Our studies this week are from the Gospel of John, and we're considering in particular the signs or miracles which are recorded in this Gospel. Reminds you again that there are fewer given in the Gospel of John than in any of the others. The synoptics recall and record most of the Most of them record the same miracles and they're in profusion, but the Gospel of John is limited to eight of them. And these eight miracles or signs are chosen, as he tells us in the twentieth chapter, for a special purpose. It says there are many other signs which Jesus did, which are not written in this book, but these are written that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you might have life through His name. That's the thirtieth and thirty-first verses of chapter twenty. You never need to buy a key to the Scriptures, because God didn't lock his Bible up. He did what hospitable people usually do. He left the key hanging right by the door. I was in Seattle recently and I got home from a meeting earlier than the people with whom I was staying, and it was raining. So when I stepped up on the porch, I didn't want to have to stay out there in the rain, not knowing how soon they would get home. And so I thought, now let's see where would they probably put the key. And I looked three places. And the third place I found it. And so I unlocked it. She put the key back in place and went inside and turned on the lights and was waiting for them. They got home. I didn't say anything. They came in and pretty soon one of them said, well, how did you get in here? Well, I said, I looked at the usual places where people hide their house keys. And the third place I looked, I found yours. Well, they said, we thought I had a place that nobody would ever find it. Well, the reason they put the key there is because they're very hospitable people, and they often tell the guests, they haven't told me yet, they didn't need to. They often tell the guests where they can find the keys. That's because they want you to come in. And God wants you to enter into His Word. He wants you to understand His Word. He has not only given us His Holy Spirit to teach us, but He has given us the key to each book. Usually it's hanging by the front door. In the case of John's Gospel, it's hanging by the back door. Find it at the close of the next to the last chapter. Oftentimes in the very first paragraph of the book, the Lord will tell us why this book is being written. And you should look for these indications if you really want to understand the keynote of an individual passage of Scripture. Now tonight we're going to look at the fourth chapter. Last night we saw two of these signs in chapter two. We saw the glory of God in creation and the glory of God in judgment. Tonight we're going to see the glory of God in His absolute power. Power is an attribute of deity. John chapter four will begin to read at the forty-third verse. Now after two days he departed then and went into Galilee, for Jesus himself testified that a prophet hath no honor in his own country. Then when he was coming to Galilee, the Galileans received him, having seen all the things that he did at Jerusalem at the feast, for they also went under the feast. So Jesus came again into Cana of Galilee, where he made the water wine. And there was a certain nobleman whose son was sick at Capernaum. Capernaum, by the way, is about twenty miles from Cana. When he heard that Jesus was come out of Judea into Galilee, he went unto him. That is, he made the trip from Capernaum to Cana twenty miles. and besought him that he would come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. Then said Jesus unto him, Except ye see signs and wonders, you will not believe. The nobleman said unto him, Sir, come down, ere my child die. Jesus said unto him, Go thy way, thy son liveth. And the man believed the word that Jesus had spoken unto him, and he went his way. And as he was now going down, the servants met him and told him, saying, Thy son liveth. Then inquired he of them the hour when he began to amend. And they said unto him yesterday, At the seventh hour the fever left him. So the Father knew that it was at the same hour in the which Jesus said unto him, Thy son liveth, and himself believed, and his whole house. This is again the second miracle that Jesus did when he was come out of Judea into Galilee. It's the third sign recorded in the book, but it's the second one that he did in Galilee. One of the marks of deity, I believe, one of the ways by which we should know God is by his absolute power. A God who is limited is not God. We're told in the book of the Psalms that the children of Israel limited the Holy One of Israel. And God was displeased with this, and dishonored by it, and saddened by it. They limited the Holy One of Israel. The enemies of the Lord limited him also. A very wicked king sent to Hezekiah and said, have any of the gods of the nations round about you and able to deliver their people, then why do you think your God can do it? And it was because that he blasphemed the name of God by comparing him with other idol gods that God stepped in and gave a great victory for Hezekiah. When the children of Israel were having problems displacing the people of the land, they said, God has helped us, but these people have iron chariots. Now what difference did it make to God whether they were wooden chariots or iron