How Can I Believe in Miracles If I've Never Seen One?

Let me begin with a prayer and then we will dig into this week's topic. How can I believe in miracles if I've never seen one? Chapter 9 from this book, Surviving Religion 101 by Michael Kruger. Father in heaven, we are grateful that today, the Lord's Day, we are gathered to worship you, to give you the honor, praise, and glory that is due to your name.

And we thank you that Jesus Christ made it possible that our worship would be acceptable to you. So we pray that we would worship you in spirit and truth today. We thank you for the church, we thank you for Sunday school classes, for pastors preparing sermons to feed us, for fellowship time, and we ask that your blessing would be upon all of it today.

In Christ's name I pray, Amen. The title of the chapter, I'm finding it harder to believe in events like the resurrection. How can I believe in miracles if I've never seen one? It has the subtitle, a quote by Lewis Carroll, where Alice says, This is impossible, and the Mad Hatter replies, Only if you believe it is. And I think that Kruger's point is, believe something is impossible, we're going to automatically discount any evidence that would prove the thing was possible or impossible.

And so what we want to start with today is I want to define what a miracle is. I think that if we asked people all over the United States or even within the church, I think we would find that we could get a wide variety or a wide array of definitions of what a miracle is. Oftentimes, if you ask people for a definition, they'll simply give you an example of something.

And so Merriam-Webster defines miracle as an extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention. And then the definition that I have for today, the working definition, is a miracle is the temporary suspension of natural laws Whereby God superintends an event, and that should say, or outcome, by supernatural means. And I cite Miracle in contrast to God's providence, which the Baptist Catechism, chapter, or excuse me, question 14, explanation of God's providence is that God's works of providence are as most holy, wise, and powerful, And that is an example of God having the most minor, we would consider even trivial or unimportant detail is all under his control.

But to give you a working definition of providence that helps us see the distinction between miracles and providence, I've added in providence, God superintends every event and outcome. So to superintend is to authoritatively govern. And in both providence and with miracles, God is authoritatively governing all of the events and outcomes that are going to occur.

But in Providence, he uses what we call ordinary or natural means. And we have a problem in the English language, I think, where when we hear the word ordinary, we think of a negative connotation. But when you read people in church history like Puritans, I was going to say church fathers, but they didn't use English. When you read the word ordinary, what they mean is that it's just the ordained way that things are going to be.

That's where the word ordinary comes from, from ordained. And so the idea is this, that in providence, God is governing every action. He's governing every creature. He's governing every outcome. He's in charge of it. And as he does this, he's perfectly in control of everything, but he does it through what we would call natural means.

So for example, if I throw a ball in the air and the ball comes down, providentially, because God provides the natural laws, gravity pulled that ball down. We don't think of that as miraculous, that even though I threw it up, it came down. We actually think that to be very natural. If we threw the ball up and it kept going up, we would think that was some kind of miracle.

Do you see the difference? So there's certain laws that God has put into place in nature that he controls, but they manifest throughout all of the world so that things work a certain way all the time with predictability. We think of them as ordinary because it's just how things always work. But what's important is that we must believe, and so I say first because I have four points that are, I think, the main points.

We must believe and acknowledge that providence ascribes no less glory to God than miracles ascribe to God. And I think that is a key issue that we have that we need to be able to consider is that it is just as amazing when God works through providence to make something wonderful happen as when he does a miracle. There are different ways he does things but in both cases he the author he the finisher he the governor he the authority So an example for you would be something fun that happened yesterday I went to Ohio State and Michael Robert and I did evangelism for a little while And then we were driving back and through all the series of events, the speed we were going, the cars that were in front of us, we arrived at Bebe Bob in Plain City at the particular time we did.

And we got in line and we placed our order. And as I was getting ready to pay for my order, Michael Robert looks at me and says, that looks like Micah Fry. And I turned around and immediately behind us in line was Micah Fry. And I think that is remarkable. And that is fun to enjoy. And God was, and here's the thing about providence that can be a little bit interesting is, God was just as much in control of, we'll say, the approximately 25 or 30,000 people who walked by me at Ohio State.

