The Prepper Broadcasting Network - 2024.01.20 - Reliance - Unwritten Works

Episode Date: January 21, 2024

God bless the Menking Family

Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. Father, thank you for your mercy, your grace, your faithfulness, your love, the peace that passes all understanding, your protection, your provision, your glory, your holiness. Thank you for the cross. Thank you for the resurrection. Thank you for the atonement. Jesus, we love you. We praise you. We want to follow you. It is the earnest desire of our hearts to be in line with your will. We pray that you would strengthen our faith this day and this year, and that you would move us forward into a greater relationship with you, into a more powerful relationship

with you, and into a mode of being where your glory would be seen through us. Lord, advance your kingdom. Advance your name. Glorify your name. Let it be lifted up. We just come to you, Lord, in an open, honest sense of repentance, of humility, of worship, of desire, knowing, Lord, that all good things come from you. We bless you, God. We praise you, Jesus.

We welcome you, Holy Spirit, into our lives and into this conversation. Redeem the time, Lord, in your name. Amen. My daughter just finished reading through the book of John for the first time today. She had some help, but she read it almost entirely by herself, which is wonderful. And I'm extremely proud of her. And she asked me a question because she was looking at the Bible we were reading from. She said, Daddy, there's a lot of pages left.

What do we do when we finish it? And I told her, you start again. You keep reading. The Bible is a book that never stops to give us nourishment. And by that, I mean it never stops providing nourishment for us. The Holy Spirit is always ready to teach us to instruct from the pages of the word so that our lives would be enriched, that our lives would be restored so that we would be motivated and nourished and comforted and protected and given wisdom and given understanding as we draw nearer to God and understand more about his character.

And as I was thinking about these things, as my daughter read the final verse of the book of John, I was reflecting on this because the word of the Lord is all sufficient, contains everything we need, and then some. But there are many, many things that Jesus did, many things that Jesus said that were not recorded in the same way as the texts of the Gospels and in the texts of Scripture. The Word of God, the speaking forth of God, is what is responsible for creation itself. So everything, in a way, can point back to him. And so first we want to say that we don't want to ascribe to a position where Jesus is being consistent and complete in the Gospels, but then he had all sorts of these

secret teachings that ended up going in a different direction or that contradicted or that would steer us in a different way. That is not the character of God. God is not a deceiver. God knows how to give good gifts to his children. He knows our hearts and what we need. He knows the state that we get in when we are not earnestly seeking to be reliant on his Holy Spirit. He knows who we are. He knows where we're going. He knows what we know. And he wants to be known by us.

He wants to be loved by us. He wants to be in relationship with us. And he wants to be known by us. He wants to be loved by us. He wants to be in relationship with us. And he wants to draw us to himself. And the question for us is, will we respond to that call? And when we contemplate how many other words Jesus must have spoken, how much additional richness is there, we can think about John's statement here, and we could certainly understand it as a plain language hyperbole, but maybe it's not. Maybe it's not really a hyperbole, an over-exaggeration. John says, now there are also many other things

that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. Well, think about it this way. What did Jesus do in your life yesterday? What did he provide in terms of your physical well-being? Even if your health is not perfect, what did the Lord provide? How many cells do you have in your body? Trillions. All of them are in a process of growth. Some of them expire. Others are expanded. They are always working, not just the cells themselves, but the molecules and organelles inside of these things. It is the upholding power of God that keeps those rules

and the chemical laws and everything, and even the physical structure of the universe of creation in right order and moving according to plan, if God did not sustain those things, if God did not actively put power forth to keep these things in existence, they simply wouldn't persist. They would cease to be. And so I think we can take it as literally true that all of the things, even that Jesus did for us just in one day yesterday, are certainly far more than we could account for, let alone appreciate. But it goes so far above and beyond. But it goes so far above and beyond. And if we think down to the microcosm, and we understand that the way that our genetic code functions, if there are mutations in any portion, that can be the start of a cascade

that can completely undo the functioning of our physical body. How many potentially damaging mutations did God prevent in our bodies? Yes, we could think of it as a probability distribution. We could think of it in the form of the mathematics that we have inferred underpinning it. But what if it is more appropriate to think about these things as the power of God present in our lives. The Bible says that God sends his reign on the just and the unjust alike. It is part of his mercy, part of his grace. And so we wouldn't look to these sorts of things in terms of God providing protection against mutation in the quote unquote normal course of our lives to say, okay, well, God protects some people and not others.

