That You May Marvel - John 5:16-29 (04.26.2026)

Today's scripture comes from John chapter 5, verses 16 through 29.

John 5:16–29

After I finish reading, I'll say this is the word of the Lord.

Please respond by saying thanks be to God.

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, 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 show Him, so that you may marvel.

For as the Father raises the dead and gives life, so also the Son gives life to whom He wills.

For 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 has 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 come out.

Those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done

evil to the resurrection of judgment, This is the word of the Lord.

All right. Well, good morning. Go ahead and be turning in your Bibles to John

chapter five. That's where we're going to be.

And while you're finding your way there, if you don't have a Bible, that's okay.

We're going to have scripture on the screen. And also you should have gotten

an insert in your bulletin when you came in that has a scripture on it.

But let me pray for us one more time as you're finding your way to John five.

Father, I do pray that you would,

by your Holy Spirit, move mightily in this room and impact lives because of

your word, because of what we learn about your son, Jesus, in this passage.

Would you please take my words and use them and help me, Lord,

to explain and to teach in a clear way.

We ask that you would do this for the glory of Jesus Christ. Amen.

All right. Well, this passage, it's kind of a second half or a second part of

something that we learned last week.

If you weren't with us, don't worry, I'll catch you up. But this is basically

a passage about the religious leaders in Jerusalem completely missing who Jesus is,

and therefore Jesus explaining who he is. So he's just done a miracle.

We'll talk about that in a minute. He's just done this incredible miracle in

a very public way, and they want him dead because he's making himself equal to God.

And so Jesus now explains a whole lot about himself. We're actually only going

to cover the first half of that explanation. We'll get into the second half next week.

But many of you, if you are a believer, if you have been a Christian for some

time, you may be tempted to think that this isn't really a passage that's important

for you because you already believe in Jesus.

You already believe he is the Son of God, or you already believe that he is God.

And so you could be tempted to think, no, well, I'm not like the Pharisees,

Sadducees, scribes, I'm not like those religious leaders.

And so this is not really an important passage for me. this is not really an

important sermon for me, but I don't want you to think like that.

Because if you've ever drifted from God for a season, this is a sermon,

this is a passage for you.

If you've ever felt for a time bored by the Bible or bored in your prayer life

or bored by the church, this is a passage for you and a sermon for you.

If there's ever been a time in your life, and maybe you're in a season like

this right now, where you've not been in utter and absolute awe of the gospel.

Then this is a passage for you. A few years ago, our family went out west and

one of the stops that we made was at the Grand Canyon.

And if you've ever been there, you know that feeling that's impossible to describe

as you walk up to the edge of the canyon.

I can put myself back in that scene and remember, walking up to the edge,

and it just takes my breath away.

And I'm trying to think of words to describe it, and I can't.

I'm just coming up short.

It's like my brain could not scale it.

There's all these depths of distance and colors and shadows,

and every single direction that you look, it's totally different and you can't see it all at once.

And so you're scanning back and forth and it sort of creates this cognitive

overload as you're trying to take it all in.

And after a moment, I kind of realized, I remembered that like I was with my

family, you know, and I came back to myself and I turn around to try and get

some of the reactions from my kids.

And I'll never forget what one of my kids said. I won't say which one.

One of my kids was sitting on a bench right there at the edge,

curled up in a ball with this miserable look on their face.

And they'd seen all they wanted to see in about three minutes.

It was hot. It was like probably, you know, 98 degrees.

And they said, what's the big deal? It's just a big ditch.

And a lot of Christians are like that. A lot of Christians are like that.

They peer into the pages of Scripture at the dizzying,

disorienting, mind-blowing glory of the Son of God, and they can't stop thinking

about where they're going to eat for lunch, what they're going to have for lunch,

or about all the things on their to-do list.

Here's what we're going to see in this passage. When we see Jesus correctly,

we see him correctly, and what he's done, we will marvel.

You see, we were looking at the same canyon, and yet, somehow, one of us saw a ditch.

And it wasn't the canyon's fault. And the same thing is true and can be true for Jesus.

We are looking at the glory of God on display.

And if we're honest, it's not just like some people see it all the time and some people never do.

If we're honest, sometimes we see it. But some days we look and we fall down in worship.

And then other days we don't. And this is a sermon about seeing who he is and marveling.

