Gospel of John, 4:43 - 5:38

Okay, last week we were, let's see, we were finishing up at the end of 9, lesson 9, which is a, we were in chapter, the last part of chapter 4, and we had talked about the effect that, the effect of this woman, recognizing who the Lord Jesus was, that he was the Messiah of Israel. And when he said to her, I that speak to you am he, it totally changed her.

As we said, the work of grace in her life had been done. And this poor Samaritan woman had received the Messiah of Israel. So she goes to town. She forgets her water pot. She goes to town. she forgets her circumstances and she forgets the toil that she's under so now she's totally engrossed with a new object who's the Lord Jesus Christ which I think is a really good object lesson for us as we grow to be engrossed now with a new object.

Now the disciples come back right at that time in verse 31 and they look at him and they brought food back they went into town and went to McDonald's, brought a bag of burgers back, and he's not hungry and they can't figure out why. Sorry. In the meantime, his disciples sought him, saying, Master, eat. But he said to them, I have food to eat you know not of. So therefore, the disciples said one to another, Has any man brought him anything to eat? Jesus said unto them, My food is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work.

Say not ye that ye are yet four months, and then comes the harvest. Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes, look on the fields, for they are white and ready to harvest." So, what is the Lord's food? Maybe a better question would be, what's more important than eating to the Lord?

He's hungry, he's been traveling, he's thirsty. To do the Father's will. Doing the Father's will is so important to him that he classifies it as his food. that he would rather do the Father's will than anything. And I think we'll see this principle played out in a number of ways as we go through John's Gospel. Because there's a lot of times where logic or human need would seem to be the motivator for the Lord's actions, but it isn't. He doesn't react to things like that. He reacts to doing the Father's will. So, maybe say it another way.

We found out in chapter 1 that the law came by Moses. What came by Jesus Christ? Grace and truth. So the work of grace, I'm going to say, is really the meat of the Lord Jesus Christ. The fact that he is the dispenser of grace is the thing that the Father has sent him to do. And up until this time, grace has been dispensed sparingly but he's bringing a whole system of grace and he operates and acts graciously his whole human life and he's taken up with it being the dispenser of grace and it gives him joy to do the father's will and the father's will was to be to change the system, the operating system from one of law to one of grace. If you were in the grace class, we spent a lot of time talking about that.

So when you get to 35 through 38, he starts talking about even though there's four months before the harvest, he says, look around and you can see that the fields are ripe. They're ready to be harvested. and then he talks about he that reaps receives wages and gathers fruit unto life eternal and both he that sows and they that reap may rejoice together and here it is and here is that saying true one sows and other reaps I sent you to reap that on which you bestowed no labor other men labored you are entered into their labors so who are the reapers and who are the sowers? Who are the sowers, first of all?

Who are they? Prophets. Yeah. They're the ones that laid and planted the seed. If you go back and study this interaction with the woman at the well, you'll see that the seeds planted in her were from the prophets. Their testimony awakened in people that paid attention to it. they began to grow, but when it was time to labor, to reap, who were they?

The disciples. Christ himself? But he says to his disciples, Say not that there are not thirty-six and he that reaps those. Who's he talking about in terms of those who the laborers would be that would do the harvesting? He's talking to them. You're going to be the harvesters of the work that somebody else did.

Now what's interesting about this from the principle standpoint, that's the way the body of Christ functions today. There are those that plant seeds, there are those that reap, there are those that nurture, there are those that plow, there are those that fertilize. We're all involved, engaged together in, put it this way, the bringing in of the crop. What's the bringing in of the crop in the body of Christ? When the field is ripe for harvest, what's it look like?

What's God's intent today? What's He doing? Building big buildings, filling them up with lots of people. What's He doing? What's God's will for your life? You. Point people to Christ. For what reason? When you're pointed to Christ, what happens to you? In Romans 8, It says that God works all things together for good to those who are called according to His purpose. What's His purpose?