We don't want to parse it with too fine of a comb here. But what we do want to say is that it would certainly be appropriate to acknowledge the works of God in our own life, even to the extent of acknowledging that there are things that God is actively doing for us right now, right here, as you listen. God is enabling this sound to be interpreted by you and understood by you. There are vast complexities and vast mysteries associated with this. From the vibration of your eardrum, to the operation of the very small bones in your inner ear, to the substance of the medium of air that is vibrating with the sound waves that are being produced, let alone the electronic communication that is facilitating this kind of transaction,

and perhaps most mysteriously of all, the way that our brain and our mind interpret these signals and are capable of attaching meaning to them. This is not simple stuff, even though it is such a component part of our everyday lives that we can certainly take it for granted. But the detail in the operation, the complexity, the magnificence of the design, the power and wisdom of God that is shown forth in establishing these things is just beyond our ability to truly comprehend and take in. And so I would say to John, yes and amen. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that

of the other things that Jesus did, if every one of them were written, suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that were written. Now, when we see the Lord face to face, when we have a chance to peel back the corridors of time, when we have the chance to learn from not just the master and teacher, but the Lord and the King, the God who created everything, we will have absolutely no doubt remaining about the wisdom and the active power of God, and we will throw ourselves before him in gratitude, thanking him eternally for his mercies and for his provision. But right now, what can and should we do in order to adjust our perspective so that we can be better disciples, so that we can follow the Lord and honor him and glorify him the way that he deserves to be honored? Well, first and foremost, we should seek to understand more about his character and the works that he is performing. Not just in upholding the course of creation through his power, as if that's not preposterously wondrous enough. But personally, his actions towards each and every one of us. towards each and every one of us. We don't have a God that is represented by deist propositions who simply creates and then withdraws. We have a God who is intimately involved,

both in terms of knowing and then in terms of acting in our lives all the time. in terms of acting in our lives all the time. And we, in our current state of affairs, I think just have a tremendously difficult challenge to deal with in the form of simply not recognizing the activity of God, of not recognizing the supernatural power that we are exposed to all the time and that we interact with, even if we don't admit it as such. And this is not to say that things that happen according to natural law, to physics, to the way that God has designed the universe are in the same categorization of a prophecy, a vision of the Lord, these truly overwhelming out of the ordinary supernatural experiences. But we would be remiss to say that the operation of natural law and the order of creation that God has set about is completely separate from the supernatural power of God. And perhaps because

of the context of the way that supernatural is used, it's not the best term here. Maybe a better term is transcendent because the power of God is transcendent. The source of this universe, the source of everything that we see is ultimately coming from a power, namely Jesus, who is beyond this universe, who was before this universe, who is permanent, eternal, mighty, glorious, and deserves to be recognized as such. Now we run into a bit of difficulty because we recognize that creation has fallen. Creation is decaying. Creation will fade away. There will be a new heavens and new earth. The Bible says that creation is groaning to see this new state of affairs, the revelation of the sons of men, this resurrection into

righteousness, this undoing of the curse that was brought about by sin in the Garden of Eden. sin in the Garden of Eden. And yes, we look around and it is very easy for us to point to evil, disorder, disunity, things that are elements of the fallen nature of creation. And we can ask, well, where is God in this? And if we adopt those twin perspectives, and even for devout Christians, devout followers of Jesus who have walked with him for some time, these are the kind of thoughts that can come creeping in. treat the things that we experience day in and day out as mundane items, us just waking up, for instance, and our bodies continuing to function even at whatever level, as mundane things that are simply par for the course and built into our expectation. And we just don't associate those things with the action of God at all. And then secondly, to look around and to see the catastrophic evil that is brought about by wickedness, by evil, by the forces of spiritual darkness.

