One of the effects of believing that the creation account in the Bible took a long time is that it makes God look like a God who acts slowly. But every Christian knows that we don’t need a God who acts slow; we need a mighty God who can act immediately on our behalf.
This excerpt was taken from the full sermon, “How Should We Interpret the Creation Account?“.
Brethren, you can’t figure it out, so it can’t be? You can’t figure out how Lazarus came forth. Can you imagine that dread silence out there on the Sea of Galilee? “Be still.” The waters just stopped. The winds stopped. And those men looked at each other. Whoa… who is this? You can’t explain that. To say God couldn’t have done this in six days, I would just ask you, what does Scripture sound like it’s saying? Brethren, there is One behind all of this whether He’s working through His Son to do the miracles that He did. How does an ear appear healed on Malchus’ head? I don’t know. But He could do those things with a word. “Lazarus, come forth!” Light, come forth. Brethren, I need the God of instantaneous miracle. I don’t need to be slowing God down; slowing Him down influenced by so-called science and by higher learning and often by people who simply lean – even Christians – simply leaning on their own understanding from all these influences that are outside the Bible. We don’t need a God who is less miraculous and who is slow and ever slowing down. And you know what happens? The church looks at it. They’re just slowing God down all the time. Slowing down. Do you know what they’re doing? They’re de-miracle-izing everything. Make it longer. Make it longer. Make it less incredible. Because that’s what they need. See, they think time fixes it because of the complexity. And we don’t have to do that. We can bring it right down and say God’s able to do all that complexity in a moment. And He makes it spring forth. Brethren, what happens in the church – we get used to this idea: slow God down; slow God down. The God who doesn’t act, the God who’s not instantaneous, the God who is so slow. And so what happens? We get to the place in the church where we’ve got to do everything because God is so slow. We can’t wait for Him, so we make everything happen. We don’t feel anything. Nothing supernatural happens. We make the preaching happen. We make the singing happen. We make the praying happen. We basically coordinate it all. So we come into the meetings, we go out of the meetings, and it’s all about what we did. We need the God who calls forth universes in six days to come in here, do we not? And do things instantaneous. The reality is, yes, sanctification might be a process. But do we not need the God to come in among us who can do the miraculous and recreate instantaneously? (incomplete thought) What I want is life like in the book of Mark. Have you ever seen how many times the word “immediately” shows up? Immediately, Jesus put out His hand and touched that leper. Immediately the leprosy left him. Brethren, we need that in the church. We need some immediacy. Lord, where is the immediacy? The miracle-working God who will put His hand on people and rather than us as a church having to put them out the door, they’re radically changed. Immediately. We need it. Have the saints of old not cried out to God, “Do not tarry!” We need the God that moves. We need the God that’s quick. This whole atheistic mindset out here: slow God down, slow Him down. Because what happens is they deny God altogether, but the Christian comes along and they say, well, we’ve got to fit the latest theories in here. We’ve got to fit the latest scientific ideas in here. So it’s not 2 billion. It must be billion years that God did this. Theistic evolution and day-age, and we’ve got to stretch these days out. We don’t need to be doing that. We need to take Scripture at face value. And you don’t have to be ashamed when you come across people that laugh at you. “You’re unacademic. How high is your IQ?” Yeah, they’re going to look at you and they’re going to laugh, but you can hold your head high because you know there’s a judgment day coming. And you know what? Jesus said, “If you deny Me, I’m going to deny you before My Father.” And He talks about His Word. I’ll tell you where I want to be, I want to be in the place where I say, Lord, I read Genesis. I could hear what You were saying there. There was no indication this was billions of years. And I believed. I believe there is a God who can create everything in six days and that is the God we needed in the church. And Lord, please move faster. We don’t have forever. Our lives are short and we need miracles among us. And we need transformation among us. And we need help among us. We need victories among us. We need God to break the power of sin and not just some future time, and not ages from now, we need help now. We need it as a church.
