So – question – do you believe in signs, wonders and miracles? Not just 2000 odd years ago in the Bible – I mean today, here, now … for you and for me?

A Biblical Perspective on Miracles

Well – we don’t think too much about miracles it seems, until we’re desperate for a miracle. Until some crisis comes along – perhaps a health scare, cancer, a heart attack, an accident, some other terrible illness and then we go to God in desperation, almost as a last resort – begging for a miracle. But I’m not sure that that’s necessarily how God wants us to think about miracles.

I – for one – believe that God is still doing amazing things today. And yes, miracles can be an exception, but sometimes, I don’t think that we’re expectant enough, matter of fact enough, prepared enough to go to God – in the normal course of business, right here in the ordinary, mundane things in the lives that we lead, and ask for Him to intervene in a miraculous way.

So we’re about to set off on a journey to explore 8 miracles – the 8 signs, as the Apostle John calls them – that are recorded in John’s Gospel. 8 signs – signs that point to the supernatural power of Jesus. And that’s the thing – John in His Gospel calls them signs – signs that point to Jesus. Signs that authenticate who He claims to be – the very Son of the one, true, living God.  In fact, Jesus makes exactly that point in his John’s Gospel, Chapter 5, verse 36. This is what He says:

But the testimony that I have is greater than that of John. For the works that the Father has given me to accomplish, the very works that I am doing, bear witness about me that the Father has indeed sent me.

I used to be really sceptical of this whole, signs, wonders and miracles thing. We’ve all seen the tele–evangelists on TV – hyping an audience, prancing around a stage, laying their hands on people, pushing them over so hard that you wonder whether instead of being healed, the person just got whiplash. Have you seen that – my reaction is to cringe from that … it doesn’t work for me – and it doesn’t work for a lot of other people. And here’s why. Jesus:

For the works that the Father has given me to accomplish, the very works that I am doing, bear witness about me that the Father has sent me.

So the whole point of these so-called signs – the wonders and miracles – are to point to the authenticity of Jesus; to point to the existence of this God who is ready and willing and able to intervene supernaturally in our lives, to suspend the natural order and to do miraculous things.

The point is not – as in the case of the tele–evangelist, to point to the authenticity of the showman, but to point to Jesus. That’s why we cringe when we see that stuff, because it’s not what Jesus intended. Does God still use that in power and might, sure He does sometimes. But miracles are meant to bring God the glory, not us.

So – that’s the first thing about miracles.  The second thing for today is our level of expectation. Now I am not suggesting for one moment that we should expect a miracle in every situation, that somehow because we believe in Jesus, we get an easy ride. That’s not at all what Jesus promised:

In this world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world  He said to His disciples. (John 16:33)

On the other hand, Jesus makes it clear that He expects us to expect miracles of Him. He expects us to put our trust and our faith in Him. And to the extent that we don’t do that, we miss out on the supernatural power of God. Do you remember the first time that Jesus visited His home town of Nazareth after He’d begun His public ministry? Have a listen:

He went away from there and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. And on the Sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astonished, saying, ‘Where did this man get these things? What is the wisdom that’s been given to him? How are such mighty works done by his hands?

Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joseph and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?’ And they took offense at him. And Jesus said to them, ‘A prophet is not without honour, except in his hometown and among his relatives and in his own household.’ And he could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them. And he marvelled because of their unbelief.  (Mark 6:1–6)

I don’t know about you, but I do not want Jesus to marvel at my unbelief. The thing that caught his fellow Nazarenes, was the fact that He was familiar – remember that Jesus, that’s Joseph and Mary’s son, the carpenter’s apprentice who grew up here in scummy old Nazareth. Who does He think He is?

Because they were so immersed in the natural, they couldn’t believe in the supernatural. They couldn’t come to grips with miracles being done in the midst of the mundane.  And I think it’s often the same with us. Look around – your home, your workplace, your boring little routine of day-to-day drudgery. Come on, do you expect Jesus to show up in that place, and do something miraculous for you?

Hmm? … I thought not. Most of us simply don’t expect miracles in the mundane. And when we don’t expect it, when our faith doesn’t reach out to Jesus in a plain and simple expectancy that He’s in this place, that He is prepared to do things for us supernaturally – it’s going to be just like Nazareth. Let these words ring in your ear: He could do no mighty work there … and so He marvelled at their unbelief.

I guess the point that I’m trying to make here, getting us ready to look at these eight signs, wonders and miracles that John records in his Gospel is this. On the one hand, Jesus doesn’t want us out there in some outrageous showmanship, that points to us and not to Him. Miracles are not magic, they’re not tricks. They’re not entertainment.

He’s not looking for super–spiritual swamis to serve Him. On the other hand, neither is He going to intervene all too often with His supernatural power, if we simply don’t expect him to, if we deny His power. If we don’t ask Him and go to Him and beg him to intervene.

The Bible talks about people who hold to the outward form of godliness, going through all the religious rituals and motions, showing up at church, playing the game, but at the same time, denying the power of God. You’ll find that in 2 Tim 3, 4–6 – and it says this about those people. That people who go through the religious motions but deny the power of God:  that we should keep away from those people and have nothing to do with them.

So as we head off on this journey looking at the signs, wonders and miracles of Jesus it’s this Biblical balance, that we need to keep in mind.

Water Into Wine

So … the very first miracle in John’s Gospel – the one that we’re going to look at right now, is such a … weird one. Let’s have a listen, as I read this from John Chapter 2, verses 1–11:

On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples. When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, ‘They have no wine.’ And Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.’ His mother said to the servants, ‘Do whatever he tells you.’

Now there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to the servants, ‘Fill the jars with water.’ And they filled them up to the brim. And he said to them, ‘Now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast.’ So they took it.

When the master of the feast tasted the water which now become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom and said to him, ‘Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.’ This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him.

After this he went down to Capernaum, with his mother and his brothers and his disciples, and they stayed there for a few days.

It’s a totally weird one this one, isn’t it? I mean, healing the blind, the sick, the lame – I totally get that. That makes sense. Even feeding the 5,000 people who were out there somewhere in the middle of nowhere listening to Jesus. Sure, I get that. But turning water into wine, because someone’s planning wasn’t quite good enough to make sure there was enough grog at the party. Really? The first public miracle of the supposed Son of the Living God – God Himself on planet earth? What’s that say about God?

Well the first thing it tells me, is that God is into helping us with real world problems. This was a real world problem that the groomsmen was facing here – serious embarrassment. Weddings went on for days back in the first century. And when a father had a daughter, when she was born, he would put down a cask of wine in the cellar, and each year thereafter on her birthday another cask – so by the time when she was married – in her mid to late teens, he’d have some really good, mature old wine, and some newer wine, perhaps some fresh wine that was not so good.  That’s what the steward was referring to about drinking the best wine first, and leaving the younger wine until people were slightly more inebriated.

Now, Jesus has no real intention of doing anything here, until his mother, Mary, gives him a gentle nudge. I love that – the Son of God aged around 30 years old, still does what His mother tells Him to do – bit of a lesson in that alone, for some people.

So – the wedding runs out of wine. Our edgy, radical Saviour Jesus – when, according to the steward’s own assessment – a good many people had already had a good deal too much to drink, Jesus gets up, and looks around – what’s available for this miracle?

Well, over there are these huge stone jars, 6 of them, each one holing 20 to 30 gallons.  That’s 120 to 180 gallons, or 550 to over 800 gallons of water. I don’t know how big the wedding party was, but that’s a huge amount of water … and it’s a huge amount of wine. Can you believe it? And without doing anything much – just commanding the servants to fill the jars, Jesus – through the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit – turns all this water, into all that wine. And not just any wine. The very best wine. So – what’s going on here? Well, a few things.

