"Jesus came again to Cana in Galilee where he had made the water into wine." (John 4:46)

That had been an occasion of human gladness. Now in Cana, there is an occasion of human sorrow. There is a government official whose son is dying. And the Saviour, whose presence made all the difference in a house of feasting, will now make all the difference in a house of foreboding.

Few of us escape this father's experience, when the whole of life is suddenly concentrated to a point of overwhelming anxiety, and a man's whole being becomes a cry - a desperate cry. Such a crisis always presents us with a chance to discover, or rediscover, what it means that Jesus is our Saviour, as we shall see.

First though we must front up to the same sort of disturbing feature in this story that we met in the first one, and that is Jesus' response to the nobleman's appeal. We shall see in this that ...

GOD GIVES A FOCUS TO OUR NEED

As Jesus did before in Cana when his mother voiced her anxiety, He seems to meet the cry for help, not with swift sympathy, but with a puzzling rebuke. To the nobleman's desperate cry for help, Jesus answers "Unless you see signs and wonders, you will not believe." What was there about the nobleman's appeal that merited that? It sounds - heartless, almost. How are we to understand it?

The first thing to notice is that Jesus uses the plural "you" - not the singular. So His remark is addressed, not just to the nobleman alone, but also to all the others standing around him. Although this man's need set him apart from the rest for the moment, there is something in his attitude that makes him just like all the rest.

The second thing is to ask, "Did Jesus say this in a tone of rebuke, or a tone of lament?" If He said it with a sigh: "You won't believe ... you'll none of you believe, will you ... unless wonders are done for you," then it sounds less harsh, less unsympathetic.

Just here, we must remind ourselves of what John has said in v. 45 in his lead-in to this episode: "So when Jesus came to Galilee, the Galileans welcomed Him, having seen all that He had done in Jerusalem, for they had gone to the Feast." From ch. 2 v. 23, we know that He had done many miracles there.

This Galilean then, this nobleman, for all his urgent need, is really like all the rest. His interest in Jesus, really, is not in His message, nor even in His Person, but simply in His ability to do wonders. And the nobleman wants one ... badly ... for his child. It does not matter to him much who Jesus is, if only He can heal his boy.

The man is sincere enough, and his desire is not unworthy.

But for Jesus, it is not enough. Just to give this man the miracle he wants ... needs even ... and leave it at that, will not satisfy the Lord's interest in the matter. As we saw in the first sign, Jesus cannot do for us what we desire save as it satisfies His Father's desire. Here is a further example of that. Jesus cannot do for this man what God wants unless He does something more than merely heal his child. He must so heal the child as to save the man! If Jesus merely heals the boy, this father will think of God's Son in no better way than a man thinks of a plumber - as someone to be called in to do a job, and then shown out again.

In a sense deeper than the nobleman realises, he too is at the point of death ... of death in his trespasses and sins. He does not know that. He is not thinking about that, concerned as he is for his child. But God is thinking about it; and so, therefore, is Jesus. The Lord's concern is so to meet this man's request that both the boy and the man are made to live, in the truest sense of that word, and Jesus knows that if the life of this world is all we are alive to, we are dead really, even while we live. Only when we are alive to God are we alive!

So Jesus declines to respond to this man's appeal in the way he wants. Instead, He meets it in a way that obliges the nobleman to make a decision about Jesus, for himself.

The man has said, "Come down before my child dies." He cannot imagine that Jesus can do anything unless He is there, and ... lays His hand on the boy ... or "waves His hand over the place," as Naaman expected Elisha to do. His understanding has barely risen above the level of magic.

So Jesus says, "I will not come. You go ... your son lives."

Now the nobleman is in a dilemma. Now, he has to make up his mind about Jesus ... whether he can trust Him! That is what Jesus has achieved by the way He has dealt with this man. That is what He meant to achieve. A moment ago, the man's only thought was, "My son, my son." Now his only thought is, "Shall I trust this Jesus?"

From thinking about his son, he is thinking now about Jesus. Jesus has re-focussed his attention - from his need to His Saviour.

That is what God always does - gives a new focus to our need.

Then, is when He can give us what it is always His intention to give us ...

GOD GIVES US CHRIST FOR OUR NEED

How long the nobleman hesitated before he made up his mind, John does not tell us. But, whether swiftly or slowly, make up his mind he did. It must have taken a big effort of faith, must it not? ... to take Jesus at His word, and start the journey home with nothing to go on but the assurance, "Your son lives"?

There must have been something about Jesus that encouraged him to believe he could trust Jesus. Says John, "He believed the word that Jesus spoke to him, and went his way."

That took some doing - but he did it. And all the journey home, something over 20 m./30 km, what thoughts must have churned in his mind. How he must have hurried to get home and see for himself what had happened.

There are those, I know, who say that his faith in Jesus was so serene and assured that though he could have covered the distance - all of it downhill - so as to reach Capernaum not long after sunset, he did not! He spent the night at a lodging, calmly breaking his journey, untroubled by doubt! I do not believe that. It is thought that he did that, to explain the fact that when he did arrive home, his servants told him, "Yesterday, at the seventh hour, the fever left him." But that is to forget that the Jewish day ended, and the new one began, at sunset - not at dawn. So after sunset, anything that had happened earlier in the afternoon was referred to as having happened "yesterday." He did not spend a night in lodgings.

I say he hurried home; he could not get there fast enough! And all the way, his mind was full of questions. Had he been a fool? Had be allowed himself to be turned away too easily? Was Jesus a fraud, this His clever way of getting rid of him because there was nothing Jesus could do? Or had he been right to trust Him? Was his instinct right that there was with Jesus a power that could only be from God, and it was God he was trusting, and it would be all right? He hurried, and he worried!

