The Miracles Of Jesus

Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through Him in your midst, just as you yourselves know.
–Acts 2:22

In New Testament times, hundreds of thousands of Jews would come to Jerusalem to celebrate Pentecost. But the celebration in Acts 2 was no ordinary Pentecost, because all of Jerusalem was still abuzz with what had happened in the city just a few weeks earlier. Everyone was chattering about Jesus’s death, resurrection, and ascension into heaven.

As crowds gathered at the temple, Peter stood up to preach the first sermon in the history of the church. Look at verse 22: “Men of Israel, listen to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through Him in your midst, just as you yourselves know.”

Notice he referred to Jesus as “Jesus the Nazarene, a man.” Jesus grew up in Nazareth. He was a man, but He was also 100 percent deity. Peter was saying, “Even though He was human, He was no ordinary man; He was a man attested to you by God.” That word “attested” means He was “proven” as being the Son of God. How? By His miracles.

Do you realize Israel is such a small country that just about everybody Peter was preaching to either saw one of Jesus’s miracles themselves or knew someone who did? Two thousand years later, not everybody is so sure that Jesus did things like raising Lazarus from the dead. They want to accept the words of Jesus, but they do not accept the miracles of Jesus. That is ludicrous–either it is all true, or none of it is true. You cannot pick and choose.

The great news is you can trust every word in the Bible. In fact, there is more literary support for the life of Jesus than there is for the existence of Julius Caesar. But perhaps the greatest proof is that we are still talking about it two thousand years later. Look at what Dallas Willard wrote about the centrality of the Lord Jesus Christ: “Today, from countless paintings, statues, and buildings, from literature and history, from personality and institution, from profanity, popular song, and entertainment media, from confession and controversy, from legend and ritual–Jesus stands quietly at the center of the contemporary world, as he himself predicted. He so graced the ugly instrument on which he died that the cross has become the most widely exhibited and recognized symbol on earth.” You cannot ignore the miraculous life of Jesus.

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Today’s devotion is excerpted from “This Man Jesus” by Dr. Robert Jeffress, 2012.

Dallas Willard, “The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God” (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1998), 12.

Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org