To conform us to Christ. To conform us to the image of Christ. When you're conformed to the image of Christ, everybody's engaged in that agricultural process. The conformity to the image of Christ. Every single one of us is engaged in that process. Whether you're the planter of the seed or the one who cultivates the field, weeds it out, whatever, or reaps it. Last question.

All the way down to 42, the Samaritans come back with the woman and in that sitting they believed on him because of what the woman was saying and told him all that he ever did. So when the Samaritans would come to him they besought him that he should tarry with them, and he abode there two days. And many more believed because of his own word. And they said unto the woman, Now we believe not because of your saying, for we have heard him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world." So my question is, in verse 42, is this a lesson for our own ministry?

And first of all, what's the lesson? The woman goes into town and starts evangelizing. That's what she's doing, right? She's telling people about this one who told her everything she ever did or ever wanted to know. And people and men got excited about it. And then she said, well, let's go out and meet him. So they go out and meet him. So what does she accomplish? She's done the job of an evangelist, which is what? Come and see. John the Baptist. Don't look at me. There he is, right there. Well, she just did the same thing, right? She just did the same thing.

So what effect does it have on the people that they said, well, gee, we believe because of what you said. But now that we see him, what's the change? Yeah, the focus goes on him and it confirms what they believed based on what she told them. So you and I tell somebody about the Lord Jesus Christ, the problem with humanity is that we like to stay the conduit through which they get to go to Christ, don't we? Don't we want to be the guy who's got all the answers? And if you want to know something about the Lord, you have to come to me, because I got them. When in fact, what our job is, is to get out of the way and say, there he is, go to him. That's our job. And that's what I think that this verse 42 really lays out to us. That number one, every single believer has the privilege and the capacity to have his or her own intimacy and personal fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ themselves.

And there's no surrogate you have to go through, there's no lieutenant. When you grow up in an environment like I did in Catholicism, there's that whole thing of priests, and all of these saints, and the Blessed Virgin, and you know who these people are? They're all these people between me and the Lord. And when I was saved, the thing that just blew me off the bridge was that I could move all of those people over here and I could go right up to Christ myself. I didn't need them. That to me was just overwhelmingly gracious.

That's our job. And that's the job here that you see that's going on. That she has pointed these people to Christ and they recognize, oh yeah, and said unto the woman, now we believe, not because of your saying, not because of thy saying, for we have heard him ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world. Isn't that cool? Okay.

You know, it sounds like she didn't make it She said, this is, he told me the things I've done. So she said, basically I was a sinner. And it sounds like it was a positive way that she put it. She was talking about his grace. She was a sinner. She didn't make it palatable for them. She didn't soften it. You know what I'm saying? No, no. He saved me because I was a nice person. If you look carefully at what he did, he didn't sweep her sins under the rug. He put them right out in the open, but he didn't condemn her about them. See, he was all about offering her grace.

And she accepted, like if you look in Romans 1, it says it's the goodness of God that leads a man to salvation. That's what she saw. She saw the goodness. And he says to her, I am the Messiah, the one who you and everybody's been waiting for. And she believed him. So although her sins were exposed, she wasn't condemned about them. It was the goodness of the Messiah that drew her.

And that's what she was saying. He told me everything. And I'm really excited. I mean, if she's standing and talking to you saying, well, I met this guy who told me everything I ever did, you'd think, oh, gee, I'm not sure I want to meet this guy. But she's so enthusiastic about what's happened and the grace that's been extended to her, she says, come and talk to him yourself.

Was she a soft-knit evangelist? No, she didn't. She said, he told me about my sins. And like everybody in town didn't know about her? Sure they did. Sure they did. Okay, Chris. I look at a little bit what Darden commented on that. Frank himself speaking there, we can their conscience. Yeah. Yeah. We talked about that a little bit last week that went after. The premise is this.

