Key takeaways to internalize
Jesus could have made a fortune by charging for His miracles, but not once did He ask for money. In fact, there is no record of anyone even offering Him money for His services. His services were always provided at no cost. Shouldn't we operate in the same way?
What comes to your mind when you read or hear about the miracles Jesus did? Most people think of the miracles of Jesus as proof that He was the Messiah. They derive no personal, practical benefit from them. However, when I look the miracles more carefully, individually and as a whole, I see a message.
The message is this: for a man to be changed from an unbeliever to a believer and function as a healthy, fruitful disciple who lives a life that is pleasing to God and useful to God, many things have to happen, and many lessons have to be learned – all of these things and lessons are symbolized by the miracles.
Let’s look at this symbolism in more detail…
We start out as an unbeliever, totally useless to God for any good work. We are like a man who is dead, demon-possessed, blind, deaf, dumb, with no hands and feet, and leprosy all over. Our spiritual value to others is zero.
Our goal (i.e. desired end result) is to become a believer and function as a healthy, fruitful disciple who lives a life that is pleasing to God and useful to God.
The first miracle is the changing of water into wine. Jesus changing water into wine symbolizes the spiritual change that takes place when a person is born again. He becomes a new creation, moving from tasteless and odorless water to a wine that smells and tastes good – an enemy now becomes a child.
Just like any child, this new creation is not quite useful to the household in any way. It is merely alive. To have eternal use, the person has to be transformed, as if from death to life.
The miracles of raising the dead symbolizes a man who was dead to righteousness now becoming alive to righteousness and dead to selfishness and sin. It reflects water baptism. You now actually begin focusing on suffering in the flesh to fight sin, and to do good deeds with good motives.
The miracles of healing lepers symbolize God working in you to make you sensitive to sin. When you sin, you feel the Holy Spirit speak to you through your conscience, just like a leper who is healed begins to feel the thorn that has entered his foot.
The miracle of casting out demons symbolize God taking away your addictions so that you can have a sober spirit and a clear mind and time to focus on the things of God. You start using your time and money sensibly and become available to God more and more than ever before.
The miracle of healing the man with dropsy symbolizes God giving you a good testimony so that you are never a bad representation of Him to anyone.
The miracles of healing the blind men symbolize God opening His word to you and showing you the hidden spiritual truths about Himself and yourself that you never realized before. You start believing the truths of Scripture, one by one, as they are revealed to you, in all their entirety.
The miracles of healing the deaf symbolize that you are now able to hear the Holy Spirit direct you along the way. You begin to figure out how to discern when God is speaking to you and what He is saying.
The miracles of healing the paralytics and the lame and the invalid symbolize God giving you the power to go where He wants you to be. Unless you are where He wants you, you will not be able to do His will properly.
The miracle of healing the withered hand symbolizes God enabling you to do what He wants you to do using the spiritual gifts He gave you so that you can effectively build His kingdom in the place He has chosen.
The miracles of enabling the dumb to speak symbolize God giving you the ability, and the boldness, to speak His word prophetically to those around you for their edification. God tested Samuel in this by giving him a tough message to give to Eli – the man who had a lot of power over him – and Samuel gave Eli the message without diluting it.
The miracle of healing the fever symbolizes God correcting you and removing a spiritual infection in you that every so often causes you to go astray.
Blood is critical to life. When you lose blood, you become weaker and weaker, and if you continually lose blood you will die. A person losing blood is a symbol of a person in spiritual decline. The miracle of healing the hemorrhaged woman symbolizes God restoring a person in spiritual decline.
The miracle of the withered fig tree symbolizes God’s behavior towards a believer who repeatedly doesn’t produce fruit. God is patient, but not forever.
The miracles of feeding the 4000 and the 5000 symbolizes God’s ability to meet my daily needs. It is so important to get this lesson and therefore this lesson was repeated twice.
The miracle of the coin in the fish’s mouth retrieved to pay taxes symbolizes God’s ability to help you meet your financial obligations.
The miracle of the catch of fish symbolizes God’s ability to make you hugely successful in everything you do. This miracle was also done twice, once near the beginning and once near the end to ensure that you really understand this lesson well.
The miracle of Jesus calming the storm symbolizes God’s ability to control the environment around your and cause all things to work for your good.
The miracle of Jesus walking on water and helping Peter symbolizes God’s ability to help you when you are drowning and overwhelmed with the tasks at hand.
These miracles give you financial security so that you don’t have to go about asking others for money as you serve God and be pleasing to Him.
When we internalize each of these miracles and learn the lessons therein and live our lives with an ever-deepening realization of their reality in us then we are functioning as a healthy, fruitful disciple who lives a life that is pleasing and useful to God.
Your goal must be to be that healthy, fruitful disciple who lives a life that is pleasing and useful to God. You must understand that you start out as an unbelieving, dead person, and one by one, all these miracles must happen to you, to make you that healthy, fruitful disciple who lives a life that is pleasing and useful to God.
Just like those people who experienced those miracles in the gospel were at the right place at the right time with the right attitude, so also you too must put yourself in the right place at the right time with the right attitude to experience those miracles in your life.
All this is available, not just for others, but for you. The centurion’s slave and the royal official’s son and others got healed because they believed that Jesus would heal them even if they didn’t deserve it. No matter what your past was, you can come to Jesus and become a fruitful servant of God.
That is the message of the miracles.
Jesus taught His disciples the lessons they needed to learn to be transformed from ordinary people into men of God through His miracles. You should learn those lessons too.
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