The Lord announces that Babylon is under judgment. He judged His people and punished them for
their apostasy and used the Babylonians as a part of His judgment but they
themselves are to be judged and brought down to nothing. They were an advanced civilization that was
the wonder of the world and they believed that such would be the case in
perpetuity, similar to what Adolf Hitler believed about the Germanic Third
Reich. Could we, in America, be guilty
of a similar way of thinking? It seems
there is always a spiritual degeneracy as civilizations advance. There is a sense that materialism isn't the
answer, that there is something more but the search for that something more is
a journey of self-fulfillment. The Lord
says that if He has judged His own people, will not the judgment of these
people who are not His people, be all the more severe.
The man whom Jesus heals here leaves me wondering why in the
world Jesus bothered with him. He
doesn't simply answer Jesus' question about being healed, he makes his excuse
for why he hasn't been healed, no one is there to help him into the water when
it is "troubled." He does,
however, obey Jesus' command to take up his bed and walk. He can't get up to get into the pool but he
is suddenly willing and able to get up and carry his "bed", whatever
that may consist of, perhaps a mat of some sort. Obedience to Jesus' command is seen as
breaking Sabbath. The man is, therefore,
questioned by the authorities concerning this breach and he points to Jesus as
the man who healed him but also the one who commanded him to do this thing, his
way of absolving himself for the infraction.
When Jesus speaks to him he tells him to go and sin no more that nothing
worse may happen to him and the man's reaction is to inform the leaders that it
was Jesus who had healed him. Two
questions arise: why did Jesus say that nothing worse may happen and why did
the man go to the leaders with Jesus' name?
Did he sin by doing so? I would
love to know the rest of the story concerning this man. The best way to read this story is in
contrast to the story in John 9, the man born blind, and compare their
reactions.
Sometimes it is helpful to break things down into simple
terms. The writer begins by telling what
Jesus has done for us, He opened for us a new and living way in His flesh
through His blood to enter the holy places.
That is an allusion to the temple where the priest had to take blood
into the sanctuary, the holy place, in order to make expiation for sin. We now need not enter such places with
trepidation but with confidence, knowing the sacrifice of Jesus was acceptable
to God. Since He has done this and now
is our great high priest, the writer calls on us to act. Let us: draw near with a true heart in full
assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and
our bodies washed with pure water, hold fast the confession of our hope without
wavering, and consider how to stir up one another to love and good works. We are called to action not passivity. We are not to be like the man at the pool, we
are to actively participate in our sanctification. Likewise, we are to remember the lesson of
God's judgments against His own people, we are to recall that He has
expectations of us and we are to walk in the light of our salvation and also of
God's ways.
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