Gleanings – The Threat of Direct Access

John 9:1-17

“Now it was the Sabbath day when Jesus made the clay and opened his eyes.”

So! Do they really think that argument will hold water? Certainly the man blind from birth who now sees doesn’t care if it was the Sabbath when he was healed. Does anyone? Well some. But not genuinely. They grasp at anything that might undermine the masses confidence in Jesus. So it was the Sabbath. That makes him a sinner. Pharisees 1. Jesus 0.

But no so fast. People are smarter than that. “How can a man who is a sinner do such signs?”

Is it ever a sin to heal? To better the life of someone created in the image of God? Even on the Sabbath? If Katrina sweeps into New Orleans on a Saturday night would the Lord have us conduct services Sunday morning? Or would He have us bag sand, deliver water and house the homeless? Both perhaps but never the former to the detriment of the latter.

Isn’t that what Paul is arguing in Romans 12? Isn’t our sacrifice serving God or the sheep of His hand a “spiritual act of worship”? Didn’t Jesus answer this for us definitively when he said the Sabbath was created for man, not man for the Sabbath?

Why such reasoning then among the religious? It is not reasoning. It is not reasonable. It is the pathetic cry of those losing control.

We have but one mediator and only one. The Lord Jesus Christ!


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