Well, our sermon text is part of a lengthy discourse Jesus is having with the Jews. And this discourse grew out of a controversy. If you recall, the event that created the controversy was Jesus healing a man on the Sabbath. And when the Jews learned that he performed this work of healing on the Sabbath, they began to persecute him. Verse 16 says, for this reason, the Jews persecuted Jesus and sought to kill him because he had done these things on the Sabbath. And Jesus begins addressing his accusers in verse 17. And from verse 17 to the end of the chapter, he makes a series of statements concerning himself as well as others. And these statements form one of the Bible's greatest Christological passages in all of the scriptures. What is Christology? Well, it's the study of Christ. Well, I'm not sure the PC is on, but Christology is the study of Christ. Christology is the branch of Christian theology that studies the person, nature, and role of Jesus Christ. The fifth chapter of John is a rich theological treatment of the person, nature, and role of Jesus Christ. And to give you a quick outline of what the rest of the chapter contains, in the portion that serves as our sermon text this morning, Jesus is giving significant revelation about the nature of his divinity, what his relationship is to God the Father, and his role with giving life to mankind. In verses 22 through 29, Jesus reveals eschatological details about his judgment in the last day, how his judgment will result in the resurrection unto eternal life for those who believe in him, and the resurrection unto eternal damnation for those who do not believe in Him. And these details, of course, are very difficult for the Jews to hear and believe. It doesn't fit within their misguided and skewed theology. And Jesus knows this about them. And so in verses 30 and 47 of this chapter, he begins to explain that the testimony, that credible testimony has been given to them by four different credible witnesses. Testimony about Jesus has been given to the Jews by four different credible witnesses. John the Baptist bore witness about Jesus. The works that Jesus performs bear witness to himself. God the Father has borne witness of Jesus, and the scriptures have borne witness of Jesus. And then the chapter concludes with Jesus lamenting over the Jews' hardness of heart. Despite the compelling testimony of John the Baptist, Jesus' miracles, God the Father, and the Holy Scriptures, Jesus explains to the Jews that they are unwilling to come to Him to receive eternal life because they do not have the love of God in them. They do not have the love of God in them, making them entirely incapable of responding to Jesus by faith. Well, as I said, This chapter gives us a heavy dose of Christology. It's a foundational passage that contributes to our understanding of Jesus's divine nature, his role in salvation, and the ultimate consequences of belief or rejection in his message. And let me remind you, everything in this entire chapter is a single narrative. It's one continuous account of an incident in Jesus's life. A controversy developed because he healed the man at the pool of Bethesda on the Sabbath. And all this rich Christological truth is revealed to us in the ensuing conversation that Jesus is having with the Jews. And if you take just a few steps back and look at this chapter in its entirety, as I've just briefly outlined it for you, it certainly appears as if Jesus wanted this controversy to develop. He knew that the Jews were legalistic about the Sabbath. He knew that if he were to heal this man on a Sabbath, that the Jews would charge him with sin. And he knew that if they charged him with sin, he would have the opportunity to respond to them. Which is to say, he'd have the opportunity to reveal all of this Christological truth that we're reading about in this chapter. it's worth noting that Jesus did not take the path of least resistance in this situation. When the Jews accused him of breaking the Sabbath, he could have deescalated the situation. He could have done as he did in Luke 14, verse five, when he asked the Pharisees, in response to a similar situation, which of you, having a donkey or an ox that has fallen into a pit, will not immediately pull him out on the Sabbath day? In that situation, Jesus dealt with the Pharisees' misunderstanding of the Sabbath in a way that de-escalated. He was trying to help them see that they were misapplying the Sabbath commandment, that they had added man-made restrictions to the Sabbath that God never intended to be added. When he asked them about pulling a donkey out of the ditch on a Sabbath, they could not answer him one way or the other. They were left bewildered, and that put an end to that particular discussion. But here in John five, Jesus didn't address their misunderstanding of the Sabbath. He didn't try to deescalate the situation, rather he escalated it. He didn't try to address their misunderstanding of the Sabbath, he addressed their misunderstanding of himself. He addressed their misunderstanding of his divine authority and his unity and equality with the Father. And this of course escalated the tensions that existed between Jesus and the Jews. It was like throwing gasoline on a fire. When they accused him of breaking the Sabbath, Jesus answered them in verse 17, my father has been working until now and I have been working. Now notice how he calls God my father and not our father. By saying my father, Jesus is claiming to have a unique relationship with the father. And