Get up, take up your bed, and walk.

[DamianWarS]

Jn 5:1-9
Did Jesus instruct this man to break the sabbath?

why did he say this request to not just get up and walk, but to carry his mat as well?

 

[topher694]

John 5:1-9
Did Jesus instruct this man to break the sabbath?

why did he say this request to not just get up and walk, but to carry his mat as well?

I ministered on this once a long time ago. Here are my notes. Some are short hand, but you should get the idea.

NOTE: I believe Jesus had him break the Pharisaical law, not God's law. The Pharisaical law had been twisted and corrupted.

• When Jesus told that man to pick up his mat he was dealing with some of the deepest religious traditions in that man’s life
  
  
• If he picked up that mat he risked being ostracized by his own people and cast out of the temple because he was violating the laws of the sabbath
  
  
• Like this man many believers are disabled because they have allowed some tradition whether it is religious, intellectual, ethnic, social to control their life
  
  
• Jesus will typically ask something OF you to break something IN you that has more control over your life than He does.
  
  
• Have you ever wondered why Jesus said pick up your mat?
  
  
  • He didn’t need carry the mat to prove he had been healed, it had been 38 years, everyone knew
    
• Why? Jesus realized that what it would take for that man to pick up the mat would break something in him that would release a miracle
  
  
• it wasn’t about the mat, it was about what was keeping him from picking up that mat
  
  
• Standing up didn’t break the sabbath law, picking up the mat did
  
  
• Jesus knew that if that man stayed under that Pharisaical religious system that he probably wouldn’t get a miracle and if he did, it wouldn’t last
  
  
• Many times there is something deep rooted in us that God is after... and in the process of our miracle there is typically a mat to pick up
  
  
• there’s something to deal with, something in your mindset, some tradition, some idolatry, some ethnic bias, some church prejudice deep in your mind about the word… and God is after that.

• There’s something that He is after and something He is looking to break inside of you
  
  
• In reality there was a religious system that was impoverishing that man, and if he didn’t pick that mat up he could have stayed in that system.
  
  
• There’s only one reason Jesus wanted him to pick that mat up, Jesus wanted to make him violate the sabbath law and call him out and break something in him that paralyzed him
  
  
  • fear of the jews, mom, dad, I’ll be thrown out or excluded?
    
    
  • (The pool itself was part of the system, he was allowed to be there only if he played by their rules, and the pool was the key to his miracle, it was a catch-22, a cycle that had left him in that state for 38 years)
    

 

[DamianWarS]

I believe Jesus had him break the Pharisaical law, not God's law. The Pharisaical law had been twisted and corrupted.

since everything hinges on this then let's explore why carrying a mat is or is not breaking the Sabbath.

the text doesn't give us specific clues nor directly calls out the pharsisies or their twisted laws. it says in v9b,10

This happened on a Sabbath day. So the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath day. The law does not allow you to carry your mat.”

the leaders then were interested in finding out who Jesus was from this man (who later told them)

there's no doubt in my mind that Jesus knew this man would be confronted and this is one of the reasons why he told him to pick up his mat. But does it violate the Sabbath? possibly a related sabbath law could be Jer 17:21-22 which reads:

Thus says the Lord: Take care for the sake of your lives, and do not bear a burden on the Sabbath day or bring it in by the gates of Jerusalem. And do not carry a burden out of your houses on the Sabbath or do any work, but keep the Sabbath day holy, as I commanded your fathers.

so is a mat "a burden"... I don't know, I'm just thinking out loud.

 

[topher694]

since everything hinges on this then let's explore why carrying a mat is or is not breaking the Sabbath.

the text doesn't give us specific clues nor directly calls out the pharsisies or their twisted laws. it says in v9b,10

This happened on a Sabbath day. So the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath day. The law does not allow you to carry your mat.”

the leaders then were interested in finding out who Jesus was from this man (who later told them)

there's no doubt in my mind that Jesus knew this man would be confronted and this is one of the reasons why he told him to pick up his mat. But does it violate the Sabbath? possibly a related sabbath law could be Jer 17:21-22 which reads:

Thus says the Lord: Take care for the sake of your lives, and do not bear a burden on the Sabbath day or bring it in by the gates of Jerusalem. And do not carry a burden out of your houses on the Sabbath or do any work, but keep the Sabbath day holy, as I commanded your fathers.

so is a mat "a burden"... I don't know, I'm just thinking out loud.

