Signs and Wonders

A sermon preached by Dr. James Flamming
Pastor, First Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia
Sunday, August 29, 2004

Scriptures: Acts 2:19, 22, 43; 4:30; 5:12; 6:8; 7:36; 14:3; 15:12

Folded into the envelope of early Christian experience are two words which are strange to our ears: signs and wonders. Often they go together. In fact, in all of the New Testament the word wonder is never used by itself. It is always joined with signs: signs and wonders. In fact, if I counted right, this couplet – signs and wonders – are used nine times in the book of Acts. Let me walk you through them – but you will need a Bible in your lap for me to do this. 

The first two come from Peter’s sermon at Pentecost. That is Acts 2. (1693) The first describes the end of the age, 2:19, and the second describes Jesus, 2:22. By the way, the three power words in the New Testament are power, wonders, and signs. All are strung like a divine necklace around Acts 2:22 in speaking about Jesus.  

The Apostles participate. “And many wonders and signs were done by the Apostles.” (2:43) Then Peter and John get in trouble with the religious authorities by proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead. (4:2) The resurrection is the central sign and wonder in the New Testament and in our faith. But the central proof of the resurrection is not only that the Apostles experienced it, but that we experience it. We sense his Presence. Sometimes it is terribly vivid and close, as if he were sitting in a chair right next to us.  

This last week one of our finest was closing out his life. His bags were packed for heaven. I began quoting Scripture, letting the Scripture run interference for him on the way to glory. His breathing, which had been difficult, became steady. The Risen One was there. He knew it and I knew it. When I prayed and asked the Lord to walk him through the valley of the shadow, the Lord answered that prayer. This is his first Sunday in heaven. Listen to me again, the great proof of the resurrection is not only that the Apostle’s experienced it but that we experience it. Sometimes the Presence is so real! 

Well, the Apostles were released (4:21). So what did the Apostles do? They decided to keep quiet, right? Wrong! In fact they pray that signs and wonders will keep happening the name of their Lord Jesus. The prayer is answered in 5:12, 6:8, 7:36, 14:3.  

A great break-through happens in 15:12, when Barnabas and Paul explain that the signs and wonder have been done among the gentiles also. I can hear someone in that Jerusalem Council muttering, “You’ve got to be kidding! The gentiles? Why would God waste his time with gentiles?” 

So, what’s the big deal about signs and wonders.  

Look at wonders first. A wonder is something that could very well be going on all of the time and we have missed it. Suddenly we see it. It makes all of the difference. Or we know someone else who has experienced it and we experience it through them.  

Dr. Guy Greenfield once told me an experience about a resurrection wonder. I have shared it before and someone asked me to repeat it. I will. Guy was a friend of mine who entered seminary on a wing and a prayer. He had little money and no transportation. A widow had an extra room right across the road and rented it to students like Guy. She was the wife of one of the greatest New Testament theologians Baptists ever produced. His name was W.T. Conner. One day Guy was coming to his apartment and saw Mrs. Conner sitting in the swing. She said, “Guy, do you have a minute? Something happened to me yesterday that I need to tell someone about. Do you have time?” He nodded. She said, “Yesterday I was sitting here by myself when suddenly W.T. was right over there. It was he all right. He looked at me and he said, ‘Don’t worry, honey. Everything is going to be all right.’ Then he was gone. Guy, what do you make of that?” Guy, first year seminarian, shook his head and answered, “I don’t know Mrs. Conner. What do you think?” She was quiet for a while and then she said, “I think the veil between this life and the next is a lot thinner than I thought.” 

Of course, there are those who could use a bit of wonder in their lives. I remember a story from the family of the late Arthur Gordon in his book, A Touch of Wonder. It seems he had a Great-Aunt Lavinia who lost her parents when she was a child. An orphan, she was raised by three elderly members of their family clan, all rather odd. There was Cousin Wayne, a bachelor who passionately admired the Wright brothers, and spent most of his time experimenting with unsuccessful gliders of his own.  

His two maiden sisters, Maud and Muriel, took the orphan child, Lavinia in.

They had some strange ways. Every afternoon Maud and Muriel retired to their room for their daily naps. They pulled the curtains and the shutters and in the gloom, no one was allowed under any circumstances to interfere with their afternoon naps. Poor Lavinia had to creep around the house like a wistful ghost.  

