Westland Free Methodist Church

“Challenge of the Faith Series: Miracles Contradict Science”

March 18, 2007

Mark 2:1-12

Richard Dawkins, an aethiest - “The virgin birth, the resurrection, the raising of Lazarus, even the Old Testament miracles, all are freely used for religious propaganda, and they are very effective with an audience of unsophisticates and children.”

Gary Habermas, a Christian - “It is not just a provocative rumor that God has acted in history, but a fact worthy of our intellectual conviction. The miracles of Christianity are not an embarrassment to the Christian worldview. Rather, they are testimony to the compassion of God for human beings benighted by sin and circumstance.”

We begin this morning by asking the question, why did Jesus do miracles while he was here, why did God himself instruct the patriarchs and prophets of the Old Testament to perform feats that defy the natural order of this world.

Matthew 11:20-21-²⁰Then Jesus began to denounce the cities in which most of his miracles had been performed, because they did not repent. ²¹“Woe to you, Korazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! If the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.

John 14:11- Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves.

In both passages we begin to see the purpose for the miracles themselves. Miracles are not for our pleasure to be free from pain in this life, nor are they to extend this life in an eternal way. Miracles have always been for the purpose of God revealing his deep and abiding love for us. To convince us to repent, make our hearts right with him, and accept the kind of life he created in the first place.

And that is why it is so important for scientists to refute the notion that there is some power beyond this world, that uses the laws of nature, and the laws of heaven to create life as it was meant to be.

Listen to this further comment by Richard Dawkins, Science professor at Oxford University as he says in his book, the Selfish Gene, “We’re working on…a complete understanding of the universe and everything that is in it.”

I am using a book called :The Case for Faith” as my reference book, besides the Bible for this series. Lee Strobel, a self professed aethiest at one time, now professes Christ, and enjoys the more intellectual chit chat that most of you and I do not comprehend. In his book he lays out the arguments from both the scientific community who reject the notion that God exists or is very uninvolved in the world today versus the Christian community that led Lee Strobel to Christ through the solid evidence of the Bible.

We need to define what we mean by miracle before we get to far. A miracle in this context is an action that supercedes natural laws. I know that for some that means getting your child to do their homework the first time you ask them, but that is not what we will speak to this morning. We are talking about miracles that have no explanation within natural law. This morning, we will discuss how miracles lie outside of scientific means, but are not contradictory to science.

This morning, we will look at several potential obstacles a person might have regarding faith in an interactive God who loves us and seeks out our best, not only for eternity but in the here and now. Obstacles to Miracles

The first obstacle is the virgin birth.

How did it happen outside the natural order of life? It is impossible. In a biological sense a woman needs a Y chromosome from a man to become pregnant.

Lee Strobel was discussing this issue with another former aethiest himself, Bill Craig, a professor at Talbot School of Theology. Dr. Craig shared with Lee that even though he hadn’t fully worked out his understanding of the miracles of the Bible, he knew enough to become a Christian. He said it was after he became a Christian that he realized, why can’t God put a Y chromosome into a woman’s body to bring the Son of God into the world. Lee strobel asked Craig if he wasn’t rushing into something he didn’t totally accept, and this was his response:

“No, I think this can be a good procedure, You don’t need to have all your questions answered to come to faith. You just have to say, the weight of the evidence seems to show this is true, so even though I don’t have answers to all my questions, I’m going to believe for answers in the long run.

Faith in God became possible for Craig because he considered the possibility of miracles, and a God who performed them.

Craig believes the problem for many is that they do not want to consider the possibility. He says the only way to not consider the possibility is to be an atheist.

The second obstacle for science is the resurrection of Christ.

There is nothing wrong with weighing the evidence of whether a miracle happened or not. But that is the point many so called scientific free thinkers make who simply dismiss the resurrection as being to complicated and amazing, so it should not be considered. This violates the accepted norms of scientific consideration. Any scientific research should look at things such as the multiple witnesses of his life, his public death, the empty tomb, and the followers who were willing to die gruesome deaths to uphold their belief that all these things were true. There is probably more argument for the resurrection of Christ than any other miracle. But instead we find many so called scientists unwilling to consider one option among many for the existence of this world. For instance it is imperative that creation be kept out of scholastic achievement, not because of the separation between church and state, but because the evidence is so overwhelming that the Bible really is true.

Another possible argument against the resurrection of Jesus are from those who believe that they are simply legends. But accepted norms for a legend to exist as such takes much more time to elapse than it took for the 4 gospels to be written. This falls way short in time after Christ’s death for the gospels to be simply legends.

To believe for instance in Mormanism just doesn’t compare with Jesus for there is so little evidence of Joseph Smith’s claims to be the ultimate prophet and Messiah he claims to be.

The third obstacle to science is the multitude of miracles Christ performed.

To know if miracles are real, there are really 2 criteria that should be considered.

Context. What kind of context is the miracle in? From politics to theology we are guilty of taking things out of context to say what we want them to say. And the same can be true of miracles of we are not careful. From a scientific point of view they would agree with this. Context gives us the setting, the people involved, the accepted norms of that culture.

For instance, the feeding of the 5000 is recorded in all 4 gospels. That is significant.

