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My Fathers Business | David Fisher

We’re going to continue with the miracle that Jesus did that we spoke about right before Easter. You all remember the story of the man who has had an infirmity for 38 years. He was sick.

He wanted to be healed and Jesus asked him, said, do you want to be healed? And he didn’t really answer the question. Jesus says, rise, take up your bed and walk. Says he was immediately healed and then he took up his bed and he walked.

There was a problem with that because he did it on the Sabbath. And to the Jewish people who believed you should do no work on the Sabbath, this was a bad, bad infraction. In fact, they could give the death penalty, but the Romans wouldn’t let them.

But if they could, they would. And Jesus responds to them here in, y’all turn to chapter five of the book of John. The Jewish leaders who were there, probably Pharisees, some of the people who were there now wanted to kill him because he had done these things on the Sabbath.

So Jesus says, my father has been working until now. And I’ve been working. My father.

Jesus was about his father’s business. Y’all remember the story in Luke? We only have a small glimpse of anything that happened in Jesus’ childhood, but when he was 12 years old, he went to the Passover with his parents, big crowds of people. And when it time for the trip back home, Jesus wasn’t with them.

The thing that bothers me is it took them two days to realize it. Two days later, they realized, where’s Jesus? I don’t know. I thought he was with you.

You know, he’s maybe he was with one of the relatives or one of the cousins or somebody. Maybe he’s, where’s Jesus? Two days go by and they go back to the temple and they find Jesus there speaking to all the religious leaders and the scribes. And they’re just amazed at what Jesus is saying to them.

A 12 year old boy. And he says, well, kind of, why did you come looking for me? He says, didn’t you know, I must be about my father’s business. 12 years old.

Well, now we’re 20 years later and Jesus is still about his father’s business. And his father kind of set him up here. See, there were seven days a week to do a miracle, but God told him to do it on the Sabbath.

There were six days that were just fine. It wouldn’t have raised one single eyebrow for him to go do a healing by the pool. God sent him to this earth and Jesus listened to his father.

He knew most of all, his father had sent him to do his business, but the father told him what to do and what to say. And on this particular day, Jesus received instructions from his father that said, go to the pool and golly, which one should I pray for? Which one should I heal? There’s a multitude of people. Well, we don’t know, but I have a feeling that God said, I want you to pick that one because Jesus said, I never do anything on my own initiative.

I do what my father tells me and I do the things that I see him doing. And it goes up to this man who’s been sick and infirmity for a long, long time and performs the healing. This is what you would call.

We’re going to really spend the rest of our time in the rest of chapter five. This is what I’m going to call a hostile crowd. It’s not fine folks who are glad to be there to sit and listen to Jesus.

Jesus is talking with people who have already decided that he should be killed. Can you imagine that standing there talking to people who are intent on killing you? There’ve been other times where they tried to kill him. Jesus kind of stepped off and walked off through the, you know, remember the very first sermon he gave in his hometown.

They wanted to throw him off the cliff. He didn’t spend a whole lot of time engaging with them. This time, Jesus is standing here or sitting here.

We don’t know he’s here engaged with people who are hostile to him. So hostile they want to see him killed and he begins giving them a teaching. You see illness takes a lot of forms.

There are people who are physically sick and you can’t always control that, can you? I’m going to tell you there’s a lot more people who are spiritually sick. He’s already done the father’s business of healing a man who’s physically sick. The impossible thing, the thing this man had hoped for for decades.

He’s now speaking to people who want to kill him. They are spiritually sick. They’re not just spiritually sick, they’re spiritually dead.

But he’s talking to them, isn’t he? He hadn’t given up on them yet, has he? Because that’s the father’s business was to come save them. In fact, it says that. It says that Jesus is actually talking to them.

He says down here in verse 34, talking about, I say these things that you may be saved. He wants to bring a healing to people who are spiritually dead. And I am thankful that that’s the kind of father that we have.

He is speaking to people who are dead, even when we are still sinners. Jesus wants to heal us. He doesn’t say, enough with you, be gone.

He wants to save them because he’s a good father. All of us who have children know what that feels like. You know, it’s not always the time your child does what you want them to do.

