John 5

Introduction

We’ve had an amazing weekend. I have slept very little. Your students have hopefully slept a little. But I’m looking forward to a little rest today. I’m a person who very much likes to sleep. Once, in college, I pulled an all-nighter at a coffee shop to study (slash maybe hang out with a certain girl named Karly) and on the way home, I was so tired that I looked out my window and I saw a wolf, but like 6 feet tall, bigger than a person. I knew I couldn’t have seen it, but I was so sure I saw it that I turned around to go back and check. It wasn’t there. I got home and went straight to bed and slept all day—so basically worthless. And I’ve never stayed up all night again.

We sleep because we were created for rest. That’s why falling asleep to Sunday afternoon golf is one of the greatest gifts God has given us. That’s why God made the Sabbath, the day of rest, in the Bible. But we’re gonna look at a story today that’s kind of confusing, because Jesus is working on the Sabbath, and he says that the Father works on the Sabbath. What’s this about.

This story comes right after what we looked at last week—a healing that Jesus did at the pool of Bethesda, where a man who had been unable to walk for 38 years was healed by Jesus. There was a pool there where people went for healing, but the man wasn’t able to make it into the pool. So, Jesus came to him and said, “Get up, pick up your mat and walk.” This week, we’re going to see the Jewish leaders’ reaction to this healing, and Jesus’ explanation of his Sabbath work. And here’s what we’ll see:

What’s the POINT?

We looked last week at a healing that Jesus did at the pool of Bethesda, where a man who had been unable to walk for 38 years was healed by Jesus. There was a pool there where people went for healing, but the man wasn’t able to make it into the pool. So, Jesus came to him and said, “Get up, pick up your mat and walk.” This week, we’re going to see the Jewish leaders’ reaction to this healing, and Jesus’ explanation of his work. And here’s what we’ll see:

Jesus is always on God’s mission of healing (and we should be too)

Read John 5:10-18

What’s the deal with the Sabbath?

Why was it such a big deal that this guy was carrying around a mat on the Sabbath? I mean it’s a mat. Who are these guys, the yoga police?

The Sabbath is given to the people of Israel in the Ten Commandments, but it goes back farther than that, all the way to creation. God created the world in six days, and on the seventh rested. () God created the world with rest built-into it. That’s why there are seasons, cycles, day and night. It’s why your students are going to go home and crash today—because they haven’t slept in two days and they need it.

Ultimately, Sabbath is about trusting God. When the Israelites were in the wilderness, after they had been delivered from Egypt, God provided food for them: Manna. But, God gave specific instructions. Gather manna for 6 days, and on the 6th day, get twice as much, because it won’t be there tomorrow. And that’s exactly what happened. Some people went outside on the seventh day and—no manna. Every family got exactly what it needed. If they tried to hoard it, it would get moldy and gross with maggots in it. Keeping the Sabbath meant they trusted God that he would take care of them, that they would have what they needed. They were admitting that—no matter how hard they worked—everything they had was a gift from God, and only God could provide for them.

Now, the problem is that, in the story of the Bible, Israel didn’t keep the Sabbath. They wanted a king to trust in, and all the kings trusted in their own power—their armies and their wealth. The people of Israel didn’t keep the Sabbath. Jeremiah calls them out on this (). Finally, God punished the people of Israel for not following the law and trusting in him above all else. They went into exile.

Now, when we get to the New Testament, the Pharisees whole deal is based on this history. They looked back at how their people didn’t follow the law and ended up in exile because of it. So they wanted to make EXTRA EXTRA sure they wouldn’t break the law and they added all these extra rules to make sure they weren’t breaking the Sabbath. We actually talked on Wednesday with our middle school about the Sabbath from Mark, and I did this thing with them (I won’t make you do it), but said if you’ve done any of these things on a Saturday recently, stand up—things like yardwork, like baking, like tying your shoes. And, you know what, every single one of your middle schoolers is a Sabbath breaker, according to the Pharisees. There was Jewish tradition that listed 39 specific activities that could not be done on the Sabbath. One of these involved carrying anything from place to place. So, when this guy picks up his mat, they’re super mad.

