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Reading John 5:19-20 where Jesus again speaks of Himself as being one with the Father, and that He does what He sees His Father doing. Visit wwutt.com for all our videos!
Jesus Christ saw the will of his Father perfectly, and what he saw the Father doing, that's what Jesus did. We don't see the will of the Father perfectly, but we do see it through Jesus Christ when we understand the text.
This is When We Understand the Text, a daily study of God's Word that we may be filled with the knowledge of His will. For questions and comments, send us an email to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.
Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe.
Thank you, Becky. We come back to our study of the Gospel of John, chapter 5. And to start out with the reading today, I'll begin in verse 19 through verse 29. The Apostle John wrote, So Jesus said to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing.
For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing, and greater works than these will he show him, so that you may marvel.
For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whomever he will. The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father.
Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but is passed from death to life.
Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself, and he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man.
Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice, and they will come out, those who have done good to the resurrection life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.
So in verse 19, Jesus says, truly, truly, I say to you, and remember we talked about this when we were back in our conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus in John 3. Truly, truly, is a statement of Jesus' authority, divine authority, as the Son of God.
The word truly in Greek is translated amen. Yeah, same word we tack on to the end of prayers. It means so be it. Have you ever wondered why when you're in church and the pastor says amen, everybody just says amen too?
Why do they do that? What is the reason for that? Is it just, hey, it's just the thing to do. Everybody else has always said amen, so I'm going to say amen also. Well, it is a congregational practice, because it means that everyone there who has heard the preacher pray, or give the scriptures, or has called for an amen, is in agreement with what has just been proclaimed.
Amen, so be it. May it be done by the providential hand of God. May he see this thing through. So that is why we do that, and why I as a pastor, whenever I am praying those corporate prayers, I will conclude a prayer with, and all God's people said.
And it's to encourage the congregation to all say together, amen, that we all may be in agreement. We have submitted our minds and hearts to this attitude that has been lifted up to the father. This desire to want to see his will done on earth as it is in heaven, just as Jesus taught us to pray in Matthew chapter six.
And that is conveyed even here in these words that Jesus speaks to those who are confronting him, because remember his audience here are those who were angry that he had healed a man on the Sabbath. Who gave you the authority to do such a thing?
And as Jesus referred to his father in heaven as his father, he referred to God as his father. This was perceived by the Jews as a claim of being equal with God. Going back to verse 18, this was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own father, making himself equal with God.
So Jesus said to them, verse 19, truly, truly, I say to you, and we have that flow from that previous statement in verse 18 into this discourse that Jesus delivers starting in verse 19. And it says, so Jesus said to them, in other words, this is still carrying on from an understanding that Christ is claiming to be equal with God.
So Jesus said to them, truly, truly, I say to you, to tack on that phrase, that wording, amen, amen, at the start of a statement rather than the end is a claim of authority. Jesus is not saying, I agree with what I'm about to say.
He is saying, I am the originator of what it is that I am about to say. This word is authoritative and it comes from God. That is the proclamation. Nobody spoke this way among the rabbis and the Pharisees and the other teachers of the law.
No one began phrases, amen, amen, or truly, truly, Jesus did it. Back in Matthew chapters 5, 6, and 7, we have the Sermon on the Mount. Do you remember how it is that the Sermon on the Mount concludes?
This is Matthew 7 verses 28 and 29. And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority and not as their scribes. And this is one of those marks of Jesus speaking authoritatively that he would begin phrases with truly or even truly, truly, which is all the more emphatically proclaiming that this word that I say to you is authoritative.
It comes from God. It originates with the creator of truth himself, whom we know to be Jesus Christ. So Jesus said to them, truly, truly, I say to you, they already think he's claiming to be equal with God.
And of course, Jesus is because he is God. That is what they hear in his words. When he refers to God as father, it is a claim of divinity. When Jesus gives an answer with truly, truly, it's the same.
He's speaking out of his divinity. Truly, truly, I say to you, the son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the father doing for whatever the father does that the son does. Likewise, the son can do nothing out of his own accord, but only what he sees the father doing.
So this affirms two themes about God. Number one, that Jesus is equal with God, because once again, Jesus is making this affirmation of God as father. The son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the father doing.
The second thing that this conveys, the second theme about God is that the father and the son have different functions or roles. It's not that they aren't equal, and it's not that the son is subservient to the father.
It's certainly not that the son originates with the father. Jesus is the son in name only, not by succession, not in the sense that the father begot the son, okay, or begat the son, I guess would be the word.