And that's what he wants for us.

That's what God wants for us. He wants us to see his glory and marvel.

I want to show you where I'm seeing that in this passage.

And also, this is a helpful little tidbit. for you just as you're reading scripture,

look for things that are repeated when you're reading a passage,

because oftentimes those repeated words or phrases are like keys to helping

you understand what the author is trying to communicate.

And so look at in verse 20, at the second half of that,

he says, and greater works than these will he, Jesus is saying,

will will the father show the son so that you may marvel so that you may marvel?

Jesus is saying there, you should look and see things that amaze you,

that make you look with wonder.

But instead, these religious rulers didn't believe in him.

They heard his claims and they marveled that he would say those things about

himself. Look at verses 27 and 28.

Jesus says, and he has given him authority to execute judgment because he is the son of man.

That phrase, son of man, is a phrase that goes back to the book of Daniel,

when Daniel has a vision of the Christ, the Messiah, and he calls him the son of man.

So Jesus is claiming to be him, the Messiah.

And then verse 28, he says, do not marvel at this.

In other words, verse 20, Jesus is saying there's something or someone rather

that you should marvel at.

And in verse 28, there's something you should not marvel at.

And the Jews had a big problem in this passage.

They marveled at the wrong things.

They should have seen Jesus heal this man, which is what we talked about last week.

He heals this paralyzed man who's been paralyzed for 38 years,

and they should have marveled at the power of God and the mercy of God on display.

Instead, they marveled that Jesus claimed to be equal with God.

And this is relevant for all of us because we all have a tendency to marvel at the wrong things.

And we all have a tendency from time to time to fail to marvel at what we should marvel at.

And maybe that's where you are this morning. And maybe this morning,

you think you're singing these songs about God's incredible mercy,

what Christ has done for you.

And you're not filled with joy and amazement and gratitude in your relationship with Him.

And maybe you marvel at all the wrong things, what's happening in politics or

world events, or maybe marvel at your phone, your TV, or your kids,

or your hobby, but not Jesus.

And so just like these Pharisees and Sadducees, these religious rulers,

we can be going through all the religious emotions and still have something blocking our view.

We can be sitting on the edge of the Grand Canyon and just not seeing it.

And so this sermon is for all of us to help us to look at Christ and marvel.

So my outline this morning is really simple. It's in three parts,

the conflict, the claim, and the offer.

Let's start with the conflict. We'll just briefly kind of go back over what set all this up.

In verse 16, it says, and this was why the Jews were persecuting Jesus because

he was doing these things on the Sabbath.

So Jesus, as I said, has just healed a paralyzed man, and he's done it in Jerusalem,

where this is kind of the center of gravity for the Jewish religious leaders.

And he's also commanded this man that he healed to pick up his bed and carry it on the Sabbath.

And the religious leaders had seen this as a Sabbath violation, and,

wasn't really. It was a violation of the man-made rules that they had added

on top of what God had commanded in Scripture.

And there's another place in Scripture where Jesus rebukes the Pharisees because

they were teaching as commandments the traditions of men.

They had a tendency to do this. They would add rules upon rules upon rules on

top of what God commanded.

And that's what they had done with the Sabbath.

And so they are angry that not only would he heal on the Sabbath,

but also that he would, you know, in their mind, command this guy to do something

that would be a violation of it.

As Hunter brought up last week, Jesus intentionally did this when he did it,

where he did it, in order to force a confrontation.

And that confrontation was intentional.

It was to force these religious leaders to reckon with who he really was and what he had come to do.

You're all familiar, I'm sure, with Rosa Parks, who refused to give up her bus seat in 1955.

And, you know, she made a choice. Rather than avoiding conflict,

you know, taking the easy road, she stepped into that conflict courageously,

and that action triggered the Montgomery buss.

Boycott, which ultimately forced Americans to kind of deal with the injustice of segregation, right?

And we all look back on that in history and we don't say like,

what was she doing stepping into that conflict?

No, she was making an intentional choice to force that conflict for the good of others.

That's what Jesus is doing in a way, right?

He's stepping into conflict in order to, for the good of others,

in order to reveal who he really is.

He's fearlessly and strategically shining light on his true identity.

And I love this about Jesus. He's not just trying to like please people, appease the crowd.

You know, they're all angry with him because he healed on the Sabbath.

