Reduplicated Realities

You and I have the learning process. You and I have the widening horizon of greater works. You and I have the thrill of seeing God make dead souls come alive…


Scripture: John 5:18, John 5:24

Transcript

And hello again, my radio friend. How in the world are you? Oh, I’m fine, thank God, I feel great, hallelujah. Wonderful to have health and strength and I think, the right use of my mind. My father always started his evening prayer, when he had evening family worship by saying, “We thank thee for health and strength and the right use of our minds.” Well I think mine is working alright. Although one day I was talking to somebody and I said, “I hope I never get senile.” This man looked at me, he said, “Bob, don’t worry, if you get senile you won’t know it.” [chuckle] Alright, well I tell you I pray that God will keep me, with the light on and somebody upstairs, as long as I’m on this Earth I wanna be sharp, and I want most of all to be a blessing to folks like you. I’ve been praying that He might have something to say just for you on this broadcast so that you can say, “Hey, that was for me.” May God answer that prayer.

You and I are looking at John chapter five and we’ve come down to verse 18, our savior has just been saying in answer to the harassment and the pressures and the conspiracy around him, his answer to persecution, was, “See what God is doing.” And your answer and mine may very well be the same beloved. Let God do something in your life and you’ve got an answer to all of the opposition in the world. Simple, isn’t it? And yet profoundly important.

Well, you have your Savior saying, “My Father worketh hitherto and I work.” “Therefore,” it said, “the Jews sought the more to kill him because he not only had broken the Sabbath but said also that God was his Father making himself equal with God. And Jesus answered and said, verily, verily, I say unto you, the Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do, for what things soever he doeth these also doeth the Son likewise. For the Father loveth the Son and sheweth Him all things that Himself doeth and He will shew Him greater works than these, that ye may marvel, for as the Father raiseth up the dead and quickeneth them even so the Son quickeneth whom He will.”

That was a forecast of what was gonna happen in John 11, when Lazarus was raised from the dead. “The Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment under the Son so that all men should honor the Son, even as they honor the Father. He that honoureth not the Son, honoureth not the Father, which hath sent him,” one more verse, the 24th, this is on of the verses I learned as a small child. “Verily verily, I say unto you, he that heareth my word and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life and shall not come into condemnation, that’s our word judgement, “shall not come into judgement, but is passed from death unto life.”

Beautiful passage there. Let’s look at it, see what it says to us. Now, verse 18 is where we started. It says, “Therefore they sought the more to kill him because he not only had broken the Sabbath, when he told this man whom he had healed, pick up the mat, roll up your mat and go on home.” He broke the Sabbath by that, in other words, he was causing that man to do some manual work. That was their interpretation of the commandment that says, “In it thou shalt do no labor thou nor thy ox nor… ” and so on and so on. He had not only broken the Sabbath but said also that God was his Father making himself equal with God. I stop here long enough to realize that there are people who have started cults in our world that placed the Lord Jesus in the secondary position to God the Father. A number of them. And you can always tell what a cult is by the position it gives to the Lord Jesus Christ. The Bible teaches and Jesus himself acknowledged that he is equal to God, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, co-equal persons, in one God head.

We don’t have three Gods, we have one God, functioning in three wonderful persons. And so at this point, they understood what he was saying. Now don’t you believe the liberal modernistic preacher who says, “Well Jesus never claimed to be God.” Oh yes, he did. This passage here is one among several that teaches you that the Lord Jesus Christ considers himself all that we say He is, the only begotten Son of God. Very God, altogether God and altogether man. There is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, says Paul. Oh they understood alright. Making himself equal with God, he never denied it, that was it.

Now, in this coming verse, He explains the process by which He laid aside His prerogatives you might say, of deity, when he came down the stairways of the stars to be born of the Virgin Mary, He said, “The Son. Can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do. But for what things soever he, the Father doeth, these also doeth the Son, likewise. For the Father loves the Son and sheweth Him all things that himself doeth and he will shew him greater works than these that ye may marvel.” Here, you have the mystery of the all knowing, ever present, all-powerful God the Son, limiting himself voluntarily in the incarnation to live in a human package. And in that relationship of limitation, also submitting himself to be taught as a human being from the heavenly Father of what he ought to do.

