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Scripture Reading: John 5:1-18, 21, 24-26, 39-40, 46-47; 6:63
We have been in the first book of the four Gospels, Matthew, and now we come to the last, John. The record of all four Gospels from the beginning to the end shows how Christ is versus religion and religion is always against Christ. According to the dictionary, religion is not a bad word; in a sense it is good. To be religious is much better than being sinful, fleshly, or worldly. But in the passage we have read in John 5:1-18, we see how dreadful religion really is. In this passage we see a group of religious people who pay attention to their Sabbath and their God. They are violently opposed to Jesus. They have two main things against Him: (1) He broke the Sabbath, and (2) He made Himself equal with God, with their God. They not only opposed Him but even attempted to kill Him. Have you ever realized that this is the attitude of religion toward Jesus? These were not sinful people; neither were they what we think of as worldly people; they were religious, and they were for God. Yet they did whatever they could to annihilate Jesus. Jesus is the target of all the arrows of religion. We must see this.
The situation is the very same today. The more we live by Jesus, the more we minister Christ to people, the more the religious people will hate us. But be clear, we are versus them, but we do not hate them. The religious people hated Jesus, but Jesus never hated them. Jesus was one hundred percent versus religion, but He still loved those religious people.
We have seen three main points in the Gospel of Matthew: first, that Jesus is our Bridegroom for our present enjoyment; second, that Jesus is the way whereby we may find rest; and third, that Jesus is our Lawgiver and Prophet; He is today’s Moses and our present Elijah. Let me say again that I do like Matthew. Matthew in the first chapter tells us that Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us. Then after giving us such a wonderful presentation of Jesus as our Bridegroom, our rest, our Lawgiver, and our Prophet, he says in the last chapter that this Jesus is with us “all the days until the consummation of the age” (28:20). Hallelujah, we have such a Jesus! We have this Emmanuel as so many items to us today. We may well be crazy for Christ since He is so much to us. But we not only have Matthew; we still have John.
The situation in John regarding Christ and religion is nearly the same as that in Matthew. We will skip over the first four chapters and come immediately to the fifth chapter. Here, you see, it was another Sabbath day (v. 9). I will call this the third Sabbath day. On the first Sabbath, Christ took care of Himself as the Head; on the second Sabbath, He took care of the withered members of His Body. Now we come to the third Sabbath. Later, we will see yet another Sabbath. There were Sabbath days after Sabbath days. The Lord Jesus undoubtedly did something deliberately to break the Sabbath day. Here, on the third Sabbath, He came to a certain pool in Jerusalem. There are seven days in a week — why did Jesus not come to this pool on some other day? He did it purposely; He did it to break the religious regulations. The keeping of the Sabbath is the first and greatest regulation of the Jewish religion. To the Jews nothing beside God Himself is more important than keeping the Sabbath. Jesus said in effect, “You Jews regard the Sabbath so highly, but I, Jesus, am purposely doing something to break it.” The Lord Jesus is a real “Troublemaker.”
Many times you have something of which you wish Jesus would keep His hands off — but He comes today, and He comes tomorrow, and He comes the following day to interfere. You know the story. The Lord Jesus knows how to make “trouble” for us. It is better to learn never to say no to Him. If we say no, He will come the next day, and then the third day, and then the fourth day. He will come again and again to drive the point home. To the Jews He came on the Sabbath again and again and again.
If you were a Jew, you surely would have been angry. You would have said, “Didn’t we tell You that it’s unlawful to heal on the Sabbath? Yet You come again. What’s the matter with You?” Jesus was out to make “trouble” for religion. He was saying, “You keep religion, but I break religion.”
This particular Sabbath day, as recorded in John 5, was probably not a common one. It may have been a feast day of the Jews. Here in this passage, in addition to the feast, are recorded the best things of the Jewish religion: of course, there is the holy city, Jerusalem; then we have a pool with five porticoes; next we have the water, which an angel from heaven occasionally stirred; last, we have the Sabbath. There was the feast to make people happy and the Sabbath to give them rest. But do you think that all those impotent ones at the pool could be happy or restful? Here is the best religion with all the best things of that religion. But if you would partake of the goodness of this religion, you had to be so strong in order that you could be number one. If you could get into the pool first, then you could share the benefit of that religion.
