This is the Truth Network. Welcome to Ignite the Light Ministries Radio and Podcast. It is our mission to help listeners develop a deeper relationship with Jesus by sharing what the Bible says and what it means. We aim to encourage and equip you to serve others, share the gospel, and reflect Christ in every aspect of your life. I'm Pastor Wyatt Cud.
Thank you for tuning in.
So last week we were looking at the topic of miracles. Wanted to kind of slow roll this topic just to make sure we give it its proper attention. Last week we talked about miracles and how we can know truth. That's a really great starting point when we're looking at the miraculous. Today we're going to be building on that and looking at if miracles are true, if they are real, what do they mean?
What do they tell us? And how do we understand them? I want to start the sermon by looking at, starting with a verse here, Matthew nineteen twenty six. Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible." But with God, all things are possible. With man, this is impossible.
But with God, all things are possible.
So, how are we supposed to understand the miraculous? We talked about that last week. We concluded with the reality of God. Not only are miracles possible, they are probable. Miracles are referred to as signs and wonders throughout the Bible, and we ask a sign for what?
What should I be wondering about? Miracles temporarily supersede the laws of nature as we know them.
Now, miracles are not just in the biblical account. Miracles are active and alive today, as is God's will. I want to talk specifically about that. What do miracles tell us about God's will? Miracles, as a sign, point to something beyond themselves.
They point to a God who loves us, who is intimately involved with the progression of history, and history is His story. It's His. Those signs we see on the highway that tell you what food and gas stations are available at each exit—they don't exist just for the sake of themselves. They point us to something. Miracles are the same way.
They point us to God, who He is, where He is going, and what He makes available to us. If miracles are real, they are not just events; they are invitations. God uses them to make Himself known.
So, what should we know about God? There's so much to say on this topic, but I want to stick to three main concepts this morning. All miracles, to one degree or another, exhibit these traits. Miracles are powerful. Miracles are personal, and lastly, miracles are directional.
They exhibit power. They take the person and people into consideration, and they point us to somewhere. There is power to witness, a presence to feel, and a direction to go. I gave an analogy last week of whitewater rafting. Who here's done whitewater rafting?
Ah, love me some whitewater rafting! You can't always see the rocks in the water.
Sometimes they're under the surface. But sometimes you'll see these ripples right over the surface of the water, and it points to a rock. They kind of form a V in the water, and it points to something under the surface. Miracles are like that; they point to God, our rock, like ripples in the water. Our God has a power to witness.
Our God has a presence to feel. Our God has a direction for us to go. God is powerful. God is personal. God is directional.
All right, so let's look at this first one. Miracles are powerful because God is powerful. In Genesis one one, it says, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." Everything we see around us, God created. Ex nihilo, which is out of nothing, the place where you live, the people you meet, the birds in the air, that little squirrel that won't leave your leave your feeder alone. He created everything we see out of nothing.
Creation—it's the most obvious miracle right in our face. Psalm one forty-seven, four through five. It says. God, He determines the number of the stars and calls each of them by name. Great is our Lord and mighty in power.
His understanding has no limit. If you get a chance tonight, go look at the stars. Look at how big our universe is. Our understanding of astronomy, with and as our telescopes have gotten better and better, this truth about God—God is powerful—it remains unchanged. But our knowledge of just how powerful God is continues to increase.
God is all powerful. I know what those words mean, but can I really fathom that to have power? Over all things, and as we understand deeper and deeper just how many things there are, power over all things. We can look at the stars; they seem infinite. He determines their number.
He calls them by name. I'm gonna say something we already know. It's because God's power is infinite. We can know that. But we can never stop discovering its truth.
There is no limit to the depths of the power of God. Can I get it? Amen. I find it interesting when we look at examples of God's power. It often inspires us to the same thoughts and same conclusions we already see in Scripture.
We see it again there. God said at first. When I look at the stars, I'm filled with this sense of awe of how big and beautiful the universe is, and then I think of just how small I am. Everything I know, everything I am, my little corner of the world, my problems, my joys are but a grain of sand on an entire beach. Psalm eight three through four.
It says, "When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon, the stars which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them? Human beings that you care for them?" Seeps into our next point here. Miracles are personal because God is personal. God is attentive to all of us. As his children, he inclines his ear to us, listens to our prayers, and if we let him, he will walk with us every moment.
When I look at the stars, I wonder how powerful God must be to be attentive to all of us in this way, to be attentive to creation, to be carrying it all in a unified direction. How powerful God must be. The other thing I think we wonder about when looking at the stars, we get this sense of curiosity. What is out there? How big is all of this?
Why is this here? The universe—not just the stars, but even down to the anatomical level—the universe of atoms. How life works, how the brain works, that we can be conscious. There is so much to learn. There is so much to discover.
So much to do.
So much to see. We could spend a lifetime on a single subject and never reach the bottom. And people do. People do that. But the ripples are obvious.
