Ask Pastor Mike Live

Speaker 1

We're enlightened, science-minded folks who understand natural laws. We're logical, rational beings. So what happens when you encounter someone's claim that they've experienced a miracle? Well, that's the topic for Pastor Mike Febares today on Focal Point.

And welcome to a special edition of Focal Point. Hi, I'm Dave Drouy. Glad you're here. Today we're gonna sit down to ask Pastor Mike a doozy. And if you've got a question of your own for him, post it online at focalpointradio.org connect.

But right now we're diving headlong into the topic of miracles. Does God still do miracles? And exactly how can we expect God to intervene in our lives? Let's enter the pastor's study to join Focal Point's Executive Director Jay Wortin.

Speaker 2

Thank you, dav. I do have Pastor Mike here. And Pastor Mike, we have a question today on miracles and the question is, what should our expectation be regarding the miraculous?

Speaker 3

Yeah, that's a good question. We certainly read about miracles in the Bible and we need to have a proper expectation regarding God's intervention. And I think that would depend on what kind of miracle you're talking about.

Speaker 2

Well, I've heard you talk about GT1s and GT2 miracles. What's the distinction between those two?

Speaker 4

Right.

Speaker 3

Well, that's kind of my personal nomenclature that I've used in teaching that describe the difference between a God thing. There's the GT part.

Speaker 2

That's a theological term, right?

Speaker 3

Well, that's Mike's theological term. Yeah, a God thing. In other words, if you look at it and you say, well, this is clearly a God thing. Look how God intervened here. Then we've got to make the distinction between the first order GT1s and then the second order GT2s. They're both miraculous events, but one is a kind that I describe as the suspension of natural law when God breaks a law that he made. In other words, a human being should not be able to walk on water. The laws of buoyancy and physics prevent that. So when Jesus walks on water, well, there's a GT1—that's a first order miracle. When Lazarus is in a grave and he's dead, and then Christ comes and has him walk out of his grave, well, that's a GT1.

There are other miracles that are discussed in the Bible that are GT2s. It's clearly an answer to God's prayer. I think, for instance, in Acts chapter 16, when Paul is in prison and they're praying for his release, and a violent earthquake takes place. It says in verse 26 that he is brought out of prison. And we'd say, well, there God has responded. That's a God thing. It's an intervention of God. In 2 Timothy chapter 3, Paul even reflects on those kinds of deliverances and credits God with those things. And yet in the text of Scripture, we see it was a perfectly timed, violent earthquake.

Now, if you said, well, were laws of nature broken? Well, I mean, I assume not. It's described as an earthquake. That's something they knew of, something we know of with more detail in our day. But clearly, it was just at the right time, just at the right place to provide just the right result, which was the answer to the praying of God's people and the concerns of God on earth. So that's the kind of thing we would say, well, there's a God thing, but it's a GT2. We're not going to say God didn't intervene. Of course he intervened, but it was done in a way that didn't suspend natural law.

Now, if you think, well, how many of the miracles in the Bible are suspending natural law and how many are not? If you do that study, you'll find that they fall into two categories. And you might be surprised at the suspension of natural law kinds of miracles. Those are the ones that really are just. They're major, they're jaw-dropping. They're really clustered in three periods of biblical history. The first one that we find is during the period of the giving of the law surrounding the ministry of Moses and Joshua. There we have several GT1s. To put it in my terms, there were about 10 of them, by my count, that you see during that period that clearly are a suspension of a natural law.

I think of one in Joshua's day, the sun stands still. Well, whatever that was, I don't care how you try to figure that one out. That is something that supersedes the laws of nature. It doesn't matter how you look at it. And yet you can look at some of the plagues and you can see, well, here's something very normal. It's just a huge outbreak at the right time to cause the right kinds of problems to put the right kind of pressure on Pharaoh. And you'd say, well, there's a God thing at the command of Moses. You saw that happen. You could say GT1 GT2. They're all GTs. I've counted 33 GT2s at the time of Moses and Joshua and only 10 GT1s.