The natural man received not the things of the spirit of God. So she's a natural person. She's not spiritually alive. How's the Lord going to get to her? He gets to her through her consciousness. That's how he gets there. Now, he says, there is where he taught us to despise before. And it says, and he turns the water into wine of joy. Yeah, that's cool. That's really cool. Morning, everybody. Good morning. OK, so in the end of chapter four, Jesus moves from Samaria into Galilee. Does anybody want to read that to the end of four?

Now after two days, he departed from there and went into Galilee, where Jesus himself testified that a prophet has not honor in his own country. Then, when he was coming to Galilee, the Galileans received him, having seen all the things that he did at Jerusalem at the feast, for they also went unto the feast. So Jesus came again into Canaan's Galilee, where he made the water wine, and there was a certain nobleman whose son was sick at Capernaum. When he heard that Jesus had come out of Judea into Galilee, he went unto him and besought him that he would come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death.

Then Jesus said unto him, Except you see signs and wonders, you will not believe. The nobleman said unto him, Sir, come down before my child dies. Jesus said unto him, Go thy way, for thy son lives. And the man believed the word, And he went away. And as he was now going down, his servants met him and told him, saying, Your son lives. Then he inquired as to them of the hour which he began to improve. And they said unto him, Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him. So the father knew that it was at the same hour in which Jesus had said to him, Your son lives. And he himself believed in his whole house.

This again is the second miracle that Jesus did. when he was come out of Judea into Galilee. Alright, so this passage opens, it says, after two days Jesus left for Galilee. These two days is the time that Jesus spent ministering to the Samaritans. And it tells us that Jesus said that a prophet has no honor in his hometown. or his own country.

And you know, the people kind of knew him so well, he'd grown up there, that they didn't really respect him as the Messiah. They didn't acknowledge that he was the Son of God, because they'd known him all his life. So, when he arrived in Galilee, it says the Galileans welcomed him. And question one on this lesson 10a says, If a prophet has no honor in his own country, why did the Galileans welcome Jesus since Galilee was his homeland?

Any thoughts on that? It says they have seen what he had done, his miracle. Yeah, that's one reason. but it's also interesting to see that the reception in Galilee was not entirely positive throughout his ministry there and also it might be the idea that he was in Samaria and now he's coming on to more Jewish turf and as we'll see after he heals the man with at the pool of Bethesda, the Jews kind of rejected him.

Which is a common theme in the Book of John. Or well, in the Gospels. Period. So he's... Verse 46, once more he visited Cana in Galilee where he had turned the water into wine. And there was a certain royal official whose son lay sick in Capernaum. This kind of completes a cycle, you know, The water was turned into wine. Jesus leaves that place. Goes throughout the country. Goes to Samaria. And then he comes back. And it's interesting that in chapter 2, it kind of ends with a reference to the weak faith of the Jews. And when he comes back into Galilee, he talks about how he says the prophet has no honor. He's kind of keeping that idea.

So this official was a man who served the king and based on the geography this was probably Herod Antipas who was not technically a king but the people kind of revered him as one. And this man came to Jesus and begged him to come heal his son, who was sick. And that would have been a 13-mile trip, which would have been about a day's walk. You could get there quicker by chariot, obviously, but transportation wasn't available to all. So this guy's kind of asking Jesus to come do this long journey. and he didn't really know who Jesus was. At this point he didn't acknowledge him as the Messiah or the Son of God, but he didn't have the idea that Jesus could help him. So Jesus turns and says, unless you people see miraculous signs and wonders, you will never believe.

So the NASB brings that out with the addition of the word people. It's a plural you, he's speaking to the Jews that are gathered there. Do you think this was a harsh rebuke? Wasn't that their nature as Jews? Yeah, the Jews required a sign. I think Jesus was kind of trying to maybe prime the pump in a way to get this guy to a deeper faith, possibly. So this guy was probably a Jew? Yeah. That answers question two. Well, I mean, she already said it. So that's a good indication that he is speaking to Jews here. Because the Jews require a sign, which is fairly well known.

Correct me if I'm wrong on this, but doesn't the Book of Acts, the beginning of the book, there's a lot of signs, a lot of wonders because they're still going to the Jews, and then when Paul's ministry takes over, that kind of drops out because the Greeks or the Gentiles don't need a sign, they're looking for knowledge and logic and all that. So it's very interesting to contrast, we don't really see signs that Jesus did in Samaria. He told the woman everything she ever did, but there's no record of healings or people brought back from the dead. Not to say that maybe that didn't happen, but it was an easier crowd in Samaria, I guess. But this is the only place in John's Gospel where the word wonders occurs. Kind of stresses the wonder that these miracles would produce in people and they marveled.

Which brings a good question. Are believing in Jesus as Savior and believing that Jesus can heal the sick the same thing? No, not at all. I think that happens a lot today. You know, people think of Jesus as a miracle worker and kind of like, when times get hard, you pray a little harder to get out of it, I guess. So, the man did not believe in the Savior.

Chris, can you talk up a little bit for those of us in the back? Oh yeah, sorry. So the royal official said, sir, come down before my child dies. And Capernaum was, you always went down to Capernaum. It was about 700 feet below the Mediterranean. Question three, based on verses 47 and 49, what are two misconceptions that the official had about the limits of Jesus' power? They thought Jesus had to be right there. That's one, yeah. So that would be kind of the misconception of Jesus' control over space, kind of distance.

Can you think of another? Maybe he had to do or say something special? Maybe. Maybe over time. He had to hurry and get there before the child died. Yeah, definitely. To identify the son. Yeah so like she said that he actually had to kill the son before he died shows like his power over time, his power over disease and death.

So, it's really interesting to contrast that with the passage in Matthew 8, 5-13, which is the Centurion, if you want to turn around. I mean, I'll read it, but it's Matthew 8, 5-13. And when Jesus entered Capernaum, which is interesting, a centurion came to him imploring him and saying, Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, fearfully tormented. Jesus said to him, I will come and heal him. The centurion said, Lord, I am not worthy for you to come under my roof, but just say the word and my servant will be healed. For I also am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. And I say to this one, Go, and he goes. And to another, Come, and he comes. And to my slave, Do this, and he does it.

Now when Jesus heard this, he marveled and said to those who were following, Truly I say to you, I have not found such great faith with anyone in Israel. I say to you that many will come from the east and west and will recline at the table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the sons of the kingdom will be cast out into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. And Jesus said to the centurion, Go, it shall be done for you as you have believed. And the servant was healed that very moment.

Now it's interesting to contrast that this centurion was not a Jew. If anyone should have recognized the Messiah, it should have been the Jews. And the centurion felt unworthy to even have Jesus come into his house. The Jews were kind of prideful because they had their father Abraham.

They were like the chosen people of God. And the official in the passage of studying thought Jesus had to come to where his son was. He had to come before he died. And this man said, speak only a word. He saw that there was power in the words of Christ. The official wanted Jesus to hurry up and get there. Think of Lazarus. Jesus waited for four days. The same idea. The sisters thought it was too late. They were mourning for their brother.

So, in verse 50, Jesus replied, you may go, your son will live. The man took Jesus at his word and departed. So Jesus didn't do quite what this man asked for, but this guy took him at his word and gained some confidence there. So, like I said before, it showed Christ's power over space and disease and death.

So do you think this man was looking for a sign? I think he wanted his son healed. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, he wanted his son healed and in the end he did exercise faith without tangible proof. He took Jesus at his word and it says that he and his household believed. And it's interesting that It's the next day when he meets his servants on the way home. So he's not even home yet, and you kind of get the idea, you know, he might have been able to make it home the same day, but he might have waited, which kind of showed that he had faith in what Jesus had done.

