The Wonder-Working God E-Book

Jared C. Wilson

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 293

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Do you believe in miracles? Walking on water. Multiplying the fish and the loaves. Raising Lazarus from the dead. The miracles of Jesus may be well known, but they're often misunderstood. In The Wonder-Working God, pastor Jared Wilson wants to help us see that there's more than meets the eye when it comes to the miraculous events recorded in the Gospels. From the humble wonder of the incarnation to the blinding glory of the transfiguration, this book shows how Jesus's miracles reveal his divinity, authority, and ultimate mission: restoring us and this world to a right relationship with God.

Leseprobe

THE

WONDER-WORKING

GOD

Seeing the Glory of Jesus in His Miracles

Jared C. Wilson

The Wonder-Working God: Seeing the Glory of Jesus in His Miracles

Copyright © 2014 by Jared C. Wilson

Published by Crossway

1300 Crescent Street

Wheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law.

Cover design: Faceout Studio, www.faceoutstudio.com

First printing 2014

Printed in the United States of America

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway. 2011 Text Edition. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture references marked NKJV are from The New King James Version. Copyright © 1982, Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.

All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the author.

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-3672-4 ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-3675-5 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-3673-1 Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-3674-8

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wilson, Jared C., 1975–

The wonder-working God : seeing the glory of Jesus in his miracles / Jared C. Wilson.

        1 online resource

   Includes bibliographical references and index.

   Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.

   ISBN 978-1-4335-3673-1 (pdf) – ISBN 978-1-4335-3674-8 (mobi) – ISBN 978-1-4335-3675-5 (epub) – ISBN 978-1-4335-3672-4 (print)

   1. Jesus Christ—Miracles. 2. Bible—Criticism, interpretation, etc. I. Title.

BT366.3

232.9'55—dc23            2014007846

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

For my precious chickadees, Macy and Grace. May the miracle of greatest awe in your lives continue forever to be the grace of God in Christ given to you in Spiritual power

“When the real king emerges, however, and appears to view, things stand differently.”

—Athanasius, On the Incarnation

Contents

Introduction1   Windows into Heaven2   A Bottle of the Good Stuff3   A Trail of Breadcrumbs4   Walking Around Like He Made the Place5   He Has Done All Things Well6   The Way That Seeing Is Believing7   The Conquest of the Dark Domain8   Weeping and Waking9   Get-Up Time10 The Singular Miracle of the Eternally BegottenConclusionGeneral IndexScripture Index

Introduction

No one believes in miracles anymore. We are much too smart for that. The earth is round and our brains are evolved. Our creation is in the lab, our resurrection in the work of the microbiologist, our ascension in the journeys of the astronaut. Who needs revelation when we have the endless diversionary enlightenment of the Internet? Who needs prophets when we have experts?

Some scientists tell us that the things we often call miracles are statistical aberrations in the natural order of things, random outliers in the overwhelmingly “normal” flow of everyday events. Most say that what we label “a miracle” is simply an illusion, a trick on the eye, a misperception misattributed. Every event has a perfectly natural explanation, they say; we simply don’t have all the data needed to explain what we’ve perceived. Scientism, which hinges on what may be observed, in this case insists that seeing is not believing. There are, then, rational explanations for every unexplained event, and the supernatural, by presupposition, cannot be one of them.

In this way, once again, science is pitted against religion, and to choose one is to disavow the other.

In the age of reality television and viral video, everything is extraordinary and therefore nothing is. We have no need for miracles, says the spirit of the age, because we are sufficiently advanced and entertained. Superstition is less and less acceptable as an explanation for the world and as an escape from the mundane life it offers.

Our miracles have become the stuff of sentiment, removed from the world of the supernatural and safely nestled in the inspirational world of human potential. In movies such as Miracle on 34th Street and The Polar Express, the power of belief becomes the miracle. “Anything’s possible,” goes the idea, “if you just believe.” Many of us see this mantra repeated in a variety of ways every day in our Facebook newsfeeds and on Twitter.

