In John chapter 5 verse 16, we’re told flatly that the Jewish religious elite wanted to kill Jesus. And we’re also told why. It was because He had healed a sick man on the Sabbath.
Now let me get this straight. The RELIGIOUS leaders wanted to KILL Jesus because He HEALED a man who had be sick for 38 years on the wrong day of the week? What am I missing here?
Now, I know that Sabbath-keeping is an important thing with God. You can’t read past the second chapter in the Bible without discovering that He’s so serious about it that He personally modeled it. But it’s also clear that God meant Sabbath to be a blessing to us not a curse. In fact, Jesus said, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” God gave us the GIFT of one day out of every seven set aside purely for spiritual renewal, physical rest, relational restoration, emotional recovery, and intellectual recalibration.
So, how did something so GOOD for us become so twisted?
Well, like everything religionists get their hands on, Sabbath had been embellished with layers upon layers of regulations God never intended. And they exploited these rules as a means of exercising control over people. And that’s the key word, control. Everything Jesus did threatened the control the religious leaders were attempting to hold over people.
That kind of control is a bad thing, and Jesus will always be a threat to it. I know because He came after it in my life.
Now, please, don’t get me wrong. I love my birth family. But all families have some measure of dysfunction, and one of the symptoms of ours was that we could never seem to get anywhere on time. And I clearly remember being dropped off late again for baseball practice one day when I was about nine years old. And as I walked to the field knowing I would have to apologize to my coach and teammates again for being late, I remember saying to myself, “When I have control, I will never be late again!”
And that vow set in motion decades of drivenness and controlling behavior that eventually would bring me to the brink of losing my marriage, family, health, and ministry had not my loving Lord squared-off against it in my life. All those years before, I had given place to something that was ruining me along with everything and everyone I loved. The control I had become so proud of exercising was really a spirit that was controlling me.
It’s a long, but beautiful story how Jesus confronted and set me free from the spirit of control that I won’t take the time now to tell. But if the little I’ve said sounds at all familiar to your own life, please, dear one, don’t wait another minute. Come in prayer with humble repentance to the One who is ready to release you from this bondage, and invite the Lord of the Sabbath to bring rest to your soul.