Yeah. Do you think this guy exhausted all other remedies? before he went to Christ? Maybe. I mean, you could see that he was desperate there. Yeah. He was at the point of, his son's at the point of death. Yeah. It struck me that he probably, Jesus was, had a reputation of being a healer now, and he'd probably done everything else that ever was available at the time, and Jesus was the last resort. desperate guy I think at this point. Yeah, I mean you could argue that this guy might have been there already, got word that his son was sick, but maybe he traveled that distance because he heard Jesus was in town.

I think it would be easy for him to have been disappointed when Christ just told him that he wasn't going to go with him. Yeah, kind of. He could have gone either way with his belief system then. Well there's a mentality even today that people I've known that especially, I hate to pick on the Catholic Church, especially, well I don't really.

There are a lot of people within Catholicism that have quote-unquote healing ministries, and I've known a lot of people who've had terminal diseases, and what they did was that if they heard about someone who had a healing ministry, they would go to them or want them, because the supposition is that the healing can't take place unless there's a contact between the healer and the sick one. And yeah, you brought up a good point. He could have lost confidence, especially when Jesus says, unless you people see signs and wonders, you simply will not believe.

But then in the very next verse, he comes back and he's still saying, sir, come down before my child dies. So he really wanted Jesus to do something. He was pretty desperate. Alright, moving to chapter 5 here. Does anybody want to read from 1 to 15? After these things there was a feast of the Jews and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

Now there is in Jerusalem by the sheep gate a pool which is called in Hebrew Bethesda. having five porticoes. In these lay a multitude of those who were sick, blind, lame, and withered, waiting for the moving of the waters. For an angel of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool and stirred up the water.

Whoever then first, after the stirring up of the water, stepped in was made well from whatever disease with which he was afflicted. A man was there who had been ill for 38 years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been a long time in that condition, he said to him, Do you wish to get well? The sick man answered him, Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I am coming another steps down before me.

Jesus said to him, Get up, pick up your pallet, and walk. Immediately the man became well and picked up his pallet and began to walk. Now it was the Sabbath on that day. So the Jews were saying to the man who was cured, it is the Sabbath and it is not permissible for you to carry your pallet. But he answered them, he who made me well was the one who said to me, pick up your pallet and walk. They asked him, who is the man who said to you, pick up your pallet and walk?

The man who was healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had slipped away while there was a crowd in that place. Afterward, Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, behold, you have become well. Do not sin anymore so that nothing worse happens to you. The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. All right.

The first question on the sheet that says Lesson 10 asks, in verse 1, what feast is referred to here? Anybody got any ideas? References, it was the Passover, Feast of Weeks, or Feast of Booths, I don't know. Yeah, well, we don't really know. Kind of a trick question there. But Mike gave me this sheet that says it could have been the Feast of Purim in memory of the deliverance in 473 BC of the Jews in Persia. But this is really only speculations for scholars, have not decided definitely. It's very true. I researched a few commentaries on this, and it seemed that about everyone had a different idea of which feast it was. But this is actually the only unnamed feast, or the only unnamed festival in Jian, we find. So it must not be that important I guess.

So we read about this sheep gate with this pool surrounded by five colonnades. There's a sheep gate mentioned in Nehemiah And it's believed that this was on the north wall. They would bring the sheep in to wash them before taking them to the sanctuary. And so all these disabled people found shelter under these colonnades. And the thought was when the waters are stirred, It's the first one in gets healed.

So does anybody have a little footnote there for the end of verse 3 through verse 4 in the Bible? Yeah. Mine says early manuscripts do not contain the remainder of verse 3 nor verse 4. Some of your Bibles probably say the most reliable manuscripts and all that. So what do you guys think about this verse 4? Schofield says the oldest and best manuscripts omit waiting for the moving of the water. And all of verse four.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, the majority of commentators think this sounds a little superstitious since it doesn't occur in some of the earlier manuscripts. They assume that it was added later. Yeah, very good point. So the thought is that maybe there was a presence of springs under the water. Minerals would come in and maybe it would be therapeutic or something. Is anybody here taking, I think it's the church history class? Verden gives a really good discussion on that topic, like the verses that are kind of disputed. If you get a chance you should get on the internet and listen to that.

