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A number of months ago in the evening service I told the Storey of being at Oak Hill, the Bible college we were at before we moved here and having armed police randomly turn up on my doorstep one morning. People very much enjoyed that Storey. It was just a case of wrong address and they went to someone else's house a few streets away. But it got me thinking about the only other time that I also encountered or had a kind of moment with the police while at that Bible college. And this was a letter that was sent to me, came one morning, looked very official.

I opened it as Sarah took the kids off to school and I was sitting at my table alone reading this letter and it started very officially dear Mr. Porter, so on and so forth and then lots of law and legal terms got thrown at me and it said under the blah blah blah blah act we need to alert you to the. I thought what is going on here? What have I possibly done to deserve this? And it was a big like lots of pages so I'm flicking through. What transpired had happened was that my name had appeared on a box and that box was in a massive pile of rubbish that had been fly tipped in North London and the police were writing to me and the line that stood out to me said we now need you to consider yourself to be under caution and any reply you give, you know all the kind of legal spirit I thought what have I done?

Anyway, I was kind of a bit confused, a bit bemused and I spoke to a friend about it whose wife is in kind of law just happened to see him next and say I've just got this letter and I'm thinking I'll just reply and say I'm Matt and I live at a Bible college and, and I've never been to this street in North London, it wasn't me and it'll be fine. And he said Matt no they won't just believe your word, you'll have to do something about it, it could be quite serious. He said well I'll leave you with the thoughts whether I'm still on the run from the police or not and I'll conclude it at the end of our sermon.

But you see that was fairly trivial. I didn't think I was going to get in that much trouble. I thought I could probably quite easily explain my way but, but taking me at my word the police wouldn't just take me at my word. Well in this Storey, true Storey, this encounter with Jesus we see something remarkable. If you've got a Bible in front of you I'd like you to zero into the end of verse 50.

End of verse 50 says this the man, remember, he's in a desperate situation, his son is close to death. The man took Jesus at his word and departed.

We're in a series thinking of these encounters with Jesus. And this morning I want to really ask, what does it look like to have faith in Jesus? It's a question we might be asking ourselves. What would it look like to put my trust in Jesus? It's certainly a question that our friends might have or family and they think, what does that actually mean?

Well, I want to profit you this morning that John wants to say one significant thing it means is to take Jesus at his word.

So that's what we're going to think about this morning. I'm going to pray. It's quite a heavy subject, quite a difficult passage with the near death of this boy. So let me pray that we together would hear God's word and trust it. Lord, we thank you that your word is so different to us.

It is strong and solid and powerful. And please, with all that we carry with us this morning, we pray that you would speak to us and guide us and reassure us through your word. Amen.

Now, the storey is intense and emotional, but it doesn't start in that way. If you've got the Bible, flip back that page to verse 43. 44. After two days, he left for Galilee. Now, Jesus himself pointed out that a prophet has no honour in his own country.

And Jesus had obviously been with the disciples, had taught them about his kind of background and life. They knew where he was from. And he said, anyone returning home, we've seen in the Old Testament time and time again, prophets, they're kind of a bit looked down on, like if you go back to the place you grew up in, and they say, we remember when he was a child and how they did this. We don't need to listen to his words. That's the kind of feel that Jesus is saying to here.

A prophet without has no honour in his own country. But 45 does something bizarre. John, the writer of this gospel, says when he arrived in Galilee, that's his home country, the Galileans welcomed him. Why does he say that? Jesus has just been saying, when I go back home, I won't have much honour.

They won't really listen to me. And then John immediately says they go back and everyone welcomes him. John is setting up for us what our storey is about this morning, what this encounter with Jesus is all about. He says, look what's happening here is the crowds. Yes, they're excited to see Jesus, but.

But they have a view of Jesus like a kind of slot machine where they think if we see a sign or a miracle, we'll love that. And John is kind of teasing out the question, what does real faith in Jesus actually look like? Not trying to gain this big following of people who kind of just want him a bit, but what does it look like to really commit your time and energy and your life to Jesus? The rest of 45 shows us that the people there, they'd seen all that Jesus had done in Jerusalem for they'd been there. And then John says they go to Cana in Galilee where he turned water into wine.

They're excited about the stuff that they get. And Jesus is going to use this as a moment to open out and say, look, the slot machine view is completely wrong. Instead, what does genuine faith look like amid all the potential faith of the crowds?

And the way it comes about is that there is this man. Every time I've read through it this week, I've thought, gosh, this is a heavy passage. Many here will have children or grandchildren. And you know that feeling when they're really quite sick and you're out of your depth and you think, I, I don't know what to do or where to turn. We call 111 or we quickly rush them to the A and E and we think, I've got to get them in front of someone that can help because my own resource now isn't enough.

