The Miracles of Christ

Well in our Wednesday night studies we have been moving chronologically through the life of Christ, tracing his steps, step by step through his life, and obviously we're still in the very early part of his ministry, but there's something that we, with the last few weeks, we've been looking at a ministry of Christ that outside of the gospel of John would be unknown. It's very early in Jesus ministry, it's a ministry in and around Jerusalem, and it's only found in the first four chapters of John's gospel. We've been looking at the fact that Jesus went to Jerusalem, he cleansed the temple, he had a night meeting with Nicodemus, he then was involved in baptizing in the area around Jerusalem, some of John's disciples had an encounter with someone who was critical of Jesus gaining more popularity, and all of that's going on, but in the midst of all of that there are a couple of statements that could easily slip by us. I want to make sure they don't, we're going to take a little rabbit trail tonight, okay, and talk about the miracles of Christ, but I want you to look in John chapter 2, if you would for a moment please, John chapter 2 and verse 23, this statement is made just after the story of Jesus cleansing the temple, and John 2 verse 23, Now while he was in Jerusalem at the Passover feast, many people saw the miraculous signs he was doing and believed in his name. Then look down at chapter 3 verse 1, there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council, he came to Jesus at night and said, Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him. Now none of these miraculous signs are described for us. The only miracle that's described is in the first few chapters of John is the turning of water into wine, that happened in Cana, that was in Galilee, this is not anything that happened in Judea. So Jesus is now in Judea, in the southern part of Israel, performing many miraculous signs in Jerusalem, we don't know what any of them were. It's just an incredible thought that Jesus is performing miracles, but none of them are recorded. John's gospel is the only gospel that records any of this information about Jesus' life and does not let us know what any of these miracles are. But we know that Jesus was performing many miraculous signs, that's what the text says here. And then if you go on over to chapter 4, when Jesus goes back to Galilee, verse 43, after he's been through Samaria, met with the Samaritan woman, stayed a couple of days to further explain who he is, and give the gospel to people in the city of Psycar. Verse 43 says, after two days, he left for Galilee. Now Jesus himself had pointed out that a prophet has no honor in his own country. Now verse 45, when he arrived in Galilee, the Galilee ens welcomed him, and why? Well, notice what the rest of the verse says. They had seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the Passover feast, for they had also been there. Okay, so that is a reference again back to the miracles, and the reason why he received a reception that was favorable in Galilee is because these people had been there in Jerusalem too, they had seen the many miracles that Jesus had performed. So a lot of miracles being performed, we don't know what they were, there's no record of them, there's no indication of whether or not they were healings or other kinds of miracles, but Jesus was performing miracles. So I want us to take a little bit of an excursus here, just a little bit of a rabbit trail tonight, before we get into the next section of the life of Christ, which is the great Galilee and ministry. 18 months, three tours of the region of Galilee, preaching tours, before we get into that, I want us to just take a little bit of a break to look at the subject of the miracles of Christ. So let's look at our outline, we'll take a little bit of a study of the words first of the miracles of Christ. There are four words used in the New Testament for miracles that Jesus did. There is no one word that can really summarize the fullness of the kinds of things Jesus was doing when He performed His miracles, and it takes four words, four Greek words that are translated by four different English words to capture everything that's involved in the miracles. The first one is the word wonder. If you look at a few passages, just going to pick out a couple that use these to give you an illustration of them. Acts chapter 2, Acts chapter 2, verse 22, hold your place in John 4, but in Acts chapter 2, verse 22, Peter's preaching on the day of Pentecost, he says, Minervisrael, listen to this, Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you with miracles, or by miracles, wonders, and signs, which God did among you through Him as you yourselves know. So the word wonder is used here, also back in John chapter 4 and verse 48. One of the first things Jesus does when he's back in Galilee is perform a miracle of healing, and in the midst of that, he says in verse 48, unless you people see miraculous signs and wonders, Jesus told him, you will never believe. Now, the word wonder is one of the words that's used for miracles. What do you think that word implies? What is the idea about miracles that that word would entail? Okay, it's something that would be astounding, make you think, it would have to do with the response of the people who witnessed the miracle, wouldn't it? Exactly right. The