chariots? In another case, a man had to meet a great army of people. And so he gathered the greatest army together that he could. And the Lord said, there's too many people, sending home all the cowards, and nearly all of them went home. I've often wondered why Joshua didn't go himself, because he was one of the afraidest persons I think I've ever read about in the Bible. Everything about him seemed to indicate that he was afraid. He did stay, but most of them went home. And the Lord looked them over and said, you still have too many. And he gave another test to find out whether they were really interested in serving the Lord or if they were more interested in getting a good drink of water. And he sent all of them home at three hundred. And Joshua must have been appalled. But he learned that it doesn't make any difference to God. God could save by few just as well as he can by many. There was another king who decided that he didn't have enough men. So he sent out and hired another army for a hundred talents. That's a lot of money. And the Lord said, I don't want those people to help you. They're not my people. They're not godly people. They're wicked people. I don't want them helping my armies. Send them home. He said, what do I do for the hundred talents? The Lord said, I can give you a lot more than that. Send them home. So they sent them home. God wanted them to know that he is the God of absolute power. Brothers and sisters, you and I are living in a time when even the people of God are limiting God. Several years ago when my wife and I first started taking children into our home, an old brother who had been preaching for forty years, came to me and he said, John, I'm worried about you, trying to take in those children and care for them. He said, have you been reading George Mueller's life? No, I said, I haven't. I did read it one time when I was a boy. I wasn't much impressed by it, but I did read it. Well, he said, I thought maybe you're trying to do what George Mueller did. No, I said, I wouldn't want to do what he did. I think he did what was fine for that century, but I wouldn't want to do it now. It wouldn't fit in our day. Well, he said, I mean, I thought maybe you thought that God would do for you what he did for George Mueller. I said, let me just ask you one question. No, first he told me this. He said, you know, you can't really expect the same things to happen now that happened then, because the Christians then were really in earnest. And he said, you know, the Christians then were selling what they had and giving it to the work of the Lord. Yes, I know. And besides, he said, he lived in a part of the country. He lived in England where there were assemblies in every city, all around him. Yes, I know. Now, I said, I just want to know one thing. If God tells me to take care of these children, will he feed them? Oh, a certain. He said, I wouldn't want to limit God. That's all he's been doing for the last fifteen minutes. He was a man who should have known God better than man. That's exactly what he was doing. He said God can do it in the nineteenth century, but not in the twentieth century. He can do it in England, but he can't do it in the United States. He can do it with a great man like Mueller, but he can't do it with a hit from the sticks. What do you think? Do you think God can do it? Or do you say yes, but? I was talking to a man in Chicago some years back, and he said, well, this faith business, that's the way he said it, this faith business, he said, you've got to be a little bit careful about this. Then he squinted one eye. That's the way you do when you show you're a sharp business man. He squinted that one eye, and he said, you've got to be hard-headed about these things. He said, hard-headed, you're hard-hearted. Do you believe God is able? You find this all through the Word of God, the insistence upon the ability of God to do anything. We've got a course which we teach our children. God can do anything, anything, anything but fail. but I'm not sure whether we really believe it or not. Let's look at this miracle, first of all, just as a story. What were the conditions? Well, first of all, this was a totally hopeless case. The boy was already dying. That's why the father was so in earnest, so insistent, that the Lord come immediately. Our brother was telling me today that in an emergency they gave him anesthetic and started the surgery on the elevator on the way to the operating room. That's a kind of a case we had before us here. You can't wait a minute. Lord, you must come immediately. The boy is dying. That's the situation. You don't like situations like that, do you? You don't like emergencies, do you? You don't like to be over a barrel. You don't like to be put in a position where only God can help us. On a ship one time, in a storm, a lady said to the captain, captain how bad is this storm he said madam only God can help us oh she said don't tell me it's come to that that's the one thing I hope will never happen in my life I don't want to be ever be put in the place where only God can help us a good many of you who are my age or even if you're not quite that old can look back in your lifetime and remember that you had a difficult time. Some of you went through the depression. And ever since that time, you've been trying to fix it so that your children would never have to go through what