The miracle of creation points to something—a prior cause of all of this—that is far greater, an infinite, all-powerful God. And all these things are even more true with Him. We could spend an eternity with God, with unending curiosity and wonder of how deep His infinite ness goes, and we will find endless satisfaction in Him. We talked about two weeks ago. We were talking about the topic of gratitude.
I said, "Where we place our attention is where we're going to find gratitude. If we're putting our attention in the right things, or if we're spending our attention on things that do not matter." I said, "Show me what holds your attention, and I will show you where your worship is." Plenty of things are vying for our attention. Yet, right here, the awe and wonder of the power of God can satisfy the attention for eternity. Spend your time with Him. Welcome Him into each moment.
I think of Jesus calming the storm, merely speaking to it. He just told it to stop, and it did. Mark four. When the disciples see this display of power, what do they say? They say they were terrified, and they ask each other, "Mark four forty one, who is this that even the wind and the waves obey him?" They were afraid.
They were terrified, and I say. Good. They should be afraid. Mark, Proverbs one seven. It says, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge or wisdom." And I think if we're really grasping the scope of God's power, being afraid means we get it.
We get that we don't get it. We grasp that it is beyond us, and it ought to humble us. The fear of the Lord, in light of His absolute power, is the right response. The fear of the Lord, fearing God, all the different variations we see of that in the Bible is mentioned over three hundred times. But we also see in the Bible, "Do not be afraid, fear not, do not be dismayed, do not worry." We see that.
In all its different phrasings, around three hundred and sixty-five times in the Bible, give or take. That's one for every day of the year. Do not be afraid. How do we reconcile that? Fear the Lord.
Do not be afraid. Fear the Lord is when I recognize His power. Do not be afraid is the proper response when I understand who God is. He is loving. He is attentive.
God is personal. Do not be afraid. Which brings us to the next observation: miracles are powerful because God is powerful. Miracles are personal because our God is personal. We can know God because God makes Himself known to us first.
If God was not personal, if God just took the clock of time and wound it up and then threw it like a frisbee and then never interacted with creation again, and He just stepped back and let it go, if He did that, you know, we might have questions: Who threw the frisbee? But could we ever know? But that's not how God operates. Rather, God made everything, and He's carrying it in His hands attentively to its final destination. He's attentive to His creation, and we see that displayed in the person and work of Jesus, God in the flesh, who stepped into creation to deal with our sin problem.
God is personal. Let me tell you about an encounter I had with God. There was one time at Liberty. I'm a Liberty student. I see we have some some guests here.
I'm a Liberty student. At Liberty, there was I was in my dorm minding my own business, and God put this. I don't know how to describe it other than a vision in my head of somewhere I needed to go. I needed to go to Liberty Mountain, a very specific place, and I needed to go right now. That has happened maybe a handful of times, but I will say it: that ever happens to you, you better go.
So I got up and I went to the hillside of Liberty Mountain. I took my Bible and I went there. And the moment I got there, I kind of looked at the sky and I'm like, "Okay, here I am." And a couple minutes later. This other student, a girl, came walking up the mountain.
Now, if you've been to Liberty Mountain, you drive; you don't walk. She came walking up the mountain, and God just highlighted her and said, "Her, I want you to speak to her." This wave of anxiety hit me, and I had to like grab onto a tree to not fall over. And I'm like, "Oh, I don't know about that, God. This could be really awkward. Are you sure about that?" And I just had two minutes of just the Holy Spirit ministering to me, and finally, like, "Okay, I'll do it." I walked over there, I got her attention, and I was like, "Hey," just as awkward as I could be.
Hey, so my name is Wyatt. This is gonna sound absolutely nuts, but I was just in my dorm. God told me to come here, and then you came walking up the mountain. He just highlighted you, and I think I'm supposed to speak to you.
So, what's on your heart? I had no idea what she was going to say, but guys, what she told me shocked me. She wasn't surprised. She looked at me expectantly. And said, "Well, God must have known what He was doing because my grandmother just died, and I got to sit down, help her process, and talk through this.
It just happened. God called me out of my room to a specific place to meet a specific person. I had assignments to work on. I had a paper that was due. This feels like I." I have things that need to be done, things to check off my to do list.
But I believe if I had not listened, I would have been sinning, working on my paper because God said, "Go." So again, our belief is that God is transcendent, above us, beyond our understanding. Yet He is immanent. He is personal. He is with us. He interacts with us.
He is supernatural, but yet He also comes. Down to us, he condescends to us, and I tell that story not with the expectation that a skeptic is going to hear it and believe that it is true. It's a true story, but I don't care if anyone believes it or not because it happened to me. It was real to me. It happened to me.
I tell this story to make the point that God has put evidence in my life. There is a God. He comes to us, and I don't say that out of my own pride and arrogance to assume what is real or what is beyond. I've experienced what is beyond, and I am forever changed. If you're a skeptic, assume that story is true for a second.
