They Saw His Miracles — Leonard Ravenhill

Our father tonight for the privilege of bowing before your eternal throne. Even our Lord Jesus called you a holy father. We thank you. You're our holy father. We thank you for your holy son. We thank you for the Holy Spirit.

We thank you for a holy word. We thank you for holy men of God who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. Lord as we sing of this love we think of vastness of your love. Everything you do is so majestic so breathtaking.

Man cannot yet take the temperature of the Sun. He can't tell where the wind is blown. There are thousand things about us. We've been here for thousands of years. There are still a mystery but greatest of all is the mystery of my love.

I think of a hymn that says When's on me this waste of love. Ask my advocate above. God is love. I know I see you. Jesus lives and loves me still. We thank you. Thank you Lord. But when we were yet a far off you saw and had compassion on us.

The Father's Compassion for the Prodigal

Remember in the story of the prodigal when he started part of the way home the father ran and fell on his neck and kissed Him. We thank you Lord, but when we were worse than that prodigal many of us. Maybe we thank you didn't smell our rags.

You didn't look upon our bruised countenances. You didn't see our warped minds and our unclean desires and our impotent wills. So we thank you took the whole wreckage of our personality. Lord we see automobiles wrecked some days.

I've seen them and no there's not a man on earth could put that automobile back again. It's almost pulp. Pieces are scattered everywhere and everything so fractured or broken. But Lord we thank you that you came to bind up the brokenhearted.

To undo heavy burden to let the oppressed go free and break every yoke. But we thank you that Impossibility is not in your vocabulary. Lord the more we gaze on your omnipotence the more we recognize our impotence.

Lord when they think of your love so vast. Lord we're told the parts of the ocean that men cannot fathom. We know not how far Science tells us of some thing they shot into the sky last year. That's already gone 250 million miles.

Mother it your works are past finding out even in creation that Lord who can understand the atoning work of Jesus Christ. Who can understand why he came the Lord of life the taste of death that we who are dead might know life?

How can we express our gratitude that he wore a crown of thorns that we might count the war a crown of life? How can we understand that he was despised and respected with men that we might be accepted into the fold of the living God?

I think the word of John when he says even now. We're the sons of God. We hear the millions in this world tonight love that we call the Unprivileged are the underprivileged, but not if they're underprivileged spiritually tonight.

It's our own fault. You've given us this holy word. It is as we used to sing as children. It is a golden casket where gems of truth are stored. It is the heaven-drawn picture of Christ the living word.

Christ's Resurrection and Authority

We think of you Lord Jesus when you said it in I am he that liveth and was dead and behold I am alive. I'm alive forevermore. And I have the keys of death and of hell and John speaks of the Christ who is and who was and who is to come.

We would put it the other way to Christ who was no isness to come but he said the Christ who is. We thank you Lord Jesus that you're alive tonight and alive forevermore. We thank you love we can say he lives.

You ask me how I know he lives he lives within my heart. Again, how do you come to us? The heaven of heaven cannot contain you and yet you can come and dwell in these little hearts of ours. You can work on these tiny little minds of ours.

You can take these bodies of ours these emotions of ours. We think about sister with a skill as she plays on this piano. Some of us couldn't get anything out of it, but so beautifully of hands move over the keys.

And the harmonies and all else that makes music so charming the Lord. We thank you. You can play on the human personality. Whereas the devil's fingers once played on us and pushed us around. We think you can take and cleanse and the vessel you can take what it may be very poor.

But we're sanctified and meet for the master's use and that our yearnings are for thee tonight. We pray breathe on us tonight breath of God. Fill us this night with life and you that we may love what I would love and do what I would do.

Lord praise was tonight as though you're in the very congregation praying. Let me recognize our praying is just stammering, but we thank you live at the right hand of the father tonight. After 2 ,000 years, you're not a bit tired any more than you were when you first ascended.

We thank you for your majesty there. We thank you for your authority there. You think you do the greatest translation that anybody could dream of maybe listening to a hundred or a million prayers at the same moment and translating them to the father taking our poor stumbling prayers out in our equal prayers and Making them acceptable.

Because we come through you Lord Jesus. We thank you that you did die that we might be forgiven you died to make us good. But not just when we slip away from this life. But we thank you that you've told us you set us up here in the midst of a crooked and perverse Generation to whom we'd shine as lights in the world.