word wonder emphasizes the response of people who witnessed the miracle. It was amazing. It was something, if I hadn't seen that, I wouldn't believe that could have happened. And there was a sense of wonder, a sense of awe that they had actually seen a miracle like this happened. You don't see miracles every day, but when Jesus was here on earth, they were quite common, and it was happening quite a bit. And so this was amazing to people, and that's where the word wonder comes from. It's what it produced in those that witnessed the miracles. It is almost always used with another word, like signs and wonders or a miraculous wonder or something, some other word is used with it, but wonder always indicates the response of the people who saw it. The second word is the word sign. We saw that in Acts chapter 2, verse 22. But if you look also in John chapter 20, verse 30 and 31, these two verses really tell us the purpose of the Gospel of John. John gives us at the end of his book the purpose for his book, and he says this, Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have a life in his name. Now also Matthew chapter 16, the word is used several times, Matthew 16, verse 1, the Pharisees and Sadducees came to Jesus and tested him by asking him to show them a sign from heaven. He replied, when evening comes and you say it will be fair weather for the sky is red, and in the morning today it will be stormy for the sky is red and overcast. You know they had sayings just like we do. Red night and morning sailors take warning, isn't that it? Red Scott night sailors delight, isn't that what we say today? And they had similar sayings like that. He says, you know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times. A wicked and adulterous generation looks for a miraculous sign, but none will be given to accept the sign of Jonah. Jesus then left them and went away, uses the word sign four times in those four verses. Now what do you think the word sign signifies about a miracle? Okay. All right, these are things that only God could do. These come from God to show that Jesus was from God, to show that he was the Christ. Okay, Steve, very good. Any other idea about the word sign? Okay, people are needing to see something visible, something tangible to show what is who Jesus is and what is happening. Yeah, and that's very true. And yet Jesus rebukes them for that, doesn't he? Says you won't believe it unless you see a miraculous sign. Now there's a real balance here because what what you've said is true. People did need to see proof, if you will. Yeah, but there was a there was a specific reason for the signs. God intended there to be visible proof. What happened and here's where the balance is a little bit tricky. What happened is people began to just look for the signs because of the benefit, the personal benefit of those signs. We want something that either will get us all excited about, you know, what we see or will benefit us. Remember when Jesus fed the 5,000 with the loaves and the fishes and John chapter 6, the Bible says the next day they wanted to take him by force and make him king. Why? I mean, it's the best food program anybody's ever heard of. You know, just take five, you know, little loaves and two fish and feed 5,000 people. Yeah, I'll vote for him as king. And so Jesus, you know, the sign which was intended by God, as we'll see in a little bit, to show who Jesus was, was interpreted by people just as something to benefit them. It's a good way to put it. Take something holy and make it common. That's exactly what was happening. And that's the reason Jesus would rebuke the Pharisees and others for requesting for a sign, even though there was a purpose in the signs. God intended them to be a proof of something. They were looking just for something to excite the imagination and turned it into something common. So there is a purpose. There's an ethical purpose, a moral purpose. The sign indicates that the miracle points to something beyond itself. The miracle is a sign of something else. It points to something beyond the work that was actually done. And we'll see what that something is in a little bit. We'll look at some of the purposes for them. The third word, interestingly enough, is the word power. Look at Luke chapter four. Several times Luke uses this word. Luke chapter four, verse 36. All the people were amazed and said to each other, what is this teaching with authority and power? He gives orders to evil spirits and they come out. So the casting out of demons is attributed to his power. And if you'll also just look over a page or so at chapter five, verse 17, one day as he was teaching Pharisees and teachers of the law who had come from every village of Galilee and from Judea and Samaria were sitting there and the power of the Lord was present for him to heal the sick. And so again, his power produces these miracles. Also chapter nine, verse one. When Jesus had called the twelve together, he gave them power and authority to drive out all demons and to cure diseases. Again, showing that this miraculous ability comes from divine power. Now, the miracles themselves are actually called powers in Matthew chapter 13. He hung just a second, Steve. Matthew chapter 13 and verse 54. Coming to his hometown, he began teaching the people in their synagogue and they were amazed, where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers? They