One sultry afternoon in 1901 things became unglued. First, their usually predictable cat decided to have kittens in an antique Chinese bowl on the cupboard shelf. Lavinia, completely oblivious to the wonder of new life, was deeply distressed about the Chinese bowl. About this time a neighbor, who was a Major in the army, came to the door to report angrily that Cousin Wayne, taking off from some undetermined pinnacle, had landed his latest glider head down in the Major’s well. Somebody, said the angry Major, ought to get him out before he ruined his well. Frantic and trembling Lavinia ran outside to see if the report was true. It was. About that time a wild-eyed newsboy cycling past flung an special edition of the newspaper at her feet reporting that President McKinley had been shot. Something in Lavinia snapped. She ran to the shuttered room where Maud and Muriel were asleep, opened the door pulled back the curtains and screamed, “Wake up! Wake up! The cat’s landed her glider in the well, Cousin Wayne’s having kittens, McKinley’s been shot, and I can’t stand everything!” 

People who can’t stand everything could use a little touch of wonder, “Don’t you think?” 

Signs

Well, what about signs? The first miracle of Jesus recorded in John’s Gospel is the wedding feast at Cana of Galilee, the turning of the water into wine. John says, “This was the first of the signs, Jesus did.” He never calls it a miracle but a sign. The translation is “miraculous sign.” But the word miracle is not there. See there is a difference between a miracle and a sign. A miracle stands alone, by itself, in one situation. A sign points to something, many somethings. If it is just a miracle it stops at the wedding. If it is a sign it points to many things. Here is my short list:

• God is bringing new wine into old wineskins through Jesus.
• Jesus is in the business of transformation, like water to wine.
• Jesus can do a lot with just a little.
• Unlike evil, which has the best at the first and then everything falls apart, Jesus saves the best for the last, when all is made new.

Well, hey, I have an assignment for your lunch time. Water to wine. John says it is the first of the Signs. What does turning the water into wine point to for you? 

Signs do something else – they affirm.  

Recently I received a call that my last living Aunt on my Father’s side had passed away. Could I come? I got through Sunday and left on Monday. My cousin picked me up at the Denver airport and drove to Elsie, Nebraska. I have lots of good memories of that farming community, tiny though it be. When I was a teenager I used to drive a tractor for my uncle in the summer, plowing the fields and then pulling a combine during harvest. I was too young to have a driver’s license. But who checks on farm boys in Elsie, Nebraska in the late 1940’s.  

It had been many years since I had been there and I was so glad my cousin Carl was driving. Dirt roads the whole bit. I had not seen a sign for a long time and was dumb enough to ask if he knew where he was going. A University Professor for many years, he just winked. There was dust coming up from the road and realizing that if we had a flat tire or ran out of gas we just might be there for the rest of the day. I squirmed a bit. Then came the sign. Elsie, Nebraska, 12 miles. That sign did two crucial things. It affirmed my cousin and his sense of the way he was taking us. The other thing was identify that this was the right way to Go. Signs affirm and identify. Signs affirm and identify. Say it with me: Signs affirm and identify. 

That is what a sign means in the New Testament. When Jesus forgives sins, or changes water to wine, or lifts a man’s week limbs and gives them strength, or opens the eyes of the blind, it is a sign as well as a miracle. It identifies who Jesus is and the way he is taking us. Second, it affirms and identifies that we are on the right road with him when he says, I am the way the truth  and the life.  

There was another night when the word sign was echoed from the heavens, from the angels, from the heavenly host. It was the night when the God-child, Jesus, was born. The shepherds were startled, awakened, and half-frozen with fear. The announcement was made – “unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you. . .” Listen again, “And this shall be a sign unto you, you shall find the baby wrapped in swaddling clothes,  in soft clothes, and lying in a manger.”   

In your mind’s eye reach into the Christmas cards and hold that God-child in your arms. He is so small. You notice his little head is a bit bruised from his rough entrance into this world. You take his little hand in yours and wonder at the miracle that any baby could be put together in nine months and have all the parts working. You smell Mary’s milk and feel the warmth of the soft clothes that are wrapped around him. You might say to yourself, “This is what God has decided to look like, and all for the love of me.” And this shall be a sign unto you . . .  

And which one of us has not struggled with trust in the shadows of  a situation in life that has just about got us down. “And this shall be a sign unto you . . .”

• If God could take a manger and make it into a place for everyone,
• if God could transform soft clothes into warmth for the Kingdom,
• if God could transform a stable into a platform for redemption,

can we not trust him to see us through where we are. “God works in all things,” says Paul. Even a stable, even warm clothes, even straw for the cattle.  

Here is your sign for your life, says God. If I could handle Bethlehem do you not think I can handle your situation right now?  

Seize the sign and the wonder of it all, and make it yours!