There was one among those impotent folk who had been lying there for thirty-eight years, just the length of time the people of Israel wandered in the wilderness. The religion was good, the holy city was marvelous, the pool was wonderful, and the water was so inviting, with the very angels of heaven stirring it up — but what good is it all if I have no strength? The sick man complained, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up” (v. 7). In religion there is no help, because everybody hardly has enough to help himself; no one has anything to spare for others. Religion was good, but it was not good for him. It was good, but he could not partake of it. He was impotent; he was powerless; he was weak. This was the situation.
But listen, suddenly a man came — not a big man but the little Jesus. Nobody paid any attention to Him. He had no form, no comeliness; He was One who came from Galilee, from that little town of Nazareth. Jesus came and saw the impotent man lying there. This is marvelous! We did not come to Jesus; He came to us. And when He came, we paid no attention to Him; yet He looked upon us. “When Jesus saw this one lying there and knew that he had already been a long time in that condition, He said to him, Do you want to get well?” (v. 6). Now listen to the foolish religious talk: “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; but while I am coming, another steps down before me” (v. 7). While he was speaking nonsense, the Lord Jesus commanded, “Rise, take up your mat and walk” (v. 8). What does this mean? This simply means, “Forget about that religious nonsense. I’m not interested.” I tell you, this is Jesus. He told him not only to rise but to take up his mat. The mat carried him for thirty-eight years; now Jesus told him to carry it. What would you do? Would you still say, “O Lord, I am still so impotent, and when the water moves, no one will come to help me”? Many times, we simply like to talk religious nonsense. Would we be willing to forget it all? The Lord Jesus said, “Do not talk anymore, but rise, take up your mat and walk.” If we will drop our religion and take Jesus’ living word, we will be healed and receive life. That day the impotent man was healed, and that day was the Sabbath.
Then the Jews saw what was done to the impotent man and came to him, saying, “What! Are you taking up your mat and walking on the Sabbath day? Don’t you know it’s not lawful to do this. It is lawful to lie there impotent, but it is not lawful to get up and walk. It is lawful for you to be dead, but it is not lawful for you to be alive.” I tell you, this is today’s Christianity.
So many people today criticize us for shouting and noisily praising the Lord. What about so many dead ones in the denominations? Why do they not criticize them? Why do they not condemn that? They are just like the Jews. They would rather keep their religious regulations than see someone made alive.
The man who became well answered them: “He who made me well, that One said to me, Take up your mat and walk” (v. 11). He said in other words, “If this is wrong, it is not my mistake; it is His mistake. The One who made me well told me to rise, take up my mat and walk.” They said then, “All right, you are not to be blamed. Who is that man who told you to do this?” He replied, “I do not know.” Then, later, Jesus met the man, and the man went to tell the Jews that it was Jesus. Oh! The Jews were so furious that they set about to kill Him.
Jesus spoke then to the Jews: “My Father is working until now, and I also am working” (v. 17). He said in other words, “You are keeping the Sabbath, but My Father is working all the time, and I am working with Him. I work because My Father’s work has not yet been accomplished.” This infuriated them even more. Now this little Jesus was not only breaking the Sabbath but making Himself equal with God. They were intent upon getting rid of Him.
Then Jesus went on to say, “As the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom He wills” (v. 21). What is this? This is Christ versus religion. We must all realize today that it is not a matter of religion, but of Christ as the very God imparting life to us. This is all we need. We need a Christ who is equal with God and who is God Himself, imparting life to us. The way He imparts life to us is not by any religion, forms, doctrines, teachings, or regulations, but by His living word. “Truly, truly, I say to you, He who hears My word and believes Him who sent Me has eternal life, and does not come into judgment but has passed out of death into life” (v. 24). Whoever hears His living word and receives it has eternal life. This is all — it is so simple.
