April 5, 2017
Easter makes me think of miracles. It is impossible to have Resurrection Morning apart from a miracle. Jesus’ life and ministry is all about miracles, but people can doubt this if they desire. His virgin birth is a miracle, but some say it could not be true. In three years of ministry, He did many miracles, but some people will refuse to believe and will find an explanation that they think discredits the miraculous.
On Crucifixion Weekend, there were events that support Jesus being God in human flesh. Anyone familiar with the Old Testament can find the prophecies that Jesus fulfilled. And He claimed deity when He called Himself the “I Am” in John 8:58. He gave sight to the blind, healed the hurting and used a boy’s lunch to feed thousands of people.
We can believe that Jesus took our sin on His body and died in our place. But if He had stayed dead, His death would do us no good. It is the miracle of His resurrection from the dead that is our hope. We are able to die, but we need life after death, which requires a miracle.
Humans do not want to accept miracles because they want to find an explanation without acknowledging the Creator. This is the lie of the counterfeit god, Satan, who convinced Adam and Eve that they could actually progress to a place where they did not need God at all. He led them away from trust in the only One Who can be and do the miraculous. The human race has not recovered from that fall and only finds redemption in Jesus, Who canceled the sin problem by His death and offered a relationship with the Creator by defeating death.
So I believe a good response to people who question the miracles, including the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, is to say in a kind but direct way: “Because it’s a miracle!” If we cannot give the Creator His rightful position, then either there is no such thing as a miracle or, as humans, we assume that we are able to do miracles ourselves.
Why do I believe in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead? Because it’s a miracle!
Pastor Bill Ehmann