Healing Brings Hatred - [John 5:1-18]

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I would invite you to open your Bibles to John chapter 5 as we move forward in the Gospel of John, going through verse by verse, sometimes slower, sometimes faster.
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You know, it's funny what really intelligent, smart people, people with IQ, probably twice mine, what they will do in order to justify, to support evolution.
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One man said this, we tend to think of empathy as a uniquely human trait, but it's something apes and other animals demonstrate as well, says primatologist
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Franz de Waal. He shows how our, this is the same man, he shows us how our evolutionary history suggests a deep rooted propensity for feeling the emotions of others, all thanks to evolution.
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The article goes on to describe how rhesus monkeys were willing to starve themselves to death instead of seeing other monkeys tortured, and what they did, and again,
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I said this in the first service, I'm not sure how PETA can live with themselves allowing this to happen, but they've got, here's the picture, they've got a rhesus monkey in one section of the lab, and a rhesus monkey in the other section, and they're separated by glass, and every time the one monkey reaches for food, the other monkey gets an electrical shock, and after a while, the first monkey, the one who's getting the food, the lucky monkey, he figures out what's going on, and he stops taking the food.
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He's willing to starve himself to death, and so this primatologist, he studies primates, he says, see, monkeys can do it, we just do it better.
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It's certainly empathy, but there's something decidedly unique about the human capacity for empathy.
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We feel for people that we don't even know, right? You see stories on TV that break your heart.
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In fact, we're so empathetic as a people that we can read a book about a fictional character, we can see a movie about somebody who's never existed, and we feel empathy.
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We get emotionally tied up in it, and we can get even moved to tears. Now, my question for this primatologist is, would a monkey cry at a movie?
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I don't think so. But what is it about human beings that puts this in us, that makes it such a deep foundational part of us?
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Did our capacity for empathy help us to climb the mountain on the top of Mount Darwin? Is it the reason why we're at the top of the pyramid of evolution?
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No. What this capacity for empathy reveals about us has nothing to do with evolution, which is a myth.
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What it shows us is how in spite of the fall of Adam, we still reflect the image of God.
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In spite of sin entering the world, we still reflect the empathy that God has, not perfectly, but we still reflect that.
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Human beings are unique, but there are no evil monkeys.
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There are no evil dolphins. They always function as they were created.
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Mankind, by contrast, can be wantonly cruel, hateful, and evil, and we're going to see some of that in our text this morning.
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As men are uniquely equipped to suppress the truth about God, it is inevitable that doing so leads to greater and greater sin, right?
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That's Romans 1. They hold down the truth and unrighteousness, and God gives them over to sin after sin after sin.
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What we're going to see this morning is men suppressing the truth, the obvious truth, the truth right before them.
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Why? Because they have another agenda. They don't want to know the truth. Now to just kind of catch us up to where we are in the book of John, the
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Apostle John, the beloved Apostle, I mean, I like to think of him really, I think he thought of himself this way, as Jesus' best friend.
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And he wrote this biography of Jesus to underscore one fundamental truth. Jesus is the
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Christ, the Son of God, the fullness of God in human flesh. As each of the
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Gospel writers did, John selects segments of Jesus' ministry, vignettes, scenes out of Jesus' ministry that best highlight his overall purpose.
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He doesn't write down everything that he saw, everything that he knows about Jesus, because he himself says in chapter 21 that if every one of them were to be written,
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I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. Now the last time we were in the end of John chapter 4 and we saw
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Jesus perform a healing by long distance, the government official comes to him desperate for Jesus to go with him.
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Jesus just says, go, your son's healed, 16 miles away, and he was. But today we're going to see something vastly different, something up close and personal.
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Let's read our text, John chapter 5 beginning in verse 1. After this, meaning after this incident in Galilee, there was a feast of the
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Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is in Jerusalem by the sheep gate a pool, in Aramaic called
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Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades. In these lay a multitude of invalids.
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Then he describes them, blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been an invalid for 38 years.
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When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, do you want to be healed?
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The sick man answered him, sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up.
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And while I am going, another steps down before me. Jesus said to him, get up, take up your bed, and walk.
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And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked again. Now that day was the
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Sabbath. So the Jews said to the man who had been healed, it is the Sabbath.
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It is not lawful for you to take up your bed. But he answered them, the man who healed me, that man said to me, take up your bed and walk.
