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Outline:

John chapter 4 opens… “Therefore, when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John, He (and His disciples) left Judea and departed again to Galilee. But He needed to go through Samaria. So Jesus came to a city of Samaria which is called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph.”

John 4:43-44, “Now after the two days He departed from there and went to Galilee. For Jesus Himself testified that a prophet has no honor in his own country.”

As John returns to the motion of the text letting us know Jesus “departed from” Samaria “after these two days” in Sychar and continued onward into “Galilee,” he adds a bit of his own commentary noting that “Jesus testified that a prophet has no honor in his own country.”

While this recollection appears to be a strange in the moment, realize John is bringing this statement of Jesus to the forefront of our minds within the context of the amazing honor and respect this unlikely group of Samaritans had just demonstrated to Jesus.

In John 4:40-42 we saw that “when the Samaritans had come to Jesus, they urged Him to stay with them; and He stayed there two days. And many more believed because of His own word. Then they said to the woman, ‘Now we believe, not because of what you said, for we ourselves have heard Him and we know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world.’” The sad truth is that you’d be hard-pressed to find this reaction in Galilee or Judea.

John 4:45, “So when Jesus came to Galilee, the Galileans received Him, having seen all the things He did in Jerusalem at the feast; for they also had gone to the feast.”

Don’t forget the flow of John’s Gospel… In John 2 Jesus and His disciples make the long pilgrimage from Galilee down to Jerusalem for the feast of Passover. Upon their arrival Jesus clears out the Temple and then proceeds to teach and preform miracles over the coming week. Note: During one of these evenings Jesus has this conversation with Nicodemus.

Once Passover wrapped up most of the pilgrims Jesus had initially come with would have returned home to Galilee. That said, instead of going with them, John 3 ends with Jesus camping out in Judea at the Jordan River where He preached and His disciples baptized.

The point is that this is the first time Jesus has been back in Galilee since those exciting seven days in Jerusalem. Though His only miracle thus far in Galilee had been the transforming of water into wine at a private wedding, because of “all the things they had seen Jesus do in Jerusalem,” John notes that upon His return “the Galileans received Jesus.”

This subtle contrast of the Galileans “receiving Jesus” while these Samaritans had “believed in Jesus” accepting Him as “the Christ, the Savior of the world” sets the stage for the final story recorded in John 4… A story that concludes in verse 54, “This again is the second sign Jesus did when He had come out of Judea into Galilee.”

John 4:46-47, “So Jesus came again to Cana of Galilee where He had made the water wine. And there was a certain nobleman whose son was sick at Capernaum. When he heard that Jesus had come out of Judea into Galilee, he went to Him and implored Him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death.”

Let’s begin by establishing what we know about this “certain nobleman.” First, the Greek word we have written as “nobleman” can be literally translated as “kings-man.” No doubt this man was an officer of King Herod - who the Romans had given jurisdiction over Galilee. Since “Capernaum” was one of the larger cities in the area, it acted as his headquarters.

With this in mind, it’s safe for us to conclude this nobleman was both wealthy and influential. As the story develops we’ll come to learn this man had “servants” further substantiating this position. In many ways his status within the kings-court afforded him the kind of life that was generally insulated from many of the hardships the common citizen faced in that day.

Secondly, from the text we also know he was a father - specifically of a young boy. While the Greek word translated in verse 47 as “son” is rather generic and nondescript implying a male gender, the word used for “child” in verse 49 indicated the boy was young in age - likely an infant or a toddler. There is no question, as any father, his son was the apple of his eye!

Read the Rest at: http://www.c316.tv/sermons/296