A few thoughts as I’ve reflected today. Few things shock me. Charlie Kirk being assassinated in public today shocked me.
-I saw the infamous video. I wish I hadn’t. It’s disturbing. To my untrained eye, I thought “I know doctors can do amazing things but I don’t think that’s survivable.” He never had a chance.
-Many have said truly wicked things about him and showed a lack of compassion and concern about his death. To borrow an idea from a friend, that says a lot more about those people than it says about Charlie Kirk. We have a lot of Bolsheviks in our society.
-You can disagree with 100% of the things he said and believed and that’s fine. Charlie Kirk was also willing to take his message to the people and to engage with those who vehemently disagreed. There’s not enough of that in our society. He was willing to have honest conversations and an assassin decided to silence him.
-I’m most saddened for his daughters. It’s a tragedy for anyone to lose a parent. It would have been sad if Charlie Kirk had died in a car accident today. But he didn’t. He was publicly executed and that’s now part of their story. -Tomorrow is never promised.
Last night when Charlie Kirk went to sleep, he had no idea that today would be his last day of life. 24 years ago tonight, thousands of Americans went to bed with the same concern being the furthest thing from their minds.
Photo credit. Photo courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons. Photo taken by Gage Skidmore.
In John 14:8, the Apostle Phillip says: Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.
For many of us, that’s a relatable request. I think we all have times where God can seem distant or hard to find.
One of the ways God is made known is through miracles.
As Jesus continues to respond to Philip, he says in John 14:11: Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves.
For this post, I want to focus on the second part of that verse. Where Jesus tells Philip to believe on the account of his works. Now under the umbrella of works, it could certainly be the righteous life Jesus lived and the teaching that he gave.
But within John, I think the works more specifically refers to his miraculous signs. That those are what authenticate a heaven-sent ministry in the world.
The first sign that Jesus does in John’s Gospel is when he turns water into wine at the Wedding Feast at Cana. And in response, John’s Gospel gives the post-script:
John 2:11: This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him.
Jesus did not turn water into wine simply to help out at a wedding feast but it was a display of his glory. And all throughout the first half of John, we see these signs that Jesus does. Healing the sick, feeding multitudes, walking on water. And before going to the cross, his greatest sign is when he raises Lazarus from the dead in John 11.
All of them done for specific reasons in pointing to Jesus, who he is, and the heavenly ministry he was advancing in the world. They show his power and dominion. They show fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies of the things which would happen in a Messianic age.
They confirm and authenticate who Jesus is. And so in Jesus’ response to Philip, what he is telling Philip is that those miraculous signs are a legitimate reasons to believe in Jesus.
And certainly the greatest miracle of Jesus, his resurrection from the dead was still to come. Miracles are a reason why we too can believe in the Lord. The resurrection is the basis for our faith and what we believe. It is the heart of the gospel and the purpose of the gospel. It’s the greatest authenticator on Jesus, who he was, who he said he was, and the fulfillment of his promises to the world. And it because of his resurrection that we have the hope of eternal life and the forgiveness of our sins.
Just as Jesus told the apostle Philip to look at his works, that we too can look at his works and his greatest work as a reason to believe as an example of God revealing himself to the world.
“Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.”
God is still at work in our world. Miracles still happen today.
Miracles
I’ll define a miracle as an extraordinary event with supernatural intervention intended for divine purposes. Miracles defy explanation along scientific or rational grounds. They’re transcendent.
A 2010 Pew research study found that 80 percent of Americans believe in miracles. A 2004 survey by Louis Finkelstein for the Institute for Religious and Social Studies of the Jewish Theological Seminary surveyed 1,100 doctors and found that three-fourths of them believed in miracles and more than half thought that they had witnessed a miracle.
Doctors. Who are the most highly educated people in our society and who are also those who are those who are treating those battling sicknesses and diseases. In another survey, 38 percent of Americans claim to have personally experienced a miracle.
That’s tens of millions of people. Are all of those legitimate miracles? Probably not. But there are mysterious and undocumented healings and situations that defy medical explanation.