Natural Forces. Where natural forces at work, or is there unexplainable facts that lead us to believe this was a miraculous work of God.

q A young boy was sitting in the park reading a Bible. He was in a trance as he read about the Israelites crossing the red sea. When he got to the part of how God parted the sea, he exclaimed, “wow, that is amazing.” At just that time, a man was walking by, and noticed the Bible. He stopped and asked the boy what he was reading. The boy told him about the Israelites and how they were saved by crossing the red sea and how God parted the waters. The man was a scientist and he explained that it was really a parting of the sea, but that it was a low tide, and that the Israelites waded across the sea, so it really wasn’t a miracle. The boy simply said, “Oh, ok”. The boy went back to his reading, and as the man was walking away, the boy exclaimed again, “Wow, that is so cool”. The man quickly returned to the boy to refute whatever the boy was reading. The boy explained to the man once more, “God just drowned all of Pharoah’s army in 2 feet of water.”

This little boy shows what it is like to investigate the context and whether natural forces were at work.

The last obstacle to science is amazingly how personal this applies to us as Christians.

I remember praying for Jim Daniel’s healing when were at the hospital and there was not chance of survival, short of a miracle. God did not perform a miracle for Jim that day. But I know he has for others.

I’ll never forget Scott. Scott was having various problems, so he went into the doctor. The doctor had reason to take some x-rays of the brain. He found an anerism, but knew it was not serious enough to operate. He did see a shadow though he didn’t like, so he took further tests. It showed clearly that Scott had a tumor on his brain that needed to be operated on. They didn’t know if it was cancer, but couldn’t risk it. So they operated and this is what happened. They found a cavity where the tumor was, but no tumor. The evidence was clear that there was a tumor. Since they were inside, they took a look at the anersim. They were totally surprised to find an anerism ready to burst. They repaired the anerism, and today Scott is a fully healthy working 30 something. Did God place the mass in Scott’s brain to lead them to the anerism, or was there ever a mass at all. I don’t know. But I know this. God is in the business of revealing himself. And that I know he did. Scott and his wife and 2 children are testimonies of God’s grace working through the desperate of all situations.

In Mark 2 there is the story of the 4 friends who came upon Jesus who was teaching in a home in Capernaum. It was here that jesus did very few miracles, so it says he was teaching. It says nothing of miracles at the time. These friends were desperate to get their friend the help needed. So they went on to a roof and broke through the mud roof, and lowered their friend to the floor of the house. Of course this caused a commotion. We pick up the story in verse 5. (Read)

Why did Jesus perform miracles? Why did Jesus raise from the dead? Why does jesus still perform miracles today?

For one simple reason, to draw all men unto himself. Verse 10, “but that you may know that the Son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins.

In Elmer Bendiner’s book, The Fall of Fortresses, he describes one bombing run over the German city of Kassel:

Our B-17 (“The Tondelayo”) was barraged by flack from Nazi antiaircraft guns. That was not unusual, but on this particular occasion our gas tanks were hit. Later, as I reflected on the miracle of a twenty-millimeter shell piercing the fuel tank without touching off an explosion, our pilot, Bohn Fawkes, told me it was not quite that simple. On the morning following the raid, Bohn had gone down to ask our crew chief for that shell as a souvenir of unbelievable luck. The crew chief that not just one shell but eleven had been found in the gas tanks—eleven unexploded shells where only one was sufficient to blast us out of the sky. It was as if the sea had been parted for us.

Even after thirty-five years, so awesome an event leaves me shaken, especially after I heard the rest of the story from Bohn. He was told that the shells had been sent to the armorers to be defused. The armorers told him that Intelligence had picked them up. They could not say why at the time, but Bohn eventually sought out the answer. Apparently when the armorers opened each of those shells, they found no explosive charge. They were as clean as a whistle and just as harmless. Empty? Not all of them. One contained a carefully rolled piece of paper. On it was a scrawl in Czech. The Intelligence people scoured our base for a man who could read Czech. Eventually, they found one to decipher the note. It set us marveling. Translated, the note read: “This is all we can do for you now.”

In recent years many studies have focused on what’s taking place in Communist China among Christians. The reason people are studying is because when the Communists took over in China there were several hundred thousand Christians. The churches were closed, the Red Guard went on a rampage, and anywhere they found a cross, they tore it down. The cross was despised. Christians were put in prison and driven to the countryside.

In recent years, with the new administration in Communist China, the relaxing of those rules and regulations, and the reopening of churches, they discovered that there are multiple millions of Christians. Up until the Communists took over, when people were free to do as they please, they had hundreds of thousands. Once the persecution took place, suddenly Christians began to multiply, and there are multiple millions.

Paul Kaufman, who has been there along with his family and observed what’s taking place, has written a book called China: The Emerging Challenge. In that book he gives a clue as to why during days of persecution millions of people would come to know Christ. He talks about the Jesus Family of northern China. In 1942 there was a tremendous drought in northern China. Aid began to pour in from the outside to help those people who were starving. The Jesus Family refused to take the aid. They continued to feed their people—not only that, but to give away the harvest. They worked up from 10 percent to 20 percent, and finally they worked up to where they gave away 90 percent of what they harvested. They supplied the food for five hundred people from forty-three acres of land. And the Communists could do only one family per acre. Somebody said to the leader of those people, “Why would you refuse aid when others were starving?” Listen to what he had to say. He said, “Those foreign churches would have robbed us of our anchor. It is our financial needs that drive us to our knees and force us to cry to him.”

—Phil Lineberger, “Great People Do for Others,” Preaching Today, Tape No. 62.

See: 1 Kings 17:15; Luke 21:4; Acts 4:34; 2 Corinthians 8:3-4.

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