you did. Now what that really means is, I don't want my children to ever be in the position where they've gotten trust off. I found too hard. Well, all right. You explain it yourself any better than that. We don't want to be in a position where we have to trust God. We'd like to have some other resources. When Satan wanted to tempt Job, test Job, he said to the Lord, Thou hast put a hedge about Job. How did he know? white than all the way around looking for a hole in the hedge, of course. He couldn't get up, Job, because God had put a hedge around him. And God had to open that hole in the hedge to let Satan be in. Do you think God would do any more for Job than he'd do for you or me? We're his children. He loves us. Is there a hedge around us? Well, yes, but. But what? Well, I'd like to have a little more security than that. So I'm going to put a hedge around the hedge. Come to think of it, maybe I better put a hedge around the hedge, around the hedge. You know what I'm talking about. I don't have to draw you a picture of it. This is the way we live today, because we do not believe. that God can do anything. This man wouldn't have gone to an ordinary doctor and said to him, my son's about to die, come down at once. But he said it to the Lord Jesus. Not only was there no human hope, but did you ever stop to think about it? The Lord Jesus didn't even diagnose the case. And furthermore, He didn't even see the patient. There are people who can't believe that our blessed Lord was capable of performing miracles. They deny the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ. And they try to explain away all of the miracles which he did. They say, well, he told the people where to fish because he was standing in such a way that the light was shining on the fish. That's how he could tell him where the fish were. I'd like to hear them explain this one. There wasn't any psychology used in this because he never saw the patient. There wasn't any medication or treatment because he was never any closer than twenty miles to it. But the boy got well. How? Because God does miracles. The cure was instantaneous. Did you notice that the father said, What time did he start to get better? That's what the word a man means. When did he begin to amend? And his servant says he didn't begin to amend. Yesterday at the seventh hour, like that, the fever left him. Well, he said that's exactly the time that the Lord Jesus said to me, Your son lives. No treatments. Instantaneous healing. Did you ever see anybody with a bad fever? Did you see their fever break? And did you see how weak they were afterward? There's nothing quite like the weakness after a fever break. And yet repeatedly the Lord Jesus healed people of fevers. This young man was well immediately. So was Peter's mother-in-law. Peter's mother-in-law was sick of a great fever. And the Lord Jesus raised her up and she immediately got up and got dinner for the people. No weakness. No aftermath. No convalescence. That's because he's God. Don't tell me about divine healers. There are a dime a dozen, as far as I'm concerned. The things that they do are nothing. In the first place, they never do the things the Lord Jesus did. He cured the maimed. That's somebody with an arm off or a leg off. He cleansed the lepers. That's somebody with an incurable disease. and he raised the dead. And not only so, but so did all of his followers. Paul raised the dead. Peter raised the dead. That's divine healing. They don't even try. Furthermore, these people who call themselves divine healers are constantly giving treatments. You bring them back enough times, They work on them psychologically until they get them convinced that they can walk without their crutches. The Lord Jesus never gave any treatments. And there's always something, some strings attached to it. You either have to get a ticket to get in the healing line, or you have to sign some kind of an agreement and you have to give the money And all of the divine healers are well healed. To excuse a pun. One of them in Tulsa, Oklahoma has the largest installation of IBM machines outside of the United States government. And when the government investigated him, they found out that his income, his income was three hundred thousand dollars a month to disgrace. Our blessed Lord Jesus healed this man instantly, supernaturally, and so convincingly that the whole family believed on the Lord. There wasn't a doubter left in the bunch. Now that's the story. What are the lessons? First of all, we should learn the absolute power of God. I've already been saying some things about it, and I want to say some more. I want to say that when God created this world, He did a tremendous thing, and He did it by simply speaking a word. God said, let there be light, and there was light. God created the heavens and the earth by speaking words. Think about that. We believe, and rightly so, that Armstrong and Aldrin did a marvelous feat. with the aid of about six hundred thousand other people, when they stepped foot on the moon. And we give them credit for it. It took a brave man to take that first step on the moon. It took brave men to go out that distance not knowing if they would come back. But all they were doing was stepping foot on something that God had placed there by just saying the word. We don't know anything about that kind of power. We know about six million pounds of