💥 THE BRIEFING
When I was a kid I would visit my father’s parents in North Georgia every summer. I have fond memories of visiting. My grandmother would basically make myself, and the dozen cousins or so breakfast, and then let us loose on their 15 acres. The unspoken statement of don’t come back until the next meal.
Going back every summer I have these vidid memories like blips in a movie montage of what it was liking visiting their old school Baptist Church. Wooden pews, baptismal at the front, and why does every old church smell the exact same?
I remember the hymnals, and I remember the summer they got an electric guitar and drum set…
I can still picture him sitting in his usual spot, 4-5 pew from the front on the right side, arms crossed, jaw set, glasses midway down his nose, one of two colored flannels he wore in rotation. It looked like someone had replaced the communion table with a ping pong table.
But here's the thing about Pawpaw. Every Sunday after church, he'd settle into his recliner and watch the same rotation of westerns and courtroom dramas. Perry Mason, Gunsmoke, Matlock. He loved a good trial scene, the drama of evidence being presented, witnesses taking the stand, truth being uncovered.
Even though I often joined him in the Bible study before service, as I loathed the cheesy games in kids ministry, I was too young to retain any of it, if he were still with us, I think he'd find John 5 fascinating. Because what we have here isn't just a healing story. This is a courtroom drama, complete with charges, prosecution, defense, and a stunning reversal where the defendant becomes the judge.
The scene opens at the pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem. Covered colonnades surrounded the water where the sick, blind, lame, and paralyzed waited for healing. Among them was a man who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years.
Thirty-eight years. That made him old for his time period. John doesn’t say it here, but to me it reads as if he seems comfortable in his situation? When Jesus asks if he wants to get well, the man doesn't say "Yes!" He makes an excuse about not having anyone to help him into the pool.
This guy had turned his disability into his identity, and to have lived 38 years in first century Judea he must’ve been doing all right making a living begging at this pool.
"Get up! Pick up your mat and walk."
The man is healed instantly. But instead of those around him celebrating, instead of praising God, the religious authorities show up ready to prosecute because he picks up his mat on the Sabbath.
The structure of John 5 reads like a legal proceeding. Verses 1 through 15 present the "crime" of Sabbath violation. Verses 16 through 18 show the decision to prosecute. Verses 19 through 47 contain the trial itself.
But like my grandpa’s favorite court room drama, the case is never straight forward.
🎙️ THE CORNER TALK
The Jewish leaders began persecuting Jesus because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. The text suggests this wasn't isolated persecution but ongoing harassment tied to his regular practice of working on the Sabbath.
The real charge surfaces in verse 18:
This is why the Jews began trying all the more to kill him: Not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal to God.
That crossed the line from religious disagreement into blasphemy. That made this a capital case.
"Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does."
But then Jesus flips the jury in this metaphor.
Under Old Testament law, you needed multiple witnesses to establish truth. Jesus calls five to the stand:
God the Father has testified concerning him. John the Baptist testified to the truth. His own works testify that the Father sent him. Scripture itself testifies about him. Moses wrote about him. Mic drop.
Suddenly the prosecutors become defendants. Jesus exposes their real problem: “You have not heard his voice at any time, and you haven’t seen his form. 38 You don’t have his word residing in you, because you don’t believe the one he sent.”
They possessed religious knowledge but had forgotten how to love God. They knew their Scriptures and used them to defend all the wrong things.
🥊 THE FIGHT PLAN
We know our Bibles (this will be a never-ending practice of mine). We attend church. We teach our kids to pray, but are we more concerned with maintaining religious tradition than seeing God move?
My grandfather's resistance to the drum set wasn't really about music. It was about control, about preserving the way things had always been. Regardless of my focus on this right now, I’m sure in my old age I’ll rally against the robot worship team on my implanted brain chip.
Thirty-eight years is a long time to live with a problem. Long enough to get comfortable with it. Long enough to make it part of your identity. When Jesus shows up and asks if he wants to be healed, the guy doesn't even answer the question. He just explains why healing hasn't worked for him yet.
How many of us have gotten comfortable with our own limitations, whether honest limitations like disability, or self imposed ones? “I'm just not good at praying with my kids.” “I don't know the Bible well enough to lead family devotions.” “I'm not the spiritual type.”
Jesus saw someone who needed help and helped him. Then he told him to do something that would definitely get him in trouble with the religious police.
Sometimes being a godly dad means breaking some “rules.” Maybe that's letting your kid ask hard questions during prayer time instead of insisting they fold their hands and close their eyes. Maybe it's skipping an event with friends to take your family to serve at the homeless shelter. Maybe it's admitting to your teenagers that you don't have all the answers about faith.
The religious leaders knew their Scriptures backward and forward. They could quote you chapter and verse, even though those didn’t exist yet, but when God showed up in their midst, they tried to arrest him for breaking their rules.
This week, ask yourself: What matters more to me, my kids following religious rules or my kids following Jesus?
Because those aren't the same thing.
🤝 THE HUDDLE
In the end, it was religion that would condemn and crucify Jesus as a religious "duty."
Brothers, we cannot raise our kids to be good little religious performers. I know for one that I want to raise them to know and love the living God. Sometimes that means coloring outside the lines that church people have drawn.
Sometimes it means picking up our mat and walking on the Sabbath.
The courtroom drama ends with Jesus as judge, not defendant. When we have to choose between comfortable religion and costly discipleship, which side of the courtroom will we be on?
Your kids are watching. They'll learn more from seeing you love Jesus than from hearing you defend tradition.
Don't let them inherit empty religion. Give them the real thing.
In your corner,
Chance