LIFE OF CHRIST
A Harmony of the Gospels

LESSON SEVEN

That day
The man at the pool of Bethesda healed - Lesson 6.

The Sabbath

The story of creation (Genesis 1:1-2:3),  closes with an account of God’s hallowing of  the seventh day,  because on it He rested from His creative labors.

There is no express mention of the Sabbath before Exodus 16:21-30. In the wilderness of Sin, before the Israelites reached Mount Sinai,  God gave them manna,  a double supply being given on the sixth day of the week,  in order that the seventh day might be kept as a day of rest from labor. 

Shortly afterward the Ten Commandments were given by Jehovah at Sinai  (Exodus 20:17; 34:1-5):

The sanctity of the Sabbath is shown by:

With the development of the synagogue during the Exile  (Babylon took Israel captive),  the Sabbath became a day for worship and the study of the Law,  as well as a day of rest.

During the period between Ezra and the Christian era the scribes formulated innumerable legal restrictions for the conduct of life under the law:

Jesus had things like this in mind when He said, “Woe unto you also, ye lawyers! For ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers” (Luke 11:46).

Jesus came into conflict with the religious leaders of the Jews especially on two points:

The Rabbis regarded the Sabbath as an end in itself,

When the man referred them to  “Him that had made him whole”  as his authority,  the argument was resistless.
Yet they ingeniously parried the thrust,  asking him,  not who had  “made him whole” – that would have condemned themselves and defeated their purpose – but who had bidden “take up his bed and walk,”  in other words,  who had dared to order a breach of the Sabbath?

Jesus had withdrawn

Some think the words indicate that Jesus withdrew on seeing a multitude in the place, i.e. raising a tumult,  because of the man’s carrying his bed.  Jesus had not yet finished His work in dealing with this man,  as evidenced in the next verse.

Sin no more

meeketi hamartane

no longer continue in sin

Jesus gave him two proofs of the perfection of His knowledge:

The man departed  and told the Jews

It is difficult to understand the motive of  the man in conveying this information to the Jews,  since he knew the hostile spirit in which they regarded the cure.
He certainly is not ungrateful,  for he still speaks of  Jesus as having cured him,  thus pointing to the power of the miracle,  not to the  “sin”  of breaking the Sabbath.  However,  opinion is split as to the motive of the man:

My Father ... and I have been working

That is to say, the rest of God after the creation, which the Sabbath represents outwardly, and which I am come to realize,  is not a state of inaction,  but of activity,

The question of the action of God upon the Sabbath was much debated in the Jewish schools.
The question was:

The answer was:

The Nature and Prerogatives of the Son

This section, the first part of the comprehensive answer of the Lord to the Jews, deals with His nature and prerogatives in a two-fold division:

His Nature in relation to the Father

The action and honor of the Son are coincident with the action and honor of the Father.
It is through the action of the Son that we see the action of the Father,
and it is by honoring the Son that we honor the Father.

The exposition of these thoughts is made in a series of statements bound together by  “for”  4 times -

Hence it follows that men should honor the Son even as they honor the Father (v. 23).

Whatever He  (the Father)  does, so does the Son

In other words,  “If I have broken the Sabbath,  so has God also;  for I can do nothing but what I see Him doing.
He is ever  GOVERNING  and  PRESERVING;   I am ever employed in SAVING.”

The Father loves the Son and God loves us because we are His

Pateer filei ton Huion

Father loves the Son

To love is expressed by two words in the New Testament: “phileo” and “agapao.”

Hence  “agapao”  is represented by the Latin  “diligo,”  the fundamental idea of which is  “selection,”  the deliberate choice of one out of a number,  on sufficient grounds,  as an object of regard.
"Agapao" is the verb,  "agape"  is the noun.

Thus:

To whom He will

Here Jesus points out His sovereign power and independence;
He gives life according to  His own will  – not being obliged to supplicate for the power by which it was done,  as the prophets did;  His own will being absolute and sufficient in every case.  See John 5:24

That all should honor the Son

If then the Son is to be honored,  EVEN  as the Father is honored,

To worship any creature is idolatry:  Christ is to be honored even as the Father is honored; 

His Nature in relation to men

In these verses we pass from the consideration of the relation of the Son to the Father
to that of the  RELATION  OF  CHRIST  TO MEN.
The conception of the  “greater works”  of the Son,  the quickening and the judgment of men is defined more exactly in connection with the Son as revealed by the Incarnation.
At the same time,  though the oblique form is generally preserved,  the work and the mission of Christ are referred to directly  (MY word,  Him that sent ME – v. 24).

The dead will hear the Voice

Three kinds of death are mentioned in the Scriptures:

Answerable to these three kinds of death, there is a Threefold Life:

Of the DEAD,  Jesus says
 “the hour is coming,  and now is,  when they shall hear the voice of the Son of God,  and LIVE.”

The hour is COMING
when all that sleep in the dust shall awake at the voice of the Son of man, and come to Judgment.

Again, the hours is COMING
when some of those who have died a Natural death shall hear the voice of the Son of God and live again here.
It is likely that He had not yet raised any from the dead;  and He refers to those whom He intended to raise.