Every one of those people had an encounter with me as a result of Providence. But one of them, Micah Fry showing up at a place where I didn't expect to see him, was really neat. It was really remarkable, and it was fun. And God controls all those little details. He's controlling the grass growing right now, sparrows falling to the ground. But sometimes providence is more remarkable than others.

And we can see that. So, miracles, qualified. Miracle is God suspending the natural law, so he's working apart from providence in order to superintend what he wants to occur outside of normal means, supernatural means. Second section, when miracles, I want to qualify them. If you look at biblical miracles, there's a few common themes that you're going to see over and over.

By the way, if you have a question or a comment... Do you have a question? Oh, are there any more worksheets? You could check if there's any more. I don't know if there's any more. Yeah, thanks.

Sorry. If you have a question or a comment, just raise your hand or just start to pipe in. But if possible, we'll want to give you the microphone because we have at least a dozen Sunday school teachers and a handful of people that can't attend here that would like to hear what you say if you'd like to share. And I don't mind if you jump right in. I might seem to be moving quick.

It's because I wanted to do the whole thing in one week and get to the points. But that's okay if we discuss things or if you have questions. So when you observe a biblical miracle, so where God actually is working outside of natural means, the course of events that would have occurred normally under what we would call natural laws and things like that, he changes things.

A few things always seem to be true at least. One, miracles were undeniable. So there was never a point in time in the Bible where a miracle occurred, where there was somebody standing there saying, Oh, there's probably this other explanation for it that makes sense. Okay, so let me give you an example. Sometimes when you have a friend who gets better after being sick, sometimes it's very hard to explain.

We don't know how it happened, and we might think we saw a miracle, or people may have testified to that. You may have heard people testify to that. And although I would say it's possible because God is able to work when and where he wants, how he wants, a lot of times we just can't explain what happened yet. You know, a couple hundred years ago, if people got healed of certain things by God's providence, by the way that things work naturally in their body, by the way he set things up, we would think it's a miracle.

And today we now know that there may have been a medical explanation that we could explain better. And again, both cases, God gets the glory. But in the Bible, the miracles that happened were never things where somebody could have credibly said, oh, it was probably an illusion that the Red Sea parted, for example. You know, there was nobody who could say that.

These were all very undeniable. Jesus's miracles weren't denied by the people who opposed him. That's actually one of the interesting evidences that he's the son of God. Nicodemus comes to him in John 3 and says, no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him. And so the people who opposed Jesus didn't say he's a charlatan. They just didn't like that he was doing what he was doing.

They couldn't explain it. The second thing about miracles that seems very common is miracles almost always authenticated a message or a messenger. So you think about the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 12, 12. He mentions that the signs of an apostle, miracles and healings and prophecy were done among the Corinthians. That's how Paul authenticates his ministry to them.

I'll add that immediately after he makes a really big deal about the fact that he didn't charge them money for the work that he did for them. That's a side note, pet peeve of mine. But miracles authenticated a message. The reason we believe the apostles, and then they wrote the scripture, is they worked miracles like Jesus had done, which authenticated the people that they were really sent from God.

And miracles function as judgment on unbelief oftentimes, especially in the Old Testament, but even in the New. You think of the 10 plagues, the Red Sea was parted for the Egyptians to eventually enter and be drowned by it, right? And in Matthew 12, you can turn there, Jesus, Matthew 12, 24, Jesus is speaking with Pharisees. And when the Pharisees heard the crowds were astounded by what Jesus had done with a blind and mute man They said only by Beelzebul the prince of demons does this man drive out demons And Jesus said to them, every kingdom divided against itself will be laid waste.

Every city or household divided against itself will not stand. And he says, if Satan drives out Satan, he's divided against himself, how then can his kingdom stand? And he says, and if I drive out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your sons drive them out? So then they will be your judges. And he says, but if I drive out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.

And as he goes on to 31, he says, therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. And that is classically defined. Blasphemy against the Spirit is classically defined as the people who have seen the works of Christ, that he's done by the power of the Holy Spirit, the miracles he's done, and that they ascribe it to demonic power.

