170 years ago, a 20 year old preacher in London England named Charles began a sermon on the unchanging nature of God this way:
It has been said by someone that the proper study of humankind is to study humans. I do not oppose the idea, but it is equally true that the proper study of humanity is God.
The highest science, the loftiest speculation, the mightiest philosophy, which can ever engage the attention of a child of God, is the name, the nature, the person, the work, the doings, and the existence of the great God whom he calls his Father.
There is something exceedingly improving to the mind in a contemplation of the Divinity. It is a subject so vast, that all our thoughts are lost in its immensity; so deep, that our pride is drowned in its infinity.
Other subjects we can compass and grapple with; in them we feel a kind of self-content, and go our way with the thought, “Behold I am wise.”
But no subject of contemplation will tend more to humble the mind, than thoughts of God.
And while the subject humbles the mind it also expands it. He who often thinks of God, will have a larger mind than the man who simply plods around this narrow globe.
The most excellent study for expanding the soul, is the study of Christ, and him crucified, and the knowledge of the Godhead in the glorious Trinity.
Nothing will so enlarge the intellect, nothing so magnify the whole soul of a person, as a devout, earnest, continued investigation of the great subject of the Deity.
And, while humbling and expanding, this subject is eminently comforting. I know nothing which can so comfort the soul; so calm the swelling billows of grief and sorrow; so speak peace to the winds of trial, as a devout musing upon the subject of the Godhead.
It is to that subject that I invite you this morning.1
John’s objective in the stories he recorded throughout his Gospel is to help his readers understand the true nature of Jesus’ identity and mission.
By telling the story in chapter 5 of a man healed after 38 years of illness, John is showing that new creation is breaking into the old. A sick world is being healed.
And it is Jesus, the author of life, who is bringing this transformation.
And yet the chapter ends with a haunting irony: the religious leaders who search the scriptures looking for eternal life refuse to come to the one to whom those scriptures point.
Life, John insists, is not found in the Scriptures themselves, but in the person to whom they testify.
When John 1 says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” he is not referring to words on a page but to the Son of God, Jesus of Nazareth, the Author of Life.
And when the Author of Life steps into the story, no one can remain neutral. The encounter forces a response. And the response people give reveals who they truly are.
This morning we are going to follow the argument of John 5 through three movements, each of which deepens our understanding of who Jesus is and what he is offering.
We will look at the identity, the authority, and the testimony of the Author of Life.
As we work our way through these movements, we will bring our attention to a tangible practice of entering into this life, which is the practice of Sabbath-keeping.
Most Canadian Christians today have lost a positive or helpful vision of the Sabbath. What remains is largely a memory of prohibition, a list of things you weren’t allowed to do on Sunday.
As we consider our text today, I want to suggest that we recover the Sabbath as an affirmative declaration of faith and identity rather than a set of restrictions.
The reason this recovery is so urgent is that we live inside an economic system that is structurally hostile to rest.
Our consumer-driven economy depends on generating endless needs and desires, leaving people perpetually restless, inadequate, and unfulfilled.
It is all about relentless achieving, accomplishing, performing, and possessing, a 24/7 culture filled with anxiety.
The Sabbath is our direct counter-claim to that system. It is simultaneously an act of resistance and an alternative to the empire of more.
It resists by insisting that human life is not given its value or purpose through productivity and consumption. Sabbath offers an alternative by relocating us on the receiving end of the gifts of God rather than initiating.
Where the consumer-driven system produces restless anxiety, the Sabbath cultivates a settled spirit.
This is the recognition that the earth and our lives within it are gifts offered to us by God in sacred trust, not commodities to be seized and controlled.
This is what the Author of Life invites us to participate in, to receive, and to share with a sick and dying world.
Let’s enter into this story now by looking at the identity of the Author of Life. I’ll start reading at 5:1 and I’ll pause every so often to make some comments.
The Identity of the Author of Life (5:1-18)
John 5:1–2 “Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades.”
Note: the ending of verse 3 and all of verse 4 is missing from most modern translations.
“Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed—and they waited for the moving of the waters. From time to time an angel of the Lord would come down and stir up the waters. The first one into the pool after each such disturbance would be cured of whatever disease they had.”
John 5:5–6 “One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, ‘Do you want to get well?’”