The next rash you find is in the coming of the prophets. During the ministry of Elijah and Elisha, this was a time when you see another cluster of these GT1s and GT2s. There are 21 GT1s by my count, and 45 GT2s. In other words, you have God intervening in a radical way to attest to the writing and the speaking of the prophets, this classical period of the prophets, and you see God doing amazing things, some by Providence GT2s and some by suspending natural law GT1s.

Well, the biggest cluster, of course, comes with the coming of the Messiah, Jesus and the apostles. We see 46 GT1s—the suspension of natural law—in the ministry of Christ and the Apostles, and 20 GT2s. If you look at those three clusters, which really present us with the law, the prophets, and the Gospels, these are the three clusters of supernatural events, God things, things we would say there's God intervening, and the majority of those are GT2s and the minority, not by much, are GT1s. In other words, this has to be seen as something that would allow us to recognize that God is intervening in time and space to credit and give validation to the giving of the truth that he's bringing through Moses, through the prophets, and through the writing of the New Testament.

Now, should we expect it today? Well, the Bible tells us to ask for God's intervention, so of course we should expect God to intervene. I mean, the prayer of a righteous man accomplishes much, so God is going to respond. But if you are praying, for instance, for money, and you are not sure you are going to make rent, I don’t think many pastors would say, well, go into your prayer closet there, bring your wallet with you. I know it is empty now; pray for God to fill it and then check it, open it up every five minutes and see if it is full of money. That would be a GT1 if that happened, the materialization of money in your wallet.

No, we would pray and then we would expect God to intervene. And often he does in providential ways, ways that we would never imagine. And we say, here's God providing. And he does it through means that are not the suspension of natural law. It's no less God's activity. And I can call it a miracle, and I will. And I'll say, here's God's intervention, look how God responded. But the materialization of money in a wallet or something being poof, you know, like the walking on water or whatever it might be, those are the kinds of things that we usually see just in those three clusters of the writing of the prophets, the writing of Moses, and the giving of the law, and what we have in the New Testament, of course, through the ministry of Christ and the apostles.

Speaker 2

When should we be expecting more GT1s?

Speaker 3

Well, the Bible does say there's going to be a rash of signs and wonders that would deceive even the elect if that were possible. And that's with the coming of the man of lawlessness. He's going to work wonders on this planet in a way that supersedes the kinds of things that we see in the church. When God is intervening in amazing providential ways, he's going to be doing things like calling fire out of heaven and having things happen that are described in the most extreme terms that would lead us to believe that when you do see things that are happening that are the suspension of natural law, the next scheduled time for that that we're going to see is at the hand of the one that's described as the man of lawlessness, or the worker of unrighteousness, or the Antichrist.

He's described many ways in the Old Testament prophets, but that will not be a good thing. And that's going to really play right into the hands of a world that's going to see these miraculous phenomena in a way that goes beyond what we're praying for and seeing in the answer to our praying. Now, we're going to see people just flocking to this Antichrist because he's doing things that clearly cannot be explained any other way than some kind of divine power. But it won't be God's divinity. It's going to be the counterfeit power of false signs and wonders that are given through this world leader.

Speaker 2

Wow. That is such a helpful conversation. Thank. Thank you, Pastor Mike. We're going to continue this topic with a message you gave called When God Breaks the Rules He Made.

Speaker 4

Since the word "miraculous" is used in such a broad variety of ways, I mean, we say things like, "the Cubs need a miracle." I want to default to a word that I hear a lot around the landscape, a vernacular term to refer to this kind of thing, which I kind of like. And that is, you hear people say when they see some unexpected event in their life clearly connected with God's goodness or intervention, we hear them say, "that was a God thing." You ever heard somebody say that? "What a God thing that was." This is a God thing. A God thing, we might say, is God's obvious intervention.