There was a practical need, and Jesus met that need. Okay – that’s what He did back then. But … how many weddings have you been to recently, where they ran out of wine, and someone prayed and God did that sort of a miracle? Hmm?  No – me neither. So there must be something else going on here that speaks into our situation, your life and mine.

As things turn out, there is. There are two other things. The first –is what Jesus uses, to create the wine and what the wine symbolises. He uses the religious symbols of the day, the ritual of purification water – of course the Old Testament commanded people to purify themselves, and certain purification rites are prescribed. By this time people were taking things a bit far – they were turning God’s law into rules and rituals.

So – Jesus grabs the symbols of those rituals and transforms them into a symbol of God’s abundant blessing – wine. Through this miracle God’s saying something powerful, the old is about to pass away, and the new is about to come – that’s why this is Jesus’ very first miracle. Old, rule based, law based religion is about to go out the door, and it’s about to be replaced by something much better – the abundance of grace and blessing that comes only through Jesus Christ – that’s the megaphone message behind this miracle.

And it’s a message that rings down through the centuries to you and me here and now – the miracle of the transformation of our lives, when we believe in Jesus – is the end of our judgement under God’s law, and the beginning of a sweet, pure, beautiful and yes … intoxicating … grace in Jesus Christ.

Let that message ring loud and clear and pure and true in your heart. The transformation of our lives through the power of grace isn’t some theory lesson. It’s real. It’s alive and it’s totally miraculous. And the other thing, the second thing that’s going on here, is that God brings glory to Himself. Listen again to people’s reactions to the miracle:

This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him.

God’s miracles always bring God the glory – the reason John calls them signs, is because they point to the authentic power and love of God in Jesus Christ. My friend – God is still doing some miracles now – if only we’d go to Him, in the midst of our very real, very practical needs and ask Him. Haven’t received a miracle yet? Perhaps that’s because you haven’t asked Him yet … with the sort of expectancy that He calls … faith.

The Nobleman’s Son

So – are you ready. Jesus’ second sign, in the book of John Chapter 4:46–54:

So Jesus came again to Cana in Galilee, where he had made the water into wine. And at Capernaum there was a royal official whose son was ill. When this man heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went and asked him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. So Jesus said to him, ‘Unless you people see signs and wonders you will not believe.’ The official said to him, ‘Sir, come down before my child dies.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Go; your son will live.’

The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and went on his way. As he was going down, his servants met him and told him that his son was recovering. So he asked them the hour when he began to get better, and they said to him, ‘Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him.’ The father knew that was the hour when Jesus had said to him, ‘Your son will live.’ And he himself believed, and all his household. This was now the second sign that Jesus did when he had come from Judea to Galilee.

Now earlier we saw how easy it is to deny the power of God. Like the people in Jesus’ own home town, sometimes we don’t expect miracles in the midst of the mundane realities of life – the place where you live, where you’ve grown up, where you work. Look around – where you live, and where you work – do you really expect Jesus to come into those places and do some miracles?

And yet here was this nobleman – a man of position and power, so desperate that he was prepared to humble himself, even humiliate himself in front of the crowd, by racing to Jesus and begging that He come and heal his son. He was a ROYAL official.

Jesus, whilst He was pulling the crowds, whilst He had unofficial rock star status, – Jesus, in the Jewish Social Pecking Order, in the scheme of things – was a nobody. He wasn’t a member of the Sanhedrin – the ruling religious body. He hadn’t gone to have His credentials stamped by the Religious hierarchy in Jerusalem. He was from Nazareth – Ugh!! Does anything good come from Nazareth?

And yet, He’d been doing these amazing miracles. The father – because he was a father as well as a royal official – was at his wit’s end. This child of his was about to die. He hears that Jesus is around – the Jesus who they say that has been healing people. Desperation drove him to come to Jesus. And he didn’t just ask – he begged, he implored – that’s the sense of the original Greek word translated here to ‘ask’ – He cast himself completely on the mercy and the power of Jesus.

Big call – something that sometimes we’re not prepared to do.  Either because we’re too ashamed to go up for an altar call at church, or ask for someone to pray with us, or let people know that we are completely at the end of our tether and we’re relying on Jesus to do the miraculous – because we can’t.

All too often we want to appear like we have it all together. We don’t need any help. Well can I tell you, none of us have it all together and none of us lives a life where we don’t need the supernatural power of God to break into our natural, boring little world from time to time. So this man of position and status casts himself at Jesus feet – and how … how does Jesus respond?

Jesus takes this as the opportunity for some teaching to the crowds: So Jesus said to him, ‘Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.’ Not exactly the response he was looking for – but Jesus was making a point. Some people just won’t believe in Jesus, no matter what.

Another time a bunch of religious leaders came to Him and demanded a sign from Him – He called them a faithless and perverse generation, and said to them no sign will be given to you.

That’s an important lesson for you and me to learn. That’s an important lesson when someone we love is dying and God, by His sovereign will, chooses not to heal them because in the lost and fallen world, we all get sick – and unless Jesus returns beforehand, we are all going to die.  I know one young man who goes to a church not far from where I live who said – Hey, unless there are signs and miracles and wonders at church each week, you know that God isn’t in that place.

Well, that’s not what Jesus is saying here – in fact, you read say the book of Acts and you imagine that it was wall to wall miracles going on there. When in fact, that book chronicles the first 20 or so years of the fledgling church – and those miracles it talks about are spread over 2 decades and across much of the then known world, right?

So Jesus is putting this whole signs and wonders and miracles thing into perspective here and saying in effect – Yes, these signs do point to me, they do speak of my authenticity, that I am who I say I am, but they’re not the be all and end all and they shouldn’t be the thing on which your faith hangs. Great bit of teaching wouldn’t you agree? But where does that leave the nobleman begging Jesus to come quickly and heal his son?

He’s not phased, he just focuses on Jesus, and says again – Sir, come down before my child dies. And when Jesus speaks that healing out through His lips and as we read … the child was healed. But NOT in the way the man had hoped. He wanted the physical presence of Jesus at His place where is son was. Jesus on the other hand spoke healing by His Word. – How would you and I have reacted? No, No Jesus – come on you have to come down to my place and lay hands on my son and do whatever it is that you do.

Not how this man reacted – no. Instead, he took Jesus at His Word, He believed – and you know the rest of the story, the boy was healed. Question: will you take Jesus at His Word? Will you listen to His powerful Word today and simply believe?

Sometimes, He doesn’t show up because we’re asking Him to do something that isn’t part of His plan. And you know what – fair enough too. As much as it may hurt, God is God and He gets to decide that and it inevitably works out for the best. But sometimes He doesn’t show up, because we don’t expect Him to, because we don’t humble ourselves to ask, because we don’t admit that we need Jesus help in public; because we don’t go to Jesus – and whatever else may be going on around us – ask Him… for a miracle.

Have you ever needed a miracle – a powerful, supernatural, miraculous intervention from God? And when you were in need, did Jesus actually show up?

The Paralytic

I’m going to throw something out there today – something that might upset a few people, but I’m going to throw it out there anyway. The reason we sometimes miss out on miracles is that we’re too comfortable in being the victim of our circumstances. Does that make you squirm just a little bit? Here’s what I’m talking about.

I know plenty of people who are so comfortable in their misery that the thought of a miracle to lift them out of that misery is incredibly unsettling. I know of people who are now third and fourth generation long-term unemployed, relying generation after generation on government hand-outs, government housing, government welfare to get by.

Now don’t get me wrong: There are many people who are unemployed for good and valid reasons; sometimes for a short-term, other times it’s a lifelong tragic situation of your health or disability. I totally get that, but there are many who are so comfortable in their welfare dependency that they just aren’t interested in getting out there, getting skilled up, hunting down a job, and going out to work. That’s a real-life example of how people can become comfortable in their misfortune.

