The Purpose of Miracles

What is the purpose of the miracles recorded in the Bible? It isn’t to prove the existence of God. Today, R.C. Sproul shows that God appointed miracles to validate the messengers of His revelation.

You know, miracles in the Bible are not given to persuade people of the existence of God. The existence of God is already established long before there’s any kind of episodes of the miraculous. The purpose of the miracle in the Bible is not to prove the existence of God, but it is to prove the legitimacy and the validity of an agent of revelation—of someone whom God has commissioned to speak His word. The purpose of the miracle is to verify the messenger of the word of God. Watch that in Scripture throughout.

You know, we have a tendency to read the Bible as if miracles were occurring behind every bush and every other day by everybody in history. But actually, if you look at the appearance of miracles in the Bible, they’re clustered. There’re all these miracles that attend Moses in his mediatorial office, and then very little miraculous activity takes place for centuries until when? Elijah. That’s the next redemptive historical period that has a cluster of miracles. Isn’t that interesting? That God verifies the law, and then the prophets, through the giving of miraculous powers. And then you don’t hear about miracles from Jonah or Habakkuk that they performed, or Ezekiel, or the other prophets of the Old Testament until again, the world becomes a blaze of miracles with the appearance of Jesus. Notice that there is a special focal point for the clustering of miracles in biblical history—all surrounding the issue of the word of God.