Teaching through miracles [3] - Categories of Miracles
The Gospels record about 36 miracles performed by Jesus, as well as numerous
other references to Him healing the sick, casting out demons, and performing
“signs and wonders”. The list below groups the recorded miracles together
into their main categories of miracles.
| |
Matthew |
Mark |
Luke |
John |
| Healing Miracles |
| Man in Synagogue |
1:25-36 |
4:33-35 |
| Peter’s Mother-in-law |
8:14-15 |
1:30-31 |
4:38-39 |
| Man with leprosy |
8:2-4 |
1:40-42 |
5:12-13 |
| Roman Centurion’s Servant |
8:5-13 |
7:1-10 |
| Gadarene Demoniac(s) |
8:28-34 |
5:1-15 |
8:27-35 |
| Paralysed man |
9:2-7 |
2:3-12 |
5:18-25 |
| Exorcism of Mary Magdalene |
8:2 |
| Haemorrhaging Woman |
9:20-22 |
5:25-29 |
8:43-48 |
| Two Blind Men |
9:27-31 |
| Mute & Possessed Man |
9:32-33 |
| Man with shrivelled hand |
12:10-13 |
3:1-5 |
6:6-10 |
| Blind, Mute & Possessed Man |
12:22 |
11:14 |
| Canaanite Womans Daughter |
15:21-28 |
7:24-30 |
| Deaf Mute |
7:31-37 |
| Blind Man at Bethsaida |
8:22-26 |
| Demon-possessed boy |
17:14-18 |
9:17-27 |
9:38-43 |
| Crippled Woman |
13:11-13 |
| Man With Dropsy |
14:1-4 |
| Ten Men With Leprosy |
17:11-19 |
| Two Blind Men |
20:29-34 |
10:46-52 |
18:35-43 |
| High Priest’s Servant |
22:50-51 |
| Official’s Son at Capernaum |
4:46-54 |
| Sick man at Pool of Bethesda |
5:1-9 |
| Healing of Blind Man |
9:1-41 |
Raising the dead |
| Widow’s son at Nain |
7:11-15 |
| Jairus’s daughter |
9:18-19,
23-25 |
5:22-24,
38-42 |
8:41-42,
49-56 |
| Lazarus |
11:1-44 |
Nature miracles |
| Calming the storm |
8:23-27 |
4:37-41 |
8:22-25 |
| Walking on water |
14:25 |
6:48-51 |
6:19-21 |
| Fig tree withered |
21:18-22 |
11:12-14,
20-25 |
| Coin in fish’s mouth |
17:24-27 |
| First catch of fish |
5:1-11 |
| Second catch of fish |
21:1-11 |
Abundance miracles |
| Water into wine |
2:1-11 |
| Feeding five thousand |
14:15-21 |
6:35-44 |
9:12-17 |
6:5-13 |
| Feeding four thousand |
15:32-38 |
8:1-9 |
This article looks at some of the important things Jesus taught through
His miracles.
1) The role of Faith
The Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke are called “synoptic” because
they are similar) sometimes emphasise that faith is
necessary before someone can receive a miracle. For example,
the following three verses in Matthew reveal that someone was healed because
of their faith.
- It will be done just as you believed it would. (Matthew 8:13)
- According to your faith will it be done to you. (Matthew 9:29)
- Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted. (Matthew 15:28)
Mark records similar words:
- ‘When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, " Son,
your sins are forgiven." ’ (Mark 2:5). Notice that in this miracle
it was not the faith of the person being healed, but the faith of
his friends which Jesus found irresistible.
- “He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few
sick people and heal them. And he was amazed at their lack of
faith.” (Mark 6:5-6). This incident demonstrates that Jesus could not
do miracles where there was no faith.
- Mark also records occasions where barriers had to be overcome
through a determined struggle in order for someone to experience
a miracle.
- “Since they could not get
him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above
Jesus and, after digging through it, lowered the mat the paralyzed man
was lying on”. (Mark 2:4)
- The woman with a haemorrhage
– see my explanation of this in the previous article in this series (no.
6).
- In the story of the healing
of the daughter of the Canaanite woman national or racial prejudice was
a barrier and the woman had to be very persuasive in convincing Jesus
to heal her daughter[1]. Matthew includes
Jesus response: " Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted”
(Matthew 15:28). So what Mark sees as a struggle to overcome a barrier
Matthew sees as great faith.
- On one occasion Jesus’ disciples
were unable to heal a demon-possessed boy, but his father persisted and
despite his own doubts, or lack of faith, he asked Jesus for help in overcoming
the barrier of insufficient faith. Jesus said "
Everything is possible for him who believes." Immediately the boy's
father exclaimed, " I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!"
(Mark 9:22-24).
- Mark also records how the
crowds tried to silence a blind man who persisted in asking Jesus for
a miracle. However, despite the opposition he was healed and Jesus said
“your faith has healed you” (Mark 10:47-52).
- In each of these incidents faith is related to overcoming
barriers such as physical limitations, prejudice, social taboos,
doubts and opposition from others.
