John 5:10-18 (Teaching)

[0:00] Morning. Good morning. Be back in Gospel of John chapter 5 this week. I wasn't embarrassing for nothing, but my brother sitting back here, his birthday was yesterday.

[0:18] Oh, okay. He's a little too embarrassing. It's good to have him there in from Missouri this week.

[0:31] I have. For the next few days. Anyway, John chapter 5. Last week we covered what I told y'all was one of my favorite passages in all the New Testament.

[0:44] Really in all Scripture just because it displays subprominently many of the things that we see in the Bible in different places.

[0:57] It displays the sovereignty of God in the first nine verses of John chapter 5. We have this man at the pool of Bethesda. I've been laying there for 38 years.

[1:10] I'm sure that wasn't constant. I'm sure that somebody come and picked him up and took him home and then brought him back the next day or whatever the case was. But he had an infirmity for 38 years as the Scripture says.

[1:25] Jesus comes in on the scene and asks the question, will thou be made whole? Ask him, do you want to be well? Do you want to be healed?

[1:36] And the man responded, but he responded oddly, didn't really directly answer the question that Jesus Christ spoke. He said, sir, I have no man to put me in the water.

[1:51] I have nobody to help me with this. And he didn't just answer a simple yes or no. Of course he wanted to be healed and Christ would have known that. But the man answered the way that he did, I have no man to put me in when the water's troubled.

[2:08] Somebody else gets there before I do so. We talked last week about how he was concentrating on man's ability and he was concentrating on the water to heal him. And God seemed like it was the furthest thing from his mind.

[2:23] But this was all in response to the question that Jesus asked, will thou be made whole? And Christ, of course, after the man responded the way that he did, just told him simply, rise and take up that bed and walk.

[2:37] And you keep in mind this man didn't ask for Jesus to heal him. He didn't ask for Jesus to do anything. Jesus simply went to this man where he was, knowing his condition, knowing how long he had been in that condition, and healed him.

[2:57] So this very greatly displays the sovereignty of God. God can do whatever he wants to, when he wants to, and he doesn't need our permission to do any of it.

[3:10] He is God, he is Creator, he is maker and master of this world and of this entire universe. So we keep these things in mind as we get into this second half, or not second half, but second part of this same passage in John chapter 5.

[3:27] I don't intend to finish this today, all the way through the end of the chapter. In fact, if we get to verse 18, I'll be very happy if we get that far.

[3:38] So all that being said, John chapter 5, beginning at verse 10, says, The Jews therefore said unto him that was cured, it is the Sabbath day. It is not lawful for thee to carry thy bed.

[3:51] So here we have immediate opposition. And this happens, this happens in the life of any Christian, any born-again believer, anyone that follows after the Word of God, anyone that makes their life to abide by what the Word of God says.

[4:14] And God had spoken through Jesus Christ and told this man, Rise, take up thy bed and walk. So this man was simply doing what the Word of God told him to, what the words of Jesus Christ told him to.

[4:27] And immediately this man has opposition and it says it's from the Jews. Now you all have heard me say several times in here that if anyone had known, or should have known, that Jesus Christ was indeed the Messiah that was promised and prophesied over in the Old Testament from Genesis chapter 3 all the way through the Book of Malachi, we find all kinds of prophecies concerning Messiah.

[4:53] If anybody should have recognized Christ as Messiah, it should have been the Jews. And in particular it should have been the scribes and the Pharisees of the Jews, because they were the most well-versed in the Scriptures.

[5:06] They were the ones that the people went to when they had questions about the Old Testament Scriptures. So they should have recognized this particular miracle and all the miracles that Jesus worked for that matter.

[5:20] They should have recognized Christ as Messiah, but what is their concern? It says that they spoke this to the man that was cured. They weren't speaking to Jesus Christ at this point.

[5:31] It says, the Jews therefore said unto him that was cured, it is the Sabbath day, it is not lawful for thee to carry thy bed. Well folks, that is nowhere in the Scripture. In the Ten Commandments, in Exodus chapter 20, in those Ten Commandments, when God tells His people, His chosen people to keep the Sabbath holy, had nothing to do with whether you were carrying your bed around or carrying this mat around that this man would have been carrying with him, had nothing to do with that.

[6:01] That is not what God was getting at there. Why was the Sabbath created? I preached about it not long ago out of Mark chapter 3. The end of Mark chapter 2, end to Mark chapter 3, I talked about when I was preaching about the man with the withered hand, just, I don't know, two, three weeks ago.