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They asked him, who is the man who said to you, take up your bed and walk?
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Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn as there was a crowd in the place.
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Afterward, Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, see, you are well.
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Sin no more that nothing worse may happen to you. The man went away and told the
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Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him. And this was why the Jews were persecuting
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Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. But Jesus answered them, my father is working until now, and I am working.
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This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the
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Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own father, making himself equal with God.
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Now this morning I'm going to draw your attention to four actions that are taken in our text so that you will be convicted of your need to emulate the empathy of God.
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Further, you will see what separates you from the sociopathic actions of the
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Pharisees is nothing but the grace of God. We would be, like the
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Pharisees, legalists were it not for the grace of God. And we're going to see that grace of God exhibited, shown, displayed.
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Why? I think it's to expose the wickedness of the enemies of Christ. While we don't believe that the gift of healing is for today, we know that the grace of God, as shown in this passage today, still angers the enemies of our
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Lord today. Isn't that true in your own lives? When you get saved, when you display a transformed life to unsaved people, you lose friends.
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Things change. Now let's go to our first action, which is an invitation to be healed.
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Let's look at verse one. We'll see the setting here of this invitation. After this, there was a feast of the
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Jews and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now that phrase after this simply means it was sometime after the incident in Galilee.
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It doesn't tell us how long it was. It could have been a day, a week, we don't know.
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But as I said last week, observant Jews, those who consider themselves religious, would make a point if they were able to go to Jerusalem three times a year.
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There were three holidays for which all the Jews would try to gather into Jerusalem.
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Those would be Passover, Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles. Now I'm going to say this several times today.
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It is easy in this text to get lost in the forest, to get so focused on the individual trees that you lose the big picture.
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The issue here this morning is not what feast this was. I read a lot of pages, a lot of ink spilled about which passage it was, but again, let me just say it this way.
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We don't need to figure out every single tree and what branch of tree -ism it is in order to know that we're in a forest.
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And we don't need to figure out what feast this is because that's not part of the story.
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He's just giving us a reference point. Jesus was in Jerusalem. Why?
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Because he was an observant Jew. He did not have a job that would keep him from going to this feast, and so he went to Jerusalem.
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Now the pool. Here's another tree. Verse 2.
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Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five -roofed colonnades.
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Once again, there are all manners of discussions about which pool this is, where it might be located, arguments, and most of them agree basically, but the pool is not the issue.
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Here's what we need to know. There is a pool of water in Jerusalem. It's near a gate, and there are five covered places.
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Why would there be five covered places? Well, because if you've been to Jerusalem, if you've been to Israel, you know a few things.
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It's very similar in terms of its overall climate to California, which is to say that it's hot, it's dry, and there are occasions where it is oppressively hot, and there's nothing better than a little shade to keep you out of that sun, because you can have a lot of problems with the heat if you don't get some shade.
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Now I'm going to jump a little bit ahead of myself, but I'm just going to ask this question anyway. You know, the reason that all these people are gathered there is why?
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Because they think there's some healing properties in this water, as we'll see. You know, some people go, well, that's an ancient superstition.
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Nobody's dumb enough today to believe that. Really? Have you heard of Lourdes, a little town there in France?
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People believe that this water actually heals. Listen to this.
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Although never formally encouraged by the Roman Catholic Church, Lourdes water has become a focus of devotion to the
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Virgin Mary, of course, at Lourdes. People have seen apparitions of the Virgin Mary supposedly there.
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Of course, how do you know it's the Virgin Mary? I don't know. But anyway, many people have claimed to be cured by drinking or bathing in it, and it's so popular that the
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Lord's authorities have provided the water for free to anyone who asked for it.
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People today still believe in the healing properties of water, miracle water. Okay, so now we get to the real issue here, this man and his need.
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Look at verse 3. In these, under these colonnades, lay a multitude of invalids, blind, lame, and paralyzed.
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One man was there who had been an invalid for 38 years. Now, we have to put ourselves in the mindset of first -century living.
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There were no government programs for these folks. Those who were chronically disabled did not have air -conditioned apartments provided for them.
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They were likely to be social outcasts. Not only were they not able to work, but there would be this idea that their sins, something they had done had caused their infirmity.
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And in fact, the fact that they were infirm would limit their social standing. They might be seen as unclean.
