God of Miracles
Bible Study Time 11-12-06
Church links:
Bible Study Time 11-12-06
Last week we talked about the fact that God is sovereign over all the universe. No one is more powerful than He. No one is wiser than He. He is powerful enough and wise enough to accomplish any task on His agenda. No one tells Him what to do, and He is accountable to no one for the things that He does.
This concept, this doctrine of God’s sovereignty is so important to us because, ultimately, the one thing that God requires of us is that we trust Him and believe what He says. With this in mind, how could we trust God if there were certain things that He could not do, if there were certain limitations to His power or to His knowledge and wisdom?
Can you image how your view of life would change if you thought that there were things that God could not understand or that He could not do?
Abraham trusted God implicitly. He believed in God. Abraham had a relationship with God and had the hope of eternal life because He believed what God said. When God said, “Abraham, you’re going to have a son even though you’re 85 years old,” Abraham took God at His word and believed what God said. As a result, God accounted Abraham as righteous.
David grew up hearing about the mighty power of God. He heard stories about God parting the waters of the Red Sea so that his forefathers could cross on dry land. Then his own personal faith grew as a result of his own experiences with the Lord. On two separate occasions as a shepherd, David had to do battle with a bear and a lion. At one point, he told King Saul that when the lion rose up against him, he grabbed it by the beard and stuck it with a mortal blow.
David was delivered from the lion and the bear and then from the terrifying giant named Goliath. Ultimately, David was delivered from all of his enemies, and he said:
2 Samuel 22:31-34 (NKJ)
31 As for God, His way is perfect; the word of the LORD is proven; he is a shield to all who trust in Him.
32 "For who is God, except the LORD? And who is a rock, except our God?
33 God is my strength and power, and He makes my way perfect.
34 He makes my feet like the feet of deer, and sets me on my high places.
David knew the joy that belongs to all those who know how to trust the Lord. He knew what it was like to come to the end of the day and say, “Lord, thank you for being with me today. I can see that You are the One who was directing me every step of the way. When I was exhausted, You gave me strength. When I was about to say something stupid, You held my tongue. I thank You and praise You for who You are and for the things You have done.”
Abraham trusted the Lord, and David trusted the Lord, and they both witnessed the mighty miracles of God. But there are those who ask if God is still doing miracles today, and I guess that if someone were to say that God is no longer doing miracles, they would have to come up with some kind of Biblical evidence to support their claim. If they say that they have never seen God do a miracle, that would not be very good evidence that God is not doing miracles. Maybe God just doesn’t want to do miracles for them.
From a Biblical perspective, the Old Testament scriptures are full of the accounts of God miracles, and the New Testament scriptures bear witness to all of the miracles that Jesus and the apostles did, but is there any evidence that God is still doing miracles today.
I think that as we look at the scriptures we see ample evidence that God is still doing miracles today, and the fact that God is still doing miracles is even supported by science and history. First, the Bible says that God is the same yesterday, today and forever. God still has the power, and He still has the desire to help us and provide for us. Paul said, “my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus,” and we can rest assured that God will not hesitate to use all of His mighty power to provide for our needs.
In fact, I think that God loves doing miracles in our lives. God loves it when we open our hearts and allow Him to work. He wants to do great and mighty things, and He wants to glorify His name through the miracles that He does.
We often limit God’s ability to do miracles because we suffer from a lack of faith. It may be that we have not because we ask not. We often settle for less than God’s best simply because we do not believe that God is willing and able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power that God works in us.
God loves to show His miraculous power, but there are times when we are not only reluctant to ask for miracles but we also fail to acknowledge the miracles that God is doing. Without a doubt, we can all praise the Lord right now for the mighty miracles that He is doing in our lives, but are we doing so?
Let’s take the area of personal health. We often think of miracles in terms of God healing people from one disease or another, but just think of the thousands of miracles that God is doing in your body right now, this very minute.
There are countless numbers of infectious agents that are attacking your body right now, and any one of those organisms could actually kill you. Do you know why they don’t kill you? It’s because God is miraculously protecting you. He is working in and through your body’s immune system to kill those microorganisms before they can kill you.
