Chapter 8 Jesus Heals: Signs of the Kingdom
1. What are we to make of the miracles of Jesus?
The gospels are filled with several kinds of “works of wonder”
Healing
Exorcisms
Restorations of Life
Nature Miracles
2. Why are the miracles so challenging
A. Left – Reject miracles as illusions of a backward people. They want proof – evidence –
Logical explanations
B. Middle – 1. It does not seem right to lump all the miracle accounts together and to treat them all the
same way, giving one as much historical validity or importance as another.
2. Look for the truth that the story can reveal to us
C. Right – Fundamentalist – face value, reject science and biblical findings – literal interpretation
Problem: gospels disagree with each other
e.g. pg. 152
Tendency to exaggerate even within the gospels
e.g. “cut off your hand”
3. Jesus did work some miracles
Sources:
a. non-Christian sources – historians refer to Jesus as a wonder worker
b. Pharisees – charged Jesus as doing works of wonder through the power of the devil
c. Eyewitnesses
4. The Jews and Miracles
Miracles
Jews Us
Manifestations of the presence of God exceptions to the law of nature
Always present therefore expected God to
act this way
evil – sickness
any cure – exorcism
evil was cast out
5. A Different Kind of World
No hospitals
No mental institutions
Sickness was a manifestation of evil
Some – punishment from God
*Jesus miracles = God destroying evil therefore Messiah
6. The key to understanding the miracles of Jesus , then, is grasping their relationship to his proclamation of the Kingdom of God
a. the message of God’s unconditional love
b. his offer of complete reconciliation
c. his commitment to the poor and outcasts of society
d. his complete domination over the power of sin and its evil influences
7. Jesus’ miracles were signs intended to manifest God;s power over all creation and, in a special way, over the
forces of evil
Faith is an important factor
Healing of people’s hearts
Blindness –inability to recognize needs if neighbors
Crippling – closed minds
Lameness - legalism
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