May 5, 2002 John 20:30-31
“It’s a miracle!”
INTRODUCTION
One Saturday afternoon, a father and his six-year old son Mickey were fishing near a bridge when a woman lost control of her car, slid off the bridge and hit Mickey at a rate of about 50 mph. Sheriff Marr, the boys’ grandfather, had seen the results of accidents like this and feared the worst. When he got to Saint Joseph Hospital, he rushed through the emergency room to find Mickey conscious and in fairly good spirits considering what had happened to him.
"Mickey, what happened?" Sheriff Marr asked. Mickey replied, "Well, Gramps, I was fishin’ with Dad, and some lady runned me over, I flew into a mud puddle, and broke my fishin’ pole and I didn’t get to catch no fish!"
As it turned out, the impact propelled Mickey about 500 feet, over a few trees and an embankment and in the middle of a mud puddle. His only injuries were to his right femur bone which had broken in two places. Mickey had surgery to place pins in his leg. Otherwise the boy was fine. Since all the boy could talk about was that his fishing pole was broken, the Sheriff went out to Wal-mart and bought him a new one while he was in surgery so he could have it when he came out.
The next day the Sheriff sat with Mickey to keep him company in the hospital. Mickey was enjoying his new fishing pole and talked about when he could go fishing again as he cast into the trash can. When they were alone, Mickey, just a matter-of-fact, said, "Gramps, did you know Jesus is real?" "Well," the Sheriff replied, a little startled. "Yes, Jesus is real to all who believe in him and love him in their hearts." "No," said Mickey. "I mean Jesus is REALLY real." "What do you mean?" asked the Sheriff. "I know he’s real ’cause I saw him." Said Mickey, still casting into the trash can. "You did?" said the Sheriff. "Yep," said Mickey. "When that lady runned me over and broke my fishing pole, Jesus caught me in his arms and laid me down in the mud puddle."
This morning, we are going to begin what I believe is going to be an exciting time for us as a church. Over the next several weeks, we are going to examine the subject of miracles.
We here a lot about miracles. There are shows on TV that suppose to tell us about miracles. There’s “Miracle Pets” and “It’s a miracle” and “Touched by an Angel”. I remember one night during the 1976 Olympics how at the end of the ice hockey game between the Americans and the Russians, the announcer this question: “Do you believe in miracles?” because the Americans had just won. There are preachers who claim to be able to perform miracles and churches where miracles seem to abound. As a church, and as individuals, we need to be able to discern what is truth and what is fiction. We need to see what the Bible has to say about miracles so that we will not be fooled and also to make sure that we are not missing out on something that is available to us.
But there’s a more personal reason for us to examine miracles. All of us at one time or another either have or will come to a point in our lives when we need a miracle. Maybe it’s a miracle of physical healing that you need, but more often, it is a miracle for a change in your lives. It seems that no matter how hard you try and no matter how many self-help books you read, you never achieve the change that you want in your life. And it seems that no matter how loving you are and no matter how much you want it to happen, a person that you care so deeply about just will not change. You want them to change. You know that they need to change. But it looks like it’s going to take a miracle. I’ve got good news for you. God is still in the business of working miracles. He can make a miracle happen in your life this morning if you will let Him. Make sure that you are here each week of our study so that you will not miss anything.
1. What is a miracle? It is something…
amazing – I have set before you two plants. One is full of branches and flowers. The other is looking like most of the plants who have ever stayed in my house for long – weak, wilted and deficient. What is the difference in these two plants? One of them was fed Miracle Grow, and one was not. Actually, when I went to Walmart yesterday to buy these plants, I looked for one that looked really full and healthy, and I looked for another that looked kind of scrawny. But I’m trying to make a point here, so give me a little leaway this morning. You’ve probably all seen the commercials for “Miracle Grow” in which they compare plants who supposedly were fed different diets. You may have even seen the ads that talk about champion growers of fruits and vegetables in which they show pumpkins that weigh hundreds of pounds because of a steady diet of Miracle Grow. If the ads are true, and plants really do grow bigger and stronger with Miracle Grow, does that make it a miracle? No. It may be amazing. But it is no miracle. It is amazing that someone could climb to the top of Mt. Everest, but it is no miracle. A parking place that is closer than 5 rows back form Walmart would be pretty amazing and extremely rare, but it would be no miracle. It would be amazing if I could keep a plant alive for a whole year. But it would not be a miracle. Just because something is amazing does not make it a miracle. But all miracles are amazing.
