What does the Bible say about miracles?

• Genesis 1:1, creation
• Exodus 14:21-22, God divides the sea
• 1 Kings 18:27-28, Elijah prays while battling the prophets of Baal
• Matthew 1:18-20, the virgin birth
• Mark 6:41-44, Feeding of the five thousand
• Luke 7:14-16, Jesus' resurrection
• Luke 11:14, Jesus casts out a demon
• Luke 17:11-14, Jesus heals ten lepers
• John 2:9-11, Jesus turns water into wine
• Acts 2:36-37, regeneration of the heart

Sermon ideas about miracles

Miracles are incredible to many, including to many theologians. They assume that everything that happens must have a natural cause and that a miracle is therefore impossible. But this is a form of materialism, a sworn enemy of Christianity, which is from start to finish a supernatural religion. A non-miraculous Christianity would be clam chowder without the clams.

Nothing prevents God from occasionally acting unusually and unpredictability: God's usual patterns of providence — of upholding the world in all its processes — are regular, usual, predictable. Descriptions of how God usually acts, drawn from widespread observation, we call "laws of nature." They make science possible. But nothing prevents God from occasionally acting unusually and unpredictably. When God (or one of God's deputies) so acts for one of the purposes described in the definition of miracles above, you have a miracle. The providence of God is regular, but as miracles show, not uniform.

God's miracles do not merely doctor or tinker with nature. They are purposeful. They heal, or exorcise, or feed, or restore to life. They anticipate the great time of shalom described so often in Isaiah: a time of universal wholeness, harmony, and delight in which there shall be no more crying except for cries of joy. Miracles may also attest to God's authority: Jesus heals a paralyzed man in Mark 2, and thereby attests to his own divine authority to forgive sins. Miracles in Scripture are mighty and serious business.

Miracles belong tothe class of "wonders," i.e., events that typically cause astonishment or numinous fear. They are "other." But not every wonder is a miracle. When the basketball star Michael Jordan was in his prime, he could soar to a dunk from behind the free throw line. People would gasp with wonder. But Jordan's soaring was not a miracle; it lacked the miraculous purposes stated in the definition.

The most common miracle is the regeneration of a selfish human heart. When Peter told fellow Jews that they had the blood of God's Messiah on their hands, they did not try to kill Peter. They were stabbed to the heart with the knowledge of their complicity in Jesus' death. John Newton, who authored the hymn "Amazing Grace," had ambition like a Caesar. He was a hard man, a profane man. He traded British manufactured goods for African slaves, and he packed those slaves like sardines in the hold of his ship. Newton's journal tells us that he treated slaves as his enemies. But one night in a storm at sea, the Holy Spirit began to blow, and it got John Newton's attention. One night the Holy Spirit got into John Newton's heart and did Pentecost there so that Newton began to speak in a new tongue. What came out of his mouth were the words, "Lord, have mercy. . . . Lord, have mercy on us." For those words to come out of this hard man's mouth was a supernatural, God Almighty, Holy Ghost miracle.