Lord. We never needed more light than now. We're in a state. I think that Isaiah talks of when he says darkness covers the earth and goes back with the people. There's darkness over politics. There's darkness over the model state of the nation.

There's darkness darkness over the financial state of our nation right now where there's darkness everywhere and The devil loves the darkness. He loves darkness more than light like his children do but let me bless you for the light in Jesus Christ.

Scripture as Light and Wisdom

We thank you for your Holy Word. This is a lamp to our feet a light and to our path. But we may not be smart according to the world's idea of the account of the academy. But Lord bless you. We thank you that we can't be wise in the things of God.

We thank you for this book of wisdom. No man is ignorant that knows this book and no man is wise that doesn't know it. We bless you that it has as the martyr said when he was burned at the stake in England centuries ago.

We put the Bible Not just in the hands of the scholars. We put it into the hands of the cowboy. And we thank you Lord for a way that men of labor that use their minds and people give them money and got this word Distributed we pray for those.

Weekly, I like live translators tonight in so many countries. With all that some convene you all that's on appetizing. All that's repulsive. Maybe today former culture the crudeness of the people and the rudeness of the people and Almost hopelessness of the food they eat and yet we thank you Lord by feeding on a higher food.

We thank you that they have this burning desire to get this Holy Word of God Into the languages that so far have not been reduced. To vocabularies are meant to be written. But we thank you for all your servants.

You see them all up. There are all kinds of servants in a man's house in the great man's houses. We've been in and seen the many forms of servants and we thank you for your servants tonight. Thank you for those who preach if they preach the truth in cathedrals.

We thank you for those that go down to the junkies. Thank you for those who go down to places like. That place in in the center of the Chicago there. That's being blessed to the ends of the earth because that man has stayed there.

Lifted the beggars from the dunghill and made them princes unto God. I thank you for the ministry you've given to brother Sonny James here tonight. Thank you for the presence again as Dear Spencer and his mother but I pray you bless that work bless it financially.

Lord raise out of that bunch of men prophets. Raise men full of faith of the Holy Ghost. Show men Lord what you can do. When you can transform a personality and take every bit of baseness and vulgarity out of it.

Every appetite of the flesh and fill them with appetite for the spirit. Make them more eager to read the word of God and drink the word of God whenever they were to drink liquors and fool around. With sin and sordidness.

But we thank you. This is your business. We bless you. The blood shall never lose its power till all the ransomed Church of God be saved to sin no more. We do not wonder that one of your servants said in a hymn that eternity will be too short.

To offer all thy praise. And now they bless you for all that's past. And we will say with Newton. I think was Newton who said glory to God for all the grace I have not tasted yet the lovely. Thank you this strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow.

We thank you don't know a thing about faith. Fabulous or failure or powerlessness. We bless you Lord. You don't have to ask advice of anybody because you're the source of all wisdom. You won't have to borrow any strength because you're a source of every bit of energy in the whole world.

We gaze on your majesty tonight. And we say well My Jesus, I love thee. I know thou art mine. Maybe you could sing. I had found my Jesus. I love thee recorded by John chapter 6. It was interesting the news today reminded us that just a year ago today.

There was that devastating earthquake in Mexico City, what was it. 8 .4 on the Richter scale and they showed a baby today. But just a year ago was buried for eight days without without anything to eat without anything to drink eight days.

And it's about the healthiest baby in Mexico. That doesn't mean you have to be in an earthquake to be healthy. But it's wonderful a child could live eight days without nourishment without anything to drink.

Jesus as the Bread of Life

Well, we're coming to the greatest source of nourishment tonight. The six chapters in the gospel is recorded by John. You know Jesus was the most radical person that ever lived. Somebody's written a book on radical Christianity.

I wish I'd written that. Because of course it it violates everything that men think is precious and. Their idea is go as high as you can. The Bible says go as low as you can they save your life. Jesus says lose your life.

Be a nobody that you might be a somebody, you know, this book is so remarkable. In the first chapter of John as you remember, he said he came unto his own and his own received him now. To me, that's one of the greatest of all miracles.

They've had years centuries millenniums of teaching 750 years before Jesus came. You remember the eyes I wrote the whole story of Virgin shall be with child. The 38 chapter the 35th chapter. There should be a highway in a way.