Okay, now when we start to look for examples of this in Scripture, there are clearly two kinds of God things that are presented to us in scripture, okay? And for the sake of abbreviation, let's just abbreviate them this way: GT1 and GT2, okay? And that'll be helpful through the rest of the sermon. There are GT1s. These are God thing category class ones and God thing category class twos. And to put a definition to that, let's call it this: GT1 is when God intervenes, breaking the rules of nature. God is getting involved and he's breaking the rules of nature. A miracle, a God thing category one.

Then there are, in scripture, as we'll find and illustrate in a minute, GT2s, and that is when God does a thing, he intervenes, but he does the intervention within the rules of nature. So let's think through it. Luke chapter one. There are two very significant God things as it relates to two different pregnancies. In Luke one, there's Mary's pregnancy, the all-important Mary's pregnancy. She is found to be with child. And we say, "Wow, what a God thing that was." We call it a God thing because there's no biology teacher in the world that's going to say, "Well, this fits the laws of nature," because there was no normal sexual relations that brought about the fertilization of an egg. It just doesn't work. God supersedes the rules of nature. Never had sex. Amazing. She's pregnant. It was a God thing Class 1. He broke the rules of nature.

There's another pregnancy in Luke chapter one, and that's Elizabeth's pregnancy. Elizabeth and her husband, it says, are old. It doesn't tell us how old they are, but they're old. Compounded by the fact that she'd never had any children. She was infertile, she was barren—the Bible word for it. She had prayed for kids, but they hadn't had any children. She also, in Luke one, is found to be with child. She is pregnant and she's carrying around a very important prophetic figure. Oh, it's not the Messiah, but it's the forerunner to the Messiah, the guy who dresses funny and goes out in the desert and preaches and prepares the way for the Lord. His name was John the Baptizer, guy, John the Baptist, and he was a very important figure. God had made sure that Elizabeth would bear this child, this important child, John the Baptist.

What's unique about it is that she's old and she was infertile. What's not unique about it is she had sexual relations with her husband to conceive the child. Now, one is unlikely, very unlikely. The other is impossible. See, both of them, God things. One's a God thing, category one. One's a God thing, category two. And I want to show you that the scripture considers it a God thing. I just want to quote two verses for you. As Mary ponders her pregnancy, she says this in verse 49, "The mighty one has done great things for me." Now, there's no mistaking that, right? Of course he's done great things for you. He's done an impossible thing for you. Elizabeth, as she ponders earlier in the passage, her pregnancy in verse 25 says, "The Lord has done this for me."

Now, the skeptic can say, "No, no, no, Zacharias did this for you, right? I mean, this was the normal thing. Wasn't likely. And I know you're older and I know it seems like. But you know what? It happened with a normal egg dropping thing and the cycle and the sperm, and you had the implantation and this baby grew, you know, unexpected." But she says, "No, wait a minute. This is a God thing." Mary's pregnancy and Elizabeth's pregnancy, are they different? Yes, very different. Are they distinguishable? Very distinguishable. But are they all under the category of GT God thing? Yeah, miracle. Yeah, miracle God thing. God intervention.

All right, now, this is my count, my study. But in my count, I found 192 clear—and this is prefaced by obvious miracles in the Bible. In other words, how many times do I see the God thing in the Bible? Now, God can intervene a lot within the rules. I'm interested in knowing when he's going to set aside the rules. So I had to take that list of 192 and look through each one of those and start to knead out the GT1s, give or take a few. I came up with, in my count, 86 clear God interventions that set aside natural law. That means when I—when Jesus stepped on water, he didn't sink. What is that? Buoyancy law was broken. He broke natural law. Okay? They're not all the time either. You don't—it's not ubiquitous in scripture. They're not everywhere. And then when you look for them, you'll find them clumped in groups. Ninety percent of them can be grouped in three periods would be a better word than categories. Three groups, three time periods.

Speaker 1

Boom, boom, boom.

Speaker 4

The coming of the law. That's the Moses and Joshua time period. That's why it makes such a good movie, right? Because there's a lot of fancy stuff going on there. Neat lice and blood and frogs and all that. Now then you get a long hiatus, and then all of a sudden you get another cluster of these. You get them in the coming of the prophets, the Elijah, Elisha, the preaching prophets, which then rolled into the writing prophets. You got Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Daniel and all those books. All of that is another cluster of miraculous events.

