God and Miracles

“Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us).

Matthew 1:23


I listened to a comedian / talk show host / political activist, belittle Christians and their faith. One comment he made that stood out was that out of all the stories Christian believe, the worst is the story of Jesus. Receiving a loud ovation, he insisted that only non-thinking people would support a story, which encourages us to believe that Jesus was born of a virgin and that he was someone both God and man. For him the idea was preposterous and just another example of how followers of Jesus fail to use our brains. 

Perhaps you also have heard similar scoffers ridicule stories such as the talking snake, the cargo of Noah's ark, even the parting of the Red Sea. The thinking behind such conjecture is that these kinds of events do not happen in our world today. Many will all of those are impossible because we live in a world with a closed system, that simply follows the normal cyclical patterns of nature. 

But here's the deal. Christianity is not just another philosophical and moral construct, it is a story about how a supernatural God destroys our perceptions about what is humanly possible. In other words, you cannot remove the supernatural from the Christian faith. We should never spend too much time trying to water down our supernatural faith because we are afraid that we may lose credibility with others. You will never be able to convince someone by removing the miracles from the Bible like Thomas Jefferson, only the supernatural God can make someone open to Him.  

You see, a prominent tenant in the Christian faith is that we are saved by faith. In other words, as difficult as some of these stories may seem, the reality is that God interjected them into the Bible so that we could by faith know that He is there. Not only that, but the miracles serve to point to something more significant, namely Jesus. 

When we read about the creation account in Genesis 1-2, we do not know who God is referring to when he says, "Let us make man in our own image." However, later in the New Testament (John 1:1-3), we discover that the us included Jesus, who was involved in the creation process. Likewise, when we study the parting of the Red Sea, we marvel how God can make such an impossible occurrence happen. However, later in the New Testament we learn that Jesus can calm the sea in the midst of a storm. 

This reality of course sets the stage for the virgin birth of Jesus. It should not surprise us that God can impregnate a young virgin in the New Testament, since he opened the womb of a lady who was 90 years old (Genesis 21), named Sarah. Over and over again, the miracles we see ultimately point to the upcoming significance of Jesus. 

Many assume the Bible is a book where miracles happen all the time. Page after page, it seems, God is busy orchestrating the supernatural. However, it is important to realize that with every turn of a page, many years pass by without some miraculous event, sometimes centuries. In fact, the Bible is filled with non-supernatural activity as a norm. The miracles are simply like Sportscenter highlights. However, when God is needed most, or people have gone their own ways, He uses the miraculous to remind us that He is still at work present in our midst. 

Ultimately, that is what this passage is communicating in Matthew 1:23. In a period of Roman occupation and Jewish oppression, God reminds us thru the miraculous virgin birth that He is still there within our midst. 

It is no surprise that the angel told Mary, people will refer to your son as "Immanuel," which means God is with us! You see, the virgin birth of Jesus reminds us that God loved us so much, that somehow, even though we cannot explain it, he chose to dwell in person with His people, just as he did in Eden. Through this miraculous event, God profoundly revealed that He is not distant. He is in our midst.