the Jews understood this. As we'll see in a moment, they clearly understood Jesus was claiming equality with God. But you and I might not recognize this as readily as the Jews did. And this is because we, as believers, as Christian believers, are able to refer to God as our father as well. This is something that we've grown accustomed to, calling God our Father. And we've been taught this from the scriptures. We don't do it out of sheer invention. This is what even the Lord Jesus has taught us to do. For example, if you consider Jesus' teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, he taught us that God is our Father when he said things like, do not do your charitable deeds before men to be seen by them, otherwise you have no reward from your Father in heaven. Or, look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. And if you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father, who is in heaven, give you good things to those who ask of Him? When Jesus' disciples asked him to teach them to pray, he instructed them in Matthew 6, 9, in this manner, therefore pray, our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. And so there's definitely a sense in which believers are able to refer to God as our Father. And when we do this, we're not claiming equality with the Father. So when we read in verse 17 that Jesus says, my father and not our father, we might think that this is because the Jews that he's speaking to are unbelievers. We might think that Jesus is essentially saying to the Jews, God is not your father, he's my father. He's not your father because you don't believe in me. And in a sense, there's truth to that. That is in one sense what Jesus is doing. When we get to John chapter eight, we're gonna read about another conversation Jesus was having with these Jews. And in that conversation, Jesus explained that God is not their father, but the devil is their father. And so it's true that Jesus would not say our father when speaking with the Jews because God truly was not the father of the Jews in that sense. But in verse 17 of our sermon text, Jesus' primary intention is not that, is not to identify the Jews as unbelievers. Rather, his primary intention is to identify who he is. that he, Jesus, has a special relationship with the Father that nobody else is capable of possessing. And to see this, we first need to recognize the differences between Jesus's sonship with the Father and our sonship with the Father. We can recognize at least three differences between His Sonship and our Sonship. The first has to do with the origin of Sonship. Jesus' Sonship is eternal, whereas our Sonship is through adoption. John 1.1, 1.14, and 17.5 teach us that Jesus is the eternally begotten Son of God, meaning He has always existed in a perfect, eternal relationship with the Father. Christians, on the other hand, are sons and daughters of the Father through adoption. Romans 8, 15 and Ephesians 1, 5 explain that we become children of God through faith in Jesus Christ and by the work of the Holy Spirit. So we are not eternally begotten sons of God as Jesus is. So that's the first difference. A second difference has to do with the nature of sonship. Jesus's sonship is based on his divine nature. And to use a theological term, Jesus is consubstantial with the Father. Consubstantial means that Jesus is of the same substance with the Father, or the same essence. We cannot make that claim for ourselves. Christians are sons and daughters of God through our union with Christ. And by virtue of being united to Christ by grace through faith, we become joint heirs with Christ, but we don't possess the same divine essence like Jesus does. And so that's the second difference. A third difference has to do with function. Jesus' sonship, uniquely qualifies him to be the mediator, to function as a mediator between God and man. In 1 Timothy 2.5, along with John 14.6, we're taught that Jesus' unique relationship with the Father makes him the only mediator between God and men. You and I as Christians, we are not mediators in that sense of the word. Even though we have the privilege of addressing God as our father, and even though we are invited to come boldly to the throne of grace, we don't function as the mediator who reconciles sinners to the father. Only Jesus does that, and it's by virtue of his sonship that he's capable of doing that. And so when Jesus is speaking to the Jews in our sermon text and he says, my father, He's making an enormous claim. And the Jews, they understood that he was making an enormous claim. They understood that he was claiming equality with God, which they thought was blasphemy. And so they thought that Jesus should be punished as a blasphemer according to the law of Moses. Verse 18 says, 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. How is Jesus making himself equal with God in verse 17? Not only by calling God his Father, but by claiming to work in the same manner as the Father was working. The Jews understood, now remember, this is Jesus' response to the allegation that he broke the Sabbath. The Jews understood that when Genesis 2 verse three says that God rested on the seventh day, this doesn't mean that God took a day off from governing and upholding his creation. God did rest on that day, but he rested from his creative work, not from his providential work. And Jesus knew that the Jews understood this. He knew they believed that God supplies the needs of all his creatures regardless of the day of the week. Jesus knew that they