FROM THE TREE TO THE CROSS

If John chapter 4 was the betrothal of the gentiles at the well, Then John 5 is the cold clash between the law and grace resulting in the first public declaration of the divinity of Jesus. 

1. Some time later there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem”.

This was most likely the Feast of Weeks (Shavuot/Pentecost). The Feast of Weeks was the day the entire Jewish nation celebrated Moses receiving the Law—including the Sabbath commandment—on Mount Sinai!

2. Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool with five covered porches, which in Hebrew is called Bethesda.  3. On these walkways lay a great number of the sick, the blind, the lame, and the paralyzed. –waiting for the moving of the water.  5. One man there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years.                

The sheep gate is so named because it is the gate the sheep for the temple sacrifices where led through.  This pool nearby it named Bethesda literally means  (house of mercy). Thirty eight years is the exact amount of time the Israelites spent walking in the wilderness because of their sin.  Deuteronomy 2:14.     For thirty eight years they walked till they grew old, fell down and died because of their lack of faith, even though they witnessed water spring from a rock.  But now there is a reversal, for this man has been unable to walk for thirty eight years, and has grown old waiting for someone to bring him to the water so he could be healed, but today, the water (Jesus) has just come to him!.   “Do you want to get well?”  Jesus asked him

“Sir, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am on my way, someone else goes in before me.”

Out of all the people waiting to be healed by the stirred water Jesus chose only this one man, why?

Because the multitude of sick people had put their faith only in the stirring of the waters, they were blind to the living water standing in their presence, but this man had lost all hope, he had no one to help him, he was the only one whose heart was ready to surrender his faith to Jesus.

Then Jesus said to him,             “Get up, pick up your mat, and walk.”

(His question and command applies to everyone, do you want to get well? Are you tired of your prison in sin? all you have to do is obey his words)

Immediately the man was made well, and he picked up his mat and began to walk.

He became a walking miracle, a moving billboard advertising the results of simply following the creators command to get up and carry his mat home.  His mat had become  a physical symbol of the sin that had kept him paralyzed from living and confined to his bed; it had been his prison for thirty eight years but now he carries it as a trophy and sign of his deliverance.

the Jews said to the man who had been healed, “This is the Sabbath! It is unlawful for you to carry your mat.” But he answered, “The man who made me well told me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’”

“Who is this man who told you to pick it up and walk?” they asked. But the man who was healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had slipped away while the crowd was there. Afterward, Jesus found the man at the temple and said to him, “See, you have been made well. Stop sinning, or something worse may happen to you.”

All he had to do was believe and obey and instantly thirty eight years of paralyzing sin was washed away and would stay washed away as long as he continued to sin no more. Jesus gave him this warning because thirty eight years of being unable to move is nothing compared to an eternity in hell.  His primary concern was not the politics of the priests, but the eternal soul of the paralyzed man.  

But the Pharisees did not see a miracle of God; they saw only a broken law because it was done on the Sabbath.                           They immediately surround Jesus to condemn Him.           Their book is open, the law of Moses is clear, there is no work to be done on the Sabbath day not even carrying a mat.                    But what followed was not an apology from Jesus.                 Instead It is chronologically his first public declaration and defense of his Deity in the entire New Testament.

The Captivity in Babylon (586 B.C.) and the Birth of the Biblical Bureaucrats.

The story begins at the beginning of our creation itself when God created life on earth in six days and then rested on the seventh day, setting it apart as a day of rest and reflection.

After Israel was freed from  slavery, God gave Moses the law to observe the Sabbath day by resting instead of working, yet Israel disobeyed it for centuries engaging in idolatry and ignoring God’s Sabbaths. After many repeated warnings from the prophets, the judgment of the Creator fell. King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon breached the walls, burned the Temple of Solomon to the ground, and dragged the Israelites into a punishing seventy-year exile.  When they finally returned to Jerusalem to rebuild it, their hearts and  minds were focused on how they could ensure God would never want to punish them like this again?

