Sermon series: LET'S TALK ABOUT JESUS

Subject: Jesus--THE MIRACLE WORKER

Matthew 4:23-24
"Jesus went throughout Galilee...healing every disease and sickness among the people. News about Him spread all over Syria, and people brought to Him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, the epileptics and the paralytics, and He healed them."

Matthew 8:16-17
"When evening came, many who were demon-possessed were brought to Him, and He drove out the spirits with a word and healed all the sick, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah, the prophet saying: "He Himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses.""

Matthew 9:35
"Jesus went through all the towns and villages...healing every disease and sickness."

Matthew 14:14
"When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, He had compassion on them and healed their sick."

Matthew 14:35-36
"People brought all their sick to Him and begged Him to let the sick just touch the edge of His cloak, and all who touched Him were healed."
Matthew 15:30-31
"Great crowds came to Him, bringing the lame, the blind, the crippled, the dumb and many others, and laid them at His feet, and He healed them. The people were amazed when they saw the dumb speaking, the crippled made well, and the lame walking and the blind seeing."

Since the earliest days of Christianity, both apostle and disciple alike have been confronted with the perversion of the revelation of God given to us in the Person of Jesus Christ.
This perversion has extended historically not just to the teaching of our Lord, but more important, to the Person of Christ; for it is axiomatic that if the doctrine of Christ Himself, i.e., His person, nature and work are perverted, so the identity of the life-giver is altered, then the life which He came to give is correspondingly negated.
The Person and work of Christ is indeed the very foundation of Christian faith. And if it is redefined and interpreted out of context, and therefore contrary to its Biblical

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content, the whole message of the Gospel is radically altered and its value diminished. Christ came into the world, not only as God’s personal representative on earth, but as God Himself manifest in flesh, and therefore appeared as a miracle in human form. Although the word does not explicitly occur in Scripture, the church has used the term INCARNATION to refer to the fact that Jesus was God in human flesh.
Christianity is a historic religion because Christ, its founder, was a historic person. In the beginning of the Christian era there appeared in history One who changed its current from a downward to an upward trend. He was born in Bethlehem and reared in Nazareth in a small town of Galilee, of a humble family of the Jews who were then subjected under the provincial Roman rule. At the age of thirty, He appeared at the Jordan, asking baptism of John, and soon after He initiated His ministry, which grew into a religious movement that has reached today the uttermost confines of the world. Jesus, different from any other teacher in history, called attention to His person rather than His doctrine. Many are the claims of Christ as to His deity.
In John 8, Jesus told His Jewish opponents that Abraham had seen His (Christ’s) day, They challenged Him, "You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham? (John 8:57). Here a sufficient response to prove Jesus’ eternity would have been, "Before Abraham was, I was." But Jesus did not say this. Instead, He made a much more startling assertion: "Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM." Jesus combined two assertions whose sequence seemed to make no sense: "Before something in the past happened [Abraham was], something in the present happened [I AM]." The Jewish leaders recognized at once that He was not speaking in riddles or uttering nonsense: when He said, I AM, He was repeating the very words God used when He identified Himself to Moses as "I AM WHO I AM" (Exodus 3:14). Jesus was claiming for Himself the title, "I AM," by which God designates Himself as the eternal existing One, the God who is the source of His own existence and who always has been and always will be.
Another strong claim to deity is Jesus’ statement at the end of Revelation, "I AM the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end" (Revelation 22:13). When this is combined with the statement of God the Father in Revelation 1:8, "I AM the Alpha and the Omega," it also constitutes a strong claim to equal deity with God the Father. Sovereign over all of history and all of creation, Jesus is the beginning and the end.

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In John 1:1, John not only calls Jesus "GOD" but also refers to Him as "the Word." John’s readers would have recognized in this term LOGOS a dual reference, both to the powerful, creative Word of God in the Old Testament by which the heavens and earth were created (Psalm 33:6) and to the organizing or unifying principle of the universe, the thing that held it together and allowed it to make sense in Greek thinking. John is identifying Jesus with both of these ideas and saying that He is not only the powerful, creative Word of God and the organizing or unifying force in the universe, but also that He became man. "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father" (John 1:14). Here is another strong claim to deity coupled with an explicit statement that Jesus also became man and moved among us as a man.
In John 14, Philip is talking with Jesus:
"Jesus said to him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father, except through Me.
If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; and from now on you know Him and have seen Him."
Philip said to Him, "Lord, show us the Father, and it is sufficient for us."
Jesus said to him, "Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; so how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The words that I speak to you, I do not speak on My own authority; but the Father who dwells in Me does the works. Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me, or else believe Me for the sake of the works themselves." (John 14:6-11).
Verse 11 in the Amplified reads: "Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me; or else believe Me for the sake of the [very] works themselves. [If you cannot trust Me, at least let these works that I do in My Father’s name convince you.]"
The skeptics who question the deity of Jesus Christ are invited to consider the evidence of His works, miracles (signs). In the Gospels, there are thirty-five outstanding miracles recorded for us to examine and consider the evidence of Christ’s claims to deity. As confirmation to John the Baptist that he was indeed the "one who was to come," that is, the divine Messiah, Jesus said to John’s disciples: "Go back and report to John what you hear and see: the blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are

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cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor."
Jesus clearly implies that His miracles validate and authenticate the fact that with Him the Messianic Age had arrived.
Jesus' miracles identified Him as the Christ in accord with Old Testament prophecies.
Isaiah prophesied: "Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who are fearful-hearted, "Be strong, do not fear! Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God; He will come and save you. Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the dumb sing. For waters shall burst forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert. The parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water; in the habitation of jackals, where each lay, there shall be grass with reeds and rushes. A highway shall be there, and a road, and it shall be called the Highway of Holiness. And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with singing, with everlasting joy on their heads. They shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away" (Isaiah 35:3-10).
"The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me, because the Lord has anointed Me to preach good tidings to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. And the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn, to console those who mourn in Zion. To give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they may be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord that He may be glorified." (Isaiah 61:1-3)
When Jesus went to Nazareth, where He had been brought up, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read. And He was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when He had opened the book, He found the place where it was written: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord."
Then He closed the book, and gave it back the attendant, and sat down. And the eyes all who were in the synagogue were fixed Him. And he began to say to them, "Today

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this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing ." (Luke 4:16-21)
Within the context of biblical theism, the weight of Jesus' miracles separately and collectively, point, according to Jesus' own testimony, to a twofold conclusion. They testified to the coming of Messiah and the Messianic Age, but they also testified to His own divine character as the Son of God who visited this poor planet on a nission of mercy, to seek and to save that which was lost.
Let's respond to the invitation of Christ and observe some of the miracles He did in His public ministry that validate His deity. We have just quoted the passage from Luke, chapter 4, and Jesus' visit to the synagogue. Immediately following that visit, Jesus traveled to Capernaum and entered another synagogue. "Now in the synagogue there was a man who had a spirit of an unclean demon. And he cried out with a loud voice, saying, "Let us alone! What have we to do with You, Jesus of Nazareth? Did you come to destroy us? I know who You are—the Holy One of God!" But Jesus rebuked him, saying, "Be quiet, and come out of him!" And when the demon had thrown him in their midst, it came out of him and did not hurt him. Then they were amazed and spoke among themselves, saying, "What a word this is! For with authority and power He commands the unclean spirits, and they come out." (Luke 4:33-37)
On that memorable day, Jesus took possession of both the Sabbath and the synagogue, since He was Lord of both. The new matter and manner of His teaching, so authoritative and different from the dry recital of tradition by the scribes, turned that Sabbath into a new Lord's Day! While teaching with all majesty and force, His discourse was strangely interrupted.
An extraordinary incident occurred, namely, the shriek of the demon-possessed man--an incident "transposed in Luke to bring into better contrast by juxtaposition Christ's rejection of the Sabbath before at Nazareth and His welcome Sabbath at Capernaum. Mark chronologically places the two cures after the miraculous draught, not before."
The quiet of the sanctuary was disturbed by a wild cry and the Lord is revealed as the Master of the underworld of evil who had come to destroy the empire of Satan.
There is a question regarding the presence of a demonic in the synagogue. How did he get there? Evidently, although possessed of an unclean spirit, he was not excluded from the public worship of God. Possibly it was not known that he was demon-possessed until the resident demon became conscious

