Christ is the Message of His Miracles
Jesus turned water to wine. He healed a nobleman's son. He raised up and made an impotent man whole - a man confined to his bed 38 years, in spite of the man's ignorance of Christ. He revealed Himself as the Christ of God to a Samaritan - a sinful woman born to a sinful race, in a heathen nation, which worshiped heathen gods. She was expert in hiding the truth about herself. She went from man to man. She questioned whether Jesus was as great as Jacob. She was ignorant of true worship; she had never worshiped God. Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, borrowed lunch from a boy and fed 5,000 men plus women and children with it. He walked on water and calmed the troubled sea. For a woman caught by men in the very act of adultery, one whom Moses in the law condemned to death, He stood as Advocate, defended and passed upon her the sentence of "Neither do I condemn thee." He formed clay from dust and mixed it with His own spittle, put it on the eyes of a man born blind, sent him to a pool named "Sent", and told him to wash there, which when he did he came again seeing. He raised from the dead a man who had been buried four days. By these miracles and many more, Jesus displayed the authority and power of the Son of God, of God Himself.
In spiritual blindness, the people who saw these things were impressed with the miracles. But the miracles that Jesus did taught more than physical healing, more than His authority over creation, more than His power over sickness and death. Miracles in themselves are not the message; Christ is the message of God's miracles. The message of miracles is the One who did those miracles, and the foundation of justice upon which He showed grace and mercy to ungodly, unrighteous, ignorant, impotent, hell-deserving sinners.
John2: Water made wine was the scriptural testimony that the Eternal Word of God, who is one with the Father, would be made flesh, in the nature of His people, and in His human body and soul would offer Himself to God in shedding of His own blood. That blood would fulfill and bring into force the New Covenant of God's eternal salvation of His people, and secure to His people all of the promises in that Covenant, which God made with His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and which Christ fulfilled by meeting their obligations and bringing the blessings of that covenant into their possession, namely, eternal salvation: cleansing and forgiveness of sins, eternal redemption, everlasting righteousness, eternal inheritance, adoption as sons, in short: eternal life. Thus, turning water to wine required the shedding of His own blood to the glory of God.
John4: He satisfied the thirst of His own soul by giving Himself up to the curse of the law so that a Samaritan woman, who faced the thirst of the burning condemnation of God's fiery law against her sin, would drink from Him as her salvation. As the object of His saving grace, she fulfilled His command to her, "Give me to drink." Giving drink to the woman required the Son of God to taste death for her and give to her the water of salvation flowing to sinners because of that accomplished death, to the glory of God.
John5: The impotent man was ignorant and without strength. When the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, raised him from his lameness, it was in spite of the man's ignorance of who Jesus was. The Sovereignty of the Son of God in salvation, in raising whom He will, was demonstrated. But raising a man from his long-term lameness required more than mere power. It required that the Lord Jesus Christ take that man's disease to Himself. It required that the Son of God, in the man's own nature, bear the weakness, the beating and the stripes that the disease of his sin earned from God's justice. He Himself took our sickness and bore our sorrows, and by His stripes we were healed. (1Pet2:24; Isaiah53:6).
John6: In feeding 5,000, the Lord Jesus broke His own body and shed His own blood for His people, His sheep, to save them from death in the wilderness of unbelief and sin under the wrath of God, and to give Himself as an offering for them and to them as their life and living. He gave Himself for them, in order that He might give Himself to them, and bring them to Himself. He died, the Just for the unjust, to bring us to God. (1Pet3:18).
John6: He calmed the tempestuous waves of the raging sea of God's wrath against all in the ship, rising above the waves and walking on their proud waters, because He Himself was thrown into the waves of judgment as the substitute of those in that ship (Jonah 1-2). When His soul was made an offering for sin, the waves of God's wrath entered into His own soul, and the raging sea of judgment against His people was calmed. By this victory He was able to speak to those proud waves, "Peace!! Be still !".
John7: In the last day of the last required feast, under the Old Testament, as recorded in Lev23:1-44, the Feast of Tabernacles, Jesus stood and cried, "If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink!" This was a call to believe on Him as the reality, the fulfillment of all of the Old Testament feasts. On each day of this last feast, several animals of various kinds were offered. But on the last day, only one offering of each victim was offered. By this, Christ declared Himself to be the fulfillment of that feast, and all the feasts that preceded it. He declared Himself to be the true, the reality, the fulfillment of all those feasts required throughout the year.
The Feast of Tabernacles required Israel to dwell in booths, small shelters, as they had when they first came our of Egypt. In fulfillment, Christ is our dwelling place in all generations (Ps90). He is our shelter from the heat of the desert of this world, of the emptiness of man's religion, of the fiery darts of the wicked, of the curse of the law. He fulfills all of these feasts in His own person and work.
