A Nonstop Day of Miracles, Part 2

Some have read the New Testament stories about Jesus and assumed His miracles were nothing more than clever illusions or sensational entertainment designed to recruit new followers. But a deeper study of God's Word will show us how the miracles of Jesus reinforced His deity and proved to a waiting world that their King and Messiah had finally come. Today on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindoll teaches from Matthew chapter 9.

In this passage, we watch the reaction from Jesus' adoring fans and conversely, His most cynical critics. Chuck begins with prayer. We bow in humble adoration before you, our awesome, almighty, victorious God. We come, having lived our lives this past week, engaged in the world about us, a world of competition, a world of secular thinking, a world where the culture is designed to undermine and disregard you and your truth. I pray, Father, as a result of our time with you, that we will gain a perspective on truth, that we will see how it is able to set us free from the things that have bound us, free from traditionalism, free from the drives of the flesh and the lusts of the eyes and the ever-present pride of life. And may we, as we bow in humble adoration, realize you are the potter, we are the clay. You are the Lord, we are the servants. You are our God, and we are those who follow you, trust you, lean hard on you. Help us, our Father, today to get rid of those things that have plagued us in our long list of worries. May they be dethroned from our lives as you are enthroned, afresh and anew. May we in humble adoration acknowledge those words of Wesley, and can it be that I should gain an interest in the Savior's blood? Amazing love, how can it be that thou, my God, has died for me? In humble adoration, our Father, we pray in the name of Jesus, the greatest of all names, the name before whom every knee will one day bow and every tongue will one day confess, that he is God, and it will all be done to the glory of your name, O Father. Through Christ, we pray, and everyone said, Amen.

You're listening to Insight for Living. To study the book of Matthew with Chuck Swindoll, be sure to download his Searching the Scriptures studies by going to insightworld.org slash studies. And now the message from Chuck about a nonstop day of miracles. Alone comes the leader of the synagogue. We know from the other books, Mark and Luke, that the man's name is Jairus. He's not the rabbi of the synagogue.

He's an officer in the synagogue, and he came and knelt before Jesus. Now look at this. Right out of the blue, my daughter has just died, he said.

But you can bring her back to life again if you just come and lay your hand on her. Listen to that. This is a Jewish officer from a Jewish synagogue. He did not represent the majority opinion among the Jews in that day or this one. And he's seen enough and he's heard enough to know this one represents a power that no one else I know has. He can do what no one else can do.

I'm going to go to him. When Jesus arrived at the official's home, he saw the noisy crowd and he heard the funeral music. So he says to them, get out. Get out. The girl isn't dead, she's only asleep.

But the crowd laughed at him. The girl's dead. She's dead.

And he says, no, no, no, no, no. I'm here to tell you she's merely asleep. After the crowd was put outside, they with their laughter, he went in and took the girl by hand. She stood up.

She's a 12-year-old girl and she's now resuscitated, brought back to life. Look at that power. Don't ever, ever, ever doubt God's power.

In his time and in his way and for his purpose, he demonstrates it rarely when we expect it. And usually in ways we would have never imagined. In fact, one of the other writers says, he says, give her something to eat.

I smiled when I read that. She's almost a teenager, so she's hungry. Even when she's just getting from death to life, she's healthy.

She's whole. And the report of the miracle swept through the entire countryside, of course. If the girl next door to you had died and she was raised from death, don't you think it would spread through the neighborhood? You couldn't wait to tell everyone you know a miracle happened next door. He doesn't promote it.

They do. After this, he leaves the girls home and there are two blind men following along. Now, you would think by now it would be good for him to have a rest. I mean, he's been hard at it. He's been dealing with those Pharisees and those disciples of John who want this whole comparison issue dealt with. He's raised the girl from death. He has healed the woman with the issue of blood.

It's a little time for a break, wouldn't you think? But they follow along behind him, shouting, Son of David, have mercy on us! Son of David, have mercy on us! And he doesn't answer them.

Don't miss that. They're shouting and he's not answering. He moves further and goes to the house where he was headed, verse 28. And they went right into the house where he was staying. Jesus isn't perturbed.

He isn't impatient. He simply asked them, do you believe I can make you see? Yes, Lord. They told him, we do. Then he touched their eyes. He touched their eyes and said, because of your faith, it will happen.

