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"But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him."
(Hebrews 11:6)
Every world religion has in common the claim to the supernatural. Christianity is no exception, as our core beliefs are predicated on God creating the world out of nothing (which I would say is supernatural!), the written Word of God, the Bible, the miracles of Jesus, Jesus' death on the cross for the sins of the world, and the bodily resurrection of Jesus from the grave. I know there are many more miraculous events that could be referenced and pointed out in Scripture, but the point is, our faith is predicated on not the natural but rather the supernatural. This is when God intervenes in such a way that He suspends the natural order to bring about the miraculous.
To experience real life, you must embrace the supernatural. (See Matthew 21:1-5.)
There are two distinct miracles in today's biblical text. The first is when Jesus told the disciples to go to a certain place, a village opposite of where they had entered, and they would find a donkey and a colt. They were to bring them to Jesus, and if anyone questioned them, then they were to tell him that Jesus needed these two animals, and the owner would release them to the disciples. Can you imagine what it would have been like for the disciples sent on this mission? But they went anyway. A lesson for us here is, if we are to get in on what God is doing, we have to be at peace with the unknown or when things do not compute or add up in our own minds. It is a miracle that both the animals and the owner would comply. And they did.
The second miracle is, the Hebrew Scriptures predicted that this specific event would happen in the future, and to me, this is astounding. Zechariah 9:9 says:
"Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!
Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem!
Behold, your King is coming to you;
He is just and having salvation,
Lowly and riding on a donkey,
A colt, the foal of a donkey."
Zechariah was a prophet of God who lived and served between 520 B.C. and 480 B.C. So here we have this detailed prophecy about the coming King 500 years before He came. There are numerous (hundreds, really) of prophecies in the Old Testament that Jesus already fulfilled in the New Testament, and there are others that He one day will when He returns. Amazing. If you are intellectually honest, you will need to grapple with the supernatural element of Christianity.
"It specifies the way He would arrive, and the fulfillment we see here is truly amazing: 500 years before Jesus came, God promised that a donkey and a colt would be available the week before Passover for Jesus to ride into Jerusalem. You don't write a script like that unless you are God!" (Source: David Platt, p. 278, Exalting Jesus in Matthew)
God has not changed, and He is still in the miracle-working business. He is working in supernatural ways all over our world, and every day, things happen that science and the intellects of mankind cannot explain because they are beyond the natural realm; they are supernatural. The key to experiencing the abundant and eternal life that Jesus promises (John 10:10) is to humbly admit what other believers already know, and that is: God is bigger than we are, and He does miraculous things!
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