A quick lesson on Bible translation. If you were to read this passage in the King James or New King James, you would find the missing verses included in the text.
This sort of thing can cause people to wonder if newer translations are less faithful to the original.
The difference between the older and newer translations comes down to which ancient manuscripts translators used as their foundation.
The King James Version (1611) was based on what scholars call the “Received Text” — a Greek text compiled largely from medieval manuscripts, none older than the 9th century.
These later manuscripts included the description of the angel stirring the pool at Bethesda in John 5:3-4.
However, centuries of manuscript discoveries have given scholars access to much older witnesses to the New Testament text.
When modern translators examined these earlier manuscripts, John 5:3-4 was either absent entirely or marked with symbols indicating scribes themselves doubted it belonged there.
Modern translations like the NIV and NRSV, working from these older and therefore more reliable manuscripts, either omit the verses or place them in footnotes.
Regardless of whether this portion of John 5 was in the original, keeping the missing portion in the footnotes is helpful, because it gives context to verse seven: John 5:7 “‘Sir,’ the invalid replied, ‘I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.’”
It is likely that this was the belief among the people, that an angel actually did stir up the waters and that people would be healed if they went in immediately after it was stirred up.
The scribes who copied the originals perhaps added that bit of context to explain why the sick man said what he did.
As far as he was concerned, his only hope for healing was for someone to carry him in right after it was stirred up. That is, until Jesus came along.
John 5:8–9 “Then Jesus said to him, ‘Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.’ At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.”
His instruction to the man was to raise himself up from the ground. This word is very common in the Gospels. Most of the time it occurs within the context of being raised from the dead.
By the time Jesus finished saying the words, the man was cured. He picked up his mat and walked, just as he was told to do.
Now, we come to the theological purpose of this story, which is the authority of Jesus to do what is unlawful on the Sabbath.
John 5:9–13 The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, and so the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.” But he replied, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’ ” So they asked him, “Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?” The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.
The Jewish laws had strict limitations on what someone could do on the Sabbath. One of the limitations was that people were not allowed to carry certain things, such as person’s sleeping mat.
Their accusation was not initially against Jesus, as he had already left the scene. It was against the man who was healed.
But now, the Jewish leaders having been told that the man was commanded to carry his mat by someone who probably appeared to be a person of authority, would have been more interested in this unknown man than the one who was healed.
John 5:14–15 “Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.” The man went away and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had made him well.”
Jesus could have left it at that and avoided all the drama that follows, but he went back to talk to the man he healed. In doing so, the man was able to identify Jesus and told the Jewish leaders who he was.
What Jesus said to the man is interesting and it brings up an important aspect of his authority and the connection between sin and sickness, forgiveness and healing. But, it will have to be addressed in another message for the sake of time.
As we come to verses 16-18 we see now a central feature of Jesus’ identity in the Gospel of John.
John 5:16–18 “So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him. In his defense Jesus said to them, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.” For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.”
Jesus makes the claim here that he has equal authority to work on the Sabbath as God does.
Mark records a similar statement in his Gospel: Mark 2:28 “the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”
The fact that Jesus identifies himself with God as the reason why he could heal someone and also command the man to do what the law forbade him to do on the Sabbath, tells us that Jesus, the Son of man, is ruler over even the divinely instituted Sabbath.
The way that Jesus behaved on the Sabbath has long been referenced as a reason Christians do not need to observe the Sabbath.
But he is not dismissing the Sabbath. He is offering a deeper interpretation of it.
The purpose of the Sabbath is to pay attention to God’s divine order. To stop the striving and simply receive.
As Jesus stands there thinking about healing a man, about sharing the goodness of God with another person.
The one who embodies the Father’s active, life-giving rest is the one who observes the Sabbath. It’s not about what you’re allowed to do. It’s an invitation to receive in a world that is so constantly demanding of our attention, energy, and resources.
Next, we come to perhaps the clearest statement of the authority of Jesus that we see in John’s Gospel.
The Authority of the Author of Life (5:19-29)
Read John 5:19-29
The authority Jesus claims to have is that of divine nature. He has authority to raise the dead and give life to whom he is pleased to give it. And, all judgment has been give to Jesus by the Father.
This idea was new to Jews. They held the view that the Father was the Judge of all people, and they expected to stand before him at the last day.
