John 5 -- It's IN There!

Jesus healed a man who’d been sick for 38 years.  He told him, “Stand up.  Pick up your mat and walk.”  The man did, and he was healed.  The Pharisees, seeing the man carrying his mat on the Sabbath, began to rake him over the coals for violating one of the many extraneous laws they’d developed over the centuries to help them be the religious police of the nation.  Jesus didn’t have to tell him to pick up his mat.  But I think He did so to produce a situation where they would publicly question His authority and that would give Him the opportunity to share about His close relationship with His Father.

These paragraphs are vitally important to me because I remember being spiritually blinded after college, having taken in so much of the New Age movement’s stuff which tries to produce a belief of intellectual eliteness in those who are suckered by it.  I’d read somewhere that nowhere in the Bible did Jesus actually claim to be God’s Son, and stupidly I believed that as fact.

There’s absolutely no disputing that He did indeed state it here, especially when the Pharisees, after hearing what He said, responded: “  First Jesus was breaking the law about the Sabbath day.  Now He says that God is His own Father, making Himself EQUAL with God!”

That’s checkmate to all of Christ’s enemies in this world.  Normally they’d cheer on the Pharisees for everything they ever did to put down Jesus.  But here they’d have to be fiercely whispering, “SHUT UP!  Don’t you REALIZE what you’re DOING??  You’re supporting His case!  We don’t need witnesses like you!”

Father, I don’t suppose I’ll ever be able to apologize enough for believing all the rot that I swallowed hook, line, and sinker about all the New Age stuff.  I know You’ve forgiven me, but I still feel so incredibly stupid for thinking that my intellect was helping me rise above all that, when really it was only taking me away from the One who loved me more than I could ever love myself.  Thanks for not ever leaving me in my rebellion, and for showing me the way back to You.  My real regret is that there is no “undo” button to wipe it all out of my mind entirely.  Your love is so awesome and so undeserved!

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford