01.06. VI. The Miracles of Christ

VI THE MIRACLES OF CHRIST

“This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory; and his disciples believed on him”—John 2:11. THE orthodox Christian world has fully consented to the authenticity of this miracle, and does not call into question the record of the many marvels of Christ’s ministry which succeeded this one wrought in Cana of Galilee. But, strange to say, that same orthodoxy is “divided against itself” on the subject of the modern miracle. The creeds of most of the greater denominations are silent touching the issues of this controversy. Atheists, Naturalists, Rationalists, Formalists, and kindred folk have so violently and assiduously assaulted the miracle itself, and spoken with such rage against the thought of a modern miracle, that they have made timid men afraid to talk on this subject lest they should seem to fly in the face of Philosophy or Science, or both; and they have coerced from too many Christian men the humiliating concession concerning the Lazarus at the gate “thy bruise is incurable; thy wound is grievous, there is none to plead thy cause, that thou may’st be bound up.” Is such a concession to the power of the Adversary necessary? What saith the Word? The true prophet’s part was voiced to Samuel by the aged Eli—“What is the thing that the Lord hath said unto thee? I pray thee hide it not from me. God do so to thee and more also, if thou hide anything . . . of all the things that He hath said unto thee.” If men are to be saved from the vagaries and fanaticisms which are more and more multiplying on every side, it must be through the faithful ministry of the Word. Every subject of controversy must be brought to it for settlement, and the honest inquirer will ask but one question, “What saith the Scripture?”

Now to the text, “This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory, and his disciples believed on him.” This text marvelously compasses what I want to say on Supernaturalism, or The Miracle Ancient and Modern. Following its plain suggestions I call your attention to The Miracle Performed: The Miracle Promised: and, The Purpose of the Miracle.

I. THE MIRACLE PERFORMED.

“This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee.” The question asked by every student of this subject is, “What is a miracle?” It is a question not so easily answered. In fact the very difficulty of defining a miracle has been made the ground of its denial alike by sceptics and ecclesiastical scribes. And yet, as Dr. Lorimer has said, “The Gospels have taught that miracles are astonishing and expressive effects of which the Divine energy is the direct and all-sufficient cause.” Whether that definition be accepted or no, the question of miracles is not to be evaded. What men want to know is this, whether what Jesus did at Cana of Galilee in turning water into wine; at Jericho, in opening the eyes of the blind; at the bier of the Nain widow’s son, and again at Lazarus’ tomb in raising the dead, are works so wonderful that God’s power alone accounts for them? If so, it is all one with us whether you speak of them as “miracles,” “signs,” “wonders,” or “power.” The act is defined not so much by words as by the conceded presence and power of God.

Edward Gilpin Johnson, in his introduction to “Reynolds’ Discourses,” says of beauty: “Beauty analysed is beauty slain, and it is, after all, wiser to rest satisfied with inhaling the fragrance of the flower of art and enjoying its perfections, than to pull it to pieces, count the petals and stamens, and resolve the perfume into an essence scientifically procurable from wayside seeds.” The ninth chapter of John presents a perfect illustration of our thought: a man blind from his birth had received his sight at the word of the Lord. Being brought unto the Pharisees they asked him how he had received his sight? And yet again they said unto him, “What did He do thee? How opened He thine eyes?” thereby taking the advantage of disputants who would evade facts by entrenching themselves behind the difficulties of a definition. The answer of that man includes one of the best definitions of a miracle possible, “One thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now I see.” And again, “If this man were not of God he could do nothing.” A miracle is some astonishing expression of God’s might.