beyond explanation – I saw a news report on Friday about a man who was having some problem with tennis elbow and took an inflammatory drug to deal with the pain. A rare side effect of this drug was that it damaged the cornea of his eye, and he lost his eye-sight. The doctors told him that there was no hope. He said that his greatest fear was that he would never be able to see his wife’s face again. Then, he heard about an eye-doctor in Boston, Mass. who had had success in restoring people’s eyesight through inserting a plastic artificial cornea over the damaged cornea – almost like a larger version of a contact lens. He went to that doctor, had a lens made to fit his eye, and virtually as soon as it was inserted, he could see his wife’s face once again. When the patient was telling about his experience, he ended with these words: “It’s a miracle!”
Was it a miracle? No, because how it happened can be explained with the understanding of modern medicine. The cornea needs to be perfectly smooth in order for the human eye to focus. The artificial cornea is made perfectly smooth and placed over the damaged cornea with a layer of artificial tears in between the two. Amazing and wonderful, but not a miracle.
A young minister was preaching his first sermon on the Feeding of the 5,000 and he was a bit nervous. So when he got up he said, "The Master fed the multitude with 5,000 loaves and 2,000 fish." An old timer in the front grinned and said, "Well shoot I could do that!" The next week the rookie pastor got up and said, "last week I misspoke" what I meant to say was, "The Master fed the multitude with 5 loaves and 2 fish." So he looked to the old timer and asked, "could you do that." The old timer replied, "Sure if I could use last Sunday’s leftovers."
The difference between what Jesus did – the feeding of the 5000, the healing of the blind – and what man is able to do today was that there was no explanation for what He did. Had there been an explanation, you can be sure that His enemies, the Pharisees would have found it and exposed Him as a fraud. Since they could not come up with any legitimate explanation, and they weren’t willing to accept that He really was God, they said the only other thing that they could think of – they accused Him of doing these things by the power of Satan. They had no explanation because what Jesus did were real miracles.
If I can explain something as happening by any other means than the direct hand of God, then it is not a miracle. BUT, just because something has no immediate explanation does not make it a miracle.
rare – if you look through the pages of the Bible, you will not have to look very hard to find miracles – and lots of them. In fact, the Bible starts with the miracle of creation. And then, only a few chapters later, there’s the miracle of a birth to Abraham and Sarah – two old people that the Bible clearly says could not have naturally had children. And then, later, God pours out His miracles with a bush that does not burn up, and plagues on Egypt, and the parting of the Red Sea and the provision of water from a rock in the wilderness. And then, if you look at the life of Jesus, the Gospels abound with miracles. How then can I say that miracles are rare? Those instances that I just gave you spanned approximately 4000 years. Even if we were to go back and search through that whole time period and find reference to 100 miracles which we probably could do, 100 miracles spread out over 4000 years makes miracles rare. Anything that is rare is valuable and precious and has great significance.
Our temptation for one reason or another is to turn everything into a miracle. In fact, one author said this: ‘Miracle,’ he said, ‘is simply the religious name for event. Every event, even the most natural and usual, becomes a miracle as soon as the religious view of it can be dominant.’” p. 304 Erickson’s Theology When you call everything amazing a miracle, then you cheapen the value of miracles.
It’s kind of like what we do with the word “love”. We use it very flippantly. We say things like, “I love reading a good book, and I love a nice spring day, and I love hot dogs.” And then I turn to Tammy, and I say, “I love you.” And that gives her all kind of warm fuzzies. I mean, think about it – I’ve just told her that I feel the same emotion for her that I feel for a hot dog.
Can I make a suggestion to you? When you see a beautiful flower growing in the field, or you hear about a pet that saved it’s master’s life, call it a wonder. Those things are all a result of the miracle that God did when He created the universe, and because of it they should point us to the love and power of God, but they themselves are not miracles. They are a natural result of the laws that God set into motion when He created the universe. Call them amazing. Call them incredible. But don’t call them miracles. Miracles are rare. Miracles are special.
from God – after Jesus’ resurrection and ascension into heaven, both of which were miracles, Jesus performed many miracles through His disciples. There were times that people started to bow down to the miracle workers as if they had done these miraculous feats through their own power. But the apostles were quick to point out to people that it was not through themselves that these miracles were happening. They did not have the power to cast out demons, to enable the lame to walk and cause the blind to see. They gave all the credit and glory to God. They recognized, and they wanted the people to know that a miracle could only come from God.
Being that miracles always come from God, there is always a religious or spiritual significance to the miracle. God did something wonderful in people’s lives to see them changed – not just changed physically. He wanted to see them changed in their belief and in their behavior. He wanted to point them to Himself. He wanted to show them His love. He wanted to convince them that just as He could do miraculous things in their body that they could see, so He could do miraculous things in their hearts that they could not see.
There are many who claim to be used of God to be working miracles today. I am not standing here as the judge this morning who can determine whether miracles are happening through these people or not. But let me tell you this. The moment that one of these starts to take credit for doing a miracle or the moment that doing a miracle becomes more important than teaching the truth of God’s Word, then that person has become a false prophet, and you had better not have anything else to do with them.
Miracles come from God, not from men. Only God has the power to make a miracle happen.
interrupts the natural laws of the universe – Some of you get very nervous when I get too close to the edge of this platform on Sunday mornings. You think that I am going to take one step too many and fall off. What if, one Sunday morning, I did take one step to many, but instead of falling, I continued walking right into the middle of the auditorium with nothing underneath to hold me up? You would call it a miracle, and rightly so.
Things much like that actually happened in the pages of the Bible. One day, Elisha and some of his fellow prophets were building a new meeting place. One of the workers came to Elisha and told him that the head of his ax had fallen off into the river that was nearby. Elisha went to the place, and caused the axhead, made of heavy metal, to float on the water so that it could be retrieved (2 Kings 6). One night, in the middle of a storm on the Sea of Galilee, the disciples thought they saw a ghost. But it was really Jesus walking to them on the water. Joshua and the Israelites were chasing after their enemy to totally destroy them so that they would not have a chance to regroup and attack again the next day. But the sun was about to set, and they couldn’t keep fighting in the dark. It looked like the enemy was going to get away. So Joshua prayed, and the sun stood still for the length of about a full day. To top it off, God sent large hailstones down on Israel’s enemy even as the sun was high in the sky (Josh. 10). In each of these instances, God supernaturally overcame the natural laws of the universe in order to accomplish His objectives.
There are two possible ways of looking at these miracles. One is to say that God, for one moment in time and in one place, stopped the normal laws of gravity that He had established. Another way of looking at it is that “when miracles occur, natural forces are countered by supernatural force. In this view, the laws of nature are not suspended. They continue to operate, but supernatural force is introduced, negating the effect of the natural law.” – p. 408 Erickson’s Theology It’s like gravity was pulling the axhead one way, down, but God’s hand reached down and pulled it in the totally opposite direction, up.
This works the same way in the greatest miracle of all – the miracle of a person getting saved. The law of the commandments says that you are destined to an eternity in hell because of your sins. But the law of grace says that you can be forgiven of your sins and can spend an eternity with God in heaven. When Jesus came to earth, He himself said that He did not come to set aside the law of the commandments. But instead, He came to bring the grace of God which is far more powerful than the law of sin and death. We, who were destined to die had God not interrupted our lives, are now looking forward to a home in heaven.
In a miracle, what should have happened does not because God steps in and changes everything.
2. Where do miracles come from?
They come from the character of God
― power
I suppose that this is the most obvious part of God’s character that is involved in any miracle. Imagine the amount of power that it took for God to part the waters of the Red Sea so that the Israelites could walk through on dry ground!
A little girl was reading her Bible on the plane one day. She was reading in the book of Exodus. The man sitting next to her, seeing what she was reading, said, “You don’t believe all the stuff that is recorded in that book do you? Archaeologists have discovered that the word for Red Sea actually means Reed Sea. The Israelites only had to cross through a few inches of water not some vast sea.” The little girl thought about it for a moment, and then she gave this reply. “Well, sir, then it must have been an even greater miracle than I thought. Just think how much more power it would have required for God to use only a few inches of water to kill all those Egyptians!”
