I'll be preaching from John chapter 4 today, verses 43 through 54. And if you don't have a Bible, it's also in the back of your order of worship. And the first few verses aren't there, but I'm going to read them just to give you some context. So, hear the word of God from John chapter 4. For the two days he went forth from there into Galilee, where Jesus himself testified that a prophet had no honor in his own country. So when he came to Galilee, the Galileans received him having seen all the things that he did in Jerusalem at the feast, where they themselves also went to the feast. Therefore, he came again to Cana of Galilee, where he had made the water wine, and there was a royal official whose son was sick at Capernum. When he heard that Jesus had come out of Judea into Galilee, he went to him and was imploring him to come down and heal his son, where he was at the point of death. So Jesus said to him, unless you people see signs and wonders, you simply will not believe the royal official said to him, sir, come down before my child dies. Jesus said to him, go, his son lives, and believe the word of Jesus spoke to him and gone, as he was now going down his labes met and saying that his son was living. So he inquired of them the hour when he began to get better than they said to him, yesterday at the seventh hour, the fever left him. So the father knew that it was at that hour in which Jesus had said, and he himself believed in his whole household, this again, a second sign that Jesus performed when he had come out of Judea into Galilee, but it's pray. Jesus, I prayed nothing more than you would come and open the eyes of the blind and the ears of the deaf so that they might see and hear you are gospel. I also pray for those of us who are slothful in our faith or even disobedient in our faith that you would come and quicken us as well, make us alive again. And I pray even for myself that you would be in my head and in my thinking and in my heart and in my understanding and in my mouth and in my speaking, in your name, we pray all of these things and then in amen. This is 4th sermon, I think, in John chapter 4. And basically, for the rest of the summer, I will just be continually working through the gospel of John. Part of it is because I have so many commitments that I'm in and out as many of you have made clear that you have noticed. So it's nice to be missed. Part of the problem though could be solved if some of you just think and get married. The out of town weddings are I'm kidding, I love doing them. But all of that said, you know, I was reading this passage and you're always trying to think up some spin, you know, what is this, what is this, what is this like? And you know, it hit me, of course, it reminded me when I grew up, for the first 17 years of my life, I never went to church. I just didn't. I grew up in sort of blue collar home in South Florida and our family were not churchgoers or religious by any stretch of the imagination. And then right before I joined the army, I actually joined the army, I signed a paper so my commitment was, sure, right before I went in, some women invited me to a camp where I heard about Jesus and put my faith in him. So for the first time, I trusted Jesus and then I had to go into the army. And fortunately or unfortunately, I'd enlisted to be a ranger in the army. So with that meant with basic training, airborne school, ranger indoctrination program, making it to a ranger battalion. And one of the most interesting things that ever happened in my memory was the very first parachute jump I did with a ranger battalion. You see, I was a young private, a little baby ranger and I had been involved with all of these guys, right, and they're maniacs and they're wild and they're godless and nothing can conquer them. They're sort of uber mench, right, they're nothing can touch them. And on the first jump that I had to make with the ranger battalion, it was into a Christmas tree farm into Germany. And the flight was so long that it was too strong, it was about 18 hours long and the seats of the bench seats on the sides of airplanes and we had to put our parachute on in the plane and it was just horrible. And then at some point, over the intercom, they said this will be an a was jump. And at that point, all of the experienced rangers, many of them, drop their heads as it's praying, a was, what is a was mean, could someone tell me what a was mean, what is a baby ranger, a was means all weather, all situation, you see, generally speaking, when you parachute in the army at least, they don't want to hurt you and so if the wind is bad, they cancel the jump, perfect snowing, they cancel the jump, perfect raining, they cancel the jump. So a was means, no matter what is going on outside, you're going out there with it. So I began to wonder, okay, now I know why some of these more experienced guys look as if they are praying and then as soon as the doors popped open and the snow came flying in from every side, the rest of the heads dropped. So here, the most wild superior elite soldiers in the world, something had brought them to a point of actually being desperate enough