And so there's examples of unbelief being judged by God's miracles. And the point I'm making there is what we're trying to lead up to is that miracles in 2026 or even 1926, you know, even the last 2,000 years, aren't common. And I'm trying to lead up for you to see that the entire purposes of miracles have ceased. Part of being a cessationist, at least we don't believe, we don't believe men or women in the church have been granted the gifts of being able to do miracles, even if God chooses to do them.

But we don't see miracles for private blessing in the scripture. Even if you saw a miracle written about in the scripture that was done for an individual somewhat privately, the mere fact that it's in the scripture for us to read makes it public, right? And so there's never an explanation of miracles where somebody's just sitting at home alone and they just get a miracle.

It's just not something that's described in the Bible. And so it's at the very least questionable when somebody thinks that it's happened. So here's some things that are not miracles that sometimes people will call miracles. Conception and birth. So a lot of times people say the miracle of birth or the miracle of conception. And literally squirrels are doing it right now.

So this is just the common way that God has provided for his creatures to propagate. It's not a miracle. It's wonderful. It's God's providence. It's mysterious and there is something happening especially with human conception That is definitely from God where he's giving people a soul. But it's not a miracle in the sense that the Bible describes miracle.

Beating Russia in hockey, that wasn't a miracle. I tossed that one in there for people that know the phrase is the miracle on ice, right? I think it's the 1976 or 1980. Yeah, I was going to say there's probably only a handful now, But the miracle on ice is the word we use. And it would honestly border on blasphemy to call an international hockey game result a miracle when you actually think of what a miracle is, a work of God divinely manifesting that he's doing something.

A close call on the road, if you're almost going to get in an accident and you survive, it's not a miracle. It's God's providence. He set up everything to get to that moment. Getting an unexpected gift right when you need it, not a miracle. When I say it's not a miracle, what's really important, and I'm going to repeat this, is that it doesn't mean God wasn't behind it.

It doesn't mean that God doesn't get all the glory for this wonderful, remarkable occurrence. It doesn't mean we shouldn't be joyful that he provided in that way. That's what providence is. It's his provision, his providing. But, we need to remember what a miracle really is. It's an uncommon event.

It's extraordinary. And I will always pronounce that word extraordinary because I got it wrong in a spelling bee. Because the guy pronouncing it just said extraordinary, which is probably correct. But I couldn't spell it right and I cried. That's a different story. But miracles are uncommon.

They're extraordinary. So for somebody to say they do not believe in the miracles that Jesus performed in the Bible, or they don't believe in the resurrection, they don't believe in the things Paul and Peter did, they don't believe that Moses parted the Red Sea, or that Noah built an ark that lasted all those days, they don't believe that Moses turned his staff into snakes, and that he brought down plagues, because they don't see miracles today is completely irrational. The fact that you don't see miracles today is actually more evidence of how unique they are.

If everybody rose from the dead all the time, and then we told people, Hey, did you know Jesus rose from the dead? They'd be like, who cares? It's common, right? So with unbelief, Jesus can't win. It's that simple. So secondly, if you turn the page over, if you're following the notes, Since miracles are by definition rare, the fact that you have not observed one has no bearing on whether the miracles described in the Bible occurred.

It really doesn't matter what your experience is. If you never see a miracle in your life, you'll be fine. So we can be confident that the Bible depiction of miracles is true because we believe the author of the Bible The question is really whether God lies whether we can trust the Bible or not Pat? Can we get the microphone? Sorry to make it awkward, but here it is.

Yeah, I was just going to say, we have witnesses in the Word of God, So I feel like I have seen miracles through the eyes of the witnesses. So I don't need to have any more miracles. They're already recorded. Amen. Good. So it's largely presuppositional.

Can you hold that? Yeah, I can do that for you, man. Just don't breathe real loud while you're holding it. That would be awkward. I preached that. Where did I preach recently?

I think it was when I went to Assembly of Christians and my friend listened to the sermon and he said the microphone was picking up all the sounds of my mouth. I had a little bit of a dry mouth and, okay, we've got to figure that one out. Get these better mics and it picks up more than we want. So presuppositional apologetics is the idea that people either believe God is who he says he is or they don't.