The closest we may come to the miraculous in the popular imagination is the cultural fascination with the so-called paranormal. Vampires and zombies are the rage right now. Witches and warlocks appear to be in the next wave of occult appeal. When I was a kid, I consumed everything I could find related to UFOs, Bigfoot, and the Loch Ness Monster. Those sorts of speculative fiction are making comebacks still. My ten-year-old daughter loves the show Fact or Faked, wherein a team of special-effects experts and videographers examines videos of unexplained phenomena, then attempts to re-create the footage in a bid to conclude the veracity of the originals, or lack thereof. In nearly every case, they conclude that the video footage is the result of a perpetrated hoax or simple mistaken identity. However, the show succeeds not because it appeals to our inner skeptic but because it deftly raises our hopes for that one conclusive sign of something out there new, different, mysterious, out of the natural order—and real. On the popular television show The X-Files, FBI special agent Fox Mulder hung a now-iconic black-and-white poster on his office wall featuring a flying saucer and a caption reading, “I want to believe.”

For all of our technological advances and instantaneous access to exhaustive information, we still carve out a space for the mysterious. Many of us say we don’t. But we do. Some of our most ardent atheists have made clear their conditions for belief. They require a miracle. They don’t believe in miracles, just as they don’t believe in God, but if a miracle could be legitimately demonstrated, they claim, they would reverse their disbelief and agree that God exists.

But this is not how miracles ever worked. Even the miracles God grants to Moses in corroboration of his mission from YHWH to secure the children of Israel’s release from bondage only serve to harden Pharaoh’s heart. Pharaoh says, “Prove yourselves” (Ex. 7:9), but even when his demand is met, he is not satisfied (v. 13). When God sends fire to consume Elijah’s wet altar and shame the prophets of Baal, there is no convincing anyone that a God exists but only that “The LORD, he is God; the LORD, he is God” (1 Kings 18:39).

Further, in the New Testament accounts of Jesus’s life and ministry, miracles seem to be plentiful, but none of them is meant to convince his audiences that something like a god exists. Most of them already believe that. And divine authenticity is only the tip of the iceberg of the meaning of Jesus’s miracles.

Certainly Jesus is God, and authenticating his deity is undoubtedly one of the functions of his miracles. But that is still scratching the surface. Jesus himself rebukes the crowds that are looking for signs. In one instance, he tells a parable of a dead man in the condemnation of hell begging Abraham for a resurrected witness to evangelize his living relatives (Luke 16:19–31). Jesus has Abraham tell the tortured man that unless there is belief in the Scriptures, a miracle won’t accomplish a thing (v. 31). Jesus later tells Thomas that it is more blessed to believe without seeing (John 20:29).

The point is this: the miracles are more than they’re cracked up to be, but probably less than we often make of them. The miracles are not the smoking gun, in other words. But they are the bright explosions of the violent spiritual campaign against evil.

Even today, the New Testament miracles do not serve so much to prove that there is a God but that the Lord is God and we are not.

It’s a subtle distinction, to be sure, but the miracles in the Bible never appear to serve God proving himself so much as God showing himself. The Lord consistently refuses to be put on the defensive, as if he must prove his existence to the jury of mortal disbelief in order to save his life. Instead, he simply and majestically shows off. And in the biblical economy of space-time—which is the actual economy of space-time—what we eventually learn is that in a fallen and broken world groaning for redemption, the miraculous is the normal. By contrast, what we have come to call “normal life” is not normal. Miracles don’t turn things upside down, in other words, but rightside up.

I’ll say more along those lines in chapter 1, but for the moment, let’s consider this: What if the miracles in the Bible—and miracles today, should they still occur—are not God trying to convince us he’s “up there somewhere,” looming out there in heaven and trying on earth to get us to acknowledge him, but are actually God showing us that he is right here and right now in charge? What if, in other words, God is not an interloper in our world, but the things we find so familiarly “everyday”—sin, corruption, injustice, decay, death—these very “laws of nature,” are interlopers in his?

When we are able to see the world that way, we get closer to the heart of the gospel. The miracles of Jesus serve that end, and when we see the world through the reality of the kingdom of God, the miracles become just as provocative, just as scandalous, in this day as they were in first-century Palestine. We post-postmoderns pride ourselves on being beyond all that superstitious hokum, but we place our hopes in the same sorts of sentimental magic as the ancients. We worship our accomplishments and our knowledge, because we worship ourselves. It makes no difference that our golden calves are gadgets and Google, while their golden calves were, well, golden calves. There is nothing new under the sun, quantum mechanics and particle physics notwithstanding. We seek a heaven on earth, be it natural or “supernatural,” and we don’t want this Jesus coming into the mix with his self-referential agitating. By reason and rationalization, we figure we can do just fine without him.

No, we don’t believe in miracles anymore. We’re much too smart for all that. But as it turns out, God’s power is not hindered by disbelief. We don’t believe in miracles. Well, okay. Turnabout is fair play, and the miracles don’t believe in us.

