John: Jesus On Trial
By: Oasis Church Birmingham
Tags: Christianity, Faith, Spirituality, Life, Resources

John: Jesus On Trial

Recordings, talk notes and application questions

Each week, we produce notes, discussion points and application questions for the Sunday talks — helping you go deeper into everything we’re looking at together and resourcing our Small Groups during the week. Use the embedded player to listen to the talk, or click here to visit Soundcloud and download it on a PC. You can also subscribe to Oasis podcasts on Spotify, iTunes or Podbean for listening on the go, and you can find the accompanying Powerpoint presentation for this week’s talk here.

Key Passages

John 5

Notes

John 5 is a fascinating passage, where the most dramatic and most exciting part of the story actually occupies a really small part in the whole narrative. The story of the healing, in a sense, is a very minor part of this chapter, it’s simply the gateway into what John really wants us to understand, which is the claims that Jesus is making about himself and the evidence he is presenting for those.

The chapter is laid out like a courtroom drama, with Jesus’s “crime”, the healing, serving as the introduction to his claims about his identity and the evidence he gives for them. What we do see in the healing though is Jesus coming with compassion to man at the very bottom of the social pile, a friendless man who’s endured an impossibly hard life, meeting him with grace and power and bringing transformation.

But because it took place on the Sabbath, and was followed by an instruction to “pick up [his] mat and walk”, the Jewish leaders took exception to it. Jesus takes that conflict, and then blows it up with the most remarkable claim — his justification for healing on the Sabbath is because he’s God.

Jesus is the eternal SON, always doing the work of LIFE by the power of his WORD, and because of that, it’s the most natural thing in the world for him to draw near in relationship and speak life and healing into being on the very day when God is to be exulted, worshipped and celebrated. In stating his case, Jesus gives this evidence:

Verses 31-32: Evidence from God

Verses 33-34: Evidence of witness testimony from John the Baptist

Verse 36: Evidence of miraculous works

Verses 37-40: Evidence from the pages of scripture

Verses 41-44: Evidence from Jesus’s character

Verses 45-47: Evidence from Moses

But as he presents his case, it becomes clear that Jesus, though he appears to be on trial, is actually the Judge, and it’s his accusers who need to worry. The judgement they were trying to heap upon him, they were actually heaping upon themselves. It’s them who can’t see the Father’s work in their midst, it’s them who can’t understand the signs they are seeing, it’s them who ignored the call of John the Baptist and the words of the Scriptures, it’s them who have ignored the testimony of true witnesses and instead sought affirmation and approval from others rather than from God. Ultimately, they do not have the love of God in their hearts (v42). And because of all that, they will find themselves on the wrong side of the judgement to be passed down.

We sometimes struggle with how to reconcile a God of love with a God of judgement, but ultimately, judgement in the Bible is simply God bringing justice by setting to rights things that are wrong in the world. It’s His action in lifting up the poor and the oppressed and the marginalised, and the bringing down those who have exploited them and imprisoned them and side-lined them.

We, like the Pharisees, are caught up in a power of sin which goes beyond an individual’s choices and has in fact ensnared the world, worming its way into every aspect of our lives and our relationships and our cultures. We, like the healed man, need freedom that goes beyond the physical. The challenge for us is in recognising that we are caught up in broken systems in a broken world, where injustice and inequality are hardwired into the way things work.

But the good news is that Jesus is the Judge. This trial scene is a picture of the one to come at the end of the gospel, where an un-just judge will declare an innocent man guilty and a guilty man innocent. He is the God of love who acts decisively to put an end to suffering and injustice by taking it upon himself on the cross, handing down the guilty verdict on a broken and rebellious world, and on our broken and rebellious lives, and then picking it all up on our behalf and carrying it for us.

And then he rises again. The brokenness of the world found to be insufficient to match the wholeness and the life found in him. Jesus is here, and everything changes. He is true sabbath rest, the very source of freedom and wholeness and hope. He is the eternal Son, overflowing with life, speaking a fresh word to you today. He is the just judge, judged in our place, to bring us near and draw us home.

Application Questions