Skeptics

Here are notes taken from "Unbelievable Unbelief" by Greg Koukl:

" Skeptics say that if God would just show Himself, if He'd just do some kind of dramatic miracle, that's all they would need to believe.  "Just do something.  Give me some good, solid, miraculous evidence for my faith."  And whenever I hear this, I think of John chapter eleven and John chapter twelve which is the account of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead.  Now this was a spectacular miracle, it was done in public.  All kinds of people saw it and as a result, a lot of people put their faith in Jesus as the Messiah.  But not everybody!  It turned out that the religious leadership, already hardened against Jesus, were not impressed at all by the miracle, except by the fact that a notable miracle had taken place and as a result, a lot of people were putting their faith in Jesus, which meant that now Jesus had to be dealt with.  That is, He had to be eliminated.  And this is when they really started working hard at arranging for His execution, which actually happened within a week or so after that.  Isn't this amazing though?  These are people who knew that this incredible miracle had been done, and they still sought to kill Jesus.  But it wasn't enough to kill Jesus because there still was another piece of evidence around; the living, breathing, walking Lazarus who had been raised from the dead.  And so what did they also plot to do?  You can find this in John chapter twelve.  They also plotted to kill not just Jesus, but Lazarus as well.  Can you imagine that?  This is what I call "unbelievable unbelief", and often times, this is exactly where the skeptic is.  People say, "Oh, if God would just show me a dramatic miracle, I'd go to God."  As one wag put it, "If a skeptic had a dramatic miracle, they wouldn't go to God, they'd go to a Psychiatrist."  Because, when the sun comes out, it softens butter, but it hardens clay. "