So some of the arguments against, obviously it's not in the early manuscripts, the idea is that somewhere along the way a scribe kind of put a note in the margin that this angel came down, stirred the waters, and that the first one in was healed. And then along the way somebody was copying that copy Thought it went in the actual text so We have this extra verse and a lot of the pagans in that day had shrines and you could go into the water and the Gods would heal you or whatever but So that sounds superstitious, but it's interesting because All of the Greek manuscripts of John include this verse, except for less than a dozen. So those dozen are early, but all the other ones include it. And some of those ones that include it are pretty early manuscripts.

And some of the Church Fathers quote this verse, including Tertullian. which goes back to the 3rd century, so we're getting pretty close to the writing of John. And there's a work called Tathian's Diatesseron, which is basically this guy took four Gospels, laid them out, and he wanted to put them all together in chronological order. And so he had this big super gospel that was like 74% of all four gospels put together. And although we don't have the Greek copies of this, we have translations and we have people who write about this.

And it's pretty clear that that verse was in there. And that goes back all the way to the second century. So we're getting pretty close to the original writings there. So my personal opinion is that I would say this verse was probably in the original.

I wouldn't die for that argument. And if any of you want to say that Shura scribe added it later, that's fine with me. Maybe that's kind of a wishy-washy position to take. Either way, It explains why the people were there. And the people did believe that. You see, like you said, from verse 7. I think it's verse 7. But there obviously was a pool there, though. Yeah. Well, there obviously was a pool. And we actually have archaeological... We've excavated that.

But this man had been in this condition for 38 years. He was helpless, couldn't get into the pool on his own. Interesting thing, as I studied this, I never thought that this guy had been an invalid for longer than Jesus had been on the earth. And actually longer than a lot of people lived back then. The average lifespan for a male in the first century was only 40 years. So a good chunk of this guy's life was pretty sad. Some people try to give the 38 years symbolic significance.

I'm sure we wouldn't do that here, but maybe some people try to compare it to the wanderings of Israel I don't think there's much weight for that argument. And this man did not seek Jesus. Jesus came to seek him. He came to seek and save what was lost.

And he may have learned of this man's condition from others, or it may have just been his supernatural knowledge, like how he knew the Samaritan woman, all the things she'd ever done. And John might have been trying to stress that supernatural knowledge here. You wonder why he picked this guy out. I would guess there would be a lot of others. Yeah, definitely. And that he didn't heal. Yeah, it's interesting. I wonder. We don't know that he healed. Yeah, I wonder what everybody else was thinking when this one guy gets healed. Why not me?

Well, the 38 years shows that the Lord is the master of time. He knew when he would be healed. So that sign shows us that He's our master of time. He has all that under control. Yeah, definitely. I think it also may demonstrate, too, at the time, I think 38 years, you say, I mean, that's almost a full lifetime. It wasn't something that somebody came and, you know, maybe like sometimes today, oh, gee, I'm healed. You know, I walked in and I suddenly healed.

He was there 38 years. He was well known by the community. 38 years there. So it was a graphic demonstration. If it was somebody who was there just a week or a month or a year versus the guy who they'd seen for 38 years at the pool, it was probably one of the best examples versus the list of lined up at the pool. He'd been there probably the longest. So it was the greatest demonstration because everybody knew him. Yeah. That's a very good point. So the man says to Jesus, I have no one to help me in the pool. This may have been a veiled request for, yeah, I've got no one to help me in. Maybe if you stick around a while, you could do it for me, kind of thing. But you wonder if he didn't have the means to get into the pool, how did he eat? How did he drink? I mean, how did he live for 38 years?

