April 26, 2021 John 5: 14-20
8Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and
walk.” 9At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk.
Now that day was a sabbath. 10So the Jews said to the man who had been cured, “It is the sabbath; it
is not lawful for you to carry your mat.” 11But he answered them, “The man who made me well
said to me, ‘Take up your mat and walk.’” 12They asked him, “Who is the man who said to
you, ‘Take it up and walk’?” 13Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had
disappeared in the crowd that was there. 14Later Jesus found him in the temple and said to
him, “See, you have been made well! Do not sin any more, so that nothing worse
happens to you.” 15The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had
made him well. 16Therefore the Jews started persecuting Jesus, because he was
doing such things on the sabbath.
19 Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, the
Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for
whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise. 20The Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is
doing; and he will show him greater works than these, so that you will be
astonished. 21Indeed, just as the Father raises the dead and gives them
life, so also the Son gives life to whomsoever he wishes.
Was it the crowd that separated them? Did Jesus move off intentionally? For whatever reason, Jesus was not there to
finish his conversation with the man he healed at the pools. But the man went up to the temple, and there
Jesus did run into him again. But Jesus’
words are a little different from his last miracle, healing the son of the
royal official. In that moment, the
official begged Jesus to come, Jesus healed the boy from afar, and John records
that the man believed what Jesus said.
Now Jesus does not refer to the man having faith. It is a warning. You are healed, sin no more or worse could
befall you. This is not an encounter
that ends with gratitude. What is the
man’s reaction? He goes and reports to
the Jewish leadership that is was Jesus who healed him in the first place! He seems to be more concerned with not
running afoul of the authorities than with what Jesus has done for him.
The situation then seems to transcend the healing as John
tells us this begins conflicts between the Jewish leadership and Jesus’ propensity
to do “such things”, miracles, on the Sabbath.
Because that is what the man was in trouble for, Sabbath breaking. If I understand the rules of the time, the
total distance someone was allowed to walk on the Sabbath was to the synagogue
and back.
The official rules about the Sabbath are developed from
the Ten Commandments, from Exodus 20 it reads 8 Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. 9For six days you shall labor and do all your work. 10But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you,
your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the
alien resident in your towns. 11For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that
is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it. It is from here that the rules like how far
someone can actually walk, actually labor, have been derived. So it was not about the healing that the Jewish
leadership came into conflict with Jesus, it was Jesus’ healing on the Sabbath.
And when they get up in Jesus’ face about it, Jesus responds
with one of the central messages that will come from the Gospel. It begins with ‘Very truly I tell you…’,
which is the signal that something profound is coming. Jesus, the Son, is only doing what He sees His
Father doing, because He can do nothing on his own. Jesus heals on the Sabbath because of what He
sees His Father doing on the Sabbath. According
to how the Sabbath was established, at the end of creation, the Son sees His Father
has done three things with the Sabbath.
First, the Father rests on that Day.
Secondly, the Father blesses that day.
Finally, the Father consecrates that day, the Father declares it Holy
for the people to rest on as well.
So what is the Son seeing His Father doing? The practice of the Sabbath is to do the Lord’s
work. To go to synagogue, to hear the Word
shared, to be renewed in the strength of their God. It is what we do, as Christians, on the Lord’s
Day, which we have established as the Sabbath on the First Day of the
Week-recognizing Jesus’ resurrection. As
the Son, Jesus does the work of the Father on the day that the Father set
aside.
This healing then becomes the setup for the centerpiece
of Jesus’ message.
More tomorrow.
Peace, Pastor Peter
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