DAILY DEVOTIONAL – December 9, 2019

“Powerful Pointers” 

Prayer:  Lord Jesus, You told Your disciple Thomas who struggled to believe in Your resurrection, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”  Lord, we believe.  Help us in our unbelief and strengthen our faith through Your Holy Spirit so that we may see more clearly Your loving presence and work in our life.  Amen.

Scripture: John 10:31-33; 37-39

The Jews picked up stones again to stone him.  Jesus answered them, “I have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you going to stone me?”  The Jews answered him, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.”  Jesus answered them, “If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me; but if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.”  But again they sought to arrest him, but he escaped from their hands.

Devotional – “Powerful Pointers”

It’s often been said that Jesus Christ was either absolutely crazy or He was exactly who He said He was and who Scripture declares Him to be: The Son of God and Savior of humanity.  Many today think that if God would just reveal Himself in an clear and obvious way, or if Jesus would come back and walk on water and manifest bread and fish in such a way that the false god of science could measure and quantify it, then everyone would believe in Him and this whole debate over the Truth of Jesus Christ could be resolved once and for all.

Well, one of the biggest evidences for the truth and believability of Scripture is that it doesn’t try and present Jesus or His disciples to us with rose colored glasses on.  We see time and again throughout Scripture how many people, even those like the Scribes and Pharisees who should have been the first to believe in Jesus as the fulfillment of God’s Old Testament promises, refused to believe in Him and considered Him to be at the very least insane if not possessed by a demon.

If the miracles Jesus performed were intended to create faith, then the Pharisees would have easily believed that Jesus and God the Father were one.  However, Jesus did not perform miracles so that they would “convince” people to believe or provide irrefutable proof of God’s existence or Christ’s truly being God in the flesh.  The miracles Jesus performed were given in order to confirm faith.  Think back to the many healing miracles Jesus performed.  After nearly every single one Jesus told the person healed, “your faith has healed you.”  You see, those who saw and realized the miracle for what it truly was saw it with the eyes of faith.  To those with faith, they saw the miraculous works of God Himself in Christ.  To those without faith and who demanded that Christ acquiesce to their prideful insistence on be convinced of Christ’s Truth, as if human reason or science could dare to put the Almighty God on trial, they saw only a trick performed by Jesus and were deprived of revelation.

John goes to great lengths to emphasize this important truth about Jesus’ miracles.  While the other Gospels refer to the mighty works of Jesus as “miracles” (“dunamis” in the Greek that means power or strength), John refers to Jesus’ miracles exclusively as “signs” (“siemeion” in the Greek which means a sign or mark or something that distinguishes a person from others.)  As Hebrews 11 says, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”  We cannot see Jesus for who He is without the eyes of faith.  Even if God were to tear open the sky and reveal heaven itself to the eyes of this unbelieving world, it would not be enough to create faith in those who worship their intellectualism as their god.  We see miracles of God as miracles only when we see through the eyes of faith, and when we see miracles they only confirm the faith in Christ we have been given, just as the faith of the sick that Jesus healed was seen by their healing.

When you get right down to it, any miracle seen by human eyes is a lesser miracle.  The first and most amazing miracle is the miracle of faith.  The miracle of faith in Christ is a miracle because faith is a work of God and not of men.  As Romans 10:17 says, “Faith comes from hearing (not seeing), and hearing through the word of Christ.”  And as it says in Romans 1:16, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.”  And as it says in 1 Corinthians 12:3, “No one can say that “Jesus is Lord” except in the Holy Spirit.”

There’s an old story about the 20th century violin virtuoso, Fritz Kreisler.

Setting out from Hamburg, Germany, one day to give a concert in London, Kreisler had some time to kill before his boat was due to depart.  While he waited he wandered into a music shop, carrying his violin in hand.  As he struck up a conversation with the shop owner, the owner asked if he might look at the violin Kreisler was carrying.  Kreisler showed him the violin and noticed that the owner had an increasingly disturbed look on his face the longer he looked at the violin.  Without saying a word, the owner disappeared into the back of the store and returned a bit later, still not saying a word to Kreisler and acting strangely.  Just as Kreisler was about to leave, two policemen showed up and immediately asked Kreisler to hand over his violin and place his hands behind his back.

“What for?” asked Kreisler.

“You have Fritz Kreisler’s violin.  Clearly you have stolen it somehow.”

“I am Fritz Kreisler!”

“Yeah right…no you’re not. Come along.”

As Kreisler’s boat was soon about to depart, there was no time for prolonged explanations.  Kreisler begged the officers to let him prove to them he was in fact Fritz Kreisler.  They finally gave into his pleas and gave him the violin back in order to somehow prove it was his.  Fritz then flawlessly played the piece he was best known for.

“Now are you satisfied?” Fritz asked.

The shop owner knowing that no one could play that piece like Fritz could ,then assured the officers that he had made a terrible mistake and Fritz was let go to board his ship.

The shop owner refused to believe that Fritz Kreisler was standing in front of him with violin in hand, because he didn’t believe it was possible for Fritz Kreisler to be standing in front of him in his store.  When Fritz played his violin the shop owner realized that indeed it was Kreisler because Kreisler performed a piece that only Kreisler could do.  The result was faith in what Kreisler had already said about himself.  So it is with faith in Christ.  Jesus performed miracles that only God could do, and the intention and result of those miracles is faith in who Jesus is and not in what He can do.  For it is who Jesus is that is the biggest miracle; God in the flesh who came down to be with us and to raise miraculously from the dead for our salvation.  Knowing Jesus as the Son of God is more amazing than any miracle we can see with our eyes, and it is only when we know Jesus that we begin to see His miraculous hand at work in our life.

Thanks for spending time with me today friends, have a wonderful day, and remember that God has forgiven yesterday, is with you today and has already taken care of tomorrow.  Amen.