SharinginKingdomLife

Do we approach God with a negative attitude, thinking about the things we cannot do, or do we come to Him with a positive attitude, thinking about all that we can do? The Gospel of John 5: 9-18 shows the contrast between these two approaches to God. It shows the openness of the man suffering for 38 years, who was a paralytic, but was open to be healed. The man never asked Jesus for healing. Jesus took the initiative and asked him if he wanted to get well. Jesus told the man to rise, pick up his bed and walk. The man responded and was healed. Do we respond to Jesus when He wants to heal us? Or do we allow doubt, wavering and a wrong attitude to settle in? Even wrong beliefs can rob us of healing. This healing with the paralytic was different from other healings because it took place on the Sabbath. And boy did this cause a ruckus between the self righteous religious priests of that day. Jesus did it on purpose to cause a deliberate discussion on a very hot issue. In this Scripture we see where the battle lines are drawn between Jesus and the religious authorities. It raises questions about religious and legalistic attitudes, the connection between sin and sickness, and the Sabbath.

John 5:9-13} Instantly the became well and recovered his strength and picked up his bed and walked. But that happened on the Sabbath. So the Jews kept saying tot he man who had been healed, It is the Sabbath and you have no right to pick up your bed ( it is not lawful). He answered them, The Man Who healed me and gave me back my strength, He Himself said to me, Pick up your bed and walk! They answered him, Who is the Man Who told you, Pick up your bed and walk? Now the invalid who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had quietly gone away (had passed on unnoticed), since there was a crowd in the place.

This was a very serious issues for the Jews, keeping the Sabbath holy is one of the Ten Commandments. It was most important to protect Israel from paganism. Martyrs had shed their blood over Sabbath observance. In that time they had a ban on carrying things from one domain to another, except for acts of compassion like carrying a paralytic. The paralytic could have been carried into the water, the problem was that, following healing, he was carrying his bed. So to their eyes, the paralytic had violated the Sabbath by carrying his bed. The Jews launched an investigation. It wasn't Jesus who was charged at first, but the man who was healed. Jesus slipped away. Why did He do that? Because He was not seeking glory for Himself. It's interesting that the religious authorities concerned themselves more with the Sabbath laws, the right order of things, but not the miraculous healing. They expressed no joy, no awe, no amazement, no praise for God. The Pharisees were not bad people, their focus was on the negative. More on the laws than on the mercy, compassion and love of God. The outside looked beautiful and holy but the inside was dirty because of their lack of love and compassion.

Too often, we as Christians, have the same mindset as the Pharisees. We think that as Christians our main task is to get rid of or eliminate everything bad, rather than giving out what is good. We join the ranks of church "police" pointing out faults and failures with the result that the church becomes a place of containment for self-righteous hypocrites. There is no excitement about what God is doing, no sharing about healing that is taking place, and most times we are so set on our agendas and programs, our rituals and doctrines, that we totally shut out the move of the Holy Spirit. The atmosphere becomes one of discouragement rather than encouragement. It becomes an atmosphere of condemnation rather than conviction and healing. We take God off the throne and put ourselves on it! Who do we think we are? The only things we hear from the pulpits are the things we are doing wrong. The church is in trouble when religion is more important than the work of the Holy Spirit.

Often times I have gone to another church for a wedding, funeral or other things. The first words out of their mouth when came time for communion was that if you are not practicing their religion you cannot receive communion. Who are they to stop a child of God from receiving the blood and body of Christ? Since when does maintaining a man made church rule overtake the desire to have an intimate relationship with Christ! Believe me when I say this is Pharisee beliefs in operation and they will be accountable before Almighty God one day for putting a stumbling block before one of God's children.

Some sin does cause sickness, but it is not always the cause of sin that causes sickness. There are other reasons. God is very concerned about sin and if we have noticed whenever He healed someone due to sin, He always told them to go and sin no more. Why? Because if they continued in their sinful lifestyles worse things could happen. The first thing God does is offer grace to us, then He tells us to stop sinning. He heals us, and then we get the trash out of our lives, we don't hang on to it and stay in it. We tend to do things the other way around sometimes. We need to clean up our lives, then we can be healed. We need to say: Have your way Lord. If anything needs to be removed, remove it! If anything needs to be shaken, shake it!