believed, the Jews believed, that God makes the sun rise and set and the tides ebb and flow and the rain fall and the winds blow and the grass grow on the Sabbath just as he does on every other day of the week. God is busily at work. every day, every moment, every second, upholding his creation, and the Jews knew this. And so the claim Jesus is making with the Jews is just as my father is performing divine providential work on the Sabbath, so I am performing divine providential work on the Sabbath. That's Jesus' response to the allegation that he broke the Sabbath. You Jews believe that God works on the Sabbath? Well, I'm doing the same work that God does, my father. And when the Jews discerned Jesus' claim and charged him with making himself equal with God, Jesus continued to escalate the situation. He answered them in verse 19. Most assuredly, I say to you, the son can do nothing of himself but what he sees the father do, and whatever he does, the son also does in like manner. Now, this is Jesus' response to the claim that he was making himself equal with God, and he's essentially saying, yes, I am equal with God. And yet, ironically, this is one of those verses that the cults use, and the enemies of the cross use to attempt to deny the deity of Christ. Jehovah's Witnesses, for example, will call attention to Jesus' statement here in verse 19, where he says, the son can do nothing of himself. And they'll say, see, Jesus is inferior to the father. If he were equal with the father, then he wouldn't need to see what the father is doing. Obviously, he doesn't have the same power as a father, or he doesn't have the same authority as a father, or he doesn't have the same knowledge as a father. However you look at it, Jesus cannot be equal with a father because he says that he can do nothing of himself. But the only way that Jehovah's Witnesses can get any mileage out of this argument is by divorcing Jesus' statement from its context. When you interpret what he is saying in its context, you'll notice that Jesus is actually establishing his identity, not denying it. Look again at verse 19. At the same time, Jesus says, the son can do nothing of himself, but what he sees the father do, he also says, for whatever the father does, the son also does in like manner. And when you consider both of these statements together, allowing both of them to inform your interpretation of the point that Jesus is making, then it's apparent that he's saying he never acts independently of the Father. He never acts independently of the Father. Why not? Because they're unified in will. They are unified in will. The will of the Son is the same as the Father. And this is exactly what the rest of scriptures teach us regarding the Trinity, right? That the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are three distinct persons, yet share the same divine essence. And sharing the same divine essence, they are completely unified in will, and purpose, and work, et cetera. And so far from being a denial of His divinity and equality with the Father, the assertion Jesus is making in verse 19 is an affirmation of His divinity and equality with the Father. It's a statement only a divine person of the Trinity could truthfully make. And not only does the Son do whatever the Father does, but the Son does it as the Father does, Jesus is saying. Meaning everything Jesus does comports with the absolute perfection of His divine union with the Father. This is an incredibly strong statement. leading us to the firm conviction that Jesus is equal with the Father, that he's in unity with the Father. Now building upon this, Jesus continues this Christological revelation in verse 20. 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. Here we see The mutual cooperation between the father and the son further explained. The father is showing the son whatever he does, Jesus says here in verse 20. In the previous verse, Jesus said that the son does whatever he sees the father do. And here in verse 20, Jesus says that the father shows the son all things that he himself does. This amplifies the claim that Jesus made in verse 19. It amplifies it because somebody might try to argue that, all right, Jesus does everything he sees the Father do, but Jesus doesn't see everything the Father does. He only sees part of what the Father does, and so he mimics or imitates the part he sees, but the Father does more than what Jesus is able to see. Again, the cults and the enemies of the cross might try to argue that way. But again, putting everything in context, verse 20 eliminates that argument entirely because verse 20 says that the father shows Jesus everything he does. There's nothing the father does that Jesus doesn't see because the father shows Jesus everything and Jesus does everything that he sees exactly in the same manner as the father does it. So once again, we must not think that this is implying that Jesus is inferior to the Father. The showing that's described here in verse 20 is not that of a teacher showing a student something the student doesn't know. The showing here refers to the cooperation between the Father and the Son. The Father hides nothing from the Son, and the Son hides nothing from the Father. They are completely unified in all they do. There's a unity of will, unity of purpose, unity of works of providence, and a unity of love. Now brothers and sisters, the unity that Jesus is describing in our sermon text should be a wonderful consolation to your soul. As a Christian, you can be assured that the will