[6:22] The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. The Sabbath was made for man. And there at the end of Mark chapter 2, we see that Jesus Christ says that he is Lord also of the Sabbath.

[6:38] But he specifies there at the end of Mark 2 that the Sabbath was made for man. It was made for our benefit. It was not the Sabbath, or not man for the Sabbath, it was the Sabbath for man.

[6:53] It was so that man could rest. And it wasn't just to regenerate himself after six days of work. It was to concentrate upon God on that day.

[7:04] It was to rest from his labors, yes, but it was to concentrate upon God. It's just like fasting. Folks, if you go a day without eating, or you go a meal or a meal time without eating, but you don't spend that time in prayer, you don't spend that time in meditation to God, you don't spend that time doing something for or toward God, you're not fasting, you're just starving yourself.

[7:30] That's all you're doing. If that time is not spent with God, it is not a true biblical fast. So people will say, well, I'm fasting for the Lord, I'm fasting for this and I'm fasting for that.

[7:42] But they spend that time doing something that pleases the flesh, or pleases their mind, or whatever the case is, and they don't spend it with God, that is not a biblical fast.

[7:53] And so for someone to take the Sabbath day off, what we as New Testament Christians think of as Sunday, but really it was Saturday in the Old Testament, but regardless of that, if we don't dedicate one day to God, or if we have a day off for that matter, but it is not dedicated to God, it's not a true Sabbath, it's not a true rest, and it's not being used for the intended purpose that God put it in place for.

[8:23] The Sabbath was made so that man could rest from his labors and concentrate on God for one day a week. One day a week is all God wanted over there in the Old Testament.

[8:35] That's not to say the other six days we go out and live however that we wanted to, we still lived in reverence to God, and reverence to the Word of God and the things of God. But we dedicated that one day per week to the worship of God and to meditate on God, and his goodness, and his grace, and his mercy, and his judgments, and his statutes, and all these other things.

[8:57] So these Jews were concentrating on something that they had actually put into practice. Told you all last week they had a list of extra laws that they had put into place outside of the laws that we find over in the Old Testament. I believe there are 613 Old Testament laws altogether.

[9:19] It's not just what we find there in Exodus 20 in the Ten Commandments. There's laws all throughout the Old Testament. If it was spoken by God, it's a law, plain and simple, no different than the New Testament.

[9:30] But they had added all these things, and this was one of those things. In fact, this was the 39th on the list that you shouldn't carry anything on the Sabbath day. I've got a list of those things at the house that the Jews, that the Pharisees in particular, had added to the laws of God.

[9:49] But it says, the Jews said unto him that was cured, it is the Sabbath day, it is not lawful for thee to carry that bed. And once again, that's not true. It may not have been true as far as their law was concerned, their rules that they had put in place.

[10:03] But as far as the law of God went, it had nothing to do with that. Absolutely nothing to do with that. And again, we might make it past this verse in this Sunday school session, I don't know.

[10:17] But again, this was ridicule from the Jews, from the religious leaders. And I'll tell you now, if someone has been born again, someone in a recent convert, we would call them nowadays, they're going to meet opposition.

[10:33] They're going to meet opposition from the world. They're going to meet opposition from their family. They're going to meet opposition at work. But you know where they're going to meet the most opposition? They're religious folk, the denominationalists that are out there.

[10:49] Those that say, well, now that you've been saved, you have to subscribe to our set of rules in the way that we do things, the way that we worship, the way that we sing, the songs that we sing, the Bible that we use, and so on and so forth.

[11:04] And that's the religious folk. And that's where they're going to meet the most fierce opposition, not from the world, not from the lost, not from their families, it's going to be from the religious crowd.

[11:17] Those that are so entrenched in tradition that they've completely set the true laws of God and the true word of God to the side, and they say, well, my grandpappy done it this way, or my great-grandpappy done it this way, and then my grandpappy and then my pappy. So I'm doing it this way because it's got to be right.

[11:37] And that's not necessarily so. I heard a lot of things when I was growing up as a young and then I found out as an adult just were not so. And a lot of them had to do with this book right here. A lot of them had to do with this book.

[11:49] But when I read it for myself and I had the Holy Spirit as my teacher and my guide in reading it, I found out that some of the things that I was told and some of the things that I was led to believe that were in this book really aren't in this book.