And there's a place where it says about him. It was a 58. He comes to undo heavy burdens let the oppressed go free break every yoke and he did it and all that. Happened every time he violated. As I say church and at the other religion every time he violated it they got more and more angry.

But he came to show us what the Son of God was. John shows him actually, of course as a son of God. Luke shows him as a son of man. Matthew shows him as the King. Mark shows him as a servant. But think a minute that in this first chapter he came unto his own and his own received him not.

We're going to come in to the fifth chapter very quickly in the second chapter. He did a miracle remember what it was. He turned water into wine. Let's say that's a miracle socially. In a third chapter he did a miracle.

Theologically, he told them one of the most brilliant men in Jerusalem a man of impeccable morality a scholar a gentleman. Maybe the best known man in the world of that time at least in Israel. And he has the affront to tell that man this unlearned man this nobody this Christ.

Who doesn't wear a clothes of the rabbi? He doesn't have a plate on his forehead. That says holy the son to the Lord the other life that lives holy in the sense of the Lord. And his life was a repute reproved to them all the way.

So in chapter one, you have the vertically of Jesus coming. The word was made flesh and dwelt among us take all eternity to explain that to us. Second chapter. You have this miracle the third chapter of the miracle.

Second chapter of the miracle socially. He turned water into wine. Chapter three of a miracle. Theologically, he comes to this brilliant Pharisee. He had to be a very brilliant man to be a Pharisee and a ruler of the Jews.

And he confronts him with a fact that if he's going to heaven, but all the blood of beast. He's been seeing shed all the prayers. They've offered all the rituals all the Sabbath days. They've kept all the new moons and Sabbaths all the Different what they call the feast they have.

But the role of no veil unless he's born again. He cannot it's not difficult. It's impossible to enter the kingdom of God. Then he comes to the fourth chapter. There's another miracle where he talks about the woman at the well and he infers that he is the water of life.

He doesn't spell it out in words, but that's what he says. It begins the fifth chapter by going to a pool. Where people sat around they become? What we call them tourist attractions in their various stages of physical degeneracy.

And there's a man lying at the pool and he says well what you're here for. I said I've been coming here for years. Why don't you get in the pool? No man lifts me in? So Jesus as well take up your bed and walk.

The Miracles of Jesus and the Response of the Crowds

Do you think that didn't go around town? You see the first thing that happened again. I remind you between Malachi Matthew you fall for centuries. 400 years of life without any light. Spiritual light without any prophetic darkness.

400 years of stillness without any prophetic noise in between those two events the end of Malachi beginning of Matthew you have an invasion of a foreign power that came and Subjugated the children of God so-called children of God and they make slaves of them.

Jesus said if a man compared you to go and I'll go with him to now. They have dominance over them. Then after that that happened that was a shake-up socially. Then it's a shake-up religiously. There's a man comes over in the wilderness of all places.

Again, he has no choir. He has no benches. He has no pulpit. He has no money. As a man said he had no nothing. I Tell you what he did have he had God. I may be totally for I don't know but I'm still startled.

I've been reading about the Puritans. John Owen may be the greatest brain in his day. Or some dispute by the greatest brain that America ever had. I'm sure was Jonathan Edwards. It was super brilliant man, but John Owen was not 30 years of age.

There was no transit system. He drew 2 ,000 people every morning and 2 ,000 people every night Sunday night that is. They have no lighting. They have no heating. They have no choir. They have no music.

They have no money. The one in God's name didn't I have they have God. How do you get 2 ,000 people go into Scotland trudge on those hills it took them hours to get to the sanctuary and yet they fill those vast Cabins if you want to call them a cathedral.

2 ,000 people crowding in and then walking all the way home and coming back for the night service. Boy, you couldn't get up today. You'd have to give them all lazy boy chair. I Was in a church one day and I said, you know lazy boy church chairs are for pastors and they just bought the pastor one for birthday.

Tell him and I get a word of prophecy is dangerous. And yet you say they would not accept John the Baptist and I love that phrase where it says John did no miracle. He wasn't staging the miraculous. He wasn't say Isaac come over here Benjamin commit.

You killed of cancer what you could have blindness when you not doing that and I still said you this Incandescent man as though he come from another world on the fire for God. You never have to advertise a fire.

