Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Is Jesus Working in Your Life Right Now? | The Gospels | John 5:16-30

Episode Date: June 26, 2026

Is Jesus only concerned with your future, or is he working in your life right now? How can the Gospel still transform us today? What hope do Christians have for the future? In today's episode, Jeff shares how John 5:16-30 reveals that Jesus is already bringing people from death to life while preparing to make all things new. Read the Bible with us! This year, we’re exploring the Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—and it's never too late to join! Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passage: John 5:16-30

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Jeff Parrott. Growing up, the faithful educators at Chin Elementary School taught me and my fellow students about the six Ws. You're probably familiar with them, too. Some call this framework the reporter's questions or the Kipling method. Here's how it worked. Our weekly assignment was to find an article in the Kansas City Star and share with the class how each news story had six Ws. There is a who, a what, when, where, why, and a how. Now, obviously, that last W shows up at the end of the word, but we'll allow it. Those questions are not just profitable for understanding local events in the newspaper.

They're also key to investigating the cosmic events and the good news of Jesus. If you think about it, our time together in the gospel accounts here on 10-minute Bible talks has immersed us with those questions. Who is Jesus? What did he come to do? When did his activity take effect in our world and in our lives? Where does his activity play out? Why does he do it?

Why does it matter? And how does it happen to begin with? Now, all of these questions are vital and they're interconnected. If you separate one from the rest, the good news of the gospel falls apart. Our passage today centers on three of those Ws in a really significant way. It will help us consider who Jesus is and what he came to do, but it will also invite us to grapple with one of the Ws that can be underrated in the Christian life. When does his activity take effect in our lives and in our world?

Now, as we immerse ourselves in God's word, we'll see that the who, the what, and the when of Jesus is truly good news for us, both today and forever. As we get ready to approach God's Word in Scripture, let's pause and ask for His grace to move through our time. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the gift of life and breath, and we thank you for the gift of your word. We bring before you every part of our lives in this moment here and now. We bring before you our joys and our sorrows, our anxiety, and our excitement, our calendars and our contingencies, meet us in this space. Jesus, help us abide in you as we engage with your truth.

And Holy Spirit, we ask you to move in and through this time in John's gospel account. And as we read your living word, may it read us and restore us to new life with you. In Jesus' name, amen. Okay, let's set up a little context for our passage today, because as always, the context sets up the contours for the content we're reading. So what's our context here? Well, Jesus has just healed a man at the pool of Bethesda on the Sabbath. It was an event of massive significance that highlighted who he is and what he came to do as the king who brings restoration and life. Now, right after that healing on the Sabbath, Jesus makes an astounding claim in

verse 17. He says, my father is working until now, and I am working. Now, this claim is striking for two reasons. First, it's one of the many places where Jesus describes who he is. He is the son of the Heavenly Father. He's claiming that he's not an ordinary human. He is a human being who is also God incarnate, fully man and fully God. That's why in verse 18, the Jewish leaders respond so severely in wanting to kill him for this claim that he's equal with God. But this isn't just a claim about who Jesus is. It's also a claim about when his activity plays out in our world. The present tense is intentional here.

My father is working until now, and I am working. That Sabbath healing restoration of Jesus from earlier in chapter 5 is a window into a work that Jesus is doing here and now, both in the first century of the Roman Empire, and here and now, and whatever you're doing as you listen to this, the sun is working. Now the rest of our passage goes on to explore that when of Jesus, but first it emphasizes the who and the what of Jesus.

Let's look at his words in verse 21. For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the son gives life to whom he will. This is an amazing claim that explains the significance of the Sabbath healing we read about earlier. Jesus is set out to accomplish the mission that his father appointed to bring people from death to life. Now, if we mistake this as a little filler information, just a little filler advertisement in the paper, we will end up missing everything. I had a young life leader in high school summarize the point this way.

He said, Jesus didn't come to make bad people good. He came to make dead people alive. And of course, people who are made alive in Jesus start living like they're alive. They do undergo transformation. But the point of Jesus' mission isn't simply the refinement of our behavior. It's the restoration of our entire being. In the gospel, we go from death, death in our sins, death in decay, death in the decreation of a world that's not the way it's supposed to be, we go from that death to life. This is the astounding good news of what Jesus came to do.