The kingdom has come, is coming, and will come. You and I cannot impede this reality with our disbelief any more than we can enhance it with our allegiance. Gravity did not become a law of nature when it was discovered. Who knows how many times that treasure in the field (Matt. 13:44) was trampled over before it was found?

The miracles do nothing for those who do not have the spiritual eyes to see them. Of the five thousand who ate Jesus’s miracle meal in John 6, how many do you suppose remained after he began explaining the significance? It seems from the text only a few. Even some identified as disciples abandoned the mission (v. 66).

In some instances in the Gospels, the miracles have an effect also innate to the parables—confounding witnesses as much as enlightening them.

So we may keep building our Babel towers, be they monuments to religion or rationale, and even as we keep declaring our view of how the world is, we remain confused on the way it was meant to be. Our counterfeit heavens are both too earthy and not earthy enough. And part of God’s plan in the revelation of the glory of his Son Jesus is to discredit and demolish both naturalistic utopia and Gnostic bliss. Somehow in the proclamation of the gospel of Christ and his kingdom is the merging of heaven and earth, in which each becomes what it was meant to be in relation to the other and each is revealed in the uniqueness of its truth and beauty.

The miracles speak to this reality. The real heaven. Heaven as it is, breaking in and bringing the light of truth. The real earth. Earth as it once was and as it will one day be—earth as it is right now becoming. The miracles of Jesus reveal what we go through such great pains to deny and what some of us go through great pains to affirm. The miracles present the vision of what every human heart is yearning for.

Heaven on earth. Can it be?

1

Windows into Heaven

In Rob Reiner’s film adaptation of William Goldman’s book The Princess Bride, comedian Billy Crystal plays Miracle Max, a crusty peasant known for his homegrown remedies. The hero, Westley, his friends believe, is dead, and they take him to Miracle Max in the hope of having him revived. The scene that ensues is one of the highlights of the story and gives rise to one of the more quotable lines in a movie full of quotable lines: “It just so happens that your friend here is only mostly dead. There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead.”

After a hilarious process of diagnosis involving a fireplace bellows and the harangues of Max’s hideous wife, the protagonists receive an antidote and Westley eventually lives to fight another day. This homeopathic remedy, some dubious alchemist’s concoction, is what passes for a miracle in the medieval fantasy world of Florin.

As a pastor, I hear numerous requests for prayer every week. As I write this chapter, in fact, I am in the cafeteria of our local hospital, waiting for one of our church members to finish his nap so I can visit with him. He fell off a ladder last night and broke some bones in his leg. We will be praying for his healing. This healing will likely occur through the combined processes of medical treatment and time. Even this normal healing we will consider the work of God. But we won’t use the word miracle to describe his healing unless something out of the ordinary takes place to accomplish it. The surgery he is scheduled to undergo tomorrow probably won’t qualify. When I go upstairs to check on him in an hour or so and we pray for his comfort and restoration, if his bones were to be repaired instantaneously, we would definitely call that a miracle. Anything short of that, however, would feel too much like cheapening the word.

Many others in our culture feel no such compunction. “Choose your miracle.” “Every day is a miracle.” Phrases like these and others proliferate in both spiritual and secular Western culture, popularized on TBN or the Oprah show. In this milieu, a miracle is a fulfillment of your personal dreams and ambitions, and the accumulation of accolades and treasures.

None of this is miraculous in the biblical sense because it remains disconnected from the glory of Jesus Christ. The biblical miracles happened to reveal something about Jesus. When the charlatan on television tells you to sow a financial seed in expectation of a monetary windfall, it is not a miracle he is suggesting, but magic—witchcraft, to be more specific. The products of these so-called miracles are things Jesus consistently warned us about, temporary treasures that degrade our souls when trusted.

In the Bible, a miracle involves transformation from death to life or from nothing to something. But in the modern world, miracle simply means “easy,” “convenient,” or “quick.” The word miracle gets trotted out about everything from pharmaceuticals to exercise plans. The miracle drugs of contemporary culture are magic beans. And more often than not, they serve only to exalt their recipient. Today’s signs only signify themselves.

Not so the signs of Jesus. His miracles were not ends in and of themselves. They were flaming arrows pointing back to him and the quality of his kingship. The recipients of Jesus’s miracles were often warned not to terminate on the wonders, in fact, but on the worker. While today’s puny miracles tell the story of human comfort and self-actualization, the biblical miracles tell another story, one about the central figure in the story of the entire cosmos. It is only this story, in fact, that solves the essential human problem.

