John 5:39-40, 45-47 "A Sad Plight"

“You search the Scriptures because you think they give you eternal life. But the Scriptures point to me! Yet you refuse to come to me to receive this life....“Yet it isn’t I who will accuse you before the Father. Moses will accuse you! Yes, Moses, in whom you put your hopes.  If you really believed Moses, you would believe me, because he wrote about me.  But since you don’t believe what he wrote, how will you believe what I say?”

 In Jesus day, many religious leaders searched and studied the Scriptures.  They had a high regard for Scripture.  They believed and taught that Scripture was given by God and inspired by God.  So, they memorized Scripture and quoted Scripture and argued Scripture.  They immersed themselves in Scripture -and yet, they missed something vital that ended up condemning them instead of saving them.  They missed that the entire Old Testament was pointing to the coming of Messiah (Jesus).  As a result, they rejected Jesus, and having rejected their one hope of salvation, were by default condemned.  A sad plight.

Today, many Christians have a similar issue with the presence and ministry of the Holy Spirit.  Believing that all we need is Scripture, they immerse themselves in Scripture, memorize Scripture, argue Scripture, quote Scripture, and yet still deny what the Scriptures themselves tell us concerning the Holy Spirit.  Nobody reading Scripture could ever come to the conclusion that all we need for effective ministry and godly living is Scripture -the Scriptures don't teach that.  The Scriptures teach us and show us about lives lived in intimate communion with the Holy Spirit, receiving intimate and personal revelation through prayer, healing the sick through the laying on of hands, living in the everyday prophetic -words of knowledge and wisdom and insight, etc.  This is all part of what sets Christianity apart from every other world religion.  This is the difference between religion and relationship.  The Holy Spirit actually indwells us -lives in us.  Why would any Believer want to deny the awesome, intimate power that is inherent in the reality of God in us?

Scripture is wonderful.  It is God's word.  It is a gift from God.  It is useful for such things as teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.  Scripture is from God, but it is not God.  It is not incidental that God's plan for His people includes the Holy Spirit in us ministering to us and through us.  This reality makes it possible for us to literally be the Body of Christ.  

John 5:17-24 "Was Jesus God?"

The Jewish leaders began harassing Jesus for breaking the Sabbath rules.  But Jesus replied, “My Father is always working, and so am I.”  So the Jewish leaders tried all the harder to find a way to kill him. For he not only broke the Sabbath, he called God his Father, thereby making himself equal with God.
 So Jesus explained, “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself. He does only what he sees the Father doing. Whatever the Father does, the Son also does....Anyone who does not honor the Son is certainly not honoring the Father who sent him.
“I tell you the truth, those who listen to my message and believe in God who sent me have eternal life. They will never be condemned for their sins, but they have already passed from death into life."

The central issue of Christianity has to do with Jesus.  As Christians we believe that Jesus was/is the Jewish Messiah sent by God;  based upon the claims of Jesus and the eyewitnesses to His actions and teachings -and then later, our own experiences with God through Jesus, we also believe that Jesus was not merely sent by God, He was/is God.  Not that He is a different God than the Father or the Holy Spirit, but that all three persons -Father, Son and Holy Spirit comprise one God.

Many people assume that Jesus never claimed to be God.  This is wrong.  The religious rulers of the day decided that Jesus had to be executed because of these very claims.  In our passage today we hear Jesus saying that God is His Father, that He does everything that God does, that we cannot worship God without also worshiping Him, and that spiritual life is only found in Him.

Since Jesus made these outrageous claims, we cannot believe that Jesus was simply a good moral teacher.  Good moral teachers do not claim to be God.  Good moral teachers do not redirect glory and worship from God to themselves.  Good moral teachers do not claim to hold the power to forgive men's sins and offer eternal spiritual life.

Either Jesus was who He claimed to be -in which case He was a good moral teacher, a prophet, the Messiah, and God -or He was a treacherous liar of the worst kind.  I believe He is who He claimed to be.

John 5:8-13 "Keeping the List"

Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.”  At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.
The day on which this took place was a Sabbath,  and so the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.”
But he replied, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’ ”
So they asked him, “Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?”
The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.

One of the problems with legalism (religion based upon rules) is that it always ends up as keeping a checklist of does and don'ts rather than allowing attitudes and behaviors to be shaped by love for God.  Legalism does not produce either intimacy or relationship -the best that can be said is "I kept the rules."

Because life is complicated, however, and every contingency can not possibly be covered by a list, rules need to be interpreted.  This where legalism becomes a slippery slope.  Because keeping a list of rules does not produce intimacy or relationship, legalists cannot use knowledge of God or God's heart or God's character as a basis for interpreting God's rules.  Instead, they must interpret the rules with their own unspiritual understanding and thinking -which usually results in more rules that are not necessarily God's rules.

