Breaking the Law

Today at Recovery Worship we took a look at the healing of the man by the pool from John 5. In Jesus' day there was a pool where people went, hoping to experience miraculous healing. The pool, called Bethesda, was a large pool surround by five covered porches. There would be crowd of sick people who would lay around the pool and wait for the water to "bubble up" and thus receive healing, at least according to tradition.

Jesus shows up at the pool one day and asks an interesting question to a man who was laying beside the pool. "Would you like to get well?" Jesus asks the man. The man tells Jesus that he had been waiting by the pool for thirty-eight years, however, he did not have family to help him, so when the pool began to bubble up, other people, many who had family there to help, were able to beat him into the water.

Jesus then tells the man to "Stand up, pick up your mat, and walk!" The man obeyed, stood up and picked up his mat. The Jewish leaders objected because the man was carrying the mat on the Sabbath, they also objected that Jesus had healed the man on the Sabbath.

In John's Gospel stories Jesus is called Rabbi over and over again. Being a Rabbi, he would have known it was "against the law" to heal on the Sabbath. He also would have know that it was "against the law" to have the man pick up and carry the mat.

It is obvious from the text that Jesus and the Jewish leaders did not see eye to eye when it came to the law. Could Jesus have waited a few hours until after the Sabbath to have healed the man? Sure, but why should he, it is apparent that the Jewish leaders had turned one of the Ten Commandments around from what God had initially intended it to be. The fourth Commandment is "Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy," is about what we do, not what we don't do. Do we really "keep it holy" by not doing something?

Jesus was willing to break the law by healing on the Sabbath. Jesus was also willing to tell the man to break the law by picking up and carrying the mat. Jewish leaders knew the Scriptures backward and forward, yet they were spiritually dead. We have people in the church today who know the Scriptures backward and forward and they are also spiritually dead. They think that simply because they can quote Scripture that they are living their lives by the "Word Alone" yet they are living a life of Spiritual death. Jewish leaders used the law to keep people in line and obeying the Sabbath had nothing to do with keeping the Sabbath Holy. People today in our churches us the law to try to keep people in line, to conform, and when they don't they will use Scripture to condemn, all in the name of Christ.

When I was in Israel several years ago I was in a building that had several floors. One of the elevators was labeled the "Sabbath Elevator." On the Sabbath day the elevator would stop at every floor on the way up and every floor on the way down. The purpose was so that a person would not break the Sabbath by pressing the button of the floor they wanted off on, thus breaking the law by "working" on the Sabbath. There are some laws that need to be broken, this, I believe, is one of them. There are a lot of different ways to keep the Sabbath day holy, let's not get carried away with law keeping.

People in recovery have to break the rules sometime in order to live a life of recovery. The family rule is "don't go for help, fix your own problem" or "people in our family don't drink, you can't be an alcoholic." They don't seek help because of the law of the family, and sometime even the law of the church. "There is no such thing as addiction, you just have a weakness."

Jesus calls us to break the rules sometimes, especially when it helps us, or others to live a life of recovery, and Spirituality.

See you next Sunday