And that's your starting point. So if you believe God is who he says he is, then everything that he says he's done, you can believe it. If you deny God at the starting point, and then you try to convince somebody who denies God that Jesus came and he was born of a virgin and he did all these miraculous things, they won't believe it anyway because it follows from the fact that God exists, that he did what he did, and it would not follow from the fact that God does not exist, that he did any of those things.

So, with miracles it's similar. If we believe that miracles are not possible, then we'll find some other way to explain miracles. And that's really the point the author makes throughout the book. So if you're interested in the book's explanation, that was really what he focused on, was helping his daughter think through logically whether miracles are impossible, And I found it to be not exactly the angle I would take to explain the answer to the question, but depending on who you're talking to, helping people see that it would take as much faith on their part to believe miracles are impossible as it takes to believe they're possible.

And in fact, those of us that know miracles have existed realize that it's actually more rational to believe in miracles than not to. But for somebody who starts from an atheistic standpoint or a, oh, I'm skeptical, I don't think so standpoint, for that person, the circular reasoning that must occur will always find an explanation for a miracle. So in other words, we have a priori decided, or if we've a priori decided we don't believe in miracles, then we'll find a way to explain it some other way.

Have you ever heard the explanation that the sea was actually so full of salt that the Israelites were able to walk across it because there was so much salt it was like solid there? You ever heard that? Yeah, there's all sorts of explanations people come up with for miracles. You know, that Jesus didn't really die. They just didn't have the technology.

They weren't as smart as we are. That's always people's thought about people thousands of years ago. And they didn't know that he was dead. He was just sleeping and his breathing was so shallow they didn't detect it. And so sure enough, he didn't resurrect. He was just always alive is kind of the explanation.

So he was so out of it that he couldn't breathe in a detectable way, but then three days without food and water, he was fine. Like, you can always find the strange holes in these things, right? But we want to, when you're talking to people, I just want to take a side note, when you're doing apologetics, when you're doing evangelism, and somebody's asking these kinds of questions that maybe Emma in the book was encountering with her friends at school, You have to decide, is this person actually asking a question because they're interested?

You know, like, how did a miracle occur? What is this miracle? Or is it just a skeptic asking questions that are really just their way of trying to say, that's impossible. And how you deal with each of those people is something that requires you to have your discernment. So either God is or he's not. The miraculous flows out of the reality of his being.

So it's just that simple. Jesus is going to return one day and it's going to be a miracle when he returns. It's going to be wonderful. Jesus was raised from the dead is wonderfully miraculous And it is something that we can see from what Romans 1 is evidence. It's how he demonstrated he's the Son of God with power. So we who are believers can get that.

And whether we believe in miracles is sometimes as similar as Jesus makes it to having childlike faith. The faith, the fact that we could take any child that's born here and we could make them believe in Santa Claus if we wanted to, right? Believe what they're taught. They'll believe in the mysterious. They'll believe in something fantastical or fantasy.

They'll believe whatever because they don't feel limited by these natural, rational thoughts that we have necessarily. And we need to be sure that we're able to have the same faith in God that hopefully our children have in us. Which is one reason I'd say don't lie to your children and tell them things that aren't true. Just teach them the truth and make things joyful and fun for them.

You don't have to have Santa Claus to enjoy Christmas, that's for sure. Thanks. So we want to have faith in God. We want to believe what God has said. And that's how we can understand miracles. And the childlike faith is another point that Michael Kruger brought up in the book.

And he points out that Jesus commends that. And so we should have that kind of faith that says, God, I don't need to comprehend everything. I don't need to feel like I've wrapped my arms around everything that you've explained in order to trust you. And anybody in here who's a parent, how badly do you want your kids sometimes to just believe what you say without the why?

Or how? Right? Yes. Good point, yes. Andrew said it's freeing. Freeing for the children, it's freeing for us.

To just walk in obedience and to know that God's going to take care of the details. So in Proverbs 26, 4 and 5, there's a pair of verses that help us to get some ideas how to do logic and apologetics. I should hear a lot more pages turning unless you're all using apps. In Proverbs 26, 4 and 5, I believe it's Solomon, but God, through Solomon, writes a pair of verses that seem contradictory at first to people, and I'm not going to have time to explain them in great detail how they work, but I think that we can use them to think about how to talk about the miracles with people.

