C209 2/7/60
© Project Winsome International, 2000

Download this Teaching

"THE CHRIST OF THE DIVINELY NATURAL"
Dr. John Allan Lavender
Lk. 4:38-40, 5:12-26

"God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power; and he went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil, for God was with him" (Act.10:38.).

It is one of the weird inconsistencies of life that, in what might be called "The Age of Miracles," we find it difficult to believe in them. We read with avid interest the well documented accounts of incredible signs and wonders reported in "Believe It Or Not" or "Strange As It May Seem." We smile at the boast of one branch of the armed forces, "The difficult we do immediately, the impossible takes a little longer!" We stagger not at the thought of sending rockets to the moon or placing satellites in orbit around the sun, yet we stumble over those passages of scripture which report the miraculous workings of the Lord Jesus.

The Nature of Miracles
I cannot help but believe that our problem is primarily one of semantics. We are stumbling over words rather than ideas, and what we probably need to do first of all is settle the question: "What is a miracle?"

Mr. Webster gives us some help on that score by providing us with two definitions. First He says, "a miracle is a wonder or marvel," and I suppose that's the most common interpretation of the word. But he goes on to say a miracle is,
"An effect or event in the physical world deviating from the known laws of
nature and transcending our knowledge of these laws."

Personally, I prefer this latter definition because it more closely approximates what I mean (and what I believe the Bible means) when we speak of miracles.

A miracle is miraculous to us because it transcends our knowledge of the laws by which it is wrought. But to God it is not a miracle. To him it is divinely natural. He has merely brought into play a higher law, or combination of laws, that neutralizes, at least for the moment, the effectiveness of the lower law.

For instance, I hold an object in my hand. If I release it, the law of gravity takes it in its grip and the object begins to plunge toward the floor. However, if I'm agile enough, I can reach out with the other hand and catch it, thus stopping its fall. That may not seem like a miracle because we have seen it happen so many times. But it's an excellent example of our definition of a miracle. The law of gravity has not been broken. A higher law, the law of human will, has intervened and produced an effect just the opposite of what the law of gravity would have produced had it been allowed to function unhindered.

A miracle, then, is not the infraction of a law, it is the neutralizing of a lower law by a higher one. The first is temporarily suspended by the second. And this restraint of the lower by the higher is constantly going on about us.

To give another illustration, we are continually seeing the neutralizing of the physical by the moral. If this did not occur, the almost involuntary attraction between the sexes would produce a completely intolerable morass of human degradation. The lower principle: "look out for yourself" -- "take care of number one" -- is overcome by the higher principle of being our brother's keeper. Our personal interests are neutralized by our social interests.

So the concept of a higher law neutralizing a lower law is well established. The difference being that, in the case of a miracle, it is applied to areas of life about which our knowledge is much more limited, so we are less able at the moment to recognize the process which is taking place.

Or to come at it from yet another angle, a miracle is "the visible working of the invisible God." When we begin to understand how the invisible laws by which God performs his miracles work, they cease to seem "miraculous," because we recognize them to be divinely natural.

Take the case of Jesus turning water into wine. We still don't know how that is possible. But when we get to know the laws of God in their fullness, the changing of water into wine will be as common and ordinary as the changing of soil, water and sunshine into grapes. The really big difference between the two is that one is sudden and we call it miraculous, while the other is gradual and we don't even give it a second thought.

When the first automobile came chugging down the street, men shouted, "It's a miracle!" When Alexander Graham Bell first sent a human voice over a wire, men cried, "It's a miracle!" When Marconi first flung words out on the air and they were sent without wires over a great distance, men exclaimed, "It's a miracle!" But today no one thinks of an automobile, a telephone or a radio as being "a miracle." Why? Because we more fully understand the laws by which these "miraculous" things are done.

If someone had told you twenty-five or thirty years ago you could sit in your living room and see and hear someone speaking several thousand miles away, you would have said, "Poor soul, he's ready for an institution!" And yet last night you saw such a miracle. Only you didn't call it that, you called it television.

And now, through communication satellites, events taking place in Washington, or London, or Moscow, can be seen and heard instantaneously and simultaneously anywhere on earth. All you need is a receiver. Parenthetically, I might add, this gives some interesting overtones to the Biblical prediction that when Jesus returns, "Every eye shall see him, and every ear shall hear him."

A generation or two ago men read that in the Bible and said,
"Pure poppycock! That proves the Bible is a book of fables! Why, if Jesus
returned to Jerusalem, people as near as twenty miles away couldn't see him, let
alone folks on the other side of the earth."
But along comes television and demonstrates at least one way in which it could be done. And, for all we know, there may be many others.