“This beginning of miracles did Jesus” Water was turned into wine by the fiat of His own will. For Him to mentally command it was sufficient, since “all things are possible with God.” It is only the millionth man who rises to any proper conception of the Divine majesty and power. Whenever you meet such a man his faith makes his name immortal. Witness the Centurion who at Capernaum “came beseeching Christ, saying, Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldst come under my roof, but speak the word only and my servant shall be healed. . . . When Jesus heard that, he marveled, and said to them that followed, Verily I say unto you I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel.” And yet, why should a man who believes in God exercise less confidence in His power? It is a strange freak of the intellect, to say the least, to consent to Hebrews 11:3—“By faith we understand that the worlds have been framed by the word of God, so that what is seen hath not been made out of things which do appear” (R. V.), and in the next breath call into question whether He who spake the universe into existence can quicken the palsied, cleanse the leper, or raise the dead with a word. O. M. Mitchel, in his “Planetary and Solar World,” says of the rings of Saturn, “It is beyond our power to conceive how this could be accomplished by any law of which we have any knowledge, and we must refer their structure at once to the fiat of Omnipotence. The rings of Saturn are stubborn facts, why should the Scientist who has no possible explanation of their existence and relations, object to Mitchel’s believing disposition of them?

Robert Buchanan says justly, concerning the effort of men to reject the miracle and keep the Master, “We may follow Mr. Matthew Arnold in his pitiful feats of literary Jesuitry, and put all the miraculous business aside in order to throw one last straw of hope to the sinking Church of England. We may putter and quibble about “poetry” and “essential” religion just as much or as little as we please, but with the loss of the supernatural pretension, perishes the whole fabric of organised Christianity.” The opinion of Strauss, Baur, Newman and others that a miracle “is unnatural and hence impossible” can carry but little weight with clear thinking men, and still less with Christian believers. The supernatural is in no sense the unnatural. It would be difficult to show that the miracles of the Master were not, every one, a replacement of some dethroned power to its natural position. It is possible for the electric current that drives the street car to be reversed and turn the wheel backward. Will the scientist who witnesses this operation claim an unnatural action when the operator so manipulates the current as to drive his car forward again? What else is sickness than a reversal of all the natural levers of physical life, a backward revolution of the machinery of nature? What else was Christ’s healing than turning again the currents of health into their appointed channels? In some sections of China women’s feet are bound, and that custom prevails so extensively that many a girl grows up feeling it must be so. And yet is it unnatural when Christian teaching takes the bandages from the toes and the feet of a Chinese woman attain their divinely appointed proportions? What else is paralysis and blindness than a binding of the feet and a blinding of the eyes by the Adversary? And what else is the word of Jesus, “Arise, take up thy bed and walk,” “Receive thy sight,” than a tearing away of the same, that Nature may reassert herself? Who can prove that death is natural? Why, then, should these devotees of so-called Law object and count it “a thing incredible that God should raise the dead?” The resurrection of the body from the grave may be as much in keeping with the eternal laws of God as is the coming of the beautiful chrysalis out of the silken bag in which last season’s caterpillar perished. Christian men and women cannot afford to forget either that the miracle is possible, or else “the new heavens and the new earth” promised in the Revelation are a mirage—never to be realised, and believers are, as the Apostle Paul put it, “of all men most miserable” since their “faith is in vain.”