So getting to the point, you're doing apologetics with somebody that says, I don't believe Jesus rose from the dead because I don't see miracles myself. Or maybe you're a Christian who struggles with your faith. Maybe you're a Christian who is discipling somebody else who is struggling with assurance of their faith and they're starting to ask these kinds of questions that skeptics like to put in the minds of Christians.

And so, in Proverbs 26, 4 and 5, Solomon says in verse 4, Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you yourself will be like him. And then Solomon follows that up by saying, Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he become wise in his own eyes. In a very shallow reading of Scripture, you'd say, well, there's a contradiction, right? If I was an atheist, I'd just be done.

Contradiction. Answer a fool or don't answer him. Well, Solomon explains when and how to answer a fool and why your response to a fool is what it is. And this is usually interpreted this way. Don't answer a fool according to his folly. So when you're speaking to somebody who's acting foolishly, speaking to somebody who indeed is a fool, So, don't follow his line of reasoning and assume his presuppositions and assumptions and premises in your logic.

So if somebody says to you, prove to me the resurrection is possible, but don't use the Bible. That's a good example of when we'd say, well, I'm not going to answer you according to your folly, Because your folly is you're denying the actual source of truth that we have, the one infallible source of truth on earth that we can actually trust in. You're saying let's deny that that even exists.

And of course if you deny the Bible as our source of truth, I could prove anything to you because everything's irrational at that point. And so we don't adopt the fool's rules of engagement in logic. If he says don't use the Bible, you say, well, I'm not going to answer you according to that error, according to that folly, because then I'll be like you.

And you don't have to use those words with the person, but in your mind you have to think, I don't want to argue the way a fool argues because I'll be led into the same foolishness if I deny certain truths I have to deny. Prove to me abortion is wrong without invoking your Christian religion. Some of these kinds of things people bring up where they want you to abandon effectively your Christianity.

They want you to abandon the way the truth and the life the word that became flesh in order to make some kind of argument And it a fool errand usually and you will become foolish yourself trying to argue oftentimes without trusting God as the source without the fear of the Lord being the beginning of your knowledge. But then in the next verse, Solomon says the opposite. Answer a fool according to his folly.

And so it seems like a contradiction at first. And Q and I were talking last night about contradictions and the skeptics annotated Bible website that has all these contradictions. And what's interesting, most of the Bible contradictions that these, I was going to say experts, but I was going to do air quotes. I don't even want to call them experts. Most of the contradictions that skeptics come up with are very surface level skeptics or surface level contradictions where a couple of English words don't quite line up the way that they think it should in 2026 English and they say there's a problem in the Bible.

And oftentimes, even just reading it a little further and reading the surrounding context solves it. Sometimes you look at a couple translations and realize, oh, the translation the skeptics are using maybe isn't the best translation. Maybe there's a better English translation we could use for that verse. But in verse 5, answer a fool according to his folly, lest he become wise in his own eyes.

And I think that's an admonition to us when we're working with people who are bringing up these skeptical claims to be able to say, okay, I'm not going to grant you the idea that you're giving me necessarily, but let's say for argument's sake this was true, what you're saying, what would it lead to? And so some good examples are when people say, you know, like, when people say, my body, my choice. And I think that's a foolish statement for the most part.

But I can look at someone and say, well, even by your own logic, the baby that's inside a mother's womb is not her body. So it should be the baby's choice whether the baby would live or die. And I would grant that all babies would prefer to live than die. And so even by sometimes fools' own premises that they'll bring up, their own little things that they'll try to say, you can show them that their own logic is absolutely warped.

When they say, don't judge, what can you say back? There you go. You're judging me. You know, I had a guy yesterday, this is a fun story. I had a guy yesterday who came up to me and he just kept saying, Ezekiel 33 20. I couldn't quite understand him and it changed a few times.

But this guy was very angry while I was preaching. And he just started to tell me that, he said, all you're doing is yelling at people and pushing them away is what he said. And he got so, I'll say enraged, it's my subjective opinion, and you could ask Michael Robert, he watched it. He started shouting over me. Now I'm on a loudspeaker and this guy's shouting over me.

