Breaking the Sabbath

Now it was the Sabbath on that day. So the Jews were saying to the man who was cured, "It is the Sabbath, and it is not permissible for you to carry your pallet." (John 5:9-10)

There is so much awakened in me when I read these verses that there is simply no way I can begin to cover much of it in just one day. But I want to begin to unpack the wonderful things about this incredible gift of God's Sabbath that has been so obscured by traditions of men and the counterfeit religions of this world.

As I ponder the context of this encounter between this freshly healed man and the stern attitudes of some of the Jewish religionists, I see a stark contrast between the true purpose of the Sabbath as given to us by a passionate, caring, loving, healing Savior and the stern, rule-oriented, legalistic notions of Sabbath-keeping as imposed on people in religious groups dedicated to the idea of appeasing a fearsome God waiting to punish all evil-doers who dare to offend His sensitive nature.

That is not to imply in the least that the Sabbath is not extremely important to remember or that ignoring the central commandment given by God Himself on Mt. Sinai can be without serious consequences. But the greatest lies that keep us from properly understanding and relating to God as we need to has more to do with how we perceive His heart and His feelings towards sinners more than a need to figure out in detail every rule and regulation that He has given humanity over the centuries. We may be ever so accurate in detailing and expostulating on which Old Testament laws were eclipsed by the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross and which ones reflect moral principles than can never be obscured. But if our spirit is not in harmony with the Spirit that emanates from the heart of God, then our logic and 'truth' will prove to be worse than worthless.

This fact has been demonstrated clearly by the very Jews who were involved in this story itself. The Jews had spent hundreds of years trying to perfect their understanding of the Scriptures and God's instructions to His people in order to try to align their lives perfectly with His commands for them. But because of their mistaken focus on the externals at the expense of connecting with God at the heart level even more intently, they had slipped into a mode of thinking that eventually resulted in such hardened hearts that they felt compelled to murder the very illustration of those laws who had come to reveal their true meaning in the life of Jesus Christ.

Jesus' main purpose for coming to this earth was to reveal the heart of the Father to sinners who had been lied to about Him. All of us have very little concept of the reality of the truth about how God really views us. We have thought that God uses our methods and principles to motivate us to be 'good'. We usually believe firmly in a mixture of enticements and threats, of using a 'carrot and stick' approach and we treat each other the way we believe that God treats us. (I believe this is a legacy of eating of the Tree of both Good and Evil.) We confirm this in our religious thinking by compiling supposed proofs from Bible stories and firm up our religious notions about an angry God who, if considered by a clear-thinking, unaffected child-like simplicity would be seen to be something of a schizophrenic the way we teach about Him.

God knew that we were buried very deeply in lies about Him and that religion is one of the greatest sources of those lies. That is why He sent His Son to live among those who were promoting many of those very lies in His name – to expose them for what they were by demonstrating in person what God is really like and how He really feels about us. For some people it began to seep in; for many others it only confused and hardened them even more and made them enraged that anyone would dare to challenge their firmly entrenched opinions about what God has to be like.

To look carefully at the difference between how Jesus viewed the Sabbath and how the Jews and many others have viewed it is to step into the very center of these conflicts relating to how we perceive God and the many false beliefs that still infect our hearts yet today. In this story Jesus had just demonstrated unequivocally how He felt about sinners and helpless people who had been taken down by the results of sin. In contrast the religious people were certain that sickness and disasters were nothing less than arbitrary punishments by an offended God who was determined to get even with anyone who disagreed with His demands. They believed that keeping their meticulous rules about the Sabbath were far more significant than bringing relief and grace to the problems that sin had caused in a person's life.

When we put the blame on God for the bad things that happen in our lives instead of placing it squarely where it really belongs, on the author of sin and on our own evil choices to remove ourselves in various ways from under the protection of God, then we will always find ourselves firmly in the grasp of deep deceptions about how God really relates to us. The Jews were immersed in these kinds of notions about God and many of us are exactly like them today but without being willing or able to perceive it. An externalized religion always produces a deceived heart and a deceived heart will always be in the process of being hardened against the real truth about God's mercy, kindness, compassion and grace.

Later in this story Jesus did indeed warn this man to avoid sin lest he find himself in deeper problems than the ones he had just escaped through the kind healing of God. It is very likely that this man's sickness was a direct result of his own bad choices and that he had needed much more than simply physical healing. But the way Jesus responded to his plight was in stark contrast to the uncaring attitude of the Jews only concerned that this man was violating the external regulations they had put in place to supposedly safeguard the holiness of the Sabbath hours.