In this series that I’ve called ‘Signs, Wonders and Miracles’, we’re taking a good hard look at the eight signs or miracles that Jesus performed, which are recorded in John’s gospel – the fourth book of the New Testament, and today we’re going to meet one such person – a man stuck in his misery, who’d do the same thing over and over again. Only problem was, it wasn’t making his lot any better, and then one day, Jesus walked into his life and turned everything upside-down. Let’s have a read. John 5:

After this, there was a feast of the Jews and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is in Jerusalem, by the Sheep Gate, a pool (in Aramaic called Bethesda) which has five roofed colonnades. In these lay a multitude of individuals, blind, lame and paralysed. One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, He said to the man: ‘Do you want to be healed?’

The sick man answered Him: ‘Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I’m going, another steps down in front of me.’

Jesus said: ‘Get up, take your bed, and walk’ and at once, the man was healed, and he took up his bed and he walked.

Now that day was a Sabbath, so the Jews said to the man who had been healed: ‘It is the Sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to take up your bed.’

But he answered them: ‘The man who healed me – that man said to me: ‘Take up your bed and walk.’

They asked him: ‘Who is this man, that said to you: ‘Take up your bed and walk?’ Now the man who had been healed didn’t know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, as there was a great crowd in the place.

Afterwards, Jesus found the man in the temple and said to him: ‘See, you are well. Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you.’

The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him, and this was why the Jews were persecuting Jesus – because He was doing these things on the Sabbath, but Jesus answered them: ‘My Father is working until now, and I am working.’

So what’s the deal here at the pool of Bethesda? Well, for starters, the word Bethesda means House of Mercy or House of Grace. Hey; that’s not a bad start, and both Jews and Gentiles went down there with the belief that there was healing to be had there. We learn elsewhere that they believed that an angel would occasionally come and stir up the water, and the first one into the pool would be healed.

Problem was, people had been there for years and years, and they’d never been healed. I mean, imagine this man’s problem; he’s lame. Getting down into the pool is going to take some time and effort, so the water gets stirred up, and a guy with a cold or an ingrowing toenail jumps in first and whammo! This man misses out … again. Where’s the grace in that? Where’s the mercy in that?

Both Jew and Gentile, believer and pagan, used to go down there and sit there day after day, year after year. We don’t know if anyone was ever healed, but it seems that this place wasn’t such a raging success. It didn’t seem to be living up to its reputation.

People went down there with a bit of a religious wishing-well mentality, and this man whom Jesus ultimately heals in this story … well, he’s a bit like that. He’s been an invalid for thirty-eight years! Hey, that’s an incredibly long time! Goodness only knows how long he’s been down here every day at this pool, facing the misery and the hopelessness of his situation, remembering there was no government disability pension on offer from the Romans in first-century Israel.

How many of us are living our lives like that? A difficult marriage; a wayward child; a deep, nagging sense of inadequacy or low self-esteem; an addiction of some sort, and we just sit there day after day with this wishing-well mentality, imagining that somehow one day things will get better, but on the other hand, kind of content to sit there in our muck and our squalor, never really expecting anything to change; never even wanting it to change really, and then in walks Jesus.

There were lots of people around the pool of Bethesda that day. Probably, there were some even much more deserving of healing than this particular man, but Jesus walks up to this guy. Why? Well, He kind of tells us a few verses down (in verse 19 of chapter 5 of John’s gospel):

So Jesus said to them: ‘Truly, truly I say to you, the Son can do nothing of His own accord, but only what He sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise.’

Why does Jesus only heal this one guy? Because he’s the guy that Dad in heaven was going to heal that day. There’s a lesson in that alone for you and me: Do what Dad’s doing, and nothing else. The reason that this is such a powerful miracle with such a powerful message for you and me today is that it speaks of Jesus walking into a mundane situation, to a guy who perhaps wasn’t quite as zealous as he could have been in improving his lot, and Jesus just does it.

What’s the first thing that Jesus asks him? He says: ‘So, do you want to be healed?’ If Jesus asked you that question, come on; honestly, what would your answer be?

Well, how does the guy respond? Does he say, straight off the back: ‘Yes!’? No. He gives Jesus the excuse why he hasn’t yet been healed – an excuse that comes right out of the victim’s wishing-well mentality. ‘Sir, I don’t have anyone to put me down into the pool when the waters stirred up, and while I’m going, another steps down in front of me.’

See, he’s seeing things through the lens of his circumstances. He’s looking from the bottom up, not from the top down. Jesus has just walked into this guy’s life, so what does Jesus do? He commands healing. Jesus said to him: ‘Get up, take your bed, and walk’ and at once, the man was healed, he took up his bed, and he walked. To the man’s credit he in fact got up and walked. A whole bunch of people weren’t happy about that, but hey; Jesus had just come into his life, and he was walking! And that was a huge miracle for this guy.

Do you know what I believe? I believe that today, through the power of His Word, Jesus has walked into your life – into your same-old, same-old situation – into your particular personal need for healing, and here’s the question that He’s asking you: ‘So, do you want to be healed?’

Feeding the Five Thousand

Some years ago, I was listening to a man who founded a large Christian radio network in the US. He’s not directly involved in it anymore, but it’s one of the big ones; hundreds of stations. These days it looks hugely successful, and it is, but as he was talking, he took me back to the early days when he was just starting his first station in the network. They were humble beginnings indeed.

The man, his wife and their family put everything on the line. They didn’t yet have many supporters, things were incredibly tight and one day, it came to the point where they didn’t have any money, and they didn’t have any food in the house. The kids were coming home from school and he and his wife didn’t know how they were going to feed them. Imagine you put it all on the line for Jesus, and it leaves you destitute in this situation.

As a husband and a father myself, I empathised ‘cos we guys, we’re programmed to be the providers and the protectors of our families, aren’t we? Not being able to feed them would be devastating. His eyes became misty as he told us the story and, I have to tell you, mine became misty too as I listened.

So what did he and his wife do? Well, they sat down in despair on the kitchen floor, and they prayed. They prayed and they prayed, and they prayed. Presently there was a knock on the front door. He went to answer it, and it was someone from their church who had just felt to bring over some food for their dinner tonight. God answered their prayer. He knew what He was doing.

Today on the programme, I want to take a look at the third sign that Jesus performed, which is recorded in John’s gospel – the feeding of the five thousand men. Let’s take a look. John 6:1:

After this, Jesus went away to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberius, and a large crowd was following Him because they’d seen all the signs that He was doing with the sick. Jesus went up on the mountain, and there He sat down with His disciples. Now the Passover feast, the feast of the Jews, was at hand. Lifting up His eyes then, and seeing the large crowd that was coming towards Him, Jesus said to Philip: ‘Where are we going to buy bread, so that all these people can eat?’ Jesus said this to test Philip because He Himself knew what He was going to do.

Philip answered Him: ‘Two hundred denarii-worth of bread wouldn’t even be enough to give each one of them just a little bit.’

One of the other disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to Him: ‘There’s a boy here, who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are they amongst so many?’

Jesus said: ‘Have the people sit down.’ Now there was a lot of grass in that place, so the men sat down, about five thousand in number. Jesus then took the loaves, and when He had given thanks, He distributed them to those who were seated. So also the fish, as much as they wanted. And when they had eaten their fill, He told His disciples: ‘Gather up the left-over fragments, that nothing may be lost’, so they gathered them up, and filled twelve baskets with fragments from five barley loaves left by those who had eaten.

When the people saw the sign that He had done, they said: ‘This is indeed the prophet who has come into the world.’ Perceiving then that they were about to come and take Him by force to make Him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by Himself.

What an awesome miracle, or sign as John calls it, and why wouldn’t He call it a sign? Signs point at something, and this one points directly at the power, the truth, and the authenticity of Jesus Christ as the Son of God – the Messiah; the One who came to usher in not a worldly kingdom, but the kingdom of heaven.

