This week’s readings are all from John chapters 4-5. Click here to see a full listing of each day’s reading and the full chapters for this week. Full readings of each day’s smaller segments of the readings will be posted on this site during the week.
Today's Reading
After this there was a Jewish feast, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 2 Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool called Bethzatha in Aramaic, which has five covered walkways. 3 A great number of sick, blind, lame, and paralyzed people were lying in these walkways. 5 Now a man was there who had been disabled for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him lying there and when he realized that the man had been disabled a long time already, he said to him, “Do you want to become well?” 7 The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up. While I am trying to get into the water, someone else goes down there before me.” 8 Jesus said to him, “Stand up! Pick up your mat and walk.” 9 Immediately the man was healed, and he picked up his mat and started walking. (Now that day was a Sabbath.)
10 So the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath, and you are not permitted to carry your mat.” 11 But he answered them, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’” 12 They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Pick up your mat and walk’?” 13 But the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had slipped out, since there was a crowd in that place.
14 After this Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, “Look, you have become well. Don’t sin any more, lest anything worse happen to you.” 15 The man went away and informed the Jewish leaders that Jesus was the one who had made him well.
16 Now because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began persecuting him. 17 So he told them, “My Father is working until now, and I too am working.” 18 For this reason the Jewish leaders were trying even harder to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was also calling God his own Father, thus making himself equal with God.
19 So Jesus answered them, “I tell you the solemn truth, the Son can do nothing on his own initiative, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise. 20 For the Father loves the Son and shows him everything he does, and will show him greater deeds than these, so that you will be amazed. 21 For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whomever he wishes. 22 Furthermore, the Father does not judge anyone, but has assigned all judgment to the Son, 23 so that all people will honor the Son just as they honor the Father. The one who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.
24 “I tell you the solemn truth, the one who hears my message and believes the one who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned, but has crossed over from death to life.
I’m trying to understand more about Sabbath and what God really desires for us with that command… I wonder if “these things” Jesus was doing on the Sabbath are like a Holy bending of the rule, or if they are a Holy clarification/example of the rule?
Is Jesus doing a greater thing by freeing this man from bondage to being disabled, rather than the holiness of rest on the sabbath? Or is there something to this moment of release and restoration Jesus provides that is a clearer example of what and why the Sabbath is given to us?
It's my understanding that like so many other laws, the Pharisees took the Sabbath law and twisted it into a legalistic mess. I feel like I read recently that the vast majority of Jesus' healings happened on Sabbath... Intentionally. He's challenging motive and reminding them of God's intent.
Here's what He says in Mark: “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”
Mark 2:23-28
Humans are very good at making things about us. Jesus is putting the focus back on God. In a couple of verses in this same John passage, Jesus says everything He does is to please His Father, modeling for us a good and pure motive.
In Luke 13, Jesus responds to the Pharisees accusations about Sabbath breaking,
The Lord answered him, “You hypocrites! Doesn’t each of you on the Sabbath untie your ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water? Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?”
In other words, the Pharisees have defined the law for themselves and have made the law itself the priority (at all costs) -- not God, not the good of the people. What's our saying about the difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of it? We can take the law too far and miss the whole point.
So, yes, rest. Take care of your body. But not with a blind eye to God's purposes and people's needs.
I know there's more to it than this, but maybe this helps?
@shelley-johnson Yes, for sure! That reference to Luke 13 is so good… to be set free from what binds us. I feel like this is an interesting lens with which to approach sabbath. It’s a time to lay down the obligations of busy-ness and free ourselves from the relentless pace.
Can it be a micro-season to take a breath from pouring out in ministry, to also pause from obligations to lead others to “water”? I think the first answer is, it’s not a black-and-white thing. But how can we find the threshold or the balance?
I think there are exceptions where God can sustain us through particularly demanding or busy or full seasons in ministry… but the norm is probably more of a balance, right? Even in good things, we aren’t meant to endlessly pour out (probably for many reasons, but mainly perhaps to remember it’s not our power by which lives are changed).
It’s an exercise in faith to stop our investment for a time, and trust that God will sustain it outside of us. It’s healthy to remember the things I’m part of were God’s first, and we can trust him to continue the good works he begins.
Though for Jesus in these stories, it is on the Sabbath when he does this ministry—maybe because he can come from a perfect place of intent? Truly and uniquely motivated by the Father in those moments? Where we can waver in our connection to the source, functioning out of obligation to do (and therefore need to practice Sabbath more intentionally), Jesus is showing us what it looks like to ———— what, exactly?
Maybe that’s part of my question? What are we observing in these moments of Jesus’s ministry? Where our flesh is broken and is in need of the Sabbath (that was made for us), Jesus’s perfect example is the reminder that God intends for us to find freedom, not bondage, in the Way of Life.
I’m pretty certain I am thinking way too hard at this point, haha. I agree with the simplicity of: the Pharisees had taken a law that was meant to bring freedom and used it to bind people. That is clear to me. I understand the Sabbath is about a regular rhythm of rest and connection to the Father’s will. Perhaps that’s good enough, and I don’t need to keep trying to distill definitions out of it. Lord, help me to simply rest in your truth!
Yes, to all of that!
I did hear someone recently speculate that Jesus choosing to heal on Sabbath was intentional...to provoke the Pharisees, to open the door for such dialogue. 🤷
One other teaching I heard was that when God instituted Sabbath it was after the Exodus. For 400+ years the Israelites knew NO REST. As slaves they worked every minute of every day. God was showing them (and us) that His way is different than the world's. In Him there's rest.
In the end, we need rest. Life/ministry is not ours to carry alone. 💜