We also need to look at Job. Job was a righteous man in God's eyes. Yet God allowed Him to be tested by Satan. Why? Because God knew Job intimately and He knew Job knew His God intimately. Job stayed faithful and had a right heart before God. He continued to praise God and give Him glory through the worst of it. Would we do that? Many times God allows sickness to come into our lives as a testing to see what we are really made up of. To test our character. And other times it is to glorify His Father. Because God never lets anything go to waste. And if we keep a right heart and attitude towards God then He will perfect that which pertains to us. He did that with Job. It wasn't because of sin that Job got sick and was tested. Quite the opposite, He was righteous and he was a threat to Satan and Satan wanted to take him down. But God didn't allow that. Because of Job's obedience, faithfulness and a right heart and attitude towards His God, the Lord blessed Him with more than he had to begin with.

What is our view of God? Do we see Him as a harsh task master? Is He a policeman or the source of abundant life? Is He a stingy ogre or does He pour out grace upon grace in our lives? Are we limited in asking Him for things or does He desire to bless us over and abundantly above all we can hope or ask for? The way we see God will determine how we live as a Christian. We need to be very careful not to get in the way of what the Holy Spirit wants to do in us and through us. The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. In other words, religion kills, the Holy Spirit gives us life and that more abundantly.

Jesus let us know in His Word that there is a connection between sin and sickness sometimes, between healing and moral reform. How are we to understand the connection between sin and sickness then? All sickness and bodily decay are the result of sin entering into the world, they are the consequences of a fallen humanity. Sin entered the world and death entered through sin. Eventually our bodies will return to dust. But not all sickness is a direct result of sin. Christians who hold this view cause a lot of damage and needless pain. The cause God's children to question themselves and to put on condemnation many times. This notion that sin causes sickness was a common idea in Jesus' day. In Chapter 9, when Jesus and his disciples encounter a man blind from birth, His disciples ask, "Rabbi, who sinned. This man or his parents, that he would be born blind?" (John 9:2) Job's three friends believed that Job was cursed because of sin in his life. How quick are we to make such assumptions when someone we know becomes very ill? Too often we have the same perspective as Job's friends. How wrong they were! How wrong we can be! If someone is sick or having a hard time, some say it must be the result of sin. And most times we become judgmental, critical and end up rejected that very person who needs our help and prayers. When we pour out our love, the love of God within us, that creates a perfect atmosphere for healing.

This connection between sin and sickness just does not hold up. Many people suffer independent of their sin. As we saw in Chapter 9 sin does not contribute to a certain man's blindness. Elsewhere in God's Word we find that suffering unjustly and enduring hardship find favor with God and identify us with the wounds of Jesus. If we are totally laid down and serious for God we are a threat to Satan and we will face trials, tribulations and sufferings.

Some sickness is the direct result of sin. We face the consequences of our own foolish choices and become afflicted in some way. We take illegal drugs and become sick, and could even face death. We engage in immorality and contract aids. We get involved in witchcraft, sorcery and we can develop mental illness. We are the ones who open a door to sickness and oppression. Sometimes God's people suffer because of sin within the camp. Many churches today are walking in some form of sin or idolatry and don't even recognize it. Our sin can have devastating results on other people in our lives. If we refuse to repent of our sins and change our ways, we can bank on something worse taking place in the future. And if we partake of sin going on in our churches then we are just as guilty as those who began the wrong practices, teachings, or anything else going on that does not line up with the Word of God. Be careful what you eat or take in, you are what you eat!

There is a definite connection between healing and forgiveness. Many physical symptoms are the result of a hard heart, resentment, bitterness, or an unwillingness to repent or to forgive. Also emotions can have a terrible outcome in our bodies if we do not deal with them correctly. That's why it's not good to stuff things down but to get them out. Emotions are alive and have the power to devastate the human body. That could be what Jesus meant when he told the paralyzed man to go and sin no more.....He mean that if he doesn't accept or offer forgiveness, something worse could come upon him. Sin may cause some sicknesses, but underneath the sin is the need to be forgiven and to forgive. This is why Jesus instructs us in His Word to address the issue of sin and forgiveness when we anoint the sick with oil and pray for them.

