SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/29/2016
10:33 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-3 The
Master Persecuted
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: John 5:9b-16
Message of
the verses: “Now it was the Sabbath on that day. 10 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." 11 But he answered them,
"He who made me well was the one who said to me, ’Pick up your pallet and
walk.’" 12 They asked him, "Who is the man who said to you, ’Pick up
your pallet and walk’?" 13 But the man who was healed did not know who it
was, for Jesus had slipped away while there was a crowd in that place. 14
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." 15
The man went away, and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. 16
For this reason the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because He was doing these
things on the Sabbath.”
We want to begin by looking at the contents of verse
eleven seeing that after the man began to walk away the Jews questioned him as
to why he was carrying his bed, and his response was that the man who made him
well told him to pick up his bed and walk away.
Now we have mentioned that it was the Lord who wanted the confrontation with
the Jews over their rituals that they imposed on the people, things that did
not go along with the Law of the Lord as found in the Old Testament. Think about how the Lord set this entire process
up to accomplish this confrontation.
First of all He healed this man on the Sabbath and then tells him to
pick up his mat and walk away, and Jesus knew that he would be questioned by
the Jews when He sent him away, and then as we follow the story Jesus went and
found the man in the mass of people who were at the temple so that the man
could then tell the Jews who it was that healed him. This was all about what had to happen to our
Lord in order to have the Jews begin to persecute Him so that in the end, exactly
when the Lord planned for it to happen that He would be crucified to pay for
the sins of those who would come to know Him as Savior and Lord. We have mentioned before that when Jesus was
12 years old his mother and father found Him in the temple teaching the scribes
and when confronted by his mother and father He told them that He had to be
about His Father’s business, and what we are seeing in this story is a part of
that business that He was doing, and then at the end of His life when He died
exactly at the time when the Passover lamb was to die He cried out “it is
finished,” and He was saying that the business from the Father that He had Him
do was over, as it is finished means “paid in full,” and so the debt of sin was
paid in full to all those who would come to know the Lord Jesus Christ as
Savior and Lord.
Now the question arises as to whether or not this
man was a true believer or whether he never came to know that Jesus was the
Christ, and I mentioned that I listened to two sermons by John MacArthur on
this section, one from 1990, and the other from 2013 and in the first one he
states that he believes that he was a believer and in the second one he states
that he was not a believer and that he actually set the Lord up by telling the
Jews who it was that healed him, and the reason he did this was because he was
so steeped in the false religion of Judaism that was prevalent during that
time. Let’s go over what Jesus said to
him when He found him in the temple. “Behold,
you have become well; do not sin anymore, so that nothing worse happens to you.” Think about that as we look at this quotation
we can summarize that it was a sinful act that caused this man to become unable
to walk and so for 38 years he sat near the pool waiting to be healed. Now Jesus tells him not to sin lest something
worse happen to him. It is very possible
that Jesus was saying to him that if you don’t turn you life around and become
a believer that this worse thing that will happen to you is going to hell,
which is far more worse than sitting by a pool waiting to be healed for 38
years. Now I am not saying that all
sickness is caused by a person sinning, but sin is certainly the main reason that
people get sick and die as you look all the way back to what the Lord told Adam
and Eve after they sinned. Perhaps this
man liked to drink too much, and I am only giving an example here, but suppose
after getting drunk he took a very bad fall and that was why he could not walk,
so we could say that getting drunk is sinful and because of this sinful act he
ended up in the condition he was in. We
only have to look at David’s sinfulness against Bathsheba and her husband to
show us that sin can cause us sickness in his life “3 When I kept silent about
my sin, my body wasted away Through my groaning all day long. 4 For day and
night Your hand was heavy upon me; My vitality was drained away as with the
fever heat of summer. Selah.” It is
believed that for one year David did not confess this sin to the Lord and it
was after he confessed this sin as Nathan exposed it to him that he looked back
and figured out why he was sick as he wrote two psalms about this experience,
32 and 51.
John MacArthur quotes some verses from Deut.
28:58-61 and Leviticus 26:14-16 that go along with the verse in Psalm 32:3-4 “58
“If you are not careful to observe all the words of this law which are written
in this book, to fear this honored and awesome name, the LORD your God, 59 then
the LORD will bring extraordinary plagues on you and your descendants, even
severe and lasting plagues, and miserable and chronic sicknesses. 60 “He will
bring back on you all the diseases of Egypt of which you were afraid, and they
will cling to you. 61 “Also every sickness and every plague which, not written
in the book of this law, the LORD will bring on you until you are destroyed.” “14 ’But if you do not obey Me and do not
carry out all these commandments, 15 if,
instead, you reject My statutes, and if your soul abhors My ordinances so as
not to carry out all My commandments, and so break My covenant, 16 I, in turn, will do this to you: I will
appoint over you a sudden terror, consumption and fever that will waste away
the eyes and cause the soul to pine away; also, you will sow your seed
uselessly, for your enemies will eat it up.”
Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28 have similar warnings in them, as Moses
wrote the book of Deuteronomy, which means the renewing of the law to the
second generation of the children of Israel who came out of Egypt for the first
generation 20 years old and older all died in the wilderness because of the
sinfulness of the ten spies.
We can look at one more section on sickness from the
NT book of 1 Corinthians chapter eleven and verse thirty: “For this reason many among you are weak and
sick, and a number sleep.” Paul wrote
this to the Corinthians who were actually getting drunk at what we might call “potluck
dinners” if you use today’s terms, for these people had feasts before they
participated in the Lord’s Table and would not confess their sin and so some of
them died because of this, which is what the term “a number sleep,” which
speaks of the death of a believer.
John MacArthur concludes his comments on this
section: “The die was cast. Jesus had not only confronted Jewish legalism
at its very core by disregarding their Sabbath rules, but had also challenged them with His true identity as the
Son of God, in whom ‘all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form’ (Col.
2:9). As impossible as it is to imagine,
the Jews’ opposition to their own Messiah would harden and intensify until they
finally were able to satisfy their wicked hearts when the ‘crucified the Lord
of glory’ (1 Cor. 2:8).”
I want to mention that I have no problem with John
MacArthur changing his view as to whether or not this man was a believer or
not, for there are things that I have changed my mind on from years back, so as
stated this does not bother me in any way.
We will introduce verses 17-24 of chapter five in
our next SD as we go into the discourse that happens after the healing of this
man. I have stated before that the main
point of this chapter is the beginnings of persecution for our Lord by the Jews
as the tide is changing during the life of Christ as persecution begins.
Spiritual
meaning for my life today: I see the plan of God coming together in the
life of Christ, and this reinforces to me that He is in control of all things.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Trust the Lord for the plan He has for me.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible question: “"In everything, therefore, treat people
the same way you want them to treat you, for this is the Law and the Prophets”
(Matthew 7:12).
Today’s Bible question: “Who said ‘Let there be light?”
Answer in our next SD.
2/29/2016 11:24 AM
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