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that he was in the presence of One stronger than the evil kingdom to which he belonged, and who with the instinct and consciousness of usurpation, cried out. It was the demon and not the man he inhabited, who shrieked. Christ often meets demoniacs in the outside world, but that one should intrude into the very presence of God was extraordinary.
In the scene before us, Luke portrays Jesus’ great battle with Satan and shows Jesus as the victor. This is the first of Jesus’ miracles that Luke recorded.
The distinguishable features of the demon in the miracle before us are as follows:
(1) It is described as being unclean. This is the one case of demon-possession in which Luke adds such an epithet. "That the usurper is here called ‘unclean’ indicates the moral impurity by which he was characterized, and so we are not surprised to find that he violently recoiled from the unsullied holiness which dwelt in Christ. Other translations use the word EVIL to describe the demon. Evil (unclean) spirits, or demons, are ruled by Satan. They were not created by Satan because God is the Creator of all. Rather, evil spirits and demons are fallen angels who joined Satan in his rebellion and thus became perverted and evil. The evil spirit had entered the man’s body, had taken up residence, and controlled him. Though not all disease comes from Satan, sometimes demons can cause a person to become mute, deaf, blind, or insane. In every case where demons confronted Jesus, however, they lost their power. God limits what evil spirits can do.
God’s power present in Jesus confronted the power of Satan. The Jews believed that the Messiah would crush Satan and destroy his power.
(2) This demon recognized the claims of Christ as the Son of God. Luke emphasized Jesus’ conflict with evil powers to show His superiority over them, so he recorded many stories about Jesus driving out evil spirits.
Jesus did not have to conduct an elaborate exorcism ritual. His word was enough to send out the demons. Luke tells us of another event when Jesus dealt with the demon-possessed. "Then they sailed to the country of the Gadarenes, which is opposite Galilee.
And when He stepped out on the land, there met Him a certain man from the city who had demons for a long time. And he wore no clothes, nor did he live in a house but in the tombs.
When he saw Jesus, he cried out, fell down before Him, and with a loud voice said, "What have I to do with You, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment

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me!"
For He commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. For it had often seized him, and he was kept under guard, bound with chains and shackles; and he broke the bonds and was driven by the demon into the wilderness.
Jesus asked him, saying, "What is your name?" And he said, "Legion," because many demons had entered him.
And they begged Him that He would not command them to go out into the abyss.
Now a herd of many swine was feeding there on the mountain. So they begged Him that He would permit them to enter them. And He permitted them.
Then the demons went out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd ran violently down the steep place into the lake and drowned." (Luke 8:26-33)
Jesus’ power over demons reveals His absolute power over Satan! Satan is presently under God’s authority; when God chooses to command, Satan must obey. "So be subject to God. Resist the devil [stand firm against him], and he will flee from you" (James 4:7).
"Be well balanced (temperate, sober of mind), be vigilant and cautious at all times, for that enemy of yours, the devil, roams around like a lion roaring [in fierce hunger], seeking someone to seize upon and devour.
Withstand him; be firm in faith [against his onset--rooted, established, strong, immovable, and determined], knowing that the same (identical) sufferings are appointed to your brotherhood (the whole body of Christians) throughout the world. " (1 Peter 5:7-9)
In Luke 10 we read:
"After these things the Lord appointed seventy others also, and sent them two by two before His face into every city and place where He Himself was about to go...
Verse 17
"Then the seventy returned with joy, saying, "Lord, even the demons are subject to us in Your name."
And He said to them, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy and nothing shall by any means hurt you. Nevertheless do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven." (Luke 10:1,17-20)
Satan’s workings are only within God’s pre scribed limits; he can do no more evil than God allows. In the end, Satan and all his demons will be tormented in the lake of fire forever. (Revelation 20:10)

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The central feature of Christ's ministry was the kingdom of God. After the temptation in the wilderness, Christ begins His public ministry with this proclamation:
"From that time Jesus began to preach and to say, REPENT, FOR THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN IS AT HAND." (Matthew 4:17). "Now after John was put in prison, Jesus came to Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel." (Mark 1:14-15)
In Matthew 12, Jesus is accused of casting out demons in the power of Beelzebub, the ruler of the demons. "But Jesus knew their thoughts, and said to them: "Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand. If Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then will his kingdom stand? And if I cast out demons by Beelzebub, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore they shall be your judges. But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, surely the kingdom of God has come upon you. Or how can one enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods, unless he first bind the strong man? And then he will plunder his house? He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters abroad." (Matthew 12:25-30)
It appears that Jesus understood the kingdom of God as a powerful demonstration of the rule of God, in line with the Old Testament expectation of His coming to deliver His people. What then is the kingdom of God? It is nothing less than the reign of God in human affairs. It is inaugurated with the coming of Jesus! His teaching and ministry, His message of the kingdom, all point forward to the climactic event of His death and resurrection. According to the Old Testament, the Messiah was to liberate the oppressed, give sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf and mobility to the lame. The arrival of the kingdom of God was to be the occasion for deliverance, liberation and fulfillment. When John the Baptist sent his disciples to question Jesus concerning His true identity, Jesus replied in terms of this Old Testament expectation. He was indeed the coming One since He was doing the works of the kingdom, healing and giving sight.
Jesus said: "If you don't believe what I say, then consider the works and signs that I do...they are the evidence of My claims to deity! Jesus Christ...the fulfillment of the prophets, the divine Son of God, the Savior of the world, God in human flesh © Copyright 2005 Church of the Highlands