thrust to get them off of this Earth's surface. But we don't know anything about the kind of power that could put the moon up there and keep it there. I read the other day that the universe is calculated to be operating within one second per century of absolute accuracy. Now, I would think that if I discovered something as close as one second in the century that I would admit that it was perfect, but they couldn't do that. They just didn't dare to do that. So they said it operates within one second of a century of being perfect. You have any idea why it works like that? Who put it there? Who keeps it there? First chapter, Colossians tells us, our blessed Lord Jesus was the agent of the Godhead in creation, and he upholdeth all things by the word of his power. I have a Christian friend who is a scientist, a research scientist. He's the man who designed and built the machinery which was used in the testing and all of the all that went with the first atomic bomb he's the foremost authority in the world today on the on the subject of electronic measurements and he said to me the miracle is not nuclear efficient not the splitting of the atom that isn't the miracle he said the atom the the the miracle is how the atom holds together That's a miracle. He said if you think of an atom as being something which is mostly space, and think of a pivotal point here as being something at this point to which the rope is attached, and then think of a rope as long as a football field, and then think of something the size of a basketball on the end of that, and think of that swinging around at such speed that it looks like it's solid. you get an idea of what's going on inside of an animal. Now he said, anybody knows that if you swing that ball around at that speed, that that rope was liable to break, and when it does, that ball is going to go far afield. But he said, this is going on in every atom, in every piece of matter, and nothing flies apart. said the miracle isn't that men can split the atom. The miracle is what keeps the atom together so that it doesn't, so the whole universe doesn't fly apart. Well, of course the answer is in the first chapter of Colossians. By him all things consist. That means they hang together. By him all things hang together. Think of the absolute power of God. in creation and in sustaining creation. This is your father. Brother and sister, we're talking about your father. I suppose every boy likes to brag about what his dad can do. Our children with the home are no different from any of the others. For years they have looked upon me as being their dad, although I was only a substitute dad. One day I heard a conversation going on outside my office window. One of my little boys and a neighbor's little boy was arguing. And the neighbor's little boy said, my dad's richer than your dad. Well, he had him there. And my little boy said, well, my dad's bigger than your dad. And that was right. And the other one said, But my dad has, what was he had, something that I didn't have, and my little boy said, my dad's got a bigger car than your dad. He had a school bus. Yeah, he said, that's right. So that ended the argument. He won. My dad's got a bigger car than your dad. Forty-two passenger school bus. Pretty hard to beat that. Why was that boy talking like this? Because every boy likes to feel, my dad can whip your dad. My dad is better than your dad. I'm glad that I belong to God's family. I'm glad that greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. I'm glad I'm God's child. because my Father is a Creator. My Savior is a Creator. Think of the greatness of God in judgment. Have you ever thought what a tremendous thing happened at the deluge, the flood in Noah's day? Oh, yes, it happened all right. No question about it. Scientists now are beginning to admit They're not even Christian men. They're just research scientists. They're beginning to admit there just had to be a worldwide flood. Well, we've known that all the time because we have Bibles to tell. Have you ever thought of the implications? Have you ever thought what it took to flood this whole world? Have you ever thought of the tremendous unleashing of power and all of that water dropped out of the heavens and came up out of the depths of the earth? Have you ever thought what happened in that judgment? Have you ever thought what happened when God sent fire and brimstone? and destroyed an entire valley of Palestine where the Dead Sea now lies, not only erasing Sodom and Gomorrah, but all of the towns around about it. We talk about the power of an atomic bomb or a hydrogen bomb, but have you ever read about the eruption of Krakatoa in the South Pacific? Do you realize that an entire island was vaporized in a few seconds? And that millions of tons of dust were taken into the stratosphere and traces of it are still there. and you realize that the noise from that explosion was heard three thousand miles away. Why they say the biggest bomb that man has ever exploded isn't even a very good firecracker compared to the tremendous unleashing of energy that happened when Krakatoa blew its power. Have you ever thought what it's going to be like when God abolishes both heaven and earth and calls from the grave and from the sea the bodies of all those who have died of all time and brings them back to stand in space before God to be judged? Have you ever thought of