The Grandness of God's Work

In this sermon we will look at two ways the Grandness of God's work relates to us. We will also explore five applications in knowing about the Grandness of his work.
(it is better to watch this sermon than listen to the audio: Watch on YouTube.
https://www.anushjohn.com/post/the-grandness-of-god-s-work)

Photo by Gautier Salles on Unsplash

anushjohn.com

Transcript

The Grandness of God's Work: Good morning. Are you ready for the last time? Ready to be done?

in November, 2020, Argentinian Diego Maradona passed away. Together with Pele, he is considered to be the world's best soccer player. People who played with him and against him were in awe of his abilities. The world cup 1986 in Mexico was probably the only time when one player defined an entire tournament. His deft touch and ball handling were as a writer described it 'almost as innocuous as it was inventive and immortal'. His uncanny ability to take a failing club and to convert it into a championship team was what set him apart from his contemporaries. This picture is Maradona right before he scores the goal of the century against England in Mexico 1986, there is something special about seeing a master at his craft and whether it's a surgeon or a painter or a musician or an athlete to see them at their work, see them doing their work and to see the work that they do is a privilege. Today, we will look at the grand master of all and in a sermon entitled the grandness of God's work, we will look at a glimpse at two of his works. God relates in two main ways to humans through creation and redemption, and I've divided the salmon into two parts. And the first part we will look at the grandness of God's work in creation. Then we will look at the grandness of God's work in redemption, and then thirdly, where I hope to spend a good amount of time at the application of knowing this grandness, the application of understanding and knowing this grandness. 

1. Grandness of God's Work in Creation

First let's look at the grandness of God's work in creation.

Turn your Bibles. If you will, to Psalm 19 verse one, Psalm 19 verse one.

The heavens declare the glory of God. The skies proclaim the work of his hands this morning to show the grandness of God's work in creation. I want to do it under four categories. 

First, we will look at the beauty of God's creation. Color photography was invented in 1866. So before that there was no color. And so if you had to describe it, it all had to be in words.

So listen to this description by Louisa and Meredith in her, my home in Tasmania written in 1853, she writes the island seemed to fold in, as it were with the westerly cliffs of the Cape, until in a south view, they formed one towering, stupendous, mass of dark rocks, most richly things with the change for rose color and purple and gold of the sunsets glorious Hughes, which shown forth in still greater luster from contrast with the deep chasms and ravines, which were in almost black shadow.

And with the white crest of the Hills of the blue sea, that dash, the glittering spray high over the broken crags. It was a scene never to be. And now since we don't live in the pre color era, there's a picture that I took. One of my side hobbies is I try to dabble in photography. There's a picture that I took about six years ago.

And you can see the beauty that is in that sunset. 

The Hubble telescope is a space telescope that was launched in 1998, floats 300 miles above the earth, taking pictures of the universe. And it has showed us pictures that we would have never otherwise. Seen former space telescope science Institute director, Bob William shared in a 2011 interview that he considers that the greatest legacy of the Hubble telescope was the beauty that it was able to reveal of the universe.

Second, let's look at the detail of gods creation.

There is incredible detail in the world around us. And I'm going to ask you to do something that you've probably never been asked before in any meeting you've ever attended. Okay. Just because I can see some skeptical faces. All right. I want you all to swallow. So have you been asked that before now,

swollen, it's such a simple, it takes, you know, 0.2 seconds or something. And let me go through what happens when we. Okay. Swallowing, obviously you food from your mouth needs to go into your esophagus into your stomach. But what happens when we swallow, we swallow about 600 times a day. Obviously with the amount of dessert that's been upstairs, we've been swallowing a little bit more, but approximately about 600 times a day and the coordination of the human body in the simple act of swallowing.

So the first thing that happens, and you can test it as I'm saying this, the first thing that happens is that your jaws close, not in a tight deathly grip, but a very gentle, close, such that your teeth just touch very gently. And as this happens, that is with one nerve called the trigeminal nerve. The second thing that happens is that your lips.

Because the goal is that the food needs to go behind. You're eating with people. The last thing you want is food coming out through their mouth as they swallow every time. So your lips kind of close so that the food does not come to the front side that is through the facial nerve. And then your cheeks tense up because what you don't want happening each time you swallow is the food coming out to the sides, into your cheek, like a chipmunk, every time you swallow and you don't want that.

So your cheeks kind of tense up. And now there is only one place where your food can go and that is backward. And so your tongue needs to do something with the food that's in your mouth. So what it does is the tip of the tongue touches the roof of the mouth. And in a wave like fashion goes from front to back control by two different nerves on one side and two on the other side.

