Traditions

 

John 5:10-15

Traditions

Tradition is a powerful thing. Recently me and my sister went to Norlina to visit my birth mom’s grave. Whenever we make that trip back east we always stop at this gas station in Oxford and my sister buys a couple of $1 lottery scratcher tickets. Our mom loved these. We remember going to South Boston to buy scratchers on Sunday afternoons. If we wont anything (which was never more than a $1 or $2) we would immediately turn it in for more scratchers! That’s a tradition we carry one knowing if mom was still with us she would get a big kick out of it. Yet, we aren’t always able to do it every time we go visit. Traditions are good and well but it shouldn’t be the end of the world when they are broken either. This is going to come into play in tonight’s message Traditions.

The Jews therefore said to him who was cured, “It is the Sabbath; it is not lawful for you to carry your bed.”

The law of Moses taught that the Sabbath must be different from other days. On it, neither people nor animals could work. The prophet Jeremiah had prohibited carrying burdens or working on the Sabbath (Jer 17). Over the years, the Jewish leaders had amassed thousands of rules and regulations concerning the Sabbath. By Jesus day they had 39 different classifications of work. According to them, carrying furniture and even providing medical treatment on the Sabbath were forbidden.

Sabbath regulations continue on to this very day. Per Chabad.org (A world renown jewish cultural learning website)

These are some basic activities from which we refrain on Shabbat:

• writing, erasing, and tearing; business transactions; driving or riding in cars or other vehicles;
• shopping; using the telephone; turning on or off anything which uses electricity, including lights, radios, television, computer, air-conditioners and alarm clocks; cooking, baking or kindling a fire; gardening and grass-mowing; doing laundry;

Jesus did not break the law. The violated the traditions of the Pharisees which had grown up around the law. If you want to upset someone don’t break the law, break one of their traditions. That’s actually why a lot of us have been mad about the whole stay at home orders. It’s messed up so many of our traditions!

Why is tradition such a powerful thing? It is because as human beings, we like to have patterns and order in our lives. The way things have always been done, whether in our family structure, our communities, or in our churches, we get used to a pattern from our childhood and associate it with comfort, safety, and other emotions which we consider pleasant.
To disrupt these "patterns" for the average human being is a devastating thing- as their mind tells them that something is not right. Change is the hardest thing in life to accept- whether it be the death of a loved one, a new job, a child leaving the nest, or whatever.

Some traditions are beautiful, and all right to observe. However, any tradition that takes us away from the truth of God, the will of God, or the word of God, is wrong. We must make the effort to remove it from our lives and to change our patterns of behavior, and also our patterns of thought. The Jewish leaders see tradition being violated, they don’t care about the miracle that just happened or the life that was just changed significantly for the better. They just care about the tradition.  What do we care about? Loving God and loving others? Or our traditions?

 

11He answered them, “He who made me well said to me, ‘Take up your bed and walk.’ ”

12Then they asked him, “Who is the Man who said to you, ‘Take up your bed and walk’?” 

 

The Jewish leaders didn’t want to know who healed the crippled man. They wanted to know who told him to carry a bed-mat on the Sabbath day. his probably seemed strange, and perhaps confusing to the healed man. “I was carried to the pool today and if I were not healed I would need to be carried home. That’s a lot more work than me carrying my little bed-mat. In healing me and sending me home, Jesus was saving work on the Sabbath, not making more work.” Drew mentioned in his excellent sermon this past Sunday that some of us are just looking for offense these days. That as Christians we shouldn’t be looking for offense but for opportunities to share the gospel. This man wanted to give testimony to God’s miraculous healing! Jewish leadership just wanted to find out who offended their traditions. In our interactions with people are we looking for offense or gospel opportunities?

 

13But the one who was healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, a multitude being in that place. 14Afterward Jesus found him in the temple, and said to him, “See, you have been made well. Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you.”

15The man departed and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well.

 

Many commentators believe that our Lord’s warning means that the man’s original affliction was somehow the result of his personal sin. Of course, Jesus Himself, in John’s gospel, tells us that illness is not always associated directly with one’s sinful choices (9:3). Thus, we would be wrong to believe that every sickness results from an individual’s sin. Yet, that does not mean that no sicknesses are caused by evil choices, for we know that some sinful behaviors can spread disease. In any case, whether the man’s lameness was due to personal sin or not, the imperative for him to stop sinning indicates that as good as it was to walk again, that healing would be ultimately insignificant if he continued to violate the law of God. If he were to continue in sin impenitently, he would suffer a fate far worse than paralysis, namely, eternal judgment in hell. The formerly lame man’s greatest need was to turn from his sin and to rest in Christ alone for salvation. That is our greatest need as well.

John’s gospel does not tell us if the man ever came to saving faith. But in this account, he certainly cannot be called a man of great piety. When the Jewish leaders accused him of breaking the Sabbath by carrying his mat, the man immediately shifted blame to Jesus (5:11, 15). Now, their accusation was ill founded. Generally speaking, the biblical Sabbath laws forbid doing what is part of one’s normal employment, with exceptions for those who perform life-critical duties, and the man certainly could not have had as his job the carrying of mats when he was lame. Yet though the authorities were wrong to accuse him of breaking the Sabbath, the man erred in trying to blame Jesus. As one commentator says, the healed man was no hero of the faith. And that brings Jesus’ charge for him to stop sinning into sharper relief. Having experienced physical healing, he still needed the spiritual healing that is evidenced by faith and repentance.

Our sovereign God may choose to intervene and bring about an unexpected physical healing. It is good and right to pray for Him to do so. Yet we must never forget that people need spiritual restoration far more than they need physical healing. As we minister to others inside and outside the church, let us not fail to call people to faith and repentance.