... to what in many ways I think is the most fun of the questions that we're going to be talking about.

And if you've stuck with me this long, I trust that you're going to enjoy it with me. How can I accept miracles?

And it seems to me that when we raise that question, there's usually a suppressed clause in it. It really is, how can I accept miracles in the light of modern-day scientific finding or a modern-day worldview? As if to say, that used to be no problem in previous ages when men didn't know as much as they do today. In a pre-scientific age, people were a lot more gullible and could accept things by faith. But today, we have the assured results of modern science, and it seems that they would contradict the whole idea of miracles, and in particular, specific miracles recorded in the Bible.

Now, I'm not, in fact, so sure that people were all that gullible in previous ages. I note with interest, for instance, that when Joseph heard that Mary was pregnant, And she told him that it was by divine action.

He was no more gullible about that than you would have been if your intended came to you and said that.

He may not have known as much as modern day science could tell you about how babies are conceived, but he knew perfectly well that virgins didn't get pregnant every day. And he had a real problem with it. So I think we ought to be a little hesitant about accepting that quite so quickly. Two things by way of introductory comment. First of all, science seems to me to keep changing its mind. When we talk about the assured results of modern science, they look not all that assured when you really stop to think about it.

Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Einstein, they all in their various generations thought that they had the final word on whatever their particular inquiry was, and in every single instance we've had to revise their theories. So what is it that you're referring to when you speak of the assured results of modern science? It may be that there are footnotes to be added as we continue to make investigation and inquiry.

somebody has calculated that at least 95% of the scientists who ever lived in the history of the world are alive today.

Now, I don't know if that's true, but if that's anywhere near true, then you get an insight into how very little scientific certainty we have, how much more there is yet to discover and refine. So that's the first caveat on the statement, the assured results of modern science. I'm not just confident that they're also assured. Secondly, when science does appear to conflict with scripture, it may be that we have misunderstood the scripture. And we've found that happening over and over again. In other words, it appears there's a conflict.

The first thing I'm saying is I'm not prepared to just swallow whole whatever the scientists tell me. Because that may not be the last word on the subject. But even if it is, even if we could be absolutely certain of a given scientific insight,

and that appears to be in contradiction with the scripture, it may be that we have misunderstood the scripture. It may be that we need to go back and re-examine what it really said, and discard our false understanding of it rather than saying the scripture itself was wrong. You understand the difference between those two things. I'll give you some examples of that in a few minutes. I want to share with you two fundamental tenets tonight, if you like, two philosophical tenets that seem to me to really speak to the whole issue of the miraculous.

There may be many others equally important, but these two really stand out in my understanding. I'm not an expert, but I was a philosophy major, for whatever that's worth. Number one, I would suggest to you, I would make as a thesis for you tonight, that science cannot, in and of itself, not pure science, not if it's true science, It cannot exclude the possibility of miracle.

Because by its very nature, science operates by observation. The scientific method is a method of observation. We begin to see apparent relationships. A happens, and every time it happens, B follows, or so it seems. And we begin to observe a relationship, an apparent relationship between A and B. And so we put forward a thesis that A is somehow causally related to B, and then we begin to test that thesis.

And the pure scientist will test his hypothesis by setting up laboratory experiments that will hold various elements of the formula constant while other elements of the formula are changed and see where the real relationship lies. That's how science makes its observations. That's how it works. Now, miracle, and we'll come to a broader definition of this in a few minutes, But miracle would be an interruption of that apparent pattern of constancy that instead of B always inevitably following A, under certain circumstances it doesn't. It's an interruption or a setting aside or an overriding of that relationship of cause and effect.

My point is that science cannot rule that out by definition because it's a matter of observation. The technical word, maybe you know this, is a priori,

which means before the experience. Science cannot say before the experience of observing it that a given thing is impossible, cannot ever happen because it is by observation. Let me put it this way. Let's say something very simple, the law of gravity. Newton discovered one morning when an apple fell on his nose, he was dozing under the apple tree, that there was such a thing as a law of gravity.

