Jesus also did many incredible things, called miracles.   Jesus said clearly that the miracles that he performed were because, “the Father is in me and I in the Father” (John 10:38).  He went to parties to turn water into wine and when he went to one picnic he multiplied the food so that there was enough to feed thousands. He healed blind people, deaf people, those who had been ill almost their entire lives. He set people free from evil forces that had controlled their lives and he could once showed that he could control the forces of nature…..

These are remarkable things that multiple eyewitnesses experienced and that an overwhelmingly oral saw the importance of actually writing them down.  They were reported as having happened not in isolation, but in giant crowds in open spaces, which made them quite easy to verify for those living at that time, if anyone doubted they had really happened.

But it was not just his miracles that make the life of Jesus so remarkable, it was his love.  He loved the loveless—especially lepers and prostitutes, the people that no one else would love.   It was love that motivated everything that he did and everything that he said, and I don’t know about you, but that certainly isn’t the case in my life.

He exemplified supreme unselfishness, he was person in whom his enemies couldn’t even find fault..in fact the only thing that his enemies could throw at him was that he was a “glutton and a drunkard” (Matt 11) – all they could say was that he hung out with the wrong people and had too much fun.

Love permeated everything in his life that as he was being tortured by the Romans, and while still alive, having nails put through his hands and feet was able to say “Father forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing.”

Are these the words of an evil deceiver or someone who was delusional ?  No – that would be the time to give up and save yourself, or unleash a hateful tirade.  But it was when he decided to forgive, instead.

And finally as we test the claims of Jesus we need to look at his physical resurrection from the dead.  The resurrection of Jesus from the dead is the absolute cornerstone of Christian faith, even if he did all those other things, they mean little without Jesus having died, and risen from the dead again.

If the resurrection of Jesus from the dead did not actually happen then we are all wasting our time here this morning. Jesus was not God, because he’s dead.  He’s not a great moral teacher, because he said he’d rise from the dead, and he was wrong.

So we need to explore if there is any evidence for believing that it actually happened, and because it is so important, we will explore it in depth for the next few days.

Question: What miracles of Jesus have you read about so far?  How do they show us the life we were created to live?

Read John 9-10 and reflect – How does Jesus say he relates to God the Father?