Verse 24 continues that death to life emphasis as Jesus says this, truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who has sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life. This is some rich theology right here. Who is Jesus? Well, he is none other than the author of life. And as the author of life, his words recreate life in the gospel, just as his words created life in the beginning and creation. There's an assuring sense of finality with Jesus' words here,

and that assurance comes from noticing when Jesus' activity takes effect. There's a sense here in which this gospel movement from death to life is already and fully accomplished in Jesus. Whoever hears and believes has eternal life. They have passed from death to life. The win of Jesus' victory is playing out here and now. In his death, resurrection and reign, the eternal life of being connected to Jesus and knowing him is full. fully accomplished. There's nothing that we can add to his sovereign work of taking us from death to life. The assurance is that the work is already accomplished and is being applied today. But here's the amazing thing about how Jesus describes the win of his life-creating activity.

It is both something that is accomplished and it's something that we anticipate. Notice what he says in verse 25, 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. So this hour of new creation life is both here, but it's also coming. Jesus expands this point about the win of his restorative work in verses 28 through 29. He says, do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and it come out those who have done good to the resurrection of life and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment. Now, according to Jesus here, there is both a present tense experience of eternal life

with him and a future tense expectation. Many theologians call this the already and not yet of Jesus' kingdom. The win of his work is already accomplished and applied by the Holy Spirit, yet it is not fully consummated until he returns to inaugurate the bodily resurrection from the dead and the cosmic renewal of all things forever. Now, if this is the win of Jesus' kingdom, then we have to ask, why does it matter? Why does the already and not yet of his restoration matter for our lives today? Well, there are two ditches that we can fall into if we ignore Jesus' words in John's Gospel account here. The first ditch is this, to over-emphasize the already.

To assume that every single hope we have in the Christian life is settled and we can expect to live our best life now. We are in heaven now. When we only see the already, we minimize the reality that our world still isn't the way it's supposed to be. We miss the fact that as Paul says in Romans 8, all of creation is groaning for the renewal of all things. We mask over the current pain of the world, and we also minimize the future plan that God has for a new heavens and a new earth. As the Nicene Creed says, we are people who look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. So we can't just live in the already. We have to remember that the not yet is coming.

Now the other ditch that we can fall into is to only and exclusively focus on the not yet and miss the already. This view imagines that the hope of eternal life only exists in the future tense, and it makes little difference in the present. If you miss the already of Jesus' restoration, you lose the hope to grow in real holiness, to heal from real wounds, and to experience real gospel transformation today. Jesus wasn't joking when he said that eternal life is breaking into our world here and now, When you hear his voice and believe him, you are actively experiencing his life and his love as a preview of the life you'll have with him forever. The wonderful New Testament scholar, D.A. Carson, describes this already and not yet dynamic in John 5 as this. He says it's a foretaste and an anticipation of the resurrection life to come, but something of it is real in its substance.

This is a down payment of it. That's so good. He says this is both a foretaste of the future and a substance of it in the present. Now consider what that means for you and I today. If the win of Jesus's victory is already and not yet, then we can be bold enough to have real hope today. The author of life is working. We can pray together, lament together, fight sin together, and rejoice together because the Holy Spirit is building us up. as an outpost of new creation now. And at the same time, as we're bold, we're also humble enough to know that our hope

goes beyond today. Our lifetimes aren't big enough to hold the fullness of gospel hope. The author of life will continue working in us and through us and beyond us. His eternal life descends into the finite span of our lives, yet it also draws us into a story that will last forever.

So wherever you are in your journey with Jesus, I invite you to hear his words and believe him, to receive his life, embrace his love, and trust him as the one who makes dead people alive, both today and forever. Father, we praise you for your plan to recreate your entire creation and the fullness of time. Jesus, we need and trust you

as the one who brings us to life spiritually now and will also bring us to resurrection life forever when you return. Help us to be a people who are bold and humble. Spirit, would you bind us together as a people who anticipate the not yet and have the assurance and the already? We ask all of this because of your grace, for your glory, and in your story. In Jesus' name, amen.