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There were all kinds of stigma attached to being in this state.
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Now, word about verse 4, because some of you are sitting there with your King James and your new King James going, well, what about verse 4?
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In fact, what about the end of verse 3? You just skipped over all that. You didn't even read it. What is wrong with you? Well, there are a lot of things wrong with you, but that's not the issue either.
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The best textual evidence we have, the older texts, do not have these verses in there.
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The end of verse 3 and verse 4 are not there. And you say, well, why are they there in my
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Bible? The best explanation I can give you is this, that we're going to see some verses here coming up where it seems like maybe the meaning is not entirely clear.
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And I think the verses that are inserted there really give us a nice picture of what people believed.
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And I'll talk about that here in a minute. But many of these invalids, a large number, a multitude, more than a dozen, more than a hundred, a lot of them were under these colonnades because they believed that this water could heal them.
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Now, out of all of them, the Apostle John draws our attention to one. He focuses on one.
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Well, why? Why would he do that out of all these people? Because Jesus focuses on one. You say, well, that doesn't seem fair.
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There could be hundreds, maybe even a thousand. Who knows how many people there? It's not fair. Why would
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Jesus just pick one man out? Was he obligated to even pick that man out?
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And the answer is no. This is really the sovereign choice of God. Not for salvation, not yet anyway, but there's no reason for Jesus to pick him out.
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And there's also no reason to think that this man was special in any way. He'd been coming to this pool probably frequently, maybe daily, for 38 years.
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And he had been afflicted for all those years. Now, Jesus asked him a direct question. Look at verse 6.
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When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, do you want to be healed?
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Now again, he could have just chosen anybody else. He could have chosen anyone at all, but he didn't. He chose this one man.
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It's interesting because our text tells us that Jesus knew he had been there a long time, but it doesn't tell us how he knew that.
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Again, this is a forest tree's issue. How did he know? If this was a Bible study and we're all sitting around, what does the
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Bible, you know, what does it mean to me? We could all conjecture and we'd all confuse each other and we'd never finish the text, so we're not going to do that.
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There are a lot of possibilities. Did someone tell him? Did he ask someone who then told him? Did the
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Holy Spirit reveal it to him? Did he, for that moment, use his omniscience to identify this guy as someone who had been afflicted for 38 years?
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That text doesn't tell us why, because it's not the issue. How he knew is not the issue.
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His direct question, do you want to be healed? Now, as a former police officer,
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I love that question. You know why I love that question? Because there are only two possible answers. Do you want to be healed?
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Do you want a million dollars? What's the answer? The answer is either yes or no. Do you want a million dollars?
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Hmm, let me think about it. I'll get back to you. Do you want to be healed? 38 years you've suffered, do you want to be healed?
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Well, look at his rambling answer. In fact, one man, I was reading this week, I love this, he said, he referred to this man as dull.
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I mean, this is just not, this is not the sharpest tool in the shed kind of answer. Look at verse 7, the sick man answered him,
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Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going, another steps down before me.
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This is not a yes, not a no. I mean, if it were you, can you just imagine,
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I mean, first of all, just imagine being in that condition for 38 years. Somebody comes up to you and says, would you like to be healed?
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Now, if you're thinking rightly, you just say yes. People will point out, well, this man was certainly polite.
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Look, he says Sir. Well, he used the Greek word kyrgios,
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Lord, but he wasn't being very polite. In fact, I'd say he was almost exasperated. His response is almost along these lines.
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Somebody says, do you want to be healed? And he says, are you kidding? Of course I would, but I can't get down to the pool on my own.
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What is wrong with you? Can't you see that? And I seem to have left my entourage at home.
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You know, all my attendants are not, I mean, he, there, there's a bit of sarcasm to it. He doesn't know that Jesus is offering to heal him.
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He has no idea who Jesus is, and we're going to see that. There's no faith exhibited by this man, and Jesus asked for none.
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He doesn't ask for anything. This man doesn't, not even help to get into the water. Perhaps he's hoping, but it's certainly, this idea, this water was supposed to cure people.
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In fact, let's just talk about verses, the end of verse 3 and verse 4. This whole idea that when the water was stirred up has this idea that the people believed that when the water was stirred up, and apparently they believed it was by an angel, that as soon as the water was stirred up, the race was on.