Look at the verse. Then their eyes were opened and they could see. And the first image they saw, the face of Jesus right in front of them.

I have a friend who is now retired from his practice of ophthalmology, an excellent, excellent physician of the eyes. And he used his practice in a very interesting way to make Christ known. He had been reading in the Bible how a person without Christ is literally, or I should say, spiritually blind.

And when a person comes to Christ, it's as if their eyes are opened and they see. Well, because he did work on eyes that were often, the vision was often blocked by growths, often thick, foggy-like cataracts. And he, through his training and skill, was able to remove the cataracts that they could see for the first time, many of them.

And he had a very interesting idea. You know how when you go to an eye doctor and they flip a chart down and you read, usually it's something inane like, now's the time for all good men to come to the aid of the country, or whatever. His eye chart read, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. That's the first of the four spiritual laws that Bill Bright introduced many, many years ago. And he said he would have the people, the very first thing they would see when they would test their eyes is this.

God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. Wow. Wow. And he would say, you know, you're able to read that, aren't you? And they'd say, oh, yeah, this is great. They'd be crying and all excited. He would say, let's look at what it says.

Right out of the chute, think of it. That's evangelism at its best. They're blind.

Now they see. Here's the gospel. God loves you. Has a wonderful plan for your life or whatever you may wish to put there.

God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him should never perish but have everlasting life. Think of what that would mean to a person who has been blind for who knows how long. By the way, this explains why you can be all exhilarated when you have truth explained to you from the scriptures and the guy sitting next to you is asleep. I mean, he's bored to tears or maybe preoccupied, can't wait till the thing's over and he gets out and he keeps shaking his watch thinking it's maybe stopped on him or something. He pulls out a calendar, see how long we're going to go in this sermon. And you don't want it to end.

What's the difference? You have sight. Quite likely the person sitting next to you does not. Quite likely the reason you find yourself bored to tears is that none of this is enlightening to you and you're still blind.

In blindness your life plays tricks on you and you cannot see what is really there. But now eyes are opened and they're able to see because he isn't ready to present himself as Messiah to the whole body of people. He says to them, don't tell anyone about this. And my response under my breath is, are you kidding?

Instead they went out and spread his fame all over the region. Could you keep it to yourself? You've been blind and now you can see and you go, I'm not telling anybody.

Why? Because your life's been changed. He has a deeper reason for his statement to them about not being. It isn't out of disobedience, it's just out of exhilaration.

They can't keep it to themselves. By the way, sharing Christ is like that. It flows out of a life that's been changed and it is so transformed you can't keep quiet about it. But here's a man who follows who can't speak. Look at verse 32. When they left, a demonized man who could not speak was brought to Jesus. Here we are again dealing with demons. Remember that session we had where those pathetic individuals were in the caves of death? They spent their time at the cemetery. They were filled with demons. No chains could hold them. No one could be around them. They were a danger to themselves and others.

They cut themselves and they lived in this miserable state. You remember. Well, here's a man who is filled with a demon and the demon has taken his voice. He can't speak. He can't respond. He can't answer questions.

He can't state his need. He comes and the man appears before the Lord and Jesus cast out the demon and then the man began to speak. What a change. The crowds were amazed. Nothing like this has ever happened in Israel. You say right now, who on earth could doubt that this was truly a man of God? The Pharisees could. They weren't there to find reason to believe. They were there to find reasons to cast doubt. Their negativity isn't simply laughter as we read about up in verse 24 where the people who had been in the room where the girl had died left laughing at him.

This isn't laughter. This is an accusation. He cast out demons because he is empowered by the prince of demons. What audacity to make that statement. He represents the darker powers since they couldn't explain away the miracles or deny the power that was at work.

It's supernatural but it comes from satanic sources. We sit in this room today and we hear these words. It's easy to overlook that we're a part of the crowd.

You're here somewhere on these pages, somewhere in these verses. I asked you earlier, would you have laughed? I ask you now, would you have nodded in agreement that he may have power but it really is not the power of God. I'm fairly late in that observation.

It was back in 1944 that C.S. Lewis wrote a book that came to be known as Mere Christianity, 1944. It was earlier called A Case for Christianity and in that book there appears a paragraph that is perhaps among the most often quoted from Lewis, the university philosopher who was surprised by joy and came to Christ in his own life. He writes this, I'm trying here to prevent anyone from saying the really silly thing that people often say about him, meaning Jesus. They say I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher but I don't accept his claim to be God.

