John 14:5-14
“God Does Miracles – Thomas, Philip”
November 10, 2002 - Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost

         Urine may not seem like much of a miracle. But for our pastor, Tim, lying in the hospital after his gall bladder surgery, it was the holy grail. When I visited him that afternoon after my seminary classes and asked how I could pray for him, that’s what he wanted me to pray. They had taken out the catheter used in surgery, but there was yet to be any natural output. The nurse had warned him that unless things got flowing soon the catheter was going back in.

         So feeling pretty silly, I bowed my head and prayed for Tim to pee. Then I left. The next day I stopped by again and learned that apparently my prayer had worked. Within the hour the desired result had appeared! But was it a miracle?

         I’ve prayed for others to be healed many times since. I know that most of you have also prayed like this. And like you, I’ve seen a few occasions when there was a dramatic recovery, some of them here in this congregation. Many times, however, events take their natural course. I see God very much at work in the heart and soul, but remarkable, miraculous healing of the body is far less frequent.

         What, then, are we to make of these words of Jesus we’ve read? How shall we understand His promise here in verse 12 that His followers would not only do miracles like His, but would do even greater things? It certainly does not appear that greater miracles than Jesus did are happening today.

         Before trying to deal with this passage and this seemingly unfulfilled promise, it would be good to ask ourselves what miracles are and why God does them. To do that, let’s place miracles in their proper context. Understanding miracles is the reason I began to study providence years ago.[1] Without some grasp of providence, of what God is doing in the world all the time, how are we going to understand those special, miraculous events when He does something out of the ordinary?

         You may remember that we saw how God’s ordinary and regular providence involves three divine actions: First, in the beginning, the Lord created our universe out of nothing. Second, the Lord at every moment, conserves in being everything that exists. And third, the Lord regularly concurs or cooperates with natural causes so that He is participating in everything that happens.

         With such an understanding of God’s regular providential activity, it is easy to see one thing that miracles are not. God does not work miracles in order to intervene or to maintain a universe which runs along on its own most of the time.

         I used to take my daughter Susan to a park near where we lived in Lincoln, Nebraska. She loved to ride the little merry-go-round there. You probably remember these circular platforms mounted on a bearing. Susan would climb up and hang on to a bar while I stood on the ground and pushed to get the thing spinning. With her hair blowing back behind her she would call out “Keep it going Daddy, don’t stop!”

         You see, once that merry-go-round was moving I had to keep adding a push every turn or two. If I just left it alone, then it would slow down. It needed my constant intervention just to keep going. That spinning platform with a little girl hanging on for dear life was a system which needed me to step in on a regular basis to move it.

         Some of the early Christian astronomers thought God intervenes in the universe like I had to with the merry-go-round. In their formulas for the movements of the planets, they were missing enough energy to keep it all running. So they thought God was always reaching out a supernatural hand to give the solar system a little extra push. But even if that were true, and better science has shown it’s not, that is not how and why God works miracles. The doctrines of providence teach us that He is already regularly and constantly involved in the world through conservation and concurrence. He doesn’t need miracles to keep His hand in the ordinary running of the world. Miracles are something else.

         Miracles cannot be what God does regularly or even very often. Occasionally I’ve heard someone say that she sees miracles all the time. And a dear friend of mine who taught philosophy for many years says that “everything is a miracle.” But it’s difficult for me to understand how anyone would have been surprised at what Jesus did, or how Jesus could in verse 11 tell Philip to believe in Him because of His miracles, if such events happen constantly and are God’s regular mode of action, part of His ordinary providence.

         Miracles are “extraordinary providence.” In ordinary providence God works in and through what He has created according to the natural powers He has bestowed on His creation. As C. S. Lewis says, “Creation seems to be delegation, through and through. He will do nothing simply of Himself which can be done by creatures.”[2] In a miracle, however, He works directly, apart from and beyond any power that exists in the world. A miracle is that which cannot be done by any creature. Miracles are extra-ordinary.

         The difference between miracles and ordinary providence is a bit like the difference between regular maintenance of a car and major repair. I keep my old van running through a regular program of buying gas, changing the oil, putting air in the tires and so forth. But every once in awhile something out of the ordinary needs to happen if I want to save my vehicle. Early this fall I had to replace the radiator. That’s an extraordinary, probably once-in-the-life-of-the-car repair. Miracles are like that. They are God’s major repairs to His world.

         Since miracles are extraordinary and are something like major car repair it is quite understandable that they do not happen all the time. In fact, a number of Christians believe that God is through doing miracles. They were necessary for bringing about salvation in Jesus Christ, the single greatest major repair of our world, but now that is accomplished and God no longer works miracles among us. The promise Jesus gave here of doing “greater things” was for the apostles only. Miracles, we’re told, stopped when those original followers passed away.

         However, there is nothing in the Bible to suggest that miracles were to come to an end when the apostles were gone. Just the opposite: Paul gave instructions to his churches on how to handle miracles like speaking in tongues. The letter of  James urged Christians to keep on praying for the sick to be healed. John’s first letter explained how to test the spirit of a prophet. The New Testament envisions a church in which at least the miracles of healing, speaking in tongues and prophecy will continue.

         History records a similar confirmation of miracles in the church. All through the centuries, Christians claimed to experience the miraculous power of God, just as many do today. It is simply wrong to limit what God is able to do in the world He created on the basis of a theological system that divides sacred history up into watertight compartments.

         We must admit, nonetheless, that miracles after Jesus, even those done by the apostles themselves, have usually been less than spectacular. There are no reliable records of Christians walking on water or feeding thousands with a lunch meant for one. Healings dominate by far in accounts of later and contemporary miracles.

