Miracles

The Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary defines "miracle" as "an act or event that does not follow the laws of nature and is believed to be caused by God". Today, experts seem determined to exclude the miraculous when trying to explain the universe. I believe it is a huge mistake to banish miracles. If you do so, explaining the universe becomes like putting together a jigsaw with some important pieces missing.

The Lord Jesus Christ made use of miracles so that intelligent observers could form a clear picture of who He really was. The Gospel of Mark describes how He did this. A thoughtful Our Daily Bread Ministries writer shows how Mark puts it over for us. The section from chapter 4 verse 35 to chapter 5 verse 43 records four miracles. After the first, the disciples are "very much afraid" and ask one another, "Who then is this ...?" (Mark 4:41 NASB). This is exactly what Jesus means them to do, so they can learn the truth about Him.

The first in this series of miracles is the stilling of the storm (4:35-41). It demonstrates Jesus’ absolute power over nature. Incidentally, it also shows He is completely human too, with a human being's weakness. He was so tired that even the violent tossing of the waves did not wake Him at first, so that the disciples were scared at first that their boat would capsize before He could help!

The second miracle shows Jesus' total command of the spiritual world (5:1-20). It is the healing of a man who was so profoundly deranged as to be beyond all human help. However sceptical you may be about demons leaving the man and entering an enormous herd of pigs, the simultaneous jumping of the pigs into the sea would only have added to the onlookers' sense of how awesome the miracle was.

Not only did wonders never before seen occur during Jesus' ministry, wonder often followed wonder in quick succession. Jesus' reputation for healing the sick was growing apace. A woman with a haemorrhage testified to having tapped into healing power from Jesus (5:33). The Saviour was already on His way to lay healing hands on a desperately sick small girl. After the previous healing incident, word came that the girl had died. Undaunted, Jesus went on to reveal that He had power even over death: He raised the girl back to life.

"Who then is this?" Each miracle shows Jesus as the Omnipotent Sovereign God. To a first century Jew who knew his Bible, these works echoed Old Testament stories which would have been familiar to him. The days of Moses who parted the seas, and Elijah who breathed life back into the dead, were back. It was as though God's ancient power had returned to earth and gone into overdrive. "In Jewish minds," says our thoughtful writer, "the power to control the sea and the waves was exclusive to God (Job 38:8-11; Psalm 65:5-7; Isaiah 51:10; Nahum 1:3-5)."

You can refuse, if you like, to believe in miracles or to see through the eyes of His onlookers what Jesus did. Some did indeed refuse to believe. But surely you, like these nay-sayers, will be missing the whole point!

Who is He, in yonder stall,
At whose feet the shepherds fall? ...

Who is He that from the grave
Comes to heal and help and save? ...

Who is He that from His throne
Rules through all the worlds alone?

'Tis the Lord! O wondrous story!
'Tis the Lord, the King of Glory!
At His feet we humbly fall;
Crown Him, crown Him Lord of all.

Benjamin Russell Hanby, 1833-67