Once the fire of God the glory of God comes. It's the most attractive magnetic thing on the in the world. Because our God is consuming the fire and he makes his angels ministering spirits and his ministers a flame of fire.

And that's what I'm playing for brother funny that in his group God will do something. He can't get he can't get intimate most places. You know before the Bible closed. Jesus is outside the church. Knocking on the door of the Laodicean Church, and we believe it's a lot of Laodicean period now he can't get in but he'll come when he's welcome.

He came to his own. They didn't receive him. Anyhow, he starts the fifth chapter of the miracle. Says that I'm wise take up your bed and walk. He starts a six chapter here with a miracle, you know, Jesus.

If he thinks like this today, you say he's Ruth. He's Rude, he's unkind. Look in the middle or in the 42nd verse of chapter 5. I Know that you have not the love of God in you. Hey, come here. You can't judge people like that Jesus says you can you judge them by their food?

People always say oh you can't judge people. Well, Jesus says don't cast it swell. Don't cast your pearls before swine. Well, you've got to judge the swine. Um, yeah before you cast your pearls. Judge not that you be not judged, but the second half of the verse says judge righteous judgment.

You see there's a wisdom which is from above which is greater than the wisdom which is from beneath. There's a righteousness of men, which is a self-righteousness. That is a righteousness of God. You know people say sometimes.

Oh, I'm only a poor sinner saved by grace. Is that all? I suppose you testify sometimes. I'm only a modded bachelor well. So it's about a sensible to say my sin was saved by grace, isn't it? No, we're not sinners.

We're saying to the most high God All my righteousness is a filthy rag. So I'll go to the cross. What does John say? He says Jesus said except your righteousness exceed the righteousness. There's nothing wrong with being right.

The trouble with the Pharisees was they boasted about their righteousness as though it was all theirs as well. They did everything right. But what does John say in his epistle? He that doeth righteousness is righteous even as he is righteous.

The standard isn't that with a Baptist or the Pentecostals or the charismatics or any other matics. It's with Jesus. I get more and more moved as I read the word of God. Holy men of God will move. You know, we've lost.

We've lost the art of meditation, I think. We've lost the art of music on the world awake until the thing explodes. Sometimes when I read my scripture in my desk I feel as though somebody's in the bushes and they suddenly get all of me and try to choke me.

I Feel as though I'm being ambushed. I believe God wants me that way. So let's start here then and John 6 upon me. Verse 42. I know you that you have not the love of God. What's 45. Do not think that I will accuse you to the father that is one of the future to even Moses in whom he Trusts.

If he believed in Moses, you would have believed me. So he wrote of me, but if you believe not his writings, how shall we believe these words? 6 chapter 6 verse 2 a great multitude followed him because they saw his miracles which he'd done on men that were diseased.

Isn't that wonderful? His eye of compassion. He's always looking somewhere to exercise his mercy exercise his power exercise his poverty. You see whatever had been damaged. As a clock saw the great him and I surveyed among those cloths in heat and he wrote also Jesus shall reign.

Whatever son that it's excessive journeys run his kingdom stretch from shore to shore to moon shall wax and ring no more. Blessings abound where he reigns. The prisoner leaps to lose his change. But we're refined eternal rest and all the sons who want our bed and all the sons who want our breath.

Where he displays his healing power death and the curse are known no more in him. The tribes of Adam boast More blessings and their fathers lost you and I can have more blessing than Adam had. We can't have innocence.

But we cannot purity. We can know a presence that even Adam didn't know and that's what he came to do to restore us back into it. So that even now on this earth. Not if you're a Shakespearean as Shakespeare said to shuffle off this mortal coil.

But even now we're the sons of God. We're supposed to live like the sons of God. Walk like the sons of God. Talk like those sons of God act like the sons Of God they show me way. We're going to convince this world.

We're not going to convince it with Christian TV shows and all the junk they have. It's going to be done by people living their holy life. The life is just a straight-up a six o 'clock. Just me. Okay, Jesus went up into an answer and there he sat with his disciples.

When Jesus lifted up his eyes a great multitude came unto him. He said to Philip when shall we buy bread that these may eat and this he said to prove him for he knew what he would Do. Philip answered 200 pennies of bread.