Sometimes your child disobeys, don’t they? You get rid of them, kick them out. I mean, I understand at some point in time you may have to with tough love, but if they’re 12 years old, you’re not kicking them out. I don’t care how bad they’ve been.

They’re 15, they get around 18. Maybe you might be thinking about it a little bit harder. But when they’re a child or a small child, they don’t know any better.

And they just, well, no, sometimes they do know better and they’re just going to do it anyway. But a good father spends time with them. A good father knows that they want to break through.

I really want us to concentrate on this about my father. See, the Old Testament, there’s only a few verses in the entire Old Testament that spoke of God as our father. There’s a few, but not a lot.

Jesus completely flips the script. Every time you hear Jesus talking about God, he calls him what? Father. Not just our father, my father.

There’s something personal when you say it’s my father. You can take a lot of pride when your whole family’s there and says, well, this is our father. I’m going to tell you when you start getting up, it’s my father.

I remember my little brother when he was real small. I came home from college and I came and sat by my dad. And you know what he did? Not my brother.

He jumped right in the middle of us. And what did he say? My daddy. Can’t get in there.

And the same thing happened with our kids. Another one would be sitting next to him. I’d go sit by Sherilyn and come get in the middle of it.

My mama. My mama. It’s mine.

It’s personal. It’s my father. My father.

And he’s here doing the father’s business, not just our father’s business, his father’s business. It’s personal. I’m going to tell you, God wants to be personal with you.

He doesn’t want you just to be our father. He wants you to be able to say my father. There are a lot of people who understand and believe there’s a God, but they just kind of believe God just set things in motion.

Then kind God just kind of steps back and watches it all go on. You ever feel that way sometime? God’s just not involved with my life. He’s busy.

He’s busy over there with that war over across the seas. He’s busy go helping some homeless priest. He’s busy somewhere else.

He’s just not. He doesn’t need to really spend time with me. I’ll tell you, that’s not who our father is.

He’s your father. I don’t care what you’re going through. He’s your father.

I don’t care whether you’ve disobeyed. I do care whether you disobeyed, but it doesn’t matter. He is still your father.

He’s my father. And Jesus came to do his father’s business. Number one, he said, I know that I was sent by my father to come do the will of my father.

The father will show me the things that he’s doing. And I will hear from him instruction from him. And then I want to do exactly what my father asks me to do.

Because over in chapter eight, he later explains it a little bit more. He says, I always do the things that please my father. Isn’t that amazing? I’ll tell you, if you go through the book of John, I was reading through book of John over and over and over this week.

And this is the consistent theme that you hear from the very start of the very first chapter in John talking about my father. It talks about Jesus knew that he was sent by the father to come do the will of the father so that he could hear what the father said and he would see what the father was doing and he would join in that work. He’s like the vine dresser that John talks about later in chapter 15.

You know, the one who chops on the vine. He’s always working. He’s always cutting.

He’s always pruning, not because he wants to hurt you, but because he wants to make you better. It’s been some of the most painful experiences that I’ve had. Years later, I can realize that was some of the times of my best growth and my closest time with him.

Can anybody testify to that? It hurts. I tell you what, the vine dresser knows what he’s doing. Vine dresser knows exactly where, how he wants it to grow.

And the vine dresser knows where I got some dead wood. Anybody got any dead wood? You know, some part of your life just not productive. You know, the dead wood can actually start hurting the good wood.

Got to cut it off. Got to get rid of a few things. The father’s always working.

Jesus says, we say, he said, my father’s working. My father’s working on the Sabbath. Do you know God’s working on the Sabbath? He’s always working.

You know why they’re so upset at him? Because he thought they were using the God excuse. He said, well, God’s working and I’m working too. I’m doing exactly what he tells me to do.

God set up this conflict because he needed Jesus to be about his father’s business. Number two, is when you have a father, I guess he’s the son. I say it as a son because I’m a male.

As a son, when you are the son of a good father, it gives you authority that other people do not have. It gives you access that other people do not have. Everything that my father owns, I can use.

Because I’m a son. Everything that my father has, I can enjoy because I’m a son. But then that comes with responsibilities.

Because I’m a son, he expects me to take care of his business. Because I’m a son, there are privileges that are earned, but responsibilities that must be kept. Because I’m a son and he’s my father.

