We have been in the first book of the four Gospels, Matthew, and now we come to the last, John. The record of all four Gospels from the beginning to the end shows how Christ is versus religion and religion is always against Christ. According to the dictionary, religion is not a bad word; in a sense it is good. To be religious is much better than being sinful, fleshly, or worldly. But in the passage we have read in John 5:1-18 we see how dreadful religion really is. In this passage we see a group of religious people who pay attention to their sabbath and their God. They are violently opposed to Jesus. They have two main things against Him: 1) He broke the sabbath, and 2) He made Himself equal to God, to their God. They not only opposed Him, but even attempted to kill Him. Have you ever realized that this is the attitude of religion toward Jesus? These were not sinful people; neither were they what we think of as worldly people; they were religious, and they were for God. Yet they did whatever they could to annihilate Jesus. Jesus is the target of all the arrows of religion. We must see this.
The situation is the very same today. The more we live by Jesus, the more we minister Christ to people, the more the religious people will hate us. But be clear, we are versus them, but we do not hate them. The religious people hated Jesus, but Jesus never hated them. Jesus was one hundred percent versus religion, but He still loved those religious people.
We have seen three main points in the Gospel of Matthew: firstly, that Jesus is our Bridegroom for our present enjoyment; secondly, that Jesus is the way where-by we may find rest; and thirdly, that Jesus is our Lawgiver and Prophet, He is today's Moses and our present Elijah. Let me say again that I do like Matthew. Matthew in the first chapter tells us that Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us. Then after giving us such a wonderful presentation of Jesus as our Bridegroom, our rest, our Lawgiver, and our Prophet, he says in the last chapter that this Jesus is with us "all the days, until the completion of the age" (v. 20 Gk.). Hallelujah, we have such a Jesus! We have this Emmanuel as so many items to us today. We may well be crazy for Christ since He is so much to us. But we not only have Matthew; we still have John.
The situation in John regarding Christ and religion is nearly the same as that in Matthew. We will skip over the first four chapters and come immediately to the fifth chapter. Here, you see, it was another sabbath day (v. 9). I will call this the third sabbath day. On the first sabbath, Christ took care of Himself as the Head; on the second sabbath, He took care of the withered members of His Body. Now we come to the third sabbath. Later, we will see yet another sabbath. There were sabbath days after sabbath days. The Lord Jesus undoubtedly did something deliberately to break the sabbath day. Here, on the third sabbath, He came to a certain pool in Jerusalem. There are seven days in a week—why did Jesus not come to this pool on some other day? He did it purposely; He did it to break the religious regulations. The keeping of the sabbath is the first and greatest regulation of the Jewish religion. To the Jews, nothing beside God Himself is more important than keeping the sabbath. Jesus said in effect, "You Jews regard the sabbath so highly, but I, Jesus, am purposely doing something to break it." The Lord Jesus is a real "troublemaker."
Many times you have something of which you wish Jesus would keep His hands off—but He comes today, and He comes tomorrow, and He comes the following day to interfere. You know the story. The Lord Jesus knows how to make "trouble" for us. It is better to learn never to say no to Him. If we say no, He will come the next day, and then the third day, and then the fourth day. He will come again and again to drive the point home. To the Jews, He came on the sabbath again and again and again.
If you were a Jew, you surely would have been angry. You would have said, "Didn't we tell you that it's unlawful to heal on the sabbath? Yet you come again. What's the matter with you?" Jesus was out to make "trouble" for religion. He was saying, "You keep religion, but I break religion."
This particular sabbath day, as recorded in John 5, was probably not a common one. It may have been at a feast of the Jews. Here in this passage, in addition to the feast, are recorded the best things of the Jewish religion: of course, there is the holy city, Jerusalem; then we have a pool with five porches; next we have the water, which an angel from heaven occasionally stirred; lastly, we have the sabbath. There was the feast to make people happy and the sabbath to give them rest. But do you think that all those impotent ones at the pool could be happy or restful? Here is the best religion with all the best things of that religion. But if you would partake of the goodness of this religion, you must be so strong that you could be number one. If you could get into the pool first, then you could share the benefit of that religion.
There was one among those impotent folk who was lying there for thirty-eight years, just the length of time the people of Israel wandered in the wilderness. The religion was good, the holy city was marvelous, the pool was wonderful, and the water was so inviting, with the very angels of heaven stirring it up—but what good is it all if I have no strength? The sick man complained, "Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool..." (v. 7). In religion there is no help. Why? Because everybody hardly has enough to help himself; no one has anything to spare for others. Religion was good, but it was not good for him. It was good, but he could not partake of it. He was impotent, he was powerless, he was weak. This was the situation.