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First one in got healed. And here's this guy who can, if he can move at all, it's not apparent here, but by the time he gets moving or somebody helps him, it's over.
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It's not like everybody there, you know, took a number, you're, you know, wait to be served, or, you know, oh no, you first brother, you've been here the longest, why don't you go today?
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It was every man for himself. And for 38 years, this man had been down there, and every time the water was stirred up, he lost.
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He didn't make it. Now was there actually any healing property in the water?
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Did anyone ever get cured by being in the water? Again, it's not the issue, we don't know. John's purpose isn't to tell us about the pool of water, it's just give us the setting.
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Now let's look at the second action, instant healing. Look at verse 8. Jesus said to him, get up, take up your bed and walk.
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And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked. Without further interaction, without further discourse, no conversation at all, no explanation,
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Jesus commands this man in a manner really worthy of a drill sergeant. You're laying there, get up.
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It's very direct. He commands the man to stand up, he commands him to pick up his bed, and he commands him, you know, in the epic words my mom used to say, to get a move on.
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Let's get going. This man didn't know Jesus at all. He obviously didn't think he could heal, or he would have said yes.
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And he is immediately made whole. 38 years of minimal movement, probably left him weakened.
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I mean, imagine, you know, if you're sick for two days, if you have the flu, something like that, cold, you know, what do you do?
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You kind of ease your way back into things. Why? Because you're weakened. Imagine 38 years of that.
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We'd expect to see him, you know, maybe kind of slowly get up, or maybe ask for help carrying the mats.
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But when our Lord heals, it is immediate. And all the implications of his injury or illness, whatever was wrong with him, are completely eradicated.
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In his gospel, Mark will use words like immediately and at once.
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And he does it all the time. It's a gospel of action. John does it very rarely. So when he does it here, it's important that we take action.
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He wants us to underscore the fact that this immediately took place. Now, did this invalid believe in Jesus?
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Did he have saving faith? Did he believe enough to be healed as faith healers are wont to say?
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No. Did he thank Jesus? No. Did Jesus use this miraculous supposedly pool?
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No. So again, why this man?
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Because Jesus had empathy for him. He had compassion for him. Because he desired to give this man what he did not deserve.
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He did not deserve this healing. But Christ gave it to him. And it goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway, the so -called faith healers of today do nothing like this.
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They don't take verified, long -standing cases of a man being invalid and do an instant healing.
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What they claim to do is heal things that nobody can see and nobody can verify. You know, it's somebody's heart murmur in Omaha.
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It's, you know, Aunt Bobo, you know, whatever in Missouri and her whatever, you know,
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I mean, these are just, they're made up things. And that's how they heal people. So we've seen two actions so far, the invitation to be healed, and secondly, instant healing.
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Thirdly, investigating the healer. Really an odd response, right? And I would say pretty wicked one too.
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Now look at verse 9, the second half of it for a really wicked question. Now that day was the
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Sabbath. So the Jews, that would be the religious leaders, the Pharisees, said to the man who had been healed, it is the
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Sabbath. And it is not lawful for you to take up your bed. Talk about a lack of empathy, a lack of compassion, a lack of love.
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How about, you know what, it's so great to see you up and about. Brother, it's so good that the
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Lord has been so gracious to you. Did somebody help you down to the pool? How did you get healed?
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How did this wonderful thing happen to you? But that's not what they say. Instead, it's like the mean old cop on the beat.
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Hey, you there, what are you doing carrying that bed? It's Saturday, not
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Sunday. The last day of the week, the Sabbath. And these
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Pharisees are after the former invalid for the crime of mat -carrying.
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You know, if I heard that one on the radio, I'd say to my partner, I'd go, oh, let's handle that one, code 3. Lights and siren, woo, got a hot one, mat -carrying.
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What was wrong with these people? Well, if you understand their mindset, there's a passage,
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I'll just take, there are a lot of passages that would give them this idea. One's Jeremiah 1721. Listen to just part of it.
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1721, do not bear a burden on the Sabbath day or bring it in, listen, by the gates of Jerusalem.
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So they would take snippets of scripture like that and they'd say, well, see, he's violating the
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Sabbath. They presumed it to mean under no circumstances could anyone carry anything on the
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Sabbath and especially not by the gates of Jerusalem. And the Pharisees had come to define work not simply as what you did for a living.
