Rest and Conflict

Immediately the man became well, and picked up his pallet and began to walk. 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)

It was the Sabbath on that day. Interesting.

The word Sabbath literally means rest. But it is far more than simply restraining the urge to go out and work at a job. When God talks about rest He is not primarily referring to physical activities. When we get fixated on defining rest or Sabbath observance in terms of checklists that we measure our life against (or more likely other people's lives) then we have fallen firmly into the trap of externalism and our religion has lost its true locus of control.

The Jews had gotten into that trap and are still largely caught there even yet today. But they certainly do not have a corner on that problem. Focusing on outward behaviors is just inherent in our sinful nature. It is so much easier to try to control our externals and appearances than it is to face squarely what is really going on in the heart and to be honest before God and ourselves. But if we fail to allow the Spirit of God to expose and deal with what is going on in our heart we will never be prepared to live in the land where everything is transparent and real and full of light.

This sick man had been trapped by the effects of sin in his life for many years. On top of that he lived in a culture that had strict regulations and traditions that circumscribed how everyone was supposed to function when it came to religion. Although these people had been entrusted with the most truth from God for many centuries they also had the reputation of being the most negligent when it came to obeying that truth from the heart. But then, how different are we, really?

When Jesus came to this man and asked him if he really wished to be well, He was not just referring to the condition of his body. There was so much more in this question that is difficult to discern without sensing the much deeper implications that must have certainly been felt by this man's heart. The very demeanor and voice tone of Jesus likely conveyed much more than the words that we now read on sterile paper. Jesus was not only speaking of his physical healing but was reaching down inside where a much greater pain had tortured this man for so many years. His heart had felt alienated from God and his soul longed for peace as well as comfort and healing.

Then God Himself showed up one day in the person of Jesus Christ and asked this poor wretch, Do you wish to be healed? This man knew that something was being offered him that was far out of the ordinary. People don't just come along everyday and ask a sick man if he might enjoy getting healed. When someone can say that to a person with the kind of authority that Jesus can say it, a person's heart will resonate with the conviction that they are in the presence of Someone that can see far deeper than what most people look at on the surface.

Initially this man's response was typical of how many of us feel in our lives. We have believed all of our lives that it is up to us to help ourselves to some supposed source of healing. We berate ourselves or blame others for not getting the right treatment or talking to the right expert or not being strong enough to achieve the level of performance needed to overcome our obstacles. Eventually we may become discouraged and fall into hopeless despair. We begin to acknowledge that we simply cannot perform well enough to meet the incessant demands of religion or the lofty expectations of those who claim to be the leaders of religion in our particular culture. We finally fall into resignation that we must be the ones destined to be the counterparts of those who will be saved and we are just doomed to be the refuse, the outcasts, the broken ones who cannot measure up and are just here to make the others look better.

We live in a religious culture that is intent on making sure we know how lost we are and how much we are to blame for our wretched condition. Our religion often reinforces our dark views of God and the kinds of punishments that He reserves for those who don't measure up to His expectations. The pious among us too often seem to delight in pointing us out as examples of what not to be like because obviously we are suffering under the judgments of God or we would not be in such miserable conditions. And our own hearts can easily see how our own mistakes and wrong choices have certainly brought on many of our problems and so the accusations and insinuations are given even greater weight to crush out all hope and reinforce the perception that God really does despise us.

But all of these perceptions are really a mirage that obscures from our hearts the real truth about how God feels about us. Our greatest problem is not the effects of sin that we experience and the consequences of so many wrong choices in our past but is the lies and misconceptions about God and how He views us that keeps us from living life in freedom and wholeness. Religion itself can often prove to be one of the greatest curses that keeps millions from accessing the saving grace of God that it purports to offer to people. Until Jesus Himself shows up and begins to speak directly to our hearts, the effects of religious rules and expectations and traditions may only tend to drive us into deeper hopelessness instead of toward the only Source where we can find relief and true rest.

This whole system of religious forms, regulations and expectations by others and even ourself drives many to feel that they must perform to some level of righteousness before God will begin to consider helping them. And it is this very mindset that is reflected in both the words of this man's response to Jesus and the Jew's words to this man after he was healed that God wants to address in the rest that is to be found in the true Sabbath. Ever since sin came into this planet and caused us to focus more on ourselves than on God we have been trying to appease God, to placate Him, to induce Him to feel more kindly toward us, to impress Him with our achievements or to turn away from Him in disgust because of the reputation He has received from those who claim to represent Him.

But when this man chose to turn away from all of that and simply respond obediently to the invitation of Jesus to live in wholeness and joy, he discovered to his amazement that not only did he experience physical restoration but he also began to experience true internal rest in his spirit that he had not known for most of his life. It was no accident that when he chose to obey Jesus and was infused with new life and energy that it was the same day that God had originally designed for all of His children to live in the closest intimacy with Him and be restored and revitalized for another week of activity.

The true rest that this man entered into at the invitation of Jesus suddenly stood out in stark contrast to the imitation kind of rest that the Jews had cultivated through centuries of tradition. They had come to believe that God was some kind of demanding dictator that was mostly interested in outward conformity and performance and obedience to long lists of rules. But they had ignored the real issues of how they related to others, especially those less fortunate or less religiously capable. As a result they heaped condemnation on anyone who didn't measure up to their assumptions about what God demanded of people and were quick to censure and shame anyone who didn't fit into their mold, their little box that they insisted contained the God of the universe.

The Jews had so externalized religion and their concept of God that they believed that when God spoke of Sabbath rest that He was demanding that people just limit their outward activities to meet His arbitrary demands for compliance. This is always the result of living in a fear-based religion, a view of God that is focused more on outward performance and rule-keeping than having anything to do with the condition of what is in our spirit. But God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart. (1 Samuel 16:7)

Whenever a person chooses to respond to God's invitation to enter into the kind of rest that only God can give – that true Sabbath rest that God desires all of us to experience – we are going to find ourselves in sharp conflict with those who refuse to believe or participate in that kind of real rest. A person who begins to demonstrate in their experience and spirit the peace and joy that God's kind of rest produces will act unconsciously as a light that begins to expose the hollowness, shallowness and hypocrisy of all other claims of religious piety. Real rest and counterfeit rest can never live in close proximity without sooner or later creating conflict.

We will be faced yet again with the same kind of showdown that this man ran into soon after his own healing. If we choose to enter into the real kind of rest that Jesus invites all to come into we are inevitably going to find ourselves accused of disobedience and heresy by those who are unwilling to relax and rest in the righteousness that can only be found in trusting and obeying the direct words of Jesus and following the promptings of His Spirit in our hearts. True Sabbath rest can only be found in a heart belief in the goodness of God and trusting in His care for us, not in trying to live in perfect compliance with a list of rules and restrictions in order to avoid offending a stern God.