Jesus is not a descendant of the father. He was not God's offspring. He is as eternal as the father is eternal. In the book of Revelation, in chapter one and in 22, at the start of Revelation and at the end of Revelation, Jesus proclaims of himself, I am the alpha and the omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.
And all things considered, it's a very crude way of saying that Jesus is eternal. The alpha and the omega, first and last letters of the Greek alphabet for Jesus to say he is the first and he is the last is putting into human language a declaration of having no beginning and no end.
It's just that we are such finite creatures and we see things linearly that we can't really convey those terms or those concepts well. So this is the way that Jesus expresses his eternal nature by saying that he is the alpha and the omega.
There's no beginning or end with Jesus, just as there's no beginning or end with the father. Jesus does not have a beginning. The father did not cause his beginning, which is the ancient heresy of Arianism, going all the way back to Arius at the council at Nicaea, who proclaimed that Jesus Christ was created by God.
But the father is eternal and Christ is eternal. The son, however, has willingly submitted to the will of the father. So though they are equal, they are uncaused and they are eternal. The son has submitted himself to the father's will.
And whatever the father does, that the son does likewise. So there's an equality with God, but there's also a different purpose and function between the father and the son. Yet in no way does this take away from Christ's divinity, nor does it add to the divinity of the father.
Verse 24, the father loves the son and shows him all that he himself is doing. So these things that Jesus does, he has an understanding of the father that no one ever has had. There's no prophet that has ever had this understanding.
Jesus has seen things that no man has ever known. He came to show us God. He is the light that has come to show us the will of the father. Going back to John 1, 18, no one has ever seen God. The only God who is at the father's side, he has made him known.
Jesus has seen God. He has come down from heaven to tell us the will of his father who is in heaven. For whatever the father does, the son does likewise. Who is the father? What is he like? Look at Jesus Christ in whom the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.
Jesus sees what the father does, and he also does it. Verse 24, the father loves the son and shows him all that he himself is doing. Now, one of the reasons why the father shows these things to the son and the son does what he sees the father doing is not just because the son is himself God, although that's certainly a big part of it.
Jesus is incarnate. He is God dwelling in human flesh. Jesus is also without sin, so the things of God are not hidden from him. They have not been veiled. One of the extensions of the curse that God placed on mankind because of our sin and rebellion against God is that it would be more difficult for us to see God.
We don't see him clearly. In fact, our hearts are so darkened that we don't even seek after God, as it says in Romans chapter three. Since becoming Christians, our hardened heart has been replaced with a softened heart, and the Holy Spirit has been poured into our hearts.
We have been cleansed. We have been declared justified in the eyes of God. But now we are going through this process of being made sanctified. We are growing in sanctification, and that requires obedience, submission to the father's will, seeking after God, reading his scriptures, knowing the mind of Christ, conforming our minds to his.
On and on it goes so that we may be made more and more into the image of the sun, as conveyed in Romans 8, 29. This process is going to continue until we die, until our bodies die. And then we go to see God, and our faith shall be sight.
As it says in 1 John 3, 2, we will be made to be like him, for we will see him as he is. That's the process that we're on. That's the trajectory. We are focusing our eyes on Jesus and desiring to be like him, our savior, the God-man, who came and lived in human flesh, who was ascended back to his father in heaven and is seated at his right hand, interceding for us.
He is our one mediator, as expressed in 1 Timothy 2, 5. But Jesus did not need this process of sanctification, for he had not sinned. Therefore, God the Father was not veiled from him. He did not have to seek to find God.
He knew God because he was God. So there is not just a sense that Jesus knows the Father because he himself is God, but also in his incarnate state, the will of the Father was not veiled to him since he was without sin.
So God had not concealed himself from the Son. The Son knew the Father and everything he saw the Father doing that the Son did. So we would know the will of the Father according to what we see Jesus doing and what he said.
The Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing. And one of the other things that we can draw from this is that anyone who is in Christ Jesus, who wears the righteousness of Christ, we have that same love from the Father that the Father has for his Son.
The Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing. And so likewise, we have that love of the Father if we are in Christ Jesus. Now, we may not see the will of God as perfectly as Jesus did, but we who are followers of Christ certainly see the will of God.
It is given to us. It's laid out for us in the scripture. And even having our minds shaped by what we read in the word of God, it helps us to discern events that we see going on around us. And again, we don't know exactly the way that God is using this right now.
We will come to that at a time much later on when we come into his glory and we look back over human history and we see how God had been working in every little minute, itty detail to bring about the fulfillment of his will in the fullness of time.