And what I would posit to you, brothers and sisters, is that our scale here is improperly calibrated. In these balances, it seems like there's replete examples of evil and pain and damage and suffering and all of these things that weigh down the scales on one end. And we are in a society where it really does feel like the only thing that we would accept as evidence of weightiness on the other side, on the side of good, on the side of God, are these hyper dramatic events, hyper visual, undeniableiable these sort of overt manifestations of supernatural power where you know if we if we see hundreds thousands millions of people being killed stricken with disease dying all all of these drastic evils and then we only count scenarios where, well, with my own two eyes, I see someone raised from the dead. With my own two eyes, I see people healed dramatically. And with my own two

eyes, I see a tremendous revival. If we're not counting the ongoing merciful actions of a long-suffering God in our own life to protect us from temptation for providing us his Holy Spirit, if we're not counting those things, then yes, the scales are always going to be balanced towards the evil that is so visceral that we can see, that we can feel, that is being projected towards us over and over and over again in greater and greater degrees of intensity. And so it feels like we're using an unfair and unrighteous balance, something that Proverbs speaks against. If we are going to say, where is God, then we have to be willing to consider the entire scope of the landscape where his actions are and where they apply. Perhaps, brothers and sisters, while there is certainly room to pray for and appreciate and

earnestly desire these unique and more rare manifestations of the supernatural power of God, perhaps God also deserves glory for the things that he does every single picosecond of every single day to sustain us, to keep us, to hold the fabric of the universe together. Here too is a demonstration of God's power. Here too is a demonstration of God's power. Here too is a demonstration of God's goodness and his love. And I think that regardless of our open-mindedness to this idea that the supernatural works of God extend far beyond what we have pigeonholed them into, however far we go down that track, I don't think it's far enough. I don't think we could ever come to the end of that because of the infinitude of God, the transcendence of God.

We're just not going to be able to on this side of eternity before we are perfected and we see Jesus face to face and we see God face to face. We're just not in a position to properly understand it. But we should certainly move in that direction, brothers and sisters. We should aim to be perfected. And part of that is the appreciation for what God is doing. Part of that is an acknowledgement of who God is and the work that he has to do. Did you tell all of your mitochondria? Did you direct them to perform the sophisticated, incredibly complex chemical operations that keep your body moving? Are you in control of any of

that? If not, who is? Well, it's either impersonal natural laws of physics, chemistry, biology that operate completely independently of God, or more properly understood from a Christian perspective, it is the power and agency of God that has put these things together in the form of creation and continually upholds them by the work of his power. And so when we see this, when we acknowledge it, when we have this kind of change of perspective, what should our situation be like? Well, it tells us that we are truly never alone and that we don't have to see some form of grandiose writing in the sky or receive a kind of direct linguistic personal revelation from God to know that God is actively working in a way

that is beyond just meaningful to us, but absolutely necessary for our own existence to be sustained. And we've heard it so many times that it just kind of becomes cliche. It's like, well, thank you. Thank you, God, for waking up for me today. And, you know, many people wake up and they don't feel like that. They don't feel gratitude for being woken up. You know, they might in a more cynical or nihilistic or angry state, even curse that kind of thing. That has happened before, even to men who God declares righteous. When we think about Job and we think about people cursing the day that they were born, saying it would have been better off if they hadn't been.

have been better off if they hadn't been. Even if that kind of viewpoint is wrong, it doesn't result in this permanent inescapable condemnation from the Lord. So how do we balance these things? What should the implications be? Well, brothers and sisters, we are never alone. We should acknowledge the activity of God in our own life. And we should understand that even if when we say a prayer, when we reach out, when we seek God earnestly, if we don't get exactly the answer that we want on the exact timetable, should that lead us to conclude that God's mercies have been removed from us? to conclude that God's mercies have been removed from us? Perhaps not, I dare say. Perhaps we can still see evidence of the supernatural, or perhaps better said, the transcendent, all around us, inside of us. The fact that anything ever goes right at all, The fact that everything holds together at all is nothing short of a miracle. It's nothing short of God's special activity to sustain things. And frankly, even from my

own perspective on my own life, I don't give God enough credit for these things. I go on autopilot. When I wake up, even if I'm doing a good job with my spiritual disciplines and I'm in the word and I'm praying and I'm seeking God, I don't always actively recognize his supernatural work. I just know that the Lord has been good. Despite all of the things that can go wrong, despite the frustrations, everything else, I just know that the Lord is good. But when you stop to think about it and you actively engage with it, it's all around us. It's inside of us. It's in every single thing that we do, everywhere that we walk, every breath that we breathe, everywhere that we go, every

beat of our heart, everything is a gift from God. And even though that's been spoken over and over and over again, that kind of truism is there for a reason. And if we would really meditate upon that, I believe that power, that understanding, that wisdom would forever banish from us this tendency that we have towards tipping the scales in favor of evil because we see these clear examples, but we don't necessarily have countervailing, overt, preposterously large, rare, and unique supernatural miraculous acts that we can point to in our own lives to the same degree. But when we see everything that's around us, when we understand the nature of God and the nature of creation, it should give us a much greater pause