to at least pretend like they were praying. And of course, I didn't, I just sort of thought it was odd because I thought, wow, if you didn't pray for a guy on the plane, you're sort of in bad shape anyway, right? But you see, the face was a desperate face and the interesting thing is all faith starts with desperation. You see, the face was a desperate face but it wasn't necessarily a true face and since it wasn't a true face, it wasn't certainly wasn't a certain or a sure faith and so that's what we're going to talk about today is the desperate nature of faith but also the true nature of faith and the certain nature of faith. You see the man, this nobleman that we see in today's text, he sort of works through all of those stages. He goes from being desperate to understanding, to actually being sure of his faith in Jesus. So those are your three things today that we'll look at, the desperate nature of faith but also the true faith and certain faith. So if you will, look first, I'm going to just read 43 again to give you some context. You can't understand really what's going on with this nobleman until you get the bigger picture of Jesus coming back into Galilee and how he was received. Notice it says, after two days, he was with the Samaritan, he went forth from there into Galilee where Jesus himself testified that a prophet has no honor in his own country. So when he came to Galilee, the Galilee and received him having seen all the things that he did in Jerusalem at the feast where they themselves also went to the feast. Chapter 4, what if it was Jesus, this rabbi who should have been there and expected to not have gone to Samaria, but he was spoken to a loose Samaritan woman by a well, do you remember that story? So Jesus, this rabbi who not only probably should have avoided Samaria if he was self-respecting, he wouldn't have dealt with this woman either. But we notice, remember he says to the woman, come into me and I will give you living water in her heart's changing. She tries to get away from him and she says, well, Messiah come, he'll explain everything to us. And remember, he says, I who speak to you and he, the disciples come. They wonder why she's there. He drops her water pot, runs into the city and tells everyone, meet the man who told me everything about me. Is he not the Christ? And remember the whole city came up to Samaritan and they embraced Jesus. They believed him and said, surely this one is the savior of the world. You say, embrace Jesus because he was beautiful. They saw him for who he was and they honored him. See, a lot of commentators think that there's an inherent contradiction in the Bible here. But then one part, it says that Jesus went into Galilee and he himself said there, in his hometown, a prophet, has no honor. On the other hand, it says they received him well. Now, what does it mean if he's not honored, but they received him? You see, we tend to equate a lack of honor with being treated badly. And Jesus equates a lack of honor with being treated pragmatically. You see, the huge difference between how the Samaritans received Jesus and how the Galileans received him again, is the Samaritans, when they dealt with Jesus, they saw him as beautiful. And when the Samarit and when the Jews in this passage saw Jesus, they only saw him as being useful. That's how many of us see Jesus. It's not beautiful, but he's used it that he's useful. We'll embrace him and to the extent that his plans don't match our plans, we shove him aside. And Jesus says, that's why a prophet has no honor. And as we go into this passage, that you need to know that because Jesus had come back, remember it said, he was the one who turned water into wine, the crowds must have been going crazy because they wanted signs, they wanted miracles, they wanted to just see cool stuff, if nothing else. That guy who turned water into wine is back, also that guy with the hooks, but a clear out of the temple he's back in town, and he's doing stuff again, everyone come out and see. And in this context, we see a royal official come, probably from Herod's court, and we know he's desperate. First of all, he came to see Jesus. He probably, he didn't have to part the crowd, the crowd probably parted as he approached Jesus. He's a royal official, the crowd was probably calm, and as he approached Jesus, the crowd part just got out of the way. It says, this royal official came to Jesus, and he was imploring him to come down and heal his fund. He was begging him. Now, we know that this man is desperate for a couple of reasons, one, he's a royal official in Herod's household, which man who's probably relatively wealthy, which meant he had access to all of the physicians and the medical doctors of that time as they would have had. So anything money could have bought to heal his son, he would have gotten it, if it were possible, and apparently money wasn't good enough to heal his son. More than that, he was a royal official in Herod's household. Remember Herod was the one who, when Jesus was born, set people to find him so he could kill him. Jesus, this would be called the King of the Jews. Remember Herod was the one who turned