The Witness by Signs and Wonders

Introduction

A Review: Why God Bore Witness

The previous revelation of God made by angels to Moses, the law which established the old covenant, was obviously valid since it came with signs of validation and included very real consequences for those who rebelled against it.

The Son of God is greater in every way than angels, and his message more complete than what the prophets gave. Therefore, the message he gives is not only valid, but perfect communication from God.

Therefore, the standard held to those who heard God’s law in the OT must at least be present for the message of salvation, and the consequences of rejection at least as dire.

The warning we saw last week that is in verse 3 is that, if every rejection of the law received just retribution and condemnation, how much greater will be the consequences of rejecting the Gospel of salvation we have heard from the Son of God?

In verses 3b-4, the author addresses a possible ofjection: that the readers have not heard the Gospel from Jesus themselves, so how does it still hold the weight of coming from the Son of God? Just like the Israelites didn’t hear the law themselves from Angels, but from the human messenger Moses, Christ entrusted his Gospel to the Apostles who bore witness of it.

This Apostolic witness, which for us is perfectly preserved in the NT documents, was confirmed during the Apostle’s ministry to the church at large by God himself through signs and wonders, miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Today, I want to take this last verse and explore what this means for us as it leaves us with questions. Should we expect signs and wonders? Should we pray for miracles? Does the Holy Spirit still confirm his presence through gifts? And if so, what sort of gifts should we be expecting?

The Witness

The word witness or testify have been overused in certain circles to the point that they’ve almost lost their original meaning. Passionate cries of can I get a witness and testify can certainly have their place among those who worship in a very expressive way, but as with many words that are used over and over again, people can easily forget that a witness and a testimony are both from a legal context.

In the OT, a testimony was established on the basis of two or three witnesses (Deut 19:15) when convicting someone of a crime. In a time before forensic science, such as fingerprinting and DNA testing, this was the best way to establish a fact. The perspective of one person is nothing to establish fact, but the perspectives on multiple people are. In fact, even forensic evidence is just a way for more people to have a secondary experience of the event and therefore establish it as fact.

Jesus himself told us not to believe him simply because he said so. John 5:31-35

John 5:31–32 ESV

If I alone bear witness about myself, my testimony is not true. There is another who bears witness about me, and I know that the testimony that he bears about me is true.

John 5:36–37 ESV

For the works that the Father has given me to accomplish, the very works that I am doing, bear witness about me that the Father has sent me. And the Father who sent me has himself borne witness about me. His voice you have never heard, his form you have never seen,

Anyone can come along and say they are the Messiah, and many have. Only one of them is truly the Son of God, the others are charletons and deceivers. How are we to tell that Jesus has the blessing of God the Father and is indeed the Son of God? God himself must bear witness. Only God knows his Son fully, and only the Son has fully seen God. When Jesus came as a human being it had to be shown that he was more than just another false messiah, and so God himself had to bear witness.

But one cannot exactly put God on the witness stand and put him under questioning. After all, the entire purpose of the coming of the Son of God was to show us the Father. So if Christ represents the Father and makes him known to us, than how can the Father come and show us that Jesus is the Christ since he is made known to us by Christ? The answer is signs, wonders, various miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Signs and Wonders

Jesus’ ministry was marked by signs and miracles for the very purpose of serving as a witness from God himself. Since human beings are unable to change the foundational laws the of universe or override how it works, miraculous works can only be attributed to divine power. Christ’s authority over nature, his authority over demons, and his resurrection all proved as a witness that his ministry and message were of divine origin. God is spirit, his essense has no form of body that we can see with out eyes. Everything that God does to show himself must be a mediation of some kind. Last week we saw that this was the case in the giving of the Law by angels. There is an inherent gap between all things and the creator and source of them. He does not exist in the same way they do, and he cannot appear without some way of translating it into our experience.

In the days of Abraham, he did this by preserving that man of faith through various trials and dangers and by giving him a son in his old age. At the giving of the Law to Moses, miraculous signs were abunatly appartent. The plagues of Egypt, the salvation through the Red Sea, the pillar of cloud and fire, the manna in the wilderness, the glory shining from Moses’ face, and many more things you can read about in Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

So God, when Christ came, bore witness by signs and wonders. The distinction between these and miracles is sometimes difficult because different parts of the NT use them in different ways. In Revelation, for example, signs and wonders usually refers to the powers given to the beast and satanic forces, where miracles usually refers to works done by the power of God. In Acts 2:22, however, Peter says that Jesus’ identity as Christ was attested by signs and wonders. Obviously, this is how the author of Hebrews us using it. To the Jewish ear, this pair of words would remind one of the miracles experienced during the exodus in the days of Moses. Exodus 7:3

Exodus 7:3 ESV

But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and though I multiply my signs and wonders in the land of Egypt,

Signs and wonders served the same purpose at the beginning of the Old Covenant as they do in the establishment of the New in Christ. They serve as a witness of God’s might power at work in that person and their ministry. It means that, whatever is going on, God approves of this.

Indicates the presence and pouring out of the Holy Spirit.

This wasn’t only true in the life and minsitry of Christ, but in the Apostles as well. Even a shallow reading of the book of Acts shows us that the ministry of signs, wonders, and miracles continued in the ministry of the Apostles and of the churches they planted. In his letter urging the Corinthian church to not abandon the Apostolic ministry that was done among them, said,

2 Corinthians 12:12 ESV

The signs of a true apostle were performed among you with utmost patience, with signs and wonders and mighty works.

This was a genuine reason for the church to not go after another teaching. What other word came to them with such miraculous authority?