God is miraculously saving your life and my life right now. How often do we stop to praise the Lord for His continuous, ongoing miracles?
When we feel sick and we go to a physician, we often think or hope that our physician will be able to heal us of our disease. But the truth is that no physician has the power to heal. That is God’s area of expertise, and it’s wrong to give His glory to another.
Researchers can set up experiments to show the various ways that the human body responds to this procedure or that medication. Then based on these observations, physicians can base their practice of medicine on what is hopefully a high probability of success. But even with all of this research and all of this knowledge, physicians still do not have the power to heal.
The farmer is in a similar situation in that the skillful farmer takes it upon himself to learn as much as he can about the physical laws that govern the earth, but one of the first things that he will learn is that he does not have the power to make a seed sprout and then grow into a productive plant. Only God can do that. Every time a crop is harvested, we see evidence of God’s miracle working power.
Farmers know the conditions that are conducive to causing a seed to sprout, but what is it that’s inside the cells of that seed that make it all of a sudden decide to sprout. That is a mystery that only God knows, and God is the only one who can make it happen.
Farmers plant the seed and supply the fertilizer. They might even provide some irrigation, but they cannot control all of the variables that have to come together to produce a crop.
Every once in a while God will change some little something in the physical environment which we may not even notice, but that little change will result in a bumper crop on the one hand or possibly a crop failure on the other. It seems that God likes to remind us now and then that we are totally dependent upon the miracles that He does on our behalf.
Even our ability to learn is an astonishing miracle. Who is it that gives the researchers the ability to design an experiment that will yield meaningful results? Who is it that gives them the ability to interpret those results in an accurate way? Anyone who has taken a course in statistics knows that not just anyone can do that, and such gifts are truly miracles from God.
We cannot even begin to comprehend all of the miracles that God is doing today, but some would say, “Yes, but these things are things that God does for everyone. Even people who have absolutely no faith in God are the beneficiaries of many of these miracles.” And that’s a great point, but it is a point in which we should all rejoice.
God heals the bodies of even unsaved people. God causes crops to grow for even unsaved farmers. Some of the most brilliant minds of all time have been the minds of unsaved people. Aren’t you glad that we serve a God like that. The fact that God does miracles even for unsaved people shows the amazing love and the amazing grace of God. When God sends the rain, it falls on the just and the unjust. God loves all people whether they are saved or unsaved.
Sometimes Christians have a tendency to think of miracles only in terms of those things that God does for saved people who have extraordinary faith. We think of things like God parting the waters of the Red Sea for the Israelites only to allow those waters to come crashing back down upon the Egyptians. Or we think of God causing the walls of Jericho to come tumbling down so that the Israelites could go in and destroy the wicked citizens of Jericho.
Is God doing those kinds of miracles today? I think He is. God always does whatever is necessary to accomplish His plan and purpose. There was no way that God was going to allow David, for instance, to be killed by a lion or a bear. God had great plans for David’s future. And today, we can safely conclude that God is not going to allow the nation of Israel to be destroyed. God’s plan and purpose will not allow it.
God’s overall plan and purpose for planet Earth is the same today as it has always been. At the time that God pronounced the curse in the Garden of Eden, God told us that the Seed of the woman would destroy the devil. The scriptures teach us that when God does bind the devil in the bottomless pit at the end of the tribulation period, the creation itself will be set free from the curse of sin.
Then, after the thousand year reign of Christ, the devil will be cast into the lake of fire, and at that time our present heaven and earth will pass away but a new heaven and a new earth will appear which will have no sin and will have no corruption. God promised Abraham and David that the Seed of the woman would be one of their descendants and that the nation of Israel would serve as a nation of priests in the restored earth.
Through the years, God has done many extraordinary miracles in order to bring this plan to fruition. He divided the waters of the Red Sea so that the nation of Israel could escape from Egypt where they faced certain destruction. God caused the walls of Jericho to come tumbling down because it was His plan to give all of the land of Canaan to the nation of Israel, and against all odds, God gave the nation of Israel victory over all of the Canaanite nations.
