Jesus's Work = The Father's Work

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John 5:9b-17

9b Now that day was the Sabbath. 10 So the Jews said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to take up your bed.” 11 But he answered them, “The man who healed me, that man said to me, ‘Take up your bed, and walk.’” 12 They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take up your bed and walk’?” 13 Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, as there was a crowd in the place. 14 Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you are well!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.” 15 The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him. 16 And this was why the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. 17 But Jesus answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.”

 
 

God “works” on the Sabbath, since God upholds reality constantly, seven days a week. When God causes the sun to rise on the Sabbath, e.g., He is not violating the fourth commandment—rather, He is making life itself possible. When questioned, Jesus identifies Himself with the Father and implies that they are both engaged in lawful work on the Sabbath.

P.S. We don’t know what Jesus means when He says, “Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you,” but the fact that the man immediately goes and informs on Jesus to the authorities isn’t a good sign!

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY:
Note how the healed man never thanks Jesus or gives glory to God. Let’s not make the same mistake today.

 

The Healing At The Pool On The Sabbath

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John 5:1-9a

5 After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.2 Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades. 3 In these lay a multitude of invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. 5 One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. 6 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?” 7 The sick man answered him, “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.” 8 Jesus said to him, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.” 9 And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked.

 
 

Some of the invalids by the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem believed that the water in the pool of Bethesda—no doubt fed by a spring—had healing properties, but the lame man complains that he has no way of getting to the water. I love the question Jesus puts to the man, a question that cuts right to the heart of the matter, “Do you want to be healed?”

P.S. Eagle-eyed readers will notice that v.4 is missing in the ESV translation. This is because some of the oldest manuscripts don’t have this verse, and the editors have decided not to include it. This is a good example of how biblical scholarship works—editors have to make hard decisions about what to include or exclude. But the missing verse is included in a textual footnote in the ESV:

John 5:4 Some manuscripts include here, wholly or in part: paralyzed—and they waited for the moving of the waters. 4 From time to time an angel of the Lord would come down and stir up the waters. The first one into the pool after each such disturbance would be cured of whatever disease they had.

QUESTION OF THE DAY:
If Jesus asked you what you wanted Him to do for you, what would you say?

 

The Freed Slaves' First Holiday

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Exodus 16:22-30

22 On the sixth day they gathered twice as much bread, two omers each. And when all the leaders of the congregation came and told Moses, 23 he said to them, “This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Tomorrow is a day of solemn rest, a holy Sabbath to the Lord; bake what you will bake and boil what you will boil, and all that is left over lay aside to be kept till the morning.’” 24 So they laid it aside till the morning, as Moses commanded them, and it did not stink, and there were no worms in it. 25 Moses said, “Eat it today, for today is a Sabbath to the Lord; today you will not find it in the field. 26 Six days you shall gather it, but on the seventh day, which is a Sabbath, there will be none.”

27 On the seventh day some of the people went out to gather, but they found none. 28 And the Lord said to Moses, “How long will you refuse to keep my commandments and my laws? 29 See! The Lord has given you the Sabbath; therefore on the sixth day he gives you bread for two days. Remain each of you in his place; let no one go out of his place on the seventh day.” 30 So the people rested on the seventh day.

 
 

The passage of time is one of the most fundamental and mysterious aspects of human existence. What we see with the seventh-day Sabbath is that the Lord is teaching His people to mark time by His standards, and not by the world’s.

In Hebrew, sabbath means “to cease, to stop.” So, every seven days God’s people are to totally cease from labor. What about daily bread? Well, on that sixth day the Lord doubly provides!

Think about what the first experience of Sabbath must have meant for these newly-freed slaves.

P.S. The word “holy” in the Bible doesn’t mean “religious” it means “separate.” The point of a holy day is that it is meant to be separate from all other days.

 

The Seventh Day

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Genesis 2:1-3

1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 2 And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. 3 So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.

 
 

The keeping of the Sabbath made Israel distinct, but the Creation account tells us clearly that the Sabbath day actually precedes Israel: there is a Sabbath from the very beginning of everything.

The Sabbath does not depend on a celestial calendar; the cycles of the moon or the stars have no bearing on the Sabbath: it just comes every seven days, no matter what.

On the Sabbath, the people of God rest, because God rested, and when the people of God rest, they are showing with their lives that they trust God to provide for them. Every seven days there is a reminder: God provides, and he can be trusted.

And what Genesis tells us is that this rhythm is built into the very structure of Creation itself.

 

The Entire Point of the Old Testament

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Mark 2:23-3:19

Jesus Is Lord of the Sabbath

23 One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and as his disciples walked along, they began to pick some heads of grain. 24 The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?”

