To Encourage You

John 21:25 “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.”

Exaggeration:  it’s something that all of us are prone to if the truth be told.  It’s a characteristic of the human condition.  For those of us who like to fish, how often have be heard (or told) “fish stories,” exaggerations about either how many fish we’ve caught or how big those fish were.  We are prone to exaggerate the accomplishments of our children – as we’ve seen in the family reports that go along with the Christmas cards each year that we’ve either read – or written.  And then there’s the language we so often hear; words like “awesome” or “epic” or “incredible” in reference to some catch we’ve seen someone make in an NFL game, or the singing we’ve heard on “American Idol” or “The Voice.” 

The Bible calls this propensity to exaggerate our human accomplishments the “pride of life” in 1 John 2:16, where it is listed at one of the sinful conditions of those who are “of the world” and the opposite of the nature of God.  Isn’t it interesting how prone human beings, who are so limited in their very natures, are so prone to overstatement about their accomplishments, while the infinite God, who truly is awesome, is not that way at all.  You see, there is no way we can ever overstate or exaggerate infinity.  No matter how great we think God is or how awesome we imagine Him to be, He is far greater still.  God has told us as much with these words: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.  For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts (Isaiah 55:8-9).” 

How often the Bible contains such wonderful understatements about God, as in the creation account in Genesis where it says simply, “He made the stars also” (Genesis 1:16).  He made the stars ALSO?! As if He’s say, “Oh, and by the way . . . “  The apostle John, in the closing words of his gospel above, makes a point of telling us that in spite of all the wonderful things he has told us about Jesus, He did many other things, and if all of those things were to be written down, the whole world couldn’t contain all the books that could be written.  But surely that’s an exaggeration, isn’t it? 

Well, the truth is, surely not!  For one thing, John is telling us that although he has given us an eyewitness account of many of the miracles Jesus had performed and many of the wonderful teachings Jesus had spoken, there are many more miracles that Jesus performed and many more wonderful things He said while He walked the earth that John did not write about.  For one thing, all we have to do is notice how many things are written in the other gospels authored by Matthew, Mark, and Luke which are not recorded by John.  But John is telling us that there are many, many more things beyond what the other gospel writers told us about Jesus. 

Just think about the fact that Jesus always was. He has existed from all eternity. He “came into the world” at Bethlehem, but He was already “with God” from the very beginning, as John tells us at the very beginning of his gospel. It is there that John tells us that “all things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.”  The entire creation, including the stars, was made by Him. How many books have been written from the beginning of time about man’s discoveries in nature.  Everything that man has ever learned about the design of the human body, the wonders of the natural world, the immense and mind-boggling scope of the universe, the existence and characteristics of sound waves, and radio waves, the atom, and other things that exist, but can’t be seen with the naked eye, all of this, was thought of first, and created by Jesus.  Can any of us begin to imagine the fathomless things He has done? And not only that, He sustains all of it.  Every person, every animal, every plant, every microorganism, every planet, indeed every atom in the universe continues to function only as He enables it to (Colossians 1:17).

And then He has told us, “I’ve gone to prepare a place for you” in John 14. Heaven itself, a place we get some glimpses of in the book of Revelation, a place that Paul saw “whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows—and he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter” (2 Corinthians 12:3-4).  We are told that “no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9).  And all of this is the work of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.  There is absolutely no way that enough books could ever be written to describe the incredible and truly awesome works of God. 

Isn’t it so strange that the most intelligent people among us, the scientists whom God has allowed to gain understanding of so much that He has done, are seemingly the ringleaders in such boastful pronouncements as “there is no God”?  Surely the foolishness of such statements cannot be overstated, particularly in the face of the wonderfully understated greatness of God that has filled this awesome universe with the work of His hands.