So why signs?

The music was upbeat and the images bouncy, but I just didn’t get it. What were they trying to sell in that ad? Style drowned out the image for me. That’s because I’m an outsider to the cool world branded by the marketers.

Fortunately, that’s not the case with John’s writings. In his book, he tells us exactly why he wrote.

But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. John 20:31

This week we’ve discussed the link between knowledge and belief. In a variety of settings, John showed us people who thought they knew because they have seen miracles. But their belief didn’t stick.

Today, we don’t get to see Jesus walking into Cana and bring a dying son back to life. But we do get to read about it. For the nobleman who had to choose between sight and Jesus’ words, the decision was agonizing. But in taking Jesus at his word, the father saw the gift of life.

It’s more important to believe Jesus’ word than to see his miracles.

Miracles happen today, bringing encouragement to those who follow the King. But don’t we long for more – to see the miracles from Jesus’ hand?

We don’t get to see those signs firsthand, but that didn’t produce enduring belief for the first-century observer anyway. The privilege of reading God’s Word is ours and by believing we have life in his name.

Tying the knot

Thomas is sometimes our spokesman, blurting out words that we’d like to say: Jesus, I won’t believe until I see the nailprints in your hands and touch the sword slash in your side. (John 20:25)

Ours is a world of material where we can feel the warmth of the sun, touch the roughness of tree bark, taste the tang of , smell a new rose, see mountains jutting into a azure-blue sky.

For many, there is nothing else. There is no spiritual, no unseen, no imperceptible – only what we can detect through our senses.

Jesus walked with those whose belief followed their senses. They saw and then believed. His ministry began in an insignificant village where he transformed cleansing water to wine, a clear image of his coming redemption. His second miracle was in that same town where he transformed death into life in healing a dying son.

The stories told between the Cana account of John 2 and the Cana account of John 4 explore the link between knowledge and belief. For many reading John’s gospel, the quest was for secret knowledge to open the box of understanding.

But the belief of those who saw Jesus’ miracles and then thought they grasped the truth was not made of the stuff of eternity. That belief faded like fog in the sunlight. The way to life was through belief. John is clear on that.

The way to belief is not through knowledge. Seeing is not believing.

Jesus challenged a nobleman to take him at his word. In doing that, the father found life and belief.

Thomas demanded physical evidence before pledging his heart to Jesus. But as Jesus stood before him, Thomas melted into belief.

Don’t we sometimes long to hear Jesus’ voice or touch his hand? Yet Jesus made it clear that belief does not come from seeing but from his word.

“Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” John 21:29

Next: So why signs?

A father's vision

A child on the doorstep of eternity will drive a father to extreme measures. And that’s probably why the nobleman traveled all the way to Cana: to lure Jesus back to him in the wild hope this rabbi could heal his son.

People talked and the stories swirled about healings in Jerusalem, strange occurrences in Samaria. The father was hoping to see his son restored to health.

You may be familiar with the story, found in John 4:46-54.

Because the story takes place in Cana, it forms what’s known as an inclusio, a bookend of sorts with John 2, where Jesus turned water into wine in Cana. The nobleman’s story completes a unit in the text that we can study for common threads.

We’re going to spend some time trying to follow some threads. Try to review John 2-4 this week, not necessarily reading each verse carefully but scanning to get the larger picture.

Starting in Cana, Jesus turned 6 jars water into wine. We don’t know if anyone saw the miracle, only the results. But we do know it resulted in his disciples believing in him.

Then Jesus traveled to Jerusalem, where many saw him do miracles and believed in him. We discussed earlier how he did not trust their believing, however. Their belief was based on what they saw and that belief faded when he was no longer in sight.

Nicodemus, in John 3, opened a discussion with Jesus by carefully explaining what he knew. Jesus challenged the knowing. You think you know what you can see but that seeing hasn’t produced correct knowledge.

We next read about John the Baptist, who was telling about something he had not seen. However, he told his listeners, Jesus told about what he had seen. “He tells what he has seen and heard, but how few believe what he tells them!” (John 3:32)

In Samaria, Jesus moved a conversation from water to eternity, reminding the woman she worshiped what she did not know.

And then we read the account about the nobleman, who came to see Jesus.

Next: Is seeing believing?

The conflict

When Nicodemus came to Jesus to extend his hand of generous knowledge, he came in the night. Some suggest that John was underlining a key point: Nicodemus was in the dark about Jesus’ nature. Others suggest that he was afraid of the Pharisees and was hiding under cover of darkness.

Both interpretations work well, especially considering how John frequently uses light as an analogy for Jesus. Nicodemus was in the dark and Jesus was the light.

But what happened to Nicodemus? He gets the John 3:16 discourse and we aren’t told the end of the story. Yet.