When he neared Capernaum, and his servants met him with the excited cry "Your son lives" ... (the same words exactly that Jesus had said: 'Your son lives') ... then he was more sure.

And lest you think it is mere fanciful imagination on my part to suppose that he had a struggle with faith, let me call your attention to what he asked then: v. 52: "So he asked them the hour when he began to mend" ... when he began to mend! You see? His faith was not so serene and strong that he believed, from the moment onwards that Jesus spoke till be arrived in Capernaum, that his son had been healed. All the way home, I believe, faith struggled with doubt in his heart, "Lord, I believe; help thou my unbelief." He must have prayed it.

But when he learned from the servants that his child's recovery had been instantaneous - not gradual, but sudden, at the very hour Jesus had spoken - then he knew. He believed (twice over John says it, a hint that his faith was growing) - and believed with such unutterable and exalted joy that he infected his whole household with his assurance! (v. 53)

There was in Jesus, in the very word He spoke, all the power of God. He believed in Jesus as the One in Whom God Himself was present.

Now remember John's purpose in selecting these seven signs, with which to point to Jesus. He tells us in ch. 20 v. 30,31 "Now Jesus did many other signs that are not written in this book: but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and that believing, you might have life in His Name."

Here is a perfect example of that purpose. You and I may believe in Jesus exactly as this nobleman came to do. You may recognise, as he did, that in Jesus, God Himself has come to you, and that in the word God speaks to you in this Lord Jesus there is all the power of God to bring new life to birth in you - and in those you love.

At the beginning of this episode, John described this man as a "nobleman"; the word is basilikos - literally "a king's man" - no doubt because he served in the court of King Herod. But now he was a "King's man" in the far deeper sense that he was Christ's man. His heart and mind were captive now to the King of Kings. He was in the kingdom of God - where he took his family with him!

He got more than a healing! By appearing to be denied what he asked - and accepting it - he got so much more than he asked!

God gives us Christ for our need, because in Christ, all God's fulness dwells ... and the power, therefore, to do for us so much more than all that we ask or dream.

Often, when our need is desperate, He delays, because then, when we are so ready to receive, is His opportunity to lift our desire to a higher level.

Jesus, you see, was not flustered by the nobleman's desperate urgency, as we might have been. He could meet it with the calm attention and the higher wisdom with which God hears our cries. God can afford to let things that distress us most go on a while longer, while He does a more necessary thing first. His first concern is not your need, but you. Before He puts your situation to rights, He would put you to rights.

God speaks to you and me the way He spoke to this man. He came rushing into God's presence with the cry, "My son! My son!" and God answered him by saying, "My Son. My son first! I hear your cry. But as you would have me attend to your son, so I would have you attend to my Son. Do that, and we shall save both your son and you!"

God's first concern is how things stand between you and your Saviour. He gives us Christ for our need.

And that is why, finally ...

GOD GIVES US HIS WORD FOR OUR FAITH

He will not do signs and wonders for you to bring you to faith. He will only give you His Word; because only in that way can He kindle true faith in you.

What John is concerned to show us in this story is that a true faith has eyes, not for the gifts in the Father's hand, but for the giving hand. It is not His gifts alone God wants you to have, but the Giver.

If it is only a blessing we want, without any vital relationship with Him Who bestows it, then our wanting is out of tune, and God must tune it before He can respond to it. He wants us to have, not just a blessing, but the living source of all blessing. He means to attach us to Christ.

And so He obliges us to depend on His Word - His Word alone - because that makes us look to Him, as He made this nobleman do. We have Christ's bare word, and no more, to trust ... for everything. We must learn to go out of the Presence Chamber of the King, so to speak, with only His promise - and cleave to that.

We have Christ's promise, for example, that He will give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him. You have His Word on that. It should be enough.

Yet there are those who will tell you, in so many words, that it is not enough. You must have a sign - that of speaking in tongues, say; and only if you do can you be sure that you are blessed with the promised fulness of the Spirit. "Unless you see signs and wonders, you will not believe."

But if such a sign is made the basis of our faith, then it is the sign we are trusting, not Christ! The effect is to weaken the very faith the Holy Spirit is given to make strong in us. The Holy Spirit is given to increase our faith in Christ, not our faith in signs.

Something spectacular is a wrong basis for faith. Jesus says, as He said to the disciples in the Upper Room, "Believe ME!" Such faith may lead to signs and wonders. You may, perhaps, speak in tongues! But if you do, it will be the fruit of your faith. It must not be the ground of it.

Christ's promise is enough for faith. To require of Him more than His promise is to dishonour Him - as though He cannot be trusted to keep His Word.

By faith alone, in Him alone, do we come to our full stature in Christ.

Faith, in the final analysis, is an act of will, as we have seen so clearly to be with this nobleman. Jesus said "Go, your son lives." That was all. And he went. That was how he expressed his faith. His mind may have been in a turmoil, but that wasn't where his faith was at; his faith was in his feet.

You have to take Christ at His Word. You believe by an act of will, not by a surge of feeling.

"You believe," as Mrs Howard Taylor wrote once, "by resolving to believe. You believe by willing to believe. You believe by refusing to doubt." Then she adds, "It used to be so dreadfully hard to have faith. I tried to feel that I had faith. But it did not help me. Then I realised that it was God's honour that was at issue, not my faith. When I said, 'I choose to believe God. Him I will not doubt', then I found that was all God asked of me. He at once confirmed my trust, making it fact and experience."

There is not one of you who cannot say, "I choose to believe God." That is how we are saved. It is how, at every stage afterwards we are sanctified. "Just as you received Christ Jesus your Lord, so go on living in Him - in simple faith," as Paul said in Colossians 2:6.

God gives a focus to our need.
God gives us Christ for our need.
God gives us His Word for our faith.