Is God doing miracles such as these today? Yes, He is. Whenever something needs to be accomplished today to set the stage for the tribulation period and the future kingdom of the restored earth, there is no power on earth and there is no power of Satan that can prevent God from doing all that is in accordance with His plan.
Titus destroyed Jerusalem in 70 A.D., but the nation of Israel is still around. That’s a miracle. When God gave the nation of Israel a homeland in Palestine after World War II, that was a miracle. The fact that Israel has been able to survive in the hostile political environment of the Middle East for the past 58 years is a miracle.
In 1967, Israel learned of an eminent attack by Egypt and launched a pre-emptive attack against Egypt’s air force. As a result, Jordan attacked Jerusalem. Enemy forces surrounded Israel, but six days later the war was over, and Israel had gained control of the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank and the Golan Heights. Now you tell me, is God still doing miracles today? I think that we would all have to agree that He is.
Furthermore, God does not just do miracles for Israel. Two hundred and thirty years ago, a handful of rebels in the British colonies of the new world decided to declare their independence from England.
England was the most powerful nation on the earth as that time but seven years later, the British signed the Treaty of Paris and agreed to withdraw from America. I think it is no coincidence that those British colonies have now become the greatest and most powerful nation on the earth and also happens to be the primary supporter of Israel in the Middle East.
God is doing miracles today, and He is doing them in exactly the same way and for exactly the same reason that He has always done miracles. God will do whatever is necessary to accomplish His overall plan and purpose.
At the same time, let me say this, God never has and never will set aside His plan in order to grant us something that we pray for. God called Moses to deliver the Israelites from Egypt after hundreds of years of suffering. God told Moses that He had heard their cries and that He was aware of their suffering, but still He did not call Moses until it was just the right time according to His plan and purpose. God had told Abraham 400 years earlier that his descendants would remain in Egypt until the iniquity of the Amorites was complete.
Daniel confessed the sins of Israel and prayed that the glory of the temple worship might be restored, but God sent Gabriel to tell Daniel that the kingdom in all of its glory would not be reestablished for at least another 490 years.
I see that our time is gone for this morning, but next week I’m planning to talk a little bit more about the miracles of God. It’s been a pleasure being with you, and I’ll look forward to being with you again next week at this same time.
Write me at: jimjoan77@juno.com
This concept, this doctrine of God’s sovereignty is so important to us because, ultimately, the one thing that God requires of us is that we trust Him and believe what He says. With this in mind, how could we trust God if there were certain things that He could not do, if there were certain limitations to His power or to His knowledge and wisdom?
Can you image how your view of life would change if you thought that there were things that God could not understand or that He could not do?
Abraham trusted God implicitly. He believed in God. Abraham had a relationship with God and had the hope of eternal life because He believed what God said. When God said, “Abraham, you’re going to have a son even though you’re 85 years old,” Abraham took God at His word and believed what God said. As a result, God accounted Abraham as righteous.
David grew up hearing about the mighty power of God. He heard stories about God parting the waters of the Red Sea so that his forefathers could cross on dry land. Then his own personal faith grew as a result of his own experiences with the Lord. On two separate occasions as a shepherd, David had to do battle with a bear and a lion. At one point, he told King Saul that when the lion rose up against him, he grabbed it by the beard and stuck it with a mortal blow.
David was delivered from the lion and the bear and then from the terrifying giant named Goliath. Ultimately, David was delivered from all of his enemies, and he said:
2 Samuel 22:31-34 (NKJ)
31 As for God, His way is perfect; the word of the LORD is proven; he is a shield to all who trust in Him.
32 "For who is God, except the LORD? And who is a rock, except our God?
33 God is my strength and power, and He makes my way perfect.
34 He makes my feet like the feet of deer, and sets me on my high places.
David knew the joy that belongs to all those who know how to trust the Lord. He knew what it was like to come to the end of the day and say, “Lord, thank you for being with me today. I can see that You are the One who was directing me every step of the way. When I was exhausted, You gave me strength. When I was about to say something stupid, You held my tongue. I thank You and praise You for who You are and for the things You have done.”
