“Most assuredly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the Son also does in like manner.” (John 5:19, NKJV)
The road of the new covenant is walked along with Jesus and the Holy Spirit, and does not involve a to-do list. We often approach God as if are either an employer or an employee. When we spend time with Him it is often driven by a list of things that we want to do for Him and that we’re requiring His blessing for, or a list of things we require Him to do for us.
Jesus called us to a new walk with God, a new living way (Heb 10:20). This new manner in which God and man commune is directed by intimacy. Within this relation we have Jesus as forerunner (Heb 6:20), and firstborn (Rom 8:29b), showing us how we need to walk with God. From Jesus’ example we find that everything that God did not speak to him of first is considered dead works.
Grant me a touch of apocryphal imagination to illustrate. Read again the story of the bath of Bethesda. “Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, which is called in Hebrew, Bethesda, having five porches. In these lay a great multitude of sick people, blind, lame, paralyzed, waiting for the moving of the water. For an angel went down at a certain time into the pool and stirred up the water; then whoever stepped in first, after the stirring of the water, was made well of whatever disease he had. Now a certain man was there who had an infirmity thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he already had been in that condition a long time, He said to him, ‘Do you want to be made well?’ The sick man answered Him, ‘Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; but while I am coming, another steps down before me.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Rise, take up your bed and walk.’ And immediately the man was made well, took up his bed, and walked.”
I can just imagine that morning when Jesus (as His father David had done) called on the morning star (Ps 119:26), visiting with His father, asking Him what lay ahead for the day:
What are we going to do today, Dad?
Today I want you to heal someone, Son.
That’s brilliant, Dad! Where?
At the waters of Bethesda. You remember the place? (Smiles)
Only that which Nehemiah told me about it – it’s close to the Sheep Gate, isn’t it?
That’s right.
There’s something I see in my mind’s eye, Dad. It seems as if there are many sick people lying around there. Can’t I just heal them all? Dad? Please?
No, son. Do you see the face of the man I am showing to you now? He’s been sick for a long time. He’s the one. (Smiles)
Jesus only did what His father asked him to do. He went straight to the Sheep Gate, found the bath of Bethesda, sought the man out from among the hundreds of sick people. It was easy for Him to say: Take up your bed and walk. He had, after all, see his Father do it.
- Sela: What did God want to teach Jesus with this episode?
- Read: Lev 23; Zech 5; Isa 63
- Memorise: Isa 63:5 (and seriously consider this Scripture).
- For a deeper understanding: Read chapter 2 of J Oswald Sanders’ book: On to maturity.