that? Who else but God can do this? And the God who has done these things is going to do these things. Our Blessed Lord Jesus is God. Never forget this. The world has filled people who are denying the deity of Christ, and many of them are preachers. And there are many people, I'm sorry to tell you, well-meaning but ignorant people preaching on the radio, writing books and pamphlets who are questioning the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ. And some of them are considered to be fundamentalists. This seems almost impossible, but it's happening. There are great many people today who are not sure whether the Lord Jesus Christ is really God or not. They're not sure whether the Lord Jesus Christ could have sinned or not. I've read statements of this effect. They say, well, of course the Lord Jesus could have sinned because if he couldn't sin, there's no point in the temptation. But he was too wonderful to sin. He refused to sin even though he could. That borders on blasphemy. Because if the Lord Jesus could see him, then he isn't perfect. And as far as saying that there's no point in the test, if he could see him, that's ridiculous. I used to be in the jewelry business, and I tested all the gold that we bought in the store. I used to buy old gold, melt it up. I tested all of it. Occasionally I got hold of a piece of pure gold. Somebody would bring in a nugget from a mine, twenty-four carat gold. Is there no point in testing twenty-four carat gold? Well, of course there is. You prove that it is twenty-four carat gold. That's what you prove. You prove that it is good, that it is pure. That's what the temptation of our blessed Lord Jesus proved. That he is God, that he had no sin, that he knew no sin, that he did no sin, that he was holy, harmless, and undefiled and separate from sinners. Of course the Lord Jesus Christ is God. His actions proved it. His words proved it. His sinlessness proved it. This miracle proved it. I want to ask you a question. If the Lord Jesus Christ could keep a boy from dying, why didn't he keep Lazarus from dying? If the Lord Jesus Christ could deliver Peter from prison, and he did, why didn't he deliver James from prison? He let James be killed. If the Lord Jesus Christ could heal lepers, why didn't he heal all the lepers? If the Lord Jesus could give sight to the blind, why didn't he take blindness off the earth? If the Lord Jesus Christ could heal people freely in the first century, why isn't he doing it in the twentieth century? Now those questions deserve to be answered. Have you ever thought about them? Is the Lord Jesus Christ all powerful? He is. His own claim in the twenty-eighth chapter of Matthew was this, all power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. And this is true. Then why doesn't he exercise that power and do these things? A man said to a preacher, where was God when my boy died? He said, God was the same place when your boy died that he was when his son died. God let his son die. Why? Friends, we need to remember that there is something beside the absolute power of God. There is also the will of God and the wisdom of God. God knows whether it's best for a man to be healed or not. God knows whether it's best for a man to live or die. God knows whether it's best. God knows whether it's best. And you're either going to learn to trust God or you're going to be disturbed all your life. Don't forget these other factors. Absolute power, yes. But this may not be the will of God. It may not be the best thing. It may not be in the plan of God for your particular need, and certainly it is not in the plan of God to heal now as He did in the first century. Why not? Well, let me just digress here and say that healing in the Scriptures was for a specific purpose. The Old Testament prophet said, when the Messiah comes, this is the way you will know it. He will do these miracle signs. That's why when John the Baptist sent messengers to Jesus to say, are you really the Messiah? Are we looking for another one? He didn't answer that question. He said, you go back and tell John what you're seeing happen. You go back and tell John that the blind are getting their sight, the dead are being raised alive again, and the maimed and the sick are being healed. You go back and tell John that. And John will understand, John will know that I'm really the Messiah because this is what the Old Testament prophet said, the Messiah was going to do. And so when the Lord Jesus, the Christ, the Messiah came to this earth, he brought his credentials with him. Now when the ambassador to the United States from Russia comes to Washington, D.C., his first official act is to visit the State Department and to present his credentials. But he only does this once. When he presents those credentials, he is accepted in Washington as the official representative of the Russian government. If we insisted on his presenting his credentials every time he contacted the State Department or once a week, we would insult him and he would go back to Russia. and we'd have trouble with Russia for insulting their ambassador. Why? Because you only present your credentials once, and the Lord Jesus presented those credentials. That's why he did it. He didn't heal the sick and raise the dead and cleanse the lepers and give sight to the blind because he was looking out for the needs of the people altogether because of this