Miracles

If you've been a Christian for any length of time, you know that Jesus' first miracle was at Cana when He turned the water into wine. Why did He do that? Was He showing off? Was He demonstrating His ability to do "magical" things? Was He letting everybody know that if they just trust Him He will do great things for them?

None of those is the reason. The passage tells us why He did it. In 2:11 we read, "This, the first of His miraculous signs, Jesus performed at Cana in Galilee. He thus revealed His glory..."

The miracles were not about the events themselves. Nor were they about the subjects of the miracles. They are not promises to us that He will perform the same types of miracles for us. They were done to show that Jesus is God. That claim is what incited the Pharisees to kill Him.

When Jesus said to His mother, "Dear woman why do you involve me?...My time has not yet come," What did He mean?

Preachers have twisted and turned this phrase "every which way but loose," and still seemed unable to grasp what He was saying. This is one of the few miracles Jesus did that was not followed by an attack from the Pharisees. They weren't at the wedding because it was not to their advantage to be there, and the Pharisees were very opportunistic people.

Jesus' time had not yet come because the Pharisees were virtually absent from the wedding. The time for them to recognize Jesus' claim was still a bit into the future.

You see, when Jesus performed His miracles, the Pharisees recognized their meaning immediately, and they did not like what they recognized.

As John tells us, Jesus was in the beginning with God and Jesus WAS God (John 1:1). The Pharisees were not after Jesus because they were afraid of losing their power. The were not after Jesus because they thought He aroused the people against them. The Pharisees were after Jesus because they knew that through His miracles He was claiming to BE God. That, to them, was heresy of the highest order and worthy of death.

Jesus' second miracle came after He had proclaimed who He was as recorded in John 4. It was the healing at the pool of Bethesda. That miracle was followed by an inquiry by the Pharisees about who had healed the man. This marked the beginning of His time.

From then on, after most of His miracles, the Pharisees made accusations against Him. They then began to search for Him, to try to get Him to stop His miracles and to intimidate Him. When that didn't work, they began to threaten Him. Finally, they even began to set out to kill him. Eventually, they did.

God still provides miracles. He does not, however, provide a miracle every time one is asked for in faith, nor does he hand them out willy-nilly. If He did, they would not be miracles. When He provides a miracle, it is for the purpose of His own glory. It is not for the person who receives the miracle, it is for God.

We need to come to grips with and to realize that nothing is about us. Everything is all about Him. When we come to that understanding, we are more able to focus on Him, praise Him and to be content in every situation. Then we will discover how to rest in Him. We will see that Jesus, in and of Himself, is enough. We need no more; no second blessing, no second filling, and no miracles.