uʍop-ǝpᴉsd∩- with Faithless Believers

Here is a link to last week’s series, uʍop-ǝpᴉsd∩

“Most certainly I tell you, he who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and doesn’t come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.

John 5:24 (WEB)

John Chapter 5 is our next passage where we will examine the upside-down attitudes of religious people—those who are supposed to have faith.

Last week, John used believe six times, bringing our total to twenty occurrences since we began studying this beloved Gospel.

What is a faithless believer? For one thing, it is an oxymoron of monumental proportions. And the implications are so serious. To be faithless is to be lost.

The Father himself, who sent me, has testified about me. You have neither heard his voice at any time, nor seen his form. You don’t have his word living in you, because you don’t believe him whom he sent.

John 5:37 & 38 (WEB)

Faithless believers often lead the Church today. But that makes no sense, does it? Don’t preachers of the Gospel know Jesus?

Not all of them.

They will be held accountable by God for mishandling the Word. But remember, each person they teach is responsible for knowing the real truth, which God has made clear through His Word, the Holy Spirit and God’s creation.

Let’s take a look at this story. You will quickly understand how the religious leaders, who should have believed that Messiah had come, did not have faith to believe.

Jesus was in Jerusalem on a holy day when he met a man who had been unable to walk for thirty-eight years, waiting by the pool of Bethesda. An old, false legend said that once a year, an angel would stir the water, and the first person to enter would be healed.

John 5:1-5

A further irony is that the name, Bethesda, means “House of Mercy” in Aramaic. How is it merciful to perpetrate a fable of hope in the minds of desperate people? Yet that is how this legend began, and many similar false promises prevail today.

Giving His full attention to the man, Jesus asked, “Do you want to be made well?”

John 5:6 (WEB)

“I have no one to put me in the pool…” Jesus told him,  Jesus said to him, “Arise, take up your mat, and walk.”  Immediately, the man was made well and took up his mat and walked.

John 5:7-9 (WEB)

And here is where the inane* religious leaders turn faith upside down.

But this miracle happened on the Sabbath, So the Jews said to him who was cured, “It is the Sabbath. It is not lawful for you to carry the mat.”

John 5:9 & 10 (WEB)

That was the deep, dark blindness of the Pharisees. A man who needed practical help and a Spiritual solution would never find either with those legalists.

““Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take up your mat and walk’?”

John 5:12 (WEB)

But he who was healed didn’t know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, a crowd being in the place.

John 5:13 (WEB)

Look what they missed. The miracle was in their sight. How could they not see? The promised Messiah was in their midst.

Healing from Jesus never ended with just practical help. Jesus came to exchange the death sentence of sinful hearts for eternal life.

That’s why later, when Jesus found the man at the Temple in an unknown sin, Jesus addressed his spiritual failure.

Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “Behold, you are made well. Sin no more, so that nothing worse happens to you.”

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

John 5:13-15 (WEB)

Then, only as self-righteous human beings can, these zealous hypocrites stumbled over the Savior, harassed Him, and in their rejection of God and of His Son, they condemned themselves.

For this cause the Jews persecuted Jesus and sought to kill him, because he did these things on the Sabbath. But Jesus answered them, “My Father is still working, so I am working, too.” For this cause therefore the Jews sought all the more to kill him, because he not only broke the Sabbath, but also called God his own Father, making himself equal with God.

John 5:16-18 (WEB)

Do you see how upside down and faithless these religious people were? Look at what Jesus said.

“You search the Scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and these are they which testify about me. Yet you will not come to me, that you may have life.”

John 5:39 & 40 (WEB)

If you read the entire chapter, then you probably found each time the word believe was used. John used the word believe in the verses referenced below.

5:24, 5:38, 5:44, 5:46 (2 x’s), 5:47 (2 x’s) – Today, the word believe is used 7 times. John has used believe twenty-seven times in five chapters.

*Inane—one of the definitions of this word means empty or void. That is a great way to describe the religious leaders and their man-made rules.

World English Bible (WEB)

by Public Domain. The name “World English Bible” is trademarked.