Part 11 – John 5:24-47

What we have seen and focused on in the previous chapters is Jesus. We saw John always pointing Jesus out to those around him, Mary pointing Jesus out as the answer to no wine, Nicodemus’s enquiring spirit that was searching for truth, the Samaritan woman who was so excited when she met Jesus that she told all around her to “come see a man who told me everything I ever did”, to the man here in John 5 whose encounter with Jesus gave him legs.

Here in John 5:24-47 we now find Jesus in the spotlight, Jesus declaring that he is in fact God in man. Well this really angered the religious leaders so much that they wanted to kill him. The question we have to ask here is, what do I do with Jesus? Do I want to continue in my ignorance and let him just carry on teaching people and hope it doesn’t get out of hand or do I want to embrace and enjoy what he is doing, that of changing lives?

This is the great question and challenge that Jesus lays down here in John 5 to the religious leaders of the day who were so wrapped up in a ‘religion’ that had paralysed their spiritual senses and understanding so much so that they saw Jesus as a threat and failed to see and accept him as the one sent from God that they had read and taught about.

Jesus sums the situation up with the following words in John 5:38-40 (NKJV) “But you do not have his word abiding in you, because whom He sent, Him you do not believe. You search the scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life: and these are they which testify of me. But you are not willing to come to me that you may have life.”

So before we move on with our study in John let us just pause for a moment and consider this man Jesus, this man who came into our sinful world with the sole aim of changing lives. What are we going to do with him? Are we going to embrace him and all his radical teachings and believe by faith that he is the answer and point him out in the crowd or are we going to be like the religious leaders of the day and intellectually and physically reject him to the point that we condemn him to death in our lives as not relevant and thereby separate ourselves from all that God has for us as individuals and as communities?

// Required code