Karen and I are reading (slowly) through the book of John. The slowness is more a result of our sporadic reading than of careful study. Nonetheless, we recently read chapter 5. In this chapter Jesus heals a paralytic on the Sabbath. Upon healing the man Jesus commands him to take up his bed and walk. The Pharisees observe the man carrying his bed on the Sabbath (i.e., "working") and question him about it. When they found out it was Jesus who had healed him and told him to carry his bed on the Sabbath it became an occasion for the Pharisees to oppose Jesus. To make matters worse in their eyes, Jesus refers to God as His Father, thus, as John notes, "making himself equal with God" (5:18). Though they saw that work (i.e., healing by Jesus and bed carrying by the ex-paralytic) was being done on the Sabbath, the Pharisees failed to recognize that Jesus was doing the works of the Father. The remainder of the chapter is Jesus' response/explanation of the works that He is doing and how He is doing them, namely, the Father is doing them through Jesus.
An important observation in Jesus' response is His emphasis upon hearing (i.e., listening to Him and believing). Jesus states, "Truly, truly I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life. . . . An hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live" (Jn 5:24-25). NOTE: Jesus here has the spiritually dead in view. Those who receive eternal life by believing Jesus' testimony will also be raised when Jesus returns to judge the living and the dead at the end of the age (1Th 4:13-17; 2 Tim 4:1).
A significant part of Jesus' reply deals with the witnesses that testify of who Jesus is (cf. Jn 5:30-47). Though the Pharisees were looking for the Messiah in the Scriptures (v.39) they were failing to see that Jesus was the fulfillment of those Scriptures. Jesus concludes, "If you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?" (Jn 5:46-47). It seems evident that Jesus here has the following prophecy in mind:
“The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me [i.e., Moses] from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen— just as you desired of the LORD your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, when you said, ‘Let me not hear again the voice of the LORD my God or see this great fire any more, lest I die.’ And the LORD said to me, ‘They are right in what they have spoken. I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him” (Deuteronomy 18:15-19 ESV).
Moses' message is simple: "God will raise up a prophet greater than me. Listen to Him." Jesus, as the only begotten Son of God, knows God like no other prophet (Jn 1:18) and has delivered to us the words of life (Jn 6:68). The Pharisees failed both to recognize the works of God and to hear the testimonies of Scripture. It is ironic that on the Sabbath, a day set aside for the remembrance of God's mighty acts of salvation (Deut 5:12-15), their focus on their own legalistic rules to preserve the Sabbath led them to overlook the work that God was doing before their very eyes. In these works God was showing Jesus to be the prophet who was greater than Moses. Nonetheless, they failed to heed Moses' command and did not listen.
I pray that God will give us eyes to see and recognize Christ for who He is and ears to hear His words of life and embrace them in faith. May we accept the demands of these words and joyfully live them out in eager anticipation of our great Savior's return!
Grace and Peace,
J