Then the Lord Jesus turned again to the Jews and said, “You search the Scriptures” (v. 39). The English translation of the word search is not adequate. In the Greek it means “research.” The Lord Jesus was saying, “You search and research the Scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life.” This was their imagination: they thought that they could find life in the Scriptures. But the Lord Jesus said to them, “Besides Me, without Me, regardless of how many times you read the Scriptures, you cannot have life.” To say that in the Bible there is life is in a sense a kind of imagination. Life, strictly speaking, is not in the Scriptures but in Christ. If you have Christ with the Scriptures, surely you will have life; but if you have the Scriptures yet are devoid of the living Christ as the life-giving Spirit, you have no life. If you say you do, that is a game; that is your imagination. “You search the Scriptures” Jesus said, “because you think that in them you have eternal life, but really you do not. What you have is just deadness. The more you search, the more dead you are. The letter kills. You search the Scriptures, yet you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life.”
Brothers and sisters, never forget verses 39 and 40 of John 5. It is these two verses in the entire Bible which show us that to search the Scriptures is one thing, and to come to the Lord for life is another. It is entirely possible to search and even research the Scriptures yet never touch the living Christ as the life-giving Spirit.
When I was young, I did much searching and researching of the Bible. But, Hallelujah, today I have given it up. Today I just come to the living Christ through the living word of the Bible. Whenever I open the Scriptures, I first touch the Lord. I open my mouth and say, “O Lord Jesus, I come to You.” Brothers, never come to this living book without coming to the living Lord Jesus. If you do, you will simply be religious.
Why do you read the Scriptures? Do you read them because there is life in the Scriptures? It is indeed a wonderful and marvelous book. But look at those who spend so much time in Bible study. Do not misunderstand me: I respect the Bible, and I have spent very much time in its pages. But I have found one thing: we should never read the Bible without touching the living Christ. If you separate the Bible from Christ, then Christ is versus your Bible. Christianity today almost makes the Scriptures a book of dead letters. So Christ in this sense is versus the Scriptures. People take this book for knowledge and even obtain degrees in Bible study, but they utterly miss Christ. He said, “You search the Scriptures...yet you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life.”
You may say that the Bible testifies of Christ. Undoubtedly. Even Moses spoke of Christ in all his writings. But you should not separate all those writings from the living, present Christ. You need to wed all the Scriptures to Christ; then you will have the life; then you will have the living word. The Lord said, “It is the Spirit who gives life...the words which I have spoken to you are spirit and are life” (6:63). The words, the Lord said, are spirit; so they must be taken as the Spirit and in the Spirit. It is the Spirit who gives life; the letter kills (2 Cor. 3:6). If you take the Bible just as letters, you receive death, not life. All the words in the Bible proceeded out of the mouth of the very Lord who is the Spirit, so whatever comes from Him must also be Spirit, for He Himself is the Spirit. Every word of the Bible must be taken as the Spirit who gives life. If we exercise our mind to research the Scriptures, we make every word of the Bible dead letters. If, however, we exercise our spirit to contact the Word by calling on the Lord’s name, it is life. There is no other way to make this word, printed in black and white, so living, as the Spirit to us. We must read it by calling on the name of the Lord Jesus from deep within. Mingle your reading and calling on the Lord as one. Then you will get the life.
We have seen first that Christ is our happiness, second that He is our rest, third that He is our Lawgiver and Predictor, and fourth that He is the One who imparts life to us. How rich are all these items! Yet how may we touch such a Christ? What are the keys to open the doors? He has said, “Behold, I am with you all the days until the consummation of the age”; but how can we enjoy Him? How can we contact Him? Two things are the keys — the Spirit and the Word.
The most precious verse in John 3 is verse 6: “That which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” Then in John 4 the most precious verse is verse 24: “God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truthfulness.” In these two chapters of John, two spirits are mentioned: one with a capital letter S, and the other with a small letter s. We know that the one with the capital letter is the Holy Spirit, and the one with the small letter refers to our human spirit. Christ is so much, and Christ is everything to us; but whatever Christ is, is altogether the Spirit. He is the life-giving Spirit. This wonderful Christ who is today the Spirit is in our spirit, and the two spirits, the divine and the human, have been mingled together as one. “That which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” “God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit.” But when we pass through chapters 3 and 4 of John and come to chapters 5 and 6, something more is added. Here in chapter 5 we read, “He who hears My word” (v. 24), and “The dead will hear the voice of the Son of God” (v. 25). So we not only have the Spirit but also the word.