Would that change you? Would that shock you to have God pick you up from one spot to another to meet a specific person? The point is, for me, it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks at this point. I have seen miracles. I've seen the spirit world.
I have I have had God tell me things about people I could not have known. God has made Himself known to me, and I am forever changed. And it can happen to you too.
Now, if we put up our blinders and ignore Him when He interacts with the world, then there we are, like the unbelieving world. Oh God doesn't interact. I don't see the spirit world at work. Therefore, it's not there. Bold of you Christians to assume that there was even a creator.
You can't justify God is real. That's a faith claim. You don't know. And every person who has seen God's love for them witnessed God move in a miraculous way. We know the problem, and it's not a problem really.
God is personal. My experiences with God are personal. He's tailored them to me. I have my testimony, but I can't cause another person to see God reaching out if they have their blinders on and they don't want it. And it's by faith we understand.
Yes, that is Hebrews eleven three. But God makes Himself known to us first. He's not going to force us to see. To understand, rather, he invites us to see. He invites us to understand.
Miracles point to a God that does that. God is personal. Miracles are personal because God is personal. Give some examples. John nine.
Jesus heals a blind man. He stopped for one man to restore his sight. Wasn't a spectacle; it was personal. God was meeting a personal need. Mark six: Jesus feeds the five thousand.
Now the number that number is just for the men. It was just counting the men, but including women and children, it was more like twenty five thousand. That's a larger scale miracle. But it says Mark six thirty four: Jesus had compassion on them. He taught them many things till late in the day, and then he fed them all with five loaves and two fish.
He's meeting a spiritual and physical need out of compassion for them. Miracles are personal because God is personal. Now miracles are a sign—a sign of what? John six. The crowd continues to follow him for food, and John six.
He says, "I am the bread." Of life, whoever comes to me will never go hungry. Whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.
So feeding the five thousand—that's a miracle of provision, but it's a sign pointing to something under the surface. Jesus is our provision. He is our sustenance. He is our God. Mark five twenty-one through forty-three.
We see a woman who's been bleeding for twelve long years, deep pain, deep suffering. She hears about Jesus, approaches him deep in a crowd, and touches his cloak from behind. He doesn't see her. If I can just touch his clothes, if I can just reach him, I'll be healed. That's what she's thinking, and she was right.
Instantly healed. Suffering immediately gone. It says verse thirty, and once Jesus realized the power had gone out of him, he turned around in the crowd and asked, "Who touched my clothes?" You see the people crowding around you, don't you? The disciples answered, and yet you ask who touched me. But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it.
Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet. Trailing with fear, told him the whole truth, and he said, "Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be free from your suffering." This miracle is twofold: healing. Miracles are a sign. A sign of what?
Jesus is the great physician, the author of life itself. And Jesus notices her out of everyone. He feels his power go into her. What's the miracle? I see you.
Miracle is a sign. A sign of what? God sees you in this big, vast, bustling universe. God sees you. She didn't rob him of his power.
It was given, but he wanted her to know, I see you. Your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be free from your suffering. Miracles are personal; they are personal because God is personal. Miracles are also powerful.
They're powerful. They're personal. Last one we're going to look at here: miracles are directional. In Exodus, Moses witnesses this burning bush that is not consumed—the divine moment where he meets God. He takes his sandals off and throws them.
His holy ground—he's standing on. God doesn't just display His power for the sake of it. The relationship developed isn't just for Moses. There's a greater purpose here, a larger direction. The miracle that the miracle is meant to be a part of.
Exodus three seven, God says, "I have seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering.
So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians." And He calls Moses. Moses says, "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring these Israelites out of Egypt?" God says, "I will be with you." And this will be a sign to you that it is I who sent you. When you have brought the people out of Israel, you will worship God on this mountain.
So Moses sees something impossible—a burning bush—and then he is called to something impossible. Exodus three six. It says he hid his face because he was afraid to look at God. He's witnessing God's power. Who has a personal concern for him and the Israelites, and God calls him towards His purposes.
He pulls Moses into His direction.
Now, could God save the Israelites without Moses? Of course, He doesn't need us. He's all powerful. Luke nineteen forty, Jesus tells the Pharisees, "If my followers are silent, the stones will cry out." So it's not our direction. It's not our destiny.
We aren't the main characters in this story. God is. It's God's direction. But He delights to invite us into it to be a part of it. He pulls us into His direction.
Hey there. I hope this sermon has enriched your day. If you like this message, I want to personally invite you to join us for Sunday worship. We have two locations in Virginia: Trinity Methodist Church in Concord and Mount Comfort Methodist Church in Appomattox. Come join us Sunday morning at 9:45, and we will help you get connected.
As always, I'm Pastor Wyatt Cud. Thank you for tuning in.