and works of the Father are always in unity with the works and will of the Son. and vice versa, which is to say if you consistently apply this truth in your life, then you will walk in great comfort and assurance in your relationship with God. Let me give you five practical examples of how that works, or five practical examples of the consolation and understanding and assurance that I'm referring to. First, If you know that the will and works of the Father and Son are completely unified, then this truth utterly destroys the caricature that the Father is the angry God of the Old Testament looking for people to punish, and Jesus is the loving Savior of the New Testament, always willing to extend grace and mercy to wayward sinners. There can be no such dichotomy if the will and works of the Father and Son are unified. That's a false dichotomy. What's true of God the Father is true of the Son. What's true of the Son is true of God the Father. If the Son is full of grace and mercy, the Father is full of grace and mercy. If the Father has wrath against sin, the Son has wrath against sin. Second, A similar misunderstanding is that the Father is the law giver who requires strict obedience to the law, while Jesus came to abolish the law and replace it with grace. This misunderstanding promotes the mistaken belief that the Father and Son are working from different plans. One of which, one plan which is established in legalism and the other plan which is established in grace. But knowing that the Father and Son are unified in will and works assures us that the grace we associate with Jesus has always been the essential plan of the Father in His redemptive plan. And the law which the Father gave in the Old Testament through Moses has always been the plan of Jesus Christ as well. Third, Ephesians 1.4 tells us that before the foundations of the world were laid, you were chosen by the Father to be holy and without blame. If you're a Christian, Ephesians 1.4 is saying that you were chosen by the Father before the foundations of the world to be holy and without blame. And because Jesus is completely unified with the Father in this matter, you can know that his atoning work was accomplished specifically for you. Specifically for you. Jesus didn't just die for the sins of the world in a general sort of way and then leave it up to each individual to decide whether to take advantage of that atonement or not. No, Jesus knew your name when he made himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant and coming in the likeness of man. He was specifically pursuing you when he said that he came to seek and to save that which was lost. He knew the exact payment that was required for each and every one of your specific sins. And he knew the love he possessed for you when he submitted to drinking the dredges of the cup of wrath on your behalf. That, brothers and sisters, is a deep consolation because, and we know this, we can have this assurance because we know that if God elected us, chose us for salvation from before the foundations of the world, and the will and works of Jesus are completely aligned with and unified with the Father, then Jesus died specifically for you. He made atonement specifically for you. The fourth assurance. Romans 8.34 tells us that Jesus intercedes for believers at the right hand of the Father. The unity between the Father and the Son means that Jesus' advocacy on your behalf will always be effective with the Father. It will always be effective with the Father. You are constantly represented by Jesus before the Father, and the great comfort is in knowing that Jesus doesn't need to twist the Father's arm to continue to be gracious to you. No, the Father shares Jesus's heart for you. The Father shares Jesus's love for you. The Father shares Jesus's advocacy for you. And so this is a great assurance to us as well. And fifth, Jesus said that he will come again to take us to be with him. And of course, This is not only His promising commitment, but that of the Father as well, and that of the Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, which means all three persons of the Trinity are working to preserve you for the day of Christ's return. All three persons of the Trinity are working in unity with each other, in step with each other, in harmony with each other, to preserve you for the day of Christ's return. All three persons are actively involved in your everyday affairs, protecting you, securing you, causing you to persevere in the faith so that you live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. This blessed hope of Christ's return is what Jesus is describing in verse 21 of our sermon text. Still speaking to the defiant and angry Jews, he continues to make claim of his divinity. Verse 21, for as the father raises the dead and gives life to them, so even so the son gives life to whom he will. Even so, the Son gives life to whom he will. With this statement, Jesus is expanding the claim of his equality with the Father. Having already established his absolute equality in will and works, works of providence, Jesus is now affirming his absolute equality in sovereign rights. Jesus is laying claim to divine sovereignty and to share this with the Father. Notice how verse 21 begins with a conjunction for. This is showing us that Jesus is advancing the subject that he was just speaking about. And the subject he was just speaking about is doing greater works than the physical healing he had just performed at the Pool of Bethesda. The greater works he's