Introduction to John 5:17-24 Jesus is indeed God

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 3/2/2016 7:48 AM

My Worship Time                                                                  Focus:  Introduction to John 5:17-24

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  John 5:17-24

Message of the verses:  “17 But He answered them, "My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working." 18 For this reason therefore the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because He not only was breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God. 19 Therefore Jesus answered and was saying to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner. 20  "For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself is doing; and the Father will show Him greater works than these, so that you will marvel. 21 “For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son also gives life to whom He wishes. 22 “For not even the Father judges anyone, but He has given all judgment to the Son, 23 so that all will honor the Son even as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him. 24 "Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.”

I have mentioned in an earlier SD something from the 17^th verse that I found out when using Dr. Wiersbe’s commentary on an earlier passage from John where he equated the miracles that Jesus did in making the water into wine as something that the Father does at all times on the earth, but Jesus did this work in a much more hurried fashion.  We will look at this verse in kind of a different way as we begin to study this very important section, in fact we will see that what we are looking at from the mouth of Jesus Christ could be stated to be the greatest truth in the Word of God, not that it is not mentioned in other places, but we have the heart of the Gospel spoken of in this section.

In today’s SD I want to give some quotes from a sermon by John MacArthur that he gave sometime in 2013 in which he took close to two hours in two different sermons on these verses.  I want to just look at some of the introductory comments and it may be necessary to do a part two on the introduction to these verses in our next SD.

He entitles these sermons “The Most Startling Claim Every Made.”

“In John chapter 5, verses 17 to 47, that entire section, long section is one discourse.  All of this section comes from the very mouth of the Lord Jesus Christ.  And He is speaking to the Jewish leaders of Israel who are designated by John as the Jews.  They want Him dead.  They consider Him a blasphemer of the worst kind. They are convinced that He is a threat to their religion, their self-styled secure religious position and power. They see Him as scorning the conventional wisdom as dishonoring God, as threatening the sanctity of their religious system.  He has already attacked the Temple with such passion that He evacuated the Temple all by Himself at the very height of a Passover celebration. That’s how He launched His ministry.

“They have heard Him repeatedly attack the hypocrisy of their false religion. They have watched Him show nothing but disdain for their non-biblical traditions and additions by which they have attempted to embellish the Scripture.  He is their arch enemy by their own choice.

“As we come to verses 17 to 47, Jesus speaks directly to them, directly to the leaders. And the purpose of the entire section is to declare to them that He is in fact God, that He is the Messiah and more, He is God.  He gives that testimony of His equality with God to begin this long section and then He calls on witnesses to the truth of that witness from John the Baptist, witness from His miracles, witness from God the Father, witness from the Scripture. And so here is His own testimony to His own identity.

“The heart and soul of the Christian faith, the heart and soul of the gospel is a right view of Jesus Christ.  There are some who see Jesus as a man only, a good man, a noble man, maybe an elevated man, maybe a highly spiritual sensitive man. That’s not an option.  Needlessly, pseudo-scholars and skeptics have argued the identity of Jesus throughout history. The attack on His deity, the fact that He is God, fully God, started with the Jewish leaders here in His own country of Israel during His ministry. They attacked Him for His claim to be deity. They saw it as outright blasphemy. 

“Subsequent generation to theirs picked up the assaults, though Jesus was now gone, the gospel was being proclaimed in Israel and around the world and they continued to attack Jesus as a transgressor, a sinner, a blasphemer, a man who disdain for the true wisdom, a man who was a powerful deceiver, led people astray when He was alive, and now His disciples were leading people astray continually.

“Throughout all of human history, the pseudo-scholars and the skeptics have kept up this attack and it goes on even today.  And even within what is called Christianity, some kind of Christianity that sees Jesus as human and not divine.  The testimony of the gospel of John is to dispel all such queries.  Remember chapter 20 verse 31, John gives His purpose, that you might believe that Jesus is the Son of God, that is to say that He has the same nature as God because when you believe that, you can have life in His name.  If you do not believe that, you cannot have eternal life, you will perish in hell in your sins.