II. THE MIRACLE PROMISED.

“This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee.” The water made wine was only the first in a series of wonderful works. It was only the beginning of Christ’s miracles. The very phrase employed is a promise of marvels to follow. To turn water into wine was wonderful, but greater things should they see who walk with the Son of God. Tomorrow He will heal the nobleman’s son, the next day He will still the tempest, shortly the demoniac of Gadara shall be dispossessed, Jairus’ daughter raised, the paralytic freshly empowered, the leper cleansed, the Centurion’s servant healed, Simon’s wife’s mother recovered from her fever, the widow’s son raised from the dead, and many other wonderful works. How many miracles Jesus wrought no man knows. In addition to the thirty odd, detailed, there are those sweeping sentences, “And he healed all that were sick, and oppressed of the devil.” Men, anxious to obscure the miracle, are wont to insist that Jesus gave Himself mostly to wonderful words. But any fair student of the Word of God must know that wonderful works claim at least half of this Divine record, and probably played no less conspicuous part in the life-labours of the Son of Man. True, the opponents of Jesus said, “Never man spake like this man,” but the language of Nicodemus is equally suggestive, “Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God, for no man can do these miracles that thou doest except God be with him.” The words and works of Jesus were alike only beginnings. The miracle at Cana of Galilee was only a beginning of what Jesus would do in His office as Mediator between God and man. Students of the Word have been profoundly impressed by the opening sentence of Acts, “The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach.” Certainly it never entered the mind of the Master that either His matchless words or His marvelous works would end at Calvary. For three years and a half He had made one of the chief objects of His ministry successors in labour. When His disciples were sorrowing at the shadow of the cross He comforted them by saying, “Let not your heart be troubled, ye believe in God, believe also in me. . . . He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also, and greater works than these shall he do because I go unto my Father.” If any man say that the works to be done by His apostles and disciples did not include miracles, it is sufficient to answer, “How readest thou?” Hear His commission to the twelve, “As ye go preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils. Freely ye have received, freely give.” And if any man say, “Yes, but this commission was given only to a select company,” you answer, “If so, the same cannot be asserted concerning the promise of power,” for, lo, these words conclude one of the Gospels, “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved. All these signs shall follow them that believe; in my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents, if they drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt them. They shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover.” Was James prescribing for apostles only, or for the period in which he lived, when he wrote, “Is any sick among you? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord, and the prayer of faith shall save him that is sick, and the Lord shall raise him up”? Were Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, and Clement false in their claims of miracles in answer to prayer? Were those godly men and women of the middle ages, who kept the fires of a true faith smouldering when an apostate church smothered inspiration itself, mistaken in supposing that these commissions were theirs, and their associated promises still potent? Was Bishop Simpson deceived when, in the fall of 1858, while at death’s door, he mingled his voice with that of Bishop Bowman, William Taylor, and others, asking to be recovered, and there came a change so sudden that the physician called it “a miracle,” in that he attributed it to the promise and power of God? Years ago, at Northfield, Mass., I met that marvelous woman, Mrs. Whittemore, whose fame is in all the churches, and she told me how she had gone on her knees practically a blind woman and had come up from them seeing clearly. Was she mistaken in attributing the change to the Christ of this text, of whose ministry it was said, “The blind receive their sight”? To come nearer home, who is it that having known the long years of suffering on the part of Miss Hollister, of Minneapolis, and the sudden health that came while praying, but is led to join with the rulers in saying, “That indeed a notable miracle hath been done is manifest, and we cannot deny it”? God forbid that any should add, “but that it spread no further among the people, let us straightly threaten her that she speak no further in this name.”

There are those who argue that if miracles were meant to characterise all ages they would not have been so common in the ministry of Jesus and so exceptional among His modern followers. Dr. Gordon tells us of certain South African rivers, which, instead of beginning as tiny brooks and flowing on deepening and widening as they go, burst out from prolific springs, and then become shallower and shallower as they go on, until they are lost in the wastes of sand. It cannot be forgotten that the stream of salvation which began with the ministry of our Lord was at its fullest in the first century, so far at least as conquest against greatest odds was concerned. Why, then, should we be surprised if the Son of God Himself, who had the Spirit without measure, should witness the miraculous more often than appears now on the fields made too nearly desert by the burning sun of secularism and the devastating winds of scepticism? And yet, the failure of present-day believers to appropriate the promises of God no more discredits the Divine purpose in making them than did the discomfiture of the disciples, praying in vain for the relief of the epileptic, prove that Christ had put into His commission to the twelve words which were mischievous and misleading.

III. THE MIRACLE’S PURPOSE.

“This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory. And his disciples believed on him.”

It evidenced the deity of Jesus. You will remember that when He performed the miracle of the barley loaves and fishes the men who saw the miracle that Jesus did, said, “This is of a truth that prophet that should come into the world” (John 6:14). It was a natural reasoning. Jesus Himself appealed to the Jews, “If I do not the works of my Father believe me not. But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works, that ye may know and believe that the Father is in me and I in him” (John 10:37-38). To John the Baptist’s question, “Art thou he that should come?” Jesus answered and said unto them, “Go and shew John again those things which ye do hear and see, the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the Gospel preached to them” (Matthew 11:4-5).