asked. And so the word power is also a word that used for his miracles. Steve, have a question? Yeah, power and authority are used together, but they're different concepts and they're actually different Greek words. The word for powers, dunamis, the word for authority is exociat. The Greek word exociat. They've been doing different things. Power indicates in eight strength. Authority has to do with the authority, the innate authority behind what he was teaching. So they're used together, although they do mean different things. It's interesting that the word for power, dunamis, you often hear, well that's where we get our word dynamite from. So it means explosive power. That is not the case at all. The Greek word dunamis never meant explosive power. It meant a quietly working innate strength. And when the Bible refers to the miracles as miraculous powers, it's indicating not some explosive thing, like Jesus said, boom and things explode. It's a quiet inner strength that is the source of the power. It is God's strength operating through him. And that's what the word power means when it's used of the miracles. One other word, and it's the word work, the word work, couple of places where this is used in particular, look at John chapter seven, John chapter seven, and verse 21. Jesus said to them, I did one miracle, and you were all astonished. He's referring back to the miracle in chapter five of the healing of the man at the pool of Bethesda, man who'd been lame since birth. He's referring back to that when he says, I did one miracle. Actually, the word miracle here is not the normal Greek word for miracle. It's the word air gone for work. It simply means an activity of work that was done. It's translated by the NIV miracle because it is a miraculous work, but it really is the word work. Verse 22, yet because Moses gave you circumcision, though actually it did not come from Moses, but from the patriarchs, you circumcised a child on the Sabbath. Now if a child can be circumcised on the Sabbath so that the law of Moses may not be broken, why are you angry with me for healing the whole man on the Sabbath? So he's referring back to his miracle of healing, and it's called a work. Look at chapter 14. This is even more clear here. John 14 verses 10 and 11. The upper room, Jesus teaching his disciples, and he's talking to Philip saying, if you've seen me, you've seen the father verse 10. He says, don't you believe that I am in the father and that the father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own, rather it is the father living in me who is doing his work. Believe me when I say that I am in the father and the father is in me, or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves. You know, it's verse 10. It's the father doing his work in chapter 11. What work is it, the miracles? Okay, so the miracles are sometimes called a work. Now, the idea behind the word work is this is something which requires and uses energy. It indicates that it is a work which requires an expenditure of energy. Do you remember when Jesus was on his way to the home of gyros where he had been requested to come and heal gyros' daughter? And on his way, he's passing through a great crowd. On his way, he senses that someone has touched him. Remember it was the woman with the issue of blood and his disciples say, well Lord, there are people crowded all around you. What do you mean someone touched you? And he said, I felt power go out of me. That leads me to believe that whenever Jesus performed miracles, there was an expenditure of energy which indicated this was a work that was tiring. There was power strength that actually went out from him when he performed miracles. Now, when you think of Jesus, for instance, in Mark chapter 1, when he spends a whole evening healing everybody in the town who's brought to him. Can you imagine how exhausting that must have been? On the one hand, we think of Jesus, he's God, there's no, he has all power. But remember, he is also man and he never independently exercised his divine attributes. He never independently exercised his divine attributes. Only when it was at the will of his father, healings took energy out of him. It was a work which required effort and power and drained him, if you will. So they are sometimes called a work. Now, you put those four words together and you have some idea of what miracles involved. They were accomplished by the innate strength that Jesus had being God, but they were a work which required the expenditure of strength to accomplish. They produced wonder and amazement in the people who saw them and they served as a sign of something. Again, I'm kind of holding back on there four reasons for the miracles. We'll talk about that in a moment, but they served as a sign quickly, Steve. Certainly. Yes, there was an expenditure power that required a recuperation of strength. He was exhausted, fell asleep in the boat, stormed, didn't wake him up. His humanity has seen very clearly through the gospels. The exercise of divine power was only at the behest of the father's will, but it always drained him when it happened. Let's talk about the definition of a miracle. How would we define a miracle? I want to give you several layered definition here because it's important that we distinguish biblical miracles from what is often passed off as miracles today. In the Bible, a