is the case. He would have done it for all of the people, not just in one spot, not just in one little tiny country, not just for a few years, three years and a half. But he would have done it everywhere. But you see, the Lord was doing it. Show the people who you are. There's no point in that now at all. It's already been proven who he is. And miracles are not in the plan of God now. When somebody says to me, you're wrong in going to a doctor for help, you should trust God about sickness. You should never take medicine. I say to him, where do you get your groceries? Well, such and such a supermarket, oh, that's all wrong. That's lack of faith. What do you mean? Well, I mean that you ought to go out the edge of town and gather it up. Manor. But he said, there isn't any manor. Why not? Isn't God the same yesterday, today, and forever? That's what they say. That's the scripture that they use. God's the same, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And they think that this proves that people ought to get well today, just the same as it did in the first century. If you're going to try to prove that, you'd have to prove also that we're going to have manners to eat instead of buying your groceries at the supermarket. But God isn't sending any manners. You're going to get pretty hungry if you stand around waiting for it to drop from heaven. It isn't coming. But God has given you other ways of getting your groceries. I tell that by looking at all of it. And God has given us other ways of getting our health back, and we're thankful to Him for doctors and for surgery and for medicines and for all the rest of it. But now let me just make another application. This is a wonderful picture of the Gospel. First of all, you have you have a helpless, a helpless patient present. This boy can't make himself well, but neither can his father make him well. And no doctor in Capernaum. And Capernaum was the largest city in the northern part of Palestine. He was on the crossroads of two Roman roads, and there were hundreds of neighboring towns dependent on Capernaum. They must have had some of the finest doctors in the country there, but nobody could do a thing for this fellow. Isn't that a good picture of the need of a sinner? If I'm talking to somebody here tonight who has never really trusted Christ as your Savior, let me tell you that you're far more hopeless than you have any idea. When we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. Without strength doesn't mean with a little strength. It means without. There is nothing that you can do. A fellow said to a preacher, You mean to tell me that all I got to do is just sit here and fold my arms and be saved? He said, I didn't say anything about folding your arms. You're adding one more thing to it. There isn't anything that you can do for salvation. Salvation is the work of God. I was preaching with Mr. A. and O'Brien many years ago, and he said, John, Does it bother you that I never make any kind of an appeal at the close of a gospel meeting? I said, no, it doesn't bother me at all. I believe in the Spirit of God doing the work. He said, I do too. He said, I don't believe that you can do anything to help the Spirit of God save a soul. And I doubt it you can do very much to him. And I think he's right. I think the Spirit of God does the work. You and I can tell the Lord Jesus about Him. and tell him about the Lord Jesus. But God has to do the work. You and I can't save us all. We can't create an anxious thought. We can't help anybody to be saved. A lady was watching a moth come out of its cocoon, and it was struggling and struggling, and she felt so sorry for it that she took a pair of scissors and slipped the cocoon down the back, and it plopped out. And there it lay, quivering. It eventually got so it could wobble around, but never was able to fly. And then she found out by reading in a natural history book that the struggle that a moth goes through and getting out of the cocoon forces the fluids out into the wings and expands the wings. And without this, it will never be able to fly. I think this has happened to a lot of people. I think that folks in their anxiety to get somebody saved, have put words into their mouths. And while a person may be saved, he never seems to be able to fly very high. You have heard him for life by urging him to say words that you put into his mouth. You let the Spirit of God do the work. This man was helpless and so were his loved ones. There's another lesson that I see in this. There was tremendous concern here. I don't know how concerned the boy was or the young man, but I know that his father was terribly concerned. Brothers and sisters, how concerned are you and I over our loved ones who are not saved? Do you pray for them? Are you doing what you can to win them for Christ? There are some things that you and I can do. We can't save them. We certainly can keep the word before them. We certainly can live before them so as to prove that we have something. If your home is not a place where the graciousness of Christ is seen, if there's bickering in there, selfishness and death. Things of this kind, how do you expect that your children are going to be attracted to Christ? You and I have got to live for our children if we want to attract them to the Lord Jesus. Are you doing what you can? Are you really concerned? I don't say these things to torment