ROUGHLY EDITED COPY CUENet AUDIO TRANSCRIPTION DOGMATICS 2 LESSON 50 Captioning Provided By: Caption First, Inc. 10 E. 22nd Street Suite 304 Lombard, IL 60148 800-825-5234 *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. *** >> Recently in church we read the story of the loaves and fishes. In fact, the gospels are full of the miracles of Jesus. What are the significance of these miracles? >> DR. DAVID SCAER: The typical answer and the easiest answer to explain the miracles of Jesus is to say that he is God on earth. And by performing the miracles, he's demonstrating his deity. That's true in every case. But I think there is something more profound going on in the miracles rather than just providing such a -- providing one answer that covers all situations and occasions. Matthew provides an interesting perspective on the miracles. He quotes Isaiah 53 to explain the miracles. Instead of the translation "Surely he has borne our sorrows and carried our griefs," Matthew provides this translation of the passage: "Surely he has carried our sicknesses and our diseases." That's a very unusual perspective. It's theologically profound. That passage in Isaiah is generally used as a reference to Christ bearing the sins of the world. And now Matthew puts it down as a reference to Christ bearing our sicknesses. And the perspective here is this: That since Christ by his atonement has taken away sin, he has removed the cause of sicknesses and diseases. So rather than simply seeing the healing ministry of Jesus as demonstrating his deity, these miracles also demonstrate -- also demonstrate that he is the Redeemer and the Savior and that he has removed the cause of sin. And there are -- the miracles -- there are some miracles which seem to be relatively insignificant. We can understand the miracle of Jesus raising somebody from the dead. That anticipates his own resurrection. It's a promise of our resurrection. But there's some miracles which almost border on an embarrassment or we could say maybe these miracles really weren't necessary. I think the obvious miracle that some theologians have been concerned about is the changing of water into wine. That's in John Chapter 2, the wedding at Cana. You know the details of that particular story. How the host did not provide enough wine for the guests. And this was a social faux pax to invite guests and not have enough wine. And of course, you know the story of how Jesus turns water into wine. Is the miracle just given to show us that Jesus is concerned about the problems of ordinary people? I think something else is going on here. John -- the Gospel of John has a strong sacramental character. And with the miracle of the changing of the water into the wine, Jesus indicates the elements that are going to be found in the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper. And he -- through the rest of the Gospel John will have a lot to say about water and a lot to say about wine. And that miracle culminates in the miracle of the crucifixion in which the spear is put into the side of Jesus and out pours the water and the blood. So we have to be -- when we look at these miracles, this is especially important for you as you're preaching, Josh, to see perhaps there is something more in the miracle than simply that Jesus has power over nature. *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. ***