him over to Pilate. So if he sort of comes under Jesus' authority in rule, does that necessarily mean he's out of a job? He had to have been desperate to go see Jesus. He had to have thought that my only hope for my son's health, my only hope for son's healing is this guy named Jesus. And you know what? That's the truth. You see, his faith was only a desperate faith at this point, but that's all he had. You see, all faith starts a desperate faith. You didn't have any other place he could go in Jesus' brought him there. And what does that mean for you and me? Well, all of our faith also starts as desperate faith. You know, a lot of people reject Jesus, or at least they reject him for a time being because of all the trials in their life and all the things that have gone on. And have you ever thought that all of the trials that are going on and all of the things and all the issues in your life have been sent by Jesus in order to make you desperate? And they make you desperate because you only see his value. You only see his beauty in your desperation. And most of us, instead of embracing that, we reject it. I remember, and many of you have heard this story, when Judy and I were in Atlanta, one of the hardest times in my life, Judy miscarried and was put in the hospital, my wife. Someone else took our daughters and I did what every pastor does when they want to avoid Jesus or when they don't know what to do with God as I went to read theology. I went home at two in the morning by myself and pulled Calvin's institutes off of the shelf because you figured I was a pastor. So there must be some good mathematical theological axiom to explain what's going on in my heart right now. The anger and the pain and the feeling being let down. And I pulled Calvin's institutes off of the shelf and I flipped it off and expecting to find sort of mass in the very first line said by our tribulations, God weens us from excessive love, this present life. And then it all started to make sense. You see, if Jesus is that thing which is most beautiful, if Jesus is that thing which is most desirable, if he is the only person who will ever love you and care for you, it only makes sense that what he would do was weed away everything else in your life that keeps you from him. So you can only come to Jesus if you understand your desperation. Now, some of you may tell, and then I meet someone who hasn't had a horrible trial in their life or two or three or a dozen. You may be there and you say, you know, nothing's really gone bad in my life, I've sort of been in control. You know, the problem with you is you're desperate as well. You just don't know it yet. You see, because even if you don't feel desperate because of your trials and tribulations, you are desperate because of your sin and brokenness and aloneness, right? The Bible says that because of Adam's sin and because of our sin, that we're separated from God, that all of sinned and fallen short of his glory, but not only does it rest, rest is quite a bit worse than anger, that God, if he would, could simply crush us and he would be the better for it, he would be completely just and no one could argue with him. We are desperate because of our sin. But even bigger than that, you're desperate. If you're not desperate because of your sin, if you don't feel some sense of guilt because you are or brokenness because you are, my guess is you at least feel some sense of abandonment or loneliness. You know, when I was a kid, I was raised by a single mother. And so up until the time I actually went to elementary school, I was in daycare every day, from eight in the morning until about five or five thirty, and every now and then, my mom was late picking me up, and I was the last kid there, and I remember that like it was yesterday. Thinking, this is the time she's not coming, this is the time left by myself. She always came, but you know what, my guess is some of you guys feel like that all the time. 24-7, 365 days a year, that's what you feel like. My life is one of abandonment, my life is one of when Owen cares for me, my life is one of which no one pursues me, and no one can care less if I wasn't here tomorrow. And to the extent you understand your brokenness, to the extent you understand your trial, to the extent you understand your sin and abandonment, is then you can start dealing with Jesus, and you run into deal with Jesus, and what do you find? You find a desperate man. You find a man who has made desperate on your behalf. You see, you run into finding Jesus, and where is he? He's in the garden of Gisemini on his knees begging God, if there be any other way that this cup may be passed from me, let it be so. Three times he asks God, and what does God say every time, nothing, which means the plan goes forward. On the cross, he screams, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why? So that you and I don't have to be forsaken, and the beauty, he resists from the dead, and when he rises from the dead, he guarantees our resurrection. So to the extent that you understand your own desperation, you see his desperation, and in his desperation, you see your own glory. You