John, on the other hand, tends to emphasise that miracles often produced
faith rather than being the result of it. There is no contradiction
here. John also knows about the importance of faith for miracles to happen
(e.g. John 4:50; 11:40), but he tells us that his whole point in describing
Jesus’ miracles is “that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ,
the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his
name” (John 20:30-31. The words “believe” and “have faith” are the same
in Greek). In many of the signs recorded in John Jesus takes
the initiative, rather than someone coming to him in faith. In fact, when
He healed a man at the pool of Bethesda (John 5:1-9) John makes the point
that the man who was healed “had no idea” who healed him (v. 13). So,
miracles might be the result of faith or they are performed by
the Lord in order to produce faith.
2) Jesus acted out of
compassion for people. On a few occasions we read words
like these: · When
he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed
and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. (Matthew 9:36)·
When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd,
he had compassion on them and healed their sick. (Matthew 14:14)·
Jesus had compassion on them.
(Matthew 20:34)· Filled
with compassion, Jesus reached out his hand … (Mark 1:41)·
“I have compassion for these people”.
(Mark 8:2) However, it is clear that Jesus’ motivation was not compassion
alone and there is evidence in the Bible that He did not heal everyone with
whom he came in contact. For example, we read that He once visited the pool
of Bethesda in Jerusalem. “Here
a great number of disabled
people used to lie - the blind, the lame, the paralyzed” (John 5:3). However,
we only read of
one man being healed here. Later, in Acts
3:1-10, we read of how Peter and John healed a crippled man at the entrance
to the Temple in Jerusalem. This man had been crippled from birth and was
taken to the Temple
every day. Jesus must have passed every time
He went into the Temple, yet He never healed him!
Jesus didn’t heal everyone.
3) Lessons from
“abundance” miracles. The feeding of the 5,000
is the only miracle recorded in all four Gospels and it is followed in John’s
Gospel by a sermon about the “bread of life”. Before the feeding of the
4,000, which was similar, Jesus said " I have
compassion for
these people; they have already been with me three days and have nothing
to eat. I do not want to send them away hungry, or they may collapse on
the way." (Matthew 15:32). It seems from these accounts that
the primary reason for these miracles was
compassion, although
the fact that a sermon follows immediately after it shows that Jesus took
the opportunity to use the occasion to
teach something from it
(although teaching may not have been the
primary objective).
In addition to the teaching about the
bread of life which follows
this incident, there are several other lessons which we can discover from
the incident itself.
1. First we read that the disciples
were aware of a problem and came to Jesus with a suggestion:
- … it was late in the day, so his disciples came to him. " This
is a remote place," they said, " and it's already very late.
Send the people away so they can go to the surrounding countryside
and villages and buy themselves something to eat.”
2. Jesus responds that the disciples
themselves should do something to solve the problem:
- But he answered, " You give them something to eat."
3. The disciples are amazed by this
suggestion, and tell Jesus that they do not have the resources
to solve the problem.
- They said to him, " That would take eight months of a man's wages!
Are we to go and spend that much on bread and give it to them to eat?"
4. Jesus tells them that they should
first see what they have before deciding they can do nothing:
· " How many loaves
do you have?" he asked. " Go and see." 5.
A little, if it is put in the hands of
Jesus, can achieve a lot.
- Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven,
he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to his disciples
to set before the people. He also divided the two fish among them all.
They all ate and were satisfied
We learn from this incident that there are two attitudes to
problems:
I. The disciples said “Send them away”.
One response to a problem is to try to shift it somewhere else.
II. Jesus said " You give them
something to eat” – in other words, “You do something!”
Jesus approach to the problem was to take responsibility and
see what can be done. We also learn that there are two
attitudes to resources:
I. The disciples said “we don’t
have enough”. A common approach to problems is to say “we don’t have the
resources to fix this” and we use this as an excuse to do nothing.
II. Jesus said “Go and see”. In other
words, rather than say “we don’t have enough” we should first see what
we do have, and then do something with it.Most importantly, we learn from
this incident that in the hands of Jesus even our very limited
resources can achieve amazing things.
The miracle of turning water into wine at the
marriage in Cana can be puzzling. It appears to be an unnecessary miracle,
and the person who was helped the most was the host of the wedding who
seems to have been “rescued” by Jesus out of a situation caused by bad
planning. It also appears to be “indulgent” insofar as Jesus wasn’t feeding
hungry people but providing something to drink for people who
had already been feasting for some time. It is even stranger that this
was Jesus’ first miracle. Why did He reveal His miraculous powers
in such a way?There are several possibilities, including: a.
Jesus announced His ministry with
a miracle which declared that His message was about abundance and
God’s overflowing generosity to mankind.b.
The water in this miracle came from storage vessels “the
kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing” (John 2:6), and Jesus is
hereby declaring that His ministry will get rid of the lifeless rituals
and man-made rules which held the people in spiritual bondage and will
replace it with something joyous.c.
Jesus ministry is not only about meeting human needs but is about
celebration and exuberance and includes elements which
are totally unexpected. Our God is a God of surprises!
The next article will look at what Jesus taught about the Kingdom
of God through His miracles, and this will lead into looking
at Jesus’ other teachings about the Kingdom.
[1] The woman in this story was a
Gentile living outside the Land and was obviously very aware of the Jewish
prejudice against non-Jews. In arguing with her about whether He should
do a miracle I am convinced that Jesus Himself did not have this racial
prejudice but, knowing her faith, He was simply reflecting the usual Jewish
attitude in order to get a faith response from her.