And rather than be like, you know, try to appease, he's like,

oh, you think that's a B, well, I also claim to be God, right?

And he takes it up to another level.

So as I said, this is the first half of that response where he is now shining

light on his true identity.

So what does Jesus say in response to this conflict that's now come to a head?

And that's the second point for us, the claim.

So verses 17, we'll read verses 17 and 18.

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 they were wanting to silence him and persecute him because he's breaking the Sabbath.

But now they want him dead because he's claiming to be equal with God.

He's not just saying the father is working until now or our father is working

until now, which would have been language that they would have been more okay with.

He's saying very specifically, my father is working until now.

He's saying, I am the unique divine son of God.

And equality with God is a massive claim. And if it's not true,

as the Jehovah's Witnesses, for example, would say, then Jesus is not worth

paying attention to at all.

You can't just claim that Jesus was a good teacher and that there's things that

we can learn from him, but that he wasn't God.

That doesn't work because he claimed to be God.

And he did so not just here, but again and again and again.

You've probably heard the famous quote from C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity.

But he says this, a man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus

said would not be a great moral teacher.

He would either be a lunatic on a level with the man who says he is a poached

egg, or else he would be the devil of hell.

You must make your choice. Either this man was and is the son of God,

or else a madman or something worse.

If Jesus were not God, then he is either a lunatic or a deceiver and false teacher.

There are only three options if we take what Jesus said seriously.

He's either Lord, as he claimed to be, lunatic or liar, because Jesus claims to be God.

He claims to be God. And if he is in fact God, and he is, then we must pay very

close attention to everything that he says, everything.

So what does he say in response to their shock at his claim?

Verses 19 and 20. 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.

A few different commentators pointed out that Jesus is using apprenticeship

language right here. And we know that.

His earthly dad, Joseph, was a carpenter and that Jesus became a carpenter.

And so we know that he apprenticed under Joseph to become a carpenter.

He apprenticed in his shop.

And it's fascinating that here, as he's talking about his earthly ministry,

he's using the same kind of language of apprenticeship with his heavenly father.

So when he says the son can do nothing of his own accord, He is not saying that

he is in any way inferior to the Father.

What he is saying is that as the perfect man, as the perfect man,

remember that everything that Jesus does is a fulfillment of righteousness in our place.

He lives the perfect fulfillment of righteousness because when he dies on the

cross and is raised, his perfect life is going to get credited to us.

So as the perfect man, as the perfect fulfiller of righteousness,

he depends completely upon his father at all times.

That's part of what he's saying. As our substitute, he's fulfilling righteousness.

He is living as we were intended to live before the fall. But he's saying more

than that. That's not all that he's saying.

He doesn't stop there. When he says, whatever the father does,

that the son does likewise, he's showing perfect unity and equality with the father.

So this is more than just sinless human imitation. salvation,

this is a clear claim to deity because only God can do everything that the Father does.

Imagine that you're in a hospital and the janitor comes into the room.

He's wiping down surfaces and cleaning the bathroom and refilling things.

And then the janitor comes walking over to you and he says, you know,

just as the doctor works hard and with excellence and with a good attitude,

I also work hard with excellence and with a good attitude.

A janitor can say that, right? They can imitate a doctor in those ways.

But if the janitor comes walking over to you and starts pushing medicine into

your IV and says, you know, whatever the doctor does, I do likewise,

you're going to have a problem with that, right?

Because a janitor cannot do everything that a doctor can do.

So when Jesus says everything that the father does, the son does likewise,

he is claiming equality with God.

The Father and the Son work in perfect unity and accomplish perfectly unified

work, even though the two persons have distinct roles.

Say, for example, in the work of redemption, they are perfectly unified.

But we know that the Father sends the Son in the work of redemption,

and the son lays his life down in perfect obedience to the father.

And they are working in unity.

And of course, we are Trinitarians here. And we know that there's a third person

of the Trinity, but I'm just right now we're talking about the father and the

son and their unity and oneness.

So verse 20 says that the father shows his love for the son by revealing to

him everything that he is doing.

And the son likewise shows his love for the father by obeying everything that the father commands.

And in the second half of verse 20, we get to that so that you may marvel phrase.

That's such a key phrase here. What's he saying that should make them marvel?

He says, greater works than these will he show him so that you may marvel.