see, some of you are not Christians, maybe you have never trusted Jesus, you need to understand your desperation and run to him and trust him. Some of you have been Christians most of your life, and you need to do the same thing. You need to understand your desperation. You see, there's a sense in which your faith starts with desperation, but your desperation can never end, at least not now, because the more and more you know Jesus, the more and more you know yourself, which means the more and more desperate you should feel, which means the more and more beautiful he ought to become. But desperate faith is not enough. You got to have true faith. You see, desperate faith is just that which goes to Jesus because he's useful. True faith goes to Jesus and believes in him because he's beautiful. Look at the next part, 48 or 50, where you see this man's true faith. So Jesus said to him, after this request, unless you people see signs and wonders, you simply will not believe. The royal official said to him, Sir, come down before my child dies and Jesus said to him, Go, your son, live. The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started off. Here we see this man's true faith, and this is really a test of his faith because here is a man who has everything going for him. He has money, he has political position, he has authority, and this out-of-word carpenter just rebuked him for making a very valid request. My son is about to die, please come down, and he says, you people, all you want is signs and wonders. And what could this man have done? He could have slapped Jesus, he could have offered him the back of his hand, he could have had him arrested, he could have cursed him, he could have done anything, but what does he do? He comes back, I imagine, with tears in his eyes, come, you see true faith starts with humility. I need you to come down and do this for me, and Jesus basically makes the point of saying, you know, this whole faith thing is on my terms, not yours, many of us are frustrated with God because he hasn't delivered where we thought he ought to deliver, we're angry because our plans have been skewed, I think we used that quote one time, but we often forget that God has plans to, so the man realizes that I have to deal with this guy on his terms, which means I have no other hope than him, then my only hope is to humble myself, please come, what does Jesus say? Go, your son lives, notice what he doesn't do, he doesn't give him a sign, he doesn't give him a sign, and he doesn't go with him, he just says, go, your son lives, so now the man is in a conundrum because what does he do? The only way he can show he believes is to leave. He has to go, does he have any other option, does he say, I don't believe he lives? Jesus said, well, okay, then he doesn't, what is he supposed to do? He has no other option but to get up and go, and that's what the text says, it says, he believes the words that Jesus spoke and he darted off, and that is the definition of true faith. True faith consists of faith believing the promises of God and repentant, which means actually the evidence thing that's faced by moving out, walking forward in those promises. The men didn't just believe, he actually went, Jesus told him to go, until what it means to become a Christian is to believe the promise of God. Jesus said, right, in John 3.16, for God to love the world, he gave his only begotten son that whoever should believe will not perish but have everlasting life. Will you believe that? That's all it takes. Now, of course, if you believe it, it will be evidence by some change in your life, I guarantee you. Now, if you're a Christian, do you get away from having to believe that? You see, because just like you need true faith to sort of enter the kingdom, you need true faith to live in the kingdom, because Jesus says to you, over and over, I will never fail you or forsake you, and if he says I will never fail you or forsake you, why are so many people bitter? Why are some Christians angry and miserable and sort of pouting all the time? Because they don't believe it when he says I will never fail you or forsake you and their lives show it, and the nature of true faith is to move according to the promise of God and that's what Jesus tells us men to do, and that's what he does. And the beauty of this hall is you can't have a certain faith unless you have a true faith, you can have true faith unless you have desperate faith. In other words, many people say, I'll believe in Jesus when I can see him or I'll believe in God when I can see what he does for me, and Christianity, at least, says you don't see in order to believe, but you believe in order to see. This man would have never been able to see his son healed unless he first believed. You can never see God's faithfulness in your life until you first believe his faithfulness on your behalf. And that's what happens next. Look at the last part, as we close with the certainty of faith, as he was going down the man, his slaves met him and saying that his son was living, so he inquired of them, the hour began to get better, then they said to him, the seventh hour, the fever