He began looking around, rubbing his sore nose, and it appeared that apples always fall to the ground. Now, you could set up any number of experiments to test that. How many apples do you have to see fall before you conclude it's a law, that when you loose an apple from the tree, it will fall? Ten? A hundred? Ten thousand?

okay it may be that you can observe 10 billion apples falling and every single time that you cut the apple loose from the tree down it goes but can you say that an apple will always without question fall to the ground no you can't make that kind of a prediction there may in fact turn out to be some circumstance under which the apple one cut from the tree will not fall to the ground all you know is that all of your past experience has been uniform to this point okay that's all you can know scientifically when the scientists and for that matter the philosophers talk about a law all that they mean by that is an observed relationship that it seems to happen every time and every time we've looked and checked it, it has in fact happened. But you can't possibly make a prediction about the future.

Now there may be a probability factor, okay, that the more times you see the apple fall, the more certain you become that yes, as a matter of fact, that is a causal relationship. Okay, after four or five or six billion times, you're more certain than the first time. All right, but you're still not able to predict with absolute certainty that it will always happen. There may come some sort of another unexpected factor that would change that.

Okay? You understand what I'm saying? You cannot, if the scientific method operates by observation, all you can do is talk about the past experience. You can't predict for the future, not with certainty. Okay? Take another example. If, in fact, there have been something on the order of four billion men and women who have ever lived on the face of the earth, and every one of them up to this point has lived and died and molded in the grave, you cannot with certainty predict that there won't be one who will come along who dies and is put in the grave and comes back out again.

You can't do that. Because there may be some other factors that impinge upon that normal course of events. all right and that's exactly what the christian claim is that one man did and as a matter of fact he wasn't the only one there were others so what we have to do at that point is go back and re-examine our formula re-examine whether we in fact had accounted for all the variables and we may discover we didn't it may even in a given circumstance turn out to be simply an accident a horrendous accident that every time A happened B followed it but as a matter of fact there was no connection between the two that is possible that's the first thesis that I would share with you that if science operates by observation it cannot with certainty exclude the possibility of a miracle because we haven't observed that yet all right the pseudo scientist the kind of man in the street scientist the man who knows just a little bit out of high school science and plugs that in as a justification for his unbelief he'll say such and such cannot happen that's the pseudo scientist the true scientist will make no such statement not if he's true to his own science what he'll say what he may say the most he would say is such and such cannot happen without a cause you catch the difference

the apple could not float away into the heavens without a cause that's what the scientist will hold out for that events are not strictly random that every event has a cause and he will immediately begin looking for a cause to explain that phenomenon. You understand what I'm saying? That's the basis of true science and at that point, I don't think the believer has any conflict with it whatsoever. The believer would say, yes, it absolutely is true that virgins don't get pregnant except in this particular instance.

And there's another cause here outside of the normal flow of events. It is absolutely true that dead men don't get up again, except in this particular instance over here, and there's another factor to be accounted for.

Secondly, the second thesis deals with what is technically called naturalism.

And the opposite of naturalism is supernaturalism. Naturalism is any philosophy which attempts to say the system is closed. The universe, as we encounter it, is a closed system. Nothing can penetrate it from outside. Nothing from outside it can affect its internal workings. Naturalists would differ with each other in terms of their specific philosophies. most of them would say that the universe is limited to those realities which we can perceive with our five senses. What we can see, smell, taste, touch, hear, that's it.

There ain't no more. Most naturalists are materialists. The physical matter out there is all there is. But even if you're not strictly a materialist, a naturalist is one who would say there can be no external cause effecting the internal workings of the universe. And that's really what the debate is all about. Whether or not there is someone or something who is outside the normal flow of cause and effect as we encounter it through our five senses who can effect the internal workings of the universe.

That's what the debate is about. The Christian says yes. Any supernaturalist says yes. And the naturalist would say no. I want to suggest to you tonight that naturalism by itself is self-contradictory.

It is not an adequate explanation of the universe. And it breaks down at a number of points. The simplest argument comes from a man named J.B.S. Haldane, and he wrote a book a number of years ago called Possible Worlds, and he reduces the whole argument to this. He says, If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain,

then I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true.

If that's all my mind is, is a matter of atoms, or we would say electrons, rearranging themselves in my brain, all right, that's a strictly mechanical process. There's no rationality that emerges from that. If my apparent rationality is in the last analysis nothing more or less than a mechanical process,

then I have no reason for supposing my beliefs are true. But, if I have no reason for supposing my beliefs are true, then I have no basis for accepting naturalism.