Even worse, legalists seem to think that the best way to prove their zeal for God is by forcing their new man-made rules onto everyone else.  What always results eventually is people sincerely believing that they are serving God by imposing rules that are actually contrary to God's desires.   We see an example of that in this story.

God's law was simply that we should not work on the Sabbath -and instead keep it set apart as a day to remember Him and worship Him.  The temple leaders decided that Jesus healing someone on the Sabbath was work and that the healed man picking up his mat and walking home was work.  Instead of their hearts being moved to worship such a compassionate, loving, merciful God (as evidenced by the healing), their hearts were moved to anger because they believed rules had been broken.

In the big picture, this legalism trap can be avoided by actually learning to love God and love others -by making what Jesus called the greatest commandment primary.  Jesus said if we could love God with all of our hearts, souls, minds, and strength and love our neighbors as ourselves, the law would end up being fulfilled.  

We might wonder, then, are God's rules and laws irrelevant?  Not at all.  They set the proper boundaries for our lives.  It's just that we cannot interpret them correctly by adding new rules -we only interpret God's rules correctly in light of His love.

John 5:1-8 "Healing Choices"

After this, Jesus went to Jerusalem for a religious festival.  Near the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem there is a pool with five porches; in Hebrew it is called Bethzatha.  A large crowd of sick people were lying on the porches—the blind, the lame, and the paralyzed.  A man was there who had been sick for thirty-eight years. Jesus saw him lying there, and he knew that the man had been sick for such a long time; so he asked him, “Do you want to be well?” The sick man answered, “Sir, I don't have anyone here to put me in the pool when the water is stirred up; while I am trying to get in, somebody else gets there first.”
Jesus said to him, “Get up, pick up your mat, and walk.” 

 This has always been an interesting passage to me because of the sick man's response to Jesus.  Local legend said that an angel occasionally stirred the waters of the pool of Bethesda (Bethzatha) and that the first sick person to enter the water after it had be stirred would be healed of any physical ailments.  The Bible doesn't teach that this was true, just that the local people believed it.

Evidently, this particular man who was an invalid and could not walk had been coming to the pool for 38 years.  Jesus saw him laying there beside the pool on a mat and was moved with compassion.   He asked the man, "Do you want to be well?"

We would think that the man would say, "Of course I want to be well!  That's why I'm here.  I want to walk and run and jump. Yes, I want to be well."  But that's not what the man said.  Instead, he responded with an excuse of sorts.  he explained why he would never be well..."I don't have anyone to help me..."  

It seems that his physical condition had become his identity.  He was the poor lame man with nobody to help him and that's just the way things were.  In this story, of course, Jesus healed him anyway.

As I read this, I am reminded of how much we are just like this lame man.  We have all sorts of physical, spiritual and emotional problems that Jesus is willing to heal.  He asks, "Do you want to be well?" And in our hearts we put up walls and refuse to hope and decide not to risk exercising the faith to believe that Jesus has something better for us than our current damaged, broken condition.  We have taken our identities in sin and shame instead of in Christ.  Yet Jesus continues to ask us, "Do you want to be well?"

Sometimes the right response is simply, "Yes, Lord Jesus, I want to be well."

John 4:46-53 "A Kingdom Compassion"

There was a certain royal official whose son was ill at Capernaum.  When this man heard that Jesus had come from Judea into Galilee, he went to Him and pleaded with Him to come down and heal his son, for he was about to die.
 Jesus told him, “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will not believe.”
 “Sir,” the official said to Him, “come down before my boy dies!”
 “Go,” Jesus told him, “your son will live.” The man believed what Jesus said to him and departed.
 While he was still going down, his slaves met him saying that his boy was alive.  He asked them at what time he got better. 
“Yesterday at seven in the morning the fever left him,” they answered.  The father realized this was the very hour at which Jesus had told him, “Your son will live.” Then he himself believed, along with his whole household.

 Jesus was, of course, the promised Messiah.  His teaching while He walked the earth focused on the Kingdom of God.  Many of the miracles He performed were simply signs to verify who He was.  As Messiah, His desire was that people (His people -the Jews) would see the miracles and listen to His teaching and understand that His Kingdom was spiritual, and that by believing in who He was and accepting His teaching they could enter into a whole new experience and understanding with God because the Kingdom had arrived.  That was His desire.

His experience, however, was that people were not very much interested in a spiritual kingdom.  People enjoyed seeing miracles and wonders and they longed for freedom from bondage to Rome, but they didn't much care for the reality of the actual Kingdom or the actual Messiah.

Although Jesus' statement to the dying boy's father seems a little curt, it is true.  People did not easily believe the actual truth.  Nicodemus who had met with Jesus at night, believed that Jesus was from God, but at first could not accept the truth of the Kingdom.  The Samaritan woman's first response to a spiritual invitation was purely physical.  People wanted signs and wonders, not truth.