Jesus is saying, I have responsibilities and authority that’s given to me by God himself to come save people, to come take them out of the death and out of the illness that they have. Just because you say he’s your father doesn’t mean he’s your father. Let me make that a little more clear.

Later when Jesus is confronting the Pharisees, this is over in chapter 8, he’s arguing with them. Really, they’re arguing with him. And they say, God is our father.

And he says, no, your father is the devil. And you do the things of your father. When Jesus Christ was speaking about sonship, he was talking about his relationship with the father, with the true father.

And the problem was he knew that the Jewish people were not following his father. They were following someone else. And they could have fooled themselves, and they did, because they believed they were serving God by killing Jesus.

So it’s not a measure of whether we’re sincere. It’s a matter of whether we are really in a relationship with our father or not. He said, I want you to hear, I want you to believe, I want you to receive.

Because all of those who hear, who believe and receive have the right to become sons of God. Now, that’s not something I’m just making up. That’s the very first chapter of John.

As many, this is chapter 1, verse 12, he said, but as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in his name, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. He’s given you the right to be a child. But that means we need to start acting with the authority of his child.

We need to be acting with the responsibilities of his child. And I’m going to tell you what, we get the privilege of being his child. Does that make a difference to you? Really, I’m asking, does it make a difference? It makes all the difference in the world.

Because I not only have the right to become one who could say my father, could get close to the one who I can say my father, but now he starts sharing his business with me because it’s really about being doing the father’s business. And sometimes I look up at my life and I say, I’m not spending a whole lot of time taking care of my father’s business. I’m spending more time on my own business.

And God doesn’t throw me away. He just says, come on, son. Come on, daughter.

Got some business for you to tend to. And you know, you can attend to the father’s business when you’re doing some of your own business. Have you working, have a friend, break time.

I bet you have something you could say good about God while you’re doing your business because he wants you to be about his business. You get all your business on your phone, posting things, saying things and talking to people and communicating. I bet you can say something good about God, doing his business, acting like you’re a child, not like you’re some heathen, crazy, loony, raven, raven lunatic.

Don’t be ranting and raving. Just talk about good things. That’s your father.

We all learn in different ways. Some are visual. You know, they see things.

Some are good at listening. They can hear it. Some folks aren’t good at listening or hearing or any of that above.

And they just go do what they want to do. Y’all been teachers. You know what I’m talking about.

Some are just tuned in. They just want to hear. Some need to see it.

Some need to feel it. Some need to experience it. Different people that learn different things.

And Jesus talks down here around chapter 31, down 31 through the rest of the chapter, he’s talking about the four different ways that these sick people had been exposed to who the father was. He says, John came. John came to tell you exactly who he was.

Need an example. Sometimes folks just need a testimonial. Why do they have celebrities on TV ads saying this product is just wonderful? Oh man, if he likes it, I bet it’s going to be good.

Isn’t that true? Somebody got to get on the soap box and talk about the soap, right? Somebody’s given a testimony. Oh, it’s, you know, it’s not, what’s that, clean. It’s not wholly clean until it’s, it’s, there’s a commercial about that.

It’s not, it’s, which one? Jestfully clean. I don’t know. It just zipped out of my mind.

And you got that person in the shower. Oh man, they just look happy. They just look happy taking a shower.

They just grinning and smiling. Oh, I feel so clean, man. I want to be like them.

Here you got John the Baptist. He actually testified. He said, I don’t get my verification from what a man says, but because you do, you, you all the time listening to other people on their advice.

You had John who said, this is the son of God. Y’all didn’t believe me. Y’all didn’t listen to him.

You know, so I did works. See the father sent me, it says here in verse, verse 36, but I have a greater witness than John’s for the works, which my father has given me to finish the very works that I do bear witness of me for of what that the father sent me. And so he’s doing these miracles.

He’s, he healed a man who’s been sick for 38 years. Now you’d think people would see that and go, and that guy must be sent by God. And what are they saying? Let’s kill him.

They’re not listening. They’re not learning. He says, well, sometimes there are people like John who come tell you, sometimes I’m doing the works to show you, to show you that God sent me to save you.