And then you have the obvious one, and you know where the third one is. Of course, the coming of Messiah. Christ shows up, and we got another rash of them, a big rash. And I include in this the ministry not only of Christ, but of his apostles, because apostle means what? Sent one representative of Christ. So the representatives of Christ and Christ himself perform the other third cluster.

Okay, what do we make of that? Well, what was significant about the coming of Moses and the coming of the law? Well, when Moses did his thing in 1445, 1440 BC, right? We were about to put God's revelation into print. Moses was the man who God had called to pick up the pen and write Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The Pentateuch was about to be written. The Torah, the law, the foundation for everything that would take place in Israel from that point on was about to be codified. And we see a rash of 43 miracles there.

Then we see the prophets building on the ministry of the Pentateuch, the Torah. And now all of a sudden, we have another rash of 66 miracles, when all of a sudden, now we have all these detailed explanations of the prophets being given to Israel, the nation of Israel, Babylon and Assyria, and all the other nations that surrounded it, Edom, etc. Okay, and then what do we have? We have a big gap again. And all of a sudden, now a new rash of miracles when Christ comes on the scene, has a new message saying he's the Lamb of God. The 39 books pointed to me, and here he comes on the scene and he establishes his message and he teaches the way of salvation. I am the Lamb of God. Put your trust in me.

And the apostles go out with that message, and we see a whole other rash of 66 miraculous events. What do we conclude? Let's put it this way. When God's word is being penned and proclaimed as a new revelation of God, we see the rashes of miracles. Boom, boom, boom, in three buckets: coming of the law, coming of the prophets, coming of the apostles. They verify the arrival of God's word.

Okay, Word does not leave us. Okay, let me say this just to start you off. Expect God's intervention in your life. Expect it. Expect God to intervene. Why? Because the Bible says He will. Here is what the New Covenant writers say to us. God has said, never will I leave you. Never will I forsake you. Okay, great. I have a companion, a spiritual. The God of the universe is with me. Is he a passive companion? No, look at the next phrase. So we may say with confidence, the Lord is my very active word here. What Helper? He will be active in my life.

And if you want to be specific, it's the third person of the Trinity who is called the Parakletos, the Helper. He will indwell my life and he will help me through this journey. He will be an active participant in my Christian life. Therefore, as a Christian, I expect God's intervention.

Okay, now, careful. Does that mean all of a sudden now I'm just looking for the GT1s in my life? No. God's intervention comes in two packages: GT1 and GT2. I'm trying to tell you that when it comes to your Christian life, your expectation should be for God to keep the rules, the rules that he's made, because he can intervene and does daily without breaking or setting aside the rules of nature that he set up.

And the times that he does those miraculous signs and wonders where natural law is set aside, it's a very different arrangement than us building our sanctification and our walk of faith on the confirmed message of revealed truth in the New Covenant.

Okay, any biblical support for that? Lots of biblical examples. Let me give you one that should be just clear to us. First Timothy 5:23. First Timothy 5:23. You've got the Apostle Paul writing to a pastor. His name is Timothy. He's pastoring the church in Ephesus. Okay. Now, he's pastoring the church of Ephesus, but he's having a bit of a hard time. He's struggling with a little discouragement. He's not all that courageous. He's not always bold and standing up for the truth. He's struggling with what people think of him and all that. So he's having problems.

And those, you know, kind of ministry problems I can fully understand have led to physical problems. Right. He is frequently ill and he's not doing well and his stomach is giving him trouble. Okay? The Apostle Paul, not in a context of establishing revelation, a personal letter from Paul to a pastor, puts in his mind a course of expectation. And he says, here's the expectation. I want God to be your helper. I think it would be good and in line with God's will for him to help your health so that you can do your job. Therefore, I want God to help you.