Abraham trusted the Lord, and David trusted the Lord, and they both witnessed the mighty miracles of God. But there are those who ask if God is still doing miracles today, and I guess that if someone were to say that God is no longer doing miracles, they would have to come up with some kind of Biblical evidence to support their claim. If they say that they have never seen God do a miracle, that would not be very good evidence that God is not doing miracles. Maybe God just doesn’t want to do miracles for them.
From a Biblical perspective, the Old Testament scriptures are full of the accounts of God miracles, and the New Testament scriptures bear witness to all of the miracles that Jesus and the apostles did, but is there any evidence that God is still doing miracles today.
I think that as we look at the scriptures we see ample evidence that God is still doing miracles today, and the fact that God is still doing miracles is even supported by science and history. First, the Bible says that God is the same yesterday, today and forever. God still has the power, and He still has the desire to help us and provide for us. Paul said, “my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus,” and we can rest assured that God will not hesitate to use all of His mighty power to provide for our needs.
In fact, I think that God loves doing miracles in our lives. God loves it when we open our hearts and allow Him to work. He wants to do great and mighty things, and He wants to glorify His name through the miracles that He does.
We often limit God’s ability to do miracles because we suffer from a lack of faith. It may be that we have not because we ask not. We often settle for less than God’s best simply because we do not believe that God is willing and able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power that God works in us.
God loves to show His miraculous power, but there are times when we are not only reluctant to ask for miracles but we also fail to acknowledge the miracles that God is doing. Without a doubt, we can all praise the Lord right now for the mighty miracles that He is doing in our lives, but are we doing so?
Let’s take the area of personal health. We often think of miracles in terms of God healing people from one disease or another, but just think of the thousands of miracles that God is doing in your body right now, this very minute.
There are countless numbers of infectious agents that are attacking your body right now, and any one of those organisms could actually kill you. Do you know why they don’t kill you? It’s because God is miraculously protecting you. He is working in and through your body’s immune system to kill those microorganisms before they can kill you.
God is miraculously saving your life and my life right now. How often do we stop to praise the Lord for His continuous, ongoing miracles?
When we feel sick and we go to a physician, we often think or hope that our physician will be able to heal us of our disease. But the truth is that no physician has the power to heal. That is God’s area of expertise, and it’s wrong to give His glory to another.
Researchers can set up experiments to show the various ways that the human body responds to this procedure or that medication. Then based on these observations, physicians can base their practice of medicine on what is hopefully a high probability of success. But even with all of this research and all of this knowledge, physicians still do not have the power to heal.
The farmer is in a similar situation in that the skillful farmer takes it upon himself to learn as much as he can about the physical laws that govern the earth, but one of the first things that he will learn is that he does not have the power to make a seed sprout and then grow into a productive plant. Only God can do that. Every time a crop is harvested, we see evidence of God’s miracle working power.
Farmers know the conditions that are conducive to causing a seed to sprout, but what is it that’s inside the cells of that seed that make it all of a sudden decide to sprout. That is a mystery that only God knows, and God is the only one who can make it happen.
Farmers plant the seed and supply the fertilizer. They might even provide some irrigation, but they cannot control all of the variables that have to come together to produce a crop.
Every once in a while God will change some little something in the physical environment which we may not even notice, but that little change will result in a bumper crop on the one hand or possibly a crop failure on the other. It seems that God likes to remind us now and then that we are totally dependent upon the miracles that He does on our behalf.
Even our ability to learn is an astonishing miracle. Who is it that gives the researchers the ability to design an experiment that will yield meaningful results? Who is it that gives them the ability to interpret those results in an accurate way? Anyone who has taken a course in statistics knows that not just anyone can do that, and such gifts are truly miracles from God.
We cannot even begin to comprehend all of the miracles that God is doing today, but some would say, “Yes, but these things are things that God does for everyone. Even people who have absolutely no faith in God are the beneficiaries of many of these miracles.” And that’s a great point, but it is a point in which we should all rejoice.
God heals the bodies of even unsaved people. God causes crops to grow for even unsaved farmers. Some of the most brilliant minds of all time have been the minds of unsaved people. Aren’t you glad that we serve a God like that. The fact that God does miracles even for unsaved people shows the amazing love and the amazing grace of God. When God sends the rain, it falls on the just and the unjust. God loves all people whether they are saved or unsaved.
