THE MAGICIAN JESU S THE GOD WHO DOES THE SUPERNATURA L

We like order and control more than we like surprise and mystery. We tend to think of our world as closed, following certain "natural laws," so that the line between "natural" & "supernatural" is obvious and firm. In Jesus' first-century world, they didn't have our modern health-care system. They had the temple, the priesthood, and Scripture. The line between "natural" and "supernatural" was obvious and firm. When you were sick, you went to the 1st century equivalent of the officially certified, governmentally sanctioned health-care professional: the priest. And the priest told you what to do with your pain: "Take two doves to the temple for sacrifice and call me in the morning.”

But what if you didn’t have the money for two doves... or the time to travel to the temple? Then you use the guy that the priests hated, the man they told you about: You had to trust the wandering magicians! Jesus' miraculous work has been an embarrassment for us sophisticated, modern, educated people. We can take Jesus as a teacher, but Jesus as a magician is a turnoff.

Our exorbitant faith in, and vast money for, the medical system may be due more to our idolatry than to our scientific superiority to the1st century people of Jesus’ day.

LUKE 11:1 and following A man named Lazarus was sick. He lived in Bethany with his sisters, Mary and Martha. This is the Mary who later poured the expensive perfume on the Lord’s feet and wiped them with her hair. Her brother, Lazarus, was sick. So the two sisters sent a message to Jesus telling him, “Lord, your dear friend is very sick.” But when Jesus heard about it he said, “Lazarus’s sickness will not end in death. No, it happened for the glory of God so that the Son of God will receive glory from this.”So although Jesus loved Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, he stayed where he was for the next two days.

LUKE 11:17 and following When Jesus arrived at Bethany, he was told that Lazarus had already been in his grave for four days. Bethany was only a few miles down the road from Jerusalem, and many of the people had come to console Martha and Mary in their loss. When Martha got word that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him. But Mary stayed in the house. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if only you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask.” Jesus told her, “Your brother will rise again.” “Yes,” Martha said, “he will rise when everyone else rises, at the last day.”

LUKE 11:25 and following Jesus told her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will live, even after dying. Everyone who lives in me and believes in me will never ever die. Do you believe this, Martha?” “Yes, Lord,” she told him. “I have always believed you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one who has come into the world from God.”

LUKE 11:32 and following When Mary arrived and saw Jesus, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if only you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping and saw the other people wailing with her, a deep anger welled up within him, and he was deeply troubled. “Where have you put him?” he asked them. They told him, “Lord, come and see.” Then Jesus wept. The people who were standing nearby said, “See how much he loved him!” But some said, “This man healed a blind man. Couldn’t he have kept Lazarus from dying?” Jesus was still angry as he arrived at the tomb, a cave with a stone rolled across its entrance.

LUKE 11:39 and following “Roll the stone aside,” Jesus told them. But Martha, the dead man’s sister, protested, “Lord, he has been dead for four days. The smell will be terrible.” Jesus responded, “Didn’t I tell you that you would see God’s glory if you believe?” So they rolled the stone aside. Then Jesus looked up to heaven and said, “Father, thank you for hearing me. You always hear me, but I said it out loud for the sake of all these people standing here, so that they will believe you sent me.” Then Jesus shouted, “Lazarus, come out!” And the dead man came out, his hands and feet bound in graveclothes, his face wrapped in a headcloth. Jesus told them, “Unwrap him and let him go!”

LUKE 11:53 So from that time on, the Jewish leaders began to plot Jesus’ death.

Why would they want to kill Jesus just because he healed people?

He turned water into wine......challenging Dionysus. He made bread appear......challenging Demeter. He heals people......challenging Asclepius. JESUS CHALLENGED ALL THE GODS OF THAT AGE: And he challenged the people who thought THEY were gods... who thought THEY were in control. And he challenged the people who thought THEY were gods... who thought THEY were in control.

None of the gospels calls any of Jesus' healing works a "miracle." "Miracle" is our word for things that appear to arise from sources other than ourselves. What we label as "miracle," odd, out of this world, is what the gospels regard as normal now that Jesus is here. Jesus does these things naturally, giving us a privileged glimpse of the way the world is intended to be. Maybe what we call "natural" is a perversion of what God intended and what we call "supernatural" is the way the world really should be.

Though Jesus healed many, he didn't heal everybody. He walked by all the sufferers and healed only one crippled man. As important as health was to Jesus, something else was even more important. Jesus never once told his disciples that, if they loved and obeyed him, he would free them from all pain and misery. In fact, just the opposite, he told them that there would be a cross for every one of them.

What if the "modern worldview" is itself a fiction, just another in the long line of futile human attempts to play God? Jesus pulls back the veil that separates the real from the unreal and shows us what is really going on!