This situation is really serious. Maybe you've had an incident like that. Well, here is this royal official. His son is dying. He knows that for a fact.

He lives a decent distance away. And the word comes to him that Jesus is in Galilee. And so he gets up and he goes to see Jesus. And you can imagine the situation at home, how painful it must have been for him to leave his son with the household. Maybe talking to his wife and saying, we've tried everything, I've got to go and get Jesus.

And the kind of heart wrenching pain of actually leaving someone. You know, you want to be at their bedside, don't you? But he sets out and in his mind he thinks, I've just got to get Jesus. And we're not told what he knows of Jesus. But I imagine he's thinking, if I can get Jesus and I can bring him back to my house, then my son will be okay.

If I can get him and bring him here, maybe he can lay his hand on my son. And he'll be healed. And so he sets out more than a day's journey, desperately hoping he gets there in time and can convince Jesus to come back. And it seems like a wonderful opportunity for Jesus. There are these crowds of people, they're longing for a miracle.

They're longing to see a sign. And Jesus could say, okay, everybody up, we get. We're going to walk back with this man. We're going to go back to where he's from, and you'll see the wonderful miracles that I can perform.

I was listening this week to the pastor in America, John Piper, and he says, whenever we think that we've got Jesus in the Gospels, kind of we know him. And we think, yeah, I kind of get Jesus. I know what he'll do in this situation. The gospel writers constantly want to show us that Jesus is different to how we would imagine him. And we can't emotionally or practically contain Jesus, because I would think, okay, what's going to happen?

This man in his desperation, he's going to come and beg Jesus, please, Jesus. And Jesus is going to be full of compassion and go with him. That's the natural flow. But have a look at 48. Another real surprise as Jesus responds, the man is there, he's begging.

He's saying, my son's close to death. And 48, Jesus says, unless you people see signs and wonders, he said to him, you will never believe.

That's not what I expect Jesus to do. The situation is desperate. Come on, Jesus, get going, sort this out. But Jesus is in any rush. He wants to show the crowd, look, it's not about the slot machine, the stuff you can get.

It's about trusting in me and my word.

The royal official is there, desperate, urgent, begging him, please, Jesus, come. And Jesus says, look, you got to see. You got to see the stuff, haven't you? And that's been their experience, the crowd. But he's trying to push them and this man to see what genuine, real faith looks like.

49. The man is desperate, sir, come be before my child dies.

I can just get Jesus there.

And so we're asking this morning, what does faith in Jesus look like? What does it mean? Jesus says, go, your son will live.

The man took Jesus at his word and departed.

Now, I don't know, we're not told. But I imagine, as he's half a mile away, the internal dialogue within him, thinking, what have I done? Can I take him in his words? Can I really trust him? Surely I should have convinced him to come with me.

But no, he Said, go. I believed him. And that wrestle is going on within him. Maybe. Or maybe he's just at peace.

Maybe he heard those words and thought, yes, I can trust.

But he doesn't know. He's got to travel all the way back and wait for news. What does it mean to have faith in Jesus? It means taking him at his words. The man must have been thinking, Jesus said to me, go, your son will live.

And I think a word of application here for all of us is something I've been thinking about this week. It's something probably as adults we all know and recognise, but it's not really the kind of thing we ever say aloud. I don't think before this morning at the first service, I'd ever said this from the front. But the more I thought about this week, I thought, yeah, actually, this is helpful, I think, for us.

Think about in 50 years time. 5, 0. 50 years. 50 years time. The reality, as it was for the first service this morning, is that almost everyone in this room will have come to the end of their life in that time frame.

Maybe you think, I've got a little bit longer than 50 years in me. I can go a bit longer than that. Some might. But 50 years, pretty much everyone here will have died. Our hearts will stop doing that thing that they just do and we take for granted, where they just pump.

Our lungs will stop just doing what they do. And probably for many of us, there'll be a time when we're in the hospital or hospice and we kind of know that the end is coming, the end of this earthly life. We're fading from this world. And as our heart goes on that final few cycles and the lungs kind of work, what will we cling to in that situation?

Surely it won't be what we've got in the bank accounts or the achievements that we've racked up in our life, or even the legacy that we've left through our family or our friends. But when everything is stripped away, what will we reach out for?

Or maybe not even in that moment, maybe way before then, you know, we've all had moments, I'm sure, where it feels like life suddenly just falling apart.

Where do we go? Where do we turn? Well, the invitation this morning is just like this man, to take Jesus at his word, to put the weight of our life and trust on him and his word for this life and for what comes after, what will our hope be? It will be Jesus words. That's the offer on the table in John's gospel.

