Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

This morning, we are going to continue our discussion on miracles in preparation for Easter.

Like many people who grew up here in the Bay Area, I was very skeptical about the supernatural even after I became a Christian.

I suspended my disbelief in regards to what I read in the Bible but I also made this arbitrary decision that these miracles in history were not enough reason to believe that we should expect God to perform those same miracles today.

Then a friend of mine, Pastor Sung, went on a mission trip to China and testified first hand that he had witnessed a miraculous healing right in front of his eyes.

A young man had been paralyzed by a car accident and unable to move his legs and much to Sung’s surprise, the missionaries that he was working with told him to pray for his legs.

As Sung tells the story, he had absolutely no faith that God would heal this young man but because he was afraid of the missionaries, he did exactly what they told him to do.

Lay your hands on the man’s legs and in faith, command his legs to be healed in Jesus’ name.

(I’ve met Esther and John before and they are scary and it doesn’t matter if you believe, you do what they tell you to do).

So Sung prayed and to his utter surprise, this young man began to move his legs and my friend began to freak out because this was actually working.

In a short time, meaning minutes, the young man was taking his first steps and his father who was very much against Christianity saw this miracle and began to weep for joy.

The missionaries then led the father and his son to faith in Christ.

After Sung shared his testimony, I had decision to make.

In my eyes, my friend has always been a stable and reasonable person and I couldn’t see any reason why he would lie about such an event.

I would have to fabricate my own theories and question the character of my friend in order to discount the miracle.

And this is something that many people end up doing.

CS Lewis describes our modern bias toward miracles in this manner:

And this is something that many people end up doing.

CS Lewis describes our modern bias toward miracles in this manner:

Collective hallucination, hypnotism of unconsenting spectators, widespread instantaneous conspiracy in lying by persons not otherwise known to be liars or not likely to gain by the lie - all these are known to be very improbable events: so improbable that, except for the special purpose of excluding a miracle, they are never suggested.

But they are preferred to the admission of a miracle.

I found myself exactly in this dilemma that Lewis describes.

I would either have to believe in the improbability of my good friend telling the biggest lie of his life for no reason or the improbability of this miracle.

Mind you both were improbable but the evidence seemed stacked toward the miracle.

I saw that my friend’s faith had been changed and this would eventually lead him going back to China as a long term missionary.

To this very day, I pinpoint his testimony as the beginning of my personal belief that God still performs miracles today.

But I soon realized that belief in miracles brought in a slew of theological questions such as, “Why does God heal some and not others?”

My prayer is that we will begin to answer some of those questions so that we can have a stronger faith in the God of miracles.

Now the question is “How did we get from Palm Sunday with all of the expectations and joy to Good Friday, where Jesus would be tried and crucified as a common criminal?”

To say the least, it is a dramatic turn of events.

To answer this question, we need to look at the miracle that sets into motion this entire series of events.

According to , it was the raising of Lazarus from the dead that ultimately created this tense environment within the religious and social fabric of Jerusalem.

These verses explain very clearly why the crowds gathered and gave Jesus such a hero’s welcome.

The news that Jesus had raised a dead man to life in dramatic fashion had reverberated across the city and there were enough credible witnesses to this miracle, so much so that it caused Jesus’ popularity to go viral.

But in the eyes of the Pharisees as well as other political and religious leaders, this explosive growth in terms of influence and fame was causing an unavoidable problem that they could no longer ignore.

A memory that would have been fresh in their minds was Jesus going through the Temple courts and throwing out all the vendors and rebuking the leaders that they had turned his Father’s house into a marketplace filled with thieves.

Jesus was increasingly seen threat but now that it seemed like the entire world was going over to him, he looked like a very dangerous revolutionary that would bring imminent political disaster to the nation.

However, as we look closely at the resurrection of Lazarus, we will see that Jesus had no intention of a political revolution but the miracle was simply a sign of future events.

John 12:

Body:

As we prepare for Easter Sunday, we want to look at this miracle, which is considered to be the seventh and final sign in the Gospel of John pointing us to the ultimate purpose of Jesus’ life.

John 11

John 11:

I would like us to look at three points from the passages that we just read:

1.  Miracles are meant to bring God glory

2.  Miracles do not always parallel Jesus' love

3.  Jesus weeps over our misconceptions of God

This passage begins with the news of a man by the name of Lazarus being very sick, possibly to the point of death.

Unlike many of the other miracles in the gospels, this isn’t a random person from the crowd but someone that Jesus has had a prior relationship with.