I’m not talking about some prosperity gospel preaching faith healer charlton who’s enriching himself or herself to a crowded auditorium in doing a glorified magic show that they call faith healings.
But what about the people who are under medical supervision and they experience healings that defy medical explanation and which run contrary to how human bodies respond to treatment?
Miracles should be an encouragement to us. They should give us hope that God is working and active in the world. When we’re tempted to mirror the words of Philip and say: show us the Father, and it is enough for us
We have the miraculous signs during the ministry of Jesus and the ways in which the Lord intervenes in the world today. And so I’d like to share two miraculous stories.
A pastor healed in real time
Duane Miller was a pastor in Texas who came down with a case of the flu in 1990.
Preaching on Sunday, his throat was bothering him and his voice sounded hoarse and scratchy. He eventually recovered from the flu but his voice remained scratchy and strained. And it stayed that way.
The flu virus had damaged his vocal cords. And just to be heard, with his damaged vocal cords, Miller had to scream at the top of his lungs. He saw specialist after specialist. The issue still didn’t improve. The following year, Miller resigned his position as pastor.
Being able to talk…Is pretty important for being a preacher. Over nearly three years, he visited 63 specialists. An international consortium of throats specialists who reviews records from particularly difficult cases told him that his voice would never improve.
By 1993, Miller and his family had moved to Houston and were attending a large Baptist church. He was asked to teach an adult Sunday school class. He resisted, but people in the class promised to suffer through his raspy voice.
Being a large church, the Sunday school class was very big and so they recorded the audio of the Sunday school class. In the lesson, Miller was talking about the subject of healing and saying that God does not always bring healing in this life while teaching from Psalm 103:
2 Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, 3 who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, 4 who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,
I share a video that was taken from the Sunday school where the pastor’s voice was restored. You’ll notice how raspy his voice is. And the clip shows the audio of what he is saying, but pay attention when he says “I have had, and you have had in times past pit experiences.”
In mid-sentence, Miller’s voice was restored. He says “I don’t understand this right now” as emotion starts to overcome his voice and you start to hear people who had witnessed this being to clap and cheer.
Upon later medical evaluation, doctors said that Miller’s voice had fully recovered. Even the scar tissue disappeared. Miller later returned to ministry and nearly 30 years later, his voice remains normal.
Hospice patient restored
In the Case for Miracles, Lee Strobell interviews New Testament scholar Craig Keener who’s a professor Asbury Theological Seminary in Kentucky.
I consider Keener to be one of the best New Testament scholars in the world. A former atheist who found faith, Keener wrote a 2,000 page two volume book on miracles which gives numerous case studies from around the world.
In Case for Miracles, Keener talks about the well documented story of a Chicago area woman named Barbara Cummisky Snyder who was diagnosed by the Mayo Clinic, one of the world’s leading hospitals, with progressive multiple sclerosis.
Keener has interviewed Barbara and two physicians who treated her.
In the book, a board certified physician who treated Barbara and who had performed over 20,000 operations called ed her “one of the most hopelessly ill patients I ever saw.”
Numerous doctors had agreed with the diagnosis. She was high school aged when originally diagnosed. Barbara battled these health issues for 16 years. She spent months in hospitals.
She loss the function in one of her lungs. Her other lung operated at less than 50 percent capacity.
She had lost control of her bowels and had to have catheters and colostomy bags attached to remove bodily waste.
Legally blind. She was on a feeding tube. Eventually she need continuous oxygen. She had a tracheotomy. By 1981, she hadn’t walked in seven years and was bed-ridden. Her hands and feet had strained into deformed positions. She went on hospice in 1981 and was given less than six months to live.
One day, someone called Moody Radio Station and asked people to pray for Barbara. More than 400 people wrote letters to Barbara’s church saying they were praying for her. On Pentecost Sunday 1981, Barbara’s aunt came to her home to read some of the letters to her.
Barbara would later say that she heard a man’s voice tell her to get up – though there were no men in the room. “Get up and walk.”
Barbara stood up, removed her oxygen and began to walk on legs that hadn’t supported her body weight in years. Breathing fine, her vision was restored.
That night, Barbara attended church with her family at Wheaton Wesleyan Church.