From these good intentions to study and follow the law to the letter, a new class of religious scholars was born called the Scribes. They made a vow: We will faithfully copy and study the Law, we will  “Make a fence for the Torah.”

The logic of the scribes was this: If God’s Law is like his holy mountain in that even approaching it leads to judgment, we will build a massive fence a mile away from the mountain. If we force the people to stop at our fence, they will never even come close to God’s mountain and breaking God’s Laws.

The Scribes and Pharisees did not invent these rules overnight. The prison of rules for the Sabbath was built brick by brick over five centuries, born out of national trauma and slowly weaponized into a system of religious propaganda.

God had given them simple commands regarding the Sabbath: Cease from your labors and rest.    But the scribes demanded definitions. What is labor? What constitutes carrying a burden? How heavy must a burden be before it is illegal? They abandoned the Spirit and reason for the Law to obsess over the measurements.

(The Melakhot)                            Over the next four hundred years, known as the “Silent Years” between the Old and New Testaments, this institutional machinery went into overdrive. The religious elite categorized the Sabbath into thirty-nine classifications of forbidden work. 

​But they did not stop there. They created hundreds of sub-categories to regulate every breath a man took on the seventh day. They wanted laws of their own making instead of simply obeying the law of God.              Look at the absolute absurdity of this institutional rule making:

• ​The Law of the Knot: You could not tie or untie a knot on the Sabbath. But what if a woman needed to tie her sash? The scribes debated fiercely, finally ruling that you could tie a knot, but only if it could be untied with one hand.
• The Law of the Burden: You could not carry a burden. What was a burden? The scribes defined it as anything heavier than a dried fig. If you carried a pomegranate, you were a Sabbath-breaker.
• ​The Law of the Dirt: You could not plow a field. Therefore, if you spit on the dirt on the Sabbath or dragged your foot across the earth, you were technically “plowing” and had broken the Law!

The Pharisees had taken the simple command of God (“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy”) and fenced it with thirty-nine man-made categories of prohibited labor (the Melakhot). They built a prison of rules around the grace of God.

By the time Jesus of Nazareth was speaking and healing at the temple, the scribes and pharisees had fully weaponized the law to use against the people as a method of maintaining control through rules and fear.                       The Pharisees measured their status and holiness by how many extra-biblical rules they could  enforce on the illiterate masses.

This is why Jesus attacks their traditions with such calculated intentions. He could have told the paralyzed man that he would come back to heal him, or to leave his mat till the next day in order to comply with the rules.     But he doesn’t; he intentionally tells the man to carry his bed because he does not merely disagree with their theology; He is purposely dismantling their matrix of control and smashing through their artificial fences.  He is openly showing the people that the religious elite had entirely misunderstood and misrepresented the character of the Creator.

The Pharisees were perfectly content to let a man remain crippled for the rest of his life, so long as their theological control remained undisturbed. They loved the ink of their man made laws and traditions more than the restored body of their brother. Jesus antagonized them to expose this absolute moral bankruptcy. He shattered their rules to show the world that the heart of the Father beats for the helpless and broken, not for the biblical bureaucrats.

“Now because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jews began to persecute Him. But Jesus answered them, ‘My Father has been working until now, and I have been working.’

The Pharisees throw the Law of Moses at Him: You can not do any work on the Sabbath. How does he respond?  My Father who created the Sabbath continues working even on the Sabbath, the sun shines, the rain falls, and babies are born even on the Sabbath, so if God continues working on the Sabbath day then he will also be working on the Sabbath day because God is his father and the Son does only what he sees the father doing.  

Because of this, the Jews tried all the harder to kill Him. Not only was He breaking the Sabbath, but He was even calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God.

Jesus knew that they would find this claim to be the Son of God blasphemous and yet he said it anyway because now that the Father had revealed the Son to both the physical and spiritual world at his baptism, his divinity as being co equal with God must also be revealed.