If any man attending the feasts that only patterned the true, is left empty, left thirsting, left dying for the reality, discontent with the mere show of religion and the shadow of it, then come to Christ! Believe Him who accomplished all of the will of God! Find all your soul's desires, longings, and needs before God and from God in Him and in Him alone. Come to Christ, take of Him, take Him into yourself, live upon Him, believe Him and so do the work of God, believing that He performed all things that were required in that eternal covenant to actually and really fulfill God's will by Himself, by His own work. In so drinking, taking and living upon Christ as the Surety and fulfillment of all the revelation of God, He will fill us until an overflowing of Himself with His own Spirit, produces an abundance of life (Jn10:10), an abundance of pardon (Isaiah55:7), an abundance of cleansing (Zech13:1; 1Jn1:7-9; Rev1:5), an abundance of righteousness (Dan9:24), and abundance of thanksgiving and love to God for all that He did.
John8: He stooped twice in defense of a guilty woman, first when He who gave the law from His own finger, was made under that law as man; and second, when He stooped lower than man, as a worm and no man, was made sin for her, enduring the curse of that law against Himself in her place, and fulfilling all of the obligations of that law for her (Ps22:6; Phil2:6-8; 2Cor5:21; Heb10:1-18; Rom5:21; 8:1-4). When He rose from the dead He declared that her sin was no more, it could not be found, though God Himself were to search diligently for it. He silenced her accusers and when He was alone with her, spoke peace to her conscience. To every believing sinner, He now says, "Who is He that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us." Romans 8:34
John9: He was made flesh and blood, as man is made clay from the earth, and put this on and set it before the eyes of the blind man and then sent the blind man to wash in the pool named after His own appointment, the "Sent" One of His Father, with all of the authority and authentication of God His Father. He was that Sent One, who was sent as the Surety to save His people from their sins, to secure them to God, and secure Himself to them. He revealed Himself as the Son of God to the man after He opened his eyes. The man gave the only appropriate response to the work of the the Son of God: he believed Him, and in believing, He worshipped Him.
John11: Christ purposefully allowed one whom He loved to suffer and die in order that He might make His glory known in his resurrection. He made it know that the resurrection is not merely an event: it is a person, "I AM THE RESURRECTION and the LIFE." We don't need to know the date and time of the last day if we know Him who is the RESURRECTION and the LIFE! He is the RESURRECTION and LIFE because He died to sin once, and now, sin has no dominion over Him. All for whom He died now live in and by Him. (1Peter2:24; Romans6:5-9)
Now, according to John, all of these things were written that you might believe. Believe what? That Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. And that believing, you might have life through His name. John 20:31.
The greatest miracle of all was the miracle that Jesus accomplished on the cross, and declared when He cried, "It is Finished!"
All of the transgressions and sins and iniquities of His people were ended then. They were put away and ceased to further accrue or to be, because He took them and bore them in His own body, up to, and on the Tree.
His obedience unto death is the eternal righteousness that became His people's. His suffering and death were sufficient to satisfy God's eternal damnation against His people. His obedience was of such merit that it was an everlasting righteousness.
He obtained eternal redemption: nothing left uncompensated to justice, nothing unpaid, nothing unremitted. Full remission was made of the entire debt sin earned from God's justice. Having remitted their sins once for all, the Spirit of God Himself testifies to it: "Their sins and iniquities I will remember no more." (Heb10:15-17)
He reconciled His people to God. He died the Just for the unjust to bring us, who in ourselves were ungodly, to God.
He brought us back. He restored that which He did not take away (Ps69:4). He did not take away God's glory, but He restored it by seeking His Father's glory, not His own, by working out the salvation of His people. He made satisfaction for sins He did not commit. He satisfied justice He never injured. He fulfilled the law He never broke. He brought in righteousness He had not lost. He secured an inheritance greater than that which Adam by his sin took away, and greater than which none could ever earn.
He cried these last words, "It Is Finished!" with a loud voice to show that He had accomplished these things by Himself, and to declare them with power to us. He cried these words to His Father, and in that cry He was heard. Salvation depends on His accomplished work alone. Did God accept Him, the sacrifice? Did God approve of His righteousness? Did He really atone for sin, cleanse us from all our sin before the LORD (Leviticus 16:30) and reconcile His people to God? Did He secure eternal life to them? This is the only issue. This is the entire matter. Either Jesus Christ actually paid for the sins of His people, actually worked out for them everlasting righteousness, actually secured to them eternal inheritance in God, is actually one with them so that all that He is and all that He did, He did before God for them and they are eternally free, or else He is an impostor! If He is the Son of God, then surely His cry is true. If God raised Him from the dead, then surely His cry is true, and all of His people, the elect of God, are saved by Him.