But I don't expect you to begin to anticipate from God GT1s to fix your problem. I expect for you to find God's help utilizing GT2s. Here's the passage: Stop drinking water. Only use a little wine because of your stomach and your frequent illnesses. Now that's a bit of a strange bit of advice from the apostle were he to have the kind of theology that people today want me to have, and that is that if there is a problem, you ought to pray to God and he will then come and mystically GT1 fix whatever problem you have.

See, Paul says, no. Use an intermediate means by which and through which God can work to solve your problem. And in this case, you got a stomach problem. And that stomach problem can be helped by you drinking some wine, which by the way, is not justification for you to down six packs to help your sore stomach. Okay? Much better tools than drinking a little wine for your stomach. Try Milk of Magnesia. Try Pepto Bismol. Try Pepcid AC. The point is, though, Paul tells Timothy to expect God's help to come through a natural means. That's what he expects him to expect.

God can do a lot of things. I mean, he can, you know, God can provide me toast every morning on my back lawn. Every morning he can provide toast for me. You know, how come I know he can do that? Because he did do that. Am I right? I know he can do that. But when I need toast, guess what? I'm not checking the back lawn for it, right? Why? Because I know I'm intuitively recognizing that God is going to meet my toast needs. GT2.

See, and I had somebody, when I used the example of scraping toast off the back lawn, you know, I said, well, that's not the way we'd approach it. But they said, well, you can always ask, right? It doesn't hurt to ask. As a matter of fact, as a pastor, from my perspective, I see it hurting people all the time. I see it all the time. Hurts a lot of people. Chasing the spectacular and missing God's provision in the GT2 category.

All right. You know, a lot of this confusion that I encounter in ministry and talking with Christians reminds me of that oft-repeated story of the man who found himself on his rooftop surrounded by rising floodwaters. Do you remember that story? He prays for God's deliverance. God save me. Deliver me from this flood. I don't want to drown here. A few minutes later, his neighbor shows up in a little rowboat and he says, come on, get in, get in. And the man said, no, no, no, no. God is going to deliver me. I have faith in God.

The man shooed him away and he began to continue to pray. God, please save me. Help me. As the waters reached his knees, a helicopter flew by, dropped out a harness and laid it down there for the guy. And Daniel, the pilot said, grab the harness, put the harness on. You're going to drown down there. The guy pushed the harness away and said, no, no, no, no, I'm not. I have faith in God. I trust God, God will deliver me.

Floodwaters reach his chest. About that time, a rescue boat pulls up, says, get in man, get in, get in. Get off that roof. Get in here quick. You're going to drown out there, man. No, no, no. I have faith in God. I'm trusting God. God will deliver me. Sure enough, a few minutes later, water submerges this guy, he drowns, he dies there on his rooftop, gets up to heaven, looks at God, says, hey God, what's the deal? I prayed, I prayed, I asked, I had faith in you, I trusted you. I asked for your deliverance. And God says, I sent you two boats and a helicopter. What did you want?

The point is, far too many times we're looking for God in all the wrong places. Don't miss the caring, loving, providential intervention of God that is most often wrapped in some very ordinary packages: a neighbor, a friend, another Christian at church, the timing of events. God cares, he's involved. Don't miss his love because you're busy chasing those flashes and glitter of some paranormal event.

Okay, God loves you. He loves me. He will be involved in our lives. We have to get in perspective and know what we should be anticipating from the hand of God.

Speaker 1

You don't have to chase miracles to experience God's life-changing intervention. That's Pastor Mike Favarez here on Focal Point, and you can hear this message again at Focal Point Radio. Look for the title "When God Breaks the Rules He Made." God is involved in the lives of those He loves, most times in very ordinary ways. As you keep listening to Focal Point, we'll continue to deliver these hard-hitting messages right to your station.

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I'm Dave Drouy. Be sure to join Pastor Mike Favarez after the weekend as he continues our journey through Luke, Monday on Focal Point. Today's program was produced and sponsored by Focal Point Ministries.

Speaker 4

It.