And you ignoring it. He says, well, sometimes the father’s testified. He says, and the father himself who sent me is testified of me, but you haven’t heard his voice at any time.

And you haven’t seen his form. You just don’t even have his word abiding in you. See, when Jesus was baptized, John was looking for a sign of who the Christ would be.

And God told him the person on whom the spirit of God descends like a dove, that’s the one. And when Jesus is baptized, that’s exactly what happened. The spirit, the form, it said in Luke, the God, the Holy spirit in bodily form of a dove in the form of God came and rested on him.

And a voice was heard from heaven and said, well done. You are my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. And the people around it heard it.

These people who’ve heard stories about it, who weren’t listening to God anymore. We’ll tell you, don’t listen to people who say God doesn’t speak. God does speak.

He says, the father himself sent me as testified of me. You’d never, never have neither heard my voice or his voice at any time. And you haven’t seen his form.

Jesus says, those who follow me hear my voice. My sheep hear my voice. For some people, they don’t want to hear the voice.

They just want to go to the scriptures. And so Jesus used the fourth testimony of the very thing that God used to bring people to Jesus. And that was the scriptures itself.

And Moses testified and Moses wrote in the scriptures that there is going to be a prophet who’s going to come, who’s going to deliver you. Listen to him. And Jesus blitzes them.

He says, the person who’s going to accuse you is going to be Moses because Moses wrote about me and you would not listen to it and you wouldn’t believe. It’s important to search the scriptures, looking for God. But the word’s got to get in us.

We’ve got to listen. Maybe you haven’t heard God’s voice in some way or felt his impression. We’ll get in the scriptures and let God begin to speak to you because he will.

Because he’s your father. I know that anytime you talk about fathers, for some people, it’s a very hard thing to hear because I know there are plenty of people here who just had sorry fathers. I know that.

And I’m sorry. I will tell you, our father is a good father and he will never leave you an orphan ever. He is a father to the fatherless.

He said he’d sent his spirit to come teach you after he was gone, but the Holy Spirit ready and waiting to teach you all of the things of God, of the father. So we’ll just come to him and say, father, I need to hear from your spirit. I need to hear from you.

I need to hear from your spirit. When Jesus is talking to these Jews who wanted to kill him, he once again talked about the importance of knowing him to know my father. I know things that you don’t know because my father speaks to me and he teaches me and he has shown me what it is that I was supposed to be doing.

I didn’t come heal on the Sabbath day because it was my own initiative. I only did the things that my father told me to do. You know, God wants to be your father and he wants you to know him.

It’s consistent throughout the whole book of John is this theme. He was sent by the father to do the will of the father, to please the father, to have the authority of the father, to heal and to make people well, to do miracles because of the authority from the father, because he wanted to give them opportunities to become to life, to be raised from the dead, to be taken from death, from spiritual death and be brought to life because he wants you to know him. He wants you to know him like a father.

Over at the end of John, John 20, this theme is consistent all through the book of John. I didn’t encourage you just to sit down and read the whole book of John. Read the whole thing and you’re going to see consistent time after time.

He says, I was sent by the father to do the will of my father because my father’s always working. I have the authority of my father. I have everlasting life.

I want you to know him. I want him to be your father. When Jesus told his disciples how to pray, how does he start it? Our father, our father, our father is this relationship.

It’s not just a relationship, but an intimacy of a father to a son, which is just, it’s how the father continues. Chapter 20, verse 17. I had never noticed this until this week.

When Jesus talked to Mary Magdalene, after he was risen from the grave, she’s talking to him. You’ll remember him. She’s talking to him.

She thinks he’s a gardener and he says, and he reveals himself. Don’t cling to me. Don’t cling to me.

He says, I want you to, I want you to go tell my brethren, I am ascending to my father and your father and to my God and your God. He is passing the baton. He said, he’s not just my father.

He is your father. And he wants us to absorb that. He wants to know it, to walk in confidence, to speak in confidence, speak to him as a father who says, dad, can I have the car keys today? Your stranger doesn’t come up to dad and say, can I borrow the car? Father, I need some provision.

Father, I know somebody who needs you. Can you help me out? He wants you to come to him as his father. And the last number four, it’s repeated all throughout the book of John.