Later in the book of John, we meet Nicodemus again. The Pharisees were in a froth because of Jesus’ words at the temple and wanted him arrested. They bemoaned those who believed. In 7:50, Nicodemus confronted the Pharisees about a point of law: our law doesn’t judge without a hearing, does it?

They accused him of ignorance. Ironically, their point was that the Messiah will not come from Galilee but their own lack of knowledge – that Jesus was born in Bethlehem – revealed their own ignorance.

And, for Nicodemus, hearing Jesus' version of knowledge allowed him to stand up to the Jewish authorities after Jesus’ death. He was the man who helped Joseph of Arimathea anoint and bury Jesus.

To touch a dead man would defile a Pharisee and to openly align himself with Jesus ended his alliance with the religious leaders. Nicodemus, who originally came to Jesus to make peace (dare I say “seek approval”?), made a stronger stand than did the disciples.

They feared the Romans and the Jewish leaders. Whom did Nicodemus fear? I’d suggest that he only feared failing Jesus. He stood in the face of human rejection. Why?

We’re told in John 2 that Jesus knew what is in a person. Immediately afterward, he sat down with Nicodemus to correct his knowledge. Did Nicodemus, through this encounter, come to understand what was in a person?

Jesus didn’t entrust himself to people and, in the end, neither did Nicodemus. They knew that people are proud, selfish, emotional, moody, arrogant.

It’s a lesson we ought to learn. Not only am I weak, but so are you. Should I work to earn your approval or should you speak words that please me? Should your criticism crush me? Should my standards control you?

Jesus did not fear people’s opinions. His approval and direction came from the Father and he knew what people were truly like. Nicodemus learned. How’s our knowledge doing?

Our knowing

Nicodemus knew a lot. He told Jesus so. He knew Jesus did miracles and only God could do miracles. So Nicodemus logically deduced that Jesus was a teacher sent by God.

He thought himself expansive. He hadn’t trusted rumors and second-hand information. He had done what we should all do: gone to the source. He came to inform Jesus of his open-mindedness.

We know, he told Jesus, that you are could not do these miracles except God’s hand was on you.

As a Pharisee, he knew the ancient writings intimately. And he missed the point. Jesus might be a teacher or a prophet. But he might also be the Messiah, and Nicodemus never considered that.

So what he knew was limited to his own preconceptions. He “knew” what the Messiah would look like, and it wasn’t this man. Yet Jesus responded with compassion, addressing exactly that point in his response.

You can’t see the truth without being changed, Jesus told him. You don’t have the ability to know truth in your present state. The change must be as radical.

Here was the kingdom of God standing before him, and Nicodemus’ knowing was pretty thin. He couldn’t see who Jesus was.

Jesus revealed truth, compassion, salvation to Nicodemus. John 3 contains an amazing theological discussion about the nature of knowing, the mission of the Messiah, the personality of belief.

Yesterday we talked about Jesus knowing what was in a person in John 2. The message flows into John 3 where Jesus reveals that our knowing is nothing like his. He knows what is in us while we don’t even know what is in ourselves.

We think belief comes by seeing – miracles, charisma, signs – but Jesus made it clear that enduring belief does not come from within ourselves unless we are changed. It’s like being born a second time or like having the wind of the Spirit blow through.

Our knowing can’t even produce belief. We need help.

Next: a conflict of knowing

Knowing

Jesus had just had an amazing set of encounters in Jerusalem. He’d drawn whips to chase the merchants out of the temple. He’d compared himself to the temple, shocking the Jews. He’d performed many miraculous signs, causing many to believe.

Yet, in John 2:24, we’re told that he did not entrust himself to the people.

Why not? Hadn’t he done the signs to stir belief? Hadn’t he revealed his zeal for God’s house in cleansing the temple? Hadn’t he confronted the religious leaders?

The people responded with belief. And he didn’t believe their belief.

Rightly so. Even the disciples believed and then didn’t and then believed and then didn’t throughout Jesus’ ministry. At the end, when he was arrested, they scattered like lightning bugs in the light.

Jesus didn’t entrust himself to the people for he knew what was in a person. He hadn’t come to this earth to befriend them or to set up a fraternity but to save them. He wasn’t fishing for approval or even understanding.

He knew what was in us and his mission was rescue. He wasn’t a church planter or a consensus-builder. He came because he knew our sin nature, that we are incapable of even belief apart from him.

When did the disciples finally come to the place of commitment and courage? After Pentecost, when they were indwelt by the Spirit of God.

We can’t do this alone. In that early chapter of John, many people believed Jesus’ signs and his words. But Jesus never sought their approval. He knew it would waft in the wind like fog off the river.

He didn’t come to be approved but to save.

Next: our knowing