Here was a real ministry-need. The gospel was being proclaimed. Thousands were following Jesus, and now all of a sudden, it was dinnertime and they had no food. The disciples, as you and I so often do, they looked at what they had in their hands, which was precious little – two fish, five barley loaves, five thousand people … but Jesus had different plans, because He had a totally different perspective on the situation, compared to His disciples.

Watchman Nee was a Chinese evangelist who was martyred for his faith and gospel-work in the 1970s. This is what he writes about the expectation issue in relation to this sign – the feeding of the five thousand, in a booklet that he published entitled Twelve Baskets Full:

‘What do we mean when we talk of God’s blessing? We mean divine activity that’s not based on human activity. We mean a working of God that is not based on our work. 

The blessing of God isn’t something that we can earn by our efforts; it’s not something we can buy with our money. One penny should always procure one penny’s worth, but if without our penny, God gives us ten thousand pennies’ worth, that is His blessing. His blessing makes our calculations futile, because it leaves us without any basis on which to calculate. When five small loaves provided nourishment for five thousand people, and left a surplus that filled twelve buckets, that is God’s blessing.

So many of us, instead of looking to the Lord to bless the loaves, are looking at the loaves in our hands. Our one hope in the face of today’s immense need is that He will perform a miracle, and that He will do it by taking the bread into His hands and blessing it. When the Lord in His goodness brings us to a totally new position where we recognise the paramount importance of His blessing, then the way will be open for Him to work.’

Here’s the point that Watchman Nee is making, as I understand it, and it’s absolutely the right point to be making. We labour away and labour away and labour away doing God’s work, we think in His name, without the appropriate expectation of God’s blessing on that work. In other words, we do it in our own strength, wondering all the time: ‘Why is this such hard work? Why isn’t it just a little bit easier’, not imagining at any point that God’s supernatural power is a complete game-changer.

Jesus didn’t have to go through some long-winded prayer. He was close to His Father in heaven; so immersed in prayer, and immersed in God’s power, that He just stepped out and He did it – in the power of God, and it was a complete game-changer. The power of this story – in fact, its whole point – doesn’t lie so much in how much food Jesus’ miracle produced; it lies in the twelve baskets that were left over. The message here is: More than enough. Much, much more than enough, and that message, my friend, flies full in the face of the little they had at their disposal at the beginning of this whole exercise.

What the disciples hadn’t reckoned on was the powerful blessing of God, but let me ask you this question then: What was it that unlocked the power of this miracle? Jesus was ready; He had the power; He had the will, but what was the key?

One of His disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to Him: ‘There’s a boy here, who has five barley loaves and two fishes, but what are they for so many?’ It was the little boy who offered up all he had to be blessed by the LORD; that was the key. He could have kept it to himself. He could have hoarded it, but he gave all the food that he had to the LORD – ungrudgingly, willingly, sacrificially, and the LORD blessed it and multiplied it, and brought glory to Jesus.

That man I was telling you about earlier? His name was Dick Jenkins – the founder of K-Love, the network in the US. There are really three big Christian radio networks in America: The Moody Broadcasting Network, Salem, and K-Love. Here was that little boy, sitting there with his wife that day on the kitchen floor, in that day of small beginnings. He’d put everything on the line; he’d offered it all up, and the Lord took it, and blessed it, and multiplied it, and still today, K-Love is one of the three big radio networks in the US, impacting millions of people each day with the love of Jesus Christ.

You and I too, we are that little boy. When we find ourselves between a rock and a hard place, come on; as we so often do, when everything we have has run out – our money, our food, our resources, our friends, our energy – everything, that place right there is the place not to hang on to the little bit we have left, but to offer up to God with a willing heart, just like that little boy, and He’ll take it and multiply it. That’s what we mean by the blessing of God. Psalm 127:1-2:

‘For unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labour in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to bed, eating the bread of anxious toil, for He gives His beloved sleep’.

My friend, what are you holding back from God? What is it that you have in your hands, that God could bless and use mightily and powerfully, but you’re holding back? This miracle, this sign that we’ve seen here, was a powerful work of blessing – God’s blessing.

The Answer is Jesus

So, two amazing miracles – one healing a single man, the other feeding five thousand men, not to mention all the women and children who were there too. So, what do the two have in common? What does Jesus have to say to you and me through them today, two thousand years on?

The answer to that question is really quite simple. It’s this: No matter what situation, no matter what the problem, no matter how big or how small the need happens to be, no matter how impossible the situation appears, Jesus is the answer.

How often have you in effect sat hopelessly by your pool of Bethesda, expecting a miracle but not really, hoping against hopes that Jesus would sovereignly step in and intervene in your life but never really expecting Him to do that? Content in a sense to be the victim of your own circumstances, wallowing there in the role of the victim? Come on, how often have you done that?

How often have you come to the end of your tether, your wits, your resources, your money, your food, your friends, your relationships, and faced a need that you were totally under-resourced to meet? And in that place, you stared at the little you had in your hands, rather than the great power of the mighty God who loves you beyond anything that words can express?

Because we’re spiritual beings living in a physical world, it seems that over and over again in our hearts and minds, we allow our circumstances to trump our God. We imagine that the problems we’re facing are so much bigger than He is. Of course, we know that’s not really true, but we think and believe and live and act as though it is, and there’s a reason for that.

The closer something is, the bigger it seems. A tiny child right next to you actually looks much bigger than a twenty-stone man you can just see five hundred metres down the road. That’s what’s going on here. That’s why we get to believing, like the paralytic, that nothing’s ever going to change. That’s why we make excuses the way he did. It’s why we look at the little that we have in our hands, rather than offering it all up to God like the little boy did, and expecting His mighty blessing.

So, what’s the answer? The answer is one of proximity. The closer something is, the bigger it seems. Sometimes we’re closer to our problems than we are to God. That’s not to say that God is a million miles away; the Bible says quite the opposite. It says that we are brought near to Him by the blood of Jesus (Ephesians 2:13). In fact, let’s have a look at that:

‘But now, in Christ Jesus, you who were once far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ’.

Do you see? Past tense. Done deal. If you believe in Jesus, right now, you are close to God. That’s something that Jesus did for you on the cross, and yet we spend all our time focusing on the problem, and little or no time focusing on Jesus; praying; reading God’s Word; resting in Him; waiting in Him. The problem therefore seems bigger than God, and that’s an optical illusion that Satan is entirely delighted with.

My friend, look again at those two signs – miracles that point to the power of Jesus; the authenticity of Jesus; the willingness of Jesus to step into any and every situation, to make a powerful difference. That very same Jesus is the Jesus who died for you on that cross, who allowed His blood to be spilled so that you who once were far-off could now be close to God, every minute of every day. You and I don’t have to shout across a galaxy or a universe to communicate with God. The impenetrable wall of our sin, which used to separate us from Him, is completely destroyed and removed the instant we believe in Jesus.

Friend, that’s the power of God’s Word for you today. God’s miracle-working, life-transforming power is available to you, and it’s much, much bigger than any lifelong disability you need to overcome, or any crowd you need to feed. No matter what the problem, what the situation, what the circumstance, what the obstacle, what the limitation happens to be, Jesus is in this place with you, and Jesus (this Jesus) is the answer. He always has been; He always will be.

So you are going along fine and then a storm blows in. One day the sun’s shining, the next the winds howling the rains pelting down and you’re wondering how am I going to get through this one?

Walking on Water

There are two equal and opposite mistakes that we can in fact make when it comes to the supernatural. One is to ignore it completely to behave as though God isn’t still doing powerful amazing things in people’s lives. The other mistake is to have unhealthy fixation on the spiritual. I’m not in either of those two camps.