See, we are not “mostly dead” creatures needing some refreshment. The way even many Christian ministries teach the Bible lends credence to the idea that we’re really just a little confused, a bit hobbled, simply unsophisticated, untrained, and uninformed. If we just had the right tools and techniques, we could be successful and victorious. Not only are we not “mostly dead,” we learn, but “mostly alive.” We just need some spiritual spritzer, some kind of “Jesusy” pick-me-up.

The true gospel assumes, however, that we are not “mostly alive” or even “mostly dead,” but all the way dead. Worse than dead, even, if the depiction of our state in Ephesians 2:1–3 is accurate. Apart from Christ, we are animalistic, Devil-following, world-captured, wrath-deserving spiritual corpses. The unparalleled severity of our dilemma requires an eternally powerful antidote. It is this situation on a global scale that the gospel of the kingdom addresses.

The Gospel of the Kingdom

The biblical Gospels tell us that Jesus came preaching “the gospel of the kingdom of God” (with Matthew often employing “heaven” as a respectful circumlocution for “God”). This is the message Jesus charged his disciples to proclaim as well. In the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, in fact, we learn that the kingdom is “at hand.”

What does all of this mean?

The kingdom of God, first of all, is this: the manifest presence of God’s sovereignty. That is, it is the reign of God being brought to bear among people and cultures in creation. God has never not reigned, of course. He has always been God, declaring the end from the beginning, hardening whom he wills and having mercy on whom he wills, overseeing both good and bad. There is no thwarting of his sovereign will. But in the proclamation of his kingdom, something special, something different, is happening.

The reign of God is finally and directly being pressed into the brokenness of the world—the sins of men and the rebellion and injustice of mankind—fulfilling God’s promise to one day set things back to rights.

The church often gets “the kingdom” wrong, because we equate it so often with the church or with the place of paradise we call heaven. But while both the church and heaven are integral to the purposes of God’s kingdom, neither is itself the kingdom. The kingdom is God’s reign, his sovereignty, his will being done. And in the case of the covenantal climax of the Gospels, the kingdom coming is God’s will finally being done on earth as it is in heaven.

The kingdom coming is no scheme of man, however. We cannot orchestrate it or manage it. The kingdom must come from God himself. Enter the God-man, Jesus the Christ. He is the long-awaited Messiah, the Son of Man and the Son of God, the King of kings. The kingdom of God broke into the world in and through the person of Jesus. There can be no kingdom without a king, and ours comes announcing that God is now forgiving sins, restoring peace and justice, reversing the curse, and setting in motion the end of days. This is—finally—good news for a creation that is groaning for redemption. All that is left for us to do is repent and believe, and the kingdom blessings will be ours, too. But only through Jesus. No Jesus, no blessing.

You would think this good news would have struck everyone who heard it as good news indeed, but, of course, most of us know that it did not. Many people hated Jesus, and even those indifferent to him conspired in his execution. So why didn’t they recognize his greatness and the greatness of his news?

The aversion to Jesus in the Gospels played on a few levels. Some were afraid of following him into hardship and death. Some did not see how his way of reigning—through serving and suffering—could possibly compute with their expectations of what the Messiah would do. Some did not like the way he questioned the existing religious authorities, as he frequently challenged, rebuked, and embarrassed them. Some did not like the company he kept and preferred the comfort of their own pride and arrogance. Some just could not see him for who he truly was.

But all of these positions had one thing in common, and it is this one thing that resulted in condemnation. Each was a fundamental rejection of Jesus as Lord. Nothing short of trust in Jesus Christ results in salvation. This is why the good news of the kingdom compels those who see Jesus as he is to repent of their old, normal ways of doing humanity and follow his new, supernatural way.

The Kingdom Story

The Bible opens with the formation of the world, and from the start God exercises his sovereign power and authority in separating light from darkness (Gen. 1:4), the skies from the seas (vv. 7–8), and the land from the waters (v. 9). The divine edicts are perfectly obeyed as our God creates the world ex nihilo. In the continuation of creation, God establishes a creation order, placing mankind above the animals (v. 26), declaring the husband as head of the wife (2:18–22; Eph. 5:23), and giving the first couple dominion under his authority over the earth, with a charge to be fruitful and multiply, and to tend the garden and subdue the earth (Gen. 1:28–29; 2:15). In other words, as a reflection of God’s own inter-Trinitarian activity and outward creative nature, Adam and Eve are commanded to collaborate, create, and cultivate.