And it goes from front to back gently pushing the food from front. And now there are two options. There's the option of the food. Going up, back into your nose from the back end or food going down into your throat. So, you know, the little thing that hangs at the back of your throat, every time you cough or laugh or sneeze that thing is called a uvula.

And every time we swallow that goes backward and locks into the back of the throat, preventing food from going up into your nose from the back end, because what is worse than food coming out of your mouth each time? Is food coming out to your nose each time you swallow. And so now you're left with just one option where the food has to go back and down, but there needs to be space for the food.

And so what happens is there is another nerve called the glossopharyngeal nerve that controls your voice box and it pulls your voice box forward and upward. So if you felt in front and you solo, you'll be able to see how your voice box comes forward and upward creating more space for that swallow. Now, , your food has two options.

It can go either in the food pipe or the window. But obviously we can't have it go into the windpipe because your lung is not capable of digesting it. And there are the problems, but people are digesting it. And so what happens is another nerve called the vagus nerve closes off the vocal cord so that food does not go down into your windpipe.

Instead, the only place it can go is the food pipe. And for that to happen, the same Vegas nerve expands. The top one third muscle of the food pipe expands it so that the food goes down and it gets down into the stomach. 12 nerves and 48 muscles are involved in the simple act of swallowing. Detail of God's creation just from that one thing is incredible. 

Next let's look at the smallness of gods creation. We thought that the atom was the smallest part of matter. And then we looked inside the atom and we saw a nucleus with the electrons running around it. This is back to physics 1 0 1 back in seventh grade, or whenever you had physics.

So they looked inside the atom and saw a nucleus with electrons, revolving around it. And then they looked inside the nucleus and found a proton and the neutron. And we thought that that was it, the proton, the neutron, and the electron running around it. And then they looked inside the proton and the neutron, and they found quirks each proton has two up corpse and one down cork and the opposite for a neutron. If the mass of one of the up quartz inside a. Is increased slightly. . If the mass of one up quart inside a proton is increased slightly, then the protons get converted to neutrons. And the only stable form of matter is a spherical clump.

On the other hand, if the mass of a down quark inside a proton increases slightly, then what happens is in the university only stable element is hydrogen, which means that everything in the universe will degenerate to hydrogen. Okay. That is the level of complexity and smallness in gods. I was going to talk about the gravitational constant, but that's enough physics for one day.

Let's skip it.

next. Let's look at the largeness of God's creation. Let me show you how large our known universe is. The sun is 83 million miles away. Okay. The sun is 83 million miles away. So if you went on Apollo 10, it would take you 156 days to reach the sun at 25,000 miles an hour. Right? At 25,000 miles an hour, it takes 156 days to reach the sun.

Instead, if you went at the speed of light, it would take you eight minutes. The galaxy that's furthest from us is the gen Z 11. To reach the gen Z. If you went at the speed of light, you would reach the sun in eight minutes. But if you want it to reach gen Z 11 at the speed of light, it would take you 32 billion years.

And that is just the extent that we know. We don't even know what's beyond it because we need to get a better telescope. God is beyond even that. One of the greatest pictures taken by the Hubble space telescope is when they focused on the Southern constellation of Fornax. This picture is known as the Hubble ultra deep field, and is perhaps the most breathtaking, an iconic pictures ever taken of the universe because you see in this one picture, you can see 10,000 galaxies.

not planets cars with their planets, but 10,000 galaxies in this one picture. So in Psalm eight, verse three and four, the Psalmist says when I consider your heavens the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, would you have set in place? What is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them after God made all this, then God gave some responsibility to humans.

And he says in Genesis chapter one, verse 27 and 28. So God created mankind in his own image. In the image of God, he created them, male and female. He created them. He blessed them and said, be fruitful and increase in number, fill the earth and subdue it, rule over the fish of the sea and the birds in the sky. And over every living creature that moves on the ground. So God gave responsibility to us to take care of creation. That's a huge task because there's so much of creation. There are more than 5.3 million species of animals. How many species do we care for?

 Hardly any. So it's not us who's maintaining creation. It's Jesus. Who's maintaining creation for in Hebrews chapter one, verse three, it reads the sun is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being sustaining all things by his powerful word. Can you imagine the extent of his creation?

And when he says, take care of my creation, how less, how little we are involved in taking care of his creation. 

