's wonderful gifts, but behind them stands the Lord himself. And to be interested in the gift, because they satisfy us bodily or mentally or whatever way, and not interested in the giver. That is the ultimate disaster. That is to miss the most important dimension of life here, in this world, let alone the dimension of life in the world to come. Hence the signs, to call to men at the physical level that here is their creator incarnate, Lord of nature, Lord of space and time, Lord of the lovely things that satisfy us physically, emotionally, aesthetically, intellectually. But here's the Lord doing the miracle to call our attention to himself and hoping that the miracle will point us, the sign will point us to the person. And if we reject the person, but a few more breadcrumbs are not going to solve the problem or save us from an eternity of utter desolation. Signs then point to the person. Somebody says to us, well, there are all these signs, you'll see, but um, how do you expect me to believe them? I wasn't there, you weren't there. You're dependent on somebody, what was his name? Oh, John, you say. Well, I mean, who's going to believe him just because he's in the Bible? I mean, how do we know the signs took place and the miracles took place? We weren't there. Oh. Well, there's another way of coming at the evidence, isn't there? Simply because, again, the signs, though physical miracles, were also an act of parables. So let's take the first of them. It is the story of the, uh, the, uh, of the wedding at Cana of Galilee. It comes in chapter two, verses one to eleven. And our Lord was called to this marriage, and his mother and his disciples, they were invited. Uh, this was a first century Palestinian wedding, and they lasted for a week or so, you'll see, and the bridegroom responsible to provide all the stuff, and in particular the wine that was there for to promote the joy and express the joy of the occasion. And the story says that partway through the wedding, the wine ran out, and our Lord miraculously supplied new and, in fact, better wine. That's the physical miracle. It's a parable, of course, isn't it? You say you can't believe the physical miracle because you weren't there. Well, would you care to listen to the parable? For this, the story, the miracle says that at the physical wedding, the actual wedding, the wine ran out. Mm. But the story is saying at the second level that in many marriages and weddings, in spite of their early joy, the wine runs out still. Is that true? How many ma- weddings, marriages in this last year in Britain have ended in divorce? And how many marriages have been kept on, but they are wearisome, wearisome days and years, and the joy is long since run out. Is that true? It's all too painfully and unavoidably true, isn't it? And not only out of weddings, but all sorts of other relations, parents and children, and employers and employees. And government and people. Why on earth they talk about the first days of a government as a honeymoon, I've yet to find out. But, uh, even honeymoons with prime ministers end, don't they? It's true, isn't it? Then the parable has something else to say. How did our Lord perform the miracle? Interesting, he could have said the word, wine be, and all the classes surged out with red wine. Dramatic. He didn't do it that way. But why did he do it the way he did? We're told that there were these huge jars capable of containing gallons of water, and they were there after the manner of the purifying, uh, of the Jews, you see. Because in those far off days, people were concerned, being good Jews, with purification, ritual purification, not only actual and physical, but ritual purification, and had all kinds of ceremonies of washing hands and feet and things according to their religious ideas. And you know, we may not have those particular ceremonies, but when it comes to weddings, it's curious how people's thoughts turn to purity, don't they? Well, they used to. They used to, and it was very important in our culture that brides dressed up in white. It wasn't just the color of the season, you know. It's meant to symbolize virgin purity. Pity that it's gone, isn't it? And they had these Jews, they had this, these religious accoutrements to add to that notion of purity, and all the guests washing hands and whatnot, you needed a lot of water. When our Lord, uh, uh, started to do this miracle to provide the new water, he didn't just take anything. He told them to fill up those water pots to the brim. That fastened the servant's attention on the water pots, didn't it? And though the rest of the guests didn't see it, we who read the story can see it. And what was he saying as he pointed to the water pots? They were there for purification. We don't despise such rituals that emphasize the need for purity, but there was inadequacy about that water, wasn't it? The best it could do was to clean your skin. And you know, the thing that upsets most marriages is not because the husband doesn't bath frequently enough. It is a deeper impurity, isn't it? Our Lord observed that to, um, the Jews of his time when they