It expressed the sympathy of Jesus. It is the custom of all those who call the modern miracle into question to emphasise the fact that miracles attested the deity of Jesus and added authority or weight to His words, but the most of them are silent touching the fact that miracles were ever wrought for their own sake, that miracles were ever wrought because the sight of suffering or distress so appealed to the Son of God that He could no more withhold His beneficent power than He could restrain Himself from tender pity. The glory of Jesus Christ consisted not alone in exhibitions of His deity, but was equally manifested in’ the ebullitions of His humanity. At the grave of Lazarus He “wept.” No man need be surprised, therefore, when He cried to His friend, fallen under the fierce assault of the last enemy, “Come forth!” He who will may believe that that miracle was meant only to attest the divinity of Jesus, or add weight to His spoken words, but I am compelled to think that it was the cry of His human heart calling back to His arms His bosom friend, and causing the hearts of those beautiful sisters, Mary and Martha, to lose their sorrow and leap for joy.

Victor Hugo makes Jean Valjean as watchful as the hunted ever are against possible detection on the part of his adversary, but when a driver’s wagon is mired, this same man crawls beneath it, and by his Herculean strength releases its wheels, and in the very process publishes his own name. Did Jean Valjean lift that wagon to exhibit his power? Never! but because his tender human heart could not “pass by on the other side,” seeing the distress of the stalled man. The Samaritan who ministered to the man on the way to Jericho, binding up his wounds, carrying him to an inn, paying his bills, providing against the future, did he do that that Samaria might have a good name, or that anybody might believe in him? Nay, verily, but because in his breast there beat the heart of a brother. And if I know the Christ at all, He healed sick men, opened the eyes of the blind, and raised the dead primarily because His heart was as humane as His character was Divine, His spirit as compassionate as His word was potent. Is it not written, “And Jesus went forth and saw a great multitude, and was moved with compassion toward them, and he healed their sick” (Matthew 14:14)? No wonder John wrote, “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. And we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace.” And that glory was never better manifested than in the miracles that Jesus wrought for the help, health and happiness of men. It is while studying this side of His character we realise that our “High Priest” can be “touched with the feeling of our infirmities” and are encouraged to “come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”

It attested the saving power of Jesus. To do that was to manifest forth His glory. “The Son of Man was come to seek and to save that which was lost,” to grant “remission of sins.” They called His name “Jesus” because He was to save His people from their sins. When He said to the paralytic, “Thy sins be forgiven thee,” they charged Him with blasphemy, saying, “Who can forgive sins but God?” “And Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said, Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts? For whether is easier to say Thy sins be forgiven thee, or to say, Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house.” The Father which sent Him, therein bore witness to Him, “confirming the word with signs following” and proving the power to forgive sins by the fact that He could restore bodies.

It is no wonder the sentence follows, “And his disciples believed on him.” God meant that men should be convinced through the senses, that they should accept what they had seen and heard. When John comes to write his first Epistle he lays claim to attention on the part of his readers by reason of the fact that he was speaking of the things which he had seen with his eyes, and heard with his ears, and handled of the Word of life. And if the miracle was potent for penitence and furnished the very basis of belief two thousand years ago, who doubts that the revival of the Word’s plain teaching concerning it, and the practice of claiming its promises, would compel men to cry out again as did Peter, “We are unclean,” and to seek His favour who is alike able to say “Arise, take up thy bed and walk,” or “Son, thy sins are forgiven thee.” Have we forgotten the remark which the many who resorted to Him beyond Jordan made? “John did no miracle, but all things that John spake of this man were true and they believed on him there” (John 10:41-42). Have we forgotten the result when He raised to life the widow’s son and delivered him to his mother? “There came a fear on all and they glorified God, saying, A great prophet is risen up among us, and God hath visited his people.”

