Seven Miracles - Pt 5

So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.” After the two days he departed for Galilee. (For Jesus himself had testified that a prophet has no honor in his own hometown.) So when he came to Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him, having seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the feast. For they too had gone to the feast. (John 4:40-45 ESV).

Our second miracle is introduced to us with a strange prologue. This is especially true in light of what the apostle tells us just after the first miracle. He says, “He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him” (John 1:11 ESV). The people you would think would welcome Him with open arms simply couldn’t care less. Yet, when Jesus gets to Samaria, an area where he shouldn’t have been accepted at all, he was received with overwhelming reception. And, the focus was not on his miracle-working power, but on his word (v. 42). It seems strange to us; however, it was not strange to Jesus. It was part of the plan from the beginning. He intends to keep offering himself to his own, and overall his own will not receive him. This will in the end get him killed, which is why he came. There was some acceptance in Galilee. They “believed,” John says, but this was not a kind of faith that Jesus accepted. It was simply an excitement with his miracles, not what they pointed to, namely, his beauty and glory as the Son of God, the Messiah, the Savior of the World, the things that the Samaritans saw, even though the emphasis there didn’t fall on miracles, but on his word. That little revelation ought to challenge us today. All too often we worship only when we are motivated by the “show.” That is merely false faith. Another illustration of this kind of false faith, or superficial “welcoming” or “receiving” of Jesus, is his brothers (cf. John 7:3-5). They believed he could do miracles. And they were eager for him to show these miracles to the world. But John says, “even his brothers did not believe on him” (v. 5). Oh, they think they are receiving him, just like the people in Galilee think they are welcoming Jesus, but they don’t understand him. They don’t have eyes to see. And so they don’t honor him, even though they make much of him as a miracle-worker. This sets the stage for the healing of the official’s son, the second miracle in John’s Gospel. We will see Jesus make a strong statement of indictment against being “sign-seekers.” That is a word for us today. We must be the kinds of believers that merely turn to Jesus when we need a miracle. He is not some cosmic vending machine dispensing what we want, when we want it!