lessened. So the father knew that it was at that hour, which Jesus said to him, your son lives, and he says, he has this whole household. As he's going along, the slaves come and say, your son lives, and he's just got to know what time? Seven hours? That was the exact same time that Jesus told me, my son lives, and it says, he himself believed, it's very empathic that he himself believed in his whole household. Why? Because he knew, it says, he knew that was what Jesus had promised. In other words, the only way he could know that Jesus would be faithful to his promise to first have believed it, and having believed it, then he saw it, and he knew that God was faithful. You see, you only get certainty in your faith by first trusting God in a place, maybe you don't know, and the irony and the hard part of being a Christian at least, is you only grow in your faith by pursuing desperation. You can only grow in your faith if you pursue desperation. You see this sort of feedback loop that's happening? Faith starts with desperate faces. It goes to true faith, and then it's certain faith, and the only way your faith can become more and more certain is to put yourself in places where you are desperate. And in those desperate places, Jesus says, I'll never fail you or forsake you. You're going to trust me, and you say, yes, and then you end up at the other end coming through alive, and he says, see? You know, so many of you, whenever I doubt Jesus faithfulness to me, I just have to think back on my life. I mean, I could think for days on my life. I think back to even when the Preparing Church in America asked me to start this church in Seattle four or five years ago, and I said, you know, I don't think I want to start a church. And they said, what's your issue? And at the time, I didn't know where they were thinking, and I said, you know, I'm afraid God would take me someplace like Seattle and leave me with my butt hanging out the wind. You say, you're funny. You should say that. Because we were just thinking to ourselves, you ought to go to Seattle, and Judy and I moved to Seattle, and we had to raise one of the record-setting sum of money I thought it would never happen. In six weeks, it happened. So we can never afford to live in the city. And what do you know? Before we got here, we met a great realtor who got us a place to live in the city, and we said, well, you know, okay, you can live in the city, but where in the world can you meet in the city? What do you know across the street from that same house? The bigger than all that is all of you. Well, how many of you have been changed, and your hearts have been changed by the ministry here? So whenever I doubt what's happening here, or whenever I get the courage, I'm sure the Holy Spirit is going to Jesus. Oh, can you believe this guy? All right, cry out, God is, I'm not going to make it in the Holy Spirit, so is he kidding? So look back at what we've done in the past. It's even bigger than that. You see, even if in your own sort of path, though, if you can't look back in your past and see the faithfulness of God, or if you look back in your past and only see trials, or if you look back in your past and see only hardship, there's one thing that you see in your past where you not only see the desperation and the truth, but also the certainty, and that is the cross of Jesus. Did you doubt God's faithfulness to you? Just look at the cross. Look back. Jesus wasn't setting an example. Jesus was not doing it just sort of decling the slate so you could gut it out for the rest of your life. Jesus went to the cross willingly on your behalf. So when you doubt your faith, you look back, and you said, did Jesus go to the cross? Yes. And if he went to the cross meeting, how could he not show me mercy now? If I was so important, if the church is so important, if Jesus would give his life for it, how could he not ensure that it would continue? If you feel desperate in your faith, you look back, and you see Jesus on the cross, and you say, he understands my desperation. If you want it, if you're struggling with being obedient in your faith, you look back at Jesus in the garden, and you realize he knows what it means to struggle with being obedient. You see the crux of this whole thing with our faith, whether it's desperate faith, true faith, or sure faith, really centers in one place, and that's the cross of Jesus. So to the extent that you understand the cross, you will understand all of these things about your faith, and to the extent that you will continue to look at the cross, you will grow in him. Think about that. Let me pray. Father, we thank you that you have seen fit to make us desperate. We hate it sometimes, and we feel betrayed sometimes, and yet, your promise is that even in our desperation, all things work together for the good of those whom you love. And so you love us, and so help us to embrace our desperation. Help us to embrace our desperation with the truth of our faith, but also help us to embrace our desperation and the truth of our faith, understanding the complete and utter certainty of it, and so we thank you and praise you. Your name, amen.