So the bottom line is we have to be very careful when it domes to the issue of connecting sin and sickness. There is no checklist that will allow us to figure it out. We can't make generalizations based on theology or men's ideas. Since we are all sinners, we can never make arrogant pronouncements or judge people to be morally inferior. Only the mercy of God keeps us from suffering as a result of our sin. Our attitude should always be one of true humility and sorrow, we also need to know that sin destroys lives and relationships. We need to be led and guided by the Holy Spirit when dealing with the sick and the sinners.

When the paralyzed man pointed to Jesus as the one who had healed him, the Jews stepped up the intensity of their pursuit of Jesus. Breaking Sabbath, to them, was a serious offense. Even more serious was telling someone to break Sabbath. Jesus defended Himself by talking about His Father. The Jews responded by accusing Jesus of claiming equality with God, and in doing this attacked the core truth and views of the Scriptures. Jesus was trying to show them that God works on the Sabbath. He holds the Universe together. He gives life and judges on the Sabbath. People are born and people die. God doesn't break the Sabbath because the entire universe is His domain. God never carries anything outside of it and never lifts anything to a height greater than His own stature. Jesus claimed that He was doing the same work as His Father because the universe is His. The same factors that apply to God apply to Him.

On the seventh day, God rested. The Sabbath was the climax of creation. However, the seventh day has never come to an end. Even though creation is complete, redemption is still in process, and God continues to work. We enter Sabbath when we rest in Christ by the Spirit. When we enter into Jesus and His rest we are healed. Sabbath is a day to become well. It is the perfect day to be healed, the day of restoration and peace. Why do you think the devil tries so hard to keep us busy working even on the Sabbath? He desires to rob us of our well being, our rest, our restoration and our peace! God desires to perfect everything that concerns us, but we have to cooperate with that process.

It's good for us to take Sabbath, to cease from our work, our labors and to rest. But Sabbath is not just about avoiding labor, it is about entering into the work of the Father. We are not working, but God is working in us and through us. We were designed to live in Him and not to return to sin. Jesus tried to explain to the Pharisees and Saducees of that day just as He is explaining to us today that He fulfills the Sabbath, redefining Sabbath in Himself. He is the true Sabbath and he is demonstrating Sabbath by doing what His Father is doing. And when He does this, He upsets the whole religious and legalistic system.

In the wilderness, we can harden our hearts against God or we can proceed forward, keep a right and pure heart, and continue to grow and be transformed more and more into His image. When we are bound by law and man made religions and traditions, and when we think God is a policeman or a harsh task master, we are not living in the Sabbath even if we don't do any work. We develop a wrong attitude and a distorted view of who God is and most time we will become rebellious. We remain crippled when we do this. We are not living an eternal life. Our question should be the same that Jesus put to the sick: Do we want to be well? Another question we should be asking is: Are we resting in Jesus and joining the Father in the work of redemption? We become well into the Sabbath rest that was fulfilled in Jesus.

When we accuse someone of being sick due to sin we cause them to suffer even more, we isolate them and reject them and end up putting them in prisons of our own making. Woe to those who put a stumbling block before God's children. We really need to pray before opening our mouths and forming self righteous opinions. We need to remember that each one of us is a gift from God. Whatever happens in our lives is by God's design and He has a purpose for each one of us. A purpose so grand and so high that we in our finite minds cannot even imagine what He will do for us in the future. So let's stop all the nonsense of judging, criticizing, offering self righteous opinions or pointing accusing fingers. Let's allow God to do His job. After all, it's not really our business as to what God is doing with one of His children. When we concern ourselves with our own walk with our Lord we will be less apt to focus on other people's walk and try to fix them. Believe me, we have enough stuff to fix in our own lives. Let go and let God!

Piczo