In this sermon, we learn that God is always working and that we are invited to join him in the family business. Watch the video or read the text below.

Karen and I were living near Youngstown, Ohio when our kids were born. After they came into the picture, we started making more frequent trips home to the Cleveland area to visit my parents. Once, while we were home, they told me that the people in the upstairs apartment across the street were selling drugs. Cars would stop, someone would run up the steps, spend (maybe) a minute at the door, and leave. Sometimes this happened during the day but mostly at night.

I don’t remember if my parents told the police what was going on but, if they did, I can imagine them watching to see if the police would raid the drug house that day, or the next, but it didn’t happen. Why didn’t the police do something? That’s what my parents wondered. Days, and weeks, and then months went by without anything happening.

Then, late one night, police surrounded the house, burst in, and caught the drug dealers red-handed. Apparently, they had informants buying drugs from those people all along. They had been building an air-tight case for many months against the dealers and their suppliers. My parents didn’t know it, but something was happening; it just wasn’t in their field of vision. The authorities were at work the entire time.

When bad things happen in our lives, we might think about God the way my parents thought about the police: Why isn’t he doing something? Someday, we’ll discover that he was. But, unlike the police, he wanted us to join him in his work.

We can’t understand why God isn’t doing something about what is important to us. It doesn’t occur to us that he might want us to do something that is important to him. Jesus understood that God is doing something right now. He’s already working in our church, in our neighborhood, in our city, and our world. He is meticulously setting the stage, step by step. He is not just preparing to act (though he is doing that); he is acting right now. There is always some God-thing going on around us. Instead of sitting around, waiting for the Creator of the Universe to make himself useful by working on our thing, we need to work on his. That’s how we seek his kingdom first.

What is most important is not what we are doing, but what he is doing. If you want to get caught up in something big, something important and life-altering, and in the process, get to know God, look for what God is doing and join him in it. I’m not talking about being a lone ranger who does something for God, but about being God’s child, who works with the Father.

Our text is John 5. Let’s read verses 17- 20. Jesus said to them, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working.” For this reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God. Jesus gave them this answer: “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does.”

Now, hold on. In the creation account in Genesis 2, we read: “… the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done” (Genesis 2:1-3).

Genesis tells us God finished what he was doing and “rested from all his work.” So, how can Jesus say that his “Father is always at his work to this very day”? Is he resting or is he working? Isn’t the claim that he rested from his work repeated in Genesis, Exodus, and Deuteronomy? Isn’t it restated in the New Testament as well? Did God retire after the sixth day or didn’t he?

The idea that God created the world and then went on some kind of extended holiday has had enormous influence on religion, philosophy and everyday life, but it is based on a misunderstanding of the biblical text. The author of Genesis was not saying that God finished his big project and then went into hibernation. It is more like: he finished the house, moved in, and now he works from home.

Jesus is very clear: His Father has not retired. He still goes to work every day. The work of creation did not wear God out. He does not need a break after making the septillionth star. He doesn’t want a break. He loves to work. No one has a better work ethic than our Father in heaven.

Jesus understood, and wants us to understand, that his Father is currently at work in the world. He’s busy in septillion places all at once, and he hasn’t even broken a sweat. What if God is already at work in your family? He is! You think you need to make it all turn out right but instead you need to find out what he is doing and join him.

What if God is already at work in our church? He is. We need to find out what he is doing and join him. The same is true in our workplace, our golf league, our favorite coffee shop, and the store where we buy our groceries. Find out what God is doing and do it with him.

If we don’t find out what he’s doing, we may work and fret for nothing. Years ago, Loyston, Tennessee was slated to go out of existence. When the river was dammed to produce electricity, the valley the town occupied would become a 34,000-acre lake. The little town would disappear under the water, so its residents were moved to homes on higher ground.

Now imagine one of those residents stayed away from the town meetings, threw away the flyers, and ignored all the talk about a dam – this electricity nonsense made him mad – and instead began remodeling his house. He painted the exterior and even added on a room. And just about the time he got done, the dam was completed, the waters covered the house, and all his work meant nothing.

It’s as if Noah had decided to build God a temple rather than an ark. He would have done a magnificent job, and his temple would have been one of the wonders of the world. But we would know nothing about because the waters would have washed it – not to mention him and his family – all away. That’s the kind of thing happens when we ignore what God is doing around us and do our own thing instead.

Sometimes, we not only ignore what God is doing but actually get in his way. Parents, for example, fearing that God is not doing anything, step in to save their son from the negative consequences of his choices. But God was using those consequences to bring real, lasting change in his life. Or take the parents who constantly criticize and condemn their daughter to get her to change, but only succeed in closing her heart to them and to God.

Jesus knew that the Father is working. “I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me” (John 6:38). Jesus was in the family business. He did not do his own thing; he did the Father’s work. Elsewhere he says that his “food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work” (John 4:34). Getting involved in God’s work was his food: it energized him, satisfied him, and fortified him – and he knew it would do the same for us. When we are working with, rather than apart from, or in opposition to, the Father, things happen around us and in us.

Now you might be thinking, “The Father works. The Son works. We work. Sounds like ‘works salvation’ to me. But we are saved by faith, not by works! St. Paul says so.”

True. But we are saved by faith into works. Paul says that too. It is important that we understand salvation is into a vocation, not a vacation—a vocation in which we join the Father and the Son in the family business. And while we’re doing that, we not only advance their work in the world, their work in us also advances. That’s how God designed it, and it is absolutely brilliant. One of the best ways to get to know God is to start working with him.