One by one he declares to them the powers given to him by his Father.

1. the power to raise the dead. in Jewish culture it was well known and established that only God alone could bring a dead person back to life.

2. The authority of judgement. only God has the authority to judge a mans soul, yet Jesus tells them that the Judge has passed his gavel to the Son in order to make him equal in honor, power and authority.

3. The creative power of the spoken word of God.                 Jesus is not going to allow them to claim that he is speaking of some pagan god of the romans or greeks, only the God of the Hebrews was known to have created all of life simply by speaking it into existence. 

“Truly, truly, I tell you, whoever hears My word and believes Him who sent Me has eternal life and will not come under judgment. Indeed, he has crossed over from death to life“.

“Truly, truly, I tell you, the hour is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live“.

This declaration is referring to two separate events.                   “The hour is coming“ is referring to the end of this age when the dead are resurrected and their bodies made new, but “The hour now is“ refers to the time when Jesus was speaking these words.  Most theology interprets it as a spiritual awakening first and then a physical one later, but the reality of it is, that it was both spiritual and physical in that time and age and will be again at the end of this age.

l. The Underworld of Sheol and The Conscious Dead

Jesus said the dead would hear his voice and rise both now and later but in order to explain this we have to first understand and prove scripturally what the underworld that contained the souls of the dead was, and how the dead in sheol could hear the voice of Jesus.  So who provides the ultimate blueprint of Sheol?Jesus Himself.

Luke 16:22-26 (The Rich Man and Lazarus)

“The rich man also died and was buried. And being in torment in Hades, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. Then he cried and said, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me…’”

But Abraham answered, ‘Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things. But now he is comforted here, while you are in agony. And besides all this, a great chasm has been fixed between us and you, so that even those who wish cannot cross from here to you, nor can anyone cross from there to us.’

Look at the description by Jesus of the afterlife before the Cross!  Both Lazarus and the rich man who ignored his suffering are in Hades (Hades being the Greek word for sheol).  The rich man has memory, he has sight, he has the capacity for torment, and most importantly, he has hearing and speech. He engages in a theological conversation with Abraham across the great, fixed gulf.

If a condemned rich man in the flames of Hades can hear the voice of Abraham from across the chasm of the underworld, do you think the righteous saints in Abraham’s Bosom were deaf to the surface? Absolutely not! They were listening for the footsteps of the Son of God walking the earth above them.

Some might say this was simply a metaphor or allegory used by Jesus to convey the importance of living a sinless life. But unfortunately just as hell is in no way shape or form an allegory, neither was sheol.

II. The Direct Confirmation of Peter

If we need New Testament confirmation that the dead literally heard the Gospel being preached, the Apostle Peter provides the theological proof. We already looked at 1 Peter 3:19 (He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit, in whom He also went and preached to the spirits in prison), but look at what Peter writes a few paragraphs later to explain why Jesus did it:

1 Peter 4:6  “For this reason the gospel was preached also to those who are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit.”

He does not say “those who are spiritually dead.” The context of the entire chapter is physical life and physical death. Peter explicitly declares that the Gospel was preached into and in the realm of the physically dead!   The Voice of the Son of God was the master key turning the lock of their prison door.

The Waiting Witnesses of the book of Hebrews

Finally, look at the Old Testament Saints as described by the writer of Hebrews. After listing the great champions of faith—Abraham, Moses, David, Samuel—the writer drops a harsh truth.

Hebrews 11:39-40 “These were all commended for their faith, yet they did not receive what was promised. God had planned something better for us, so that together with us they would be made perfect.

They died never doubting their faith in God and his plan of  redeeming them from their sins, but they did not receive  their reward after death. They did not go to heaven or simply fall asleep, but neither were they tormented as the wicked are.  They were in a state of rest waiting for their redeemer, waiting to be redeemed from sin so that they could leave sheol and ascend up to heaven to be with their creator.      They were not “made perfect” (meaning their salvation had not yet been finalized) until his death at the Cross.