miracle is, here's the first layer, an objective event in the external world. This is a quote that comes from a man by the name of Robert Culver who wrote a book on the life of Christ. He also wrote a great commentary on the book of Daniel. He says this is a miracle in the Bible is always an objective event in the external world. In other words, it is observable to the senses. That's a very important distinction in biblical miracles. This is something that was quite obvious, something happened that people could see. It was not like what's passed off in many charismatic circles today as miracles where someone is healed of something that you can't really see. I had back pain, now I don't. I had depression and I got healed of it. Well, I'm grateful for anybody that may be healed of things like that and certainly don't limit God's power to do that. But Jesus miracles were of the kind that were observable. You could see them. There was no question that a miracle had really taken place. When Jesus heals a man with a withered hand, it's a man whose hand is paralyzed and drawn up and probably not fully developed and all of a sudden it's fully grown and functional. You can see that. When he heals it's someone who's blind who can now see who's never been able to see before. He raises people from the dead. He calms storms. He multiplies bread and fishes. I mean, these are things that are seen. These are observable in the external world. So these are objective events in the external world that are observable. They are always attributed to the power of God. It's another distinction of a biblical miracle. Always attributed to the power of God, not to the power of the person doing the miracle. This is particularly true of the apostles. Always directed to some moral end. Let me explain that one just a little bit. A miracle is always directed in the Bible towards some moral end. And what I mean by that is miracles were never done for popular excitement. Miracles were never done in the Bible for personal glory. They were always done for a purpose that glorified God, a moral ethical purpose that glorified God and helped other people. In fact, there was there was no question as to the legitimacy of the miracles of Christ and of the apostles in the New Testament. Let me just point out a couple of passages here in John chapter 11 and verse 47. This is after the miracle of the racing of Lazarus. That was pretty observable. You know, in a man who's been dead four days and walks out of a tomb still wrapped in the grave cloths. So you couldn't deny what had happened there in verse 45. Therefore many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary and had seen what Jesus did put their faith in him. But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. Then the chief priest in the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin. What are we accomplishing? They asked, here is this man performing many miraculous signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him. And then the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation. The Pharisees couldn't deny that a miracle had taken place. In fact, even earlier in his ministry, they would not deny that he was doing miracles. What did they, what did they not believe? What did they attribute his miracles to? Satan. Yeah, they said he did his miracles by the power of Satan. They never denied that he was doing miracles. They just tried to attribute them to the power of Satan rather than the power of God. You know, the same thing was true of the apostles in the book of Acts in Acts chapter 4, something very similar happens after the healing of the man in the temple by Peter and John in Acts 3. In Acts chapter 4, when they've been called in before the Sanhedrin. For 15, they ordered him to withdraw from the Sanhedrin, then confer together. So they go into executive session here in Sanhedrin, get the apostles out of here. We need to talk about this verse 16. What are we going to do with these men? They asked everybody living in Jerusalem knows that they have done an outstanding miracle and we cannot deny it. We cannot deny it. They recognize the miracles been done and it simply cannot be denied. Steve? Well, there are numerous ones. There are numerous ones actually in the magicians of Egypt, for instance, and there will be in the future in the tribulation time with the Antichrist. I want to get to that in just a little bit if we can hang on to that. Okay? I want to get that in just a little bit. But a miracle is something observable which cannot be denied. It is something that really happens in the real world. Even the enemies of Christ could not deny that something miraculous was happening. They knew it. They couldn't deny it. That is a very critical part of understanding what miracles really are. I don't want to get into this in a lot of depth, but since I have touched on it in the book of Acts, let me just say that there was in the first century such a thing as the spiritual gift of miracles. It was part of the gift of the apostles. It was limited to the apostolic era, the first century, and there are several passages that deal with that. 2 Corinthians 12, 12, Hebrews 2, 3, and 4, there are several passages that deal with the fact that these miraculous gifts were given to the apostles to be the credentials that would establish the gospel as it took root. And then once the apostles passed off the scene, those miraculous kind of spiritual gifts passed off the scene. So what is passed off today as miracles? Maybe miracles that God does, but God has not given people the spiritual gift of miracles today. That was for the first century only. That was for the age of the apostles. It was impossible to deny that Jesus and the apostles did miracles, but to say that that is a continuing gift that is to be exercised today is just not biblical. Questions? There before we move on to talk about some of the characteristics of Jesus' miracles. Okay, quickly four characteristics of Jesus' miracles. And I just want to state these. They are kind of summary and you find a lot of examples of them, but we are not going to take the time to look at these examples of all of them. But these are some of the characteristics of Christ's miracles. First of all, they were accomplished with the greatest ease. You know, when I watch Star Wars and I like Star Wars, but when I watch Yoda, okay, Yoda, when he lifts the spaceship out of the water in one of the Star Wars movies, it's very difficult. And he's trying really, really hard and it finally happens. Jesus never did anything like that. Jesus says to a dead man, Lazarus, come forth and it happens. Jesus just speaks and things happen. Miracles take place. He touches someone. They can see. They can walk. Their arm is whole again. There's no effort in the sense of, in some very difficult thing that he has to do. He simply speaks and it happens. It does take power out of him, but there's no incantation. There's no fancy exercise. There's no formula that he has to go through to try to make this thing happen. So performed with the greatest of ease. Secondly, he accomplished them with no instrument of power outside himself. He didn't need a magic wand or any pixie dust or anything like that. He simply spoke. He simply touched people. He simply things just happened. Now there was, there was one time where Jesus used something in a miracle. What was it? It was a saliva. Or in West Virginia spit. What did he do with that? He made mud, didn't he? John chapter 9 and he put it, what did he do with the mud? Put it on the eyes of a blind man, didn't he? Why do you think he did that? Because he wanted to. Okay. All right. I mean, there are other times when he healed blind people that he did blind Bartimaeus as we saw Sunday. There was no use of any material that way. Why do you think he did that? An object lesson? May well have been. Yes. What kind of object lesson do you think Jesus would be accomplishing with the use of mud? Watch the field possibly. I think I'll reason something there. I think how did God create man? He formed him unlike the rest of creation in Genesis 1 where God spoke things into existence. Man was created by God fashioning the dust of the earth and then breathing into man the breath of life. There's a sense I think possibly where Jesus is showing that he is the creator God that takes the same dust of the earth and creates sight, if you will, in this blind man. There's at least possible. We're not told by John why he did that. But it may have been a reference back to the creative activity of God in the Old Testament. So in the same God who created man in the beginning can also fashion sight out of the dust of the ground if he so chooses. But typically Jesus did not use any other instrument to perform a miracle. He would just happen. He would do it. Okay. The third characteristic is they were the miracles of Jesus were evidences of kindness, grace and mercy. There were times in the Old Testament where miracles were done as judgments. Leoporcy was given to someone that happened several times in the Old Testament miraculously. Jesus miracles, however, were done with kindness, an act of grace and mercy. They helped people. Now, can you think of a possible exception to that? An miracle that may have been a miracle of judgment. Woman of the well. That's true. He did point out her sin, didn't he? And yeah. Cast the demons into the swine. That might be an example. Certainly, the miracle itself benefited the demon possessed man out of whom the demons came. But it created some financial financial hardship for the owners of the swine. Remember how they responded? They didn't want him there. They wanted to leave our territory. They said, can you imagine? Leave our territory. We lost some pigs. We gained a guy who had been demon possessed, but we lost some pigs. And so it affected our pocketbook. Lots of why? That's an Old Testament example of a miraculous thing that happened. Possibly miraculous. That may have been, you know, she was turned into a pillar of salt. And there's a lot of question about how that actually happened. Sofra was raining down from heaven. She may have been encrusted in that because of lagging behind. I'm thinking of one other miracle of Jesus that seems to be an active judgment and it doesn't have to do with a person. It has to do with the. The fig tree. Yeah. When he cursed the fig tree. Remember when he's going into the temple in Jerusalem one day and the last week of his life on Tuesday, actually the last week of his life. And he sees a fig tree that should have been producing fruit and it wasn't. And he used it as an object lesson to his disciples. He curses the fig tree the next morning they come out and it's all withered up already. But even that had a