All right? If the universe is simply one big, incredibly complicated machine, machine. All right? There is no thinking being outside of it who brought it into being. There is no mind. There is no morality. It's just the universe. It's just there. All right?

There's no God. There's no supreme mind behind it. There certainly is no supreme lawgiver behind it. It's just there, and it's one massive machine. I'm part of that machine. All right? My mind is part of that machine. And if we can account for that strictly in terms of a naturalistic explanation of the universe, then we have to account for my mind in those terms. We reduce my mind to a machine.

Atoms, electrons rearranging themselves, amino acids sloshing around in gray matter. All right? But that makes my mind irrational. if my mind is irrational I have no basis for accepting my beliefs if I have no basis for accepting my beliefs I can't say anything about the nature of the world alright that's a problem isn't it C.S. Lewis put it a different way same point slightly differently in mere Christianity he said if the whole universe has no meaning

we should never have found out that it has no meaning. Just as if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes we should never have known that it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.

Let me ask you does a fish know what it is to be wet?

I suspect not unless he's a flying fish. If you know no variation if you know no contrast. Wet doesn't have any meaning. That's all there is. There's nothing to contrast it with. I had a friend in college who was born blind, completely, totally blind.

And we became quite close and had a lot of fairly personal discussions. And I remember asking him one day, I said, Bob, when you hear people describing colors to you, talking about the sunrise, talking about a rainbow. What comes to your mind? Are you able to form any mental picture of colors? And he said, John, I can't conceive of what light is.

How do you expect me to understand color?

It's completely absent from him. Now let me challenge you to do something. You can imagine, just barely, what it would be like to be deprived of one of your senses. You can imagine what it would be like to have no sensitivity to light or color, or to sound, right? Or to taste, or whatever.

I challenge you to imagine what it would be like to have a sixth sense. You can't do it. At least I can't do it. Any more than you could understand light In terms of hearing. You can't do it. It's another dimension. Right? Now supposing that the universe, instead of being the material, physical world that we encounter through our five senses, supposing that there is a sixth dimension.

If only we had some way of perceiving it. Or a seventh. Or an eighth. Or a two hundredth. I mean, you can imagine a world in which there were any number of additional senses but nothing whatsoever forms in your mind, right?

And so, when we begin to talk about miracles, it may be that what we're talking about is simply the fact that the universe is more complicated than we are able to perceive with our five senses. just as Bob knows that the universe is more complicated than he is able to perceive with his four senses. He knows that, unless everybody else around him is lying to him.

Naturalism doesn't account for that possibility. Naturalism says it's a closed system. Naturalism, in essence, and I'm using this word now to be the alternative of supernaturalism. Here's what you would have to accept to be a thoroughgoing naturalist. You would have to say that out of nothing came something. For no reason. There was nothing there, and then suddenly there was something there. For no reason whatsoever.

It just happened. It is totally unaccountable. Out of nothing there came matter and energy. Alright? Out of energy and matter, given eons of time, somehow simplicity began to beget complexity. Things became organized, became differentiated, became more and more and more complex.

Out of complexity, inanimate matter, just stuff, began to live. No reason. It just happened. Life was produced where there was none.

Life, which was irrational, it was just alive, which means able to reproduce itself, began to think.

Purposelessness begat duty

and the instinct for self-preservation

somehow was transcended and gave way to a universal sense of obligation to our neighbor. Every culture that the world has ever known has agreed with the golden rule. That's what you would have to accept if you were going to be a thoroughgoing naturalist. There is no one outside guiding this whole process.

At every single step, it just plain happened. That the irrational, the sub-rational somehow began to think. That the unfeeling somehow became sensitive. That the purposeless developed a sense of duty and obligation, of morality, of value, even of love. Have you ever stopped to think about the self-contradiction of Darwinian naturalism? The evolutionary thing by itself. I'm not arguing that species can change, but by itself, as a total explanation,

Darwinian evolution says that the whole process of change is based on the survival of the fittest. That is the principal driving force in the evolution of species, the survival of the fittest. And yet here, at the end of the whole process, man emerges, all right, the fittest of the fittest, presumably, and somehow universally agrees that the fittest have an obligation to aid the weak.

