00:00 Intro music and voice over.
Welcome to jesus loves the world podcast. For more information and free resources visit our website jesuslovestheworld.info Be blessed empowered and transformed in Jesus’ name!
00:20 Speaker
Last week we were reminded that God is always working in pursuing humanity in love. For it is the Father’s heart’s desire that none should perish. So God is continually revealing Himself to humanity. Enabling us to see into the unseen. To know and experience His unconditional love, unending truth and wondrous power. He therefore reaches down to where we are at and reveals Himself to us, in ways we can understand.
In His great love the Father creates a safe place for us to just be, accepted just as we are. Where He makes His home in us and enables us to be at home with Him. Having declared us pure, holy and one with Him, we can nestle deep into the Father’s heart. In the spirit knowing and experiencing the divine.
As disciples of Jesus, we follow Him to the Father’s heart. For it is from the Father’s heart that Jesus came down from heaven to earth, to us.
When Jesus walked the earth as a man, He said ‘My Father has been working…’ In the context of this moment in time, Jesus had just spoken hope, healing and light into a man’s sickness. The man was without hope and was left all alone. Yet in amongst it all Jesus saw him, acknowledged him, gave respect and healed him. For a deeper revelation of this please listen to our jesus loves : the world podcast titled, ‘Hope and Healing’.
The religious who were opposed to Jesus, challenged Him in regards to the healing of this man. For they knew and believed that only God could heal. In response, Jesus made this extraordinary statement, My Father is always working. Let us pick up the dialogue.
John 5:17-21 But Jesus answered them, “My Father has been working until now, and I have been working. Therefore the Jews sought all the more to kill Him, because He not only broke the Sabbath, but also said that God was His Father, making Himself equal with God. Then Jesus answered and said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the Son also does in like manner. For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself does; and He will show Him greater works than these, that you may marvel. For as the Father raises the dead and gives life to them, even so the Son gives life to whom He will.
So the religious who opposed Him sought to kill Him. As the text states, even more so than before. For the religious who opposed Jesus understood exactly what He was saying to them.
Jesus was revealing to them that He is the Eternal One, who had stepped into humanity’s finite world. Everything Jesus did, when in human form, is the same as what God has been doing since humanity chose to become one with good and evil. Since the first man and woman gave their God given power to rule and reign to their selfish desires and evil. God has been pursing humanity in love to bring hope and healing, deliverance and salvation for all eternity. To set humanity free from the destructive power of evil and humanity’s selfish desires.
It is the Father, Son and Spirit, one God who created and gives life. The religious understood that only God gives life. So Jesus reveals that the Father will raise Jesus’ human body from the grave and as a result anyone who receives Jesus and His right to rule and reign will also be raised from the dead and receive their resurrected glorified bodies. Just as the Son of God did in His humanity, so too we will be. In a twinkling of an eye when Jesus returns we will be like Him, receiving our resurrected glorified perfect bodies. Bodies that never get sick and never die. The fullness of our eternal inheritance will be realised. Yet until then just as Jesus said, My Father is always working.
God has been and is continually working in our finite world. Yet the ultimate demonstration of His great love and transforming power is in the birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension of the Son of God who became human.
The Apostle Paul received from God a deep revelation about the eternal significance of Jesus’ divinity and humanity in the work of God. Especially in those who have received the work of Jesus’ life, death, resurrection and ascension. This is evident in his prayers for those who have received and believed.
Ephesians 1:15-23 Therefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers: that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come. And He put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.
Paul prays that they may understand and see the exceeding greatness of His mighty working power toward all of us who believe. That is every individual who has said to Jesus, yes to God, acknowledging His right to rule and reign is the recipient of God’s working power. All the power of God - Father, Son and Spirit is directed toward us. In receiving Jesus, we receive not only what He has done for us, but all of who He is.
His working power is a supernatural, miraculous, gift giving, life transforming power. To think the creator of heaven and earth and all things good, directs His power toward us, for the benefit of us, is beyond our comprehension.
So knowing this, God in His great love gives us the ability to receive and believe in Him. We simply be willing and choose Him. Give our allegiance to worship only Him.
God gives all of Himself, which includes His love and truth. Truth can only be determined by the one who is truth itself. God is truth and light. There are no lies, trickery, deception or darkness in Him.
Pure love can only be experienced by the one who is pure love itself. God is love and relational. There is no hate, selfishness, pride or impatience in Him.
God gives all of Himself so that we may know and experience Him, be at home with Him and daily be filled by Him. This is the daily journey of living in the reality of His wondrous working power toward us.
Let us read the next prayer by the Apostle Paul that is recorded in Ephesians.
Ephesians 3:14-19 For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
The power of God that works within us in this instance is linked to several life transforming aspects. They are the strengthening of the inner man, be rooted and grounded in His love, to know and experience God’s love and being filled with His fullness.
Strengthening of the inner man is to be made strong in the principle elements of life. That is emotions, thoughts and character. God is the one who makes us strong. Strong in emotions - where we are able to love and be loved. Being able to experience the full range of human emotions at the appropriate time and circumstance. God in His working power makes us strong in His love. Where His love goes deep into our hearts and minds. Being throughly grounded in His love, and truth. Each day being transformed in His power. Filled with more of His love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness and self control. Being filled with the fullness of Him which is the character of God and the fruit of His Spirit.
For it is true, as Jesus testifies, My Father is always working. We simply be willing. Be willing to be transformed by Him, living in the fullness of all of who He is and all that He has given us. This transforming character work of God is the Father’s will for us. As in His transforming work in us we shall be truly free.
Again let us read another prayer by the Apostle Paul. This time in Colossians.
Colossians 1:9-14 For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, for all patience and longsuffering with joy; giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.
This transformation work of God is His will. So that we would be truly free and live in the fullness of all that He done for us and given to us.
Paul prays that they may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding
The word that has been translated as filled is used often in regards to the fulfilment of Gods promises. Especially in relation to Jesus’ fulfilment of the prophecies of old. It can mean to bring to fulfilment, with the want of nothing and cause to abound. For this is not only the will of God but His work and delight to do this for us. As we surrender our self will to that of the Father’s will in our daily journey with Him, that is living in the fullness of His sacrifice making us worthy. We become fruitful in every good work which is His work in and through us to others. Being led by the Spirit.
For it is the Father who has enabled us to be partakers of the inheritance of the Son of His love. Through the blood sacrifice of Jesus we not only receive an eternal inheritance when He returns but live in the reality of the work He does in us now.
Daily living in the fulfilment of Jesus’ victory of surrender of self will, to that of the Father’s will, abounding in His love, truth and power.
This work of God within us is how the world is going to know that we are His disciples. It will be by His love in us and the outworking of His love in us for each other. All to the praise of His glory.
The resurrected Jesus testifies, My Father is always working. The writer of Hebrews puts it this way.
Hebrews 13:20-21 Now may the God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you complete in every good work to do His will, working in you what is well pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.
19:40 Outro music and voice over.
For more information and free resources visit our website jesuslovestheworld.info Be blessed empowered and transformed in Jesus’ name!