beneficial purpose, didn't it? To teach the disciples a lesson. So, by and large, I think we could say almost without exception, Jesus miracles are acts of kindness, grace and mercy. Things that really help people. The fourth characteristic is that his miracles are mainly in the sphere of human life rather than the realm of nature. And that's exclusively mainly in the realm of human life rather than the realm of nature. And even those miracles which are done in the realm of nature are done to help someone, to benefit someone. Jesus calms the storm on the sea of Galilee, but that's for the sake of the disciples. They're concerned they're going to perish in this storm. Even when Jesus performs acts of controlling nature, it is for the benefit of someone else, mainly in the realm of human life. Okay, quickly, I want to deal with the purposes of Christ's miracles because this is very important. Let me just give you the four because I don't want to carry this over to next week. One purpose was to foster belief in him as the Son of God and the Messiah of Israel. Very clearly in John chapter 20, verse 31, we saw the verse earlier John telling us the purpose for why he chose these miraculous signs to record in his book. He says these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have a life in his name. It was obviously a purpose of the miracles to prove to show this part of the sign element here to show that Jesus was the Son of God and to foster belief, to encourage belief in him as the Son of God and as the Messiah. Now, these are all kind of tied together. Some of them kind of fleshed that one out a little bit more. The second purpose was to prove his right to be heard. To prove his right to be heard. I think this is very significant. The miracles in and of themselves did not prove the deity of Christ. They proved his right to be heard to determine whether or not his message showed him to be the Son of God. Let me read you a warning in the book of Deuteronomy. Moses warned the people of Israel about the demonic use of miracles in Deuteronomy chapter 13, verse 1. If a prophet or one who foretells by dreams appears among you and announces to you a miraculous sign or wonder, and if the sign or wonder of which he has spoken takes place, and he says, let us follow other gods, God you have not known, and let us worship them, you must not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer. Moses says, the Lord your God is testing you to find out whether you love him with all your heart with all your soul. It is the Lord your God you must follow and him you must revere. Keep his commands and obey him, serve him and hold fast to him. That prophet or dreamer must be put to death because he preached rebellion against the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt or be injured from the hand of slavery, the land of slavery. God was warning the people of Israel, there will be people that will come along and even do miracles, but they are satanic, they are demonic. If their message is not in line with the God of the Scriptures and the Scriptures themselves, don't believe them even if they perform miracles because the miracles in and of themselves are not proof of deity. Satan can counterfeit miracles, can't he? He did in Egypt with the magicians of Egypt. Some of the miracles that Moses did, the magicians did too. And there is no way to explain those away. You see, Satan does have incredible power in the tribulation time, and I referenced this just a little bit earlier, in the tribulation time the Bible says in Revelation chapter 13 that many people will believe in the Antichrist because of the wonders and the miracles that he does and the miracles that the false prophet does on his behalf. And they will do miracles, which I think will include the bringing to life of an image that is set up in the temple of the Antichrist. So it is possible for a B.B. Warfield, who was a great theologian back in the early part of the 1900s, taught at Princeton Seminary, wrote a book, which I have in my library called Counterfeit Miracles. And he documented through church history, counterfeit miracles. Now, at the risk of sounding critical of a particular group, and I don't mean it that way, but the Roman Catholic church has thrived throughout the centuries on the supposed miracles that have taken place. Okay, B.B. Warfield documents many of those miracles as counterfeits of the real thing because of the message that was then promoted because of those miracles. And he uses passages like Deuteronomy 13 to show that. You see, the miracle itself did not prove that Jesus was the Son of God. The miracles gave him a right to be heard, and if his message lines up with the scriptures, then the miracles are proof that he is the Son of God. In and of themselves, it's not enough. So please don't ever swallow the argument that someone says, well, I saw this or I experienced this. It does not matter what people see. It does not matter what people experience unless it carries with it the message that is true to the scriptures because Satan can counterfeit God's miracles. Okay, that's very important to understand. Rout of times, gotta be quick, Steve. Okay? Yeah, the snakes were. The frogs weren't, and some of the others weren't, but the snakes were. So there are genuine miracles, but they are overpowered by God in some cases. Yes, in some cases, they're