But how do we do that? Do we all need to become pastors and evangelists? No. God’s work is not stuck in the sanctuary. Our Father is at work right now at Thor and at Forest River, in the school administration building, and the courthouse. He is at work in art studios, surgical suites, and construction sites. He is working in classrooms and on football fields, and we can join him in his work.

I ask again: how? How do we do that? Jesus can show us how. Our text grows out of a larger narrative in which Jesus had come to Jerusalem for a religious festival and, while there, had spotted a man in a difficult situation. Jesus inquired about him and learned that he had been in a bad way for a long time. So, he talked to the man. After seeing the man, asking about him, and talking to him, Jesus realized he was invited to work with the Father in the man’s life.

How did he realize that? Did he, like Sherlock Holmes, see hidden clues that we mere mortals miss? And what happens to us if we miss those clues? Or what if we think something is a clue and it isn’t? Will we waste our time and money on something that has nothing to do with God?

We can relax. We don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to join in the Father’s work. His work is not a puzzle to be solved. It’s the Family Business, and our Father takes it on himself to send us our assignments. We don’t need to worry about that.

Look at what Jesus says in verse 19: “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.” Let’s break that down.

First, the Son – and remember who we are talking about: this is the heir of all things, through whom the universe was made, the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, who sustains all things by his powerful word (Hebrews 1:2b-3b), the Son of God himself – says that he can do nothing by (or better, “originating from”) himself. Even the Eternal Son did not say, “What can I think of to do?” Rather, he looked to see what his Father was doing. We must learn to think this way: my Father is already working here. What is my part in the Family Business?

Jesus says he only does what he sees the Father doing and whatever he sees the Father doing he does. There lies the key, but there also lies the problem. Jesus saw the Father doing things and he joined with him in doing them. But he had extraordinary spiritual vision, and we don’t; so, how can we join in?

We’ll get to that in a moment but first notice that this wasn’t dependent upon the Son’s extraordinary spiritual vision. No, the initiative lay with the Father, not the Son. Look at verse 20: “For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does.” Jesus does not see what the Father is doing because he has extraordinary spiritual vision (though he does); he sees it because the Father shows him what he is doing. In the same way, we won’t see what God is doing because we are smart or spiritual; we’ll see it because he will show us.

Jesus’s relation to the Father is the model for our relationship to him. He said, for example, “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.” “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you” (John 20:21). Jesus is our example. Like him, we are sent into the world to join in God’s work, and we can be confident that God will show us what he’s doing. And notice why the Father shows the Son his work: it’s not because he needs someone to do things for him. It’s not because there are not enough volunteers. He shows him what he is doing because he loves him. Whenever God shows us what he is doing, it is because he loves us.

Perhaps you are afraid that you will not see what God is doing even if he shows you. And that is possible. So, is there a recipe we can follow or some kind of formula we can use for seeing what the Father is doing? Is there some kind of sign we need to be looking for?

Some people are always seeing – or think they are seeing – signs. These are puzzle-builder Christians, the mystery-solver types who are susceptible to taking any coincidence as a sign. “Right after the boss told me I was being laid off, I got a call from a California area code; that never happens! Earlier this week, there were cars with California plates parked on either side of mine at the coffee shop. I didn’t realize it at first, but those were signs that God wants us to move to California.”

Don’t look for signs, and don’t go to the Bible as if it were a coded message to tell you what you are supposed to do. Two old friends met at their 30^th high school reunion. The one guy had gone to college, became a veterinarian, worked hard, earned lots of money but had recently made some bad investments and was in a serious financial bind. The other guy didn’t go to college, never held a job more than a few years, and yet he was quite prosperous. The first guy asked him how he did it.

He answered, “It’s simple, really. After my mom died, I opened my Bible, dropped my finger on a page, and the word under my finger was oil. So, I invested my inheritance in Exxon Mobil, and I made a bundle. So, I tried the same thing again. My finger stopped on the word Covenant. I had to search around for that one, but I found a company called Covenant Logistics and I invested all the money I made from oil. Over the next two years, their stock more than doubled. So, I decided to try it one more time. The Bible fell open to First Samuel, and my finger touched the word, “Eli.” The only Eli in the stock exchange is Eli Lilly. I invested everything – that was right before the Pandemic – and their stock when from $145 a share to $950. Long story short: I got rich.”

When the friend in financial trouble got back to his hotel that night, he pulled out the Gideon Bible, shut his eyes, let it fall open, and stabbed his finger onto the page. When he opened his eyes, he panicked. His finger rested on the words, “Chapter 11” (as in bankruptcy).

That’s not how God shows us what he is doing—and how he shows us isn’t the important thing anyway. He has a million ways to do that – through thoughts that come during prayer or Bible reading, through chance conversations, through circumstances, through desires, and through Christian friends. How is not important – God has a million how’s. The important thing is Who. God uses his million how’s with select who’s.

Well then, are we back to people with superior spiritual vision? No. the people who see what God is doing are not exceptionally spiritual. They see what God shows them because they, like Jesus, love God and do what he says. This is John 14:21: “Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him.”

It is not a formula that is needed. It is a commitment. But more than that, it is a commitment of love. The people who are able to see what God is doing are people who have seen what God is like: the God who is light all the way through; the God who is Father, Rewarder, Giver, and Forgiver; and they love him for it. And they trust him.

If you have not seen what God is like, ask him to reveal himself to you. Read the Bible not for clues or puzzle pieces but to get to know your Father and his ways. If you have not seen this God, look at the Lord Jesus Christ and believe on him. He is the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15).

One last thing: If you are always in a hurry, you are bound to miss what God is doing. Hurry is the enemy of relationship, including the relationship with God. As much as possible, eliminate hurry from your life.

God is at work all around us right now. Find out what he is working on and join him.