And I'm really aware. I don't want to stand up here offering false hope or just some kind of myth we have to work out for ourselves. And all I can say is that in the time that I've known Jesus and walked with Him, I found His Word to be reliable, faithful, consistent, and I've seen it actually in the lives of others. And that's increased my belief and trust in Him.

All of us have to decide what are we going to cling to in those moments of life when we come towards the end, 50 years time or less, the invitation of John's gospel is to cling to Jesus words as a solid foundation, as a strong place for our feet to stand. I think it's amazing that the man did it go. Jesus said, your son will live. And the man took Jesus at his word. But of course, that's the offer to us too.

Well, that was probably a little bit down in terms of tone and feel. Let me try and contrast for a moment and maybe have a bit more fun with Jesus words with my words or your words. As I was thinking about it this week, I was reflecting back on when I was at university and I think I was probably 18 or 19, and someone said to me, would you lead this little team of people to get ready practically for some of the events that we're hosting within the Christian Union? We've got Annika coming on Wednesday evening here. She'll be sharing some more up to date storeys of the work in Brighton to come back and pray.

And it was that kind of work that I was involved in, you know, practical things, setting up tables and chairs and handing out flyers. And for some reason they let me be in charge of this team. It was not a great idea, I have to say. And one of the issues with it was that the team would say to me when we met to plan, Matt, what time on Tuesday? Which was like a whole week away.

What time on Tuesday will we meet? And I would say, I don't know, let's meet an hour beforehand at 10 o' clock and we'll be there and we'll set up together and we'll do this and that and the other, and then I would just forget. I mean, it would just completely slip my mind. I didn't have a diary. I just thought, I'll remember.

And I wouldn't. And I would get a message through on my phone, maybe at 10 past 10 to say, Matt, where are you? And I would reply, just on my way. Which meant, I'm going to get my shoes on. I'm going to run to the bus, I'm going to wait for a bus, I'm going to take a 20 minute bus into town and I might be there just before the thing start.

This became a kind of reputation thing. Sometimes they say, are we doing this? And I'd say, yes, absolutely, I'll be there. And then I would turn up to eat the food and not to do any of the helping. I hope that I've got slightly better in this area as I grew.

But yeah, it was not good. And my friends decided to give tribute to me at the end of the year when I came to the end of this particular role and they wrote me a song that they sang in front of all of my peers that reflected on my tardiness and lateness and the inability that I had to keep my word.

Well, thankfully, Jesus Word is not like my word or your word. We all do it, don't we? We say, I'll do that thing on the list or I'll respond to this, I'll do it today. And then we get to the end of the day and we've forgotten, I'll do it tomorrow. Jesus Word is not like that at all.

Jesus, well, his word carries weight and power. And why can he raise, how can he raise this one little boy far away with just a word? Well, if I can stretch your minds a bit this morning, the Jesus in the Bible, he's the one who spoke creation into being. He said, look, this planet Earth, let's fill it with all the trees and animals. And it was, it just happened through His Word.

Of course, if that's who he is, he can raise one little boy from the deathbed. Of course he can, just by speaking a word. But Jesus Word, he doesn't just leave us there. He encourages us along the way. Let's pick the storey back up.

His word is strong and powerful. He says, you son will live. The man departed, taking Jesus at his word. And that wrestle might be going on, he might be wondering what he does. And he sees as he's walking along the servants in the distance.

Remember, it's a good day's walk, maybe further, that he's got to travel. And he sees the servants coming to him. How do you think he was feeling? In his heart? There's some part of him think, oh no, they've come to tell me that my boy, my precious boy is dead.

And he can't see what they're saying, they're too far away. And he has to wait as they get closer and closer and it says While he was still on the way, his servants met him with the news that his boy was living. When he inquired as to the time that his son got better, they said yesterday at one in the afternoon, the fever left him. Then the Father realised that this was the exact time at which Jesus had said, you son will live.

Jesus word. It didn't delay, it didn't need any response from anyone. He spoke it and it happened. And John is really clear in this little account with all the details and all the little bits that he drip speeds in the time and the locations and the movement. There is Jesus speaking a word.

But we might say, well, isn't this just a lovely storey? Isn't this something just to kind of, I don't know, make us feel better on a really, really dark and difficult day. I was talking about this with someone I met randomly on a train many years ago, chatting with this person I sat next to on the train to turned out he was a firefighter. And he very, very tragically, his son was in a motorcycle accident many years before. And this firefighter said to me, my son had died, killed outright.

Got to the hospital and they told us, there's nothing that can be done. And I don't know how we got into the conversation, but he said to me, if anyone, any doctor in that moment had said, your son's been pronounced dead, but I'll sort him out, I'll raise him, I'll revitalise him, don't you worry. He said, if any doctor had said that to me and that had been a lie, the ends I would have gone to to discredit that man, to physically attack that man, to get him disbarred from medical practise. I would have stopped at nothing, he said, if he'd lied to me like that. But here in the storey, that's not what happens to our man.