I just know that my God the one who sent Jesus to this earth to pay for my sins and give me a new life, I know that He is real, that He’s Powerful and that He hasn’t stopped wanting to make a powerful difference in my life, in your life and the life of anyone who decides they’re going to believe in Jesus and follow Jesus wherever He may lead.

Call me simple, call me crazy, call me whatever you will. Jesus died for us, he rose again. He sits at the right hand of God on his throne and he’s ready, willing and able to make a powerful difference in my life and yours if only we’ll let him. That’s why in this series Signs, Wonders and Miracles we’re stepping our way through the eight miracles that the apostle John recorded his gospel account of Jesus life and ministry.

Interesting, Jesus performs so many miracles in the three and a half years of his public ministry but John chooses to reveal only eight of them to us. He calls them signs and here’s why. John actually gives us the reason why he does this. John 20:30-31:

He says now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples which are not written in this book but these are written so that you believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God and that by believing you may have life in His name.

The whole point of these miracles and the reason that John constantly refers to them as signs, is that they point to the power and authenticity of Jesus. They verify His claims that He was and is the Son of one true God and that the He came to die for us to pay for our sins and to rise again from the dead to give us new life.

John wrote them down recorded them to point to Jesus so you that may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah your saviour, the Son of God and here’s the crunch here, here what’s this means to you and me here and now and by believing you may have life in his name.

A fresh, new powerful life here and now filled with his power and his joy and his peace and his grace and his mercy and an eternal life in his presence. That’s what these signs are all about. That’s what these miracles are all about, they’re about your life and that’s why they are so important.

So the next one in the series is the time that Jesus walks on water. Hey, pretty neat trick if you can do it. Let’s have a listen John 6:16-21:

When evening came his disciples went down to the sea, got onto to a boat and started across the sea to Capernaum. It was dark by now and Jesus had not yet come. The sea became rough because there was a strong wind blowing. When they had rowed about three or four miles they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat and they were frightened. But he said to them, ‘It is I to not be afraid.’ Then they were glad to take him into the boat and immediately the boat was at the land to which to they were going.

So after that powerful miracle of feeding the 5000 men with two fishes and five loaves, Jesus sent his disciples to go out onto the Sea of Galilee. It’s not unreasonable. A few of them were experienced fisherman they knew these waters but if you’ve ever been on the ocean or as in the case of these disciples, on a large inland of body of water, you’ll know that no amount of experience can compensate for the ferocious power of the wind and the water.

And that’s what happened here to these men in this boat. One minute everything is fine, they had the skills to get across they knew the waters, everything was fine and dandy but the next minute a massive storm blows in. We all know what that feels like, its confusing first up. Why does God let that happen? They must have been thinking that to themselves in this tiny boat pitching on this angry sea why did Jesus let us get on this boat? Surely he knew.

Well of course he knew. But he wanted them to experience the reality of His power amidst the overwhelming circumstances of their fragile lives. There are three or four miles out from the shore. Look in the middle of a storm they may as well have been three or four hundred miles out. Because once you are out there in that storm in a small fishing boat, nothing is going to save you. You’ve been there right? Perhaps not on a boat on an angry sea but in your life you’ve been out there when the storm’s been blowing and you’ve wondered how am I going to survive? This miracle, this sign speaks the reality of the supernatural power of God into our lives.

This power of God isn’t just a theory, it’s real and it’s something you and I are meant to experience for ourselves in life. Out on the stormy waters Jesus walks completely impossible right? I mean totally, totally impossible. And that lies at the heart of what God’s got to say to you and me, in this short, simple but powerful story that’s written up here by John in such an understated way.

The sea is rough, I mean, the sea really rough and yet they see Jesus walking about across the water. They were frightened. Well, that’s putting it mildly. And Jesus tells them, ‘Don’t worry. Stop being afraid. It’s me. I’m here. I can do the impossible.’

I mean they already knew that. They had seen him doing the impossible in other people’s lives. I mean hey, just a few hours before they seen him feed 5000 men plus the women and children with two fishes and five loaves. But they’d never experienced this power in their own lives.

They’d never experienced this power when they were in peril. And the whole point of this miracle for them is that they should believe that the power of God is real in their lives as well, through Jesus Christ. Not just all the crowds Jesus ministers to, not just odd the blind person or the lame person that Jesus heals but in their lives when they are in desperate need. And the whole point of this miracle for us is that we should believe that the power of God is real in our lives through Jesus. Do you get it?

When next you have a storm raging in your life remember this, remember that the Holy Spirit had John the Apostle record this miracle. Remember he was one of the guys in that pitching boat, he was one of the guys who was there afraid he was going to drown even more afraid when he saw Jesus walking on the water. God had him record this story so that you and I would know that Jesus power is real and through that we can have life the life that he came to bring us. It’s that simple. Jesus is for real.

Healing the Man Born Blind

So imagine you are blind from birth, just imagine that. You have no sense of what anything looks like. You only understand texture by touch. You identify people and places by smell and by sound, by context rather than by sight.

When people talk about red or blue or the colour of the sunset, you have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about, none. And then, then Jesus walks into your life and he gives you your sight for the first time. Come on, what would that feel like? Totally incredible right? Let’s have a read of this beautiful, powerful story Jesus gives sight to a man who has been blind from birth. John 9:

As he passed by He saw a man who had been blind from birth and his disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned this man or his parents that he was born blind? But Jesus answered, ‘ It wasn’t that this man sinned or his parents but that the works of God might be displayed in him. We must do the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when we can do no work. As long as I am in the world I am the light of the world.’

Having said these things he spat on the ground and made mud with his saliva. Then he anointed the man’s eyes with the mad and said to him, ‘Go and wash in the pool Siloam.’ Which means sent. So he went and washed and came back seeing.

So they bought him to the Pharisees the religious leaders of the day and it was Sabbath when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes so the Pharisees again asked him how he had received his sight. And he said to them, ‘He put mud in my eyes and I washed and now I can see.’ Some of the Pharisees said, ‘This man isn’t from God for he doesn’t keep the Sabbath.’ But others said, ‘How can a man who is a sinner do such signs?’ and there was a division amongst them.

So they said again to the blind man, ‘What do you say about him since he opened your eyes?’ And he said, ‘He’s a prophet.’ The Jews didn’t believe that he’d been blind and received his sight so for the second time they called the man who’d been blind and said to him, ‘Come on give glory to God we know that this man is a sinner.’ But the guy answered,  ‘Whether he’s a sinner or not I don’t know. One thing I do know though, is that I was blind but now I see.’

They said to him, ‘What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?’ And he answered them, ‘I’ve already told and you wouldn’t listen, why do you want to hear again? Do you too want to become one of his disciples?’

But they reviled him saying, ‘You are his disciple but we’re disciples of Moses we know that God has spoken to Moses but as for this man, we don’t know where he comes from.’ So the man answered, ‘Why isn’t that an amazing thing you don’t know where he comes from and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God doesn’t listen to sinners but if anyone is a worshipper of God and does his will, God listens to him. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God he couldn’t do anything.’ But they answered him, ‘You were born in utter sin and would you teach us?’ And they cast him out.

Jesus heard that they had cast him out and he found him and said, ‘Do you believe in the Son of Man?’ And he answered ‘And who is he sir that I may believe in him.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘You have seen him and it is he is speaking to you.’ So the man said, ‘Lord I believe’ and he worshipped Jesus.

Jesus said, ‘For judgment I came into this world so that those who do not see may see but those see may be come blind.’ Now some of the Pharisees nearby heard these things and said to ‘Are we also blind?’ And Jesus said to them, ‘If you were blind you would have no guilt but now that you say we see, you’re guilt remains.’