And all I could think is, you don't believe your own rhetoric. You're telling me that I'm yelling and that's bad and you're yelling over me right now. And then ironically, I told him, I said, I don't think Ezekiel's the best book of the Bible for you to cite to tell me I shouldn't be publicly preaching. I said if Ezekiel was here now, everybody would be wishing I was the one preaching.

He was a little bit harder than I was, I think. But don't give in to the temptation to give fools miracles. So don't answer them according to their folly by providing examples of things that are not miraculous. And so one of the ways that atheists win debates against Christians is when Christians make bad arguments. So we'll never ultimately lose debates because in the end God's going to win.

But I saw an example once where a guy said, you know, he knew God existed because there was a plane that was going to crash and it crashed and all the people lived. So therefore God must exist. And the atheist just said, well, I know a plane crash is where the people died. And it was a good response because it's really not an argument for the existence of God that somebody survived a plane crash at some point.

So don't try to give them miracles that don't exist. So if somebody says, I haven't seen a miracle, don't start trying to tell them that it's really a miracle when a caterpillar becomes a butterfly. You know, all these things that happen all the time that, again, are remarkable providence, but it's not a miracle. So don't provide examples of something that you can't explain.

Like don't tell them about your uncle in West Virginia that, you know, they had an x-ray and then two weeks later the x-ray was clear. You know, some of those kinds of things are just, they're untenable. You can't really defend them. They're always hearsay, it seems like. And they always in West Virginia where they don even have like modern equipment So sorry if anybody was offended by that one I knew Gene from Kentucky so I didn use Kentucky Got family there So instead, move the conversation to Christ.

The person's problem who's denying miracles, especially if they're denying the resurrection of Jesus Christ, they're denying the virgin birth of Jesus Christ, they have to question whether all the things happened And with the ark and with Moses and the 10 plagues and turning the staff into snakes, move the conversation to Christ. Your real goal is not to convince somebody miracles are possible or probable. Your goal in talking to a person like that is to convince them that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and became man and suffered, died, and was buried, and then rose again three days later so they could be forgiven of their sins.

And if they believe that, they'll believe everything else that God has said in the Bible. Over time, maybe, they'll learn it. And so turn the conversation to the real need for Christ. And one thing I just thought of as I was reminded about Moses is, you may recall that Moses turned a staff into a snake in front of Pharaoh. And all of us Christians would readily call that a miracle.

I think. Maybe you won't. I would. And then you might think that five seconds later the magicians in Egypt did the same thing. And it's part of why I think embedded in the definition of at least biblical miracles that it's a manifestation of God's divine power in the sense that when Moses turned the staff into a snake it was authenticating that he was the prophet of God who was sent to deliver the people out of bondage And it was a judgment on those who would not follow him.

And when the other guys turned their staff into a snake, it was again by God's remarkable providence. I mean, they didn't do it without God allowing that to happen and even empowering it. But they did it, I think, by the power of the demonic. And what they did had nothing to do with authenticating a good message. It had nothing to do with letting people know of the power of God.

And so there's some intentionality built into whether a miracle is legitimate or not. But the beast and the false prophet are going to do miracles, right? Go ahead, Steve. It also showed that God was more powerful than their magic because God's Moses' snake ate them. They turned back into a staff for their staff to kill. Death is swallowed up in victory.

It's pictured there. So finally, answer a fool according to his folly. Let me repeat what you said because you didn't have a microphone. It showed God's power over the Egyptian gods that Moses' staff was able to eat up all the snakes of the Egyptian magicians is what Steve said, in case somebody didn't hear it. So finally, answer the fool according to his folly.

When people tell you there's no such thing as miracles or they haven't seen a miracle, I know I already told you I don't think they're that common and the biblical ones are not exactly. They're extraordinary and we don't see those kinds of miracles every day, but there is a sense if you look around this room that you're looking at miracles. Every single person in this room has been regenerated by the Holy Spirit to have a new heart, to have a stony heart taken out and a heart of flesh put in.

And I think regeneration is a miracle. 2 Corinthians 4, 6, if you turn there, you'll be able to see it. If you don't have this verse memorized, it should be on your short list of verses to memorize. If you do have it memorized, you don't have to turn there, which creates a conundrum for me, saying you have to. But, 2 Corinthians 4, 6, I think we have a real miracle.