How do you account for that? Where did that come from? It's a total contradiction of the very principle on which man is supposed to have emerged.

I'm not, by any means, a scientist, but my understanding of the two fundamental laws of thermodynamics, and if there are some scientists here, maybe you'll correct me on this, but my understanding of the two laws of thermodynamics, simply put, are this, that the amount of available energy in any given system is always tending towards zero.

To translate that into our popular terms, what it means is things fall apart.

Things fall apart. that all of thermodynamics consistently are based upon the fundamental perception that things left to themselves do not get more and more refined, do not get more and more complex, but fall apart. They rust, they wear out, they get old, they die, they decay, they fall apart.

The notion that a universe which began from nothing and has become this rich world of multi-being, interrelationship, rationality and value is a total contradiction of that basic perception. Naturalism is incomplete. It cannot explain how things got started. It cannot explain what sustains the universe. Just think of this. if it's true that things do fall apart, then wherever you date the beginning, it would have eons ago collapsed.

I mean, how long is eternity?

Unimaginable. Supposing that it all happened somehow, it would have fallen apart unimaginably long ago.

Naturalism cannot explain any meaning, cannot give any meaning to things. It's just plain, at best, one horrendous accident. It just plain happened. That has led in the 20th century, amongst the atheists, the unbelievers, and the naturalists, to a very widespread, if not universal, feeling of despair. People like Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Bertrand Russell.

Despair, the hopelessness, the emptiness, the purposelessness. Bertrand Russell put it this way. he said no fire no spark no heroism no intensity of thought and feeling can save us all the labors of the ages all the devotion all the inspiration all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction in the vast death of the universe the whole temple of man's achievement must be buried beneath the debris of a world in ruins

there's no God there's no meaning there's no purpose it's all going to fall apart it's all an illusion sorry about that I know that you think you're in love but that's just a chemical process I know that you think you're rational sorry about that that's just electrons rearranging themselves in your head I know you think that there are some fundamental values behind society it's all an accident has no meaning whatsoever.

It's here for a flickering instant. It'll collapse and be forgotten. There'll be no one to remember, no one even to observe. That's the self-contradiction of naturalism. And if it has no meaning, then what possible meaning can it have to say that it has no meaning?

All right?

The paradox of the whole situation You take men, and I want to tell you, I respect the intellect of a Bertrand Russell or a Jean-Paul Sartre, but both of them, leading exponents of this sort of a way of life, got involved toward the end of their lives with protesting nuclear armaments. Now just think about that for a minute. Here's Bertrand Russell who says it has absolutely no meaning whatsoever. There is no value, and he's throwing himself in front of nuclear submarines just before they're to be launched to protest. The immorality of it.

Where did his notion of immorality come from? There's no value if there's no purpose, if there's no meaning.

Well, those two statements then, by way of a negative attack, that naturalism is an incomplete explanation and that science by itself cannot rule out the possibility of miracle. All it can do is talk about the experiences which we have observed. It can make no statement about the future and about the possibility that there may be some other factor that would change the formula. Now there's another kind of a question that needs to be raised and I would put it this way, it's a literary question.

When you come to the Bible

and you read some of the accounts within it, It may be that what you're dealing with is not, in fact, a miracle story at all, but it's some other kind of literature. We need to raise a literary critical question. A lot of people fail to make that distinction. This is not, in fact, one book. It's 66 books written over a period of about 3,000 years. Okay? Within those 66 books, you have every imaginable kind of literature.

You do have history. You do have biography and narrative, but you also have poetry, allegory, parable. You have symbolism. You have metaphor, illusion. You have contrast. You have hyperbole.

All right? And we need to sit down and do some hard work. This is not a question of whether or not something could conceivably happen if there's a God, but simply what sort of literature are we dealing with? For instance, when Isaiah says the trees clap their hands, I have no problem with that. I understand immediately that's a poetic statement, that the trees are moving with the breezes that blow through them, and it's as if they were joining in the applause for God, their Creator.