for avoiding the temptation to fall into this cycle of loneliness or despair or depression or temptation. It should give us a tremendous comfort, a tremendous peace, a tremendous hope, a tremendous joy to open our eyes and understand what goes into us being able to see. And even if we're deprived of our sight or it's deficient in some way, what goes into us simply being able to exist in whatever form, in whatever capacity, God didn't have to create you, but he did. He made you. You have a soul. How exactly we describe it, how it's constituted, what we understand it to be, how we map it on to everything. Those are extraordinarily difficult questions to ask, and there's much debate and dissension about it. But you are you. And however we unpack that,

it tells you that God specifically intended to bring you about because you're not a necessary being the way that God is. You're contingent. You exist because he brought you about. And so these things that we sort of treat as mundane because they're just such a part of our experience that they kind of fade into the background because of the way our perception works, because of the way our memory and our rationality works so that we can get on in the world with what we need to do. The familiar simply becomes acclimated to our own experience and therefore not as appreciated, not as acknowledged.

And we see this all over the place in our own relationships, et cetera, et cetera. But the same applies to our relationship with God. The familiar sense that we have with these things should not remove the wonder that they inspire. It should not remove this just spectacular presence and awareness and understanding and appreciation for what God has done. So yes, indeed, I can say yay and amen that if every one of the things that Jesus does would be written, the world itself could not contain the books. The universe couldn't. Creation couldn't. If you take it to the logical limit, to the nth degree, every single subatomic particle in all of creation

needs to be acted upon by God at every single point in time because he's sustaining the entire universe through his power. And so there is not enough physical space in the universe to contain all of these books by definition, because every single particle needs another entry for what Jesus did at every single point in time. And that's just not, it's not possible. So I think it's literally a true statement that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. But the interesting thing is, I don't think that there's a massive library that's going to open up in the new heavens and new earth for what happened to this particular subatomic quark in this particular nebula in this point of space. What God is concerned with, even more than that, are the relational things, are the personal things, are the human things, are the divine things.

We are created in the image of God. We have the imago Dei. and understand it, what we should really appreciate is that God cares about us in a tremendous way. He says that in his word. Jesus affirms scripture as authoritative. John goes so far as to say that the word is God. And so we see Jesus as the word, as God. It should bring us to a position of being totally convinced of God's care and God's love for us. Not to the point of us feeling puffed up and prideful. Paul writes many times about not boasting. We shouldn't boast except in Jesus.

But we should also reject the thrust of this age that says that we are unimportant, minuscule with respect to the cosmos, completely insignificant. That kind of nihilism is unjustified. It's unwarranted. There is a creation that is here, and you were brought about by a purposeful decision of God. However you want to demarcate that, however you want to go down the theology, God knows you, God made you, and God loves you. And that, brothers and sisters, and that brothers and sisters the love of God towards us the presence of it the manifestation of the good gifts that God gives us in every single way every single moment of our entire lives and then when our lives are over he brings us home to him he brings us directly into his own presence brothers sisters when has God mistreated any of us when has God fallen, when has God mistreated any of us? When has God fallen short? When has God stopped being faithful?

When has he not sustained? When has he not provided? When has he not been there? He's here right now. He's there all the time. We just have a tendency to block that out because of the fallenness in creation, because of the evil we see around us, because of the everyday nature of God's provision. By definition, if God is providing every single day, well, we can just get used to it and fail to give it the same appreciation and

acknowledgement. And we can even get into a familiarity breeds contempt kind of situation. Think about what happened to the Israelites with the manna falling from heaven. They were seeing this overt outward supernatural miracle. They were provided for in a direct physical miraculous way in the desert, not just once, but every day for years and decades. They aided the manna until they entered the land. This is a long time we're talking about here, but it didn't take very long for people to start complaining about the manna. Unless we put ourselves in a position where we say, well, we're much better than that. I would never do that in that situation. Do we do the same thing with the provision that God has given us in terms of our ability to speak to others, provided we have that, provided our ability to exist, our ability to understand who God is, our ability to have a Bible in our hands? All of these things that we take for granted, are we not doing the same thing as grumbling about the manna? When we look around

and we say, all of these terrible things are happening. I just don't see God. God is everywhere. Not in a pantheist perspective or a panpsychist perspective or anything else like that, but the power of God upholds everything in you, around you, of you. He upholds you. If God decided that your existence was no longer to be, then your existence would be no longer. God is upholding you right now. And so we find ourselves in a similar position where we sound like the Israelites wandering around in the desert saying, man, I wish I had some cucumbers right now. Let's go back to Egypt.