“So the question of who is Jesus Christ is the most important question.  The Holy Spirit has declared that He is God in chapter 1.  The early disciples declared that He is God in chapter 1.  John the Baptist declared that He is the Lamb of God, the Messiah, the Savior early in the gospel of John.  His authority over the Temple was a declaration that He is divine.  His miracles are proof that He is divine.  His omniscience, the fact that He knows what people think and He knows their history, never having met them, indications of His omniscience show that He is God. And John has covered all of that.

“And then as chapter 5 began, John recorded one of the most important miracles that Jesus ever did.  Apparently it didn’t lead to the salvation of the man He healed, even though the man had been ill for 38 years and Jesus healed him on the spot, instantaneously and completely, told the man to pick up his bed and go home—which he did.  That miracle Jesus purposely did on  the Sabbath.  He had already declared that He was Lord over creation, John had in chapter 1, that He was Lord over disease and demons in His miracles, that He was Lord over the Temple which He attacked and assaulted.  And now He declares that He is Lord of the Sabbath and He has no interest in the Jewish traditions that have encumbered the Sabbath with bondage.  He does this miracle purposely on the Sabbath.

“And then when they come at Him, look at verse 16, and they begin persecuting Him because He was doing these things on the Sabbath, we learned that He had a pattern of doing that, that He was doing on the Sabbath what they by their tradition had decided was not legal because it was a form of work.  And they had the man carrying his rolled up pallet under his arm and they said that constitutes work.  So Jesus was doing work and causing someone else to do work on the Sabbath. And so they began to persecute Him, that’s why He did it.

Ok, I will try and go on with some more of the things that MacArthur said in his introduction, and one thing that our Lord makes sure people know, and the Jews did know it was that His claim was to be God come in the flesh, the Son of God in the very nature of God.

One more thing that I want to talk about here and that is a question to ask that is also very important to ask as it goes along with this section of Jesus doing a miracle on the Sabbath.  Does God keep the Law?  You may think that this is a trick question, and perhaps it is, but the answer is no.  When I ask my wife this question she understood where I was going with it, and got the answer, which is something that I did not get when MacArthur first gives it in this sermon, but she is much smarter than me, something I have always known.  Jesus states in this section from verse 17 that His Father is always working and also in another section that God made the Sabbath for man, and in another section Jesus states that He is Lord over the Sabbath.  It is important to remember that we CANNOT bring God down to our level as human beings, for God is so very much higher than man, for God created man.  We have written about the
Sabbath in earlier SD,’s when we were studying this miracle that Jesus did, and we realized that what Jesus did was not a breaking of the Law of the Sabbath, nor was the man carrying his mat a breading of that law, for the man was not trying to sell mats, he was just carrying it back to where he lived, and there was nothing wrong with that.

Now once again as we go through this section and truly this section actually goes from verses 17-47 as mentioned it is all one discourse from the lips of our Lord, that Jesus is claiming to be God, and that is exactly who He is and always was and always be, and this is the heart of the gospel message and why John wrote this book:  “30 Therefore many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; 31  but these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name.”

Spiritual meaning for my life today:  I woke up yesterday and though that it was going to be a really good day, but then I had a series of computer problems, which I won’t get into and my day turned out to be a very bad one.  As I was talking to the Lord about it before going to sleep the thought came to me that Satan had a lot to do with what happened, and then I thought that it had to do with this message that is so very important to get out for people to read and understand.

My Steps of Faith for Today:  “The successful Christian life is a series of new beginnings.”

Answer to our last Bible question:  “God” (Genesis 1:3).

Today’s Bible question:  “Where did the Lord appear to Solomon in a dream?”

Answer in our next SD.

3/2/2016 8:31 AM