Sometimes Christians have a tendency to think of miracles only in terms of those things that God does for saved people who have extraordinary faith. We think of things like God parting the waters of the Red Sea for the Israelites only to allow those waters to come crashing back down upon the Egyptians. Or we think of God causing the walls of Jericho to come tumbling down so that the Israelites could go in and destroy the wicked citizens of Jericho.
Is God doing those kinds of miracles today? I think He is. God always does whatever is necessary to accomplish His plan and purpose. There was no way that God was going to allow David, for instance, to be killed by a lion or a bear. God had great plans for David’s future. And today, we can safely conclude that God is not going to allow the nation of Israel to be destroyed. God’s plan and purpose will not allow it.
God’s overall plan and purpose for planet Earth is the same today as it has always been. At the time that God pronounced the curse in the Garden of Eden, God told us that the Seed of the woman would destroy the devil. The scriptures teach us that when God does bind the devil in the bottomless pit at the end of the tribulation period, the creation itself will be set free from the curse of sin.
Then, after the thousand year reign of Christ, the devil will be cast into the lake of fire, and at that time our present heaven and earth will pass away but a new heaven and a new earth will appear which will have no sin and will have no corruption. God promised Abraham and David that the Seed of the woman would be one of their descendants and that the nation of Israel would serve as a nation of priests in the restored earth.
Through the years, God has done many extraordinary miracles in order to bring this plan to fruition. He divided the waters of the Red Sea so that the nation of Israel could escape from Egypt where they faced certain destruction. God caused the walls of Jericho to come tumbling down because it was His plan to give all of the land of Canaan to the nation of Israel, and against all odds, God gave the nation of Israel victory over all of the Canaanite nations.
Is God doing miracles such as these today? Yes, He is. Whenever something needs to be accomplished today to set the stage for the tribulation period and the future kingdom of the restored earth, there is no power on earth and there is no power of Satan that can prevent God from doing all that is in accordance with His plan.
Titus destroyed Jerusalem in 70 A.D., but the nation of Israel is still around. That’s a miracle. When God gave the nation of Israel a homeland in Palestine after World War II, that was a miracle. The fact that Israel has been able to survive in the hostile political environment of the Middle East for the past 58 years is a miracle.
In 1967, Israel learned of an eminent attack by Egypt and launched a pre-emptive attack against Egypt’s air force. As a result, Jordan attacked Jerusalem. Enemy forces surrounded Israel, but six days later the war was over, and Israel had gained control of the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank and the Golan Heights. Now you tell me, is God still doing miracles today? I think that we would all have to agree that He is.
Furthermore, God does not just do miracles for Israel. Two hundred and thirty years ago, a handful of rebels in the British colonies of the new world decided to declare their independence from England.
England was the most powerful nation on the earth as that time but seven years later, the British signed the Treaty of Paris and agreed to withdraw from America. I think it is no coincidence that those British colonies have now become the greatest and most powerful nation on the earth and also happens to be the primary supporter of Israel in the Middle East.
God is doing miracles today, and He is doing them in exactly the same way and for exactly the same reason that He has always done miracles. God will do whatever is necessary to accomplish His overall plan and purpose.
At the same time, let me say this, God never has and never will set aside His plan in order to grant us something that we pray for. God called Moses to deliver the Israelites from Egypt after hundreds of years of suffering. God told Moses that He had heard their cries and that He was aware of their suffering, but still He did not call Moses until it was just the right time according to His plan and purpose. God had told Abraham 400 years earlier that his descendants would remain in Egypt until the iniquity of the Amorites was complete.
Daniel confessed the sins of Israel and prayed that the glory of the temple worship might be restored, but God sent Gabriel to tell Daniel that the kingdom in all of its glory would not be reestablished for at least another 490 years.
I see that our time is gone for this morning, but next week I’m planning to talk a little bit more about the miracles of God. It’s been a pleasure being with you, and I’ll look forward to being with you again next week at this same time.
Write me at: jimjoan77@juno.com
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