Jesus says that the Father has handed over all judgment to the Son, so that people will honour the Son just as they honour the Father.
Those who fail to honour him fail to honour the Father who sent him. This is about the unity of the Father and the Son. What is done to one is done also to the other.
Then he continues to claim that everyone who truly believes the Father will accept Christ. It is not possible to believe what the Father says and to turn away from the Son.
Finally, Jesus claims that the time will come when the dead will rise because they have heard his voice. Then, he will judge everyone justly according to the will of God.
All of this is said in response to the Jewish leaders who were accusing Jesus of breaking the Sabbath and making himself equal with God.
But, his healing of the man by the pool was only a small taste of his authority. It is the authority to grant life wherever there is death. Not only in his lifetime, but for all time.
Look at verse 24 again. “whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life.”
Eternal life is not a future reward to be earned but a present reality to be received. The one who hears Jesus’ word and believes has already crossed over from death to life.
This is what is demonstrated when we are baptized. It is acknowledging and identifying with the death and resurrection of Jesus. It is us saying, “I want the life Jesus offers.”
Bringing our attention back to the Sabbath… at its deepest level, observing the Sabbath is the practice of positioning yourself on the receiving end of these gifts from God rather than the achieving end of human striving.
When we observe the Sabbath, we are enacting the kingdom reality of peace and rest.
The Testimony to the Author of Life (5:30-47)
Finally, and briefly, we come to the testimony which confirms the identity of Jesus as the author of life.
He identifies four witnesses in verses 33-40: John the Baptist, the works he has done, the Father, and the Scriptures.
John’s witness was to the truth about Jesus. And if they would have listened to that witness, they would have found themselves on the path that leads to salvation.
The witness of Jesus’ works were no ordinary acts of obedience to the law. They were extraordinary. They were works that showed he was sent by the Father.
The Father himself is a witness. But, they were not convinced by this witness because they never even knew the Father.
The Scriptures also bear witness to Jesus. He’s referring of course to the Jewish Scriptures, those which contained many promises that pointed to the Messiah.
But, rather than looking to the Scriptures to know the Messiah, they have turned the Scriptures into their salvation. Specifically, they have turned their obedience to their interpretation of the Scriptures into their salvation.
This continues to be a problem today among those who have turned the Bible into the object of their worship.
The Scriptures are given to testify about Jesus, not because in them we will have eternal life. Eternal life is available to those who go to Jesus. Those who stop all the trying and striving and just receive.
In an ancient text for Jewish believers, the Sabbath is described as “the lived enactment of the messianic age,” when we may enjoy a foretaste of the coming “world of peace in which striving and conflict are (temporarily) at an end, and all creation sings a song of being to its Creator.2
Conclusion
To close, I want to point us back to a story I skipped over at the end of chapter 4.
Read John 4:46-50.
I only want to say one thing about this story. It is this short dialogue between Jesus and the royal official.
He wanted Jesus to do a miracle, to heal his son. Jesus made an accusation, not just to the man asking for his son’s healing. It is a plural “you.” You all. He was speaking to the crowd.
But, unlike everyone else, the royal official was unconcerned about proof of Jesus’ claims to be the Messiah. He only wanted his son to be healed.
Here’s the point of the whole message. It is about how we must come to Jesus, the author of life.
I am increasingly convinced that, unless we practice the Sabbath, we will be quite unfamiliar with this vital posture.
The royal official, despite being very early in his faith, came to Jesus with nothing more than to recognize his own need for help.
And this was enough for Jesus to grant his request. Jesus said, “Go, your son will live.” The man took Jesus at his word and departed.
This is faith. This is how we approach the author of life. Knowing our need for help and trusting that Jesus is the only one who can give the help we need.
Let’s pray a prayer written by Augustine, who was a bishop in northern Africa over 1600 years ago.
O Lord God,
grant your peace to me,
for you have supplied me with all things —
the peace of rest,
the peace of the Sabbath
which has no evening;
through Jesus Christ my Lord. Amen.
- C.H. Spurgeon, New Park Street Chapel, Southwark, Jan. 7, 1855 ↩︎
- From Lectio 365 https://lectio365.24-7prayer.com/share/devotionals/2026-02-22/morning ↩︎
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