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October 3, 2009

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Scripture readings are from the living Bible

We continue her study of the book of John and today will be reading John chapter 5

Afterwards Jesus returned to Jerusalem are one of the Jewish religious holidays. Inside the city, near the sheep gate, was Bethesda pool, with five covered platforms or porches surrounding it. Crowds of sick people — lame, blind, a with paralyzed limbs — lay on the platforms (waiting for a certain movement of the water, for an angel of the Lord came from time to time and disturb the water, and the first person to step down into it afterwards was healed).

One of the man lying there had been crippled for 38 years.

Jesus saw him and knew how long he had been ill, he asked him, “would you like to get well?”

“I can’t,” the man said, “for I have no one to help me into the pool at the movement of the water. While I am trying to get there, someone else always gets ahead of me.”

Jesus told him, “stand up, roll up your sleeping mat and go home!”

Instantly, the man was healed. He rolled up the mat and began walking.

But it was on the Sabbath when this miracle was done. So the Jewish leaders objected. They said to the man who was cured, “you can’t work on the Sabbath! It’s illegal to carry that sleeping mat!”

“The man who healed me told me to,” was his reply.

“Who said such a thing is that? Those quotes they demanded

The man didn’t know, and Jesus had disappeared into the crowd.

But afterwards Jesus found him in the Temple and told him, “now you are well; don’t sin as you did before, or something even worse may happen to you.”

Then the man went to find the Jewish leaders and told them it was Jesus who healed him.

So they began harassing Jesus as a Sabbath-breaker. But Jesus replied, “my father constantly does good, and I am following his example.”

Then the Jewish leaders were all the more eager to kill him, because in addition to disobeying their Sabbath laws, he had spoken of God as his father, thereby making himself equal with God.

Jesus replied, “the son can do nothing by himself. He does only what he sees the father doing, and in the same way. For the father loves the son, and tells him everything he is doing; and the Son will do far more awesome miracles than this man’s healing. He will even raise from the dead anyone he wants to, just as the father does. And the father leaves all judgment of sin and his son, so that everyone will honor the son, just as they honor the father. But if you refuse to honor God’s son, whom he sent to you, then you are certainly not honoring the father.

“I say emphatically that anyone who listens to my message and believes in God who sent me has eternal life, and will never be damned for his sins, but has already passed out of death into life. And I solemnly declare that the time is coming, in fact it is here, when the dead shall hear my voice — the voice of the son of God — and those who listen shall live. The father has life in himself, and has granted his son to have life in himself, and to judge the sins of all mankind because he is the son of man. Don’t be so surprised. Indeed the time is coming when all the dead in their graves shall hear the voice of God son, and shall rise again those who have done good, too eternal life; and those who have continued in evil, the judgment.

“But I pass no judgment without consulting the father. I judge as I am told and my judgment is absolutely fair and just, for it is according to the will of God who sent me an is not merely my own.

“When I make claims about myself they aren’t believed, but someone else, yes, John the Baptist, is making these claims for me too. You have gone how to listen to his preaching and I can assure you that all he says about me is true. But the truest witness I have is not from a man, though I’ve reminded you about John’s witness so that you will believe in me and be saved. John shone brightly for a while, and you benefited and rejoiced, for having greater witness than John. I refer to the miracles I do; these have been assigned to me by the father, and they prove that the father has sent me.

In the father himself has also testified about me, though not appearing to you personally were speaking to you directly. But you are not listening to him. For you refuse to believe me — the one sent to you with God’s message.

“You search the Scriptures, for you believe they give you eternal life. And the Scriptures point to me.

Yet you won’t come to me so that I can give you dislike eternal.

“Your approval or disapproval means nothing to me for as I know so well you don’t have God’s love within you. I know, because I have come to you representing my father and you refuse to welcome me, though you readily enough receive those who are sent from him, but represent only themselves.

No wonder you can’t believe! For you gladly honor each other, but you don’t care about the honor that comes from the only God!

“Yes it is not I who will accuse you of this to the father — Moses will! Moses, on whose laws you set your hopes of heaven. For you have refuse to believe Moses. He wrote about me, but you refuse to believe him, so you refuse to believe in me. And since you don’t believe what he wrote, no wonder you don’t believe me either.”

This concludes John chapter 5 from the living Bible

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