25 He answered, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? 26 In the days of Abiathar the high priest, he entered the house of God and ate the consecrated bread, which is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions.”

27 Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. 28 So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”

Jesus Heals on the Sabbath

3 Another time Jesus went into the synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there. 2 Some of them were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal him on the Sabbath. 3 Jesus said to the man with the shriveled hand, “Stand up in front of everyone.”

4 Then Jesus asked them, “Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” But they remained silent.

5 He looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored. 6 Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus.

Crowds Follow Jesus

7 Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the lake, and a large crowd from Galilee followed. 8 When they heard about all he was doing, many people came to him from Judea, Jerusalem, Idumea, and the regions across the Jordan and around Tyre and Sidon. 9 Because of the crowd he told his disciples to have a small boat ready for him, to keep the people from crowding him. 10 For he had healed many, so that those with diseases were pushing forward to touch him. 11 Whenever the impure spirits saw him, they fell down before him and cried out, “You are the Son of God.” 12 But he gave them strict orders not to tell others about him.

Jesus Appoints the Twelve

13 Jesus went up on a mountainside and called to him those he wanted, and they came to him. 14 He appointed twelve[a] that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach 15 and to have authority to drive out demons. 16 These are the twelve he appointed: Simon (to whom he gave the name Peter), 17 James son of Zebedee and his brother John (to them he gave the name Boanerges, which means “sons of thunder”), 18 Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James son of Alphaeus, Thaddaeus, Simon the Zealot 19 and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.

 
 

Jesus is the point of the Old Testament, so to speak: he is the living reality to which the entire story of Israel was pointing. As such, he is the purpose of the Sabbath—to find rest and wholeness in his presence. The Sabbath is the culmination of Creation, and where Jesus goes, he brings a living Sabbath presence with him.

Take 15 minutes to sit in silence today. May the Lord give you rest.

 

P.S. I’m teaching a Bible study on How to Read and Understand the Gospel of Mark (and the entire Bible, too!) TOMORROW, March 9, 6-7 PM. You coming?

P.P.S. Plus we have Wednesday morning communion each Wednesday in Lent, 7:00-7:20 AM, with Chick-fil-A breakfast to go on your way out. You’re coming, right? I would LOVE to see families with school kids there.

The Seventh Day

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The keeping of the Sabbath made Israel distinct, but the Creation account tells us clearly that the Sabbath day actually precedes Israel: there is a Sabbath from the very beginning of everything.

The Sabbath does not depend on a celestial calendar; the cycles of the moon or the stars have no bearing on the Sabbath: it just comes every seven days, no matter what.

On the Sabbath, the people of God rest, because God rested, and when the people of God rest, they are showing with their lives that they trust God to provide for them. Every seven days there is a reminder: God provides, and he can be trusted.

Keeping Sabbath Today

There is much more to discuss about this topic than I have time for in this post, but I would like to say something provocative: I’m beginning to think Christians should keep the Sabbath today. I don’t think Sunday worship is the same as Sabbath, and though I understand why the early Christians got away from the Sabbath—they wanted to show that a person is saved because of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and not in the keeping of the Jewish Law—I think we should think hard about reclaiming it.

In practice, keeping the Sabbath would mean that Christians would deliberately structure their Saturdays to be about family and friends and celebration. No work would be done—no emails, no shopping, no yard work, no tax returns. Instead, we would have folks over for dinner, go to the park, read, play board games, go for walks, etc.

Can you imagine how America would change for the better if the Christians started keeping Sabbath?

Just as an experiment, why don’t you try it this Saturday?

Let me know how it goes.

 

Today’s Scripture

Genesis 2:1-3

Start Planning Your Sabbath Today

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[Note to my subscribers: As usual, this post went live on my blog at 3:30 AM this morning, but yet again we had some technical difficulties in sending it out via email, which is why you are only just now receiving this. The reason is a good reason: my subscriber number keeps increasing, and so I keep burning through the limits set by the email provider. —AF]

Jesus makes an interesting point when the Jews attack him for healing the lame man on the Sabbath:

“My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.”

The practice of ceasing work on the 7th day comes from Genesis 1, where God rests on the 7th day and ceasing from the work of creation. However, the rabbis also acknowledged that Sabbath doesn’t mean that God stops caring for and upholding Creation, and Jesus makes the same point.

There is a sense in which God never takes a day off (since nothing would exist without God’s continued care).

The good news is that we are not God.

How can you start planning today for a true Sabbath day this weekend?

 

Today’s Scripture

John 5:16-30