Signs // The Power of Faith

chapter four this morning, john chapter four, and we're actually starting a brand new series today entitled Signs.

What If it's Not About the Miracles?

As we've been going deeper this year and we've been walking through the book of John, what we're gonna talk about over the next several weeks is the miracles of Jesus.

But here's what's really interesting at least to me it is is John doesn't call the miracles of Jesus.

But here's what's really interesting at least to me it is is John doesn't call the miracles of Jesus miracles.

He calls them signs.

Why would he call them signs?

Well, signs point to something beyond itself.

Signs are not about themselves.

They're about something else and signs communicate something.

So, for example, let's say you saw this sign outside of a room.

Somebody tell me what would this sign communicate?

Women's restroom, women's restroom, not a men's restroom, women's restroom.

And if you're in the room, yeah, somebody clap for that.

That's a different sermon.

Now.

Wow, okay, let's go.

If you are like me and sometimes mistakenly, you've ever walked in the wrong bathroom, you know it is important that the signs matter, because the sign points you to something we said a few weeks ago.

The point of the miracles of Jesus were not the miracles of Jesus, but to show that Jesus was the Son of God.

So the miracles of Jesus happened.

Not so you'd be like that's an amazing miracle, jesus, that's amazing.

The point of the miracles were that you would say Jesus, you are amazing.

You are amazing.

You are the Messiah, you are the Son of God, you're the forgiver of sin, you're the source of life and purpose and identity.

That is why the miracles happen.

And today what we're going to do is we're going to see the second miracle, the second sign of Jesus.

A few weeks ago we saw the first one, which was when Jesus turned the water into water Awesome.

The second one, which is what we're going to see today, is the healing of the royal official's son.

Now, here's what I'm really excited about today, because today what we're going to see is we're going to see how do you form faith.

Like you might be here today and you might say, man, people around me are like, maybe, faith people, but I'm not really.

I don't really have strong faith.

I'm not a faith person.

I'm going to show you how you can form faith.

I'm also going to show you what do you do when your faith is lacking.

How many of you would be honest enough to say there are times in my life where my faith is lacking.

Raise up your hand.

Okay, how many of you are honest enough would say, hey, I can raise up both hands.

This happens often, okay, and we're also going to look, though, at how powerful faith actually is, and the power of faith in the life of a normal person like you and like me.

So let's pick it up In John, chapter 4, if you're ready for it, would you say amen?

John 4 · chapter mention

So it says in John 4, verse 43, it says After two days, he, he, this, he is somebody.

John 4:43

His name starts with a J.

Does anybody want to guess who that is?

It is Jesus, that's right, jesus.

He left there for Galilee.

Jesus had just spent two days in a place called Samaria.

We saw a couple weeks ago that he had a conversation with a woman at a well.

He had been traveling from Judea, from Jerusalem specifically, he was going up to Galilee.

He had just spent some time in Samaria.

So now he's going up to Galilee after spending a couple days in Samaria.

Jesus himself, in verse 44, he testified that a prophet has no honor in his own country.

When they entered Galilee, who's the they?

It's Jesus and his apostles Peter, james, john.

These are his people, these are his homies, this is his crew.

When Jesus, when they enter Galilee, the Galileans let's say the next word, the Galileans they welcome him.

Why did they welcome him?

Because they had seen everything he did in Jerusalem during the festival, for they also had gone to the festival.

Now, if you go back to John, chapter 2, at the end, you will see.

John 2 · chapter mention

The festival they're talking about is the Passover, and at the Passover festival, jesus had done all types of other miracles and all types of signs.

So all the people in Galilee because the men had to go and other people went, but the men had to go to the Passover they all traveled to Jerusalem.

They saw Jesus doing all these different signs.

Jesus was traveling back to where they were.

He took a pit stop in Samaria for a couple of days, talked to some people.

Those people made a straight trip.

They beat Jesus to Galilee.

They see Jesus coming and they welcomed him.