That's why I for one am not afraid of science as some Christians seem to be. For if there is a God, and I believe there is, and if the universe is his revelation of himself in space, and if the Bible is his revelation of himself in language, and if Jesus Christ is his revelation of himself in person, there will be no conflict between them. God does not contradict himself!

It's my deep conviction that the more we know about our world and how it works, the more we understand the physical laws that control our universe and how they work, the more we will understand the written word of God and the ultimate will of God. And the more we will be able to appropriate his power for the good of all mankind.

It comes down to this then: The laws of nature, as we call them, are God's normal way of carrying out his work. A miracle is a kind of special expression of God's power. Not greater, just different! It is something that is divinely natural. But, because it is a rarity, it is not divinely normal. It is an event in which a higher law neutralizes the effect of a lower law with what we, in our ignorance, call "miraculous" results.

The Purpose of Miracles
All this being true, then what is the purpose of miracles? To answer that question we must first be cognizant of the fact that the miracles recorded in the Bible cluster around three historical crises. The time of Moses, then Elijah and Elisha, and finally Christ and the Apostles.
In each case startling advances of God's revelation of himself and his plan and purpose for man were being introduced.

In other words, there is nothing whimsical or capricious about the miracles of the Bible. They are purposeful.

Add Authority and Credibility
In the case of Jesus, their first aim was to add authority and credibility to his ministry on earth. This is made graphically clear in Jesus' answer to John the Baptist. John had sent two of his faithful followers to Christ with the question, "Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another?" Our Lord answered by saying, "Go and show John again those things which ye do hear and see. The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them." By the testimony of his marvelous works, Jesus sought to dispel John's doubt and add the voice of divine authority to his messianic mission.

The Natural Outgrowth
A second reason for the miracles of Jesus is that they are the natural outgrowth of our Lord's loving heart and tender compassion.
He wept when he saw the sorrow of Mary and Martha at Lazarus' grave.
He was overcome with grief at the needs of the people in the city of Jerusalem.
He was filled with compassion for both the crowd and the individual.
Great loving heart that he was, he could not turn his back upon the heartache and heartbreak of humanity. So he laid his hands on them and made them whole. Mentally, physically, and spiritually. This spiritual wholeness which Jesus brought into their lives suggests -

What God Wants To Do
A third reason for his miracles is that they paint, in graphic detail, a picture of what God wants to do for you and me.

Take the healing of blind Bartimaeus for example. Here was a poor, miserable mendicant. Skin burned black from sitting for ten thousand days in the boiling sun. Hair disheveled and matted gray. Sightless eyes sunk deep in watery sockets, never having seen the glory of a sunrise or the blazing miracle of a sunset. That was Bartimaeus. "A poor ragged pocket calamity had turned upside down and emptied of everything of worth." But Jesus came. And in response to the blind man's cry, "Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy upon me!" Jesus stopped. And then, stretching forth hands of healing, he brought light to a darkened life. Poor, old, blind Bartimaeus was made to see!

What is that but a parable of the spiritual healing Jesus wants to bring to our sin-sick souls! Here are we, so blinded by pride and selfishness and iniquity we are unable to see God's great master plan for our lives. And what a sad, heart-rending sight it is to see souls "bound who should be conquerors, slaves who should be kings."

But the good news of the gospel is that Jesus Christ has come to bring hope and help and healing to such poor, sin-blinded souls. And if we will cry out in our desperation, "God be merciful to me a sinner!" the same Lord Jesus who gave sight to blind Bartimaeus will bring light to our darkened hearts and turn our nights to day. The miraculous doings of "The Christ of the Divinely Natural" are masterpieces in miniature. Luminous cameos. Little living pictures of that larger, grander, finer work he came to accomplish: the seeking and saving of those who are lost.

This morning we are removed by time and space from the narrow, twisting streets of those ancient cities where the miracle-worker performed his signs and wonders. Our world is quite different from that world, but our needs are the same. And Christ is the same! Thank God for that.
He is the same today, as he was yesterday, and as he will be tomorrow. He is here this morning with the same heart of love, the same tender compassion, the same power to make people whole.
If you will let him, he is ready, willing and able to perform the greatest miracle of all: the saving of your immortal soul.

Will you place your heart in his hands, right now? Will you let him work that miracle of redemption in your life, right now? I pray that you will. And if you do, then joy, real joy, wonderful joy will come sweeping into your heart as Christ places this song in your soul:
"My Father is omnipotent
On that you can rely.
A God of might and miracles
'Tis written in the sky.
It took a miracle to put the stars in space.
It took a miracle to hang the world in place.
But when he saved my soul,
Cleansed and made me whole,
It took a miracle of love and grace."