Jesus grew up in the home of Mary and Joseph, and he had to be taught the very simplest things of life and language and skills and interpersonal, societal relationships. Please and thank you and how to conduct himself in that society. He is God, very God, just as much God as God the Father and God the Son, but now he has limited Himself voluntarily to the limitations of a human body, and He gets hungry and he gets tired and he gets thirsty and he can be hurt and he can cry and he can be discouraged and down. Because he’s a human being, as well as being God in the flesh, and so he says, “God the Father is showing me things and I’m doing them.”

The essence of His incarnation, was that he voluntarily limited Himself by taking on a human body, and then submitted himself to the constant guidance of the heavenly Father. And so you find him praying, “Nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done.” Have you ever thanked Jesus for the sacrifice made in coming here? Many of us I’m sure, have prayed Lord, thank you for dying for me on the cross. But have you ever thanked him for the sacrifice he made in coming here to be with us, to be one of us, because the children are subjected to death, he himself also, likewise, became subject to death, that through death, he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is the devil, and deliver them, who all their lifetime were subject to fear? Jesus came to do what nobody else could do and the way to do it was for Him to live in a body like ours. And so He felt our pain. And it says “He himself carried our sicknesses. He knew what it was to hurt, he knew what it was to cry, he knew what it was to be rejected, he knew what it was to be wearyary.”

Jesus has said, “Being weary with His journey sat on the stone coping of Jacob’s well in Sychar.” He was weary with ministering to the multitudes and he fell asleep on a pillow in the stern of the little boat, as they went across the Sea of Galilee. Jesus, our Lord absolutely God, Almighty God just as much God as God the Father or God the Spirit, but limiting himself now to the limitations of a human body so that He could bring life to you and to me. Have you ever thanked him for coming here? Oh how much it must have meant, how much it must meant, you and I can’t begin to imagine what it was to take infinity and compress it into a human body, for those 33 years.

He says, “The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do. The Father loveth the Son and sheweth Him all things that Himself doeth, and he will shew him greater works than these, that ye may marvel for as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them, even so the Son quickeneth whom he will.” The first statement about this Father-son relationship, was that Jesus had voluntarily limited Himself to a place where he needed to be talked by the Father as a growing human being. What to do. Second, he brings out the fact that there is a widening horizon of possibility because the Father is giving Him greater works. The third is, the resurrection is part of the evidence that God is working, “As the Father raiseth up the dead, so the Son quickeneth whom he will.” This, of course, was a reference to the several times that the Lord Jesus raised the dead. The son of the widow that lived in the little town of Nain, Lazarus who lived in Bethany, the Lord Jesus raised them up from the dead. Then it says, “The Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgement unto the Son, so that all men should honor the Son even as they honor the Father.”

So you have the widening horizon, you have the power of life-giving, and then you have the authority of judgment. The Lord Jesus Christ in His incarnation, has been given these special functions. And I wanna go a step farther than and remind you that because the Holy Spirit of God in-dwells the believer, this same group of functions is committed to you, believer, by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so you and I have the learning process, you and I have the widening horizon of greater works. You and I have the thrill of seeing God make dead souls come alive and you and I have the responsibility of reminding people that Jesus is Lord and he’s gonna be their judge if they won’t let him be their savior.

Do you follow that? See, there’s a development there. You see, He says the Son can do nothing what he seeth the Father… The Father loves the Son and shows him greater works, raise up the dead and committed all judgement. These are things that were particularly true of Jesus in his incarnation, but friend, because Christ lives in your heart by faith and the in-dwelling Holy Spirit re-duplicates all that Jesus is, in your believing heart, these are also the realities that can be true of your life.

Father God, today, reduplicated in our lives, the power and presence and beauty of the Lord Jesus Christ. I ask in His name, Amen.

Till I meet you once again by way of radio, walk with the King today and be a blessing!



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