It's a poetic statement. It's not a statement of the miraculous. When Jesus gives the parable of the good Samaritan, I understand immediately what he's doing. He's telling me a story in order to illustrate a point. He's not saying that there was, in fact, a man who did that particular thing. When he talks about forgiving my brother 70 times 7 and illustrates it with the parable of the unjust steward, the guy who is forgiven a debt of $10 million and turns around and refuses to forgive his friend who owes him $20, again, I understand, that's hyperbole.

That's super exaggeration in order to make a point. When the book of Revelation tells me that the streets of heaven are paved with gold. I understand that to be a metaphor for the purity and the splendor of it. Heaven is obvious, whatever heaven is, it's a spiritual dimension. And I don't get hung up on whether we're talking about 14 or 21 carat. Alright?

Sometimes it's not so easy to tell what you're dealing with. You come to the book of Jonah, which somehow seems to give more people more trouble than almost any other. And what people are hung up on in the story of Jonah is the possibility of somebody living through being swallowed by, and it does not say a whale, a great fish. Leviathan is the best translation of it. A sea monster, if you will. All right? But if you go back and read that story for yourself, I think you'll immediately discover that the point of the book of Jonah is not the miracle story.

The point of the book of Jonah is that God's mercy would extend even to the heathen in Nineveh. It's not reserved exclusively for the children of Israel. That's the point of the book. All right? So then we have to raise the question, what then is the function of the story of the miracle?

Is it a piece of history which we're supposed to take literally, or is it, again, a parable or an illustration that just as a man lived through this experience of being swallowed by a sea monster, so the people of Nineveh could have been swallowed by the wrath of God, but instead were spared?

Which is it? I'm not sure. I'm not sure on literary grounds. Okay? Now frankly, personally, I have absolutely no problem thinking that God could create a sea monster or a great fish or a whale or whatever it was and that somebody could live through the experience of being swallowed by him if that's what God wanted to do.

I mean, if there's a God, surely he could do that. That's not even a very big miracle. Nowhere near as big as the virgin birth. Nowhere near as big as the resurrection. if that's what he wanted to do. But I'm not sure on literary grounds that that's what the literature is asking me to believe. Do you understand the difference?

We know, as a matter of fact, that during violent storms, the sperm whale will often swallow its young and spit them out unharmed when the storm has passed.

There have been instances of precisely that happening to human beings reported in the National Geographic.

So if it was a miracle, it certainly wasn't a very big miracle. Okay? The question is, what did God intend me to understand by that? Is the fish literal or is he symbolic?

Psalm 115 verse 3 says, Our God is in the heavens. He does whatever he pleases. That's really the issue. If there is a God, then miracle is no problem. If there isn't, then why are we talking about it?

Come to the story of creation. And that's probably the second biggest problem for most people because they're absolutely convinced that if science tells us anything, it tells us that the world was not created in six literal days in 4004 B.C., right?

Number one, the Bible itself doesn't say 4004 B.C. That was Archbishop Usher, who added up all the genealogies and worked it out. The problem with that is that we know for a fact that the genealogies are not complete. There may have been any number of gaps in them, okay? But beyond all of that question, the whole argument pivots on the meaning of one word, day.

What is a day? Well, in every instance in the Old Testament where that word is used, it does mean a 24-hour period. Okay.

24 hours measured by the earth alternatively facing toward and away from the sun. That's how we measure 24 hours. The problem is that when you read Genesis 1 and you attempt to use that meaning of the word day, you immediately run into a problem. because if it's to be measured by the earth alternatively facing toward and away from the sun you notice that the sun isn't created until the fourth day.

Both Old and New Testaments say a day with the Lord is as a thousand years and a thousand years is as a day. Could it not be in that particular instance that this word which everywhere else means a normal everyday day in that day simply means a period of time

it's at least arguable and if that's what it means take the blinders off friends look at what we read in the book of Genesis that beginning with the aquatic and lower plant life we move up a scale of being to the higher animals and finally at the end of the process to man himself.

Isn't that what evolution claims?

No conflict. Except that where evolution cannot go beyond the closed system and give us any account of how it began or what guided it or what meaning it has, the creation story says, in the beginning, God.

It goes beyond the closed system of naturalism and finds a first cause, a sustaining cause, and a meaning in the whole process.

Second chapter of Genesis retells the creation of Adam and Eve.