For God who said, let light shine out of darkness, made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. And so basically what Paul is saying is the same God who out of nothing was able to create everything and then set in motion all of these natural laws that I referred to earlier that have been governing everything ever since the beginning of time. And that same God, the same kind of power was used to regenerate you and to convert you from a sinner who was hopelessly separated from God into a sinner who's now called a saint and is, hopelessly isn't the right word, but hopelessly connected to him, like without hope of being separated is what I mean.

It's an amazing power of God and it's a miracle. And I think that we, just like sometimes we look for miracles in contradiction to providence, and so we miss ordinary, wonderful, remarkable providence because we're eager for the exciting. Maybe that's not as common in a Reformed Baptist church as some other churches, but it happens. I think sometimes we're looking for the kinds of miracles we want to see.

We want to see power and display of lightning and big things like red seas being parted and we want to have miraculous wisdom suddenly without effort I'll tell you this, I'm really guilty of wanting humility being granted to me rather than having to go through the process of learning it. I think a lot of us want God to just give us things. But if you just look around, there's miracles all over the place.

And I think that we need to stop looking for miracles that are the way we want them and to honor God for his marvelous and wonderful works of providence, but the types of miracles that he has been most commonly performing, namely salvation. And I would grant that during your walking with Christ, As God sanctifies you and changes you from within so that you live for righteousness and die to sin, that's miraculous as well, for God to even change us as we grow. And I think sometimes we miss the excitement of that because we're looking for the more outwardly demonstrations of miracles.

But if you knew the way people once were, and now you know how they are, you've seen the miracle of salvation. Any thoughts, comments? Do you want the mic? Yeah. Would you say that the miracle, the perfect gift from God is the miracle of Jesus? Yeah, I think I get what you're saying.

I'm quoting pretty loosely, but every perfect gift comes from God. Yes. So if I give Charlie a million dollars to pay to lift him up out of wherever he's at, he would view that as a miracle, and I look at it as a perfect gift. Well, I don't know if I'd call it a miracle, but a good gift, right? But the idea being that it's not the miracle that he should be, or the, it's not the miracle or the gift that he should be so excited about as the giver itself.

Is that what you're saying? Yeah, and to know that where, because on his end, if I was the receiver, boy, it's a miracle. I'm going to pull myself out of whatever hole I've created for me versus recognizing that it really was a perfect gift from God. Well, and I think that it's a strange example because you're not God. You can't do miracles anyway. But yeah, I think I get what you're trying to say.

It's from our perspective sometimes, yeah. And some of the reasons I address what I think is a good definition of miracles, Kent, is that I think sometimes we ascribe the word miracle to more things than it really is because it's just, it's wonderful to us, it's astounding. And so there's an element of wonder that occurs both with miracles and with God's wonderful providence.

And I was just trying to keep them distinct for the discussion, but I see exactly what you're saying. When the Apostle Paul worked miracles, he basically asked people, now listen to the message. Repent. Believe the words I'm saying. Worship the God who made the miracles happen. Bring your tithes and offerings to church and to that.

Don't bring them to me. This is all about God. This is not about me, even though he was the one doing the miracle. Imagine what evil we would do if we could work miracles. Any other thoughts? Pat?

I just think back. And I think most of us can do this, reflect on my life, and I can see clearly, providentially, how God put the right people around me and brought me from where I wasn't even close, you know. In darkness, slowly into light. I mean, I didn't see it then, but I can see it looking back. And it's a miracle in my mind. I know it's not the miracle definition, but it's like, wow, God took me from there to here, and I still got a long way to go.

But that to me is amazing. Amen. I just realized the time, so forgive me. Father in heaven, thank you that we can open your word and we can investigate it and that your word will always teach us and correct us. It is infallible and inerrant and it is sufficient for our needs. And so help us this morning to continue to meditate upon your word through the scripture reading, the prayers, through the songs that we'll sing that are saturated with your word And may the sermon be anointed by your Holy Spirit for our good.

In Christ's name I pray. Amen.