When God is giving us a complete and total necessary provision, miraculously, that we can see. So let's be circumspect in our understanding of these things. Let's allow the Holy Spirit to open our eyes to the work that God is doing. And as we understand more about God, as we understand more about his creation, we will have a greater and greater escalating appreciation for what he is doing in our lives. Not just personally to us, even though that is astounding and resplendent in and of itself, but what he is doing all over the place. God is active. God is present.

God's power suffuses his creation. But the creation is in rebellion and we see the evil. Let's not weight things inappropriately. Let's not have an unjust balance or an unjust measure. Let's give God the glory as we attend to his works in our own lives, understanding that all of the works of Jesus continue to be ongoing. The word continues to not return void. It continues to have power. And so we say, yes, it is true. The world itself could not contain the books that would be written. And more books and more books and more books are being written even now of the acts of God, of the power of God,

of the manifestation of the will of God. So Lord, give us eyes to see. Father, help us to understand even an additional glimpse, just a small extra glimpse, Lord, of what you are doing in us, around us, through us. Lord, your transcendent power upholds all of creation. You are the one who sustains us in every single way, from our soul and our consciousness, all the way down to every single molecule that is part of the bodies that you have created for us. Working together and coordinating this transcendent symphony of what you have done. Let us never grow weary and well-doing. Let us never grow so familiar with things that we fail to recognize your action in it. Let us not grow dull. Lord, we know that even as you lead us into greater awareness from image to image and from glory to glory on these things, that when we see you face to face and we fall before you, when

we understand more about how involved you are and how involved you have been in every aspect of our lives, that we will bless you and glorify you forever and ever for your patience, your mercy, your long suffering. God, I know that in my own parenting, it can be so frustrating when I'm trying to do something good or nice for my children, and their first reaction is to complain. You've given me such sweet children, but this is the nature of all of us. The nature of all of us. Someone can present us with the best thing ever, and we can react by saying, it's not what I wanted it to be, or just failing to appreciate and acknowledge everything that went into it. So God, forgive us of these things. Forgive us of turning up our nose and closing our eyes to the work that you have performed

and are performing, even here right now, even in the form of being able to understand and comprehend and take in this broadcast, these words. God, you are God alone. this broadcast, these words. God, you are God alone. You are good and righteous and your mercy endures forever. And you are long suffering towards us, not wanting any to perish, but the all would come to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. So Lord, give us new eyes to see. Give us a new sense of sensitivity to the working of your Holy Spirit so that we would acknowledge you and give you glory and be led into a peace that passes understanding, resulting from the conclusion that we are known, we are seen, we are loved, we are heard,

and that you are abundant and transcendent. Lord, don't let us complain about the manna that is provided. Don't let us use an unfair, unjust balance where we give evil all the credit in the world but fail to acknowledge what you're doing. God, help us to be of a right mind. Lord, you said, come let us reason together. Though your sins be red as scarlet, they will be made white as snow. Lord, forgive us for being ignorant, whether blindly or willfully.

Forgive us for not noticing and appreciating and giving you glory and worship and love for all of the things you do at every single level. and love for all of the things you do at every single level. God, there are things that you have done for us that we'll, on this side of eternity, never even be able to understand, let alone perceive. But God, you have done them all. You are worthy of it all. We glorify your name, Jesus. Establish our faith. Make it steadfast, make it just so compoundingly overflowing with this sense of appreciation and gratitude that people, even those around us, even the most hardened hearts around us would understand that there is something true, something genuine, something real, something joyful, something peaceful, something dedicated, something joyful, something peaceful, something

dedicated, something appreciative, something grateful, something humble, something supernaturally powerful at work. God, your word says that we overcome by the blood of the lamb and the word of our testimony. Give us a testimony of gratitude and appreciation for what you're doing on every level. And Lord, let us feel peace in our hearts and joy in your presence, even as we acknowledge the things that would seem so little and normal to us that you do, but that are truly supernatural and transcendent in origin. Thank you, Lord. Thank you for this opportunity.

Thank you for your mercy. Thank you for your grace. Thank you for this opportunity thank you for your mercy thank you for your grace thank you for your glory in Jesus name amen