God Give's Up Series

In an episode from the classic TV series, The Andy Griffith Show, Andy Taylor, the Sheriff of Mayberry, is out of town. His deputy, Barney Fife, is in charge, and he has deputized Gomer, the local mechanic. The two deputies are walking down the street one evening when they see someone robbing the local bank. They hide behind a car. They are afraid and don't know what to do. Finally, Gomer looks at Barney and says excitedly, “Shazam! We need to call the police.”

In utter exasperation, Barney shoots back: “We ARE the police!” (Stephen Mansfield, Mansfield's Book of Manly Men, Nelson, 2013, page 12; www.PreachingToday.com).

As we look around our world, we see so much wrong, and we think, “Someone ought to do something.” Then we realize that we are that “someone.” Jesus calls us, His followers, to be salt and light in a dark and decaying world, to slow the decay and shine a light in the darkness.

So how do we do that? How do we put the brakes on our own country’s slide into moral ruin? Well, if you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to Romans 1, Romans 1, where God’s Word describes the downward spiral of every civilization that rejects Him like many in our country have.

Romans 1:18-20 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse (ESV).

They are without excuse, literally, they have no defense, because God has clearly revealed Himself in creation. No one can claim ignorance, because God’s creation clearly reveals His justice and His power.

In his book, A Million Little Miracles, Mark Batterson believes we’re walking through a world brimming with the miraculous—we just don’t have the eyes to see it.

“There are miracles happening all around us all the time, hidden in plain sight,” Batterson says. “If you miss them, life can become a little bit of a chore and a bore. But if you rediscover the miracle that is life, it takes on a different dimension.”

It’s not just the big, cinematic miracles—the Red Sea parting or a blind man seeing. It’s the fact that we’re currently spinning at 1,000 miles per hour on a planet hurtling through space at 67,000 miles per hour, all while our bodies conduct trillions of biochemical reactions every second.

What if the real problem isn’t that miracles are rare—it’s that we’ve trained ourselves not to notice them? Psychologists call it “inattentional blindness.” If something is constant—like the sun rising, our hearts beating, or our lungs breathing—we stop paying attention to it. Batterson explains, “We should be startled by the sun, not the eclipse.”

The same is true of our own bodies. Batterson says:

Right now, you have 37 sextillion biochemical reactions happening inside of you. Your heart will beat 100,000 times today, pumping six quarts of blood through 60,000 miles of veins, arteries, and capillaries—that’s twice the circumference of the Earth. And yet, we go about our day saying, ‘Well, I’ve never seen a miracle.’ With all due respect, you’ve never not seen one. In fact, you are one.”

So how do we start seeing the miracles around us? Learn to take nothing for granted. To wake up each day and marvel at the ordinary. To stop waiting for the grand, spectacular moment and realize that the spectacular is happening all around us, all the time. And maybe, just maybe, if we start paying attention, we’ll realize that life itself is the miracle we’ve been waiting for (Emily Brown, “Think You've Never Witnessed a Miracle? Think Again,” Relevant Magazine, 3-10-25; www.PreachingToday.com).

The universe and your own body reveal the divine power of God all the time! The problem is most people “suppress the truth” (verse 18). It’s not that they CAN not see the truth. They WILL not see it.

Romans 1:21-22 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools… (ESV).

Their willful ignorance leads to actual ignorance, to lunacy. They started by suppressing the truth to the point that they now stupidly pursue a lie.

In our culture, that lie is Evolution. In 1859, Charles Darwin first proposed the theory of evolution. In it he suggested that through natural selection, there was slow gradual change from one species to another over millions of years.