Lastly,  the hour NOW IS
when many,  who are dead in trespasses and sins,  shall hear the voice (Word) of the Son of God,  believe,  and receive spiritual life through Him.

So not marvel at this

The Father had given Him:

In this verse  (v. 28)  He anticipates an objection,  as if they had said:  “This cannot be:  thou art a man – thou wast born among us.”
Jesus answers:  “Don’t marvel at this,  because I am a man – for greater things than these shall be done by me:
He who now addresses you,  though disguised under the FORM of a man,  shall appear in the great day to be the Judge of the quick and dead:  by His almighty power,  He shall raise all the dead;  and,  by His unerring wisdom and justice,  shall adjudge the wicked to hell,  and the righteous to heaven.”

I can of Myself do nothing

This verse forms a transition from the first section of the discourse (vv. 19-29) to the second section (vv. 31-47).

At the same time it marks the passage from:

I seek ... the will of the Father

The two conditions of absolute justice,  as pointed out in this verse are:

The Witness to the Son

This second main division of the discourse consists, like the first, of two parts:

The witness to the Son is first laid open  (vv 31-40).

Christ appeals to a witness separate from His own,  and yet such that He has immediate Knowledge of its truth. Such witness is partly:

If I bear witness of Myself, My witness is not true

The words anticipate an objection,  and define the amount of truth that it contains.
According to legal usage the testimony of a witness was not received in his own case.
This principle the Jews might urge against Christ;  and He acknowledges the deeper meaning that lay beneath it:
that He had just stated twice that He could do nothing of Himself.

You have sent to John

He was not without human testimony of the most respectable kind:  “Ye sent unto John, and he bare witness….”
There are several circumstances in John’s character that render his testimony unexceptionable:

I do not receive testimony from man

This connects with verse 36   “…the works which the Father has given me….bear witness of me….”

That you may be saved

They believed John to be a prophet – a prophet cannot lie:
he bore testimony that Jesus was the Lamb of God,  that takes away the sin of the world (1:29);
therefore,  that they might be saved by believing in Him through the testimony of John,  Jesus appealed to John.

You search the Scriptures

“You search”  is from the Greek word  “ereunate”  which is in the indicative mood,  and should be translated
 “you do search”  or  “you are searching.”
Perhaps the Scriptures were never more diligently searched by the Jews than at that very time:

The Greek verb  “ereunao”  is a compound verb,  “and is,”  says Chrysostom,  “a metaphor taken from those who dig deep,  and search for metals in the bowels of the earth.  They look for the bed where the metal lies,  and break every clod,  and sift and examine the whole,  in order to discover the ore.”

The rejection of the witness  (vv. 41-47)

In this section Jesus, starting from the fact of His hearers'  lack of will to believe,  unfolds:

How can you believe

The grand obstacle to the salvation of the scribes and Pharisees was their Pride, Vanity, and Self-love.
They lived on each other’s praise.
If they had acknowledged Jesus as the only teacher,  they must have given up the good opinion of the multitude;
and they chose rather to lose their souls than to forfeit their reputation among men!

Do not think that I shall accuse you

They had accused Him with a breach of the Sabbath,  that accusation He had proved to be false:
He could,  in return,  accuse them,  and substitute the accusation,  with the breach of the whole law;
but this He did not need to do,  for  “Moses, in whom ye trust”  is the accuser.
They read his law, acknowledged they should obey it,  and yet break it both in the letter and in the spirit.
That law,  therefore,  accused and condemned them.

There was a maxim among the Jews that none could accuse them but Moses.

He wrote about Me

Moses pointed out the Messiah in a multitude of

All these were well-defined,  though shadowy,  representations of the birth,  life,  sufferings,  death,  and resurrection of the Savior of the world.
Added to this is the fact that Moses had given certain marks to distinguish the FALSE from the TRUE prophet (Deuteronomy 13:1-3; 18:22) which,  if applied to Jesus,  prove that He was not a false, but a true prophet of the Most High God.

THE  SON

4 Witnesses of Jesus

The Second Sabbath after the Feast

Your disciples are doing what is not lawful

On any ordinary day this would have been lawful;  but on the Sabbath it involved, according to the rabbinic statures, at leas two sins.

2 Unlawful acts

The Talmud says:
 “In case a woman rolls wheat to remove the husks, it is considered as sifting; if she rubs the heads of wheat, it is regarded as threshing; if she cleans off the side-adherences, it is sifting out fruit; if she bruises the ears, it is grinding; if she throws them up in her hand, it is winnowing.”

Have you not read what David did

No example could be more appropriate than this. The man after God’s own heart, of whom the Jews ever boasted, when suffering in God’s cause and straitened for provisions,  asked and obtained from the high priest what, according to the law,  it was illegal for any one save the priests to touch.

The Priests profane the Sabbath and are blameless

Referring to doing servile work.