God’s power is limitless. The same God who created the waters can part them with the wind that He created. The same God who created the animals that live in the sea can make a fish big enough to swallow a man and can keep that man alive in the belly of that fish for three days. And the same God who caused water to run out of a dry rock can cause joy to once again flood a dry soul. There is no limit to the power of God.
But God doesn’t always choose to use His power to alleviate the suffering situations of mankind. The reason He doesn’t is because of the second character trait of God involved in His miracles. That is His wisdom.
― wisdom
In 2 Corinthians 12, Paul tells about his prayer to God for God to heal him of some kind of physical problem. This seems rather odd to us because Paul had been used by God to bring healing to many other people. Why couldn’t he receive healing? For one, as we have already seen, Paul, being a man, was not the healer. God was the healer. And secondly, for some reason, God chose not to heal in this case. We don’t know why other than as Paul says, to keep him humble.
God, in His wisdom, does not choose to heal every person of every disease. He doesn’t even choose to heal every Christian of every disease. When Jesus was on earth, He did not heal every disease of every person that was living in Palestine at that time. He didn’t attend every funeral and raise every person back to life. In fact, of all the people that died during the 3 year ministry of Jesus, there were only a few times that He used His power to bring them back to life.
As I was preparing for this sermon, I started to wonder about what it would have been like to be one of Jesus’ disciples. Matthew comes up to him one day and says, “Hey Jesus, I think I’m coming down with the flu. Could you give me a touch of your healing power?” And then here comes John with a migraine headache and Peter with an ingrown toenail and Judas with allergies. Did Jesus take care of all these problems? The Bible doesn’t say, so I can only give you my opinion, but I would tend to answer my own question with a “no”. It’s not that Jesus didn’t because he had a limited amount of power and he didn’t want to use it up on trivial matters. His power was limitless. It’s that He didn’t want His disciples and He doesn’t want us to get more interested in His power than we are in His presence and His person. He’s not a big bottle of Tylenol that we run to whenever the next headache comes along.
It is not always a part of God’s plan to alleviate our suffering. In fact, 1 Peter talks about the fact that God used suffering in our lives to accomplish our growth. Sometimes, he uses suffering in a person’s life to convince them of their need for God. Part of allowing God to be God is letting Him base His healing on His wisdom and not on our desires.
That may sound harsh and uncaring, but God is not harsh, and God is certainly not uncaring. God is a God of love, and that is the third characteristic of God that is involved in His miracles.
― love
One day, Jesus sought for a place where He could have some alone time. It had been a bad day for Jesus. Believe it or not, Jesus had bad days too. This one had been particularly bad. He had just learned of his cousin, John the Baptist’s death. Jesus wanted to be alone. But because of His miracles, the people followed Him, and a large crowd gathered. Jesus could have sent them all away when they brought their sick to him, but instead, the Bible says that “when Jesus…saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick.” (Matt. 14:14)
It is only because of God’s love that miracles even happen in our lives. We do not deserve God’s miracles in our lives. We don’t deserve to have Him heal our bodies or our hearts. We deserve His judgment. But because of His love and compassion toward us in our pain, He chooses to intervene in our lives with His power and in His perfect wisdom to take away some of that pain that we endure because we live in a sinful world.
It was because of God’s love that the greatest miracle of all began. On a night 2000 years ago, the angel came to a young girl by the name of Mary and told her that she was going to have a child even though she had never been intimate with a man. The miracle of the virgin birth – the amazing, beyond explanation, one and only time that God intervened in the history of mankind to change things forever. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16) To think that God could and would become a man, so that He could show us His love by suffering right along with us. And then to think that God so loved you and me that God Himself would die on a cross to pay for your sins and mine.
That brings us to the second component necessary for miracles to occur. Not only do they come from the character of God, but they also come from the condition of man.