Rick Warta, Pastor
Jesus turned water to wine. He healed a nobleman's son. He raised up and made an impotent man whole - a man confined to his bed 38 years, in spite of the man's ignorance of Christ. He revealed Himself as the Christ of God to a Samaritan - a sinful woman born to a sinful race, in a heathen nation, which worshiped heathen gods. She was expert in hiding the truth about herself. She went from man to man. She questioned whether Jesus was as great as Jacob. She was ignorant of true worship; she had never worshiped God. Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, borrowed lunch from a boy and fed 5,000 men plus women and children with it. He walked on water and calmed the troubled sea. For a woman caught by men in the very act of adultery, one whom Moses in the law condemned to death, He stood as Advocate, defended and passed upon her the sentence of "Neither do I condemn thee." He formed clay from dust and mixed it with His own spittle, put it on the eyes of a man born blind, sent him to a pool named "Sent", and told him to wash there, which when he did he came again seeing. He raised from the dead a man who had been buried four days. By these miracles and many more, Jesus displayed the authority and power of the Son of God, of God Himself.
In spiritual blindness, the people who saw these things were impressed with the miracles. But the miracles that Jesus did taught more than physical healing, more than His authority over creation, more than His power over sickness and death. Miracles in themselves are not the message; Christ is the message of God's miracles. The message of miracles is the One who did those miracles, and the foundation of justice upon which He showed grace and mercy to ungodly, unrighteous, ignorant, impotent, hell-deserving sinners.
John2: Water made wine was the scriptural testimony that the Eternal Word of God, who is one with the Father, would be made flesh, in the nature of His people, and in His human body and soul would offer Himself to God in shedding of His own blood. That blood would fulfill and bring into force the New Covenant of God's eternal salvation of His people, and secure to His people all of the promises in that Covenant, which God made with His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and which Christ fulfilled by meeting their obligations and bringing the blessings of that covenant into their possession, namely, eternal salvation: cleansing and forgiveness of sins, eternal redemption, everlasting righteousness, eternal inheritance, adoption as sons, in short: eternal life. Thus, turning water to wine required the shedding of His own blood to the glory of God.
John4: He satisfied the thirst of His own soul by giving Himself up to the curse of the law so that a Samaritan woman, who faced the thirst of the burning condemnation of God's fiery law against her sin, would drink from Him as her salvation. As the object of His saving grace, she fulfilled His command to her, "Give me to drink." Giving drink to the woman required the Son of God to taste death for her and give to her the water of salvation flowing to sinners because of that accomplished death, to the glory of God.
John5: The impotent man was ignorant and without strength. When the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, raised him from his lameness, it was in spite of the man's ignorance of who Jesus was. The Sovereignty of the Son of God in salvation, in raising whom He will, was demonstrated. But raising a man from his long-term lameness required more than mere power. It required that the Lord Jesus Christ take that man's disease to Himself. It required that the Son of God, in the man's own nature, bear the weakness, the beating and the stripes that the disease of his sin earned from God's justice. He Himself took our sickness and bore our sorrows, and by His stripes we were healed. (1Pet2:24; Isaiah53:6).
John6: In feeding 5,000, the Lord Jesus broke His own body and shed His own blood for His people, His sheep, to save them from death in the wilderness of unbelief and sin under the wrath of God, and to give Himself as an offering for them and to them as their life and living. He gave Himself for them, in order that He might give Himself to them, and bring them to Himself. He died, the Just for the unjust, to bring us to God. (1Pet3:18).
John6: He calmed the tempestuous waves of the raging sea of God's wrath against all in the ship, rising above the waves and walking on their proud waters, because He Himself was thrown into the waves of judgment as the substitute of those in that ship (Jonah 1-2). When His soul was made an offering for sin, the waves of God's wrath entered into His own soul, and the raging sea of judgment against His people was calmed. By this victory He was able to speak to those proud waves, "Peace!! Be still !".
John7: In the last day of the last required feast, under the Old Testament, as recorded in Lev23:1-44, the Feast of Tabernacles, Jesus stood and cried, "If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink!" This was a call to believe on Him as the reality, the fulfillment of all of the Old Testament feasts. On each day of this last feast, several animals of various kinds were offered. But on the last day, only one offering of each victim was offered. By this, Christ declared Himself to be the fulfillment of that feast, and all the feasts that preceded it. He declared Himself to be the true, the reality, the fulfillment of all those feasts required throughout the year.
The Feast of Tabernacles required Israel to dwell in booths, small shelters, as they had when they first came our of Egypt. In fulfillment, Christ is our dwelling place in all generations (Ps90). He is our shelter from the heat of the desert of this world, of the emptiness of man's religion, of the fiery darts of the wicked, of the curse of the law. He fulfills all of these feasts in His own person and work.