Well I think that's clearly what the Pharisee's had twisted it to mean.

If you look at the Hebrew word for burden here it can mean natural weight/burden, but it can also mean more of a emotional/spiritual type of burden. What we might call worry/anxiety or even anger/upset.

I think the key here is in the phrase "nor bring it in by the gates of Jerusalem". That may not mean much to us today, but in those days the gates where a place of all kinds of important activity. Including where legal matters were adjudicated. So, if you had a "burden" that needed to be resolved you would take it to the gates. Clearly then, this is not talking about a physical burden like a mat.

To put it in a kind of blunt way: The sabbath was not a time for petty disputes.

Ironically the Pharisees may be the ones that truly violated the sabbath by making something simple like a guy carrying a mat into a petty dispute.

 

[Bob S]

Jesus was, in His ministry, preparing the Jews for the time the Sinai covenant would be replaced with the new and better covenant of Grace and love. His actions with the woman at the well, Zaccheus, His Sermon on the Mount, adding to the meaning of some of the commandments dealing with morality, the lame man, healing on the Holy day, etc were events that were leading to the Cross where the Law was indeed changed with the ushering in of the new covenant.

 

[BNR32FAN]

I ministered on this once a long time ago. Here are my notes. Some are short hand, but you should get the idea.

NOTE: I believe Jesus had him break the Pharisaical law, not God's law. The Pharisaical law had been twisted and corrupted.

• When Jesus told that man to pick up his mat he was dealing with some of the deepest religious traditions in that man’s life
  
  
• If he picked up that mat he risked being ostracized by his own people and cast out of the temple because he was violating the laws of the sabbath
  
  
• Like this man many believers are disabled because they have allowed some tradition whether it is religious, intellectual, ethnic, social to control their life
  
  
• Jesus will typically ask something OF you to break something IN you that has more control over your life than He does.
  
  
• Have you ever wondered why Jesus said pick up your mat?
  
  • He didn’t need carry the mat to prove he had been healed, it had been 38 years, everyone knew
• Why? Jesus realized that what it would take for that man to pick up the mat would break something in him that would release a miracle
  
  
• it wasn’t about the mat, it was about what was keeping him from picking up that mat
  
  
• Standing up didn’t break the sabbath law, picking up the mat did
  
  
• Jesus knew that if that man stayed under that Pharisaical religious system that he probably wouldn’t get a miracle and if he did, it wouldn’t last
  
  
• Many times there is something deep rooted in us that God is after... and in the process of our miracle there is typically a mat to pick up
  
  
• there’s something to deal with, something in your mindset, some tradition, some idolatry, some ethnic bias, some church prejudice deep in your mind about the word… and God is after that.

• There’s something that He is after and something He is looking to break inside of you
  
  
• In reality there was a religious system that was impoverishing that man, and if he didn’t pick that mat up he could have stayed in that system.
  
  
• There’s only one reason Jesus wanted him to pick that mat up, Jesus wanted to make him violate the sabbath law and call him out and break something in him that paralyzed him
  
  • fear of the jews, mom, dad, I’ll be thrown out or excluded?
    
    
  • (The pool itself was part of the system, he was allowed to be there only if he played by their rules, and the pool was the key to his miracle, it was a catch-22, a cycle that had left him in that state for 38 years)

Very interesting perspective my friend. It makes a lot of sense.

 

[BobRyan]

Jn 5:1-9
Did Jesus instruct this man to break the sabbath?

why did he say this request to not just get up and walk, but to carry his mat as well?

NOTE: I believe Jesus had him break the Pharisaical law, not God's law. The Pharisaical law had been twisted and corrupted.

good point!

"Sin is transgression of the law" 1 John 3:4 - Jesus never sinned
transgressing the law "and teaching others to do so as well" is condemned by Jesus in Matthew 5.

His command was not a command to break God's Commandments -- which Heb 8:6-12 says are in fact Christ's own Commandments at Sinai.

The New Covenant began in the OT as Jer 31:31-34 reminds us.

There is only ONE Gospel Gal 1:6-9 the NEW Covenant is part of that Gospel and "the Gospel was preaching to Abraham" Gal 3:8.

No wonder Paul said "what matters is keeping the Commandments of God"... where the "first commandment with a promise" is still the 5th commandment Eph 6:1-2 even in the NT .. still...to this very day.

Choose the Bible for doctrine.