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It wasn't just your vocation. They had, in fact, 39 classes of work.
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Thirty -nine. One writer says it this way, he goes, including taking or carrying anything from one domain to another, except for cases of compassion.
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You could carry someone who was an invalid, that would be okay on the Sabbath, but an invalid carrying his mat, that wouldn't be okay.
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According to the traditions of the elders, the man was breaking the law. He was violating one of these 39 categories that they had.
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Now, so they've made this accusation against him, you know, what do you do when carrying your mat on the Sabbath? Listen to his
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Weasley answer. And by the way, Weasley is not really a word but I like it. Verse 11, but he answered them, the man who healed me, that man said to me, take up your bed and walk.
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You know, as soon as I read this, I just thought, you know what this sounds like? The woman, the woman you gave me. This is blame shifting 101.
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You don't want me. Look, it wasn't my idea to carry this mat. It's not even my mat.
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I borrowed it. He doesn't say that, but I'm just kind of making it up.
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What he does say, though, is don't blame me. Blame the guy who told me to carry it. After all, he healed me.
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Then he told me to carry it. What was I supposed to do? It's not my fault. I mean, this is not exactly, you know, a profile in courage.
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It's not even a, I mean, this is even a tough guy mobster. This isn't exactly Whitey Bulger not wanting to be a rat, right?
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Now, they ask, they follow this up. They follow up really with the wrong question. Look at verse 12. They asked him, who is the man who said to you, take up your bed and walk?
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Now, wouldn't you want to know if it was you and you were investigating this whole scenario? Not that you would be, but imagine that you were for a moment.
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You find out this man who'd been an invalid for 38 years had been healed. Your first thought would be,
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I want to know who healed this man. That's not what they say. They say, who is it who told you to carry this bed?
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There's a violation of the Sabbath here. And you know what? If you'll give us the identity of the person who told you to do this, we'll go talk to him.
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We want the big fish. We just want you to roll over. We want you to give us the big guy, the crime boss.
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I mean, this man had told this poor invalid to break their rules and that cannot be tolerated.
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And this is so typical of legalists. They're always focused on the speck in someone else's eye and not the beam in their own.
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These rules were entirely made up. They were not scripture. 39 categories of work.
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Where does that come from? A man whose life had previously been in human eyes, in their eyes, worthless, had been changed.
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And they were concerned that the man who had healed them had ordered him to carry a mat. Now, why would they have that mindset?
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Because here's the mindset of legalists. What do they think? They think if I obey rules, I please
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God. Even if they're rules that I derive from my own contortions from the word of God.
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What separates every religion, including Judaism of that day, from Christianity?
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All these other religions are on a treadmill. Obey, obey, do, do, do, please
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God by what you do. Here's the problem. You cannot please God by your own works.
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It's impossible. And in their hearts, I suspect they even know that. So what do they do?
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They make the rules increasingly complex because that adds to their profanity and their own sense of holiness.
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If I can keep all these laws, I must be really, really holy. I must be really, really good.
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They know that in their minds that if they keep these works and these stringent requirements, that they're good enough for God.
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They have foods that may not be eaten, drinks that may not be consumed, places that you can't go, activities that you may not participate in.
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And there's one key element to all of this legalism. God didn't command it. Now after that wrong question, look at the disappointing answer here at verse 13.
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Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was for Jesus had withdrawn as there was a crowd in the place.
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The Pharisees really wanted to know who this upstart was, who this rebel was. But this man who had been healed never asked.
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He never asked Jesus for his real name. Jesus had never offered it. As soon as the man picked up his bat and left, so did
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Jesus. Now what might have happened? It says here
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Jesus had withdrawn. Well, what would have happened if Jesus made himself known to that man and that man started shouting, you know, this man just healed me.
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You're in a crowd of people who are chronically invalids.
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They're going to, you know, want healing too. And you say, well, why didn't
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Jesus do that? Why, why, why, what? You know, again, we get lost in the forest.
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There are a lot of possibilities. What if, what if, what if? But that's not the point of this whole story. Now look at, we have here a stern warning in verse 14.
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Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, see, you are well. Sin no more that nothing worse may happen to you.
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Now again, how long is afterward? We don't know. It just means later. It could have been, you know, obviously it was sometime after this interview with the
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Pharisees, but we don't know. It could have been an hour. It could have been a day. It could have been in weeks. We do not know.