So as the father sent me, so I send you. Out there, if you’re still there in John 20, go to verse 21. It’s one of the last things Jesus even tells his disciples.

He’s come and he’s raised from the dead. He appears to him and says, peace to you. Chapter 20, verse 21, as the father has sent me, so I also send you.

You all get that? The father sent Jesus, sent Jesus so that we would believe in the father. And Jesus is sending you to somewhere, to somebody to know that the father is going to be their father if they’ll just receive him. You want to be about the father’s business? Did you want to be about the father’s business? Do y’all really want to be about the father’s business? Or is this just Sunday school talk? Yeah, yeah, yeah, get through, I got lunch.

I’m really being serious here. I’ve sat in sermons and I said, oh yeah, preach it, preach it, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, agree. And by lunchtime, I’ve already forgotten what he said.

Try it. About six o’clock, I’m going to call you and ask you what I was preaching on. And you’ll probably say, I don’t remember because we quit taking notes.

Ms. Fay got her notes, said I want you, I am sending you to do exactly what my father sent me to do so that people would believe in the father. People aren’t healed just so that they’ll get well. They’re healed so they’ll believe in the father.

Miracles are not done just so that you can enjoy some good feel stuff. Miracles are done so that people will believe that the father sent Jesus Christ to die for their sins. He has sent us, he is sending us, he’s giving us the same exact commission that the father gave to him.

As the father sent me, so I send you. You and I are brothers. Scriptures call us brothers with Jesus.

We’re all children of God. We aren’t begotten of God like Jesus was, but we are adopted into his family. We’re adopted to be the children of God because you have the right to become a child of God.

We have the right to become child of God and we throw away our rights. We’d rather wallow in the pig pen, throwing our money away. I’m going to tell you we have a father who’s waiting on you to come back.

We have a father who’s waiting on you to come back to him. We have a father who’s willing to run to you and embrace you with open arms to hold you and say, what is lost has now been found. What was gone has now come back.

Let’s have a party. I don’t know where you are today. There’s some of you who know deep in your heart that Jesus Christ died for your sins.

You know that God is your father and you are walking in that sonship or you’re walking in that daughtership. You’re walking in that relationship with God and that is wonderful. I’m going to encourage you, those who are doing it, you start passing that on.

As the father sent Jesus, he’s sending you to go show other people the importance of being saved from spiritual sickness and from death. You may have never, never, ever been able to come to the place where you can call God your father. Let me tell you, as a son of God, adopted into his family, we’ll tell you there’s more room.

There’s more room. Come on in. The water’s fine.

We’ll tell you, we want you in the family. This is a family of God because we all have the right to be sons and daughters. And our oldest brother, Jesus, is proud to have brothers and sisters who give honor to his father.

You ever have a sibling who goes off and kind of does something they shouldn’t be doing? And you get irritated because they’re not treating mama and daddy right? Sometimes you got to go talk to your brothers and sisters. Hey man, what’s going on? You’re not giving mom and dad the honor they deserve. I’m going to tell you that’s why I ask you to call people.

And if they’re missing, there’s a reason why they’re missing. Maybe they’re off on a trip, but maybe they just kind of have forgotten what it feels like and how important it is to be part of the family. So as the father sends Jesus, so Jesus sends you to be about the father’s business.

I want to ask us to just spend some time, anybody here who’s never taken the call to be part of the family, all you have to do is say, Father, forgive me. I know I’ve sinned. I’m coming to you.

Jesus says, all those who call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. And to come and you say, Father, I want him to be my father. This is a beautiful time to do it.

But if not, maybe it’s just a time just to hold each other and to speak to each other and say, how you doing brother and sister? Have you talked to dad in a while? It’s one of the convicting things that a wife will say, have you talked to your dad in a while? Talk about my physical dad. I meant to do that yesterday. We all be talking to our heavenly father every day, more than one time.

And the good thing is you won’t get a bill for it. You just get joy. So I’d like for us to spend this time just coming together, praying before the altar, and let’s spend a little family time.

And if you need a healing, we’ll have elders up here. And if you would like some of the prayer partners to pray for you, it’d be a great time to do it. Amen.