referring to, therefore, is giving life. It's not just giving life, but giving life to whom he will. And the emphasis here is upon the sovereignty of Jesus in determining who he gives life to and who he does not give life to. Jesus makes that decision, he's saying. And in this regard, the healing that he performed at the Pool of Bethesda serves as an object lesson. Jesus didn't heal every sick and infirmed person at the pool. Rather, he chose only one person to be healed. And he chose only one person who would be healed, and that one person showed no inclination or evidence of faith in Jesus. As if you recall back to the sermon that was preached when Jesus healed that man, that man was not a believer. That man showed absolutely zero signs of faith, both before the healing and after the healing. After the healing, he actually turned on Jesus, ratted Jesus out to the Jews, putting the blame of working on the Sabbath onto Jesus, not himself. And so Jesus chose one person out of everybody at the pool, and that one person showed no inclination or evidence of faith. If you remember the rebuke that Jesus gave to Nicodemus in John 3 verse 12, he said, if I tell you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? And the premise that Jesus is implying here is that the truth that is established in earthly matters has correspondence to the truth that's established in heavenly matters. There's correspondence between these things. Correspondence between the earthly and the heavenly. Well, Jesus sovereignly chose to heal this man at the pool of Bethesda without any considerations about whether that man was worthy of such a gift. And this serves as an earthly example of the greater works that Jesus is doing in the spiritual realm. The greater works he's talking about here in verse 21 of our sermon text. Or verse 20, I should say. Jesus does not give life to all men spiritually, but to whom he wills. Jesus does not give life to those who are worthy, because none are truly worthy. but only to whom he wills. Jesus does not give life to those who are seeking after God, for none seek after God, but only whom he wills. And He does not give life to whom, to those who will, those who run, as it says in Romans 9, but Jesus only gives life to whom the Son of God wills, whom He wills. Do you see the connection that is in our text here or in this chapter between the physical healing of the man at the pool that we read about at the beginning of the chapter and the greater works that Jesus spoke about in verse 20 and the absolute sovereignty he is claiming to possess in verse 21 as he exercises those greater works? This is what Jesus is saying the Jews will marvel about. When Jesus said to the Jews in verse 20 that you may marvel, the pronoun that he uses is in an emphatic form. And this implies that he's not only speaking about the Jews, those specific Jews that he was talking to, but he was using the pronoun you in a more generic sense to include people like the Jews. In other words, to include unbelievers. The Jews and other unbelievers will not know what to make of the mighty works of Jesus. This is the claim that Jesus is making. They will not know what to do with the mighty works of Jesus. They will see his greater works. They will be astonished by his mighty power, but they will not praise him as a sovereign Lord that he is. They will not give glory to him as the king of kings. That is, not until the final exhibition of His power is performed. Philippians 2, verses 10 and 11 tell us that the day will come when at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow of those in heaven, of those on earth, and those under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. That day is coming, but until that day, the unbelievers will see the mighty works of Jesus, those greater works where he's giving life to whom he will, transforming people, and they will marvel in the sense that they will acknowledge this transformation of regeneration, and yet they will not give God glory for it. So the question I posed to you this morning is where do you fit into this spectrum? Where do you fit in, dear friends? Jesus is telling us that everyone marvels at his great works, everyone. Nobody can ignore the fact that Jesus is giving life to whomever he wills. No one can overlook the reality that Jesus is exercising absolute authority over the lives of sinners, regenerating them, transforming them, making them new creations. Have you listened to Russell Brand speak lately? I don't know if you don't know who Russell Brand is. He's an English celebrity, comedian, actor, and activist. He came from a broken home. He was on the streets by the age of 16. He was heavily involved for many years of his life in drugs and prostitution. He's been charged with several allegations of inappropriate behavior with women, but this year, Russell Brand began reading the Bible. In April, he was baptized. And a few weeks ago, he was interviewed by Tucker Carlson. And I have to say that it's marvelous to use Jesus's word. It's marvelous to hear Russell Brand giving praise and glory to Jesus Christ. He is publicly acknowledging his sin. He is publicly turned away from his sin. He describes his experience of forgiveness. He's speaking about salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ Jesus alone. He's giving glory to Jesus Christ for having chosen him for salvation. And the depth of gratitude in Russell Brand's prayers make it sound like he's been a Christian for several decades. People are marveling at