They were like hey, you did a bunch of stuff in Jerusalem.

You did miracles for those people.

We want you to do some miracles for us.

We want you to make our life better.

We want you to do some things for us Like come Jesus, we're welcoming you.

Notice, they weren't welcoming Jesus to be the master and Lord of their lives.

They were welcoming Jesus because of everything he did in Jerusalem during the Passover festival.

Jesus, you made their lives better.

If you can make their life better, I know you can make my life better.

So they welcomed Jesus.

And look what Jesus did.

Verse 46, he went again to Cana of Galilee.

You guys remember Cana?

That's where he had turned the water into wine and there was a certain royal official whose son was ill at Capernaum.

Okay, so now we got a new person on the scene here, we got a royal official.

Now, if somebody's a royal official, you know what that means.

They're royal, they have power, they have influence.

But this powerful, influential person had a problem.

His son was ill.

Look how bad it was.

It says when this man heard that Jesus had come from Judea into Galilee, he went to him.

And what did he do?

What are those three words?

He with him to come down and heal his son, since he was about to die.

Okay, son doesn't have an ear infection here, son doesn't have really bad allergies.

Right now, deathbed.

Can you imagine what this royal official must have been feeling, the burden the weight, knowing that his son is on his deathbed.

Can you imagine the anguish in the royal official's mind?

Can you imagine the heartache?

Can you imagine the I don't know what to do, the desperation.

His son is on his deathbed.

So he goes to Jesus and he pleads with him.

Jesus, come down to my city, come down to Capernaum, cana, to Capernaum, 16 miles away.

It's a good little trek.

Remember they don't got Uber during these times, no cars.

They're walking their hind parts on their feet to the place 16 miles.

He goes, 16 miles.

He says Jesus, come with me.

Jesus told him unless you people see signs and wonders, you will not believe Verse 49, sir.

The official said to him come down before my boy dies.

Can you feel the urgency?

I need you to come to my city and look how Jesus responded.

Jesus says go, your son will live.

Notice Jesus doesn't say let's go.

Jesus doesn't say okay, you go and I'm following right behind.

That's what the man wanted.

The royal official wanted Jesus to come with him.

Jesus just says go.

And it says that the man believed what Jesus said to him, he trusted the words of Jesus and he departed.

Now can we also just bring something very obvious to the surface that this royal official really had to humble himself.

He's royal, you do what he says.

He doesn't come and ask you to do things for him.

He doesn't plead with anybody you plead with him.

Plead with anybody, you plead with him.

This royal official is royal and Jesus is from the city of Nazareth, which it said in John 1, nothing good comes from Nazareth.

It's like Nazareth, like nobody wants to go to Nazareth.

I sometimes joke around and I'm like what's Nazareth like?

It's basically Fresno, it's Fresno.

It's what Nazareth is right.

And Jesus goes to this carpenter guy that's teaching and traveling, and this royal official comes to him from Nazareth and he's like heal, my son.

And then Jesus said you go, son.

And then Jesus said you go.

And the man trusted the words of Jesus enough to actually go back.

And look what happened.

Because he trusted the words of Jesus, he had enough faith to take Jesus at his word.

It says in verse 51, while he was still going down, his servants met him saying that his boy was alive.

So verse 52, what did the royal official do?

He asked him at what time he got better.

What do you think he's doing here?

He's trying to connect some dots.

What time was it?

Yesterday, at one in the afternoon.

The fever left him.

They answered.

The father realized verse 53,.

This was the very hour at which Jesus had told him your son will live.

So he himself believed, along with his whole household.

The first belief was I trust your word.

This belief here is I believe that you're the Messiah, you're the son of God, you're the forgiver of sin.

I'm putting my faith, my complete trust, in you for my eternal destiny.

This is what's happening here, because he saw this sign.

Now, this verse 54, was also the second sign Jesus performed after he came from Judea to Galilee.