 Nevertheless, Jesus had a Kingdom sized compassion.  Even though people were not ready to accept the whole truth, He preached the Good News; He delivered the demonically oppressed; He brought dignity and justice to the downtrodden; He brought freedom to those living in spiritual bondage; He healed the sick.  And as a result, some believed.

We are not so different than Nicodemus or the Samaritan woman or this court official.  We sometimes need convincing.  We need to experience the reality of the Kingdom before we believe it.  Because Jesus still has a Kingdom compassion, He allows us to experience first and believe second.  Once we have experienced the reality of the Kingdom, however, we need to live it out.  We need to preach the Good News, and deliver the demonically oppressed, and give dignity and respect to the poor, and set free those who live in bondage, and heal the sick.  This is what Jesus did, and it is what we are now called and empowered to do.  The world doesn't know it and certainly doesn't understand it, but the world depends on it.  This isn't just about religion, it is about the actual Kingdom of God as Jesus taught it and demonstrated it.  We are His Body.  We are His presence in this world.  We need to live in His Kingdom.

John 4:35-38 "The Harvest"

You know the saying, ‘Four months between planting and harvest.’ But I say, wake up and look around. The fields are already ripe for harvest.  The harvesters are paid good wages, and the fruit they harvest is people brought to eternal life. What joy awaits both the planter and the harvester alike!  You know the saying, ‘One plants and another harvests.’ And it’s true.  I sent you to harvest where you didn’t plant; others had already done the work, and now you will get to gather the harvest.”

 Jesus illustrates here the difference between the natural and the supernatural.  In the natural the harvest cycle was four months between planting and harvesting.  Plowing and planting was hard work. When the work was done, there was a natural waiting period that could not be rushed.  It took four months for the seeds to sprout, grow and mature.  

Because of the delay, it makes sense that often the hired crew that worked the harvest were different than the hired crew that did the planting.  This is the natural.  In this story, however, Jesus just planted spiritual seed by speaking to an outcast Samaritan woman whose heart God had already prepared.  The right words spoken at the right time under the guidance of the Holy Spirit produced an immediate harvest -no long wait.  Jesus spoke, she responded and brought her entire village to hear Jesus, and many believed.  There was a supernatural harvest in the spiritual sense because Jesus was co-operating with the Spirit, planting where the Spirit had already been at work.

In the natural, we might assume that some educated person ought to come to this village where people are spiritually hungry and begin a teaching ministry with the hope that eventually there would be enough spiritual understanding to produce a spiritual harvest.  When we are co-operating with the Holy Spirit, however, speaking when He says speak -and speaking the words He says to speak, not relying only upon our learning and studying and demographic profiles and five year plans, we can expect a supernatural harvest.

There is nothing wrong with planning and studying.  In fact, we ought to do those things -we ought to prepare.  But at the same time, we should not only rely on natural methods if we want to participate in supernatural ministry; we ought to always be seeking the Spirit about when and where and what to speak.  There are always people in whom God is already working.  When we plant where the Holy Spirit has already cultivated the soil, the harvest is plentiful -it transcends the natural.  

How encouraging it is to work in conjunction with the Spirit -to work where God is working.

John 4:23-24 "Spirit and Truth"

"Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.  God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”

The Old Testament Law prescribed how to worship.  This is what the Samaritan woman was alluding to when she said, "Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

 According to both tradition and Law, if at all possible, people were supposed to go to the Temple in Jerusalem during the holy days and make sacrifice at the Temple.  There were all sorts of sacrifices and reasons to make them.  There were grain sacrifices and oil sacrifices and animal sacrifices ranging from small to large (doves, goats, lambs, cattle, etc.).  Smaller sacrifices could be made to give thanks and show gratitude.  Larger sacrifices were made for the atonement of sin.  Sacrifices could also be made to seal vows.  And once a year a priest would enter the Holy of Holies, the Most Holy Place, and make a special sacrifice for the sin of the entire nation of Israel.

Making sacrifices at the Temple was a ritualistic act of worship that the Law demanded.  It might engage the emotions and the spirit, or it might not; since it was the Law, it didn't really matter as long as the sacrifice was correctly made.

But everything changed when Messiah came.  Jesus claimed that the entire Law was fulfilled (accomplished brought to completion) in Him.  The Old Testament laws were never God's ultimate plan.  Because the Law was fulfilled in Christ, there is now a new freedom in worship that is not about a location or a ritual.  This new worship is what God has always desired.

This new, authentic worship that God is seeking involves our emotions (spirit) and our minds (truth).  It is not about where we are, it is about who we are.  It is about consciously and intentionally giving our whole selves to Him.  This can be done any time and any place.    It happens as we sing to Him.  It happens as we pray.  It happens as we lie in bed at night and think of Him.  It happens as we give water to a thirsty person or food to the hungry or a blanket to the poor and cold.  Authentic worship happens wherever in spirit and truth we are aware of God's presence with us and we realize His love.  It is real.  it is intimate. It is meaningful.