And not just in the Bible, not just in the storeys we find here, but across Jesus life. We don't find people going around saying, he's a liar. He said he did this. But look, he said all these places was never here. None of that.

No, actually the reaction is quite different, isn't it? Look down again at verse 53.

Then the Father realised this was the exact time which Jesus said, your son will live. So he and his whole household believed.

That's a bit strange, isn't it? Didn't he already believe?

What do you think? Did he already have belief? This man surely had some belief already, right? I mean, we've been focusing on that verse 50 the man took Jesus at his word and departed. To me that shows a heck of a lot of belief.

Always the plan was I'm going to get Jesus, I'm going to walk him to my house and that's going to sort it. But he believed Jesus Word and he wandered on his way. But now we're told he gets home and then he believes what's going on. Well yeah, I think he did believe in verse 50. I think he did.

He showed it with his actions, didn't he? Faith in Jesus, putting your weight of your life on Jesus. He is actually absolutely doing that. But I think what's happening is that he said, I did believe then, but I really believe as I saw the evidence, as I saw and I heard the timings and I got that confirmation and then I really believe. And I think that's a little bit like our experience actually.

Maybe you're not a Christian, maybe you're just looking into these things. I think for many they would say, look, I believed when I first put my hand in Jesus hand and said, yeah, I'm going to walk with Him. But now I really believe. Now I've had these things in life and I've heard Jesus Word and I've read it and he said things that have been really hard, like forgive me and I wouldn't have thought that forgiveness was the right thing. But then I've tried it and I've prayed about it and I can see and now I really believe that I can trust this man and his word.

I really believe it. I think that's kind of what's going on here. The man he believed absolutely showed great faith to turn and walk without Jesus, trusting in his word, just like we have to do, we have to trust in his word. But now he says, I really believe. And not just him, but it spills out, doesn't it?

The whole household think about that. All the rest of the household, they never met Jesus and yet they put their trust in him. Never met him, just like us, we've not seen him in the flesh, but we can take his word and we can take it to the bank on that final day and we can trust it.

Well, you might be wondering what happened with Matt right at the beginning and his reported crime of fly tipping somewhere in North London. Am I really under an alias here, living in disguise? No. Let me tell you what happened. I was feeling fairly confident in my assertion that I could just write to them and say, I'm Matt, I'm a nice guy, I didn't do it.

But My friend said, look, the best thing you could do would be to take some evidence, maybe get a character letter, maybe go and take photos of the bins and show kind of set up here, explain who you are, what you're doing to do it properly. So I sent this letter back under police caution as it was, and I believed that I was fine, but I didn't know. I didn't know for sure. I just kind of believed until the day that the Metropolitan Police wrote back to me, which I'm grateful they did. And they wrote back to me and said, much shorter letter this time.

Dear Mr. Porter, thank you for the evidence that you have submitted. We consider the matter closed. You are clear in full. Phew. I'm happy, therefore, to share it with you today.

I believed when I sent the letter off in the post, but I believed much more sincerely when the letter came back saying, you are actually in the clear. Well, the same with this man. He believed, I think, to an incredible level. He put his faith in Jesus word. He said, I'm going to trust Jesus.

My son's life is on the line. I'm not going to bring you home with me. I'm going to just walk and trust. But then when he saw, when he experienced Christ in his life, said, now I truly believe. And him and his whole household came to faith.

And John wants to say to us as we go on our faith journey, by the way, everyone, verse 54, this was just the second sign that Jesus did while he was coming from Judea to Galilee. John saying, there's lots more to come. You think you've got Jesus down to size now. You think you know Him. He's always going to surprise you.

Always got much more in mind.

So the invitation this morning is, what does it mean to have faith in Jesus?

Well, I've said a lot. I think it's quite simply this, to take Jesus at His Word, that is our choice. We're not compelled or forced to do it. We're just invited. Will we take Jesus at His Word when all else fails?

Will we build our life on him and his words? And like the man, will we say, I believe, but now I really, truly believe?

That's the invitation. Let me lead us in a word of prayer to that end.

Almighty God, we thank youk that yout Word is not like Our word. Our words are cheap and clumsy sometimes, but your Word is powerful and steady and true. Thank you for your word to this man and the faith that he showed. And please, Lord, whether our faith feels big or small, may we come to you and ask you to grow within us that trust and dependence on your word and your voice.

Thank you that it is safe ground to build a whole life on. Please help us with the things that we'll face even this week to know your voice and to trust you in it. And we pray this in Jesus name, amen.