It was a miracle, it was a sign because this man had enough faith to take Jesus at his word, even if Jesus told him something a little different than he expected.

And this kind of brings up a question, though this royal official before this interaction?

We don't ever see him meeting Jesus or ever interacting with Jesus.

So how do you have enough faith to trust him?

Well, here's something that we need to consider, we need to see from the text is that faith for the royal official, for all of us?

It begins with information.

Faith begins with information.

Now, this is not just a Christian thing.

This is a human thing.

Look at the text.

They entered Galilee.

The Galileans welcomed him why?

They had seen everything he did in Jerusalem during the festival End of John, chapter 2.

John 2 · chapter mention

He had done miracles.

So because of this, they had this information that caused the royal official to have faith in the words of Jesus.

And this is something that we all do.

We make decisions based off information, faith decisions.

For example, who in here has ever had surgery before?

For example, who in here has ever had surgery before?

Oh, my goodness, usually, when we have surgery, we let somebody that we barely even know, maybe even a complete stranger put us to sleep like sleep, sleep, stranger.

Put us to sleep like sleep sleep.

Take out a big knife, cut us open, say they're going to fix us and do the right things and hopefully we're all better, and we give them complete authority over our entire physical bodies for multiple hours.

Think about it.

I remember when I had surgery, I was 19 years old and I literally did not know the doctor's first name.

His name was Dr Lubin.

What's his first?

What's his name?

Dr Lubin, that's his name.

I met with him.

He said okay.

He said, nate, here's the x-ray of your ankle.

Your ankle is shattered.

You need to have surgery.

Sir, is there a pill that I could take to fix my ankle?

You don't understand.

This is what your ankle looks like.

Let me show you an image of a normal ankle.

Oh, my ankle's jacked up.

When do you want to schedule surgery?

What kind of surgery is this going to be?

It's going to be a major surgery.

10 to 14 screws will go in your ankle and probably two plates.

When would you like to schedule this surgery?

I literally met this guy like 15 minutes before.

I'm like how about next Wednesday?

All right, let's do it.

And I literally trusted a complete stranger to operate and fix my ankle to the place where, if he messed up, I would possibly not be able to walk the rest of my life.

And I trusted this with a complete stranger.

But I will say I had some information.

One my mom worked at the hospital, so my mom knew Dr Lubin, so she had a relationship.

So that was a big box check.

I'm good.

Second of all, he was a surgeon orthopedic surgeon at Sutter Hospital.

So in my mind I'm like okay, this is a pretty trusted medical institution.

I can trust them.

They're not going to hire some random guy at the street corner to come in Like box checked.

Here's the other box that was checked.

He had done this surgery before.

So I'm like, okay, my mom knows him, he's hired by Sutter and he's done this before.

Check, check, check.

So this gave me enough information to make a decision of faith to trust him.

Now here's why I say this, because when we have faith in God and not just for our salvation, but for other things it's very similar.

It's faith, but it's not blind faith.

In fact, let's just consider this.

Let's consider evidence is for God.

Like you might be in the room and you're like I don't even know about all this God stuff.

Okay, let's just think about this.

Okay, one creation.

Let's look around the world and see the beauties of the world and you might say, man, there's no way I can believe in a creator, there's no way I could believe that all of this happened without a creator.

And it actually takes more faith to believe that all this happened by accident, without an intelligent designer, than it does to believe that all of this happened with an intelligent designer designer than it does to believe that all of this happened with an intelligent designer.

Faith, they're both a faith position.

It's an evidence for God.

What about this?

What about our conscience?

Let's think about this.

People, all people.

We look at an injustice and we think that's bad, that's an injustice.

We should do something about that.

Where does that sense of justice come from?

Where does that sense of there's a moral law?

They're doing an injustice, they're breaking that law.

They shouldn't be doing that.

If there is a moral law in our hearts, we are admitting there is a moral law giver that puts a moral law in our hearts that causes us to say that's an injustice, that's not right.

We have a conscience.

It's an evidence of God.

