Three Reasons We Miss the Messianic
Now that day was the Sabbath. So the Jews said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to take up your bed.” But he answered them, “The man who healed me, that man said to me, ‘Take up your bed, and walk.’” They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take up your bed and walk’?” Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, as there was a crowd in the place. Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you.” The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him. And this was why the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. But Jesus answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.”
This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God. John 5:9-17
Matthew Sink writes on this passage, "The Jewish leaders missed a miracle because it failed to follow their expectations."
Thinking over this just indictment, I consider that we as Christians may follow more at the heirs to the Jewish leaders than the One they overlooked and despised. There are at least three reasons.
(1) We figure He will refresh the fountainhead first. An earnest desire to see the culture renewed and more distinct was in the Pharisees' DNA. That's why they emerged in the heyday of Alexander the Great because they were concerned that God's Covenant people were becoming too Greek in their daily lives in order to fit in. Some of this, no doubt, filtered down to the expectations of the Pharisees Jesus face as He walked the Earth. With so much wrong in the dominant pagan culture, surely any Messiah worth His anointing would transform cultures through their capitals, not piddle with transformation one pair of eyes at a time.
(2) We want more time as the warm-up act. Perhaps this is the underside of why the Pharisees guarded the Sabbath so carefully. This was a day when she took the subtle cues from the shepherds, when those who didn't have time or education to study the finer points of the growing protections around the Law depended on these leaders to tell them what was right. Upset the notion of what was proper on the Sabbath, and these leaders, the warm-up act to the Messiah, lost the spotlight and pivotal influence. Positioned as Christians as the forerunner to His showing up and showing off at any moment, and to His second coming, we can develop a similar defensiveness about being upstaged.
(3) We don't want to learn from him, or from them. Not only would the Jewish leaders challenged to yield their position as instructors and influencers, they were challenged to learn from The Formerly Blind Guy. They inherited years of careful tradition. He, until a few minutes before, would have been almost entirely dependent on others to interpret the outside world for him, and would have been seen as an outsider under something of a curse because of his disability. Yet, his very progress toward wholeness, and his boldness in it, is a challenge to them. Would they be willing to receive? Will we as Christians when, as always, our comparative progress is uneven and Christ would use someone else in the flock to instruct us?
This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God. John 5:9-17
Matthew Sink writes on this passage, "The Jewish leaders missed a miracle because it failed to follow their expectations."
Thinking over this just indictment, I consider that we as Christians may follow more at the heirs to the Jewish leaders than the One they overlooked and despised. There are at least three reasons.
(1) We figure He will refresh the fountainhead first. An earnest desire to see the culture renewed and more distinct was in the Pharisees' DNA. That's why they emerged in the heyday of Alexander the Great because they were concerned that God's Covenant people were becoming too Greek in their daily lives in order to fit in. Some of this, no doubt, filtered down to the expectations of the Pharisees Jesus face as He walked the Earth. With so much wrong in the dominant pagan culture, surely any Messiah worth His anointing would transform cultures through their capitals, not piddle with transformation one pair of eyes at a time.
(2) We want more time as the warm-up act. Perhaps this is the underside of why the Pharisees guarded the Sabbath so carefully. This was a day when she took the subtle cues from the shepherds, when those who didn't have time or education to study the finer points of the growing protections around the Law depended on these leaders to tell them what was right. Upset the notion of what was proper on the Sabbath, and these leaders, the warm-up act to the Messiah, lost the spotlight and pivotal influence. Positioned as Christians as the forerunner to His showing up and showing off at any moment, and to His second coming, we can develop a similar defensiveness about being upstaged.
(3) We don't want to learn from him, or from them. Not only would the Jewish leaders challenged to yield their position as instructors and influencers, they were challenged to learn from The Formerly Blind Guy. They inherited years of careful tradition. He, until a few minutes before, would have been almost entirely dependent on others to interpret the outside world for him, and would have been seen as an outsider under something of a curse because of his disability. Yet, his very progress toward wholeness, and his boldness in it, is a challenge to them. Would they be willing to receive? Will we as Christians when, as always, our comparative progress is uneven and Christ would use someone else in the flock to instruct us?
Good word, brother
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