God Builds Strong Believers
St. John 4:46-54
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
St. John 4:48 Then Jesus said to him, “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will by no means believe.”
Dear fellow redeemed in Christ our Lord… People, in general, go to church for different reasons. Some go out of a sense of obligation. Some go to be entertained. Some go for some kind of a spiritual “experience.” Some go to feel good and to be wowed by the speaker. Some go to be motivated. Some go to learn how to improve their lives. Some go simply to be seen going to church. But those are all lousy reasons.
Others come for better reasons: to hear the Word of God, to honor Him, to pray, praise and give thanks, to seek help from God, to receive forgiveness in the absolution of His Gospel and in the Sacrament of His body and blood, to encourage their fellow Christians.
Regardless of why you came here today, now that you are here, it is important understand that God has a reason for you to be here; and that is that He wants to work on you. He wants to work on all of us.
That implies, of course, that we are not yet what we should be; it implies that we need work and that we need His help. Ah, but our sinful flesh does not like that idea. It doesn’t like it because it does not want to be changed or improved. Our flesh is relatively content to remain as it is, because it knows that God’s methods are often painful or even fatal to the flesh. But God insists. He insists on forming us; He insists on building us into stronger believers.
We see God building the faith of the nobleman right before our eyes in today’s Gospel. And as we watch, He does the same for us.
We see the nobleman of Galilee seek out Jesus. This is still early in our Lord’s ministry. Jesus had performed that one famous miracle in Cana right away at the beginning, changing water into wine. Then He went back down to Judea and performed many more miracles there. Sadly, He wasn’t received well there; the people of Jerusalem didn’t want to be changed. So Jesus went back up to Galilee, and the people there were more receptive… at least, for a while anyway. Word had spread throughout Galilee about Jesus, and about two things in particular: One, that Jesus has come from God with divine power to heal; and two, that Jesus is merciful and good.
So when the nobleman from Galilee heard that Jesus was back in the area, he showed a bit of faith, trusting that Jesus would help his son who is sick and dying. He went to Jesus and begged Him to come over to his house to heal his dying son.
The reaction that anyone would want from Jesus would be, “Yes, of course I’ll do what you ask. I’ll come over and heal your son right this instant!” But that is not the reaction the nobleman got.
Jesus said, “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will by no means believe.” You see, it wasn’t just the nobleman who needed to be built into a stronger believer. “You people,” Jesus said. All of the Jews were in danger, either of rejecting Jesus entirely, or of looking to Him mainly as a miracle worker rather than as the Savior from sin, death, and the devil. So Jesus warned them by telling them, “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will by no means believe.” In other words, faith that is rooted in signs that you can see simply isn’t good enough.
We have all heard that you shouldn’t drink coffee because it will stunt your growth. Well, I don’t think that’s probably true; in fact contradictory studies will tell you that it does and that it doesn’t. But there is something that will stunt the growth of your faith: and that is too much seeing, too much human reason, too much logic, too much looking to Jesus to deal miraculously with your earthly problems. Those things will stunt the growth of your faith; and if that happens, then faith will eventually fail and become useless when you really need it.
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The nobleman wasn’t ready to learn a lesson just yet. He wasn’t interested in being built into a stronger believer. He had a pressing earthly problem, so he begged Jesus again, “Sir, come down before my child dies!” He still insisted that Jesus come over to his house – to be there personally – to perform a miracle. Well, what’s the problem with that? The problem is that, if Jesus is truly sent from God, if Jesus truly is the Savior He claims to be, then why does He have to come over to the house in order to help? If God is able to speak a word and bring the entire universe into existence, isn’t He perfectly capable of healing an illness in the same way?
And that is exactly what Jesus did. He said to the man, “Go your way; your son lives.” Jesus gave the man what he wanted, but not in the way he wanted it. Jesus forced him to settle for a word, to settle for a promise. The seeing would come later; it would eventually be there. But first faith had to work. Reason and logic had to step back. Sight had to be turned off. And faith – even blind faith – had to be exercised.
But how? By the power of the Holy Spirit working through Jesus’ word. This is what so many Christians fail to grasp and what so many preachers fail to preach. Faith is not the product of logic or reason or sight. Faith is simply and only the product of hearing the word of Christ. The word itself has the power to create faith, as St. Paul says in Romans 10:17, “So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.”
And it worked! The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him, and he went his way. Jesus built him into a stronger believer. When he first came, he was panicking. He was fearful. He trusted that Jesus could help, but only if he could see Him helping in person. But now he isn’t afraid; he’s full of hope. Now he doesn’t need to see anything. His faith relied on Jesus’ word and promise. He went home fully expecting to see his son alive, simply because Jesus said so.
And then, when the man had heard that his son had gotten better at the very moment Jesus had spoken those words, and when he saw that his son had recovered, John records these words: “And he himself believed, and his whole household.” It was no longer a matter of faith to believe that the boy was healed; that had become a matter of sight. The believing was a stronger faith in Jesus Himself as the Savior and in His Word which is always and utterly reliable.
That, dear fellow redeemed, is the kind of faith God seeks to build in each of us, a faith that is ever stronger, ever firmer, ever more leaning. It is a faith based not on reason or logic or sight, but on His word alone. And He does that building by means of His word alone.
You and I need that kind of faith – stronger, firmer, and word-based. We need it for the fight that is ahead of us, because it is not a fight in which we can see our enemies. As Paul wrote in today’s Epistle, “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” (Eph 6:12) We wrestle against the devil and his dark forces. And the only way to fight, the only way to stand is with a faith that has been created and nurtured and built by the word of God. With such a faith, Paul says, we will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one.
Nowhere is such a faith needed as much as in the day of our death where we see our body failing. All we see when a loved one dies is the dead body, the grave standing open, and a pile of dirt. If our faith is founded on reason, logic or sight, then it will surely falter on that day.
But, dear fellow redeemed, if our faith has been nourished and built by the word of Christ, we will most certainly stand. And the words of Hosea the prophet will be the ones that ring in our ears as God promises ransom and redemption for His dear believers even as He mocks death and the grave: “O Death, I will be your plagues! O Grave, I will be your destruction! Pity is hidden from My eyes.” (Hos 13:14)
Dear Christian, dear baptized ones, the Lord God has brought you to faith by the word of His Gospel. He has given His only-begotten Son to die for you and for His sake He has paid for all your sins. He has received you as sons in His kingdom through Holy Baptism.
And now the Lord would build you up today into stronger and stronger believers. And the only way that He does that is by putting His forgiving Word into your ears in preaching and Holy Absolution, by putting His name on you in Holy Baptism, and by putting His living and resurrected body and blood into your mouth in this blessed Sacrament of the Altar.
May His good Spirit keep working on us and in us all throughout the day and throughout the week and in the weeks and months and years to come. God grant that we cling to His Word and Sacramental gifts alone by His precious gift of faith so that we receive strength from our good and gracious God until He calls us Home and into the life of the world to come.
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