We know more about Jesus’ interactions with his sisters, Martha and Mary, that he had been a guest in their home, that he had spent time eating with them, and teaching them the word of God.

Lazarus is not mentioned specifically in those stories but we are told here that Jesus loved him too.

So given this friendship that Jesus had with this family, it doesn’t seem to make any sense that Jesus would wait a full two days before deciding to go up in order see how Lazarus was doing.

Given the distance between where Jesus was in relation to Jerusalem, this would have required an extra two days of walking and delaying these two extra days could easily be interpreted as Jesus being callous, irresponsible, and downright unloving.

Imagine if one of your friends treated you this way, it would be very hurtful.

And the only excuse that Jesus gives for this delay is the Sunday school answer, “This is for the glory of God.”

When I first became a Christian, I had a very difficult time with this oft repeated statement made famous by the Protestant Reformation, for the glory of God alone, or soli Deo gloria.

It made God seem very self-centered, an ego maniac, that was only out to promote himself even when it meant hurting people.

It appears that the apostle John must have known that this would be problematic for his readers so he made sure to emphasize that Jesus genuinely loved this family.

I’m sure that many of us can relate to what this family had to go through.

Clearly the sisters believed that Jesus loved their brother and that he could heal him just as he had done for many others.

This is why they sent him the message, “He whom you love is sick.”

The message within the message is come quickly so that you can heal him.

Countless Christians have prayed the very same prayer, only to see their loved ones suffer without a miracle.

If you have a Christian background like mine (pentecostal/charismatic), you hear about the many miracles that God has performed but you rarely if ever hear about the miracles that didn’t happen.

So it is a bit shocking to the system when you come to a situation that seems to be begging for God’s supernatural intervention but nothing happens.

I remember going on a mission trip to Mongolia and ministering to a village of people living in the city dumpsters.

It was one of the most heartbreaking things that I had seen up to that point in life and a family brought us their son that was confined to a wheel chair and I was so sure that God would heal him.

I felt like I had faith and clearly there was a need but as much as we prayed, nothing happened.

I had not developed a clear theology of miracles as a young pastor and I could not wrap my mind around why God would not heal in this particular situation.

Why didn’t Jesus show up this time?

As hard as it may be to accept in the midst of our suffering and disappointment, miracles are not primarily an operation of man’s need.

Although they may meet our earthly needs, they are ultimately dependent on whether or not God will be most glorified through them.

And again, when I say that I’m sure that many of us are thinking “Ah ha, that proves God’s selfishness” but I want you to hear me out to the conclusion of this message.

By its very definition, if miracles occurred every time someone needed one, we would cease to marvel at the supernatural because it would be the norm.

In a sense, we would have a pseudo utopia and would have no need to look forward to eternal life in the new heaven and new earth.

In addition, people would have no other choice but to believe in God.

There would no longer be a need for faith because the evidence for God would be overwhelming.

And you might be asking, “Isn’t that what God wants, for everyone to believe in Him?” Shockingly, the answer is no!

What God desires is for everyone to love Him with all their heart, their soul, and their mind.

Miracles generally lead to belief but they do not always need to love.

The account of the the ten lepers in is a clear example of this.

Jesus heals 10 lepers but only one returns to thank Him and to give praise to God.

Remember from last week that faith in miracles is the most fickle and unstable of our beliefs.

But having no miracles and here we need to broaden out the definition of miracles to include revelations and visions from God, which includes the writing of Scripture because of its inherent prophetic nature.

If we didn’t have any of this, there could be no basis for our belief.

We would have every right to simply be naturalists without any belief in the supernatural and God would not be able to find fault with us.

So we are left with the only conclusion that we can make, which is God gives us just the right amount of miracles that will engender both belief and more importantly our love for God.

If you are a fan of John Piper, I know that it’s been ingrained in you to believe that God is most gloried when we are most satisfied in Him.

I might clarify that statement by adding that God is most glorified when we are most in love with Him.

Why do you think God created a world where people universally agree that love is the single most important virtue?

The Beatles, known to be die hard atheist, sang “All we need is love.”

And the rally cry of the LGBTQ community is love wins.

Democrats and Republicans would all agree that love is a worthy goal for society.

How can people with such divergent worldviews come to the same conclusion about love?

Could it be that God ordered the world so that what you love the most is what you glorify the most both for good or for evil?

That which you love the most will be the most praiseworthy thing in your life.

Love and glory are two sides of the same coin.

Some miracles increase that love, some actually decrease it and only God is privy to that knowledge.

That leaves us with this important conclusion: Miracles do not parallel Jesus’ love for us.

In other words, there is not a one to one correlation.