It's not sufficient but every one of them may take a little notice one. How many thousands are there? All five thousand. And it says 200 penny worth. In our money, that's about five hundred dollars. And if we could go and get all that bread at once and bring it.

It isn't enough to feed this multitude that they might take a little. That's the idea of man. Look what it says in verse 12 when they were all filled they didn't have a little. They didn't have a middle.

Amountful they were filled. Why 200 penny worth of bread is not enough that they may take a little. They'll say one of the disciples Andrew said Unto him there is a lad here. Wouldn't it be wonderful to see that lad in heaven?

I Hope his name was Leonard, but I don't know. Maybe it was Jack. Some little unnamed fellow never thought when he set off that money. He was going to share his love if you're telling you're going to share his lunch.

It have stayed away anyhow. Need it himself. He didn't think he was going to share it with 5 ,000 other people. What happens here? There is a lad here. The lad gave the The Loan. The disciples shared the loan.

The Savior blessed alone. What did he do? He took five little buns which are about the size of a hamburger bun. You know that what you call it a bun anyhow or a cake. Of course, it depends where you get your hamburger, but anyhow.

Just something not bigger than the much bigger than a palm of my hand. And how many were there five loans? Twelve disciples. He breaks it in two now. What do you think he did? He say hey Peter come over minutes put your hands out both your hands out together.

Come on John. Come on Matthew. Gave him all. I'm sorry the thing went to a stack of loads like that. So medical is not only that Jesus blessed it but the medical is that every time they broke the thing up it never got any less and.

They fed the 5 ,000 ones and they fed the 4 ,000 another time. But listen, you know, we're doing. We're going up and down the front row all the time up and down the front row. I Was reading that I want to talk on the light.

Jesus being the light next week. Jesus being the light of the world. Well in God's name how many people are in light tonight? We don't want the light. We wonder why the nation's in darkness because we keep the light out of the schools.

That's right. One of our young people are going to hell as fast as they are because we're giving it back to them. That's right. And the only voice that's going to save our generation is the voice of the church when she gets awakened and anointed.

And sees a desperate plight. You see because we've lost sight of the holiness of God. We've lost sight of the depravity of man. We don't see the vast growth between the Holy God there in eternity and this corrupt civilization that we're living in even now.

When they were all filled isn't that growth. I guess a little boy must have felt great when somebody said youngster Hey, thanks for sharing your lunch kid. I Forgot mine. I was so excited to see this big preacher.

I came to see miracles boy. This bread is the nicest I've ever tasted when you did your mother make it. He said well, that's not your business eat it. I'm sorry. I think they enjoyed it. Oh. Let's give them we haven't enough money to buy bread to give them a little.

And they were all filled and got 12 baskets full. Can you imagine each of the? 12 disciples going home with a basket loaded my wife said where's you been shopping? Oh Darling, I mean anywhere Jesus did it did what?

He took the boys little cakes and broke them and broke them. We broke them and we went around with 5 ,000 people and the bread never got any less. It was wonderful. It was growing in our hands. We just fed it.

Well, it's not like the Word of God. I Mean how many times men have taken this book Bible? They burned it they banned it they blamed it they buried it. You know the habit of the Bible as a wonderful habit of standing at the grave side of its persecutors.

Voltaire that marvelous man in France in the days of Wesley said a hundred years from now Bibles will only be found in museums. Well, he didn't miss it by much did he? As a matter of fact the house where he wrote that became the headquarters of the Geneva Bible Society for many years.

It was only bombed out in World War two. Well, who's thought of Voltaire today. Put both hands up if you have. Then football feet up. No, you haven't nobody's thought of Voltaire today. How many millions of people have read the Word of God?

We've broken it as it were we've disposed of it every day. I thank God for men. I remember seeing a man in a jungle up there in New Guinea among those sunny naked people. They're almost totally naked on American beaches, but these the Savages, you know.

And there was a man with an earned PhD from one of the best universities in this country. He had a ragged shirt on they sitting there at the tree and he's trying to get a man to say Ah, I've got you know all kinds of work and he's trying to make words.

I thought that guy could be home. Maybe I mean 20 40 50 thousand a year and here he is contented in the jungle because he's taking the living word of the living God to bring to people who are dead in trespasses and in sin, and he knows it's gonna be eternal value.