What about this?

The scripture Change lives.

God has given us evidence to trust him.

If you're a follower of Jesus and maybe you're in a place where you're like man I, just man my faith is lacking.

What do I do?

Here's some information Romans, chapter 10, verse 17,.

Romans 10:17

It says this it says so faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the message about.

What's that last word?

The message about?

Also, in other translations it says the word of God.

So in other words, this word is what will produce faith in you.

So you can't say I'm lacking faith, but your Bible is dusty, you can't say I'm lacking faith but I don't even know where the Bible app is at on my phone, because what happens is faith.

Reading the word produces faith in our lives and as we're reading the word, faith is going to be produced.

Something else that produces faith is when we remember what God has done in the past, his faithfulness in the past.

The children of Israel in the Old Testament.

They constantly had forgotten what God had done for them and what it did was.

It robbed them faith in the present.

So they forgot God had done that.

They forgot God had done that and in the moment they were lacking faith.

As I remind us from time to time, the greatest enemy to faith is forgetfulness, because when you forget what God has done, you'll stop believing what God can do.

Do you remember what God has brought you through?

Do you remember when you pleaded with God and that was a very clear answer to prayer that God said yes.

Have you forgotten?

Do you look back now and are you like well, it just kind of happened that way?

No, my friend, it didn't happen.

God answered your prayer.

Do you remember when you were struggling with that thing and you're like, and you sought God and you had this peace and this strength that only God could give you.

Friends, we cannot remember his faithfulness in the past because it will rob us of faith in the present, and what we have to do is be people that consider the information and look at God's faithfulness and we say listen, I've seen you do that before.

We sang about the goodness of God.

I've seen your goodness, I've lived in your goodness, and because of that it will give me faith in the present, no matter how I feel, no matter how dark the situation is, because I serve a faithful God.

Will somebody say amen?

I serve a faithful God.

Will somebody say amen?

And when that faith is formed from information, what it's going to produce in our life?

Real faith will produce real action, because true faith acts on the words of Jesus.

So let's think about this.

Jesus told this royal official of Jesus.

So let's think about this Jesus told this royal official go.

Your son will live.

At that moment, after your son will live.

The royal official had a decision to make Was he going to trust Jesus' words or not?

Because that is not what the royal official wanted.

He didn't want Jesus to tell him to go.

And what faith does is faith acts.

I kind of want to give a silly illustration that you've probably seen before and I'm going to set it up like this Just go with me here for a second.

Okay, how many of you in the room would say Pastor Nate, in general, I trust you Say, pastor Nate, in general, I trust you.

Some of you are like sitting on your hands.

You're like, no, I don't know what he's going to ask next.

Okay, so, in general, I trust you.

How many of you would say Pastor Nate, I trust you enough that I would be willing to be blindfolded, and if I fell back, I think you would catch me.

Who would say that?

I thought you'd raise up your hand?

Okay, raise up your hand, joe.

Do you really believe that you do?

He says he doesn't believe that.

Who really believes that?

Okay, all right, josh, I see your hand.

Yeah, come on up here, josh.

You really believe it?

Okay, josh, come here.

Okay, uh-oh, by the way, come on, that's right.

Can we just thank Josh while he does it on the worship team?

Worship team does such a great job.

So, josh, you genuinely believe that I would catch you if you were falling back, if you were blindfolded?

Okay, so luckily for you, we don't have a blindfold, but I want you to face that wall and I want you to close your eyes.

Anthony, is his eyes closed.

Is his eyes closed?

Okay, so on the count of three, count of three.

I want you to fall back.

Are you ready for this, josh?

You trust me 100% for sure.

Okay, one, two, three.

Oh man, you're strong bro.

Okay, stay here, stay here.

Stay here, stay here Honestly and we didn't talk about this before literally Falling back.

Were you a little nervous or how did you feel about that?

A little bit, a little bit, he's a little bit.

What made you nervous?

I mean, I didn't know if you were going to catch me or not.