were fussy about washing. He said, but look here, it's not that that which goes into the mouth of a man defiles a man, it's that which comes out. It's out of the heart proceed the ugly things. These defile. It's these things that, coming out of the heart, ruin the joy of personal relationships. And all the religious water under the sun won't put it right. What our Lord did is to take those, and by his divine power and strength and grace and wisdom, turn the water of purification into the wine of the best joy they'd ever tasted. Do you doubt that? Well, you're fortunate if you know some Christians. And ask them what Christ has done for them. And if you ask the secret of their joy, most Christians will say that their joy started here, when they came to Christ and he cleansed their hearts. And by his grace and the value of his atoning death, he purged their hearts from an evil conscience. Then their bodies was ba- were bathed with pure water. Hence their joy. As the psalmist said it long ago, all the joy, the blessedness of the man or woman whose sins are forgiven, whose iniquities are covered, whom the Lord will not impute unrighteousness. So, yes, the miracles are signs then. They're not just physical mir- they are physical miracles and historical, but they are signs, and the signs point to Christ. Moreover, they are not only exposing our inadequacies and needs and sins, they do that, they are a diagnosis of our need. They also point to the cure. The very offer of Christ as the bread of life presupposes men and women are hungry. And if you say, how can I prove him true that he is the bread of life? Well, suppose somebody said on the table before you is a, is a loaf of bread, if you eat it, that will satisfy your hunger. How would you prove it true? Well, you'd eat the stuff. So is it with Christ. But having said that, I don't proceed- propose to go through all the signs. Uh, time would forbid. I just want to point to another feature that in your study you are bound to fall upon. You've probably fell- fallen upon it already, you'll see, uh, and therefore will now be impatient to get to your lunch. I want to call attention to an interesting, uh, uh, little fare, you'll see. You'll see, for instance, chapter five is the story, it's number three in the list, how the paralytic was healed at the pool, you see. And one of the major points of the miracle is that Christ didn't use the pool. The man thought he would. When Christ said, would you be made whole? The man said, but I've no man to put me in the pool. And Christ replied, in effect, I don't need the pool, my dear man. Heal you direct. Spoke the word, and the man was healed. Because the Lord was the source of life. He didn't e- need to use the means of life. So chapter five, it's number th- 3 sign here, the third sign, raises the question, do you use the pool? No. Look at this number six. Would you like to up the thing a bit so that people can see? Sight given to a blind man. Use the pool? Yes. To the thoughtful, that will cause one or two brain disturbances, if not for very long. You'll say there's a simple answer, you know, Christ uses one means of somebody and another means of somebody else, and that's all there is to it. One man gets saved in church, another man gets saved in a public house. So where, I mean, what does it, what does it matter, you'll say. And yet, and yet, and yet. It was a courteous, uh, uh, um, thing to do, wasn't it? The man was blind, he had no sight. And, uh, to put mud on his eyes made matters worse, if anything. And to tell a blind man with mud on his eyes to go groping his way down the city to find a pool and get into it. Why on earth did our Lord do it? There were other blind men who cried out to be healed, and he instantaneously gave them sight, like Bartimaeus. But why didn't he instantaneously give this man sight? Why did he go through that, uh, uh, palaver of making clay and putting it on his eyes and sending him to the pool? And John wants to assist us in our search, and he nudges us in the ribs and said, do you know what the pool was called, where the man was sent to? And you say, no, does it matter? Well, John says it happens to be called Siloam, in Greek, Shilach in Hebrew, and means sent, S-E-N-T. And you say, what about that, John then? Well, John will leave you to think that one out. Um, but it was significant, the very name of the pool to which he was sent. So how shall we make some sense of it? Well, what was the trouble? You say the trouble was the man was blind, we'll say, and he couldn't see. What was it that he came to see when he got his sight? Well, the end of the chapter is this, our Lord found him and said, do you believe on the Son of God or the Son of man? And the man said, who is he, Lord, that I might believe? And our Lord replied, thou hast both seen him, and he it is that speaketh with thee. So the man got physical sight. Ah, but more than physical sight, he had his eyes open to see who Jesus was. Yes. He was the Son of God. For that, the sign is telling us that Jesus took the initiative and opened his eyes. Man couldn't open them himself. Born