31 And he went down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee. And he was teaching them on the Sabbath, 32 and they were astonished at his teaching, for his word possessed authority. 33 And in the synagogue there was a man who had the spirit of an unclean demon, and he cried out with a loud voice,34 “Ha![b] What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God.” 35 But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent and come out of him!” And when the demon had thrown him down in their midst, he came out of him, having done him no harm. 36 And they were all amazed and said to one another, “What is this word? For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and they come out!” 37 And reports about him went out into every place in the surrounding region. 38 And he arose and left the synagogue and entered Simon’s house. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was ill with a high fever, and they appealed to him on her behalf. 39 And he stood over her and rebuked the fever, and it left her, and immediately she rose and began to serve them. 40 Now when the sun was setting, all those who had any who were sick with various diseases brought them to him, and he laid his hands on every one of them and healed them. 41 And demons also came out of many, crying, “You are the Son of God!” But he rebuked them and would not allow them to speak, because they knew that he was the Christ. 42 And when it was day, he departed and went into a desolate place. And the people sought him and came to him, and would have kept him from leaving them, 43 but he said to them, “I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns as well; for I was sent for this purpose.” 44 And he was preaching in the synagogues of Judea.
These miracles were a demonstration that what we need we cannot get from any other. And look at how the Lord takes us from hopelessness to our cup running over with tender mercies and hope that knows no end. In the life of Jesus, we see demons fall, lame people made whole, blind people see, and even dead people raised. What is the point of all of this? Well, a number of things.
First, the miracles of Christ demonstrate who He is as the Son of God and the authority that He has been given by the Father, to authenticate His person and His mission.
What Jesus does in this chapter and throughout his life has no possible explanation other than the supernatural. And we must never forget that even the enemies of Jesus did not deny this, they never once denied that what he did was supernatural. They did try to attribute it to the Devil and to dark powers of evil, but that was only a desperate attempt by desperate men. But never a denial that what He did was beyond nature.
Without the miraculous you have no Jesus, you have no Savior, you have no salvation; Christianity and the miraculous simply cannot be separated. If you admit that Jesus is the Son of God as even the demons do, then miracles, far from being hard to believe, are actually inevitable. Admit the incarnation and miracles are part and parcel of what did and must have happened if God became a man.
Second, the miracles of Jesus are pointing to the end, and are building to the greatest miracle of the resurrection. This is what the people missed. This is what they did not understand and could not see, namely, that miracles are eschatological in focus, or, miracles are those supernatural acts of God that preach and point to the eternal victory of Christ and those who trust him.
The miraculous was not done simply to do nice things for people or to get attention. He was not being a divine magician nor putting on a show so that he could pack folks in. In fact, his miracles were not with demonstrative, emotional acts on the part of Christ, he merely would touch and speak and disease, death, and even the created order would obey Him.
However, there was much more. Jesus comes to demonstrate the authority that is his, a power over the physical world AND the spiritual world that is His and His alone. And we must remember to never disconnect the two, the physical and the spiritual, for Jesus does not. The one physical is merely the picture or the demonstration of the other.
The miracles are vehicles of revelation and of salvation itself. Calvin called them “sacramental signs”. That is, they reveal in visible form the invisible grace of God. John Stott calls them “enacted parables” C.S. Lewis beautifully says,
“The miracles in fact are a retelling in small letters the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.”
In each miracle something bigger than the miracle itself is the point. What does it mean that Jesus spoke to creation and it obeyed Him? Creation serves the redemptive program of God and that redemptive program is Jesus Christ.
Or when Jesus casts out demons? He is showing us that the power of hell cannot withstand Him, cannot thwart what He is doing, for us and for our eternal joy and satisfaction. His healing diseases point us to the realization that by His stripes we are healed, not just from fever and disease, but from what disease and sin own as their champion, death itself.
But allow me to return to where I started the miracles as demonstrative of the Messianic program, of the love of God to save outcasts even to save all the wrong people. AND the fact that we are being shown the helplessness of man BUT the great supernatural grace of God that does what man cannot.
Let’s look at this from another vantage point. A set of questions that I read some time ago: Why do we look down on others? Why are there so many divisions, the people who are the “someones” and those who are not? Why do we classify one another, put each other in boxes and categories, and almost never kind labels but derogatory ones? Let’s be honest every one of us does this?
“Oh, she is such a narrow minded woman…He is proud and hard to talk to…She is socially awkward and boring…” Why? Why do we do this?
Why is there so much hatred and why do we justify ourselves for feeling this way about others? Why do we categorize people and ridicule them in our hearts and in our words to others? Why do we look down on others because they are not what we think is socially acceptable? Or perhaps they don’t look the way we think they should, maybe they are overweight, or not very attractive.
On a bigger scale, why is there racism, which the Bible calls hatred, and why a despising of people because of where they are from, how they were raised or the color of their skin?
A very large part of the reason for this, if we are honest, is that we know ourselves, at our heart, to be outcasts. The hatred of others, the proud disdain of others and our feelings and actions that we are superior to them, this is all our insecurity and pride expressing itself.
We put down others, we put down the weak, we classify people so that we will be exalted above them, so that we will know ourselves to be superior to them. We do this, we point out the failures of others, the ridiculous of the way they act, or the way they think, because it is precisely OUR failure that exposes us to condemnation and to this haunting sense of inferiority and liability to rejection. (RSR)
For the fact is, we are a mess…and we know it, no matter how hard we try to cover up that it is so, or comfort ourselves that others are bigger messes than are we. And so, we raise ourselves in our own judgment and in our own eyes in the only way that is open to us…by putting down, by mocking and ridiculing, by lowering others, in our hearts, our minds AND even in the hearing of others.
The miracles help us to see others…as we ought to see them.
To be continued…
Prayer: Father, help me to see the work of Jesus clearly that I might know Him and align my life to follow Him with my whole heart. Help me to know, believe and live in the promise that you will never leave me nor forsake me. With you as my guide, my fortress, my deliverer and my hope, I will walk humbly yet boldly through life’s circumstances as your child, to the praise of my elder brother and Savior, Jesus Christ, Amen.
Hymn: Lord of Eternity