What are those greater works than these that Jesus is referring to?

Well, if you keep reading, it becomes clear that he's thinking about,

he's referring to his future death and resurrection, the work of redemption

that's going to be accomplished about 18 months from this point.

That's the greater works. That's the ultimate works that Jesus is always thinking

about, always moving toward, always pointing to. So he's talking about the gospel.

That's what should make us marvel more than anything else.

The place in human history, the climactic event in all of human history where

the glory of God's grace is most prominently on display,

that he would provide a way for sinners like us to be forgiven, to be reconciled.

That's the ultimate work that should make us marvel. And it shows us,

the rest of the passage shows us what he has in my look at verse 21.

Now Jesus is going to, he's going to talk about his equality with the father

in these, and what works is it that he's doing that the father does?

For as the father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the son gives life to whom he will.

Scripture's clear. There's only one who can give life, and that's God. This is a clear claim.

Then verse 22, for the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son.

In Genesis 18, 25, God is called the judge of all the earth.

Throughout the scripture, God is clearly identified as the only one who can judge.

He's the only one who can give life. He's the only one who can judge.

Jesus is saying, I am God.

He's saying, I am the one who gives life. I give life to whomever I will,

and I will judge all those whom I give life to in the end.

I am the beginning and the end, and everything in between, life giver and judge.

There's no other way that he could have possibly raised himself higher than

by saying that he is the life giver and the judge.

Why does he say it? Look at verse 23, 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.

He's not saying this to diminish the Father or to eclipse the Father,

but rather, remember what we learned at the beginning of this book,

Jesus came to reveal the Father to us so that whoever sees the Son,

whoever sees Jesus, sees the Father.

He is the revealer of God.

We look upon him and we see God in the flesh.

He says, whoever does not honor the son does not honor the father who sent him.

So those who claim to be honoring God, but who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ

as Lord, as the son of God, as God himself, they are not honoring God.

Do you see it friends?

All of these things. When the father works, Jesus works.

He does all that the father does. As the father gives life, the son gives life to whom he will.

The father has given all judgment to the son.

The son is worthy of the same honor as the father.

Whoever doesn't honor Jesus does not honor the father who sent him.

Jesus is the glory of God in the flesh. He is God incarnate.

Look at him. Look at him and marvel.

So that's the first thing that we should do. And then the offer,

look at the third part of this sermon and the last part of this text, verses 24 through 29.

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 has 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 come out and those who have done good to the resurrection

of life and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.

So there's so much in here, but the biggest thing that you need to take away

here is that God incarnate, the life giver and judge says there is a way that

you and I don't have to come into judgment.

There's a way that we can pass from death to life, that we who were spiritually

dead can be made spiritually alive now. How does it happen?

He says, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has now has eternal life.

We can escape judgment and spiritual death through faith in his word.

And yet, like many of these religious rulers in this story,

people hear this offer of forgiveness and reconciliation to God,

and they do not take hold of it by faith. Why?

Why is that? Why was it that these Jews were blind? Why was it that they were

able to sit on the edge of this canyon and say, I don't, I just don't see it.

I think, look back up at verse 10 in this passage.

We didn't read it today, but this was what, this is, this is their response

to this amazing healing that Jesus performs.

So the Jews said to the man who'd been healed, it is the Sabbath and it is not

lawful for you to take up your bed.

Hunter pointed this out last week. It is astonishing that this is their response.

Here is a man whose legs have not worked for 38 years, and their response is not lawful.

That's it. That's all they can see. That's all they can see.

They should have been jumping up and down with the man.

They should have been praising God. They should have been marveling.

That's the point that Jesus is trying to get them to see. You should be marveling.

What's on their minds? Not lawful. That's it. Not lawful.

About 25 years after this happens, the Apostle Paul pens a letter to a church in Corinth.

2 Corinthians chapter 3, Paul is going to talk about this kind of blindness.

2 Corinthians 3 · chapter mention

This blindness that you can look right at Jesus and all of this glory and miss it.

And just to kind of set it up, he's talking about, he's contrasting the old

covenant of the law with the new covenant of grace.

And he's saying that the law condemns and kills those So in other words,

those who seek acceptance with God through their performance and their ability

to keep God's law, his rules,

it ends up killing them and condemning them while the new covenant of grace

gives life through the spirit to those who seek acceptance with God through it.