blind. Our Lord had to open his eyes, and until his eyes were opened, he wouldn't see. What a parable it is. We are all born blind that way, aren't we? Our salvation depends on seeing who Jesus is, seeing that he is the Son of God. We can't open our own eyes, can we? So, what do we have to do? Is it so that, uh, we just have to sit around anyway? There's nothing we can do about it. Our eyes are, we're blind, you'll see, we're hopelessly blind, and we have to sit around. There's nothing we can do. We have to wait for God to do something, and there's nothing we can do whatsoever. To wait till all of a sudden one day, whoops, and the eyes come open, you see, you see. That isn't true, is it? Listen to the story. It wasn't the man was sitting there one day blind, and all of a sudden his eyes opened. No, no. There was a tremendous lot he could do before his eyes got open. Weren't there? Wasn't there? You'll see when the Lord came and made the claim, put it on his eyes, the man had to decide what to do. What it was for, well, it's to give you sight. Well, the man had been born blind, so he didn't know what sight was. You try to explain what sight is to a man born blind or to a woman born blind. Sight, you say, let me explain to you what sight is. Now, sight is, now sight is, uh, lets you see the daffodils. And what are daffodils? Well, it lets you see the color. What is color? Oh, well. How will you explain sight to a man that doesn't see it and can't see it, has no eyes? Eyes. Well, when our Lord said that he could go to the pool and wash, come seeing, the man might not even understand what sight was, whether the whole thing was a psychological trick or something. And if he trusted this man, he would think he saw when he didn't see, and all that kind of thing. So the man had to make up his mind. Was he going to cooperate? Was he going to make the experiment? And the man made the experiment. On what ground do you suppose he made the experiment? Well, one, because he had heard from many other people, doubtless, that Christ had done many miracles upon them. Perhaps he also had heard of the teaching of Christ. He could have heard, maybe, of some who said, yes, he opened my eyes too. And that therefore it was intellectually respectable to dare to trust Christ and to trust his character. Was this Jesus an absolute charlatan, an obvious fool, and a deceiver? Or did it make some sense to say, righto, um, I will trust him this far as to be willing to make the experiment he suggests and see what happens. Which is precisely what the man did. And made the experiment, and went and bathed in the pool of Siloam, and found it worked. The pool of Siloam got its name, Siloam, which means scent. And here the parable extends itself, doesn't it? There's no pool that you can go bathing in, in Nottingham that will cure your sight if you haven't got it, to say. But you can consider what the name of that pool stood for in Old Testament history. It's one of the titles of Messiah, the waters is lowen. Now, and we are invited, are we not, to consider all that long stream of Old Testament prophecies of what the Messiah was to be, where to be born, what he would do, to acquaint ourselves with it. And in the doing of it, God undertakes to do his side and to use it for the opening of our eyes. So I'm saying that, yes, these, these signs in John are very carefully selected and recorded, and they are very often putting two sides of a question. In chapter five, the man is healed, the paralytic healed. Christ doesn't use the pool. He uses, needs no means. But in chapter nine, the sight given to the man, Christ does use the pool and insists on the man using the means, yes? And that deliberately. Let's take one other pair, and then we'll cease. Uh, let's go back to number two on the list. We began the session with it in earnest, the healing of the official son, and saw how it turned on this, that Christ could heal at a distance. That was the whole point of the story. And the test of the man's faith, therefore, whether he was prepared to take the naked word of Christ, that his son had been healed at a distance. Now let's come to the story at number seven in the, uh, in the list, the death of Lazarus. And let me retell the story briefly to you. There was this family, see Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, friends of Jesus, and the Lord loved the whole lot. Lazarus took sick, and the sisters sent a little message to the Lord. They simply said, Lord, he whom thou lovest is sick. They didn't even include a request, please come and heal him. They counted on the fact that Jesus was their friend, and Jesus loved them. If he heard that Lazarus was sick, he would have come and healed him. So they just sent the notice, Lord, he whom thou lovest is sick. And when he heard that, he stayed put in the same place. And we now, with our great theological less- uh, knowledge that we've acquired this morning between the hours of ten and half past eleven, We say, well, yeah, you see what's going to happen, don't you? I mean to say, the Lord doesn't have to go to Bethany to raise him, you