[12:04] And it was a real eye-opening experience. So again, yes, a new convert will experience opposition, but the worst opposition is going to be from the religious crowd, just as it was here.

[12:20] Verse 11, he answered them, he that made me hold the same said unto me, take up thy bed and walk. So this verse here, there's two real takes on this verse.

[12:33] Now I'll tell you what the two takes are. You can make up your own mind which way you want to go with it. But one take, the first take, the one that I go with is this fellow genuinely had no clue who healed him.

[12:47] He had no idea that it was God himself manifesting the flesh in Jesus Christ that had healed him. All he knew was that somebody had healed him. And he tells them, he that made me hold, he that cured me.

[13:02] The one that done this thing for me after 38 years of me laying here and not able to dip in this pool because somebody else would get to the water before I would.

[13:13] The one that cured me, he's the one that told me to rise and take up my bed and walk. And that's why I'm doing this. So the two takes on it is one, this guy's hiding behind Jesus just as he should, just as any convert should.

[13:30] Whether you're a new convert or an old convert, I ain't saying hide and cower. I'm saying that Jesus Christ is our high tower. He is our fortress.

[13:41] He's our mountain. He's the one that we go to for protection. He's the one that we go to for guidance. He's the one we go to for strength. So that's one take on another take is he was footing the bill off on Jesus.

[13:57] He was saying, well, ain't my fault I'm taking my bed up. And he was blaming Jesus. He was saying, this man calls me to break the Sabbath. I don't go with that take.

[14:08] I don't think that he was just pointing the thumb at Jesus Christ to get the Jews to get the Pharisees off of his back. I don't think that's what he was doing at all. I believe that he genuinely had no clue who had healed him.

[14:24] He just knew that he was healed. And folks, listen, the day I got saved, the morning that I got saved, I'd heard about Jesus Christ all my life. I'd heard about the Bible all my life.

[14:35] I'd heard about salvation. I'd heard about redemption. I'd heard, of course, that I was a sinner and I was going to hell. I'd heard all kinds of things about it. But the morning that I got saved, I couldn't tell you a whole lot about Jesus Christ.

[14:49] I could tell you most of what the Bible had to say about him, because I knew the Bible better than the most professing Christians that I knew before I was saved. But to get down into what we were referred to as the nitty gritty and tell someone about Jesus Christ, I couldn't have done it.

[15:10] All I know is I hit my knees that morning and when I come up, I was a new man. That's all I knew. I was lost and then I was saved.

[15:21] And I've been saved ever since. And that's all I could tell you at that point. So this man saying, I don't know who healed me. All I know is that I'm healed.

[15:32] That's the boat that I was in the morning that I got saved. I knew it was Jesus Christ. And I knew there had been a change made, but I couldn't get into the details about Jesus Christ.

[15:43] I was a newborn in Christ Jesus at that point. Maturity comes along. It's just like the natural process. We're born and we can't fend for ourselves.

[15:56] We depend on our parents to feed us. We depend on them to change our diapers and everything else that they do for us. And it's no different for a new convert in the Lord.

[16:08] We get born again and we have to depend upon the Heavenly Father to show us these things. We have to depend upon Him to guide us in our walk and guide us through His Word.

[16:20] And guide us in all these other things. And of course we have a dependence upon the other children of God that are around us in our church family and so on.

[16:31] But they were raised in the exact same manner. No different. If you've got older siblings, they help take care of you when you as a baby. Chances are that they did. I don't mind, did I?

[16:42] I've got three older siblings. They all had their turns with me having to watch after me and so on. But either way, it is by God and it's by the Word of God.

[16:54] So this man, I don't believe that he was just pushing the blame off on Jesus. Trying to take the spotlight off of himself and put it on Jesus. He genuinely had no clue who healed him.

[17:07] All he knew was that he was sick. He was depraved. He was unable to do anything for himself. And this man come along and done it all for him. And he told him to take up his bed and walk.

[17:21] Verse 12, then I stay here. What man is that which said unto thee, take up thy bed and walk. Verse 13, and he that was healed, wist not who it was, for Jesus had conveyed himself away a multitude being in that place.

[17:36] So they told him he was breaking the Sabbath. He said, the reason that I'm doing this is because the fellow that cured me, the man that come along and cured me of this ailment. He's the one that told me to carry my bed.

[17:49] And they asked him, who was it that said unto you, take up your bed and walk. Who told you to break the Sabbath in other words? And he that was healed, wist not who it was, for Jesus had conveyed himself away a multitude being in that place.

[18:05] And there's two takes on this as well. One of them is that Jesus Christ was scared so he stowed away somewhere so that they wouldn't come after him. Folks, my Jesus ain't never been scared in his life.

[18:16] He has never been scared. He is from eternity. He is the ancient of days. He's the beginning, the end, the first and the last. The Alpha and Omega never once and all of eternity has Jesus Christ been scared.

[18:30] That's my Jesus. That's the one that I serve and that's the one that I save my soul. So, news is to say, those that say Jesus got scared and went and hid himself in the crowd, I don't go with that take.

[18:43] My take on this on verse 13 where it says, for Jesus had conveyed himself away a multitude being in that place. My take on this is Jesus done exactly what he's done throughout the Scriptures.

[18:56] His time had not yet come. His hour was not here yet. We read about the hour of Christ throughout the Gospels that we find. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, we read about this hour.

[19:08] And when his hour finally come, he wasn't scared then either. Was he dreading it? Of course he was and you would have too. You and I would have dreaded it a whole lot worse when his hour finally did come to be arrested and to be mocked and to be scourged and to be crucified.

[19:25] Now, yes, he was dreading it. Of course, I mean, when he prayed there in the garden at Gethsemane, the Bible says that his sweat became his great drops of blood.

[19:36] Yes, he dreaded it. He dreaded the pain. He dreaded the suffering just like any other human being would. He being fully God and fully man at the same time. Yes, he was dreading it, but he was not scared.

[19:48] You know what tells me he wasn't scared? The fact that he didn't throw in the towel. The fact that he didn't call down legions of angels and say, take me away, take me back home and call down these same legions of angels to take vengeance out on those that wanted to do him harm.

[20:08] He wasn't scared because he was doing the Father's will. That was his whole purpose for coming. We read back in John chapter four, the woman at the well, the Samaritan woman that Jesus Christ met there at the well.

[20:21] We read that it was his meat to do the will of the Father. That's what kept him going. That's the whole reason that he came was to do the will of his Father and our Father.

[20:33] It was to do his bidding. So it says Jesus had conveyed himself away a multitude being in that place. So there's all kinds of folks there according to verse 13, verse 14, and after where Jesus found with him in the temple, well, praise God for that.

[20:52] The man had been healed. It's hard to tell how many times, if ever, he had ever been to the temple. We don't know how old this man was. We just know that he had had an infirmity for 38 years, which tells me that because the Bible doesn't say and he was 38 years old, it tells me that he received this a little bit later on in life.

[21:14] Maybe he was five years old. Maybe he was 10, maybe he was 20 when he received this infirmity. Whatever the case is or was, we don't know how old he was, but he got healed.

[21:25] He got cured and where did Christ find him at? He found him at the temple. What did people go to the temple for? Those of you that were in here when we went through the first seven chapters of Leviticus should know the answer to that.

[21:39] They went to the temple to worship. They went now. The temple wasn't around in the days of Leviticus. What was the tabernacle then became the temple later, but it was all used for the same purpose.

[21:52] They went to the temple to worship God. And where did Christ find this man? He found him at the temple and the temple had one purpose and that purpose was to worship Almighty God.

[22:05] That's where Christ found this man. So he gets healed, has no clue who healed him, but he wants to go and worship God. I don't know if this man had ever stepped foot in a synagogue in his life.

[22:18] I don't know if he'd ever been to the temple in his life. But I do know as per the scripture here that when he was healed, when he was cured, when he was made whole, the next place that we find him is in a place that was dedicated for the sole purpose of worshiping God.

[22:37] Do we do that in our own lives? Do we do that when God heals us, when God enters a prayer, whatever the case is, do we worship God for that? Or do we just say, well, you know, he kind of owed that to me.

[22:52] He kind of owed that to us. You know, just, yeah, I prayed for it and thank you, Lord, for doing so. Or do we truly worship God for what he's done for us?

[23:07] Like we should. Like I should. I admit to y'all, I'm guilty of not doing it. I'm guilty of not doing it. And if we're all honest with ourselves, we're all guilty of not doing that as we should.

[23:23] This man, when he was cured, it's the first place we find him. Afterward, Jesus found him in the temple and said unto him, Behold, thou art made whole, send no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.

[23:35] So Jesus found him in the temple, worshiping God, we're rightfully assuming. But Jesus gives him some words here. He speaks something to him. Now, the man's already followed the words of Jesus Christ once.

[23:48] Jesus said, Rise and take up thy bed and walk. I read nothing about any hesitation in this man. I read that he took up his bed and he went on his way.

[23:59] But Jesus speaks some more words to him here. He says, Behold, thou art made whole, send no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee. What does this remind me of?

[24:11] It probably reminds you all of the same thing in John chapter 8, when he was brought to Jesus that was caught in a very act of adultery. And after Jesus Christ has basically shooed away all of her accusers, guilted him away, really, by his words. What does he say to that woman?

[24:30] He says, We're thine accusers. She says, I have none. He says, Neither do I accuse thee. Go and send no more. Oh, that's the thing with forgiveness. That's the thing with being born again. It's not that we live a perfectly sinless life.

[24:45] We sin every day. I've explained to you all before. The very flesh that encases you is sinful. Our flesh is still underneath the curse of God.

[24:56] The Bible says that flesh cannot inherit the kingdom of God. There's a lot of people out here going back to what I was talking about earlier, denominations and other things that people have added to it.

[25:09] They'll swear up and down. If you've got a tattoo on your body, there ain't no way you can get to heaven. God did not save this flesh. God saved my soul. This flesh is going back to the ground.

[25:22] And I know people that think along those lines. They say, If you've got a tattoo, you cannot get saved. Show that to me in the scripture and I'll preach it myself. But it's not in there.

[25:34] Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. God saves the soul. And I'm going to get a glorified body one day. It's going to be free from every scar that I've got.

[25:45] It's going to be free from every sickness that I have. And if you're born again, you're going to receive the same type of body. Liking and fastening just like the Son of Man. Just like Jesus Christ.

[25:57] I'm not saying we're all going to be up there looking like Jesus Christ, but we will all have a glorified body like Jesus Christ has right now. Praise God.

[26:09] That's a promise directly from the scriptures. But he tells this man, Behold, thou art made hold, send no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee. In John chapter one, we read some pretty prolific words about Jesus Christ.

[26:26] John the Revelator, or John the author of the Gospel of John, who is John the Revelator as well, but that he wrote about Jesus. He says, the law came by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.

[26:42] Last week when we went through the fifth chapter of John, verses one through nine, we saw grace. We saw the grace of God. Once again, that man, he was unable to do anything for himself.

[26:56] Just like a lost person now is unable to save themselves. It's an impossibility. That's the rawest form of depravity that there is.

[27:09] People think about depravity as far as how wretched and how wicked someone can act. No, depravity is unable to do anything for yourself, and we are unable to save ourselves.

[27:21] This man was unable to do anything for himself, to cure himself. He was unable to claw his way to the water. He was unable to get himself in when the water was stirred so that he could be healed.

[27:33] So it was by grace that Jesus Christ came there by the pool of Bethesda and passed by that multitude of people that was there. Passed by everybody else that was there. The Bible says there was all kinds of folks that were there that were halt and lame, sick, and all kinds of things were wrong with him, and crossed by each one of those to get to this one man.

[27:56] And he showed grace to him because the man never said, Will you heal me? He never asked Jesus to do that. He never said, Jesus will you come into my heart? He never said anything along those lines, but Christ healed him. That's grace.

[28:11] When God gives you something that you are undeserving of, it is by the grace of God that you have it. It's by God's grace that we all have air in our lungs this morning. It's by God's grace that we have food in our bellies and food in our pantries at the house.

[28:26] It's by God's grace that we have blood flowing through our bodies. It is all of the grace of God because we couldn't do that ourselves. It's an impossibility. But here, I said in John chapter 1, we find where John said, The law came by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.

[28:44] Here in John chapter 5, we've seen grace in John 5 verses 1 through 9. Now we have the truth. We have the truth that Jesus speaks to him. Behold, thou art made to hold, Send no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.

[28:57] That's truth that Jesus Christ is speaking to him here. He done show grace. Now the truth is, Send no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.

[29:09] What is that worse thing? I mean, this man been crippled for 38 years, and we might read this and say, What could be worse than that? What could be worse than depending on your family, your friends, or possibly having to pay someone to come get you at your house every morning and take you to this pool of Bethesda and lay you there with your mat and make sure you're comfortable and then go scooting off until the evening and come back and get you that evening and take you back home.

[29:41] What could be worse than that? All kinds of things that are worse than that. One of those things is the chastisement of Almighty God. People might read this and they'll say, Well, what did that man do? What sin did he commit?

[29:54] Folks, you can turn over to John chapter 9. There's a blind man there in John chapter 9, and the disciples asked Jesus Christ, What sin did this man commit? Because he was blind from birth. What sin could he have committed that he was in this state, or what sin did his parents commit for that matter?

[30:10] What sin was committed that he has been blind all of his life? And Jesus says, He's not this way because of the sin. He's this way that the works of God might be manifested, that God might be glorified.

[30:23] This man laid there for 38 years, and you might say, That's a cruel God to allow that. It's a cruel God to allow someone to lay for 38 years before He heals them.

[30:34] That's unfair, a lot of people would say. I'll tell you what's unfair, that you're a wretched sinful creature, and I'm a wretched sinful creature, and there was a perfectly innocent man. No God was ever found in his mouth.

[30:46] He never committed one sin, never told a lie, never had a bad or an evil thought, and he came here and he died on a cross for you. That's what's unfair.

[30:57] So don't tell me about the unfairness of God, and we've got the grace of God through Jesus Christ. He says, Behold thou art made whole, send no more, lest the worst thing come unto thee.

[31:09] You've been made whole, you've been cured, you've basically been resurrected. The man was laying unable to do anything for himself. Was he dead in trespasses and sin?

[31:20] According to the Bible, we all are in Ephesians chapter 2, but he'd been raised to where he could have his life now, and he was found in the temple, and he was doing what he should have been doing.

[31:31] He was praising God. He says, Send no more, lest the worst thing come unto thee. The chastisement of God is a whole lot worse than laying beside a pool for 38 years, or being incapacitated for that matter for 38 years.

[31:48] When we go against God, God will chastise us. The Bible says that without the chastisement of God, we are bastards and not sons. I praise God when I have to get chastised, because that means I'm one of his.

[32:03] It means I'm his, and he's treating me just like an earthly father should treat me. When I was doing what I should, there was no chastisement from my parents when I was growing up.

[32:15] When I'd done things I wasn't supposed to do, I got chastised, just as a parent should. Whether that chastisement was a tongue lashing or a belt lashing, I got chastised.

[32:26] And our Heavenly Father is the same way when we're doing as we should, not for salvation, but because of salvation. When we're doing as we should, there's no chastisement from God, because there are no laws against doing good and doing right.

[32:42] But when we're not doing as we should, that's when the chastisement comes. I've told a whole lot of people that you ain't had a weapon until you've gotten one from Almighty God.

[32:53] That's the worst thing that was to come to this man, was the chastisement of God. The man departed and told the Jews that it was Jesus which had made him whole, and therefore did the Jews persecute Jesus and sought to slay him, because he had done these things on the Sabbath day.

[33:13] The man departed, he went back to the same Jews that said, who done this thing for you? And remember the Bible says, he wist not that it was Jesus. He had no clue who it was. All he knew was that he was down on the ground, and the next thing he knew, he was up walking, all because the man told him to rise and take up that bed and walk.

[33:33] He goes back and he tells them Jews because they were inquiring to him who it was. So he goes and tells them it was Jesus which had made him whole, and therefore did the Jews persecute Jesus again.

[33:44] Not only has this man been persecuted, been ostracized by the Jewish, by the religious people, not only was he, but now Jesus is being persecuted, because he's the one that performed the miracle.

[33:58] And it's all because he done it on the Sabbath day. No one can show me in Scripture. No one can show me within the pages of this book that God doesn't want us to do good on the day of rest that he has given us.

[34:14] That God doesn't want us to do right on that day. Once again, when I preached about the man with the withered hand from Mark chapter 3, not long ago at all, I talked about many of these things then, about how it's always right to do good.

[34:30] It doesn't matter the day of the week. It doesn't matter the hour of the day or night. It is always right to do good. And it is never right to do wrong. Never.

[34:42] But they persecuted Jesus and sought to slay him. That goes beyond persecution. They sought to slay him just as they did in Mark chapter 3, when he healed the man with the withered hand that was there at the synagogue.

[34:56] And he told him, he said, stretch forth on hand, and the man did so. And they didn't pay a bit more attention to the miracle, that that was a cure that only Messiah, that only God could have done himself.

[35:11] They didn't care about that. What they cared about was their own role of doing anything on the Sabbath had been broken. And it's the same case here. They sought to slay him because he'd done these things on the Sabbath day.

[35:24] But Jesus answered them, my Father, worketh hither to, and I work. Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him because he had not only broken the Sabbath, but said also that God was his Father making himself equal with God.

[35:39] So Jesus, when they persecuted him, sought to slay him, Jesus, it says Jesus answered them, said, my Father, worketh hither to, and I work. In other words, he was telling them, God, the Father has never quit working.

[35:54] And you might look back in the very first couple of chapters of Genesis and say, well, I can read where he took the Sabbath day, he took the seventh day for himself and rested from the other six days. Folks, it wasn't because God was tired.

[36:07] It wasn't because he was wore out. The Bible says the God that watches over Israel never sleeps and never slumbers. He does not tire, and I'm glad that I serve a God that does not tire.

[36:19] I'm glad that I serve a God that does not sleep. He has got constant watch over me. I'm glad that it's that way. He says, my Father will work with hither to, and I work. In other words, yes, he created the earth and all the critters on the earth and in the sea and the sky and the star and the sun and the moon and all these things.

[36:39] And then he created man, then he took a rib out of man's body and created woman. He'd done all this in six days. And he says, God rested on the seventh day, but it's not because he was tired. It's not because he needed a time to meditate upon himself or to worship himself.

[36:54] It was an example unto us that God took the seventh day. But Jesus says here, he says, God's never quit working.

[37:07] He says, he worketh hither to. That word worketh is perfect tense. He's constantly working. Folks, if God wasn't constantly working, the sun would not have come up this morning.

[37:20] The earth would not have spun overnight. You and I would not be sitting here as breathing, living human beings right now. If God quit working, Jesus says God's always working.

[37:32] And therefore so am I. And it says they sought the more to kill him because not only had he broken the Sabbath, but said also that God was his father making himself equal with God.

[37:43] You know why he was making himself equal with God? Because he was and is equal with God. Jesus Christ is all God. He's always been all God.

[37:54] Yes, we've got God the Father. Yes, we've got God the Son. And yes, praise God. We've got God the Spirit. And they make up one triune God. The Bible says in the book of Colossians, in him dwelt the fullness of the Godhead.

[38:08] In Christ dwelt the fullness of the Godhead. He made himself equal with God because he was equal with God. And to this very day as I stand here now, he is still equal with God.

[38:21] There at the end of the Gospel of Matthew, he says all power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. The first question I would ask is who gave it to him? If it's given to him, but he's got all power.

[38:32] Why does he have all power? Because he is equal with God. He is God. I'm not getting into Jesus only stuff with you. I've already said we have the three persons of the Trinity, but Jesus Christ is God.

[38:47] That's why he can make himself equal with Him. But that made these people mad. Why? Because he wasn't quite the Messiah that they were thinking they were going to get.

[38:59] They were looking for somebody to come in and stomp the Roman government, stomp a mud hole in their backside, as we might say nowadays, and set on the throne of David forever and ever.

[39:12] That's the Messiah they were looking for, because that's the Messiah that was promised. The folks you read in the Old Testament, you read about two comings of Messiah you read about in the Old Testament, and you read about it in the New Testament, but we understand it better in the New Testament because we have both Testaments.

[39:30] But if these Jews had studied just a little bit deeper, just a little bit harder, it's just like Jesus told Nicodemus when we went through John chapter 3 a few weeks ago, and Jesus told Nicodemus, you are a master of Israel and you don't know these things.

[39:43] You're the one that's teaching these people, you're teaching the Jews, and you can't tell them these simple things that you must be born again. You don't understand that. When the new birth is found plainly in the Old Testament, it's found plainly in several different places in the Old Testament.

[39:59] You find it in the book of Ezekiel, you find it in the book of Jeremiah, you find it in the books of Samuel actually, but he says, you're a master of Israel and you don't know these things. How can I teach you of heavenly things when you don't even understand the natural things?

[40:13] That's what he told Nicodemus. These Jews, this was not the Messiah these Jews were looking for. That's why they hated him. They hated him because he broke their rules, and they hated him because he made himself equal with God, but she had every right to do so.

[40:27] But anyway, that brings us to the end of the section that we were really hoping to get to. Anybody got any questions or comments on any of that?

[40:38] God bless you all. I appreciate your attention. Thank you.