Deuteronomy 19:15-19; John 5:1-47 (text)
January 3, 2016 * Download this sermon (PDF)
Dear Congregation of Christ: In recent weeks, so many people are confused about the person and work of our our Lord Jesus Christ. They confuse Christianity with other religions. One popular movie personality says, “We’re all Muslims.” A professor at a well-known Christian university says that Christians and Muslims worship the same God.
Just a few years ago, even those who reject Christianity knew the simple distinction between Christianity and other religions: Christians believe that Jesus is God and other religions reject this doctrine. What happened? For one, nobody wants to be accused of racial or religious discrimination. Everyone wants to be politically correct. Secondly, there is now so little knowledge about Christianity and other religions, even among professing Christians. Third, we have been bombarded and brainwashed with erroneous ideas about religions.
In our text today, our Lord Jesus Christ makes it clear who he is: he is the Second Person of the Trinity, of the very same essence as God the Father. As we recited in the Nicene Creed today, “very God of very God… being of one substance with the Father.” In Chapter 5, his dispute with unbelieving Jews is like a courtroom trial. The Jews accuse him of breaking the Sabbath and of blasphemy. Jesus defends himself by stating his relationship with God the Father and his work on earth. Then he turns the tables on his opponents by accusing them of unbelief and twisting the Scripture. In his defense of himself and accusing his opponents, he then presents five witnesses.
How did this trial begin? It began when Jesus was in Jerusalem to attend an unnamed Jewish feast. He went to a pool called Bethesda, which when actually excavated in the 1800s, turned out to be a two-pool complex. Many blind, lame and paralyzed people were there. Why did they congregate by the pool? They believed that the water had some medicinal property. In verse 7, we read that once in a while, the water would start stirring. In the older translations such as the KJV, there is an explanation in verse 4 why the water would start stirring: “an angel of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool, and stirred the water: whoever stepped in first after the stirring of the water was healed of whatever disease he had.” The problem is that in more recent translations such as the NIV and ESV, there is no verse 4, because they are based on much older Greek manuscripts than the manuscripts used by the KJV. The most plausible explanation is that verse 4 was a later addition by scribes to explain why the water stirred at certain times.
But this is not the focus of the story. Out of all the sick people at the pool, Jesus chose to heal a man who had been paralyzed for 38 years. After he was healed, the man went to the temple, probably to offer praise to God, or to show the priest that he has been healed. John does not say that the man thanked Jesus. He just obeyed Jesus’ command, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk,” and was instantly healed. This obedience started Jesus’ trial by the Jews.
Today, we will study John Chapter 5 under the theme “Jesus Turns the Tables on Unbelievers at His Trial” under three headings: first, The Trial of Jesus; second, The Trial of Unbelievers; and third, The Five Witnesses.
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