2. Grandness of God's work in redemption

Second, let's look at the grandness of God's work in redemption. Your Bibles. If you will, to Ephesians chapter one, verses four through 10 Ephesians, one four.

in love. He predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ in accordance with his pleasure and will to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the one he loves in him. We have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins in accordance with the riches of God's grace, that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ to be put into effect when the times reached their fulfillment to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth, under Christ. From Adam onward, God has been moving creation towards redemption other than the first two chapters of the Bible

which talk about creation. The rest of the Bible, the one thousand one hundred and eighty seven chapters of the Bible is talking about redemption. Every single person mentioned in the Bible is the story of redemption. So when Jesus told Peter to feed his sheep in John chapter 21, he said, take care of the church, take care of the part of the story of redemption.

think about your own spiritual journey. Okay. From the first day till now, think of how many people were involved in your own spiritual journey. Think of how many circumstances were involved in your own spiritual journey. Okay. You've got kind of a. How many people and how many circumstances where we're a part of your own spiritual journey till this point. Of all these people and all these circumstances how much of this could we have controlled? Very, very minor, very, very minor. Our own spiritual journey. We have such less control over. Imagine if you were in charge of the spiritual journey of every person in this room. I mean, it is mind boggling to think how much planning and execution is required for one person's spiritual journey.

Yet God chooses to let creation get involved in his activity. I'm going to have to completely random question, but I will bring it back to the topic at hand. What are angels? What are.

It's not a rhetorical question. Angels are created beings. There's a very specific phrase. It's in Hebrews chapter one. I think the last verse, I think it's 14. They are ministering spirits Angels are ministering spirits. So when you read the account of the birth of Jesus, it talks about how an angel of the Lord came in a dream to Joseph.

And then in one of the other dreams, he has the Lord spoke to Joseph in a dream.

Why did God use angels?

Why does God use angels? Absolutely. There is no reason. Anything that manger can do. God can do it. He doesn't need an angel to do anything. he involves angels because he wants creation to be involved in his activity. And for the same reason he uses us because he wants us to be involved in his redemptive activity,  obviously are getting involved in the redemptive activity having experienced redemption ourselves is on a much different scale than when an angel gets involved. Look at this video, which is based on a true story.

ladies and gentlemen, when all said and done, when we get to heaven and see a part of the big picture. And the notes of the crescendo start to fall. We will find out that it was the unseen hand of God that was doing work through finite people to fulfill his eternal purposes. And that he was the one that was creating the masterpiece with our broken notes.

Can God manage the maintenance of his creation? Absolutely. Can he do the work of redemption? Absolutely. But he chooses to let us get involved and incredulously, he chooses to reward us for it.

3. Application ` 

We looked at the grandness of God's work in creation. We looked at the grandness of God's work in redemption, and finally, let's look at the application in ministry or in life application in life, recognizing that God is doing almost. I want to give you five applications of understanding that God is the one that's doing all this, both in ministry and in life.

The first one, the first application is that there is no agony in ministry. Great burden. Yes. Agony, no concern. Yes. I ain't give me no, we all. No, that God is the one who makes it grow. Turn your Bibles to first Corinthians chapter three, verses five through eight first Corinthians three, verses five through eight.

What? After all is a palace. And what is Paul? Only servants through whom you came to believe as a Lord has assigned to each his task, I planted the seed Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is, but only God who makes things grow. Ministry and parenting kind of similar.

There is a burden in parenting and there is a burden in ministry, but there should not be agony because we can do only what we can do with our limits and the best of our abilities. And the rest is up to God. We do not control the results in parenting. The same thing  we can agonize over how our kids may turn out and try to manage some pieces here, but we can do the best we can.

We can only do the best we can. The results are completely up to God. And that is why there shouldn't be agony in ministry and agony in parenting. What is your biggest agony in the ministry?  I'm going to give you three examples.

Maybe you feel under-qualified maybe being under-qualified is your agony in the ministry and every day that you go to do the ministry or do life, or be a parent or whatever you do, you're under-qualified you feel under-qualified and you think, man, the task is so big ahead of me and I just can't do it.

You know what you should feel. Under-qualified. They will never come a time when you think you're qualified. Because when we are, handling infinite truth as finite beings, they will never come a time when we are, fully qualified, never. So if you feel unqualified, under-qualified, that's how it's going to be.

God will make you slightly qualified for the next step. Not for 10 steps ahead for the next step. And when you do that, he'll give you more and more qualifications as you keep going But none of us will ever be fully qualified. The task that God has called us to

maybe the agony is the pressure to produce results. You know, when we, when we go through a drive-through at McDonald's. Chick-Filet or whatever it is, we placed the order. And 15 seconds later, when we come on the other side, we kind of want it ready. I don't want it. That's kind of, and if they are delayed by about another 10 seconds, we're like, man, did they have to go and kill the chicken first?