         Yet God can and does continue to do amazing things. I have no reason to doubt Corrie Ten Boom’s recollection of a miracle that occurred while she and her sister were imprisoned by the Nazis. They managed to smuggle in and share a bottle of liquid vitamins with their fellow prisoners, staving off malnutrition for many of them. A tiny bottle lasted for days and days, far longer than was naturally possible as they measured out dose after dose to others in need. She writes that “every time I tilted the little bottle, a drop appeared at the tip of the glass stopper.” When the day came that they received other rations which contained necessary vitamins, she found the bottle dry.[3]

         We may be confident that God still works miracles. For this reason another large group of Christians believes that what Jesus promised to Philip here is the assurance that dramatic miracles will constantly occur whenever and wherever faith is vibrant enough to support them. In Acts 8 we read how God did miracles when Philip preached the Gospel in Samaria. According this view, sometimes known as “power evangelism” or “the third wave,” we may expect the same miraculous accompaniment to genuine preaching today. Miracles should be an almost daily occurrence in the church.

         The problem with expecting miracles is that they are not regular events – we grasp that when we think of God’s ordinary providence. Miracles are not what God does all the time. They are the major repairs, the signs and wonders which God uses to bring us back to Himself when we are far gone.

         Our former Covenant president, Paul Larsen, writes that the miracles witnessed among those who practice power evangelism are most often events like unmeasurable lengthening of short legs and the reduction of pain, not great New Testament miracles like healed blindness or a restored withered hand. The expectation of constant wonders is, he says, a temptation, a temptation to fakery.[4] In order not to be accused of too little faith, one comes up with something to display, even if it is ultimately trivial. But making a leg an eighth inch longer or a sore back feel a bit better can hardly be what Jesus meant when He said His followers would do greater things than He.

         Thus I would urge a cautious middle road between a complete rejection of contemporary miracles and an unbridled expectation that miracles will occur all the time. Whatever Jesus meant by promising His disciples greater accomplishments than His own, it could not have been the continual working of astounding miracles. Let us go back to the text.

         In Scripture the word “miracle” does not occur. Here the word translated “miracles” by the New International Version in verse 11 is literally “works.” Philip was asked to believe in Jesus on the basis of the works He did. The translators rightly took Jesus to be making an obvious reference to His miracles and so translated that way, but it might have been better if they had followed almost every other version and left it as “works.” Because the “works” Jesus promises the disciples in verse 12 are something different.

         Never forget that the greatest miracle of all was accomplished by God in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. There is no way that the wonder and power of Jesus’ time on earth will be duplicated by others, no matter how much faith they have. The central miracle in God’s plan for our world happened once and for all.

         If Jesus is God’s central miracle and greatest work, then the only possible way His disciples might approach His works is through that one great miracle. The most miraculous thing you and I have the privilege to witness is not any sort of healing or natural wonder. The grandest miracle you and I will see happens whenever a person places faith in Christ and God works the miracle of grace and redemption in the human soul.

         In that sense, the disciples’ work could be greater than Jesus’ work. When Jesus left this world, despite all His miracles, at most a few hundred people had been converted by His ministry. When Peter preached on the day of Pentecost, three thousand came to faith. Jesus never left little Palestine, but Paul carried the Gospel all over the Roman Empire. In working out the miracle of salvation, the disciples did do greater things than Jesus.

         You and I are part of that continuing greater ministry which Jesus commissioned. There are miracles, but there are even more astounding works which Christians do in the name of Christ. Christian hospitals have healed many more people than Jesus did in His lifetime on earth. Missionaries and local church pastors have brought millions to faith in comparison to the handful our Lord converted in person. Instead of Jesus’ five thousand, rescue missions, soup kitchens and relief offerings feed hundreds of thousands all over the world. Let us not get so bent on seeing the miraculous that we forget to exercise the truly awesome power our Lord has given us. That is the power He invites us to pray for in His name in verse 14, power to bring His grace to the world.

         Miracles happen. I do not doubt it and I think I have seen at least one or two. God has not finished doing miraculous things on earth. But miracles are extraordinary. They are rare and awesome occurrences we should not often expect to witness.

         In fact, C. S. Lewis cautions us about wanting to see miracles. He reminds us of what many missionaries know, that miracles occur in bunches, at special times and places where God is beginning some great new work or where Christians are suffering greatly. Heroic missionaries and martyrs witness miracles most often. At the close of his fine book on miracles, Lewis quotes Shakespeare, “Nothing, almost, sees miracles but misery”[5] then writes, “Miracles and martyrdoms tend to bunch about the same areas of history – areas we have naturally no wish to inhabit.”[6]

         In other words, we ought not to wish for more miracles unless we are prepared to suffer more. It took a season in a prison camp for Corrie Ten Boom to see her miracle. As we will read next week, it took a lifetime of blindness for a man to experience the healing of Jesus. Miracles are the great repair work of God – it may not be a gentle thing at all to be caught in His construction zone.

         Yet the great miracle is happening all the time. Sunday School teachers will go to their classrooms in a moment and children will learn to believe in Jesus. You may go to work tomorrow, show a bit of kindness to a co-worker and she will remember you as a follower of Christ. A portion of the money you placed in the offering will pay the salary for a missionary who will lead a man to Jesus in Thailand this week. Over and over God’s people are doing greater things by sharing the greatest miracle, the love of God in Jesus Christ. Put your hope and faith in that miracle. God will send the others in His time.

         Amen.

Valley Covenant Church
Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
Copyright © 2002 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj