Faith and Miracles
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Introduction
Introduction
This morning we are beginning a new mini-series out of the gospel of John which will focus on the the Miracles of Jesus. Of all the world religions, Christianity is most dependent on the existence and belief in the miraculous. The core teachings of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam would largely remain intact and the religion itself would not change very much if their believers didn’t believe in God’s supernatural intervention in day to day lives of people. In fact, the Quran goes as far to suggest that the prophet Mohammed performed no miracles because he was sent only to warn people about their disobedience to God.
The unbelievers say, 'Why has a sign (ayatun) not been sent down upon him from his Lord?' Thou art ONLY a warner, and a guide to every people.
Over and against these other religions, true Biblical Christianity would cease to exist if its followers no longer believed in a God who works miracles in our lives. Unlike the founders of the other world religions, the beginning of Christianity asserts the miraculous virgin birth of our Savior and from their it records the many signs that He performed and ends with the greatest miracle of them all, his resurrection from the dead. No other religion has dared to claim such things for itself because it would have proven to be patently false. Myths, fantasies, and legends don’t last for thousands of years but here we are 2000 years after the ascension of Christ, another miracle in its own right, and there are over 2 billion people around the world that still believe in the miraculous power of Jesus. It seems like outside of our western worldview, the rest of the world still believes and so over these next few weeks, we are going to unpack the theology of miracles and hopefully give you a reason why you still need to believe.
46 So he came again to Cana in Galilee, where he had made the water wine. And at Capernaum there was an official whose son was ill. 47 When this man heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went to him and asked him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. 48 So Jesus said to him, “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.” 49 The official said to him, “Sir, come down before my child dies.” 50 Jesus said to him, “Go; your son will live.” The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and went on his way. 51 As he was going down, his servants met him and told him that his son was recovering. 52 So he asked them the hour when he began to get better, and they said to him, “Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him.” 53 The father knew that was the hour when Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live.” And he himself believed, and all his household. 54 This was now the second sign that Jesus did when he had come from Judea to Galilee.
John 4:
43 After the two days he departed for Galilee. 44 (For Jesus himself had testified that a prophet has no honor in his own hometown.) 45 So when he came to Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him, having seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the feast. For they too had gone to the feast.
46 So he came again to Cana in Galilee, where he had made the water wine. And at Capernaum there was an official whose son was ill. 47 When this man heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went to him and asked him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. 48 So Jesus said to him, “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.” 49 The official said to him, “Sir, come down before my child dies.” 50 Jesus said to him, “Go; your son will live.” The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and went on his way. 51 As he was going down, his servants met him and told him that his son was recovering. 52 So he asked them the hour when he began to get better, and they said to him, “Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him.” 53 The father knew that was the hour when Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live.” And he himself believed, and all his household. 54 This was now the second sign that Jesus did when he had come from Judea to Galilee.
John 4:4
There are three points I would like to address from this passage:
Faith that depends on miracles is the least stable.
Some faith is better than no faith.
It only takes a small measure of faith to truly believe.
If you remember from a couple of months ago, the first miracle that John recorded in his gospel was the turning of water into wine and in this passage we return back to the location of that first sign and we read about Jesus’ second sign, the healing of the official’s son. At first glimpse, Jesus seems incredibly insensitive to this man’s request to come and heal his child that is close to death. Jesus rebukes this desperate man along with the crowd gathered around him and says, “Unless you see signs and wonders, you will not believe.” Essentially, what it seems like Jesus is saying is “You people don’t come to me for any other reason but when you need a miracle in your life, then you show up.” It almost sounds like something one of our own parents that might say to us, “You don’t call, you don’t write, unless you need something.”
That is the general tone of Jesus’ rebuke and from the human perspective, it’s mean but from the perspective of God, it is all to real. How many people suspend their faith unless they receive a miracle? How many people only take God seriously when they are faced with no other options? And how many of us have seen or experienced the miraculous and yet are still riddled with doubt and questions? What Jesus is telling this man and telling us is that faith that is dependent on a personal experience of a miracle is the most fickle, the most unstable, and the easiest to sway. Unfortunately, I have seen this story countless times and I can see why Jesus used this very dire situation as a teaching moment at the expense of this father but for our benefit.