see. Matty's going to stay in the same place, you see. Thomas, don't get alarmed, my boy. Uh, the Lord can just say then, presently you'll find you'll speak the word, and Lazarus will be healed at a distance because the Lord can heal at a distance. Just learned it. Hmm. Hmm, Two days more followed, and our Lord said to the disciples, Lazarus fallen asleep. They said, jolly good, he'll be better soon. No, said the Lord, he's died. I'm glad I wasn't there. Well, it's a half a minute, Lord. What are you talking about? You're glad you weren't there? But come, Lord, you could have healed at a distance. What difference did it make whether you were there or not? Why didn't you speak the word and do for him like you did for the official's son and save him at a distance? Problem, isn't there? We'll get worse in a minute. Then our Lord said, let's go to Judea, and went to Bethany. And as he drew near to the village, out comes Martha. Robust soul Martha was. And she said, good to see you, Lord. It wasn't very soon before she was telling him what was in her mind, and quite directly. Lord, we sent you a message, didn't we? Lord, I, you know, if you had been here, my brother hadn't died, she said. We say to ourselves, what difference would have made whether he was there or not, Martha? Actually, he could have done it at a distance. And when she went, here comes Mary, and through her sobs, she repeats what was burning deep into their hearts. Why didn't he come? Why didn't he come? Lord, if you had been here, sobbed Mary, my brother wouldn't have died. Why didn't he come? Why didn't he speak the word where he was and stop him dying? And he led them to the grave, said, take away the stone. Oh no, Lord, said Martha. Dead four days. You mustn't do that. Stench would be. Oh dear, dear, dear. Why didn't he come? Why didn't he stay at a distance and speak the word and stop the man dying? Or if he must let him die, why didn't he speak the word at a distance and raise him from the dead anyway? Why did he wait? And why did he have to come to Bethany to raise him from the dead. Because Jesus is not only the Lord of space and time, he's the Lord of history. And as he stood there, he knew the centuries that would follow. And he knew what was going to happen. One day, he would come and raise the dead, but it would be many centuries before he did it. Many times there would be when his disciples would send their notes up to heaven in the form of prayers, Lord, he whom thou lovest is sick, and expect the Lord to heal the sick from a distance, and he wouldn't do it. That's happened millions of times, hasn't it? And then people would watch their loved ones declining in death and plead with the Lord in their prayers to save them from dying, and he wouldn't do it. He knew what was going to happen in the centuries to come. And so, to comfort his people and to establish their hearts, he did this miracle in such a way as a pattern would be laid down. If he can heal at a distance, and at times if he pleases so, he does so, and does so miraculously. Down the Christian centuries, the pattern would be that if the Lord delayed his coming down the centuries, believers would die, and he wouldn't come, nor would he heal at a distance. Nothing there to break your heart about, because eventually he would come, and then he would raise the dead. So let us notice this likewise. Why did our Lord leave it till he came to Bethany before he raised Lazarus? Because this was a type, a sign, a parable of the great resurrection of the dead. And when shall that happen? The New Testament is adamant on this. When it comes to the resurrection of the dead, our Lord will not stay seated on his throne in glory and from a distance speak the word and the dead be raised. The New Testament insists on this, that the dead will not be raised until the Lord come. This we say to you by the word of the Lord, that the Lord shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and the trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise. All in their own order, Christ the first fruits, afterwards they that are Christ shall be raised at his coming. Lazarus was not healed at the distance. Lazarus was certainly not raised at the distance. Lazarus died because the Lord didn't come, and he wasn't raised until the Lord came. And I who speak to you am seventy two. Look at me. If the Lord doesn't, you know, hurry up a bit, given another fifty years, I shan't be here. And I go ill and say, Lord, save me and heal me, and he stays in heaven, if you please, and doesn't heal me. So then I die. If he waits another one hundred and fifty years, most of you will be dead too. So what matter? He's the Lord of space and time. He could heal at a distance if he chose to, but the normal event is that if he doesn't come, we shall all die and pass away, and we shall wait. But the pattern says that one day, as sure as he came to Bethany and raised Lazarus, one day he shall come again, and they that sleep in Christ shall be raised, and all shall be ta- changed and united at the marriage supper of the Lamb. So may God bless our study for his name's sake.