Faith Pt. 2/Miracles

Notes
Transcript
Last week we began talking about the gift of faith..
Here are a few key points from last week to catch you up
Three types/expressions/experiences of faith in scripture:
Converting/Saving Faith
Daily/Ongoing Faith
Charismatic/Supernatural Faith
What the gift of faith is not:
It is not forcing yourself to believe something other than what you believe
It is not psychological certainty
What the gift of faith is:
1 Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.
3. What the gift of faith is:
It is a supernatural amount of faith given in a moment or situation by the Holy Spirit
We didn’t give this definition last week, but it might be helpful to define it as D.A. Carson defines it in Showing the Spirit:
“[the gift of faith] appears to be the God-given ability, without fakery or platitudinous exhortations to believe what you do not really believe, to trust God for a certain blessing not promised in Scripture.” - D.A. Carson Showing the Spirit Pg. 48
So confidence and belief that God will do what we can not, but it originates with the Holy Spirit
Last week, we talked about a couple of potential examples of the gift of faith. Remember, there is no other explicit mention of the gift of faith in the scripture.
So, we are trying out best to see examples of this gift without direct mentions
We talked a little about how it is possible this is what Jesus is talking about when He says:
22 “Have faith in God,” Jesus answered. 23 “Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them. 24 Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.
Another possible example of the gift, and I believe it is, is in:
13 Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise. 14 Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord.
15 And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven.
If we look at this James passage just from our own experience….now, to be clear, our experience may not align with scripture because of other factors, but I think we can look fairly and say, we all know people seemingly fit into this truth of scripture
Now again, as I said last week, we can’t form a theology on one isolated text. We must look at the entire council of scripture to form a theology
So, if our only theology of healing is from James 5, we are missing so much more…and we will get to this next week!
We will spend probably at least 3 weeks on healing…
So, don’t form your entire theology of healing on this text!
Back to the point, how many times have we followed this process, where someone was sick, we called the elders, anointed with oil, and they weren’t healed?
Does that mean this scripture is wrong?
Here in this baptist church, we believe in an inerrant view of scripture. Meaning, it is without error!
So, is the rest of scripture true, but not this one?
Well, we wouldn’t say that…so, what is the issue?
It is either:
There is other teaching on healing that we need to bring into consideration
We are not understanding what the Holy Spirit is conveying through James
And, maybe it is possible it’s a little of both!
In my personal journey, I actually watched some teaching on this passage this week that changed my view a little bit of the passage.
That doesn’t matter for today, but we will get to it a little further down the healing road
So, I would say that yes, there is other teaching on healing as well as maybe we don’t understand exactly what James is saying here.
There are a couple of things to consider here.
I think it is important to ask the question: what exactly makes the sick person well?
It seems like there is a formula or system here.
I am not a systems person when it comes to healing, but I can certainly see where one would come to that.
So, if it is a system, what makes the person well?
Is it calling on the elders? Is it praying over them? Is it anointing them with oil, or anointing with oil in the name of the Lord?
Or is it the prayer of faith?
Well, if we stop there, it might be tricky, but let’s finish the verse
15 And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven.
It is the Lord who raises them up…
You see, I believe it is important to call elders, to anoint with oil and to pray in faith, but it is Jesus who heals.
More on this when we get into the nuts and bolts of healing.
But is looks like this is a certainty….
James 5:15 (NIV)
15 And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven. - emphasis mine
James doesn’t say might…but he says the Lord will…
Seems like a certainty, yet we likely all followed this “system” and yet, seen people who were not healed.
So, again, why is that?
I think it is because James is alluding to the gift of faith…
What I think is happening is James is saying to call on the elder, or mature in the Spirit, anoint with oil, and when praying in the gift of faith, they will be well!
This can be a guarantee because the gift of faith comes from the HS.
And so, the healing in guaranteed because the HS has given a gift to one or more of the elders that He is healing the sick person.
