SIGNS AND WISDOM

My son, Bryan and I were driving down a steep road when we encountered a peculiar sign. It said, “Caution—Hill Obscures View”. Well duh! We laughed at the great wisdom displayed! Maybe it’s the way my brain works, but that set me to thinking about signs and miracles. Does it seem like people are unimpressed with the obvious and bore easily today in an age where technology renders the sufficient obsolete?

Meditation
1 Corinthians 1:22,23—Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.

Throughout Jesus’ ministry, religious leaders insisted that Jesus produce signs to prove that He was the Messiah. But Jesus did not comply with such requests. He exercised supernatural power only when it was in keeping with God’s will in the ministry before Him. When the gospel spread to the Gentile world, signs retained their popularity but to cerebral Greeks it was the wonder of wisdom that mattered. Not much has changed umpteen centuries later.

Countless people gravitate towards ministries where signs are emphasized. Now I am not one who believes that miracles were limited to the time of Christ and the Apostles. I personally saw God miraculously heal Bryan from an incurable brain tumor. Around the world there are verifiably accurate reports of God still raising people from the dead and healing incurable diseases. In India I visited a retreat center where AIDS patients are supernaturally healed. As a result many have placed their faith in Jesus. There is nothing inherently wrong with admiring signs or wonders.

There are also those who are skeptical of anything that defies natural laws. They venerate rational, humanistic thought. They call themselves Christians yet reveal enlightenment as embracing what the Scripture calls perverse. Some honestly yearn to amass knowledge but miss Solomon’s observation: “The wise man has eyes in his head while the fool walks in the darkness; but I came to realize that the same fate overtakes them both” (Ecclesiastes 2:14).

Our central focus should never be on miracles or philosophical acuity. If we worship the One crucified for our sin, resurrected for our salvation we will experience His power and we will grow wise. Jesus did not multiply five loaves to impress 5000 men. He wanted them to understand that He was the Bread of Life. “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you” (John 6:53). After this teaching many no longer followed Him. The wise tripped over cannibalism while the unschooled fisherman recognized the “Holy One of God” (John 6:66,69). Keep your heart in worship and you will keep your heart.

Inspiration
The error of the “signs and wonders” movement is that the eye is fixed not on Jesus, but on our own whiteness, or on the amazing of those around us because of what God has done. Jesus Christ never went on that line, and the unobtrusive kind of life He lived is exactly the kind of life the saints are to live. There was no “show business” with the Son of God, and there is to be no “show business” with the saints.—Oswald Chambers in Bringing Sons Into Glory