One of the clearest miracles that I’ve had a chance to be a part of was during a mission trip to Panama. I took my first youth group down to Panama city and we were scheduled to do an outdoor evangelism outreach. Our kids had practiced a dance and .
prepared one of those gospel pantomimes that YWAM makes you perform on their trips. Anyways, my youth group was a bunch of spoiled brats that didn’t listen and to be honest I wondered if they even believed in Jesus. Well the day of the outreach came and we could see that it was starting to pour outside. The mission director told me that if it continued to rain like this, no one was going to come out to see a bunch of Asian kids dance poorly and perform even worse. At that point, I asked her “When will this rain stop?” She turned to me and told me, “This is the rainy season, it could be days before it stops.”
I don’t know what came over me but I turned to the kids with fire in my eyes and I said, “We did not come all this way to let a storm keep us from preaching the Gospel. We are going to pray that God would stop this rain and we are going to do what we came here for.” We started praying and guess what, the rain stopped to the surprise of the YWAM missionary and the kids got to perform, I had a chance to preach and people stopped and listened because I shared that God had stopped the rains so that they could receive the life giving message of Christ. It was like a religious Braveheart moment. Afterwards, those youth kids were so hyped and I could see their faith growing and I thought when we get back to the states, these guys are going to change the world just like the twelve disciples. To make a long story short, after the spiritual high wore off, the kids were worse than before they went. What seemed like a history changing moment or at least a youth group changing moment yielded very little fruit.
But this is not just a trap that young kids fall into, its one that ensnares millions of adult believers as well because we are all born with the proneness to forget even when we have experienced what seems to have been a life changing miracle or even a series of miracles.
11 They forgot his works
and the wonders that he had shown them.
12 In the sight of their fathers he performed wonders
in the land of Egypt, in the fields of Zoan.
11 They forgot his works
and the wonders that he had shown them.
12 In the sight of their fathers he performed wonders
in the land of Egypt, in the fields of Zoan.
13 He divided the sea and let them pass through it,
and made the waters stand like a heap.
Psalm 78:11
17 Yet they sinned still more against him,
rebelling against the Most High in the desert.
Psalm 78:
Psalm 78:
Reading this I realized that the kids in my youth group were not the exception, they were actually the rule. I pinned too much of my hope on the miracle and not enough on the One who makes the miraculous possible. And the logical question that you might have is, “Why would God grants us miracles if so little good seems to come out of it?” And the answer is simply, some faith is better than no faith. Sometimes the first step toward God begins with belief in his miraculous power. Would this official have sought after Jesus if his child had not gotten sick? Probably not! Before the child’s sickness, he had everything to lose and nothing to gain by becoming a follower of Christ. Most likely at this point in the ministry of Jesus, only the poor and the powerless were willing to follow Christ because they had nothing to lose, no reputation to protect, no social status to guard. But for men like this official, there was much to lose by being associated with Jesus. Remember the story of Nicodemus, who would only visit Jesus in the dark of the night for fear of being seen with Him.
But when the life of your child or someone you love is on the line, you’re willing to throw out your reputation, your social status, your wealth because none of those things can heal us of incurable sickness or perform the impossible. And maybe that is you today. Maybe you came in with no faith but as you hear the stories of God’s power, some faith is starting to rise up in your heart.
The evidence for miraculous healing is something that is overwhelmingly attested to in the records of modern medicine. Dr. Jaclyn Duffin is a scientist/historian that has tried to catalogue the vast records of healing miracles or what they have labeled spontaneous remission in certain medical circles. Her research can be found in the New England Journal of Medicine and also in a long, detailed, and boring book entitled Medical Miracles. Her interest in this subject was sparked by a case of leukemia that a colleague brought to her attention. She was given a progression of blood and bone marrow samples from a particular patient and asked what she thought. After having studied hundreds of cases like this, she assumed that this patient was dead. To her surprise, the patient was very much alive with no signs of the cancer that had ravaged her body and which without the miracle could not be treated by chemotherapy.