WHY DOES JESUS DO WHAT HE DOES?

Jesus is on a Mission of NEW LIFE

But Jesus is like so not worried about their extra rules, and he says something amazing: “My Father is always working, and so am I.” Jesus tells the Pharisees why he’s not worried about their extra rules, and it’s because he’s on a mission. He’s got work to do.

What is Jesus’ mission?

Jesus’ work is about NEW LIFE. Right after this section that we read today, Jesus launches into a speech about him and his Father, which we’ll get into more next week, but there it says that the Father and Jesus are both giving life, and moving people from death to life.

New Life is a major theme of the book of John as a whole. The very first verse says, “IN THE BEGINNING was the Word,” which is a direct reference to the creation story in . Then, the most famous verse from the gospel of John, : “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him will not die, but will have eternal LIFE.”

This healing we read about last week, the guy at Bethesda, it’s the third of seven signs in the book of John, like the seven days of creation, and the last one is the resurrection of Lazarus, where Jesus says, “I AM THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE.”

Jesus also says in , have come that they might have life, and have it to the fullest. Jesus’ mission is about bringing new life!

And this makes sense of Jesus words to the healed man, too. He says, “Look, man. I healed your body, and that’s awesome. But that’s not NEW LIFE, that’s not ETERNAL LIFE. For that, you need to deal with sin in your life. Jesus came to heal much more than the man’s legs. He came to heal his souls. He came, not just to give him a new physical life, but a new spiritual life too.

You, and I, we live in a world of death. Everyone dies. I think it was Mark Twain who said that “everyone should live next to a graveyard to remind themselves of the end of the story, or something like that.” And I’m not sure where you’re at, but I try just not to think about it mostly. But it’s there, and we have to deal with it.

But, deeper than that, what I think most of us miss most of the time, is that even if we’re literally alive, we can be spiritually dead. The Bible talks about sin as a kind of death. All sin ends in death. We’re not fully alive—the way God created us to be.

But here’s the deal: This is Jesus’ mission. To bring healing to people, to bring new life—physical, emotional, mental, and above all, spiritual life.

NEW LIFE means no more sin

At the beginning of , it contrasts the spiritual life to a life ruled by sin. We can’t participate in the life of the spirit if we go on sinning. This is why Jesus tells the man, “stop sinning or something worse may happen.” You may be more than physically hurt, but spiritually hurt.

In Romans

Now, we know, both from Scripture and from experience that we are not completely free from sin yet. Sometimes, I feel like my sins just went from obvious to subtle and sneaky after I became a Christian. With every year I follow Jesus, I become more aware of the deep, deep ways that sin has snaked its way into my heart. My opinion: I sin less, I’m just more aware of it. And now I can fight it. And I have a huge advantage now: the HOLY SPIRIT. “The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you.” . And his Spirit gives you life. It frees you from sin.

The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you.

Tyndale House Publishers, Holy Bible: New Living Translation (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2013), .

And here’s the crazy thing. It never ends. So, if you’re in middle school - what sins do you need to freed from? High schoolers - what sins do you need to be free from? Parents? Empty nesters? Where do you need the Spirit to bring you life? Where do you need freedom from sin?

Jesus is just like his Father—he is God!

Now, you would think that the Jewish leaders would be pumped about this. you would think they would be all about Jesus’ plan to bring new life. But they weren’t. It says that they were harassing him for breaking the Sabbath. Because they didn’t understand the mission of Jesus—they only care about maintaining the way things are. They didn’t care about new life. But then Jesus’ answer hypes them up even more. First they’re harassing him, then they want to kill him. (It’s like …)

Jewish leaders/wanting to kill Jesus

Why do they want to kill Jesus? “Because he called God his father, thereby making himself equal with God.”