During the service, when the pastor asked if anyone had any announcements, Barbara walked to the center aisle and walked toward the front of the sanctuary.
Upon further medical evaluation, Barbara’s lung function had been fully restored.
At the time of writing the Case for Miracles, 35 years had passed since Barbara’s recovery without a recurrence of her illness.
Her case so defied explanation that two doctors who treated Barbara each wrote books about her case.
God is working.
Conclusion
There are times in his goodness that God supernaturally intervenes.
Why not always? A skeptical person might ask. Because the world is fallen and sinful. We don’t deserve any of his grace. So instead of asking why he doesn’t eternally do what we think he should do, we should be thankful for the glimpses we get of God’s power and to remember the goodness of a God who loves us and who is active in the world.
Furthermore, God never says that he will always bring every miraculous intervention that we might want in this life.
It is in heaven that: He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21:4).
Also, if God always did what we wanted him to do, he wouldn’t be God. We would be. But he is greater than us. His thoughts are not our thoughts. His ways are not our ways.
In John 11, when Jesus learns that his friend Lazarus is ill, he does not immediately go to him.
He says:
This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it” (John 11:4).
Jesus knew that Lazarus would die and he knew he was going to raise him.
On a much smaller scale, I think of Pastor Duane Miller who we talked about earlier. Losing his ministry and spending three years with those voice issues. Not the worst thing that’s ever happened to someone.
But undoubtedly a grueling experience.
He went through some difficult seasons in those three years.
But God had a plan to use him for a tremendous purpose in impacting people’s lives all over the world with his testimony.
God is good.
And he is working.
We don’t always get the miracle we’re hoping for.
But God is no less good. He is no less at work in the world. He is no less sovereign.
All things really do work for good for those that love the Lord (Romans 8:28).
And we must remember the Lord’s goodness.
Philip pleaded:
Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.
But that’s often not so simple.
People are fickle. We’re sinful.
A person can see something that they think if miraculous yet not really appreciate the source.
A person can hear about something miraculous but not really have their life transformed by it.
Because it’s not just about seeing something impressive, or unexpected.
At the end of the day, we’re called to faith and belief in this great God.
Remembering God. His goodness, his gospel, and his faithfulness. Everyday.
The miracles of life can stir and encourage our faith. But we must also pursue a relationship with God through Jesus Christ.
Living lives where we remember what God has done. Not just the big, spectacular moments, but how he has sustained us and our families throughout our lives.
And appreciating what God is doing today.
Throughout the Old Testament, it’s constantly pointing back to the Exodus. The Passover meal was to be celebrated annually. Really with all of the Old Testament holidays, they were meant to remember. To remember various ways in which the Lord had blessed his people.
And what does Jesus say at the Last Supper? When he breaks the bread?
“Do this in remembrance of me.”
For as long as we eat the bread and drink the cup, we remember his death until he comes.
We’re called to remember the greatest miracle of the New Testament, Jesus’ glorious resurrection from the dead.
We live in a world where there is a lot of religious chatter, and many opinions. It can be hard to sift through it to get to truth. In this passage, Paul expresses his concern for the Galatian Christians who had been led away from the truth of the gospel by false teachers who had instead preached a self-serving message.
In this episode, Josh talks with Pastor Jim Murphy, the creator of MyCirlce training. Jim has pastored churches in Texas, New York, and now serves in Iowa. He has a heart for rural churches and reaching people with the gospel.Show less
505 years ago today, the history of the church, of Europe, and of the western world were forever changed in the town of Wittenberg Germany. Martin Luther wrote his 95 theses, a list of grievances against corrupt and unbiblical practices within the Catholic Church. The impact of this event continues to ripple throughout the Christian world.
Luther was not the first person to call for reform in the church.
Other movements perhaps had followings but didn’t have political support. Luther had that. Which afforded him a certain level of personal safety, though his martyrdom seemed inevitable at times. Another key difference between Luther and influential reformers who preceded him was the invention of the printing press. This allowed a mass volume of pamphlets to be produced. Luther was also likely helped by the fact that other reformation movements spread elsewhere in Europe during this time. Amid church abuses, Europe was at a tipping point. And while Luther was not the first to call for reform, it was his ministry that most significantly tipped the Reformation movement over the edge.