Those are things that we're going to see when we get to glory. Nonetheless, even as we live on this earth, as we have had our minds shaped by the word of God, these things being written on our hearts, there are ways that we can look at the world and we can see that God is doing something with this.
According to what we've seen in the scriptures, we might see a pattern or we have a discipline in our hearts to trust God even in the midst of those circumstances where we don't understand how this is working out.
I know God is using this for something. I don't know how it's working out according to his will, but I know he's doing it and I'm going to trust him and I'm going to place my faith in him knowing that that all of this is ultimately working out for our good and for his glory.
So the father loves the son, shows him all that he himself is doing. And we have the spirit of God poured into our hearts so that we might discern those spiritual things that have been revealed to us in the word of God.
First Corinthians chapter two, the naturally minded man cannot understand these things. He cannot look at the world and see how God is using the things that are happening in the world for some great and ultimate excellent purpose.
What does the naturally minded man see? He looks at the world and goes, how can it be that a loving God exists when there's all this evil going on in the world? That's what the naturally minded man says, because that's all he sees.
He sees evil. Therefore, God must be evil. He doesn't look at evil and see that this has all come about at the hands of sinful men. All of the world has been subjected to futility. Even natural disasters happen because of sinful men.
Since God cursed all of creation because of our rebellion against him. So in this way, even the calamities and the disasters and the wars and all these other things that we see happening in the world around us, even these things are the result of mankind's sin.
But the naturally minded man thinks more highly of himself and less of God. And so he looks at all this evil and thinks it's God's fault and points the finger back at God, exalting himself, saying, hey, if I was God, I would be doing a better job than this.
That's the naturally minded man. But the person who is spiritual, who has the spirit of God in their hearts, we know that we're wicked and we know that what we deserve is to be destroyed for our wickedness and our rebellion.
But that is not how God has dealt with our situation. He has shown his love for us by sending his son, Jesus, to die on the cross for our sins. And so we see that even in the death of the perfect son of God, the Lord was doing something great and mighty that even his own disciples didn't perceive as they beheld these things with their own eyes.
It wasn't like they were sitting at the foot of the cross going, yes, amen, the forgiveness of sins is happening right now. No, they fell into despair. They ran away and hid because the Christ, the Messiah whom they were following, had been crucified at the hands of those people that he was supposed to be liberating the Jews from.
So the disciples were incredibly afraid because they did not yet see the will of the father. And we won't yet perfectly see the will of the father either. But there are certainly ways through the scriptures and the discernment of the Holy Spirit that has been poured into our hearts.
We can see how God is using this or that he is using this for some ultimate purpose, even though we may not know how that's going to come about in the time that we're going through that or observing what it is that's going on.
So we praise God even through the midst of the worst circumstances. The naturally minded man blames God. The spiritual man praises God and knows that we're going to be delivered from this into his eternal kingdom for God was faithful to his own son and the promises that had been laid out in scriptures from the prophets onward that a Messiah would be given for the forgiveness of sins.
And God fulfilled these promises by crushing his son on the cross and then raising him again from the grave so that all who believe in Jesus will not perish but have everlasting life. And because God has been faithful to fulfill these promises in the past, we know that he's faithful to fulfill his promises in the future.
And these are things that we come to the knowledge of, according to his word, because we have the son who has given us his spirit, who shows us the will of the father, that we may look to the father and do the things that the father is doing by the example that has been given to us in his son, Jesus Christ.
The father loves the son and shows him all that he himself is doing. And Jesus goes on to say, and greater works than these will he show him so that you may marvel. Now, some may look at that and go, well, yeah, of course, Jesus resurrection from the grave, greater things than these will he show him so that you may marvel.
No, it goes even farther than that. It's not just Christ's death on the cross and his resurrection from the grave, but it's also the way that God is going to bring the world to himself through Jesus Christ.
Remember the controversial statement that Jesus made with Nicodemus wasn't that a Messiah was just coming to save the Jews, but rather a Messiah was coming so that all who look upon him in the whole world will be saved.
As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the son of man be lifted up. Jesus said in John 3, 14, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life for God. So loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
Greater things than these will the father show him so that you may marvel. Look and behold how God has indeed been drawing the nations to himself through the gospel of Jesus Christ. You have come to salvation through this gospel.
So believe it and live and put your trust in God. Rely upon him. He is working things out for his glory. Amen.
So be it. Gabriel Hughes is the pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas. Find out more online at www .utt .com.