The Miracles of Jesus

I have, for some reason, really taken an interest in the Miracles of Jesus in the past few days. I honestly don't know why.


I have always found the Miracles interesting, but not to the degree that I have recently. I had, previously to my finding of faith through Jesus, always looked at the comparative features of Jesus' Miracles in comparison with Miracles performed by other religious leaders and prophets; I suppose originally this was to undermine the work of Jesus and show that he was just an amazing man, nothing more. Fortunatly, that's not what I do anymore, now that I have seen and read the truth.

Recently through my reading of the Gospels, the cleansing of the leper has really spoken to me. This could be for a number of reasons, but because I read and study from three different bibles, ( 2 KJV's and 1 NIV) I often read different Gospels at different times.


Again, I am unsure why I do this; I don't do it to pick and choose verses to read, but I do sometimes find it difficult to "digest" passages when  trying to work through the Bible, so i suppose having more than one Bible, more than one translation, helps me keep a closer eye on what I am reading. It also helps me, when God speaks to me through Scripture, what specifically He is trying to get me to understand (I can be a bit slow when trying to understand messages-God is very forgiving). 

All this week, I have read the Miracle of Jesus when he cleanses the leper. The reference to this miracle can be found below.


So, through seeing this, as I always do, I went straight on to the Internet to read more about this particular miracle. I love finding out if there is extra or relevant meaning. Where I don't have a study Bible, I find the Internet to be a very useful tool.


In my searching I came across this below table, listing the miracles of Jesus, and how they harmonise throughout the New testament.


list of key episodes in the Canonical Gospels.

Number	Event	Matthew	Mark	Luke	John
1	Marriage at Cana				John 2:1-11
2	Exorcism at the Synagogue in Capernaum		Mark 1:21-28	Luke 4:31-37
3	Miraculous draught of fishes			Luke 5:1-11
4	Young Man from Nain			Luke 7:11-17
5	Cleansing a leper	Matthew 8:1-4	Mark 1:40-45	Luke 5:12-16
6	The Centurion's Servant	Matthew 8:5-13		Luke 7:1-10	John 4:46-54
7	Healing the mother of Peter's wife	Matthew 8:14-17	Mark 1:29-34	Luke 4:38-41
8	Exorcising at sunset	Matthew 8:16-17	Mark 1:32-34	Luke 4:40-41
9	Calming the storm	Matthew 8:23-27	Mark 4:35-41	Luke 8:22-25
10	Gerasenes demonic	Matthew 8:28-34	Mark 5:1-20	Luke 8:26-39
11	Paralytic at Capernaum	Matthew 9:1-8	Mark 2:1-12	Luke 5:17-26
12	Daughter of Jairus	Matthew 9:18-26	Mark 5:21-43	Luke 8:40-56
13	The Bleeding Woman	Matthew 9:20-22	Mark 5:24-34	Luke 8:43-48
14	Two Blind Men at Galilee	Matthew 9:27-31
15	Exorcising a mute	Matthew 9:32-34
16	Paralytic at Bethesda				John 5:1-18
17	Man with withered Hand	Matthew 12:9-13	Mark 3:1-6	Luke 6:6-11
18	Exorcising the blind and mute man	Matthew 12:22-28	Mark 3:20-30	Luke 11:14-23
19	An Infirm Woman			Luke 13:10-17
20	Feeding the 5000	Matthew 14:13-21	Mark 6:31-34	Luke 9:10-17	John 6:5-15
21	Walking on water	Matthew 14:22-33	Mark 6:45-52		John 6:16-21
22	Healing in Gennesaret	Matthew 14:34-36	Mark 6:53-56
23	Canaanite woman's daughter	Matthew 15:21-28	Mark 7:24-30
24	Deaf mute of Decapolis		Mark 7:31-37
25	Feeding the 4000	Matthew 15:32-39	Mark 8:1-9
26	Blind Man of Bethsaida		Mark 8:22-26
27	Transfiguration of Jesus	Matthew 17:1-13	Mark 9:2-13	Luke 9:28-36
28	Boy possessed by a demon	Matthew 17:14-21	Mark 9:14-29	Luke 9:37-49
29	Coin in the fish's mouth	Matthew 17:24-27
30	Man with dropsy			Luke 14:1-6
31	Cleansing ten lepers			Luke 17:11-19
32	The Blind at Birth				John 9:1-12
33	Blind near Jericho	Matthew 20:29-34	Mark 10:46-52	Luke 18:35-43
34	Raising of Lazarus				John 11:1-44
35	Cursing the fig tree	Matthew 21:18-22	Mark 11:12-14
36	Healing the ear of a servant			Luke 22:49-51
37	Catch of 153 fish				John 21:1-24

Now, it was probably incredibly naive of me, but on first thinking of Jesus's miracles, I could name 8 maybe 10 of them, I thought logically about it and assumed if I can name 10 that there must be about 15, give or take.


Seeing that there was 37 really shocked me. Did I know all of them, surprisingly I did, but why didn't they spring to mind. This chart, taken from Wikipiedia, harmonises them throughout the Bible. That must have been it, they were not in all of the gospels, probably scattered throughout them sporadically. Looking at the above table, I assumed that for it not to be sporadically located that it needed to appear in more than one, 23 of the miracles do. That is still a massive number, and 18 of them in three out of four. Why didn't I know this?