The evidence for miraculous healing is something that is overwhelmingly attested to in the records of modern medicine. Dr. Jaclyn Duffin is the latest scientist that has tried to catalogue the vast records of healing miracles or what they have labeled spontaneous remission in certain medical circles. Her research can be found on the New England Journal of Medicine and also in a long, detailed, and boring book entitled Medical Miracles. Her interest in this subject was sparked by a case of leukemia that a colleague brought to her attention. She was given a progression of blood and bone marrow samples from a particular patient and asked what she thought. After having studied hundreds of cases like this, she assumed that this patient was dead. To her surprise, that patient was very much alive with no signs of the cancer that had ravaged her body and which up to the time of the miracle could not be treated by chemotherapy.
And far from being an isolated case, Duffin discovered that these things happen periodically but the medical community has been hesitant to talk about the connection between faith and healing for a couple of reasons.
It can’t be scientifically validated and one thing that highly educated doctors are reluctant to admit is that they don’t know why some patients experience miracles or what they would call spontaneous remission.
On a more humanitarian level, doctors don’t want to give their patients false hope and probably want to error on the side of caution. This is certainly understandable from physicians that have no religious preference because these types of healings are considered miracles for a reason. They don’t happen frequently and they are impossible to predict.
Unfortunately, many Christians and even Christian doctors can become overly cautious in their view of miraculous healings. In our minds intellectually, we believe that God can heal, but in our hearts we assume that He will not heal and so it becomes difficult if not impossible to pray in faith. I share this because this has been my personal struggle. I remember the first time someone prayed for my healing. He was a friend from college who had been radically saved and was full of faith. So when he heard that I had torn the meniscus in my knee at church, he came over and started fervently praying for God to heal me but nothing happened…no sensation, not even a partial healing. But the fact is, I pretended to pray because I had already made up my mind that this was impossible. I think he was so discouraged by my lack of faith that he ended up actually going to medical school and he is still a doctor to this day. He should probably thank me for his career choice.
On a more serious note, I have seen that sickness often gives us an open door, maybe the last and best opportunity to share the gospel with someone we love, a friend, a coworker, a neighbor, a family member. The greatest regret I have in my Christian walk has been not walking through that door because of my own fears. Some years ago, Jeremiah came back from school with the news that his friends dad had been diagnosed with stage 4 stomach cancer. The kids were on the same basketball team and I had found out that he had grown up in the seventh day adventist church but had left the faith a while back. Like the doctors that don’t share about the possibility of miracles out of fear of creating false hope, I found myself just as unwilling to give a dying man some hope and some reason to believe out of fear of not seeing a miracle. And sadly, he passed away before I could get over my doubts and skepticism. I knew that I had missed a chance to share the love of Christ with a dying man. I failed to give him a chance to take the first step of faith, of reaching out to God for a miracle, which then could of have led to the second step of faith towards true belief. In a sense I robbed him of the small hope of healing in this life but more importantly I robbed him of the greater hope of knowing that his body would one day be resurrected, cancer free without pain.
In his interaction with this official, Jesus clearly understood this connection. He knew that this man was desperate enough to believe for a miracle but he also knew that faith in miracles was not enough so instead of physically going with the man to heal his son, Jesus simply gives him the assurance of his word by telling him, “Go, your son lives.” And perhaps the official heard the authority in Jesus’ voice or power in the words that he spoke but now a different type of faith was beginning to rise up in him. Instead of just believing for a miracle, he believed in the word that Jesus spoke to him and he knew that whatever Jesus said was true and unfailing. Do you see what Jesus just did there? He took this small measure of faith, this small thread connecting this man to God and he began to grow it into true belief. The miracle is actually secondary to trusting and believing in Jesus and his Word because it is his Word that brings miracles of healing, causes the storms to still, and makes the impossible possible!
In this time of fear
When prayer so often proves in vain
Hope seems like the summer bird
Too swiftly flown away
Yet now I'm standing here
My hearts so full, I can't explain
Seeking faith and speakin' words
I never thought I'd say
There can be miracles
When you believe