He's got all these priorities in the right place. Let me get through this. Let's go down further into the chapter now. Those 13 they gathered them together and 12 baskets full they filled with fragments of the body loads which had remained over the both.

That which was eaten and those men when they had seen the miracle that Jesus said Did said this is of a truth that prophet but despite that fact he proved a miraculous again that they didn't believe in him.

He raised the day. They didn't believe in him when Jesus therefore verse 15 Perceived that they would come and take him by force. They said this is the man we want. They weren't concerned about miracles.

He filled their bellies. He met a need on the physical level. Well, anybody who's gonna is gonna get voted for if he can do that give them satisfaction on that level. He's gonna get the vote. So they said we would take this fellow before somebody else does and we'll make him King but Jesus it says.

Therefore perceived he would come and take him by force to make him King he departed again into a mountain himself alone. In Matthew 14 and Mark 6 it says that that he went into a mountain to pray and When he who was now come his disciples went to the sea and entered into a ship and went over the sea to old Capernaum.

And it was now dark. So most you there without Jesus. He entered in they entered into a ship and went over the sea to old Capernaum. It was now dark and Jesus has not come with them. So that alone that alone in the dark.

Verse 18 and the sea arose. And the sea arose by reason of a great wind so now they're in trouble but in the darkness the seas are boiling. They can't see anybody. Jesus isn't there and in the midst of that situation They wrote about five and thirty furlongs out of about three miles.

Why wasn't Jesus with them? Don't you need this in the dark place don't you need this when the storm is breaking on you. He wasn't with them, but I guess I will tell you what he was watching for. Even though it wasn't with them.

So here's a the waves are coming up. It says a great wind came and the seas were boiling. It's terribly dark. They're being tossed around. So, why doesn't the Lord come. Because he couldn't do a greater miracle.

He missed the boat. Surely he did they went off without him. Again, they're in the dark. The winds are howling. The seas are boiling. What does it say? Verse 18 the sea arose by reason of a great wind and blue when they drove about five and twenty or thirty furlongs they see Jesus walking on the sea and Drawing near unto the ship and they were afraid.

It Says verse 21 then they willingly received him into the ship and immediately the ship was at the land where they went. Now that's a miracle. The day following when the people stood on the other side of the sea and saw that there was none of the boat there.

Except the one in which these devils came. Hey, what's going on? Jesus didn't get in the boat. There's only one boat on the shore. That's the one of those fellows came in. What happened? Well, I'll tell you what happened.

In verse 25 it says when they found him on the other side of the sea. They said rabbi. How did he get here? Well, how did he get there? I'm sure the spirit of cutaway fillet cutaway Jesus. They'd left him behind he came to me in their distress in their darkness in their confusion.

And then he went ahead of them and he's waiting the other boats were coming. If you read a context from Tiberius to see the mighty workings of God. But he's gone to Capernaum. Those 25 Jesus and women said very very I sent you you'd see me not because you saw the miracles because she did it of the Of the Lord and were filled.

Verse 28 then they said unto him. What shall we do? We might do the work. But we might work the works of God. Is everybody saying that now I Want to do work. I will do greater miracles. Well, he said I'll tell you what the greatest work you can do in the world is to get for me to believe on me.

They didn't believe by the miracles didn't believe by the bread and. This is his answer to them. They said unto him verse 28 What should we do? We might work the works of God and Jesus has said this is the work of God.

But you believe on him who has sent me. Now that's how one job here on earth as a minister to the gospel anyhow. You know, I'm sure in my own heart. Very very very few people really getting born again these days.

They go to the front shed a few tears, but they're not miraculously and that needs a revolution in through the blood of Jesus. He needs a revolution by the regeneration power of the Holy Ghost. The new birth is more miraculous than the physical birth.

Physical births are wonderful. These mine was my mother thought we got the greatest baby in the world. I still think that but anyhow. What do they say the doctor said recently there are 2 ,000 possible injuries that can come to a child before it's even born it can be born with all those handicaps impediments and Some of the things inside gone wrong.

And it's terrible. We have a wealthy friend and he and his wife had a child about four years ago. And he was born the most. He's a healthy fine-looking man and she a fine-looking woman. Oh, well, he's wealthy.

Oh. What a home that child got when he came in he'd had what we call it down down syndrome. Just distorted terribly distorted. We're very embarrassed. They live in a small town of about 1 ,500 people.