Why didn't I know this: I suppose the question is did I ever really look before, probably not. But it definitely interested me (which is whyI am posting a Blog about it)  A lot of the miracles, showed and fulfilled the prophecies written about Him in the Old Testament, so sceptics could argue that they were placed appropriately in the gospels to collectively bring them together. I can see the point, if this is raised, as I would have questioned that myself. This shows that they have an all rounded and  supportive evidential structure to prove that they happened.What did stand out, is the feeding of the 5000 is the only miracle in all four of the Gospels, again, a little fact that I was unaware of. But this I believe this miracle was unprophacised. Although, this could be argued that this purposefully mirrored the story of Elisha (2 Kings 4: 34-41) But I don't think so, it just continues to show the wonder of Him.


The wikipedia site also had this table below as well.

List of miracles found outside the New Testament

Accounts of Jesus performing miracles are also found outside the New Testament. Later, 2nd century texts, called Infancy Gospels, narrate Jesus performing miracles during his childhood.

Miracle	Sources
Rich young man raised from the dead	Secret Gospel of Mark 1
Water controlled and purified	Infancy Thomas 2.2
Made birds of clay and brought them to life	Infancy Thomas 2.3
Resurrected dead playmate Zeno	Infancy Thomas 9
Healed a woodcutter's foot	Infancy Thomas 10
Held water in his cloak	Infancy Thomas 11
Harvested 100 bushels of wheat from a single seed	Infancy Thomas 12
Stretched a board that was short for carpentry	Infancy Thomas 13
Resurrected a teacher he earlier struck down	Infancy Thomas 14-15
Healed James' viper bite	Infancy Thomas 16
Resurrected a dead child	Infancy Thomas 17
Resurrected a dead man	Infancy Thomas 18
Miraculous Virgin Birth verified by midwife	Infancy James 19-20

For me, if these are included or not, just really opened my eyes to the things that Jesus did and that we should always remember them, not forgetting that he did just 5 or 10 great things, he did lots, with the greatest miracle being his death and resurrection for us all.


Ending on a verse to remember:

John 21:24-25

²⁴ This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true. ²⁵ Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.




*Just for the sake of Tom-Sheep and Goats: Bob Dylan

Are you a Gardener?

I saw my Aunt and Uncle the other week, mainly as they hadn't seen my son William since he had been born, which had almost been two years! Not that we hadn't seen them, but for some reason never with our son in tow.

William, only just coming back from a church event, had his children's Bible in his carry bag. He pulled it out and pointed to the front and said "Mummy, Jesus". Now we thought that this was very cute and although he doesn't really understand, he can now identify who Jesus is (Sadly so many more children in the world can identify Ronald McDonald rather than Jesus).  My Aunt in reply, and I don't think in anyway milicious, said "You're starting him early."

My question is: Are we?

I have been reading a book called Fatherhood Principle by Dr. Myles Munroe.

 

Now, this particular chapter discusses what we, as fathers, should be doing with our children. It starts off saying that the word Discipline should never be used in the concept of punishment, and that this is where so many fathers "fail." 'Discipline' comes from the word 'Disciple' meaning "follow and train." This should be us as fathers, correcting children in their behaviour by showing them what they should do, and not just punishing when they go off course. God, in the garden of Eden, gives Adam this very task. He was asked to be the keeper of the garden; he was asked to cultivate.

¹⁵ The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.
Genesis 2:15

He wasn't told to dig out the weeds or cut the grass, he was told to work on it and take care of it. In other terms Cultivate.

The same should be used for us, as family, parents and friends. We are meant to help the people around us and cultivate them in the way that God wanted them to be. The problem is that we tend to just be pulling weeds or cutting grass. It doesn't solve the problem, it just hides it for a while.

Recently my dad came round to prune back the rose bush. It was about 6 ft tall. It is now about 3 ft, my dad didn't hack at it, he spent an hour neatly cutting away. Now, I admit when I saw it, I thought he had got carried away, when confronting him his reply was, "now when it blooms it will choose a beautiful path to bloom into". And that, for me, is exactly what God asked Adam to do. That is exactly what we should be doing to one another, steering them in the right direction, and asking that the choices they make to be choices that will please God, most importantly, putting Him central for everything.

So, for that reason, I think the earlier William knows Jesus, and is even willing to explore God with us, the better, so Candy and I will be doing it, in the hope that we, too, cultivate William into the man that we and God want him to be. Even if for the time being it is only us showing him and talking about the characters in his childrens bible, or us putting on his childrens worship CD in the car when we have him, so he can dance about. Us putting God as much as we can to our central family life, I hope we will cultivate William to bloom in his Light.

(On a side note isn't the word Cultivate a fantastic word, God keeps showing me this word in so many ways)

So my question to you is, Are you just pulling out weeds? Are you cutting the trees back because they are blocking the light or because you want them to grow in the light? Are you cultivating around you or just gardening?

2 Timothy 2:19

¹⁹ Nevertheless, God’s solid foundation stands firm, sealed with this inscription: “The Lord knows those who are his,” and, “Everyone who confesses the name of the Lord must turn away from wickedness.”