Monday 21st November
Read John 5:16-18
“So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him. 17 In his defence Jesus said to them, ‘My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.’18 For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.” (NIVUK)
How relevant to you are the reasons for which the Jews persecuted Jesus? Would you persecute anyone who worked on Sunday? Would you simply smile and nod if someone made outlandish claims to a personal relationship with God? I am not sure that today anyone would think murderous thoughts in response to either action. Yet it is these very claims that formed the grounds of the rising, constant and ultimately successful desire to kill Jesus.
Jesus weighed into a significant current debate amongst the Jews, namely, does God break His own law by upholding creation seven days a week? If God rested, as He commanded His people to do, surely chaos would ensue. That chaos does not arise every seventh day suggests that God continues to work in upholding creation. The key passage is found in Genesis.
“Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. 2 By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. 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.” (Genesis 2:1-3) (NIVUK)
In the context of the healing of the paralysed man, who declared when dobbing Jesus in that Jesus ‘had made him well’ or ‘made him whole’ or, dare we say, ‘made him complete’ on the Sabbath (v15), perhaps the work Jesus is doing remains just as important. Perhaps it is less about ‘resting’ and more about ‘completing’? By arguing that he is engaged in precisely the same ‘work’ as his Father it is unsurprising the implications of His claims provoked the ire John records.
It leaves us with the question though – why should we care? Neither the breaking of the Sabbath, nor the implied equality with God, would raise anyone’s ire today. Yet those two questions prompt a response from Jesus that gives us deep insight into who He is. So we should care. Because knowing who He is, is the only sure way to completeness for us and for those we love.