False Witness

However, just as two in court can share a lie, there is such a thing as a false witness of signs and wonders. Again, the book of Revelation contrasts the miracles done by the power of God with the signs done by the beast and his ilk. Not all spiritual forces are from God, although God allows them for the testing of his saints.

This isn’t new to the NT either. In the law, if a fale prophet was able to tell the future or perform a sign and then told people to go after false gods, that prophet was false and was to be put to death. The Apostles, also, did not rely purely on their ability to heal and perform miracles, but always backed up their teachings with previous Scripture. Jesus himself explained to the men on the road to Emmaus how the Scriptures were fulfilled in him before he showed them who he was a miraculously disappeared from their sight.

So even though signs and wonders do show the presence of divine power, we also know that God allows spiritual beings to exercise that power. Some of those beings are in rebellion against God, and yet God allows them to continue for his own purposes. How can we tell the difference between a true miraculous witness and a false one? The answer is whether they are in line with the revelation from God that came previously.

Its a bit of a trope in some films that a character will have a gun and before him will be his friend and a doppleganger, some monster or alian visibly the same as the friend, in front of him. How does he know which one to shoot and which one to save? Usually, he asks the two a question that only his friend would know the answer to. Likewise, if we are confronted with a message that comes with miraculous or seemingly miraculous works, our question should be: “is this consistent with what God has said previously?” In the case of the Gospel, yes it is, and therefore the miraculous works of Jesus and the Apostles are a legitimate witness from God that they speak on his authority.

Gifts of the Holy Spirit

But the witness does not stop with the Apostles. As they preached, churches were planted to be a witness in the cities and among the peoples where they lived. In this places God pours our his Spirit just as he promised he would in the passage from Joel we read earlier. The gifts of the Spirit that were witnessed from Pentacost onwards, including things like prophecy and the gift of tongues as well as gifts of cherity, discernment, and encouragement. These were a witness of God to his church and to those on the outside looking in that his presence and authority was present in his church. Even though these gifts could be abused, as they were in the church of Corinth, they remained a gift of the Spirit of power proving their legitimacy and the divine authority which the chruch carries as the keepers of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Now, it isn’t the individuals who recieved these gifts that had this authority. Our text tells us that the gifts were distributed according to his will, but not necessarily because those individuals were the ones to be listened to. Some had a gift of teaching, others the gift of prophecy, but even they were to be tested by the church. Instead, God the Spirit distributed those gifts among the members to communicate to the world that his divine authority to preach belonged to that community. What they preached was what was given by the Apostles with signs and wonders, and that is what was given by Jesus with signs and wonders, and all that these spoke was in line with and built upon all that God has communicated through the prophets in the past.

So we see here the reason why gifts of the Spirit were given. They were a witness to and through the church that the Gospel of Jesus Christ was directly from God.

Reading 1 Corinthians 12-14 gives us some insight into the way these gifts practically worked in the early church, as Paul uses that space to address abuses and misunderstanding concerning spiritual gifts. He makes the point that all true gifts are from the Spirit, and so there is a unity of source and of purpose. This implies that a spiritual gift is only one if it bolsters the confession of the Lordship of Christ (12:3). It also assumes that there is equality between the gifts as they all convey the same power of the Spirit. This is why the idea found in modern Pentacostalism that all Christians Spirit-filled Christians should have the gift of tongues is dangerous, implying that the Spirit isn’t really at work unless he gives you this specific gift. The one gift that is universal among all Christians is the gift of love, which is what Paul gets to in 1 Cor 13.

The Witness Today?

Now before closing, I will touch on the question which arises when we are speaking about the gifts the Spirit gave to the church: are these gifts for the church today?

The NT does not explicitly tell us the exact time period in which we should expect gifts, signs, and wonders.

These things had a unique role to play in the Apostolic age, bearing witness of what was communicated by God through Christ. Just as the signs of the Exodus did not continue after entering the promised land, there does seem to be a natural expectation of cessation.

However, just as signs and miracles do pop of from time to time in the OT after the giving of the law, its not unexpected that this would be a soft cessation. John Calvin is quoted as saying that the gift of prophecy, for example, seems to have ceased almost entirely. He was willing to leave the door open for God to use it or other gifts on certain occassions.

These gifts do not undermine the completion of Scripture, as some have claimed. If modern prophecy does exist, it will be lacking two things: First, it will not be infallible (God is able to speak through falllible means). Second, it will not add anything to our doctrine. As we have seen, God’s speech concerning our salvation has already come perfectly in the Son; God didn’t hold any of it back for some fallible prophet.

We have good reason to believe that, at times, God has used signs and wonders throughout church history. The phenominon of Muslims being led to Christ because of dreams is one example. I’ve seen a few instances of someone being healed through prayer of a disease they had no hope of recovering from. God is able and does at time prove himself through signs and wonders, but this is no longer seems to be the regular means by which he does this. Maybe in some places God bears witness in this way more than others. Maybe he tends to do it in places where the Gospel is conquoring new territory that had previously been controlled by demonic forces, it’s hard to say.

The point is that, while we should be open to experiencing these things, we should not be discouraged if they seem to be few and far between.

Conclusion

So how does God bear witness to us today? What confirms to us that the Son of God has indeed spoken the words of God the Father?

The completion of the Word of God previously attested to us by those who heard and witnessed these things.

Since those days, the church has been well established, and through it the Gospel has been spread.

The historic effect of the Gospel.

The personal miracle of forgiveness, redemption, and conversion.

Application

Praise God regularily for the way he has made himself known in Christ and born witness to us that it is true.

Look to the Scriptures, which bear the testimonies of those who witnessed these things for your confidence.

Don’t be afraid to pray for God’s to give the gifts the he knows would benefit the church.

Draw nearer to God, and he will show himself more clearly to you.