Miracles Prove Nothing

Mark 8:11-13

      People are always wanting proof. They want 100%, irrefutable proof of the Gospel message. They want proof that the Bible is true. They want proof that God exists. They want proof of Hell. And they want 100% proof. Ninety nine percent won’t due.

      And yet we live life in a less than 100% world. Every day we wake to a world where decisions are made without absolute proof. We sleep in houses believing we are safe, even though people are killed in houses every year. Earthquakes, tornados, violence. We get in our cars believing that the homicidal people are not driving toward us and ready to swerve and kill us. We walk into buildings and trust the architect and engineers and contractors and code enforcement officials to have all done their jobs perfectly, making this building safe.

      We live and act every day trusting other people. We even trust ourselves. We trust our memories, that we turned off the coffee pot before we left home, that we dropped the infant at the baby sitters, that the expiration date is after the date we eat the food.

      The reality is that we live in a world of possibilities and not certainties. Remember, trust is faith in action. So every time we trust someone or something, we are exercising faith. Trying to make our world 100% leads to OCD and Agoraphobia. We either become so compulsive, trying to control our world, make it 100% safe, or we hide away believing the inside world is somehow safer and more controllable.

      Our text tells of one set of Jesus’ contemporaries asking Jesus to make their world 100%. They want proof that what He is saying is true. They of course were asking with ulterior motives. They had already determined to kill Jesus because of the threat He posed to their way of life, to their power base. The numerous signs that Jesus had already done were not enough to convince these religious leaders. People who rely on miracle, on signs of God’s existence, in order to believe, will never have enough. They will always want one more sign.

      Signs don’t prove it, make your world 100%. This world will never be 100%. It will always take faith. Even Evolutionists have faith that someday someone will find the ‘missing link’, or even one transition fossil. You would think with the innumerable numbers of transitions that had to have taken place for Evolution to be true, that all you would find in the fossil record would be transitions. They would be tripping over partial this and that. But this is exactly the opposite of what we find. We find the exact same fossils covering the globe.

      At what percentage are you willing to trust? We would all like 100%, but that is not life.

The Beginning

Genesis 1

Where the universe came from is the fundamental battle of our culture. We travel to distant galaxies through the eye of advanced telescopes in hopes of finding planets with the capability of sustaining life. Why? So that we can disprove the Bible! There is so little evidence here on planet earth that doesn’t point to God’s creation that we have to search space to try to find some. I will give you just one example.

Take a look at the fossil record. If evolution was true, that there were innumerable transitionary life forms, then the fossil record would be filled with these transitionary forms. But exactly the opposite is true. We see consistent forms across the fossil record. We don’t see any half-this half-that fossils. In fact, when one seems to pop up it makes international news. There should be so many, that when we find consistency, that would make news.

The Scriptures say it so simply, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Some who want to hold to evolution point to this verse and say, “Here is the Big Bang.” OK. I prefer the Big Shout. I don’t know the timing, so I am not going to argue the timing. I don’t know the duration of time from “the beginning” of verse one and creation of life on this planet. I don’t think those matters are important.

The purpose of this chapter, and all of Scripture for that matter, is to show God’s hand in every matter of importance. This chapter is part of Scripture that introduces the covenant God to the Israelites.

If we are to have a relationship with Him, it is because He has been the mover behind and in every moment of existence. We are not the result of innumerable accidents, as evolution demands. We are the result of purposeful decisions of the one Creator God. Accidents cannot carry with them purpose. “Evolution” is not an entity that moves itself forward. It does not make decisions about what will help it survive. Accidents are accidents. Randomness cannot produce purpose. Randomness does not remember the last role of the dice.

So if we are the result of evolution, we are accidents. There is a wonderful video conception_to_birth_visualized that shows the development of a baby in the womb. Alexander Tsiaras created this and concludes that we are designed, that accidents could not create the complexity that is seen in human development. If you haven’t seen the video, it is worth the ten minutes of viewing time.

You are not an accident! God has purpose for your life. He is involved in your world. He wants you to be involved with Him in His work.