Here’s what totally blows me away about this story. A blind guy has been healed, I mean what a miracle. Come on! This isn’t some shonky, unverifiable miracle like some of those that you might have seen on television. No! This guy has been blind from birth. Everybody knows that. This is a serious, real, authenticated verifiable, bona fide miracle that no one has ever seen before. But all the religious leaders of the day are worried about was that Jesus healed the guy on the Sabbath when by the law he wasn’t supposed to do any work. The day of rest, the day when no work is to be done.

They grilled the guy, they put him through the third degree. And this man who has just by the way received his sight after all his life being blind, gives it back to them with both barrels. He states the blindingly, glimpsingly obvious, ‘Well, guys I don’t know where he’s from but once I was blind but now I can see. That’s all I can tell you. This is what Jesus did.’

In other words the evidence men speaks for itself. ‘You may not know where he comes from’, he said. ‘You may not like him, he may well be upsetting your religious apple cart but guys I used to blind you all know that but I now can see. Go figure.’

Do you see this sharp contrast between this man’s newfound vision which comes from an encounter with the power of God through Jesus Christ and the spiritual blindness those religious leaders? Jesus sums it up for them he tells them, you’re the guys who are really blind here because you completely missed the obvious. The blind man gained his sight and believed, the spiritual leaders those who should have wisdom and insight and knowledge about God’s stuff. Those who claimed to have sight according to Jesus were in fact blind.

I remember sitting in a meeting being told by a very respectable Christian leader and teacher, a man who was heard by millions of people through the media around the world, that miracles didn’t take place anymore.

Now I was only a young Christian at the time but I remember how my blood boiled. I didn’t know much but I knew that the power of God was real. God found me on the eighth floor balcony of a hotel room about to jump off and take my life and he pulled me back from the brink through a Gideon’s bible that I’d been reading the night before and saved me.

He transformed my life and here I am all those years later telling millions more people around the world all about the same powerful, loving, miracle-working Jesus. The man, that religious leader was just like these Pharisees and Sadducees in the story. He was denying the power of God.

What he didn’t realise was he was talking to me and I, I have to tell you, am a walking, living, breathing miracle. My life was saved by this Jesus. My spiritual blindness was cured by Jesus and I’m here to tell you that the transformative power of Jesus Christ is real. I tell it to you not just because I read it here in the bible, as we’ve just heard but I can tell it to you because I’ve experienced in the most powerful and dramatic way in my life. Jesus is real and he wants to make the most powerful, the most amazing the most transformative difference in your life too. And my friend, don’t let anyone, anyone, no matter how plausible they sound tell you any different.

Raising Lazarus

Have you ever seen someone physically raised from the dead? I haven’t, not yet. I’ve seen Jesus do some amazing things in people’s lives both in terms physical healing and emotional and spiritual healing but to this point I haven’t seen anyone brought back from the dead physically.

Now we’ve seen it a few times in scripture not many just a few. We see Jesus bring a little girl back to life in Luke’s gospel in the New Testament, chapter eight. Of course we see the resurrection of Jesus that’s the really big one. Can’t miss that one. And then we see the story of Lazarus. A good friend of Jesus who dies and then Jesus brings him back to life.

It’s the one I’d like to look at right now. I guess the point I want to get across first is this. Do I believe that Jesus can bring people back to life physically from the dead? Sure I do, absolutely I do. But it’s not something that happens every day. It was quite rare in scripture and it’s really quite rare today. Why? Well, we live in a world where it’s an absolute certainty that each one of us is going to die physically. Either Jesus will come back beforehand or you and I are going to die that’s it. The two sure things in life are death and taxes is what they say and pretty much they’re right. But every now and again God does bring people physically back to life.

So here’s the thing, if we’re all going to die and yet physical resurrections are rare as hen’s teeth, that’s a reasonable summary, what’s the point of this miracle? And what does it say to you and me today about the power of God in our lives?

A message comes to Jesus that his good friend Lazarus is close to death but instead of racing straight there he waits for a couple of days deliberately to let him die. Then only then does he go. Let’s pick up the story in John chapter 9 as Jesus arrives in Bethany where Lazarus is already dead:

Now when Jesus came he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Bethany was near Jerusalem about two miles off and many of the Jews had come to Martha and to Mary to console them concerning their brother. So when Martha heard that Jesus was coming she went and met him but Mary remained seated in the house.

Martha said to Jesus, ‘Lord if you had been there my brother wouldn’t have died but even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.’ So Jesus said to her ‘Your brother will arise again and Martha said to him, ‘I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.’

Jesus said to her ‘I am the resurrection and the life whoever believes in me though he dies yet shall live and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?’ and she said to him ‘Yes Lord I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God who is coming into the world.’ When she said this she went and called her sister Mary saying in private, ‘The teacher is here and he is calling for you.’ And when she heard it she rose up quickly and went to him.

Now Mary came to where the Lord Jesus was and saw him and she too fell at this feet saying to him, ‘Lord if you’d been here my brother wouldn’t have died.’ When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who’d come with her also weeping he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled and he said ‘Where have you laid him?’ They said to him ‘Lord come and see.’ Jesus wept. So the Jews said ‘ See how he loved him but some of them said, ‘Couldn’t he who opens up the eyes of a blind man also have kept this guy from dying?’

Then Jesus deeply moved again came to the tomb it was a cave and a stone lay against it. Jesus said ‘Take away the stone’. Martha the sister of the dead man said to him, ‘Lord by this time there is going to be an odour because he’s been dead for four days.

But Jesus said to her ‘Didn’t I tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God? So they took away the stone and Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, ‘Father I thank you that you’ve heard me I knew that you would always hear me. But I said this on account of the people standing around that they may believe the you sent me.’

When he said these things he cried out with a loud voice Lazarus, come out! And the man who’d died came out. His hands and feel bound with linen strips. His face wrapped with a cloth and Jesus said to them ‘Unbind him and let him go.’

Do you know what’s interesting? The first thing Jesus does when he hears that his good friend Lazarus on his death-bed is nothing. Nothing! Hey, when I have a crisis going on in my life a matter of life or death I want Jesus to spring into action now. Don’t you?

Well, nothing I guess isn’t quite right. He executes a phase of deliberate delay. He stays where he is for another two days. Come on Jesus, let’s get going this is urgent. You have to act now. But Jesus deliberately delays because the point of what’s going on here, the point of what’s going to transpire is this. The illness doesn’t lead to death it’s for the glory of God so that the Son of God maybe glorified through it. And so we see as the story unfolds everyone is so distressed at Jesus delay. Oh Jesus if only you had come sooner my brother wouldn’t have died.

Now, that’s not an unreasonable statement I guess. But it’s all about perspective. Our perspective in a crisis is our pain, our problem, our circumstances, our need, our desperate timetable. We see it from where we sit. But as we’ve observed previously in this series, John calls these miracle signs and with good reason because there all about pointing to Jesus. Authenticating who he is, the Son of the living God.

We all see things from where sit, from our perspective but God sees things from a different perspective the whole point of the supernatural, miraculous intervention from God in our lives is that God gets the glory.

I for one have never seen the point of going fishing. I mean, you sit there for hours with a line dangling in the water – how boring’s that! You know, if I want to eat fish, I go and buy some fish at the fish shop. It’s much quicker I reckon.

The Multitude of Fishes

Of course, the fishing that I’m thinking of is quite different from the sort of fishing that Jesus was thinking of. I’m thinking of one guy; one line dangling in the water; sitting round; doing nothing, waiting for the fish to bite. That’s a very 20th-century, western view of fishing, but when Jesus spoke to His disciples about fishing, He had a totally different picture in mind.

A few of them were professional fishermen, who used to take their fishing trawlers out onto the sea of Galilee to go and haul in a commercial catch. They had nets a bit different to the ones fishermen use these days, and they went out, based on their local knowledge of the water and the seasons and the weather and the habits of the fish, and they would try and catch fish to sell at the markets.

