The Faith of the Nobleman

Webster defines “miracle” as, “an extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention in human affairs”. Oxford Dictionary says of miracles, “A surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore considered to be the work of a divine agency”. In our time the word miracle is tossed and twistedly applied to just about everything. A baby being born–it’s a miracle! Catching a baseball in the last play of the game–it’s a miracle!  One recovers from a serious illness or accident and again–it’s a miracle!

Truth is that apart from what we cannot know, these are natural events. Childbirth, is natural, catching and winning the ball game in the last play is common, and recovering from an illness or accident–well, the miracle is from God every time in the sense that we are “fearfully and wonderfully made”, (Psalm 139:14). That is to say that God made our bodies to heal from injury, the miracle is how God designed us, not that we heal.

But there are miracles recorded in the Bible by the hundreds, and we’ll consider one where Jesus heals a nobleman’s son without ever stepping foot in his home, without every seeing the boy. That my friends is something that cannot happen naturally. That is a miracle. Let’s begin in John chapter 4 at verse 46 and expound on this marvelous event…