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Today we are studying John 5:18-23.
The context is Jesus coming to Jerusalem for one of the feasts, where they were to remember God who saved and redeemed Israel out of slavery about 1500 years before.
While Jesus was in Jerusalem, on one Sabbath, also a day when the Jews were to rest from their normal labors and take time to remember the Lord, he went to the Pools of Bethesda.
There, he found a lame man and healed him.
Because Jesus told the man to pick up his mat and walk, the man did.
But then the Jewish leaders were all over this man because he was breaking their rules for the Sabbath.
The man told them Jesus did it, and they went on the attack against Jesus for His healings on the Sabbath.
Jesus offered is defense for healing on the Sabbath, saying, “My Father is always at his work to the very day, and I too am working.”
They did not like it.
That is where we are picking up the story-line today.
Prayer
Equal with God
When Jesus said, “My Father is always at his work to the very day, and I too am working,” The Jews were offended.
They knew that Jesus was calling God His own Father.
How did they get that?
Obvious to them was the fact that Jesus was referring to God working on the Sabbath.
As we saw last week, God is always at work.
He is working for us to this very day!
I hope you took time to reflect on how God is working for you this week.
The Jews did not have a problem with God working.
They did not have a problem with calling God, “Our Father,” or “Our Father in Heaven”.
When alone and addressing God in prayer, they might, though not often, refer to Him saying, “My Father in Heaven.”
However, when talking with others, they would never refer to God as “My Father.”
This was just being way to familiar with God.
So, when Jesus said, “My Father,” and spoke of working on the Sabbath just like God the Father, they knew that Jesus was claiming to be equal with God.
This is one of the emphases that John has in his gospel.
He wants us to know that Jesus is God the Son.
And that is not less than God, that is equal with God.
Jesus truly is equal with God.
He is God.
Yet, he also referred to the Father here, and on other occasions, and he referred to the Spirit.
At this point in the gospel, John is focused on the Father and the Son.
The distinction of the Father and the Son in this passage shows that they are distinct persons.
Yet, the harmony in which they work speaks to the true unity of them being one God.
I see in this passage a great example of what we call the trinity.
Trinity is the term that we use to describe God as we see Him in the Bible.
God is completely different than we are.
He is beyond our comprehension, yet still wants to reveal himself to us.
God is certainly, One God.
That is represented by the centrality of God in this diagram.
There is only one God.
Yet from the very beginning, God revealed himself as One being, One God, that is a unity of three persons.
The ‘Us’ there is the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
They are distinct from one another.
So, the Father is not the Son nor the Holy Spirit.
The Son is not the Father, nor the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is not the Father, nor the Son.
Yet the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God.
Matthew 3:16-17, and Matthew 28:19 are great passages for seeing the three persons, and the complete union of the three in One God.
This verse shows us how the three are truly one, having one singular name or identity.
They are God.
Here we see God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit all present and working together at the baptism of Jesus.
This is, I believe, one of the best evidences against what is called modalism.
Modalism teaches that God sometimes manifests or reveals himself as God the Father, other times as God the Son, and yet other times as God the Holy Spirit.
That is what the author of the Shack portrays in his book.
What the scripture reveals is three persons working as One union, One God.
We often refer to the God as One God, subsisting as three persons who are coeternal and coequal who are of one essence, yet distinct.
When we refer to them as three persons, and speak of the work they do, or the roles they play as they work in complete unity often leaves us thinking of them as three individuals.
However, the passage today will help us see them not as three individuals, but as a completely unified, working union.
Let’s dig into it verse by verse.
The Son can do nothing by himself...
This verse shows the great unity of God.
The Father Son and Spirit all work together in perfect harmony.
But what does it mean that the Son can do nothing by himself?
Does that mean that Jesus is less than God?
Does that mean he cannot do anything unless God enables him to do it?
If that is the case, than Jesus would no longer be God.
To be less than God is to not be God.
This verse gets to what theologians call the Kenosis, or emptying.
When Jesus came to earth, he came as fully man.
Philippians 2 speaks of this.
Kenosis - emptying
This passage speaks of Jesus being fully God.
“Who being in very nature God.”
He is exactly the same as God.
Some interpret this verse to mean that He was less than God.
But the exact same wording is used in verse 7 that says he took the very nature of a servant.
So if you want to say he was less than God in verse 6, that would mean that verse 7 says he became less than a servant.
No, you cannot corrupt the text that way.
He is in nautre fully God.
And when he came to earth as a man, he took the very nature of a servant.
He was fully a servant.
Jesus is fully God, but what does verse 7 mean when it says, “he made himself nothing?”
That word in the original Greek text is κενόω (kenóō).
Theologians call this the Kenosis, or emptying, and have spilled much ink over what it means that Jesus emptied himself when he came to earth.
Did Jesus become less than God, and therefore need to have God show him everything so he knew what to do?
Is that what the passage today is saying?
No, when Jesus came he was still fully God.
He was still the creator who came into the world.
We saw this is John 1.
He was still God when he came to earth.
We see evidence of that in that he still knew all things even the hearts of men.
We saw that in John 2:25
He was still, somehow, omnipresent in that he saw Nathanael when he was not physically present with him.
John 1:48
He was still all that God is: Holy, Righteous, Just, Love, Merciful, Lord, King.
Yet in the passage today, John 5:19, it said that Jesus can do nothing by himself?
And in Philippians 2:7 it says he made himself nothing.
So what does it mean that He emptied Himself?
The Philippians passage itself tells us.
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