Stop sinning (what’s worse?)

This is really interesting for a lot of reasons, but I think first because it shows that Jesus really did claim to be God. You know, sometimes you’ll be talking to people, or come across a blog or Youtube video that’s arguing against Christianity, and they’ll say, “Well, Jesus never claimed to be God. That’s something later Christians came up with.” But the problem with that is they’re reading the Bible from the perspective of a modern, western perspective. We want clear, plainly stated answers. We want the Bible to say, okay, point 1: Jesus is God. But, the Bible is so much better and more interesting than that. It’s a story, written in a completely different time and culture. So when I read, My Father is always working and so am I—I think, oh that’s cool, Jesus is calling God his father like a metaphor. But the way Jesus meant it, the way the Pharisees understood it, was that he was “making himself equal with God.” Jesus, right here, is claiming to be God, in a very 30AD, Jewish kind of way.

skrrrt. What? Jesus is God.

Jesus talks about God as Father A LOT. And that was really a thing in the Old Testament. It only very rarely talks about God as Father, and usually as the father of the whole nation, not of one person. But Jesus talks about God as father in a unique way.

We are like our parents. I know this is not a unique insight. But it’s been becoming real for me. I remember growing up, I always said, when I’m a parent, I’l NEVER say, “because I said so...” I’ve been a parent for a year and a half and, well. The other day, we were walking out of basketball, and I was tired, and Kendrick asked me something, and I couldn’t stop it before it came out. We turn into our parents, because we have this close, close relationship with them. When Jesus calls God his father, he’s saying that he has a close, close relationship with him, so close that Jesus is like God.

But it’s way more than that. There’s a word in the book of John that’s kind of hard to translate, it’s in : it’s usually something like “one and only” or “unique” or if you memorized the KJV, “only begotten.” This word, as John uses it, is all about how close the relationship is between the two. Jesus is not just the son of God, but he is the unique son of God, the one who is so closely related to him that his actions are the Father’s actions. This word shows up too, which is one of my favorite verses, and says, “No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.” What John is saying here is that Jesus is the unique Son of God, who has such a close relationship with God because he is God himself, and we can’t see God, but we can see what God is like through Jesus.

So, Jesus shows up in the

So, when we get to , and Jesus calls God his Father, and says that God is working and so is he, we understand that Jesus is on a mission of healing, not just because he feels like it, but because that is God’s mission in the world—always has been.

How does Jesus use Father? (the unique son) Son of the same dude.

CONCLUSION

It’s interesting that they said that Jesus broke the Sabbath, because he didn’t. Jesus showed us what the Sabbath is really about: It’s about healing, it’s about new life, it’s about God through Jesus re-creating the world.

Our student theme this weekend was WIRED, talking about how we connect to God and others. Our speaker, Brandon, talked to us about the incredible good news of the gospel, of how God has created us for his kingdom, and rescued us from darkness and put us into his kingdom, and how, ultimately, this sends us on a mission to the world.

Jesus is working on the Sabbath, but he’s doing the right kind of work. The answer is not less Sabbath, it’s more. It’s about a different kind of work—work that connects us to God, work that connects us to others. We fill our time and fill our time with stuff—with busy work that takes a lot of energy, but doesn’t rely on God. The right kind of mission, the right kind of Sabbath work follows God in his mission. It’s the kind of work that we see God doing in Jesus: the work of new life, of healing our bodies and our souls.

Martin Luther: I have so much to do I must spend the first three hours in prayer.

This mission is a different kind of mission. There’s a Martin Luther quote I like but don’t fully understand: “I have so much to do I must spend the first three hours in prayer.” I want to be that kind of person but I’m not yet.

The mission that we’re on is one of new life. It’s one where we bring life to every person we come across. And it takes work, but it takes a special kind of work, Jesus-work, God-work.

Jesus’ Father

Equality with God