Yeah, that's true. I mean, someone had to be caring for him. Maybe people giving him poor. I'm not sure how common that was. Do you have any thoughts on that? Yeah. In Acts 3, when Peter and John heal the man going into the temple, when you look at that in the first few verses, This man was carried around on a stretcher, and he put himself, placed himself in positions where he could, you know, beg money and food and stuff. I'm sure that the Laing people did the same thing, because people coming into the temple would give money or whatever to those that were there asking for it. Yeah.

But, yeah, I totally agree. One thing to think of is, if you're trying to stay ritually clean and you're an upper class, are you going to go hang out with all these paralyzed people? Which, I mean, obviously there had to be somebody who was helping out. if you were had a physical malady, it was because of sin or your parents sins. And so those that didn't have the malady didn't want to associate with those.

And so, next verse, Jesus says, get up, pick up your mat. Again, we see power in the Word of Christ. And his words healed this man and they also instructed him. And if you've been laying there for 38 years and someone tells you to get up and you feel all of a sudden like you can, Why not do exactly what he says? And this causes problems.

As we'll see, he's carrying his mat, which testifies to this healing. You know, we have proof here, walking around, to all of Jerusalem, that the Messiah has come. And what do you see? The Jews say it's the Sabbath, and the law forbids you to carry your mat. And you know, this was fulfilled prophecy from Isaiah 35. It said that the Messiah would heal the lame.

And it's interesting, we see again the people who should have been the most receptive, the most looking for these things are the ones who are persecuting this guy who's probably had the best day of his life here. Because carrying anything on the Sabbath was a capital offense, and you could be stoned for that.

That's not in the law, obviously. That's the Jewish interpretation of work on the Sabbath. It continues today. I think we use the example of pushing the buttons on the elevator. The elevators on the Sabbath just go by themselves. in Israel. So keeping the Sabbath was the most important thing. These guys didn't even mention anything about, hey, you've been healed, you're walking around.

So this guy passes responsibility off on Christ. He probably feared for his life at this point. It was probably getting pretty pretty dangerous for him. And in their eyes, Jesus was a worse offender. By telling this man to break the law, they probably wanted to know, or well, from the text, they wanted to know who told them to do this. And they didn't see Jesus as the Messiah or even as a healer, they just saw him simply as an offender. Oh, true. I'm getting ahead of myself here.

I don't think it was a mosaic law that you couldn't carry a bed around on the Sabbath. The point was you couldn't do any work. So the Jews had that system of laws that they would follow so that if they didn't break that law then they certainly weren't going to break the mosaic law. It was lawful to carry a bed on the Sabbath with a sick person in it.

But you couldn't carry a straw, Matt. It was probably a straw. You know, I think here too, they have rejected Christ and the work that he did. And this thing about the Sabbath was the pretext to cover up that rejection. I think there wasn't one of them who didn't do something wrong on the Sabbath. Oh, yeah.

I'm thinking about this guy laying there. get up and walk and pick up your bed and the guy says, no, I can't pick up my bed, sorry. The guy's never been on his feet in his life, right? He's never done any work on the Sabbath. And the Lord says, pick up your bed and he's going to argue with him. But you think they would be rejoicing in his healing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, here God's reaching out in grace to a needy person. And, you know, you should celebrate, not persecute.

Yeah, like you said, Mike, the Jews didn't know it was Jesus who healed them. The guy who was healed didn't even know. I mean, you wonder, like, how much was going on there, like was this guy a believer? I don't think so. Maybe he, after he came in contact here at the end, verse 14, maybe he had a faith in Christ, but it is kind of interesting to see, you know, I've been an invalid for 38 years, I'm healed and Who was that guy that came by? Anyway, we have to quit. Basically, made it to the end. Alright, let's pray. Dear God, thank you for this day and that we could come together and be with each other. Study your word. Please teach us in your grace. In your name we pray. Amen.