In chapter 5 we have not only the living word but also the written word. Jesus said to the Jewish people, “You search the Scriptures” — the written word. He said also, “If you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote concerning Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?” (vv. 46-47). Again Jesus referred to the written Word. He told them that if they did not believe the written Word, how could they believe the living word out of His mouth? So today, praise the Lord, we have the written Word. We have the Spirit, and we have the Word. Then when we come to 6:63, the Lord Jesus makes these two things one. He said, “It is the Spirit who gives life...the words which I have spoken to you are spirit.” First, we are told that it is by the Spirit that we touch Christ, and then we see that it is also through the word that we contact Him. Eventually, the Lord Jesus reveals to us that these two are one: the word is the Spirit, and the Spirit is the word.
John 6:63 is a verse which strongly proves that the word is the Spirit. There is another verse in the Bible, however, which tells us that the Spirit is the word. Ephesians 6:17-18 says, “Receive the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which Spirit is the word of God, by means of all prayer and petition, praying at every time in spirit.” Here in these two verses of Scripture, three main points are revealed: (1) The Spirit is the word. Have you ever realized that the Spirit of God is the word? Not only is the word the Spirit, but also the Spirit is the word. (2) By what means may we receive this word? We are told here to receive the word of God “by means of all prayer and petition.” This is pray-reading. We must not receive the word of God by merely reading but by prayer, and by means of all prayer. There are all kinds of prayer. Sometimes we need to receive the word by praying quietly; at other times we must receive the word by praying aloud; and there are times when we must also receive the word by shouting to the Lord. Sometimes we need to receive the word by short prayers; at other times we must receive it by long prayers. Sometimes we need to pray-read individually; at other times we need to pray the Word together with a few others; and sometimes we must pray-read with a large congregation. There are many ways. But the principle is one — we must receive the word of God “by means of all prayer and petition.” (3) These verses also tell us how we must pray — “praying at every time in spirit [our human spirit].” We must exercise our spirit, the deepest part of our being, to pray the Word. Do not analyze the Word; do not research the Word; just receive it by praying in the spirit. Hallelujah!
The two keys whereby we may contact Christ are the Holy Spirit and the holy Word. We have the Holy Spirit in our spirit, and we have the holy Word, the Bible, in our hands. These should not be two things, but two ends of one thing. The end within us is the Spirit; the end outside of us is the Word. When the Word enters our spirit, it becomes the Spirit, and when the Spirit is expressed from our mouth, it becomes the word. The Spirit and the word, the word and the Spirit, are two ends of one thing. The inner end is the Spirit, and the outer end is the Word. When the outer end gets into our spirit, it becomes the Spirit, and when the inner end proceeds from our mouth, it becomes the word. These are the two keys for us to contact Christ. Christ today is the Spirit and is in the Word. Forget about religion. Forget about doctrine, teaching, forms, rituals, rules, and regulations. Just take care of Christ. Contact Christ as the Spirit and in the Word.
What is the organ for us to use these two keys? It is our human spirit. Our hand, we know, is the proper organ to turn the key to open the door of our house. To somehow manipulate our mouth or our toes to turn the key would be extremely absurd. Likewise, the proper organ for us to use the keys of the Spirit and the Word is not our mentality or our will but our human spirit. We must exercise our human spirit; we must stay in the spirit. Whenever we pray, we must pray in our spirit; whenever we pray-read the Word, we must pray-read with our spirit; whenever we say, “O Lord, Amen, Hallelujah,” we must say it by exercising our human spirit. The Bible may either be a book of letters or a book full of words as the Spirit. The kind of Bible we have depends upon which organ we use to contact it. If we contact the Bible by our mentality, it is merely a book of letters to us. If we contact the Bible, however, by exercising our spirit, it immediately becomes a book of the Spirit. The apostle Paul said in 2 Corinthians 3:6, “The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” Paul, in referring to the letter which kills, was referring to the written Scriptures. If we contact the Scriptures with our mind, it becomes the killing letters. The same book may be either killing letters or the life-giving Spirit.