* The showbread was the loaves that were set forth before the Lord.
The Jews called them the  “loaves of the face,” i.e.,  “of the presence of God.”
The bread was made of the finest wheaten flour that had been passed through eleven sieves.
There were 12 loaves, or cakes,  according to the number of tribes,  arranged in two piles of six each.
Each cake was made of about five pints of wheat.
They were anointed in the middle with oil, in the form of a cross.
The renewal of the showbread was the first of the priestly functions on the commencement of the Sabbath.
The bread that was taken off  was deposited on the golden table in the porch of the sanctuary, and distributed among the outgoing and incoming courses of priests.
It was eaten during the Sabbath,  and in the temple itself,  but only by such priests as were Levitically pure.
When David came running from Saul, this was the bread that David ate.

There are four ways in which positive laws may cease to oblige:

God ordained the Sabbath not only to be a type of that  “rest which remains”  for the people of God,  but to be also a means of promoting the welfare of men in general.  God prohibited work on the Sabbath day,  lest their masters should oppress servants,  that the laboring beasts might have necessary rest,  and that men might have a proper opportunity to attend upon His ordinances.

Lord of  the Sabbath

Kurios

supreme in authority

This is the same word used by Jesus in His temptation:

It is the same word used in the LXX for Yahweh

Our English versions distinguish the 3 main uses of the term thus:

Yahweh

(the) self-Existent or Eternal; Jehovah, Jewish national name of God:

Jehovah,  the proper name of the God of the Hebrews,  which should always have been retained in that form, but has almost invariably been translated in the English Bible by LORD (and printed thus in small capitals),  after the example of the Septuagint (Kurios) and Vulgate (Dominus).
(from McClintock and Strong Encyclopedia, Electronic Database. Copyright (c) 2000 by Biblesoft)

I desire mercy and not sacrifice

This is quoted from Hosea 6:6.
For I desire mercy and not sacrifice,
And the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.   (NKJV)

Ceremonial duties must give way to moral,  and the natural,  royal law of love and self-preservation must take place of ritual observances.  It was used before, Matthew 9:13,  in vindication of mercy to the souls of men;  here,  of mercy to their bodies
(from Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible: New Modern Edition, Electronic Database. Copyright (c) 1991 by Hendrickson Publishers, Inc.)

The Scribes and Pharisees watched Him closely

There were now come to the length of dogging His steps, to collect materials for a charge of impiety against Him.

Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?

It was a cannon among the Jews:  “We must take a tender care of the goods of an Israelite.”  Hence:

The miracle only enraged the Pharisees,  who immediately plotted  (along with the Herodians, Mark 3:6)  to destroy him.  Thus in Galilee,  as recently in Jerusalem (John 5:18),  murderous hatred was taking definite form.  Men who called healing a Sabbath violation felt no qualms about plotting murder.
(from The Wycliffe Bible Commentary, Electronic Database. Copyright (c) 1962 by Moody Press)

The Herodians

Herodian rulers served as the agents of Rome in various sections of the Palestinian regions from 37 B.C. to A.D. 92/93. This family dynasty, which spans more than a century and a quarter, begins with Herod the Great and includes members of the larger family down to Herod Agrippa II.
(from Holman Bible Handbook. (c) Copyright 1992 by Holman Bible Publishers. All rights reserved.)

Jews of influence and standing who were favorable toward Greek customs and Roman law in New Testament times.

THE  TWELVE  ORDAINED	Top Previous Section

Matthew 10:1-4   (1) And when He had called His twelve disciples to Him, He gave them power over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all kinds of sickness and all kinds of disease.  (2)  Now the names of the twelve apostles are these: first, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother; James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother;  (3 ) Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James the son of Alphaeus, and Lebbaeus, whose surname was Thaddaeus;  (4)  Simon the Cananite, and Judas Iscariot, who also betrayed Him. NKJV

Mark 3:13-19 (13) And He went up on the mountain and called to Him those He Himself wanted. And they came to Him.  (14)  Then He appointed twelve, that they might be with Him and that He might send them out to preach,  (15)  and to have power to heal sicknesses and to cast out demons:  (16)  Simon, to whom He gave the name Peter;  (17)  James the son of Zebedee and John the brother of James, to whom He gave the name Boanerges, that is, "Sons of Thunder";  (18)  Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James the son of Alphaeus, Thaddaeus, Simon the Cananite;  (19)  and Judas Iscariot, who also betrayed Him. And they went into a house. NKJV

Luke 6:12-16 (12) Now it came to pass in those days that He went out to the mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God.  (13)  And when it was day, He called His disciples to Himself; and from them He chose twelve whom He also named apostles:  (14)  Simon, whom He also named Peter, and Andrew his brother; James and John; Philip and Bartholomew;  (15)  Matthew and Thomas; James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon called the Zealot;  (16)  Judas the son of James, and Judas Iscariot who also became a traitor. NKJV

EXCERPTS  FROM  FARRAR

If there were any ground for believing the tradition that says that Mary,  the wife of Alphaeus,  was a younger sister of the Virgin,  then these brothers would be first cousins of Jesus.

A Comparison of the Four Listings of the Twelve

The Four-Fold Calling