Miracles and the Cross
Job 38:1-11 and Mark 4:35-41
June 24, 2018 – Redeemer
Whenever Jesus does a miracle don’t forget His cross. You don’t want an Almighty God without mercy.
Consider Job in today’s Old Testament reading. Job was a righteous man. He believed in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But then the Devil went to God and said, “It’s easy for Job to believe – after all He is rich. His children are grown up and happily married. He feasts with them every day. He has a wealth of land and animals.” Even though Job lived to be a hundred and forty years old, at his yearly physical his doctor kept telling him – you have the heart of 90 year old.
God gave the Devil permission to take everything away and in one day Job lost all his children, all his servants, animals, and land. All God spared was Job’s health, but then the Devil wanted that too. You know what they say, “If you don’t have your health you don’t have anything.” So Satan afflicted him with open sores all over his body. Job’s wife gave up on God. “Curse God and die,” she said, but Job would not. He did however lament that he was ever born. Why would God allow him to suffer all this? Job complained, but he didn’t curse God. After thirty some chapters of Job and his friends trying to figure God out, God Himself answers their questions and complaints.
Before we get to God’s answer to Job, let’s consider miracles for a moment. First – what is a miracle? A miracle is a highly unusual event. Like God creating the whole world out of nothing. There wasn’t anything. He spoke and there was everything from yellow bellied sapsuckers to a man and a woman to the Rocky Mountains and Niagara Falls. Don’t try this for lunch. Don’t go to the table and say, “Let there be food.” It would be highly unusual for everything to appear out of nothing. A storm rises on the Sea of Galilee so fierce that lifelong fisherman panic. The storm is silenced by one man’s voice. Don’t try that the next time you’re caught in a storm. A miracle is when a doctor diagnoses you with incurable cancer and then six months later the doctor says, “I have no explanation. Your cancer has completely disappeared.”
What do the miracles teach us? Whoever performs a miracle is Someone with far greater power than us. As Christians we believe that miracles show us the power and might of God alone.
So, back to Job. Would it be in your best interest to complain to Someone with almighty power? Should you complain to the police officer who just pulled you over for speeding? Should you complain to your boss who has the power to fire you? Job stands before the Almighty God and God answers Job with power, “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements – surely you know! … Who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb? … and said, ‘Thus far you shall come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stayed.’?”
We all want a God who can work miracles. When a child is born with severe physical problems we want a powerful God to fix what we cannot. When we are in the pit of depression we want to be pulled out immediately without counseling, medicine, or a change in behavior. When a life changing accident happens we want God to roll back time and take it away.
But shouldn’t we fear a God who wields such power? Who was Job to be asking God what He was up to? And who are you to expect God to come to your defense and use His power for your benefit? After all what have you done with the gifts God gave you? How have you treated your body? Your wife? Your neighbor? Your work? Your church? You’ve worshipped the good gifts of creation more than the Creator who made them. You’ve looked for life in what you desire instead of what God desires. You have chosen to sin knowing the consequences and then expect God to deliver you without any conditions. What makes you think God would use His almighty power for you and not against you?
The Cross. The miracles and might of God dare not be taught and believed apart from the cross. Jesus stopped the storm on the Sea of Galilee, even though the disciples woke Him from a well-deserved nap. Even though the disciples in the boat were sinners. One of them would betray him, another would deny him. They were opposed to His mission and were more concerned about their own benefits than His work. Those men deserved to drown for their sins. Yet they dared to wake Jesus and look to Him for miraculous deliverance.
Why? Well, they know Him and they’ve seen His power at work – He used His power against Satan and cast out unclean spirits. He used His power against death by chasing away fevers and cleansing lepers. By His almighty command demons went mute and paralytics started walking. The most amazing display of His power was when He forgave sin – by calling Matthew (a no good, dirty rotten, Roman loving tax collector) to be His disciple and when He forgave the paralyzed man.
In every act of mercy and kindness that the disciples witnessed, they were being given a foretaste of the cross. Every evil that assaults body and soul and creation is the result sin. Volcanos erupt and floods drown and cancer spreads because of sin. It is your fault, your own fault, your own most grievous fault. It requires a miracle to forgive sin, to undo our rebellion against God.
And so it is that God becomes man, the Word is made flesh and dwells among us. The infinite is confined to the finite. In Jesus the Almighty God empties Himself of all power and might to bear your sin and have your most mighty enemies attack Him. All your sin, your death, your hell goes against Jesus. The Almighty God dies and that is the only reason you know that He is for you.
Every miracle flows from the cross, to the cross, and through the cross. Not once in the New Testament do we ever see Jesus use His power for evil. It is always for good, for your good. That is because the Almighty God is good. Right now this man who was conceived in the womb of Mary sits in power over all things. This man who laid down His life for you has been given the Almighty power of God through the union of God and man in one person. So go ahead and ask for a miracle. Jesus can do it or He might not. But never, ever believe that He is against you. If there’s never a miracle in your life (and remember, they are rare events) that does not mean God doesn’t love you. The cross, not miracles, tells you what the Almighty thinks of you and does for you. That’s why the disciples were not afraid to wake Jesus in the storm and why you should never hesitate to awaken your heavenly Father with your prayers and ask for Him to exercise His power.
About halfway through the book of Job Job makes this memorable confession, “I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last He will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another.” Even as Job complains before the almighty God he is given a glimpse beyond the cross – to the resurrection and the life that comes through the miracle of forgiveness. God will restore everything Job lost either in time or in eternity – and it will be a miracle. Job can depend on that because by faith he sees the cross and believes in the name of Jesus. Amen.
Pr. Bruce Timm
June 23, 2018 anno Domini