That's right.

He didn't know if I was going to catch him or not.

That's fair.

Now here's the thing I was going to catch him, no matter what, no matter what he believed.

So he could have been like oh, pastor Nate, I had complete faith in you, I didn't have any fear at all, I was going to catch him.

He could have been like I was so scared, I was having anxiety up in front of everybody, I didn't know if you were going to catch me, and you know what, I still would have caught him, no matter what he thought.

Now you can take a seat.

Can we put our hands together and welcome Now?

Here's why I say this, because it's not the strength of your faith but the object of the strength of your faith that matters.

Can we put that next slide up on the screen?

It's not the strength of your faith, but the strength of the object of your faith that matters.

Weak faith in an all-powerful God is better than strong faith in something that is weak.

No matter what Josh thought, I still was gonna catch him.

It wasn't about the strength of his faith, it was about my strength to be able to catch him.

And here's the reality For some of us.

We're like I can't really trust God, but I can really trust myself.

I have a lot of faith in myself.

Come on, bro, that's not very strong.

Some of us, we have a hard time trusting God, but we sure trust our political system and we trust our favorite political leaders, our political system and we trust our favorite political leaders.

Come on, man, whatever side of the aisle you're at and this is what happens.

Is that sometimes we're like God?

I don't really trust you, and until I have complete faith in you until I know that.

I know that I know then I'm not going to fall, that I'm not going to take that step into you.

But, guys, god is strong and when we take steps in our faith and we choose to trust, this is what's going to take that step into you.

But, guys, god is strong and when we take steps in our faith and we choose to trust, this is what's going to happen.

Our faith is going to grow because faith grows through action.

Faith grows through action.

John, chapter four, the royal official what was his faith level after he obeyed?

He took a step of action, went back and saw his son healed.

Where do you think his faith was at?

Through the roof.

But you know where it started, when he trusted God at his word and he believed and he took that next step.

Some of us want, we want, high faith, but we have low obedience.

And until you step your obedience up, your faith will never grow, because it's your obedience that allows your faith to grow.

Because when you obey when you don't understand, and when you obey when everything doesn't make sense, and when you obey when it's really hard and you still take steps of faith and you see, god will do what God says he will do.

Your faith is going to go high.

It's going to go high.

And here's what we got to do.

We got to be people that say, even if I don't understand, even if, god, your agenda is different than my agenda, I'm still going to trust and follow you, because here's where the rub happened.

The rub happened in this text is when Jesus told him to do something that he didn't plan on.

Jesus said go.

The man wanted Jesus to go with him and he still obeyed.

And here's my question this morning Are we people that would be willing to trust God?

And the question is is where do you need to trust God?

Some of us think, oh well, I tried to trust God with my job, I tried to trust God with this relationship, I tried to trust God here, and it didn't work.

You know what we are.

We're like the Galileans in John, chapter 4, that we come to him with our agenda and say do what I want you to do for me, and if you don't do what I want you to do, then I'm mad at you.

John 4 · chapter mention

And what you don't want is you and what we do when we say that is we don't really want to follow Jesus for who he is.

We really want Santa Claus to do for us what we want him to do for us.

And Jesus says I have no place for that.

And, by the way, jesus says I am so powerful that I don't even need to be in that boy's presence.

I can still heal him because he's powerful.

And in your life, where do you need to obey guys?

Because he's powerful.

And in your life, where do you need to obey guys?

You got faith.

Oh, I love God, I trust God.

Okay, where's our obedience?

When I was a kid, they used to tell me put up or shut up, brothers, obey.

Maybe it's a place in your life where you need to forgive somebody so hard to do, isn't it so hard to do?

Maybe it's in our financial giving.

We need to learn to take a step to trust God in our giving.

I know it's so hard to do.

Tithing are you?

That's tough man.

When you do the math on that you're like there's no, how trust?

I don't know where it is, but if we'll just take a step and we'll just say I trust God,