They were waiting in the part of sheol referred to as Abraham’s Bosom.                                           They were awake.                      They were intently listening for the voice of the Master, waiting for his call.

So when Jesus stood in the temple in John 5 and said,   “the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God,”  He was not speaking in abstract poetry or an allegory. He was speaking through the stone floor, into the waiting room of sheol, telling Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: “Pack your bags.  The wait is over, your reward is with me, I AM coming to get you.”

The First Resurrection Saints

For further proof that the dead could hear the voice of Jesus, we need only look at the words themselves, for He did not say that the dead will only hear his voice, he said that the dead would rise, they must be able to hear his voice in order to rise in response to it.  This would happen three separate times in keeping with the divine number of three, which is symbolic of the Trinity. 

First they would hear his voice and rise from the dead while Jesus was still alive.                     He would make this command to rise three separate times.

I. The Widow of Nain’s Son Luke 7:11-17

II. Jairus’s Daughter            recorded three times in three of the gospels.                                  Matthew 9:18-26                        Mark 5:21-43                                Luke 8:40-56

III. Lazarus of Bethany             John 11:1-44

Secondly the dead would hear his voice and rise immediately   after his last words on the cross. 

Matthew 27:50-53                        And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit.Then, behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth quaked, and the rocks were split, and the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; and coming out of the graves after His resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many.

These were the old testament saints who had heard the voice of Jesus as he preached the gospel on earth and believed that he was the Son of God who came to redeem them of their sins.      They were instantly renewed to life at his death, but waited for three days for his resurrection and return before they went into the city and revealed themselves to the people as a sign that he was the Messiah and had conquered death and sheol, fulfilling the prophecies.

Psalm 49:15 But God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave: for he shall receive me. Selah.

Matthew 12:40  “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth”.

1 Corinthians 15:4 that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,

Listen to Peter’s description of David’s prophecy in Psalm 16 about the Lord’s resurrection and conquering the grave.

Acts 2:25-36   For David says concerning Him: Therefore my heart rejoiced, and my tongue was glad; Moreover my flesh also will rest in hope. For You will not leave my soul in Hades, Nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption. You have made known to me the path of life; You will fill me with joy in Your presence.

“Men and brethren, let me speak freely to you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. Therefore, being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that of the fruit of his body, according to the flesh, He would raise up the Christ to sit on his throne, he, foreseeing this, spoke concerning the resurrection of the Christ, that His soul was not left in Hades, nor did His flesh see corruption. This Jesus God has raised up, of which we are all witnesses. Therefore being exalted to the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He poured out this which you now see and hear.

“For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he says himself: ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at My right hand, Till I make Your enemies Your footstool.” ’

“Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.”

Thirdly, there will be a final resurrection at the end of the age,in which all of the dead will once again hear his voice and rise from their graves.

Ezekiel 37:12-14  I will open your graves and bring you up from them, and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. Then you, My people, will know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. I will put My Spirit in you and you will live

Psalm 71:20 Though You have shown me many troubles and misfortunes, You will revive me once again. Even from the depths of the earth You will bring me back up.

Psalm 30:3 O LORD, You pulled me up from Sheol; You spared me from descending into the Pit.

Isaiah 26:19 Your dead will live; their bodies will rise. Awake and sing, you who dwell in the dust! For your dew is like the dew of the morning, and the earth will bring forth her dead.

1 Corinthians 15:52-54 in an instant, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must be clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. 

Daniel 12:2 And many who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake, some to everlasting life, but others to shame and everlasting contempt.

John 5:28-29 “Do not be amazed at this, for the hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear His voice and come out—those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.

The Fourfold Witness

His focus now shifts from declaring his divinity as the Son of God to now defeating their accusations of blasphemy. Jesus knows the Law of Moses better than the men who weaponized it. Deuteronomy 19:15 demands that no man can be validated on the testimony of a single witness; there must be two or three.