Now, early on when Jesus was deciding who His twelve disciples would be, He went out and called them to follow Him – quite different to the usual Rabbi. People would apply to Rabbis – a bit like applying to study at a university. Some would be accepted and others wouldn’t, but no, Jesus called people to follow Him and right there, down on the shores of the Sea of Galilee is where He called the first of them. A little later, He performed His first fishing miracle. Let’s have a look. Luke 5:1-11

‘On one occasion while the crowd was pressing in on Him to hear the Word of God, He was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret and He saw two boats by the lake, but the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. Getting into one of the boats, which was Simon’s, He asked him to put out a little bit from the land, and He sat down, and He taught the people from the boat. And when He had finished speaking, He said to Simon: ‘Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.’

‘And Simon answered: ‘Master, we toiled all night and took nothing, but at Your word, I will let down the nets.’ And when they had done this, they enclosed a large number of fish, and their nets were breaking. They signalled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them, and they came and filled both boats so that both began to sink.

But when Simon Peter saw it, He fell down on His knees, saying: ‘Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, my Lord’, for he and all who were with him were astonished at the catch of fish that day that they’d taken, and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon’.

‘And Jesus said to Simon: ‘Don’t be afraid. From now on, you’ll be catching men’, and when they had brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed Jesus.

If you’re a fisherman, hey; that’s a pretty powerful miracle, right? But it’s His second fishing miracle that I really want to focus on today, because it speaks to His disciples and to you and me in quite a different way. It comes three years on, after Jesus’ death and resurrection. The disciples have headed from Jerusalem, from the tumultuous happenings of the Passover and the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus, back to what they know. Back to Galilee. Back to fishing. So, here it is at the end of the story. Let’s pick it up. John 21:

After this, Jesus revealed Himself again to His disciples by the Sea of Tiberius, and He revealed Himself in this way: Simon Peter, Thomas (called the twin), Nathaniel of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee and two others of His disciples were together. Simon Peter had said to them: ‘Look, I’m going fishing.’

They said to him: ‘We’ll go out with you too.’ They went out and got into the boat, but that night, they caught nothing.

Just as day was breaking, Jesus stood on the shore, yet the disciples didn’t know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to them: ‘Children, do you have any fish?’ 

They answered Him: ‘No.’

So He said to them: ‘Cast the net down on the right-hand side of the boat, and you’ll find some.’ So they cast it, and now they weren’t even able to haul it in because of the quantity of fish.

That disciple whom Jesus loved therefore said to Peter: ‘It’s the Lord!’ When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on his outer garment (for he was stripped for work), and he threw himself into the sea. The other disciples came in in the boat, dragging the net full of fish, for they were not far from the land (about a hundred yards off). 

When they got onto the land, they saw a charcoal fire in place, with fish laid out on it and bread. Jesus said to them: ‘Bring some of your fish that you’ve just caught.’ So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish – a hundred and fifty-three of them, and although there were so many, the net wasn’t torn. Jesus said to them: ‘Come and have breakfast.’

Now none of the disciples dared to ask Him: ‘Who are You?’ They knew it was the Lord. Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and so with the fish. (This was now the third time that Jesus was revealed to the disciples after He was raised from the dead.)

Now the first time they saw this particular miracle was way back at the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry (we read it earlier in Luke 5). That was early on in their relationship with Jesus when they barely knew Him, and the power of that miracle had convinced them to follow Jesus. They dropped their nets; they left their boats; their businesses; their livelihoods; their families, because they were convinced by the power of that first fishing miracle that there was something truly special and powerful about this Jesus fella.

Maybe you’ve had an initial experience with Jesus like that too – that time when you first came to believe in Him. Somehow, He had a powerful impact on your life back then. Maybe you went to a meeting and you heard about Him. Maybe a friend told you about Him – wherever; whatever that first initial, powerful experience was, it convinced you to follow Jesus.

But then, I’m not sure if you’ve noticed this, then that initial first blush and euphoria wears off. Then it’s back to the grind; back to life; back to all the ups and downs we all travel through, and then believing in Jesus takes on a whole new dimension. It’s all about believing in Him with your life; trusting in Him with your life; following Him with your life, and that entails determination and sacrifice and pain and persistence … all those things we wish it didn’t … but it does.

That’s where these disciples were at second time round. They’d seen their Jesus – this miracle-working preacher and pastor and prophet, Jesus – arrested, tried, beaten, nailed to a cross. Ok; they’d seen Him rise again, but truly that didn’t compute. It didn’t really make sense to them. They were reeling. They’d been through the emotional wringer and they were wrung out, so they go back to what they knew on the Sea of Tiberius.

They go fishing, and what does Jesus do? Jesus speaks to them through this miracle that they’ve seen once before, back in the early days, when it was exciting instead of terrifying to follow Jesus. He reminds them: There they are out on the water, and some guy on the shore tells them to throw the nets in on the other side of the boat. They do. They catch this enormous catch, and all of a sudden, they realise. They remember. ‘Hey, that’s Jesus! We’ve seen this before somewhere!

So Peter gets his clothes back on again and dives in the water and swims to shore, and the rest of them get back as quickly as they can, and what’s Jesus doing? Hey; He’s cooking them breakfast. Man, I love that. Jesus – tried, beaten, crucified, dead, risen again – Jesus the Son of God, the Lord of the whole universe speaks to these fishermen through this sign of a great catch, and by cooking them a barbecued breakfast on the beach.

So what’s that saying to us today? Well, quite simply this: That the risen Jesus is a Saviour both of power and of love; that He reaches into our lives and speaks to us in a way that we can understand. To the fishermen, He speaks through the fish. He does it with miracle-working power and He does it with tender, intimate love. Imagine Jesus reaches out to you in this way. He calls you to breakfast on the beach, after you’ve been through it all in these last three-and-a-half years with Him.

Just imagine how deeply that would impact you for the rest of your life. Jesus – the God of power; the God of love; the Saviour who reaches out and touches us in the most special, tender, miraculous way; in a way that only He can. My friend, that’s exactly what Jesus is like. Power plus love equals Jesus, and that’s the Jesus that you and I can expect Him to be.

As we reach out to Him, expecting Him to be the same Jesus, the same Saviour, the same gentle teacher, shepherd, pastor, fisherman, miracle-worker as the One we read about in the Bible, here’s what we discover. We discover that He is the same, and that this time, we learn the Bible-truth about Jesus with our life-experience of Him, and hey; there’s no better way to learn than that.

The Greatest Miracle of Them All

So here we are, almost at the end of our series on the ‘Signs, Wonders and Miracles’ of Jesus, as they’re recorded in John’s gospel in the New Testament. Well, according to the theologians, there are eight of them. Here they are again, just in case you missed any of the programs: Firstly He turned water into wine at the Canaanite wedding. From that we discover that Jesus uses His power to bless us, sometimes in the most amazing ways. Then He healed the nobleman’s son and we saw how, despite all that was going on around him, this man just focused on Jesus and believed in Him, and so received a miracle.

The third sign that Jesus performed was the healing of the paralytic by the pool of Bethesda – a man who was in a hopeless place, without hope, and Jesus demonstrates His love and His power by walking into that hopeless place and bringing not just hope, but healing too. Oh, who can forget the feeding of the five thousand? As Jesus took that little boy’s fishes and loaves, just showing how Jesus wants to grow the faith in His disciples through what He can do by the tiny offering of one little boy.

Then there was the walking on water, through which Jesus speaks the fact that His power and His love are just as good, just as effective, just as present during the storms in our lives as they are on a clear sunny day. The healing of the man who was blind from birth, to show us that it’s not about religion; it’s about trusting in Jesus. Religion often blinds us; Jesus is the One who gives us sight – physical and spiritual, and let’s not forget the raising of Lazarus from the dead – a death that occurred precisely because Jesus delayed in going to His good friend, so that His power and glory would be evident to all.