I mean, to, to give me the chicken sandwich. it's, now we need the results right now.

unfortunately that carries over into the ministry where we think we are, planting bamboo shoots when instead we are actually planting Oak trees. It takes a while. It takes a while for the roots to go down. It takes a while for the ground to break and it takes a while for it to finally start producing some kind of fruit.

It takes awhile. And the pressure to produce results is there because we have to send a monthly, letter. And if, the letter that you sent in September is kind of the same one. Yes. Please pray for X, Y, and Z. And for the next three months, please pray for X, Y, and C. Well, there's no, you know, there's not much change in X, Y, and Z, you know, sorry, we're kind of apologetic, or maybe your agony is finances.

I can tell you a cliche answer and say, God's going to take care of, and he will, and I was back in India, my dad was a pastor of a church. You didn't get much money from the church. And the reason I know it is because I was managing them. He was teaching at a Bible school at 1200 rupees a month.

That if you convert it to the dollar rupee amount at that time is $75 a month.

One of my brothers and I happened to go to the best school in the city and we came all this way. Even now, when I look back, I don't know how it happened because the math doesn't add up

for God. The math does not need to add up because God is beyond the math and God is beyond the logic and God is beyond the natural. So he will take care of you. And everything. Old timer who's been in the ministry for long enough, knows that. God will take care of you. God's work done in God's way we'll never lack God's supplies. And he has infinite supplies.

The second application of understanding the grandness of God's work is the return of joy. the return of joy. Imagine that in your job, you are doing something that you love. Okay? And the same thing goes for parenting. There's a lot of similarity between ministry and parenting. Imagine that you're doing something you love, let's say, you know, video editing or computer graphics or whatever, .

 The case may be or working on Excel, but I know, yeah, there are some people

imagine you're doing something that you love, no matter that it is something you love, the moment you start putting pressure on it, it becomes a tedious task. in the ministry, it can be something you love singing, or you love playing the guitar. You love playing the drums.

You love speaking, or you love teaching, but the moment you start putting pressure on it, it seizes to be joyful. It becomes painful. It becomes tedious. Ministry becomes a burden.

And the same thing is true in parenting. I mean, we should enjoy. But the pressures of life and the burdens of life overwhelm us, such that we don't enjoy parenting. And then years later we're like, wow, I should have enjoyed those moments. Maybe if we understand that God is the one who is doing this and we are just stewards, not really parents.

We are stewards of what he has given to us to take care of. serving God should be a joy.  If God is not the best employer then who is, if working in the ministry is not the best business to work for which business is

do we have joy in the ministry? If we don't, then we need to evaluate certain things.

Okay. We can ignore the big picture. We can ignore the big picture. We don't need to worry about the big picture because we don't know the big picture. What, five years ago, I came to Athens with mark and we went down Athens to the university and down the suburbs. We were, we were scouting out a region. And then I flew back from Athens to Philadelphia. So on my flight back about, I don't know, probably was about an hour into the flight. There was an announcement overhead that said, is there any medical personnel. We have a need. So I waited a couple seconds and then I lifted my hand and my waited a couple of minutes, nobody came to me.

So I thought maybe they handle the medical emergency. And then I looked back and to the back about eight rows behind was a group of people. And I can't let a group of people go to waste. So I got up and slowly walked to the group of people and I wasn't going to get involved or interfere because if they're doing what they need to do, I mean, I don't need to get involved.

And I go there and mix with the window seat. Is this about 80 year old lady? that was lying unconscious. She had passed out. The lady next to her was sitting stoically looking straight ahead. I mean, not concerned about this other lady that passed on. And around them, where a couple medical staff, there was a pediatrician and a couple other people that were there, a couple of nurses and so on.

So I listened for a minute. I said, okay, now let's see, let's see what's going on. And then. The pediatrician, anybody who works for pediatricians, I'm not trying to trash them. I'm just missing a rating the incident. The pediatrician said, oh, maybe we should just give her some epinephrin. I said, you know, let's just hold on the epinephrine until we find the four hardest stopped or not.

You know, you want to just get up in front door. So nothing was happening. They were just talking over .This lady has had, she was apparently a lone traveler that had been to one of the islands, one of the Greek islands and was traveling back to Kansas city. So I said, okay, let's do something for this.

So let's take the spatial Bazza patient. Now let's take the patient. And we had to force this other lady who was stoic and move her. Can you please move so we can move this other patient. So we took this patient, brought her to the side and she had passed out. So I told the nurse, can you please check her blood pressure?