That's the one thing, Lewis says, that we mustn't say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said wouldn't be a great moral teacher. He'd either be a lunatic on a level with a man who says he's a poached egg or else he'd be the devil of hell. You must make your choice. Those are my words to all of us today.

You must make your choice. Either the man was and is the son of God or he's a mad man or something worse. You can shut him up as a fool or spit at him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But don't come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He hasn't left that open to us. He didn't intend to. I'm not asking you today simply to be impressed with a man who lived and died and whose name is now known among multiple millions around the world, fine man, martyr for a cause, good teacher. Those are silly answers.

They're shallow answers. Great moral teachers would never say what he said. In fact, in 2004, many years after mere Christianity, Kent Hughes wrote and then later one as more recent as Eric Metaxas in his book on miracles wrote this.

C.S. Lewis rather famously said that when it came to deciding who Jesus Christ was, we really only had three choices. First, we could say he was a liar, that all the things he said were simply lies. Second, we could say he was not a liar but a lunatic, so he couldn't be held responsible for saying the things he said. And third, we could say he was actually who he said he was, the Lord of heaven and earth. Lewis said there were no other options besides the three, Lord, liar, lunatic, because Jesus hadn't left us any other options. He continues to regard Christ as a wonderful moral teacher is not possible because he said so many things that a sane and wonderful moral teacher would never say, such as when he cursed a fig tree or raised people from the dead or said that he was the promised Messiah of the world or when he forgave sin and healed the blind, to name a few examples. Socrates didn't do any of those things or claimed to do any of those things, but if he had claimed to, we would rightly say he was an out-and-out liar or a fraud or simply non-compass mentis, and so it must be with Jesus. He can hardly be someone who pronounces deeply sane and wise things on the one hand and a madman or deceiver on the other. We are forced to choose. Lewis here holds our feet to the logical fire.

Good words, Eregmataxis. Let me have you bow your heads, please. Please close your eyes and sit quietly there in the darkness provided by your eyelids and the quietness of this room. What is your opinion of Jesus Christ? No, no, no, no, not your parents, not what your preacher believes. I'm not talking about any of that. You, who have just sat through a rather brief and simple narrative of a nonstop day of miracles.

You're left with a choice. God didn't give us his word simply to entertain us or satisfy idle curiosity. He recorded these events so that we might have our lives changed by belief in the one the officer from the synagogue believed in or the crowd around the girl who stood up now alive or the two blind men who now see or the demonized man who now speaks.

Where are you in that story? The Lord our God stands before us with his arms open saying, come to me, come to me as you are, come in faith. Believe that my son died that you might have life now and eternally and trust him now.

Believe in him now. You are no closer to God than you were when you came in if you came without Christ if you have not turned your life over to him. You've done a few religious things. You've done songs and you've been a part of a time of prayer and teaching, but you're no different until you turn your life over to him, until you trust him to forgive your sins, to give you a whole new slate, a whole new beginning. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old things are passed away, all things are new. We've heard of that new piece of cloth and the new wine. I offer to you a whole new concept of faith.

Trust him with your heart right now. Dear Father, we are so grateful that you cared enough about us and you were revealing your word that you included in it this narrative designed to capture our attention and to arouse our interest, to convict us. We've lived so many of our years looking in the wrong direction, trying to find answers and a reason to go on from erroneous sources.

We now realize it is Christ and Christ alone in whom we have eternal life, forgiveness, and a hope of eternity. I pray that you would give no rest and no relief until those who do not know you turn their hearts over to you. May sleep flee from them.

May anxiety be their constant companion. May there be restlessness until they find hope and rest in you. Dear Father, through Jesus Christ, the Son of God, we pray, every one said, Amen. Witnessing these miracles of Jesus brings us to a crossroad of decision. Quoting C.S.

Lewis, was Jesus a liar, a lunatic, or the Lord of heaven and earth? You're listening to a message from Chuck Swindoll about a nonstop day of miracles, and this is Insight for Living. To learn more about this ministry, please visit us online at insightworld.org. If Chuck's verse-by-verse study through the book of Matthew has ignited your curiosity and you're ready to learn more, I'll encourage you to add Swindoll's Living Insights commentary to your personal collection of study tools. The edition for Matthew comes in two large volumes, both hardbound.

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