So Jesus calls Four Witnesses to the stand to prove His deity.

Witness 1: John the Baptist (The Lamp). “He was the burning and shining lamp, and you were willing for a time to rejoice in his light.” The zeal and spirit of John brought people from all around to hear the word of the LORD that had been silent for 400 years. He declared himself that he was not the Messiah but pointed to and confessed Jesus as being “The One who comes from above is above all”. John 3:31

Witness 2: The Miracles (The Signature). “For the works which the Father has given Me to finish—the very works that I do—bear witness of Me…”   The miracles are not magic tricks; they are divine credentials. Only the Creator of the human body could rewire the severed nerves of a thirty eight year old paralytic with a single spoken sentence.

Witness 3: The Father (The Voice). “And the Father Himself, who sent Me, has testified of Me.” At the Jordan River, the Heavens tore open and the Voice declared, “This is My beloved Son.” The Father Himself confirmed the Son.

Witness 4: The Scriptures (The Written Word). “You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; These are the very words that testify about Me.”

“But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life.” (John 5:40)

The Idolatry of the Ink and the Ironic Prosecutor

What a terrifying paradox!            It is possible to love the Bible so much that you become blinded by it.  The enforcers of the law—the very people who were meant to prevent idol worship from ever happening again—had become the idol worshipers themselves. They transformed the Torah into their idol and worshiped the letters instead of the meaning behind them.

“but I know you, that you do not have the love of God within you. I have come in My Father’s name, and you have not received Me; but if someone else comes in his own name, you will receive him“. 

The Pharisees had built a system that appeared religious on the surface, but in reality its motives were social status and political influence. They were used to pride and ego being the motivating factors to rise in the ranks and obtain power and control. So when Jesus came preaching and healing in his father’s name and not seeking his own fame and glory, they couldn’t accept or understand him. But Jesus warns them that one day someone will come boasting in his own name, seeking his own glory instead of God’s, and him they will understand and listen to.  He is speaking of the beast, the antichrist who will come at the end of this age.

2 Thessalonians 2:3-4          “Let no one deceive you in any way, for it will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness—the son of destruction—is revealed. He will oppose and exalt himself above every so-called god or object of worship. So he will seat himself in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God.

Daniel 11:36-37 Then the king will do as he pleases and will exalt and magnify himself above every god, and he will speak monstrous things against the God of gods. He will be successful until the time of wrath is completed, for what has been decreed must be accomplished. He will show no regard for the gods of his fathers, nor for the one desired by women, nor for any other god, because he will magnify himself above them all.

Daniel 7:11  Then I kept watching because of the arrogant words the horn was speaking. As I continued to watch, the beast was slain, and its body was destroyed and thrown into the blazing fire.

And then, the ironic twist:              It is here that Jesus delivers the most devastating blow to the men who had memorized the Torah, who counted the very letters of the scroll, who wore the Scriptures in leather boxes on their foreheads to show their devotion, and were now attempting to use those same letters to destroy the creator of them. 

“Do not think that I shall accuse you to the Father; there is one who accuses you—Moses, in whom you trust. For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me.” (John 5:45-46)

The Pharisees brought Jesus to trial, claiming they were enforcing the law of Moses. But Jesus flips the courtroom. He declares, “I will not be your prosecuting attorney on Judgment Day. Your prosecutor will be the very man you claim to serve! Moses!”

Why? Because Moses wrote of the Seed of the Woman who would crush the serpent. Moses wrote of the Passover Lamb whose blood stops the wrath of God. Moses wrote of the Bronze Serpent lifted up on a pole to save the dying people from their sin.

The Jewish leaders built a temple and rules around Moses thinking that obeying the law would save their souls, but when the very substance of the Torah stood in front of them, in the flesh, instead of coming to him to find eternal life, they plotted to kill Him.    

The Court is adjourned.               The evidence presented.            The verdict, the Pharisees are willfully blind.