Instant Replay

Jesus therefore answered and was saying to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner.” John 5:19

Doing – What an important verse this is!  Not simply because it begins with an announcement of personal endorsement of divine action (remember that “truly, truly” is really amen, amen) before the statement is given, but also because it implies that what comes next is the absolutely reliable foundation of the relationship between the Son and the Father.  And that relationship is based on submission and identical action.

Have you even wondered why Jesus did the things that He did?  Do you think that His approach to life was as random as ours seems to be?  This verse says, “No!”  This verse tells us that Jesus acted in submission to what He saw the Father doing (active present participle of the Greek verb poieo – continuously doing).  Jesus’ decisions and actions were identical to those actions the Father continued to do.  Jesus saw what the Father was doing, and did just that.  So, how did He see what the Father was doing?  Did He have some sort of divine X-ray vision or maybe an instant replay in His mind?  Did He exercise His powers as the Son of God, the second Person of the trinity, in order to get tuned into God’s choices?  I don’t think so.  If those options were true, then it would be impossible for Jesus to ask us to do the same.  We are not divine.  We don’t have the heavenly reply channel in our heads.  But we do have something that Jesus also had – we have the past history of God’s actions.  We have a catalog of the way God works and the way that He continues to work right in front of us.  It’s called the Bible.  In God’s Word we are able to see what the Father is doing, and, as a result, we can become apprentices and repeat those actions.  That’s how we know what the Father is doing.  We look to the past and discover the present.

Think about the choices and actions that you make today.  How many of those are the direct result of knowing how God acts and has acted?  Can you point to your efforts and draw a straight-line connection to something God has already done?  Do your actions demonstrate consistency with the character of God revealed and recorded in His Word?  You don’t need heavenly instant replay.  You need to be saturated in God’s Word.

Jesus was a Torah-observant Jew of the first century.  We know that at age twelve He already demonstrated remarkable understanding of the Scriptures.  We can justifiably assume that this means He committed vast portions of Scripture to memory.  He absorbed God’s Word into His life.  But He is not unusual in that regard.  Jewish education began and ended in God’s Word.  Pharisees were known for memorizing the entire Hebrew Bible.  Nearly every parable and every teaching of Jesus has Old Testament parallels and roots.  Jesus didn’t need divine replay.  He knew His God and Father because He was filled with the words of the Father.

You and I have the same words – and more.  Are we looking to God’s past actions to determine our present choices?  Or are we making it up as we go along?