They come from the condition of man
― sinners
The Bible says that all of us are sinners. When the first man and woman rebelled against the only prohibitive command that God gave them, they started a pattern which has continued in the life of every man, woman, boy and girl from that time until this. God knows the right way for us to go. He knows the way of safety. He knows the way of joy. When we choose to go our own way because of our rebellion against God, we have become sinners.
― sufferers
And your question may be what in the world does the fact that we are sinners have to do with miracles. It has everything to do with miracles. It is because of the fact that there is sin in the world that there is suffering in the world. The world that God created with the first miracle had no disease, no suffering, no blindness, no death. All of these are the result of the original sin that Adam and Eve committed. It is because of that sin and the curse that it brought on God’s creation that we have earthquakes, tornadoes and other natural disasters.
And then there is the suffering that our own individual sin creates in our lives. When you overeat or eat what you know is bad for you, you are going to create problems for your heart. When you smoke, eventually, you are probably going to get lung cancer. If you drink alcohol to excess, you are going to develop cirrhosis of the liver. If you use your paycheck selfishly, you’re not going to have enough money to meet the needs of your family. If you marry someone who is not a Christian or who is a Christian but is living outside the principles of God’s Word, you’re going to create misery for yourself. These are all problems that we bring on ourselves through our own rebellious sin, and yet when we start to feel the consequences of our decisions, we expect God to work a miracle to get us out of the mess which is of our own making.
Those are all examples of physical or emotional problems that we bring on ourselves or are a part of our lives because of sin. But there is also a much bigger problem that comes as a result of our sin – it is separation from God. God intended us to live a joyful life here on earth and an ecstatic life with Him in eternity. But because of our sin, we are destined to suffer here on earth. And if we refuse God’s offer of payment for our sin, we are destined to suffer for eternity in hell. But God wants to rescue us from that eternal suffering and work a new creation within us. The only way that can happen is as we place our faith in the death, burial and miraculous resurrection of Jesus Christ from the grave as payment for our sin. And then, God can do the greatest miracle of all – turning a sinner into a child of God.
CONCLUSION
A very godless man, noted for his profanity, was one day carrying freight up a gangplank to a big steamer. A man following him accidentally jostled him, and the blasphemer fell into the water, between the wharf and the boat. His last utterance was a horrible oath, a curse upon his comrade. He immediately disappeared. After some time he was rescued from beneath the boat, apparently drowned. Strenuous efforts put forth to resuscitate him were finally successful. With his first breath he cried out, “Praise God. I’m saved!” “Yes, you were pretty nearly gone,” someone replied. “Oh,” he said, “I don’t mean saved from drowning. I mean saved inside. The Lord has taken my sins away.” Then he told them when he found himself beneath the boat, he thought the end had come. In those few seconds he saw himself kneeling again at his mother’s side, and heard her prayers for him. His sin, as a high mountain, rose before him, and he cried for God to save him. In that moment he realized forgiveness, and the cleansing of the blood. It was for this that he praised God with his first breath. – Alliance Weekly, as quoted in Knights Master Book of New Illustrations p. 406
“Perhaps most amazing in many ways is God’s power in human life and personality. The real measure of divine power is not the ability of God to create or to lift a large rock. In many ways, changing human personality is more difficult. Whereas giant machinery can accomplish extraordinary types of physical work, it is not so easy to alter human nature. Yet, with respect to salvation Jesus said, “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (matt 19:26). We never need despair out of a belief that it is impossible to change human nature, whether our own or that of others, because God can work [a miracle] even in this area.” p. 277 Erickson’s Theology
INVITATION
Are you going through suffering today? Do you have a need that’s going to take a miracle? Good, I’m glad that you’re going through suffering. I’m glad you’ve got problems because that means that you are a prime candidate for a miracle. God may not choose to work a miracle for you physically. That may not be in His all wise plan. But I know that it is in His plan to work a miracle in your heart. I know that He desires to miraculously rescue you from a life of sin or a life of mediocrity and make you a testimony to His glory.
Don’t ignore your need for a miracle today. Don’t try to fix your suffering or your heart on your own. Let God do an amazing, beyond explanation, rare work in you that goes beyond all that is natural, normal and expected. Don’t be satisfied with the status quo. Ask God for a miracle.
