THE FULFILLMENT OF THE MIRACLE
3/27/22
Purpose: To encourage the church to press on and to believe in your miracles!
Today’s message is titled: The fulfillment of the miracle.
It will be centered around John 5:1-5, but we will look at several other passages. Most of which we will not directly read, but rather I’ll just give an overview of the messages.
We are going to start in John chapter 11:1
Jesus gets word of Lazarus’s illness and after a couple of days pass by, Jesus tells the disciples, “lets go to Judea again.
v.8: The disciples ask Jesus “are you sure you want to do that? After all, it wasn’t very long ago, they tried to stone you.”
I can’t help but wonder if they feared for their own safety as well!
v.22:Martha confronts Jesus and said “Lord if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
The story goes on, and of course Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead.
4 things to examine in this scripture:
1)The teaching in the miracle:
• Many times before Jesus performed a miracle, He capitalized on a teachable moment.
• These teachable moments were oftentimes more important than the miracle itself.
• He tells Martha “I am the resurrection and the life”
2) The danger in relying on the miracle (instead of relying on Jesus)
• According to scripture, by this time, Jesus had performed at least 18 miracles.
• So, Martha was angry that she hadn’t received her miracle.
• Recently I read this and it has really stuck with me, and you may not agree with this and that is okay!
-A miracle is a supernatural intervention of God in a crisis situation.
3) The glory in the miracle
• John 11:4 When he heard this, Jesus said “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.”
It’s not about the miracle, but the glory in the miracle.
4) The prophecy in the miracle
• “this sickness will not end in death”
A few weeks back, Pastor Jeff brought a sermon “See, I told you so”. It was about this very verse!
Let’s go to chapter John 12:9-11 (read from bible)
As though killing Lazarus was going to erase:
the event of the miracle!
Here we see:
the fear in the miracle.
Let’s look @ one definition of miracle.
“A surprising and welcoming event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws, therefore; considered to be the work of a divine being.”
While the story of Lazarus is recorded only in the gospel of John, the feeding of the five thousand is recorded in all four gospels.
For reference: Matthew 14:13-21
Now Jesus had just heard the news of the beheading of John the baptizer, and He needed some space to be by himself, but because the good news of the miracles had spread widely, a great multitude began to follow Jesus.
Picture this: you just heard the news that the person who baptized you had been beheaded, and this mass of people are closing in all around you. Without a doubt that would have been more than I could handle, but scripture says “He was moved and began healing people”.
That’s my Jesus!
A couple of things I love about this miracle:
First: I sort of envision this in Caption Form:
The disciples: “There are too many, send them away.”
Jesus: “Don’t send them away YOU give them something to eat.”
Disciples: “Only 5 loaves of bread and two fish.”
Jesus: (shrugging his shoulders and shaking his head)
Bring them to me.
Second: He looked up to heaven, gave thanks and broke the bread. He gave it to the disciples and they fed the five thousand men, plus women and children.
This was the:
thanksgiving before, and in, the miracle.
Let’s look @ Mark 9:14-29
This is the story of the possessed boy. After the situation is presented to Jesus, he exclaims “you unbelieving generation. How long must I stay with you?” Jesus knew his time was short, and the disciples and others were being just a little too slow on the upswing.
Then, as though His words fell on deaf ears, the man says “If you can do anything…” Jesus incredulously replies, “If you can? Everything is possible for one who believes”. To which the man replied “I do believe, help my unbelief”.
I recently read something that struck me as quite profound:
>At some point in our life we will be forced to live in the potential of our belief, or the consequences of our doubt<
Our unbelief could render our miracle impossible!
Let’s take a few minutes and look at the man @ the pool as described in John 5:1-5.
Has significance for at least 3 reasons.
This man had an infirmity for 38 years. He had been coming to the pool every day, looking for his miracle.
• Jesus asks him “do you want to be made well?”
As though he was asking him “are you sure you are ready to leave this pity party, because everything in your life is about to change forever.”
• After Jesus healed the lame man, the Pharisees asked him “who healed you?”. At first, he didn’t know, but later Jesus visited him again, and the lame man told them “it was Jesus”.
He was:
the witness in the miracle.
