Are Miracles Really True? Series

SERIES: “ANSWERS TO SOME OF LIFE’S DIFFICULT QUESTIONS”

TEXT: JUDGES 6:11-13

TITLE: “ARE MIRACLES REALLY TRUE?”

INTRODUCTION: A. There’s an old story about a skeptic who continually challenged a local preacher.

The skeptic loved to try to paint the preacher as intellectually inferior because of his

faith. The preacher took the skeptic’s challenges with a lot of grace and restraint.

One morning, the preacher was eating breakfast at the corner diner when the

skeptic came in. Eyeing the preacher, the skeptic walked over to the table and began

to harangue this humble servant of the Lord concerning the validity of miracles. He

took great pains to ridicule the preacher concerning a belief in miracles and finally

taunted, “Give me one concrete example of a miracle. Just one concrete example.”

The preacher had taken enough abuse from the skeptic. The preacher stood,

politely wiped his mouth with his napkin, and kicked the skeptic as hard as he could in

the shin. The skeptic grabbed his leg, yelled some profanities, and sat down in a booth

– totally in shock at the preacher’s behavior.

The preacher sat down across from the skeptic and asked, “Did you feel that?” The

skeptic cursed again and declared in no uncertain terms that his throbbing leg had

certainly felt the kick. The preacher smiled and said, “If you hadn’t, well now, that

would have been a miracle.”

1. Have you ever struggled with the truth that God works miracles?

a. Maybe you’ve been in a situation where you asked God for something and

didn’t get what you wanted

b. Perhaps a loved one was suffering from a debilitating disease or life-threatening

illness

c. Or you had financial difficulties or another kind of need that had to be taken

care of in a big hurry

2. You’ve read about miracles in the Bible

3. You’ve heard other folks claim miraculous events in their lives

4. But you’re just not sure that even if God performed miracles at one time or another

that He still operates in the same way today.

B. I think we’ve become too loose with the term “miracle”

1. People find a parking spot in a crowded park lot and they praise God for a miracle

2. They find a lost wallet or lost keys and they praise God for a miracle

3. But sometimes they don’t find a parking spot in a crowded parking lot or find their

wallet or keys

--What happened to the miracle then?

4. Once there was a fellow who was quite overweight and decided to do something

about it. He changed his eating habits and began an exercise program. Everyone

where he worked complimented him on his efforts because they were working.

However, one morning he walked into work carrying a box of bakery donuts.

Everyone was shocked and so they asked why he had the donuts. He said, “You

guys know that I love donuts; especially donuts from Wally’s Bakery. As I drove

into work this morning, I thought those donuts. I prayed that if God wanted me to

have donuts this morning that there would be a parking spot open right in front of

the bakery’s doors. And guess what? The seventh time around the block, there

was a parking spot.”

C. I think that struggling with the validity of miracles is part of the human experience.

1. We go through struggles, trials, illnesses, and difficulties of all kinds and we say to

ourselves: “Are miracles really true? Does God still perform miracles today?”

2. Gideon was a leader of God’s people in the Old Testament.

a. When God came to Gideon to ask him to be a leader, Gideon was frightened and

he was skeptical that the job at hand could be done at all.

--The children of Israel were overpowered by and being oppressed by the

Midianites

b. Judges 6:11-13 (NLT) – “Now the Angel of the LORD came and sat under the

terebinth tree which was in Ophrah, which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite,

while his son Gideon threshed wheat in the winepress, in order to hide it from

the Midianites. And the Angel of the LORD appeared to him, and said to him,

‘The LORD is with you, you mighty man of valor!’ Gideon said to Him, ‘O my

lord, if the LORD is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where

are all His miracles which our fathers told us about, saying, Did not the LORD

bring us up from Egypt? But now the LORD has forsaken us and delivered us

into the hands of the Midianites.’”

c. Gideon had his doubts about the miracle stories he had heard about, too

1). He’d never seen anything as dramatic as the ten plagues on Egypt or the

opening of the Red Sea so that God’s people could escape slavery in Egypt