We checked the blood pressure. It was very low. So we called for the crash cart that was there. I said, let's get some fluids and give her some. So I asked another nurse to start an Ivy. She did start the Ivy, we hung the IB bag on a clothes hanger, and we stuck it into the overhead bin and we shut the door to  let it hang and be let the flu.

Meanwhile, the pilot comes over and says, do you think that this patient is good? So he, he asked me, do you think the patient is good? Because we are just about to cross the Western part of Europe and we are going to get into the Atlantic ocean. So he wanted to know whether he wanted to land the plane or not.

So I said, I think she's fine. She just needs some fluids. We'll give her the fluids, get a blood pressure up. I think she's going to be fine. And so we just kept going. Now, if you were called to a code, this was not a full code, but  if you're in the hospital and you call a code, a  code blue team comes running along and there are several of them.

There is one. And then that leader assigns responsibilities. You start the IV, you do the chest compressions, you do the respirations. You make a record of all the medicines. You keep the time. And there are multiple things that are going on. Each person knows their responsibility and just does it. The person who is doing the chest compressions has no idea what drugs were given to the patient.

Each person doesn't know what the other person is doing. There is only one person on that team that knows what everybody's doing, and that is the leader. And we are not,

you don't have to know the big picture. We don't know the big picture. So when somebody asks us, is mother Theresa going to go to heaven? I don't know.

All I know is that you can go to heaven only through Jesus Christ. I have believed in Jesus Christ. I will go to heaven. If you believe in Jesus Christ, you will go to heaven. Will Hitler go to heaven? If he accepted Jesus Christ. these questions of origin and destiny and stuff that is outside of the Bible, I don't know.

I'm just doing chest impressions. You know, that's all I know.

The fourth blessing of knowing that God is doing everything including life and ministry is a pursuit of holiness. We don't have to forget about holy living. The burden of ministry is not an excuse to not be holy. God has called us to holiness. It is a not an excuse to sin.

In first Corinthians chapter nine, verse 26 and 27. And when you went yesterday to Corinth, you understood why Paul used these athletic references, right? There is these athletic games that happened every two years in Corinth and it was part of their culture in Corinth. And so he uses athletic references.

He says, therefore, I do not run like someone running aimlessly. I do not fight like a boxer beating the air. No, I strike a blow to my body and make it to my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize. The ministry is not more important than personal holiness.

Parenting is not more important than personal holiness. There is no responsibility that we have been given that is more important than personal holiness.

And finally, the pursuit of God, the burden of ministry is not an excuse for us not to pursue God. Paul had finished three missionary. He had been imprisoned in Philippi, in Ephesus, in Jerusalem. And now in Rome. When the book of acts ends, he is in the prison in Rome. And from there, he writes a letter to the Philippians.

And this is after all the missionary journeys and all the work that he had done. This is what he says in Philippians chapter three, verses  eight, and 10. I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whose sake, I have lost all things. I consider them garbage that I may gain Christ.

They want to know Christ. Pursuit of God should be the number one goal of every believer. There is no other responsibility that takes. Yes. And I'll end with this verse. It is God's final purpose for everyone in Jeremiah 31, verse 34, it says no longer will they teach their neighbor or say to one another, nor the Lord, because they will all know me from the least of them to the greatest declares the Lord. 

The purpose of God's grand work is that we would know him. In the garden of Eden after creation. God wanted Adam and Eve to know him so he spent time with them. And the purpose of God's redemptive work is that we would know him.

I pray that each person who has heard me and listens to the sermon would grow in increasing knowledge of Jesus Christ day by day.

I'm going to give a few minutes to reflect. Reflect on, on what you've heard and let God speak.

heavenly father. We thank you for this time that you've given us. Yes,

we are. Sorry for letting anything else come in the way when you wanted us to seek, okay. 

Pray that you would give us the wisdom and the strength so that the distractions can be removed so that we can single-mindedly seek after you help us to grow. In our knowledge of you many times, our knowledge of you has come to a standstill and it's what it was from yours.

Lord, we will never stop knowing you. We will never know. You completely

help us to focus our energies on knowing. Yeah, we know that everything else will follow a Lord, God, holy living. And every other thing will follow as we set our face toward you. Thank you for the privilege that you have given that you've called us to participate in your redemptive work. We were never qualified from the beginning and we never will be at this point in our lives.

We don't even know how unqualified we are. Thank you, Lord God. Thank you for the calling that you've placed upon each person here. Thank you for the privilege in Jesus' name. I pray. Hey, man.

 I just want to take a second and thank the leadership  for inviting me. 

It's been such a privilege. I had one goal coming here and that was to glorify Jesus Christ. And I hope that he says I pleased him. Yeah. Let's give a