23rd March 2026

23rd March 2026


Pray (ACts)


Read (John 5:16-30 focus v16-18)


Message (Alan Burke) 


Do you remember ‘The Generation Game’? I’m sure that for many you do. It was a staple of the telly. I remember Bruce Forsyth, and may I add, not in his original run as the presenter but in his second stint. I’m not that old, even though some of your children in Lissara think I’m hitting 60. I’m not. There was one time that I remember this fella doing plate spinning, and you know what I did? Well, actually, I didn’t because my mum saw the look in my eye and warned me if I even tried it, there would be consequences. Think though of a plate spinning; it doesn’t just happen, does it? It takes someone by their actions to start it spinning. It doesn’t take a genius to know what would happen if once it was started that it was just left to see what happened. You’d have a smashing time. 


Here Jesus responds to the Jews. They had come after him, persecuted. Can also be translated as pursued. They came to Jesus, and he says to them, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working.” Now, that might not seem like a big deal to us, but to the Jews, they were enraged. We are told that because of this, they tried all the harder to kill him, and the reason was that he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God. 


Think of that plate spinning again, it needs someone to actively keep it going. Well, Jesus saying that my Father is always at work to this very day is speaking of how the Lord is enabling the existence of creation itself. Some people have this view that God is like a watchmaker, made creation and let it tick over, but that is not the case. God is actively at work. After he had created all that is, he didn’t just put his feet up on the seventh day, no, for everything in creation is reliant on his continuing work to sustain it all, for everything is dependent on him for its continuing existence. The Father has been at work, through the Son sustaining all things. This world, the universe, and all that is, is reliant on the constant providential care of the Lord our God. All of creation, all that he has made, is dependent on him every single second of every single day (see Heb 1:3). 


In saying what he said, the Jews understood what he was saying; he also called God ‘My Father’, and it was as if Jesus was saying, “right now I, with my Father, are enabling your life, your being”. While they knew that Jesus was only able to do what he had done because he was from God (see Jn 3:2). They knew that God was with him, they knew that he couldn’t have done what he was doing unless God were with him, but they cannot comprehend what he has done, how in their mind he had broken the Sabbath even though there is no prohibition on acts of mercy, and they could not tolerate from him this claim that he was God. To them, Jesus was a blasphemer, for he was claiming to be God. 


There are lots of people today confused about who Jesus is. Some think he was a good teacher, maybe a good example; he’s to some was a revolutionary. People even in the church cherry-pick the bits that they like and ignore the rest. But Jesus wasn’t confused about who he was; he reveals himself as the Son of God. Jesus is God incarnate, the Jews desired to kill him all the more and they would succeed to an extent, he was nailed to a cross, fulfilling the plans and purposes of our Triune God from eternity past that he would die for our salvation and rise again defeating death and its power (Heb 2:14-15). 


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC
Q22 How did Christ, being the Son of God, become man?
A. Christ, the Son of God, became man, by taking to himself a true body and a reasonable soul, being conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost, in the womb of the Virgin Mary, and born of her, yet without sin.
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