And then finally, after His death and resurrection, as we just saw before the break, He appears once again to His disciples and performs a miracle that they’d seen once before. He tells them to throw the nets over to the other side of the boat, and after a night of fishing that yielded nothing, they hauled in an amazing catch. To fishermen, He speaks through the fish. To each one of us, He speaks in terms and in a language that we can understand.

Eight amazing miracles. Signs, as the apostle John calls them, that point to the power and the love and the authenticity of Jesus as the very Son of the One true living God, who is ready and willing and able to transform your life. And why does John record just these eight signs and wonders, of so many that Jesus performed, in his gospel-account of the life and times of Jesus? Well, he does tell us that in John 20:30-31:

‘Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name.’

See, it’s all about helping us to believe because these signs point to the authenticity of Jesus, and in believing that we might have real life – a vibrant life today, and an eternal life tomorrow. See, Jesus is all about life: Life for me, life for you, and not the sort of life that Lazarus had just as he came out of that tomb, wrapped in his grave-clothes.

Can I just take you back to that picture again? Jesus has come. Lazarus is dead. He’s been dead for four days; he’s on the nose now! He is as dead physically as anybody who doesn’t yet know Jesus is spiritually, and on the nose as I said, and Jesus commands that they roll the stone away from the entrance of Lazarus’s tomb.

Deeply moved again, Jesus came to the tomb. It was a cave, a stone was laid against it. Jesus says: ‘Take away the stone’, and Jesus lifted up His eyes and said: ‘Father, I thank You that You’ve heard Me. I knew that You’d always hear Me, but I’ve said this on account of the people standing around, that they may believe that You’ve sent me’. When He had said these things, He cried out in a loud voice: ‘Lazarus! Come out!’ The man who’d died came out. His hands and feet were bound with linen strips and his face wrapped with a cloth, and Jesus said to them: ‘Unbind him, and let him go.’

Just look at that picture of Lazarus, wandering out of the tomb wrapped in his grave-clothes. Now, underneath his cheeks are pink because he’s flushed with life – the life that Jesus breathed into him, but he’s wrapped in the uniform of death – the grave-clothes, and no man can live their life like that, which is why Jesus says (mark these words): ‘Unbind him, and let him go’.

Many-a man’s life, many-a woman’s life, is depicted by that picture of Lazarus wrapped in his grave-clothes. They have life because Jesus has breathed new life into them, but they remain dressed in the clothes of death – bound in the sin of the old man, the old woman, the one who was before Jesus gave them new life. They wonder: ‘Why isn’t my faith working for me? Why is Jesus falling short of all my expectations of Him? Why is my life such a mess?’ all the time not realising that it’s because they remain bound in their sin – bound in the grave-clothes of the old man, the old woman.

Now contrast that picture with a picture John gives us of the greatest miracle of them all, the ninth one in John’s gospel, the resurrection of Jesus Christ – the empty tomb. Let’s go to John’s gospel, chapter 20 verse 1:

‘Now on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and she saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb, so she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and she said to them: ‘They’ve taken the Lord out of the tomb and we don’t know where they’ve laid Him!’

So Peter went out with the other disciple, and they were going towards the tomb. Both of them were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. And stooping to look in, he saw the linen cloths lying there, but he didn’t go in.

‘Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb, and he saw the linen cloths lying there, and the face-cloth which had been on Jesus’ head not lying with the other linen cloths, but folded up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went in and he saw and he believed, for as yet they didn’t understand the Scripture that He must rise from the dead. Then the disciples went back to their homes.’

Would you please notice with me this passage tells us about the grave-clothes, the clothes of death, that Jesus had been wearing for His burial? The linen cloths lying there, and the face-cloth which had been on Jesus’ head not lying with the other linen cloths, but folded up in a place by itself. They were off! Jesus had risen, with a freedom of new life that He now wants to pass on to you and me.

Friend the whole point, the thing that Jesus is all about, is bringing you new life through His resurrection: Freedom from sin, freedom from death, not walking around in some half-life, but an abundant life! Not tied up in the old grave-clothes – the sin of the past, but free! The apostle Paul sums up this greatest miracle of them all in Romans 6:4:

‘We were buried therefore with Jesus by baptism into death, in order that just as He was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so too we might walk in newness of life.’

The greatest miracle of them all is that through His death and resurrection, Jesus had brought us not just forgiveness of sin; not just removal of the power of sin to destroy our lives, but He’s replaced it with a completely new life. The greatest miracle of them all is that Jesus died for you and rose again for you, so that you could have this newness of life. My friend, do not go another day, not one single day more, without embracing this Jesus as your Lord and your Saviour; without putting your trust in Him; without embracing His abundant newness of life.

 A Miracle for You

God’s plan wasn’t ever for miracles to end, and for His supernatural power to stop working in this world and in our lives. I know that, because that’s what I read in my Bible. We so often focus on the cross of Christ, and of course why wouldn’t we? Because it’s there that we receive forgiveness for our sins, but we focus on that and we forget the empty tomb – the resurrection, which is why we just talked about that.

Because when Jesus rose from the dead, He was doing something powerful – something miraculous, that impacts our lives in a very real way today. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is not just some historical fact, although it is that, but it’s a present reality for you and me. Again, here is how the apostle Paul sums that reality up. We looked at it just before (Romans 6:4):

‘We were buried therefore with Jesus by baptism into death, in order that just as He was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so too we might walk in newness of life.’

See, this greatest miracle of them all is the newness of life that Jesus brings. Come on, real life; real newness; real transformation, because that newness of life is what’s available to each and every person who puts their trust in Jesus.

The problem is, a whole bunch of the people who do believe in Jesus aren’t living that new life. They’re stuck in the old life. They’re wrapped, as it were, in the grave-clothes of the past, just like Lazarus was when he walked out of that tomb after Jesus raised him from the dead

That’s why you and I need a miracle-makeover. You can’t have that newness of life when you’re wrapped in the grave-clothes of the past, right? That’s why we need God’s miraculous power and makeover in our lives – the new life that the risen Jesus brings; not in some shallow external sense, but in a deep, emotional, spiritual sense.

Look; looking your best is great. Do you want to look your best? Sure you do. I do; mind you, for me it’s not an obsession as it is for some, but I like to look good, and yet at the same time, you and I both know that looking good only goes so far to making you feel good. It has some impact, but it doesn’t deal with the deeper issues that so often hold us back from this newness of life that Jesus promises us.

There’s a process of transformation that we go through to ditch the hang-ups and the sins of the past, so that we can actually experience this fresh new life that Jesus promises. Theologians call it sanctification. I don’t like that word; it feels too hoity-toity for me. I prefer rehabilitation or restoration; being transformed little by little back into the image of God, our Creator. And for most of us, certainly for me, that requires a series of not-so-minor miracles because there are things deep engrained in our nature that we cannot deal with on our own, things that only God can deal with by His power and His love.

Chances are, you have a bit of a handle on the things that are robbing you of this newness of life. With me, it used to be anger and pride was my Achilles heel. You learn to live with it, but you always realise it’s robbing you of life. You have your own brand of … well … let’s call it for what it is – sin, that’s robbing you of your life, and Jesus came to set you free. Jesus came to give you an abundant life! Jesus came so that you could experience a newness of life, that completely defies understanding.

So let me ask you: Do you want that newness of life? Do you want His miracle-makeover to be happening in your life? Well, the miraculous transformation that Jesus brings is for you. It’s real; it’s today; so often we ask God for a miracle out there somewhere: ‘God, change that person; intervene in that situation; provide for me in this venture; God, help me; protect me; save me’. Come on; that’s fine, but the greatest miracle of all is the newness of life, the total transformation of our lives, that Jesus alone brings.