this. People in England are marveling. People in Hollywood are marveling. People from MTV are marveling. He used to host an MTV show. His former drug dealers are marveling. Tucker Carlson is marveling. Christians are marveling. Atheists are marveling. Nobody can ignore the fact that something transformative has happened to Russell Brand. Everyone who knows him sees a drastic change in his life, and this is what Jesus is referring to as marveling. When you marvel at these sorts of transformations, dear friends, whether it's a celebrity who has a rebellious and sinful past, or it's your coworker who never wanted to talk about Jesus Christ. or it's your family member who was a nominal Christian his whole life, but suddenly became enthusiastic about Jesus. When you marvel at these sorts of transformations that Christ is doing, what becomes of your marveling? That's the question. What becomes of your marveling? Where does it lead you? Does it bring you to a place where you give glory to Jesus Christ? Do you recognize it as the greater works Jesus continues to do amongst his people? Or do you try to offer a naturalistic explanation for the transformation that's happening in front of everybody's eyes? An explanation that doesn't involve Jesus exercising absolute sovereignty over the lives of those he chooses? Or, and perhaps this one might hit a little closer to home, Is there cynicism in your heart? Are you hesitant to attribute glory to Christ for fear that you might have judged the situation prematurely? I think we can all recall a time when we got excited about the news of some high profile person converting to Christianity only to discover later on that it wasn't real. Maybe it was a rap artist. Maybe it was a rock star. Maybe it was an actor, or an author, or a radio personality, or a former president of the United States. And when this happens a couple times to us, We have a tendency to become cynical. And if cynicism sets in, we are reluctant to give glory to God for the mighty work that he's doing in the lives of people. A person makes a seemingly credible profession of faith in Jesus Christ, and we say to ourselves, yeah, right, we'll see. Let this thing play out for a couple years. We'll see where they are down the road. Meanwhile, withholding glory from Christ. Is this the type of marveling that Christians ought to do? What if Russell Brand proves to be a false convert? What if, in a year from now, he renounces Christ, renounces his baptism, renounces everything positive he's ever said about Christianity, would that mean that we were wrong to have given praise and glory to Jesus Christ for what appears to be a genuine conversion? No, not at all. If genuine fruit appears to be growing on the tree, then Jesus deserves the glory. It's not our role to withhold the glory that's due Christ for fear that somebody might prove to be a false convert in the future. Rather, we should be quick to give Christ the praise and glory for the great work that we perceive Him doing. And if we later discover that a person is a false convert, then we give praise and glory to Christ for exposing the pretenders from amongst us. We give Christ glory for exposing the pretenders from amongst us. Realize, brothers and sisters, there will always be pretenders amongst us. There will always be people who talk the talk. But eventually, they will be exposed for who they truly are. In 1 John 2, verse 19, the apostle John tells us how Jesus exposes pretenders. He writes, they went out from us, but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out that they might be made manifest, exposed. that none of them were of us, that they were not truly of us. Do you hear what John is saying? The Lord Jesus Christ is the one who will work out, who will expose the pretenders. We don't have to withhold the glory that is due Christ because we're afraid there might be a pretender amongst us. Jesus gives life to whomever he wills. And when it appears that he has given life to a sinner who was dead in his trespasses and sin, we should marvel. And that marveling should bring us to the point where we recognize that this is the greater work that Jesus is describing in our sermon text. And we should be quick to give Christ praise and glory for these greater works. Such praise is never misplaced. Such glory is never undeserved. And when we consider ourselves, how we were dead in the trespasses and sin, we should marvel that the Lord chose to give life to us. You and I should see our own redemption as part of the greater works that our Savior continues to perform, those greater works that he's describing in verse 20 of our sermon text. And we need to praise him for these greater works, just as we would praise him for the transformation he accomplishes in a loved one or a celebrity. We should praise him for the transformation that he not only did accomplish but continues to accomplish in those of us who are walking in Christ Jesus. Our lives should be a continual act of worship. As it says in Romans 12 verse one, our bodies need to be presented as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. This is our reasonable service. Brothers and sisters, this is your reasonable service. It is not reasonable. to have a cynical heart that withholds praise and glory to Jesus Christ. But it is reasonable to present yourself as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. That, brothers and sisters, is the primary way, one of the primary ways in which you offer praise and glory to Jesus Christ. Amen, and let's pray.