We all must realize first that we have such a Christ — a Christ for our happiness, a Christ for our rest, a Christ as our Lawgiver and Predictor, and a Christ as the Life-giver. But we must also realize that this Christ today is the Spirit and is in the Word. Now, if we would contact this Christ, we need to exercise our spirit to pray-read the Word or simply to call on His name. If we would do this, we would continually contact Christ and enjoy Him. There is no other way.
Have you ever changed your way in dealing with the Bible? I am much concerned that you are still cleaving to your old way of reading and studying the Bible by exercising your mentality. Are you still in the old way? Sometimes, no doubt, in your study of the Bible you have received some life. But I believe that most of the time you have been deadened and killed. It is simply because you have used the wrong way. The new way and best way is that whenever you come to the Bible, at the same time you come to the Lord. Always combine coming to the Bible with coming to the Lord. When you come to the Bible, you must open your spirit and mouth to call on the name of the Lord Jesus. Whatever verse, whatever sentence, you read, read it by calling on the name of the Lord. Always mingle your reading of the Scriptures with calling on the Lord Jesus. Try it. You will see the difference.
You may say then, “Should we not understand the Bible?” Leave this matter to the Lord. Just pray-read; the Lord will take care of your understanding. I guarantee that if you faithfully pray-read the Word of God, you will understand the Bible much better than all the others who do not pray-read.
Let us use for an illustration a match. The match stick, it is true, is made of wood, but in essence the match is really phosphorus. The meaning of the word phosphorus is “light-bearer.” Second Peter 1:19 refers to the Lord as the morning star: that term morning star in Greek is the word phosphorus. Christ is the phosphorus, the light-bearer, shining in the darkness. Now suppose I want to use the match: what shall I do? Of course, I must strike it. But how shall I strike it? If I strike it using the end without the phosphorus, though I strike till eternity, I will get no light. I am using the wrong end. The Bible is the match, and the Lord Jesus, the Spirit, is the phosphorus. The wooden stick may be likened to the black and white letters, the words in the Bible, which hold Christ as the phosphorus, the heavenly morning star. How can we make the phosphorus take fire and shine? We must use the right end of the match, and we must strike it on the right spot. The right end is the Holy Spirit, and the right spot is our human spirit. We must not care so much for the black and white letters — that is tantamount to concentrating on the wooden stick of the match. All our focus should be on the end with the phosphorus. We do have the letters of the written Word, but we must not pay too much attention to them. We must concentrate on the heavenly phosphorus in the word, Christ the Spirit, and we must strike this end in the right place, our human spirit. How many Christians there are who are “striking” the Bible in the area of their mentality! Little wonder that they never catch fire. We need the stick to hold the phosphorus, no doubt; we need the written Word, the black and white letters, to contain Christ, the heavenly phosphorus. But it is the phosphorus, it is the Spirit, who burns and gives the light. We must strike the right end, and we must strike the right end at the right spot. We must take the written Word and strike the Lord who is the Spirit upon our human spirit. Immediately, we will get the fire. It really works. If you stay with the Bible for half an hour or even an hour and get no fire, you are wrong. I can tell you, just after two minutes of, “O Lord Jesus! In the beginning was the Word. Amen! O Lord Jesus, You are the Word! Amen, Lord Jesus! Hallelujah!” you will be burned. This is the right way to contact the Word. You have to strike the Lord Jesus, the heavenly phosphorus in the Word, upon your human spirit. Hallelujah! Try the new way, and you will give up the old way. Every time you come to the Word in this new way, it will burn and shine upon you.
Praise the Lord, we have the keys, we have the organ, and we have the way to contact and enjoy such a wonderful Christ.