you. I've had all kinds of torment about the failure of our eldest son. I don't want to put blame on you that doesn't belong there, but I am saying that we ought to be concerned. We ought to be concerned. But not only was this Father concerned, and this is wonderful, the Lord Jesus was concerned. But his concern was wider than the Father. The Father had one single thought, make my boy get well. That's the whole thing. But the Lord Jesus had some other concern. There are some other things to be considered. There are some other factors. This may be one of the reasons why God has not saved that son or daughter of yours yet. Maybe he's trying to teach you something. What did he want to teach this father? Well, first of all, he said to this father, he said, except you see signs and wonders you will not believe. Was this true? Well, yes, it was true. And that man showed that he was dependent upon things like this. How did he prove it? By the very fact that he went back home and said, what time did he start to get well? That showed that he didn't really expect the Lord Jesus to do as much as he did. Doesn't it prove it? The Lord saw into his heart the Lord saw that there was a lack of complete confidence in himself. And God would like to teach us. We who are Christians need to be taught. complete confidence in God. Have you ever wondered why you go through trials? You think God enjoys torturing you? Do you think God does this because you've been bad? Some people say, you know, when things go all right, they say, well, I must be living right. And when they don't go right, they say, well, I wonder what I did. Well, that's a very low idea of God's concern for you. God's trying to teach you something. God's trying to make you like the Lord Jesus. God is trying to put you through school. So he was concerned about this person, this father, being genuine. He was concerned about the need of the boy, but he was concerned about the need of the family. He saw that there were many people in that household who did not believe, and he wanted to see them blessed as well. See, when the Lord does something, this is not an isolated thing that He's doing. This is all part of the pattern. One of the hardest things for me to understand is the inner workings of a computer. I have a son who is a computer programmer. And he showed me the three-quarter million dollar machine that they have at Earth Science Service Administration, where he works in Boulder, Colorado. And it just covers literally acres. This huge building is filled with this machine. And it's difficult for me to understand. Here he sits at a little thing like a typewriter, and he touches keys. And things are happening all over this building. And I said, well, what I don't understand is how do you get this back so quick? He told me that he solved a problem which is estimated to take twelve men a year's time. Twelve mathematicians could work a year solving this problem, and he solved it on this machine in three seconds last. I said, what I don't understand is how do you get all this done in that length of time? Well, he said, Dad, a lot of things are happening at once. Now, that's exactly the story in God's dealings with us. While God is working with your unsaved boy or girl, he's also working with grandma. Something about grandma that he needs to fix up. And he's also working with that unbelieving heart of yours. And at the same time, he's getting the neighbor interested. You see, God's doing a lot of things at the same time. And when the proper moment comes, he'll save that boy of yours, and he'll bless grandma, and he'll save that neighbor as a result of it. And he'll do a lot of things, because God is doing a lot of things at once. That's the greatness of the absolute power of our God. There's something else about this, a lesson that I think is most necessary for us to learn, and that is confidence. I'm using the word confidence rather than the word faith. People are a little bothered by the word faith. They assume that they have faith. They talk about little faith and lots of faith and praying for more faith. When the Lord Jesus was asked by the disciples to increase their faith, he said, if you had faith as a grain of mustard seed, that would get the job done. You don't need more faith. You need living faith. That's what a grain of mustard seed has. It has life. All you need is living faith. It isn't a matter of getting more faith at all. It's not a matter of how much faith you have. It's a matter of where your confidence is placed. Now the question is, do you have implicit confidence in the Lord Jesus? One of the hardest things that I've ever had to learn in trying to help people, manage people, trying to get people to work together. I used to be a manager of a jewelry store and then the children's home. I've had responsibility there of getting people coordinated and working together. One of the biggest problems that I have ever had to learn is that once you put confidence in a person, you must not pull the rug out from under you. If you give him that job, even though he may not be doing it as well as you would do it, you let him finish it. Because you have to show confidence in people. How much more is this true of our confidence in God? Brother and sister, we're not really trusting God. We trust God plus something else. We're kind of like the man in the Civil War who said, Trust