The whole creation and the order established to cultivate it into the future is declared “good” by God. The elements and the systems needed for perfect peace are all present. Why? Because it is all as God means for it to be, perfectly aligned under his sovereign will and design. The kingdom of God is manifested in great harmony with the created world.

But as in every powerful story, a crisis arises. The king’s subjects, led astray by the satanic tempter, rebel against the divine authority, committing treason in their disobedience (3:1–13). The perfect alignment between kingdom and creation is shifted. Shalom is shattered.

The result is all creation under a curse (vv. 14–19) and mankind forced into a sort of exile from being “at home” in the world (vv. 23–24). All the aching for more, the longing for purpose, the search for meaning, the desire for justice and peace comes from this original fracture. Adam and Eve disobey God, and the rest is sordid history.

But there is something curious in the story of the fall, in the very explication of the curse. Embedded in the consequences of sin is the shadow of a hope for a remedy:

The LORD God said to the serpent,

“Because you have done this,

cursed are you above all livestock

and above all beasts of the field;

on your belly you shall go,

and dust you shall eat

all the days of your life.

I will put enmity between you and the woman,

and between your offspring and her offspring;

he shall bruise your head,

and you shall bruise his heel.” (vv. 14–15)

The tempter is cursed, too. And in his curse lies what some theologians call the proto-evangelium, or “first gospel.” Man will bruise the Serpent’s head, and the Serpent will bruise man’s heel. This may be a forecast of the crucifixion of the Messiah, Jesus. His death will appear to be the fatal strike of the Serpent, but in fact will be the decisive crushing of the Serpent’s head.

What an interesting irony! What is meant as defeat by the rebellious glory-thieves turns out to be victory for the King! This inside-out, rightside-up twist in the story is described in a variety of ways in the Bible. The crucifixion of the King becomes his conquest. The prophet Isaiah promises that “upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed” (53:5). The apostle Paul writes about this juxtaposition this way:

And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him. (Col. 2:13–15)

The cross, seen by worldly eyes as the symbol of crushing defeat, becomes the means of Satan-vanquishing, law-fulfilling, sin-conquering, life-giving power.

But as in any great, masterful story, there is yet another twist, something hardly anyone can see coming. God’s kingdom has more to conquer. So while the cross becomes the means of triumph over sin, it is retroactively made so because of what comes next, the great eucatastrophe of human history: the resurrection of Jesus Christ:

But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For “God has put all things in subjection under his feet.” But when it says, “all things are put in subjection,” it is plain that he is excepted who put all things in subjection under him. When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all. (1 Cor. 15:20–28)

Adam’s sin brings death into the world. And only death can take it out (Heb. 9:22). But God is not content with this eye-for-an-eye stuff. His plan is not amelioration but restoration, renewal. Death must itself be banished to set God’s creation order back fully to rights.

From reign to chaos to rescue. This is God’s plan for the world, and it is the story the Bible tells from cover to cover, beginning with the tragic fall in Genesis and culminating in the final, consummate victory of Jesus Christ over injustice, wickedness, and death in Revelation.

We live now, as every Christian has until now, in the “end times,” the momentary waiting between Christ’s inauguration of the kingdom through his incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension, and Christ’s consummation of the kingdom through his future return. The kingdom has come and is coming still. It comes, in fact, very powerfully, violently even, and those desperate for its presence lay hold of it with passionate force (Matt. 11:12). It is this creation-shaking power that we see in all kingdom activity.

Because the entire world has been affected by mankind’s sin, the way the Bible talks about the kingdom’s coming seems somewhat cataclysmic. This place is broken, but because we have become so accustomed to living with the brokenness, the very restoration of the place can seem like a breaking. And it is. It is a breaking of the way things have been and a resetting to the way they ought to be. The prophet Daniel interprets a rather disturbing dream for King Nebuchadnezzar this way:

You, O king, the king of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, and the might, and the glory, and into whose hand he has given, wherever they dwell, the children of man, the beasts of the field, and the birds of the heavens, making you rule over them all—you are the head of gold. Another kingdom inferior to you shall arise after you, and yet a third kingdom of bronze, which shall rule over all the earth. And there shall be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron, because iron breaks to pieces and shatters all things. And like iron that crushes, it shall break and crush all these. And as you saw the feet and toes, partly of potter’s clay and partly of iron, it shall be a divided kingdom, but some of the firmness of iron shall be in it, just as you saw iron mixed with the soft clay. And as the toes of the feet were partly iron and partly clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong and partly brittle. As you saw the iron mixed with soft clay, so they will mix with one another in marriage, but they will not hold together, just as iron does not mix with clay. And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever. (Dan. 2:37–44)

As mighty and as expansive as Nebuchadnezzar’s kingdom was, and other great earthly kingdoms have been and will be, they are as nothing compared to the kingdom of God, the eternal kingdom that will never be destroyed because it is built by God himself. Its entrance into the world is depicted as breaking all the other kingdoms into pieces and reducing them to nothing.