The rabbis have from time immemorial taken that statement to be a poetic way of describing the relationship between husband and wife. It talks about the rib being taken out of Adam's side and Eve created from it. And the rabbis have said for centuries, this is to illustrate that woman was not taken from man's head to dominate him, nor from his feet to be trodden down by him, but from his side to be his partner. What sort of literature are we dealing with? Do you see what I mean? There's a distinction between the question of could it have happened that way, which is a philosophical question, And the literary critical question, what sort of literature, what sort of genre of literature are we dealing with?

Now, if you could demonstrate to me, beyond any question, that Genesis 2, in the discussion of Eve being taken from Adam's side, is a historical statement, I personally have no philosophical problem with it. I believe that God could have done it that way, without any problem. But I'm just not sure on the literary question that that's what I'm supposed to understand from that passage.

Fortunately,

though all of the argument concerns those sorts of things, they really are peripheral to the issue. When you come to the guts of the matter, there is no such room for ambiguity.

The central issue, and we said this last week, I'll just repeat it for those who weren't here, the central issue of the New Testament and therefore of the Bible as a whole from a Christian point of view is the claim that Jesus rose from the dead. There is no room for doubt about that one as to what it was intended by the disciples. This was not a parable. This was not an allegory. This was not a metaphor.

This was not a way of saying something symbolically. They bent over backward to be clear. that they were claiming to be eyewitnesses to a literal, physical, flesh and blood resurrection from the dead in point of time and space history. That's the issue. Nobody was ever saved on the basis of whether he believed that the world was created in six days or not. Nobody was ever damned because he disbelieved in the story of Jonah. Those may, in fact, be part of your total view of scripture, but those are not the central issue.

The central issue is who is Jesus. And the central proof for his claim to divinity is the resurrection. And there's no ambiguity about that as to what they intended, as to what sort of literature it is.

Okay, so finally, we come to a definition. What then is miracle?

Miracle is an interruption of the normal course of events by the imposition on it

of some previously undetected or not yet fully understood additional causative influence.

You'll have to write that down. That's the how definition. I'll give it to you again. A miracle is an interruption of the normal course of events by the imposition on it of a previously undetected or not yet understood additional causative influence. With the scientist, we believe that things don't just plain happen with no cause behind them.

But we're prepared to say that God, who stands outside of the closed system, can influence it, and can interrupt the normal flow of events, if he chooses to. In that regard, I note that it's the timing and the consequences of a given event that make it miraculous, just as much and maybe even more so than the event itself. For instance, the parting of the Red Sea. It may be that if we were there with all of our weather detecting equipment and all of our geological equipment and all of our 20th century scientists, if we were there, we would have been able to describe how God did it.

Great wind, earth upheaval, or what have you. The moon moving too close in some sort of an aberration of its orbit and somehow upheaval and the water parted. It may be that we could have explained how it happened. But what's miraculous about it is that it happened when the Israelites needed it. And then immediately they got through it, collapsed again on the Egyptians. That's what makes it a miracle. Not whether or not you can explain it. All right?

And finally,

miracle literally simply means sign. That's what it means. You'll sometimes find it translated that way. A sign. But a sign of what? a sign of two things invariably two things one god is at work here god is present in this circumstance or more specifically if it's a miracle of jesus the fact that jesus in doing this is one in the same with god the father in his divinity one god is at work and two it tells us something of the character of God, what sort of a God he is, what his style of relating to people and their needs are.

It's important, I think, that you understand that the Bible is not a book of continuous miracle. We have that perception sometimes, but that's not true. It's in fact a book of clusters of miracles, and there are four primary clusters of them. The first one is around the time of the Exodus. The beginning of Israel's history was attended by supernatural dramatic interruptions of the normal flow of events by the power of God.

Again, at the beginning of Israel's prophetic age with Elijah and Elisha, both of them, the first two major prophets, are attended by supernatural signs and wonders, underscoring the validity of their message. Thirdly, around the time of Jesus and just prior to him, just after him, the apostolic age was a time of miracle. And fourthly, it's prophesied that as the end of the Christian era draws to a close, as it comes near, that there will be again an outpouring of supernatural demonstration of who God is.

