Thursday, August 29, 2013

Greater Works than These So You Might Marvel.

And this was why the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. But Jesus answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.”
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, “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. (John 5:16-20 (ESV)
John now goes into a few reasons why the Jews are persecuting and wanting to kill Jesus. He works on the Sabbath and he makes himself equal with God. Jesus works on the Sabbath because God works on the Sabbath. “My Father is working until now, and I am working.” God doesn’t cease to work. Creation wasn’t a matter, isn’t a matter of winding up a clock and letting it go. Every day is a day in which God is creating and sustaining creation. So the Son works in and through the Father in creating and sustaining creation.
And greater works than these will he show him, so that you may marvel. This world is wonderful. It truly is. I watch children who delight in a little puppy, or a kitty cat. The world being so new they aren’t dull to the amazement of it. But there is so much more that constantly amazes a man throughout life. Take trip through Highway 12 in Utah, and every corner causes your mouth to drop. Then there are the beauties of relationships between a husband and wife, a father and his son, a mother and her daughter, a parent and their children. Old friends, and new friends. And the creations of the created, in which God uses us yet again to create. The beauty of a Cranach painting of Venus, a fine shotgun, a well-crafted beer, lunch at the Café de Paris in Geneva. Yes there are things to marvel at throughout life in this world. And yet greater than all of these is the relationship of God to his own creation, which as fallen as it is in sin a debauchery he still loves and dies for. There is profound beauty in that love. A beauty hidden in the ugliness of the cross and all that we did there with our sins. Because there God prepared the whole world to see even greater things, things we cannot imagine until such time as we enter the gates of heaven, to marvel at the new creation of heaven and earth.

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