Sermon Tone Analysis

SCRIPTURE

MESSAGE

We Serve a Miracle-Working God!

What is a miracle?

A miracle is an extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention in human affairs.

A miracle from God begins where man’s ability ends.

A miracle is when God causes something to happen, that couldn’t happen, shouldn’t happen, and wouldn’t happen, unless He made it happen.

The Word of God demonstrates His miracle-working power.

The Bible is God’s special revelation of Himself to us.

The Bible reveals to us who God is.

And as we come to the Bible, we discover that He is a miracle-working God.

From the book of Genesis to the book of Revelation and everywhere in between, we find example after example of God working signs, wonders, and miracles for His people.

In the Old Testament, God parted the Red Sea, provided water from a rock, brought down the walls of Jericho, raised a widow’s son from the dead, healed leprosy, caused an ax head to float, delivered three Hebrew men from a fiery furnace, and many other miracles.

And God’s miracle-working power did not stop in the Old Testament.

In fact, signs, wonders, and miracles were a major part of Jesus’ ministry while he walked the earth.

And Jesus anointed His disciples to work miracles in His name.

And throughout the book of Acts, God continued to work miracles through them even after Jesus’ ascension.

I do not believe that the miracle-working power of God somehow stopped after Acts Chapter 28.

Hebrews 13:8 tells us that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever!

God does not change!

He performed miracles in the past and Jesus is still working miracles today!

Examples from “Miracles Today” by Craig Keener

Example 1 - The Lame are Healed

Dr. Douglass Norwood was a missionary in the South American country of Suriname.

There were very few Christians in that country and most of the people were hostile toward Christianity.

One night in 1994, a group of locals gathered at Dr. Norwood’s church to protest him being there.

One of the protesters was a man who was in his seventies.

He had been paralyzed on his right side virtually all his life.

His friends carried him into the meeting on a blanket or rug and plopped him down in from of Norwood.

This man was not happy.

“Your religion is garbage!” he shouted.

“My religion is garbage too!

I’ve prayed to Shiva, and to Vishnu, and to my other gods, and nothing happens.

Now you want me to pray to Jesus?”

As he uttered the name Jesus, his paralyzed arm suddenly shot up into the air.

He stared at his own arm, shocked.

No one had prayed for him, but when he mentioned Jesus, God healed his paralysis.

Norwood reports, “At that instant, he jumped up, grabbed my mike, and began screaming, ‘Look what Jesus did for me!’ as he danced around, waving his now-healed arm in the air.”

The other visitors were converted almost as quickly as he was and in the years following, many came to Christ in that area.

Example 2 - The Deaf Hear

Maria Johansson began to lose her hearing in 2012 and eventually reached a point where she needed to read lips and so was unable to talk on the phone.

Doctors warned that she would lose hearing completely if she did not have a cochlear implant.

On Sunday, August 21, 2016, Johansson and her family went to worship at the Sion Assembly in Flen, Sweden.

When people prayed for her, she felt as if a warm blanket had been laid over her.

Abruptly and to her astonishment, she noticed that she was hearing the music!

The next day, she reports, she could hear the gravel beneath her feet.

Her children were astounded when she called them, able to talk on the phone.

“That night I heard the cars passing by on the road,” she recounts.

“I heard a fly buzzing against the windowpane, and I heard my husband’s snoring.

Everything was like sweet music, even the snoring!”

On September 9, she returned to the audiologist.

After testing, the surprised doctor concluded, “Now everything with your hearing is within the normal range.

Something has happened to your ears that I simply cannot explain.

You can call it a miracle!”

Example 3 - The Dead are Raised Back to Life

One January morning in southern Ohio, two-year-old Malachi Reissig was running the around while his mother, Kelly Reissig, was talking with her sister on the phone and making breakfast.

Realizing she had not heard her son for a few minutes, Kelly stepped into the living room and, horrified, threw the phone to the floor.

Malachi had accidentally hanged himself from a treadmill cord and was already stiff, his eyes fixed.

Malachi’s father, Jim, reached the local hospital just before Malachi was to be airlifted to the children’s hospital in Columbus, Ohio.

The physician explained that it appeared that Malachi’s oxygen had been cut off for nearly ten minutes.

If he survived at all, he would probably be a vegetable.

Glancing at his unmoving child, Jim Reissig broke down, fell to his knees, and began crying out to God.

To the astonishment of everyone in the room, color began to return to Malachi’s body and the swelling visibly diminished.

So how did things turn out for Malachi in the long run?

You can read the answer to that question in the sports section of the September 19, 2013 edition of the Chillicothe Gazette.

The newspaper reported Malachi’s miraculous story because he was now, at age fifteen, a running back for the local football team.

Believing God for a Miracle

Miracles are Part of the Gospel

Prerequisites to Your Miracle

Failure

The time is going to come when you need a miracle from God.

Jesus met a woman in the city of Nain that needed Divine intervention.

She was a widow, so her husband was dead.

Now her only son was dead too.

She had lost everything and she would now be dependent on others for charity to sustain her the rest of her life.

She needed a miracle.

There are going to be times when you need Divine intervention.

You are going to face times when you reach the end of your own ability.

You are going to face times when you hit the wall of your own limitations.

You are going to face times in your life when you need a miracle.

Just remember, failure does not have to be permanent.

We read in the Gospels those who faced failure for:

12 years,

18 years,

38 years.

There is no problem too hard for Jesus to fix!

Jesus is still working miracles today!

Favor

Jesus had compassion on the widow woman.

The Bible doesn’t say that she had great faith.

The Bible simply says that Jesus had compassion on her.

He extended to her His Divine favor.

You can’t earn and you don’t deserve Divine favor.

It is according to His grace!

We are saved by His grace.

We are kept by His grace.

We are healed by His grace.

We are restored by His grace.

That’s why I can’t get upset with God and question Him when He answers someone else’s prayer but He doesn’t answer mine.

Because the favor that God gives to that other person, doesn’t take away the favor that God has for me.