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It's an indeterminate amount of time. But why was the man at the temple?
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We don't know. The text doesn't tell us. Some speculate that he was there to thank
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God for his healing. That would be a good thing. I think it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility. And if you've had to work on Sundays before, you'll understand this.
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If there's a time or you've been sick for a number of Sundays, if there's a time where you cannot go to church, when you actually get to go, it's delightful.
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It's delightful. And so it's entirely possible that this man may have just thought to himself, you know, I haven't been able to go to temple.
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Either nobody would carry me or I couldn't physically get myself there. Or when I got there, I was turned around because people presumed
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I was unclean. I'm going to go to the temple. We don't know though. And again, it's not an important detail.
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And by the way, here's another unimportant detail. How did Jesus find him? Well, the verb there would kind of indicate that he wasn't really looking for him.
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But he saw him, he recognized him, and so he approached him. And his comment, see you are well, really implies that nothing was said after the
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Lord commanded him to take up your bed and walk, as I said before. He's just like, it's just kind of a, see, just as I said, you know,
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I told you to take up your bed and walk and here you are. And by the way, it says he is perfectly physically whole.
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That's the word Jesus uses. When he says, you are well, it means he's sound, perfect.
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But up to this point, Jesus had said nothing about what? About his soul, about his salvation.
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And that changes right here. The wording implies that the man had sinned and that that sin may, may have been the cause of his condition.
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We're not told definitively. Some scholars say yes, some say no. I mean, really excellent scholars on both sides.
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But here again, this is a debate that you can have and you'll miss the whole point. Because while these scholars take different branches and they both disagree, they come back to this one basic point, which is on the second part where he says about nothing worse.
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They'll see to it that nothing happens to you. Stop sinning so nothing will happen to you. Why? Because the pattern of sin that this man was currently involved in indicated no salvation.
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He was not saved. He needed to stop sinning or something worse was going to happen to him.
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And all the scholars agree that that something worse was eternal hell. Now, was there a change of hearts?
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We're not told specifically, but I think there's a really good indication in verse 15. Let's look at that. The man went away and told the
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Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him. Now, your first thought is what a snitch. You know, he leaves the
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Jews or he leaves Jesus and he goes right to the Jews and rats him out. Got to be careful.
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Remember what they wanted to know. They wanted to know what? Who commanded him to carry his mat on the
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Sabbath? Who commanded you to break the Sabbath? Look what he says. Not like, hey, the guy that told me to carry my mat on the
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Sabbath, that was Jesus. He doesn't say that. He says, it was Jesus who healed me.
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The man was Jesus. I think that shows a change.
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Their question, his answer, two different things. So we've seen invitation to be healed, our first action, second action, instant healing, third action, investigating the healer, and our fourth action, instigating the plot, instigating the plot to kill
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Jesus ultimately. Look at the action taken, verse 16, and this was why the Jews were persecuting
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Jesus. They were after him for his belief system, for what he did, because he was doing these things on the
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Sabbath. Well, what things? Healing? Commanding others to pick up their beds and walk?
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It seems like, it seems that these things refer to a series of incidents that occurred on the
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Sabbath, incidents that John doesn't talk about. Why? Because he doesn't talk about them.
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They're not the focus of what he's trying to do, of the case that he's building. He just wants us to know that there were a series of events, and eventually the
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Jews had had enough because he kept doing things on the Sabbath. We read in the other Gospels about the activities that the
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Lord did on the Sabbath. But listen to Jesus' answer, the answer given in verse 17, but Jesus answered them, my father is working until now, and I am working.
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And that Greek word for answered carries a legal meaning weight to it. In other words,
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Jesus was defending himself from their charges of violating the Sabbath. You're going to accuse me of violating the
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Sabbath? Here's my defense. You all know, even the rabbis of the day understood that God was upholding the universe by his power, and he could not stop working for a single moment, or everything would cease to exist.
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They knew that in that sense, God was not at rest. So Jesus says, I'm just doing as my father does.
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You think, well, that's a pretty harmless answer. Oh, it got under their skin.
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Why? Well, breaking the Sabbath was a major issue, but there was something much worse to the
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Pharisees, and that was exactly what Jesus did. Look at verse 18. This was why
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Jews were seeking all the more. They were to kill him. They were persecuting him because of his violation of the
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Sabbath, but listen, now they want to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling
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God his own father, making himself equal with God. The Jewish religious leaders had been determined to put an end to Jesus' ministry, but this just turned the volume way up.