And here's a snippet of that passage that's the most relevant for our story

in John on this morning, 2 Corinthians 3, 15 through 16.

Paul says, yes, to this day, whenever Moses, in other words,

the law, Moses wrote the first five books, the law, the first five books of

the Bible, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their hearts.

But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed.

And I think that's a great way for us to understand what's happening,

like beneath the surface in this passage.

These religious rulers still think they're capable of keeping the law.

They still think that they're good enough.

And that's why their first reaction is unlawful, right?

They're so quick to judgment in this story, and they can't feel happy for a

man who's healed after 38 years of paralysis because they see through this one lens.

There's a veil over their hearts. They cannot see the glory in front of them.

But remember what John said in the prologue to this book? he said, we have seen his glory.

He's not just meaning like with the eyes, you know, with his physical eyes, which he did.

He means we had eyes to see it.

We could see the glory of God through this person of Jesus Christ. We had eyes to see it.

Those who believed in him and to this day, those who believe in him.

That's a testimony that we can all say with John.

We have seen his glory.

But these religious rulers couldn't. All they could see was someone who needed to be put to death.

So let me just summarize what I'm trying to say here in just one simple sentence.

They couldn't see and appreciate the glory of God seen in the person of Jesus

Christ because they were still trusting in their own righteousness to save them. It's that simple.

Because what Paul said in that verse in 2 Corinthians 3, when one turns to the

Lord, the veil is removed.

And here's why that's so relevant for us, even those of us in this room who are believers.

I think that we still have a propensity in our flesh to go back to that.

Even though we have.

We love the Lord and we trust the gospel. We have these moments or these degrees

in which we slip back into that law-keeping.

We slip back into performance mentality. How am I performing?

That determines how God is pleased with me or not pleased with me.

Don't we? And because we do that, and when we do that, this very same thing

happens We can't appreciate the glory of God in the gospel, can we?

We can hear the word of God We can hear sermon preached We can read the word

of God We can peer over the edge into this grand canyon of glory,

We can see the glory of God exploding from the person of Jesus Christ and miss it.

And I think it is very frequently because we have slipped back into law-keeping for our acceptance.

There was a quote that I read this week that helped tremendously.

George Whitefield, one of the great preachers of the Great Awakening,

and we'll have it up here for you.

Listen to this. Before you can speak peace in your heart, you must not only

be made sick of your original and actual sin, but you must be made sick of your

righteousness, of all your duties and performances.

There must be a deep conviction before you can be brought out of your self-righteousness.

It is the last idol taken out of the heart.

The pride of our heart will not let us submit to the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

If you never felt the deficiency of your own righteousness, you cannot come to Jesus Christ.

Know, we might think regularly of our need to repent of sin, and we do,

but I think we might forget of our need to repent of our own self-righteousness,

the ways that we think we are,

nailing it, the ways that we think we are the example.

I don't know if that hits you the way It's me, but that hit me hard this week.

The religious rulers, they're a warning for us because they didn't see how much

they needed the righteousness of Jesus because they thought they had plenty of their own.

And as a result, they missed glory.

Jesus makes it clear in this passage, if you never marvel at him,

there is judgment coming.

Let me say that again. If you never marvel at Jesus, there's judgment coming.

If you don't ever see him as wonderful, judgment is coming.

But there's good news. When you turn to the Lord, the veil is removed.

When you turn from your own self-righteousness, from your sin,

when you turn to him, the veil comes off of your heart and you can see.

You can see glory, the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

So look at God who became flesh in order that he would be able to suffer and

die for your sins and marvel.

Stand in awe of the perfect righteousness that is being offered to you through faith in Jesus Christ.

And if you see it, if you can see the glory of God in Christ,

then the veil has been removed.

Look at him and be saved. Be forgiven.

Be reconciled to God.

Marvel at him so that you will not come into judgment but pass from death to

life. Let's pray together.

Lord Jesus, you are God.

We confess it. We declare it. You are God. You are life giver and you are judge.

And one day you will speak a word.

The dead from all of human history will be raised and summoned to judgment, to stand before you.

Lord, I pray that every person in this room, when that day comes,

would be able to stand before you clothed in your perfect righteousness,

because we had put our trust, not in our own selves,

in what we could do, but in what you have done.

Thank you, Jesus, for the cross. Amen.