Now, again, as I said at the beginning of the message, we can’t guarantee that James is talking about the gift of faith as he doesn’t say that he is…
And so Caleb, why would you take so much time going through this if it may not be an example?
we don’t have any explicit texts of the gift of faith
because whether what I believe about the text is true or not, it teaches us to look at texts critically and study them out
So, we have talked about the gift of faith and looked at a couple of examples, and there certainly may be more we could look at, but let’s shift a bit to look at the gift of miracles
Before we can dive too far into what the gift of miracles is, we need to have a working definition of a miracle?
Sam Storms raises this question in his book Understanding Spiritual Gifts. Let’s answer a few similar questions to what he asks:
Is a baby being born considered a miracle?
What about a scrape on our hand being healed?
Maybe someone born with a malformation and it is suddenly healed?
What about being locked out of your car when your spouse happens to drive up and says they suddenly had a strong urge to go get a pop and saw you standing outside your car?
What about surviving supernatural events?
When someone is saved?
You see, the list can go on and on as to what exactly a miracle is.
And, there have been several attempts to try and define it.
Before we can define what a miracle is, we need to understand a couple things:
God is not limited by time, but He is certainly not outside of it! Meaning, He is still working in the world and His creation!
28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
He is the creator and is still creating!
God is also sustaining His creation
17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
We also know that God has created certain process in the beauty of His creation!
Plants bear seeds that reproduce and create more plants..as with humans, animals, insects, cells and many other things.
So, we live in this space where God has created, is still creating, sustains and also created things to reproduce and function naturally.
So, this makes it difficult for us to define a miracle. It seems somewhat subjective.
Wayne Grudem maybe has one of the best attempts at defining what a miracle is with his definition:
“A miracle is a less common kind of God’s activity in which he arouses people’s awe and wonder and bears witness to himself.” - Wayne Grudem Systematic Theology pg. 355.
Or, worded a different way, God working in a way that we perceive to be a non-normative way of His working.
Even simpler, “when God, in the supernatural, acts in a way that supersedes the natural. Either by contradicting it or expediting it.”
So, working with this definition, let’s talk about the gift of miracles
As with many things, there is a spectrum of belief when it comes to miracles. It might be helpful to acknowledge some different views on miracles:
I put these titles on the view to help us understand them, but it isn’t really any official title
1. Epoch View - God did miracles at certain times throughout scripture, but they stopped after the apostles died - cynics
2. Rare View - God might do a miracle, but they are extremely rare - skeptics
3. Uncommon View - God still does miracles, but they are uncommon and independent of any human involvement. - doubters
4. Gift of Miracles View - God still does miracles in the church and they should be “desired” as with all of the gifts - hopeful/prayerful
5. Hyper-Expectation View - God always wills to do miracles in our midst and thus, will always do miracles - gullible
Obviously, the scope of this message and where I land is in the gift of miracles camp, that all of the gifts are still in operation and should be desired.
If you’re just joining us, the gifts should NOT be desired more than desiring Jesus…I have talked a lot about this and you can go back and listen, but nonetheless, should be desired
1 Pursue love, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy.
So, back on track, what is the gift of miracles?
As I have said with every gift that we have talked about, the gifts are:
7 Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.
So, the gift of miracles is not something that begins with us…
I do not believe there are any “miracle workers” walking around that can perform any miracle anytime that they want to.
The gifts do NO originate with us, they are the HS working through us!
No one in scripture was able to perform miracles as they wanted. They were always dependent on the Lord.
The only arguable person was Jesus, but even then Jesus says:
19 Jesus gave them this answer: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. 20 For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, and he will show him even greater works than these, so that you will be amazed.
So, we have to break down the misconception that the gift of miracles is us doing miracles as we please.
It is always in connection and relationship with the Holy Spirit!
What are some examples of miracles:
OT - Elijah and oil, moses red sea
Jesus - feeding 5,000, walking on water, healing miracles, water into wine
Paul - healing miracles, bitten by the viper, handkerchief healing people, prison doors
So, we see a wide variety of miracles that happened in scripture.