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They were done with him. A Jew might refer to God as my father if he was praying to him alone at home.
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When a group of Jews got together to worship, they might call him our father, but for Jesus to say my father in this particular situation was to claim a special relationship, an intimacy with the father.
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And to the ancient Jewish mind, to establish that kind of relationship with the father was blasphemy.
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We have to think, you know, if somebody said I was Dean's son, then that would mean to them, that would mean, well, he is a duplication.
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He is an image bearer of his father. So when
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Jesus says, I'm just doing what my dad does, they're ready to kill him.
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Sabbath breaking and ordering others to do that, that would be bad, but blasphemy, that is saying something untrue about God was far, far worse.
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And what was the supposed untruth? That Jesus was equal with the father. But it's true.
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It's interesting because cultists today, there's a major world religion, you might have heard of Islam.
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They will say that Jesus never claimed to be God. But the original audience understood this, and the original audience didn't like it.
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Same thing happens at the end of John chapter 8 and other places when Jesus makes truth claims about himself, his relationship with the father, and the fact that he is
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God, a very God. Then what happens? His original audience is incensed.
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They understand what he meant. The Pharisees here, I mean, you can almost picture they've got the pitchforks in one hand.
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They're looking for the torches. They are ready to go. This all brought to mind because really, this was a moment of decision for the
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Pharisees. They could have gone two ways. They could have looked at the works of Jesus and say they could have fallen at his feet, but they didn't do that.
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C .S. Lewis once said this, you must make your choice. Either this man was talking about Jesus and is the son of God or else a madman or something worse.
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You can shut him up for a fool. You can spit at him and kill him as a demon, or you can fall at his feet and call him
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Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about being a great human teacher.
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He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. And I would say C .S. Lewis was right, except he doesn't go far enough.
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You either believe that Jesus is who the Bible says he is or you reject him, not partially, but entirely.
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You either love Jesus or you hate him. You either submit to Jesus as Lord and Savior or you rebel against him.
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You either trust him fully or you have placed your full faith and confidence in yourself and your own good works.
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And that's what these people, these men had done. These Pharisees had done. They had a system. They had a program.
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They knew intellectually that they were on the stairway to heaven. They knew that what they were doing was sufficient.
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They believed, but their hearts were hard. They were so hard that they did not even look at the miracle that Jesus had performed and rejoice in it.
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There was no joy in them. The nature of that healing should have caused them to repent and believe, but miracles alone don't save.
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You can see all the miracles you want. We're going to see miracle after miracle in the book of John. You can go through all the gospels.
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Jesus performs miracles and what happens? The multitudes depart. We're going to see that later in John chapter six because unless the
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Holy Spirit causes a new birth, unless he causes you to be born again, miracles don't save you.
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They harden your hearts. They should have rejoiced.
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They should have emulated God and rejoice. They should have rejoiced at the love of God, the grace of God to this man.
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Instead, they were angry. They were filled with hatred and they were filled with murder.
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They wanted to kill Jesus. Now, mankind, whether they are outright atheists or religious legalists, every single one of them who reject
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Jesus as God, who reject Jesus as their savior, who reject Jesus as their master and their king will suffer their due punishment.
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They will not receive the grace of God as this man did. How about you?
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Where are you with Jesus Christ this morning? Have you submitted fully to him?
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Have you trusted his sacrificial death, his death on a cross?
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Have you been accounted righteous by virtue of his perfect life on your behalf? Do you believe in the resurrection from the dead?
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If not, today would be the day to change your mind and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
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Let's pray. Father in heaven, Lord, what a magnificent thing to see this man who had nothing to commend him to you.
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Nothing. No social standing, no religious standing.
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And in fact, when Jesus appeared and selected him, he didn't give a second thought.
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He didn't thank Jesus. He didn't want to know who he was. He just left. He didn't defend
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Jesus. Father, your grace is not conditional.
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It's not based on what we do or who we are. We thank you that you are a saving
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God, able to reach even those that seem beyond hope, as this man certainly did to those around him.
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What a great savior you are. Lord, we thank you and praise you for the grace of God in Christ Jesus.