If any man attending the feasts that only patterned the true, is left empty, left thirsting, left dying for the reality, discontent with the mere show of religion and the shadow of it, then come to Christ! Believe Him who accomplished all of the will of God! Find all your soul's desires, longings, and needs before God and from God in Him and in Him alone. Come to Christ, take of Him, take Him into yourself, live upon Him, believe Him and so do the work of God, believing that He performed all things that were required in that eternal covenant to actually and really fulfill God's will by Himself, by His own work. In so drinking, taking and living upon Christ as the Surety and fulfillment of all the revelation of God, He will fill us until an overflowing of Himself with His own Spirit, produces an abundance of life (Jn10:10), an abundance of pardon (Isaiah55:7), an abundance of cleansing (Zech13:1; 1Jn1:7-9; Rev1:5), an abundance of righteousness (Dan9:24), and abundance of thanksgiving and love to God for all that He did.
John8: He stooped twice in defense of a guilty woman, first when He who gave the law from His own finger, was made under that law as man; and second, when He stooped lower than man, as a worm and no man, was made sin for her, enduring the curse of that law against Himself in her place, and fulfilling all of the obligations of that law for her (Ps22:6; Phil2:6-8; 2Cor5:21; Heb10:1-18; Rom5:21; 8:1-4). When He rose from the dead He declared that her sin was no more, it could not be found, though God Himself were to search diligently for it. He silenced her accusers and when He was alone with her, spoke peace to her conscience. To every believing sinner, He now says, "Who is He that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us." Romans 8:34
John9: He was made flesh and blood, as man is made clay from the earth, and put this on and set it before the eyes of the blind man and then sent the blind man to wash in the pool named after His own appointment, the "Sent" One of His Father, with all of the authority and authentication of God His Father. He was that Sent One, who was sent as the Surety to save His people from their sins, to secure them to God, and secure Himself to them. He revealed Himself as the Son of God to the man after He opened his eyes. The man gave the only appropriate response to the work of the the Son of God: he believed Him, and in believing, He worshipped Him.
John11: Christ purposefully allowed one whom He loved to suffer and die in order that He might make His glory known in his resurrection. He made it know that the resurrection is not merely an event: it is a person, "I AM THE RESURRECTION and the LIFE." We don't need to know the date and time of the last day if we know Him who is the RESURRECTION and the LIFE! He is the RESURRECTION and LIFE because He died to sin once, and now, sin has no dominion over Him. All for whom He died now live in and by Him. (1Peter2:24; Romans6:5-9)
Now, according to John, all of these things were written that you might believe. Believe what? That Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. And that believing, you might have life through His name. John 20:31.
The greatest miracle of all was the miracle that Jesus accomplished on the cross, and declared when He cried, "It is Finished!"
All of the transgressions and sins and iniquities of His people were ended then. They were put away and ceased to further accrue or to be, because He took them and bore them in His own body, up to, and on the Tree.
His obedience unto death is the eternal righteousness that became His people's. His suffering and death were sufficient to satisfy God's eternal damnation against His people. His obedience was of such merit that it was an everlasting righteousness.
He obtained eternal redemption: nothing left uncompensated to justice, nothing unpaid, nothing unremitted. Full remission was made of the entire debt sin earned from God's justice. Having remitted their sins once for all, the Spirit of God Himself testifies to it: "Their sins and iniquities I will remember no more." (Heb10:15-17)
He reconciled His people to God. He died the Just for the unjust to bring us, who in ourselves were ungodly, to God.
He brought us back. He restored that which He did not take away (Ps69:4). He did not take away God's glory, but He restored it by seeking His Father's glory, not His own, by working out the salvation of His people. He made satisfaction for sins He did not commit. He satisfied justice He never injured. He fulfilled the law He never broke. He brought in righteousness He had not lost. He secured an inheritance greater than that which Adam by his sin took away, and greater than which none could ever earn.
He cried these last words, "It Is Finished!" with a loud voice to show that He had accomplished these things by Himself, and to declare them with power to us. He cried these words to His Father, and in that cry He was heard. Salvation depends on His accomplished work alone. Did God accept Him, the sacrifice? Did God approve of His righteousness? Did He really atone for sin, cleanse us from all our sin before the LORD (Leviticus 16:30) and reconcile His people to God? Did He secure eternal life to them? This is the only issue. This is the entire matter. Either Jesus Christ actually paid for the sins of His people, actually worked out for them everlasting righteousness, actually secured to them eternal inheritance in God, is actually one with them so that all that He is and all that He did, He did before God for them and they are eternally free, or else He is an impostor! If He is the Son of God, then surely His cry is true. If God raised Him from the dead, then surely His cry is true, and all of His people, the elect of God, are saved by Him.
Rick Warta, Pastor
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