Less than 20 years later in England, Henry VIII broke away from the Catholic Church and started he Church of England in 1534. Reforms were also happening in Switzerland, most notably, the city of Geneva, eventually under the leadership of John Calvin. The Anabaptist movement sprung up who favorited believer’s baptism over infant baptism. These groups were not always in agreement, and some of them had severe conflicts with each other, but they were all in agreement that all was not well within the Church, and that there were changes which were necessary.
Against Church traditions that had become entrenched in Europe, the reformers did not think that they were doing something new, but rather were taking the Church back to its Biblical foundations.
By the sale of indulgences, it was believed that people could pay a price to have sins removed from themselves or for people for whom they had purchased the indulgences. But the issue with this was that the Catholic Church was overstepping its bounds on what saved a person. The Church was not the arbiter of what brings salvation, it is God’s grace alone received through faith alone in Christ alone. The gospel is not man’s gospel (Galatians 1:11).
The Catholic Church believes and believed that the seven sacraments impart grace by nature of being sacraments. While the Mass was in Latin and could not be understood by all people, the justification for this was that the sacraments still inherently imparted grace to a person, regardless of if they could understand. But this undermined faith. That’s not to say that Catholics (then and now) never value faith. But it can be easy to focus on sacraments and works apart from faith.
Interestingly the sacrament of confession was one which caused great angst for Martin Luther. Beginning as a devout Catholic and constantly aware of his own sinfulness, Luther lived in an ever-present awareness the this life did not live up to God’s standards of holiness. He had no assurance of salvation and lived in an exhausting cycle of constant confession. Luther would confess multiple times a day, sometimes for hours at a time, as he tried to remember every sin he committed, every hint of pridefulness, everything he should have done but hadn’t.
One verse that Luther had despised in the scriptures was “the righteous shall live by faith” which is found multiple times in the Bible (Romans 1:17; Galatians 3:11; Habakuk 2:4).
But Luther knew he wasn’t righteous.
In his conversion story, Luther said:
“I hated that word “righteousness of God,” which, according to the use and custom of all the teachers. I had been taught to understand philosophically regarding the formal or active righteousness, as they called it, with which God is righteous and punishes the unrighteous sinner. Though I lived as a monk without reproach, I felt that I was a sinner before God with an extremely disturbed conscience. I could not believe that he was placated by my satisfaction. I did not love, yes, I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners, and secretly, if not blasphemously, certainly murmuring greatly, I was angry with God.”
But Luther would eventually be struck by the verse which had brought him such distress. The gospel was not about living up to the righteousness of God. It was about living for God in faith. And for Luther, that changed everything.
“At last, by the mercy of God, meditating day and night, I gave heed to the context of the words, namely, “In it the righteousness of God is revealed, as it is written, ‘He who through faith is righteous shall live.’” There I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that by which the righteous lives by a gift of God, namely by faith. And this is the meaning: the righteousness of God is revealed by the gospel, namely, the passive righteousness with which merciful God justifies us by faith, as it is written, “He who through faith isrighteous shall live.” Here I felt that I was altogether born again and hadentered paradise itself through open gates.”
Faith is a gift from God and that people are declared righteous by God as a result of faith in the gospel.
We are justified by faith. This became a hallmark of Luther’s theology. And it became invaluable to Protestantism. We are justified by faith, not by faith and works. Not through faith and Church. Not by faith and any of the sacraments (though baptism and the Lord’s Supper are things which all Christians ought to do and are commanded to do).
A critique of this view and an unfortunate consequence is that many take the “faith alone” view to mean that disingenuous faith is enough, just giving some vague assent to a gospel a person doesn’t really believe in. That wasn’t what Luther believed.
At the beginning of his 95 Theses, the first theses talks about how all of life is repentance. Faith is an all-encompassing reality and driving force of life. Living by faith in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That we cannot earn salvation of our own merit but that it is entirely by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.
Happy Reformation Day!
This post was originally published October 31, 2017 as “500 years of reformation.”
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