in God and keep your powder dry. Is that good sense? Yes, but it isn't good faith. I don't mean you should be careless. I mean that your confidence in God should be absolute. Now, if you have confidence in God, he's going to test it. The minute you say, I'm going to trust God about this, right that minute God says, all right, let's put him to a test. He said, that isn't fair. I don't think God ought to... But you see, God wants reality. God doesn't want this lip service. He doesn't want you to say you trust him. He wants it down in here. So he tests you out. And you fail. But out of the test, you've learned something about trusting God. It's a little easier next time. You've learned a little bit about trusting God. Now this man had imperfect faith. You noticed that. He said, what time did he start to get better? But God honored the faith that he had. The Lord was constantly doing this. There was a woman came up behind the Lord in a crowd one time, and she said, Now if I can just touch the hem of his garment, I'll get well. Was that faith? Well, it was kind of a superstitious faith, to be honest about it. There wasn't anything in the Bible to say, and the Lord certainly had never said, if you touch the edge of my garment, you'll get well. The Lord had never said that. Why didn't she just say, Lord, I want to be made well? No, she said, I've got to touch the edge of His garment. That was superstitious faith. She felt that there would be some kind of magic in just getting up to where she could touch that. That's that kind of thing that makes money for these fellows on the radio when they send out prayer claws and handkerches and all kinds of stuff around over the country for a buck a throw. Because people superstitiously believe that you can get something by touching. But do you know what happened? The Lord healed that woman anyway. He honored the faith that he did see. There was a man who came to the Lord. He said, Lord, if you can do anything for me, do it. The Lord said, if you can believe. The if wasn't with God. The if was with the man. And the man with tears said, Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. And the Lord did what he asked. You see, the Lord meets you where you are. If there's any faith, It is no matter having enough faith. Some people think, if I just had enough faith, I could get saved. It's not a matter of having enough faith. It's a matter of having any faith. If you have any faith in God, if you can trust God at all, that's enough faith to be saved. But God isn't going to be satisfied with that faith. He's going to develop it. When George Mueller was in this country, somebody asked him how he could trust God for so much. Well, he said, I'm not a man of great faith. I've just learned by practice. He said, when I first started taking care of children, I only had ten dollars worth of faith. That's all I could ask God for. It was ten dollars. God gave me ten dollars, and I bought food for the children, and I asked God for another ten dollars the next day, and he gave me another one. But he said, pretty soon, I had so many children, and ten dollars wouldn't go far enough, and I found out I had a hundred dollars worth of faith. So I asked God for a hundred dollars at a time. And then the thousand dollars. And he said when we built our last building, he said we needed a hundred thousand dollars to put up that building. And he said, I asked God to please give it to me in big enough gifts so that I wouldn't be spending a lot of time writing letters because I was terribly busy and God gave it to me in three gifts. I only had to write three letters of thanks for a hundred thousand dollars. Now he said, that isn't a matter of having great faith. That's a matter of exercising the faith that I had until it got stronger. That's what you do with muscles. That's what you do with faith. You develop your faith by using it. And God rewards faith. And God strengthens your faith as you go through trial. Don't ask God not to give you any difficulties. Don't ask God to give you a bed of roses. Don't ask God to put a carpet down on your racetrack. You need difficulty. You need problem. You need to learn His way. You need to learn the absolute power of our God. That's right. Our Father, we thank thee that we know thee through thy Son. We thank thee that thou art God. and that we can count on thee. And whenever we have counted on thee, thou has never let us down. We thank thee our blessed Lord for accomplishing salvation for us. We thank thee for redeeming us individually for that time in our own life's experience when we came to know the Lord, because God wrought wondrously in our life. And then we thank them for the things that have happened in our experience, that have taught us God's ways, that have increased our confidence in God, that have enabled us to say, I believe God. And we pray, Father, for those who still need more, teach us thy ways. And we ask by blessings we go to our homes. We pray, our Father, for those who didn't come tonight as well as those who did. We pray especially tonight for the young people who are here, some of them quite young. God bless them all. Take our thanks again in the precious name of the Lord Jesus. Amen. I might suggest that tomorrow, sometime, you read the first sixteen verses of the fifth chapter of John's Gospel. where we shall learn about the glory of God in forgiveness.