Grow Guide | Feb 6, 2022
I Am
John 5:1-18
Connecting Questions
Have you ever had a moment when you felt helpless?
List some times when doing the “wrong thing” might be the “right thing” to do.
Context
We continue our series, I AM, this week by looking at the story of Jesus healing a lame man on the Sabbath. Jesus is back in Jerusalem. The stories in Jerusalem, in the Gospel of John, highlight the blindness of the religious leaders. This week Jesus challenges the leader’s view of the Sabbath Law. The Law of Moses simply states that the Israelites were to set aside the seventh day as holy, so they might enjoy rest and worship God. The religious leaders of Jesus’s day had turned the Sabbath into an oppressive, legalistic system that fostered a “Sabbath-breaker police” mentality. Pay attention to this story and notice why Jesus thinks he has the authority to override the Sabbath Law.
Look at the Book
Read John 5:1-18.
Where does this story take place?
Why was the man laying by the pool?
Why did the man never get into the pool? How would you feel if you were that man?
If Jesus knew it was against the law to carry a mat on the Sabbath, why do you suppose he told the man to do it?
How did the religious leaders (that’s what John means by “Jews”) respond to the man who had been healed?
Why do you think Jesus told the man not to sin any more? (note: this doesn’t mean that his sickness was caused by sin. It probably means that Jesus didn’t want him to carry his mat any more that day, so the leaders would get off his back)
What big claim(s) does Jesus make in verse 17?
How did the leaders respond to Jesus in verse 18? Why?
Taking it Home
One way to interpret this story is that Jesus placed the wholeness of a human’s life as a higher priority than keeping a Sabbath Law. What examples of religious rules can you think of that might cause us to put rule-following over taking care of people?
Jesus claimed to be God’s son and doing God’s work. Theologians call this the incarnation: God come in the flesh. What difference does it make in our lives, and how we read scripture, if we think Jesus is God’s presence in human form?
According to this story, fill in the blank: Jesus is ___________?