• When Jesus healed this man, He knew:
• the danger in the miracle. In fact, He sort of doubled down.
Not only did He heal the man on the Sabbath, but He also compared Himself equal to God, to the Pharisees. Jesus knew the danger in the miracle, but He did it anyway, because scripture had to be fulfilled!
Earlier, brother Dan read Luke 5:18-20. Lets look at some other verses before and after those verses.
v.17 (read from my bible)
Many times Jesus taught before He performed a miracle. Is He trying to teach YOU something before your miracle?
v.21(read from my bible) we see the danger in the miracle,
but look at v.20- do you see:
the gift in the miracle?
When He saw their faith, He said to him “man, your sins are forgiven”.
Their faith to get their friend in front of the messiah, moved Jesus to heal the man.
That was the gift in the miracle.
When I was growing up, I had a friend who frequently said “it’s a modern day miracle”. He usually said it when I didn’t miss the bus to school!
Do you believe in modern day miracles? It is hard for me to understand how some people think miracles have ceased to exist. Hebrews 13:8 tells us Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever. If you believe all scripture is from God, how can you not believe in miracles?
Many of us witnessed a modern day miracle this last week.
Who saw the Chevy truck make it through the tornado? I would venture to say that young man driving the truck believes in modern day miracles!
Are you in need of a miracle?
Genesis 15:5 (read from bible)
God planted a seed in Abrams’ mind by showing him the stars and saying“count the stars if you are able to number them, so shall your descendants be”. What do you suppose Abram saw every night thereafter, when he gazed up into the sky?
Seems to me, in order to receive a miracle, we must first believe in our miracle.
I did this for the first time in my life, last week. I planted the seed for receiving a miracle, and I believe one is coming!
Believe:
Oftentimes we pray for a miracle in life-threatening situations.
There was a Baylor University study done about believing in miracles. The gist of the study was this:
The more life-threatening a situation is, the more we tend to believe in miracles. It saddened me to think that our faith in miracles is tied to our circumstances. Pastor Jeff says this all the time “God is not moved by our situations or circumstances, but by our faith.”
As I was thinking about prayer and faith this week, this word was placed in my heart:
Do we have faith because we pray -or- do we pray because we have faith? I often think of Jesus’s words and actions regarding prayer.
Then I found this: Romans 12:3.
At least 8 times in gospel of Mark we are told Jesus prayed. This makes me ponder,
“Why would Jesus need to pray? And If Jesus needed to pray, I certainly need to!”
Hebrews 11:1 says this “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen”.
Let’s look at another miracle recorded in John 4:46-54.
It’s the story of the man of nobility who tells Jesus his son is dying and asks him to save his son’s life. After a brief conversation about peoples lack of belief, Jesus tells the man to go home to his son, that his son will live.
Jesus didn’t have to touch the mans’ son, or be in earshot of him, or even see him, to perform the miracle.
This shows us:
the reach of the miracle.
This is really good news for us. We just need to have Jesus in our heart to receive a miracle.
Another Father
Just a couple of years from the time of the events in John chapter 4, another Father, was watching his son die. He would die an agonizing death and cry out “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The One who would hear the cry from the noble official, and save his son, would not hear a response from heaven.
This was the silence in the miracle.
God was trading places with His sick children.
Revelation 19: 11-21 (read from bible) records:
the return of the miracle and
the victory of the miracle!
Here’s the Good News from Isaiah 9:6 (read from bible)
I’d like to examine two words from this verse.
-Wonderful Counselor-
First off, I never dreamed there would be so much written about these two words in this verse. However, after I sorted through much of it, the Hebrew transliteration is “miracle worker” or simply “miracle”.
Jesus is the miracle.
Several weeks ago pastor Jeff read from 1 Corinthians 13, and replaced the word “love” with “Jesus”.
I’d like to do something similar to that today:
Replace “the miracle” with Jesus in several of these from today.
The teaching in Jesus
The glory in Jesus
The prophecy in Jesus
The thanksgiving in Jesus
The witness in Jesus
The belief in Jesus
The gift in Jesus
The reach of Jesus
The return of Jesus
The victory in Jesus
Jesus is the miracle!
Do you need a miracle in your life?
Do you believe you will receive it?
Let’s pray.