not. And in some cases, they're very deceptive. In the tribulation time, you know, Jesus said even the elect, if the time were not shortened, even the elect would be deceived. And the antichrist is very persuasive in his miracles in the tribulation time. So it all comes back to the message. That's the important thing. Quickly, the last two purposes number number three is they are to demonstrate God's approval. Up on him, Acts 22, we saw it earlier that Jesus is approved by God by the miraculous signs, which he does. So the miraculous signs are a sign of God's approval on him, given the fact that the message is biblical. Number four, the miracles were to fulfill the messianic credentials announced in the Old Testament. Just quickly, this is a wonderful study. In Isaiah 35, there's a description of the kingdom. There's a description of what the earth will be like when God's kingdom is on this earth. And it lists a lot of the miraculous things that will happen. The lame will walk in the death will hear and the blind will see and list several things like that. In Matthew chapter 11, when John's disciples are sent by John to ask Jesus, are you really the Messiah or should we look for another John is in prison. He's beginning to have some doubts. And Jesus tells them, go back to John and tell them what you have seen here today. And then Jesus says what you have seen here today basically quotes from Isaiah 35, the lame walk, the blind see, the death here, ticks all those things right off from Isaiah 35. What he's doing is he's saying, tell John these signs, he'll immediately recognize Isaiah 35. And he'll know that what he is seeing and what you have seen here today is the credentials that the Old Testament said the Messiah would have to bring in God's kingdom. And so that was part of the purpose of the miracles to prove to the nation of Israel that their Messiah was here. If they had known, if they had recognized, if they had perceived the connection between what Jesus was doing and what the Old Testament had prophesied, they would have seen it. And some people did, I think Nicodemus is an example. Nicodemus was trying to figure this out. In John 3, we know that no man can come from God doing these kind of miraculous signs. And he's trying to put it together, are you the Messiah? Who are you? And I think Nicodemus eventually did come to faith in Christ as evidence when Jesus died. So Nicodemus was probably one of those Old Testament scholars who was trying to put it all together. Most people didn't. But it should have been possible for people to do that. Okay, any any quick question before we go times up. Yes. And well, first of all, the Bible never says for anyone to go forward in a church service to get anointed with oil. James 5 says that the elders are to go to the person's home and anoint them with oil. If there is such a thing as anointing of oil, it's not done in a public gathering in the Bible. And many many scholars believe that the anointing with oil in James 5 has more to do with medicinal use of olive oil in the first century. And so basically what he's saying is take your medicine. Now, even if you do take that literally to mean that the elders of the church should take oil to the person, it's not the oil that heals them. James 5 makes it clear that it's the prayer of faith that heals them. Now, I'm not saying that God doesn't heal people. I believe he does. But the miraculous gift given to a person to heal others is not one of the not one of the gifts that's valid today. None of the sign gifts are none of the miraculous gifts are. They were all for the first century. And that's a whole other study. I taught a master's class at ABC on that subject for you know, whole semester on gifts. It's improper. It's never taught in the Bible. The only time the only time anointing with oil is even mentioned in the Bible as far as healings in James 5 and the elders are called by the sick person to come to his home and anointing with oil. It's never done in a public setting in a church gathering. So that's out of order anyway. Now again, we have to we have to measure everything by the scriptures. But it's really it's a much more in-depth study than what we're able to do tonight on the gift of miracles and the gift of healing and the gift of tongues. All the sign gifts is what Paul calls them in 2nd Corinthians 12 12 the signs of an apostle he says. All of those miraculous gifts were signs designed to be the credentials of the apostles. And there are no apostles today. The apostles were only for the first century. And it was only for the purpose of being their credentials as the gospel took root and got started. And once it got started then the apostles died off. There was no more need for the sign gifts. And that's that's a whole you know 20 week study in itself. So I'm sorry for bringing that up when we couldn't really get into it very well. Great question. Yeah. Okay. Our time is way gone. And so we better quit. Thank you Father for the opportunity to study your word and to look at the miracles of Jesus. We pray that you will help us to rejoice in the great power which he demonstrated to prove who he was. And along with his message which lined up with the Old Testament and drew people to you prove that he was truly the Son of God. We pray Father we will rejoice in that and thank you for those evidences who he is in Jesus name amen.