It is true that every great revival of the past has come in consequence of the recovery of some long lost truth. “The just shall live by faith,” bringing a revival in Luther’s time; the eternal sovereignty of God, adding weight to Calvin’s words; the personal responsibility for rejecting or accepting Jesus making effective the preaching of Wesley; the great commission giving power to Carey and his associates; the enduement of the Spirit—a second blessing, fitting for service— bringing great results in Finney’s day; the pre-millennial return of the Lord making Moody a flaming figure. Do we not recall how in the days of Josiah— the good king—the high priest when he searched through the house of the Lord found the book of the law given by Moses, and “Hilkiah answered and said to Shaphan the Scribe, I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord. And Hilkiah delivered the book to Shaphan. And Shaphan carried the book to the king. . . . And it came to pass, when the king had heard the words of the law, that he rent his clothes,” and confessed “great is the wrath of the Lord that is poured out upon us, because our fathers have not kept the word of the Lord, to do after all that is written in this book. . . . Then the king sent and gathered together all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem. And the king went up into the house of the Lord and all the men of Judah, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and the priests, and the Levites and all the people, great and small, and he read in their ears all the words of the book of the covenant that was found in the house of the Lord. And the king stood in his place and made a covenant before the Lord, to walk after the Lord, and to keep his commandments and his testimonies, and his statutes, with all his heart, and with all his soul, to perform the words of the covenant which was written in this book. And he caused all that were present in Jerusalem and Benjamin to stand to it. And the inhabitants of Jerusalem did according to the covenant of God, the God of their fathers. And Josiah took away all the abominations out of all the countries that pertained to the children of Israel, and made all that were present in Israel to serve, even to serve the Lord their God. And all his days they departed not from following the Lord, the God of their fathers” (2 Chronicles 34:15-16; 2 Chronicles 34:18; 2 Chronicles 34:29-33).

I am persuaded that the truth, which when recovered, shall empower an enfeebled church and cause “strawberry festivals to give place to the festivals of the saints,” and which will make men depend not so much upon the music in the gallery, or the eloquence in the pulpit, or the culture in the pew, as upon the power of God, and finance committees to look not to the latest fads in fair or festival, but to the Father who owns the cattle upon a thousand hills, and preachers to hope for successful meetings not from the coming of some famed brother, but rather from waiting in the upper room until they themselves have been baptised;—the truth, I say, that will accomplish this change, is in those plain texts which prove that God is present in His own world, and His arm is not shortened that He cannot save, nor His ear heavy that He cannot hear. When men see the lesser miracles, once performed by the Son of God, being repeated in answer to prayer, they will be encouraged to look for that greatest of all His marvels, the salvation of sinners from sin. It is no mere accident that Charles Spurgeon, who prayed for many people to see them made well, prayed again, and preached to see men saved in soul. It is no mere accident that George Mueller, who believed that God was present in His world and was working wonders, turned evangelist in the very last years of his life, and revivals were in his wake wherever he went. It is no mere chance that John Wesley, who when disabled with pain, fever, and cough, called on Jesus to restore him, that he might continue to speak, and found, as he himself said, “When I was praying my pain vanished away, my fever left me, my bodily strength returned,” was able to effectually call sinners to repentance, and pray successfully for their pardon.

All over this country good preachers of the Gospel and noble souls in the pew are praying for a revival. In recent years plans for evangelism have been more extensive, expensive and emphatic than the church ever before knew; and right at the time when “the new century movement for evangelism” ought to be at its height, in the very season when the reapers should be gathering whereon we have sown, there come to us annual reports that strike the prophets of optimism into silence, and send the church flat on her face again to cry to God for help. But our cry will be like that of the prophets of Baal. Though it increase in agony, and we torture our souls as they cut their bodies, no fire will fall from heaven while we bow before the false gods of Naturalism, or worship at the superstitious shrines of Social Philosophy or Scientific Culture!

Only by acknowledging God, by believing that what men have pronounced “impossible” is easy to Him, by seeing that whoever may pour on the extinguishing waters, He is yet able, and yet willing, and forever pledged, setting aside your so-called natural law, by His own right and power, to let the flames fall, can we hope for that conflagration which shall revive God’s people, overthrow the prophets that oppose them, and bring even the unbelieving in penitence before Him to acknowledge that “He is God.”