And many of us believe that we're living in the beginning of such a period, that once again the Holy Spirit is doing wondrous things in our generation which have never been completely absent, but which have not been as dominant throughout the history of the church as they were at its beginning and will be at its end. In the midst of all those, you see these two things. Wherever there's miracle, one, it's a sign pointing to who God is, to the fact that he's there, and secondly, to telling us something about his character.

So that when Jesus, for instance, heals somebody, it always has a two-fold effect. One is to underscore his claim to be God incarnate. But two, it's an expression of his love.

I care about you. I want to meet your need. I want to restore the sight to the blind, the hearing to the deaf. Let the lame man leap for joy. Let the leper be cleansed, and so on. So it tells us who God is, and it tells us what he's like. That's what a miracle is. And I want to close with this statement of Jesus. As a defense of himself when he was questioned by the Pharisees and other skeptics in the fifth chapter of John's Gospel, he makes this statement.

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 he does that the son does likewise for the father loves the son and shows him all that he himself is doing and greater works than these will he show him that you may marvel jesus claim for himself is that i am doing precisely the same thing that my father is doing i can do nothing in fact of my own accord but only what he's doing that i do likewise now I'm not going to take the time to develop this but I'll just allude to it we've talked about this some of us in previous lectures I just would challenge you to think through the miracles of Jesus for instance every summer

God sends the rain waters the earth, plants send down roots, drink up the moisture over the course of the summer translate it into fruit fruit ripens, we go out and harvest the fruit at the end of the season one kind of fruit we love to harvest is grapes we squeeze the grapes we get grape juice we let more time go by it ferments it becomes wine and if it's a good year we're very glad now notice what's happened in the course of a season water has been transformed into wine

only it went by so slowly so gradually that you may not have noticed it you may not have ever thought it was a miracle you may have said well that's just the way it is until God himself steps onto the stage of human history and in an instant does the same thing changes water into wine and suddenly it's a sign and the sign has a two-fold purpose

to show us that Jesus is in fact one and the same with the God who is doing that every season, faithfully, year after year. And two,

it ought to bring us to the realization that every time we drink a glass of wine, we're in the presence of this same one who walked the shores of Galilee.

Every year we plant a few grains of corn in the ground, And the sun comes down on them and the rain comes down and the harvest grows and they become a whole field full of corn. And we go out and we harvest the corn and we mill it and we make bread out of it. And a little corn has become much corn. A little bread, if you will, has become much bread. That's just the way it is. There's nothing special about that. Until the Son of God steps onto the stage of human history and takes a little bread and makes much bread of it and feeds a multitude.

every year a couple of fish get together and produce a multitude of fish no miracle until God's son takes a couple of fish and feeds 5,000 do you see what I'm saying? it's striking to me that there is absolutely nothing capricious or arbitrary about the miracles of Jesus what we find him doing consistently compare this with the miracle stories of any other world religion you'd be amazed they are like fairy tales by comparison things flying around for no purpose serving no good end meeting no real need just a sheer demonstration of naked power Jesus consistently does the same thing that the father is doing he may do it on a different scale he does it at a different speed but he's doing the same thing the father is doing and he's doing it consistently to meet the real needs of people around him

so what is a miracle? a miracle is a sign that this is in fact God and it shows us something of what he's like it is not a total abrogation of the laws of nature but it's the imposition on them of a higher law One that we perhaps haven't previously noticed or don't yet fully understand. But being good scientists, we would be prepared to say that when we understand all of the factors, we'd be able to explain it,

except perhaps in its timing.

And except perhaps in its ultimate meaning.

Because for those things, you have to look beyond the system.

And that's where we come to God. How can I accept miracles? By accepting the one who works them.

If there's a God, that's precisely what we'd expect.

Let's just bow our heads for a minute.

Lord God, we've covered a great deal of territory in a brief time tonight.

And I would dare to ask you that that which is truly of you, you would allow to settle in our minds and hearts and build our sense of confidence in your word and anything which is mere human speculation

you would allow to drop by the wayside.

Help us to see that the central issue is simply the question of whether or not you exist and that there is no way that science by itself in examining the physical world can answer that question.

except you come amongst us and reveal yourself to us. We pray this in your name. Amen. Amen.