John 5:16-30

February 17, 2008: Communion Sunday

 

On one level the Bible is very straight-forward and simple to understand.  At another level, we can spend our whole lives in God’s Word and still not understand its depths.  So how should we live as caring Christians in 2008, understanding apparent discrepancies do exist and we have even more problems when we try to make applications to real life situations resulting from these discrepancies? How can we deal with the issues that have separated Christians and kept us from working together to bring salvation to the lost? Jesus can show us the way out, if we will learn to really listen to Him.

 

Most people, Christians or not, are at least somewhat familiar with the Ten Commandments. Let’s look at one of them together this morning and see how its interpretation became one of the chief reasons the Jewish leaders hated Jesus. Exodus 20:8-11 says, "Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”

 

Its interpretation seems simple enough.  The God who created the world in six days made a covenant with the nation of Israel.  One of the most important ways the Jewish people could show they were intent on keeping this covenant revolved around what they did from sundown on Friday until sundown on Saturday. Everyone agreed that worshipping God was one way to keep the Sabbath. But for God to be worshipped, the Levites had to work.  In Leviticus 24:8, the priests were commanded: “This bread is to be set out before the LORD regularly, Sabbath after Sabbath, on behalf of the Israelites, as a lasting covenant.” And, again in Numbers 28:9-10, the priests were commanded: “On the Sabbath day, make an offering of two lambs a year old without defect, together with its drink offering and a grain offering of two-tenths of an ephah of fine flour mixed with oil. This is the burnt offering for every Sabbath, in addition to the regular burnt offering and its drink offering.

 

So the Jewish leaders of Jesus’ day agreed that the priests were allowed to do their required work on the Sabbath without being guilty of breaking the Sabbath.  And these same Jewish leaders, following in the traditions of the Talmud, agreed that God did not truly stop all of His work on the “seventh day”. They understood Moses to be saying God had completed His work of creating the universe in which we live and ceased from creating anything more. Everyone, the Pharisees and Jesus, agreed that if God were to do absolutely nothing on any or every seventh day this universe would fall apart.

 

So when Jesus said, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working” (John 5:17) the disagreement was not over whether God “is always at his work to this very day.”  The Jewish leaders fully understood when Jesus said “My Father” and “I, too, am working” that Jesus was claiming a relationship with God that went beyond that of any man. They knew Jesus was claiming His work was equal with the work God alone could do. The Pharisees “knew” no man could be in any way equal with God; but that is precisely the reason John gives for Jesus continuing to habitually heal on the Sabbath. Since Jesus was “calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God” (5:18), the Pharisees had to kill Him.  They were left with no alternative interpretation.

 

John continues, taking great pains to make sure we know that Jesus is saying that He and the work He does are equal to God and the work God does: “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, to your amazement he will show him even greater things than these” (5:19-20).

 

These very important verses give us the key to holy living since the New Covenant, the New Testament, is not only written on paper, the 27 books beginning with Matthew and ending with Revelations, but in our minds and on hearts so that all of us, “from the least of [us] to the greatest,” will all know God intimately (Jeremiah 31:33). Put another way, Jesus is alive and is speaking to us today.  Through His tremendous gift, the Holy Spirit, we can “see what the Father is doing” and with the help of the Holy Spirit we can do what our Father is doing. We can learn to recognize the hand of Jesus by coming to know Him through the Scriptures. But all Christians are also capable of hearing His living voice.  How can I be so sure of that?  Listen to what Jesus also said in this same context: “Whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life. I tell you the truth, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son to have life in himself” (John 5:24-26).

 

Look closely at those words. Jesus is saying we are saved or become Christians only after we hear Jesus speaking to us (“hears my word”). Before we heard Jesus speaking to us, we were dead in our sins, but when we were dead, we heard the voice of the Son of God and lived because He called to us. We become Christians when we respond to Jesus talking to us because the Father has granted “the Son” not to be dependent on anyone or anything, but to “have life in himself.”  By responding to His Living Word, we are made truly alive.

 

If we heard His voice at our conversion and have His life living in us, we can continue to hear His voice.  When we don’t understand what Scripture is saying, or we don’t know what we should do, we need to listen until we hear the voice of God.  How do we listen?  It starts by knowing His revealed written word.  What His written Word tells us is wrong will always be wrong.  The voice that speaks contrary to the written Word can never be the voice of Jesus. Internalizing His written Word helps us find His living Word and helps us understand what Jesus or God is doing.  Those are the things we are to do.  That is our answer, our way to live a holy life and our way to live above the apparent discrepancies we find. 

 

When what Jesus was doing appeared to break the Sabbath, the Pharisees should have examined the works He was doing. His works and the written Word they had were enough to show He was God, He was who He claimed to be. By studying, listening, and observing over a period of time, we can know whether what we see is of God or not.  It just may take more effort and openness than we are willing to grant.