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Controversial Miracle

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The text for this Sunday is John 5:1-18.

“Do you want to get well?”

It was a startling question for Jesus to ask. Of course the man wanted to get well; he and the many others with various disabilities who were there with him. He had been struck with this disability for 38 years. He had been coming to this pool, Bethesda, perhaps daily hoping to be the one to make it into the water first “when the water is stirred.” He never made it though. Someone always beat him in. And so he waited and watched with countless others hoping for healing.

Of course he wanted to get well, but he never said that specifically to Jesus. He describes his desire to get well, but he never says to Jesus, “Yes, Lord, I want to be well.” That’s the kind of response we expect when Jesus performs his miracles – one of faith. We either expect it before the miracle or after, but with this man we get neither. Jesus healed him and this man showed not even an ounce of gratitude.

But, the healed man plays a much lesser role in this chapter than we might initially expect. Yes, he is the object of Jesus’ miraculous healing. Yes, he turns around and betrays Jesus to the Jewish leaders. Yes, that is a shocking response to what Jesus did for him… But the reason why the man turns on Jesus is because Jesus told him to specifically do something against Sabbath regulations at that time. It was against Sabbath rules for someone to carry a mat for lying on. When the Jewish leaders attacked the healed man for doing something specifically against the Sabbath, he simply passed the blame to Jesus. After all, it was Jesus who commanded him to carry the mat.

But Jesus had reasons for making the man carry his mat. Making him do so offered him an opportunity to uncover the spiritual sickness of the Jewish leaders. As leaders, they were more concerned with preserving traditions than listening for God’s voice. They were more concerned with rules than mercy. They were more concerned with maintaining the status quo than discerning what God was doing in the world. They were more worried about "religion" than God.

Jesus exposed this in the leaders, and they didn’t like it.

However, by making the man pick up his mat, Jesus was also able to offer a clear picture of his identity near the beginning of his ministry. As it turns out this is what raised the ire of the Jewish leaders most of all. Verse 16 tells us that the Jewish leaders began to persecute him.

In college I had a friend who, in our many conversations about Christianity, would frequently say that his biggest problem with Christianity is that Jesus never claimed to be God. He meant, specifically that Jesus never said, “I am God,” to the best of his knowledge. No matter how much I tried I couldn’t convince him that Jesus did make claims that he was God and that is precisely what got him in such great trouble.

Most often we associate that trouble mostly with the crucifixion, but in John’s gospel we see that Jesus faced persecution his whole life in ministry because he claimed that he was God’s only Son – equal with God. In verse 17, Jesus says, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.” To say that this angered the Jewish leaders is a major understatement. John tells us in verse 18, “For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath (a big deal!), but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God (a claim warranting death).”

For those who look to Jesus as only a great moral teacher, or a great example, or a major historical figure, or a nice guy who did great things; Jesus strongly refuted those claims. The truth is that when we consider who Jesus is, we have only two options: either Jesus is who he says he was (God’s only Son), or he was a lunatic - as C.S. Lewis once argued. There are no other options. His morals, his example, his historical notoriety, are all tied in to the very fact that he claimed to be God and people believed him.

By God’s grace, Jesus is who he said he was. He claimed to be God’s only Son, and then lived a perfect life to keep covenant with God (covenant that we cannot keep), died a sacrificial death for us and our salvation, and rose again to guarantee us new and eternal life through faith in him. In John 5:24, Jesus says to the Jewish leaders persecuting him, and to us, “Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life.”

 

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