Similarly, the prophet Isaiah forecasts the coming of the kingdom through the Messiah’s reign this way:

A voice cries:

“In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD;

make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

Every valley shall be lifted up,

and every mountain and hill be made low;

the uneven ground shall become level,

and the rough places a plain.

And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed,

and all flesh shall see it together,

for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.” (Isa. 40:3–5)

The coming of the King is seen as an “earth-shattering” event. The reversal depicted here is emblematic of the kingdom’s reversing of the curse. This is the passage that John the Baptist employs to herald the coming of his cousin Jesus (Luke 3:2–6).

The manifest presence of God’s sovereignty has huge ramifications—not just for the fallen creation, but for the corrupt systems, the injustice and broken shalom among nations and peoples. Consider yet another kingdom prophecy from Isaiah:

The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me,

because the LORD has anointed me

to bring good news to the poor;

he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,

to proclaim liberty to the captives,

and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;

to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor,

and the day of vengeance of our God;

to comfort all who mourn;

to grant to those who mourn in Zion—

to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes,

the oil of gladness instead of mourning,

the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit;

that they may be called oaks of righteousness,

the planting of the LORD, that he may be glorified.

They shall build up the ancient ruins;

they shall raise up the former devastations;

they shall repair the ruined cities,

the devastations of many generations. (Isa. 61:1–4)

This is the very text that Jesus reads in the synagogue and then ascribes to himself (Luke 4:16–21).

These passages are just a sampling of the way the Bible tells the fantastic story of the kingdom. In review: God makes everything, and he makes it good. The sin of mankind corrupts everything, breaking our world and our very selves. But God does not let our sin have the last word. He intervenes himself, sending his Son to proclaim the climactic arrival of his kingdom and himself as King, which is ultimately ratified and actualized through his death and resurrection, and which promises not just a return to the way things used to be but a renewal, a restoration of creation as even “better than good.” It is not Eden’s garden we long for now but the new heaven and the new earth. Therefore, the mission of the church today is to continue proclaiming Christ as King and the “at hand”-ness of his kingdom, which promises to anyone who repents and believes in Jesus pardon from sins and victory over death through everlasting union with him.

That, in a nutshell, is the story of the kingdom. It is the story the books of the Old Testament forecast and anticipate. It is the story the New Testament assumes and proclaims. It is the story the four Gospels begin, each in its own idiosyncratic way.

In a previous book, I addressed the role of Jesus’s parables in this story, asking in effect, “What purpose do Jesus’s little stories serve in the bigger story of the kingdom?” My argument throughout that work was that the parables reveal (or conceal, depending on the prerogative of the Spirit) the glory of Jesus Christ in service to the mission of his kingdom.

The question in this book is this: “How do Jesus’s miracles fit in the kingdom story?” But before we answer that question, we have to answer a more primary one.

What Are Miracles?

We tend to think of miracles as “special” things God does on occasion, things really out of the ordinary. This is a perfectly understandable definition, but the problem of thinking about miracles entirely this way ought to be apparent—it lends itself to the idea that some things God does aren’t special, that some things he does are ordinary. But nothing God does can be thought to be mundane. Everything he does is exciting, from the raising of the dead to the raising of the farmer’s crops.

God cannot be boring. If we find him boring, it is we who are the problem, not God. He does not sometimes do marvelous things and sometimes dull things. No, the real difference is in our failure to marvel. The heavens we walk under every day declare the glory of God. This is a miracle.

But of course, expanding our view of the miraculous to everything runs that previously discouraged risk of cheapening the very word miracle. If we can agree that nothing God does is essentially boring—that, in fact, his very existence and presence in the world mean life cannot be boring—can we still set aside certain events from the ordinary run of affairs as miraculous? I think so.

Here is a survey of how a few modern sources have defined the word miracle:

[T]he biblical concept of a miracle is that of an event which runs counter to the observed processes of nature.—