Lessons from John 5: Controversy and Claims

Controversy and Claims in Jesus~John 5:16-30

The result of Jesus healing this man publicly and on the Sabbath became a point of contention between Jesus and the religious rulers. They proceeded with plans to kill Him. Jesus didn’t fit their mold of what the Messiah would look like or how He would act.

Much like people today, they wanted a God of their own making. Because Jesus didn’t fit their ideas, they sought to get rid of Him.

The whole purpose of Jesus coming to earth as a human being was to fulfill the Old Testament prophecies which so clearly pointed to our need for a Savior.

God had given the Ten Commandments as the plumb line for daily living, and keeping the Sabbath holy was one of them. But these religious leaders had done everything in their power to make this a day of drudgery and even a day of burden. So much so that instead of people enjoying the Sabbath, they resented it and were even afraid to do anything for fear of being unjustly accused of breaking the Sabbath.

God’s Intention for the Sabbath

This was not the way God had intended for the Sabbath to be. So with the coming of the Lord Jesus, a new day, not the 7th day but rather the first day of the week, would now become the day of celebration and worship. And because these Jewish religious leaders didn’t like what they saw or heard they began persecuting Jesus.

Yet Jesus immediately got to the heart of the matter and responded to their perfection. He declared that He was simply doing what the Father had sent Him to do.

You see, in the beginning God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit created the heavens and the earth. Scripture tells us in Genesis 2:2 that on the 7th day, after God had finished the work He had been doing, He rested.

Genesis 2:3: Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.

He rested because everything was done. It was complete. The work that He had set out to do was finished. But then Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden everything that was accomplished and made perfect was now interrupted by man’s sin.

Therefore, because God desired to rescue sinful men and women from their dreadful plight, He did not cease to do His good work, even on the Sabbath.

You see, if God refused to work on the Sabbath, the sun would not rise, nor the moon set. The stars would not appear and the earth would not continue to rotate. All would be lost and destruction would come upon all His creation! Even us!

We cannot breathe without His help and our bodies would cease to function without His life-giving grace.

And so Jesus would not cease to do the work and will of the Father on the Sabbath!

Everything Jesus did here on earth was to prove that He was indeed God incarnate. He was deity in the body of a human being. He did this to prove that He had the power and authority to change what had been into what would be!

Yet the Jewish religious leaders refused to believe that Jesus was equal with God the Father. Thus, they refused God’s own Son. And to refuse the Son was also to refuse the Father.

You can’t have Jesus without the Father and you can’t have the Father without the Son.

Jesus received His authority from God the Father and His power from the Holy Spirit. Thus we have three in one! The Holy Trinity. The Lord God almighty. He is always at work on the behalf of sinful humanity, with the goal of rescuing humanity from their sins!

Terri Hamman

Faith & Fitness Coach