Did Jesus Break the Sabbath in John 5?

Did Jesus break the Sabbath in John 5-18? That's just one of the questions we'll be answering on today's edition of CORE Christianity. Hi, I'm Bill Meyer, along with Pastor Adriel Sanchez, and this is the radio program where we answer your questions about the Bible and the Christian life every day. We would love to hear from you. Here's our phone number.

It's 833-THE-CORE. You can also post your question on one of our social media sites, and of course you can always email us at questions-at-core-christianity.com. First up today, let's go to Eric calling in from Iowa Falls, Iowa. Eric, what's your question for Pastor Adriel? Hi. Hey, Eric. Hi, how are you doing? Doing well.

How are you? Good. I have a question. You know, you talked about the Lord's Supper on this last program, and you talked about the wine and the bread. I have a question, two questions.

One is, some... I've visited churches before that they give you grape juice instead of wine. Other churches I've been to, they give you wine. Does that make a difference? And the other question I have is, if you have, like, an intolerance to wheat, is it okay to use the non-gluten wafers?

Thank you so much for that question. Yeah, I mean, you know, different churches have different practices. Generally speaking, with regard to the cup, I do think, you know, like at our church we use wine. Jesus instituted the meal with wine, and typically I say we want to stick with what Jesus did.

It's not up to us to change those things around. Now, people will make the case, you know, grape juice is still the fruit of the vine in one sense. It's not alcoholic, it hasn't been fermented. It's not the drink of celebration, like you get in the prophets and in the gospels, which is part of what's being depicted there in the Lord's Supper. You know, this is the drink of festivity. You go to a wedding, and typically, you know, they have bottles of wine at the table, you know, not bottles of grape juice.

Why? Because it's a celebration. It's a feast.

It's a time of joy. And of course, there's that imagery in the scripture associated with wine. But I think, you know, a church that is using grape juice and they're approaching the table with, you know, the faith that God calls us to have in places like 1 Corinthians 11 in partaking of the Lord's Supper, I don't think that God is rejecting them or those believers. And so, yeah, and then with regard to the bread, you know, it's interesting in the ancient church, and still to this day, there are disagreements on this, you know, between the East and the West, for example, in the church. Some people are saying we can use unleavened bread, and there are others who are saying you can't use unleavened bread, we're using leavened bread because, you know, Jesus Christ has risen from the dead, that kind of a thing.

This is something that Christians have really split over at various times in the history of the church, but there again, I don't think that there's anything wrong with having gluten-free bread for those who have intolerance. In fact, we do at the church that I pastor, and so that's what I would say, brother. I think one of my concerns, and you hear this on the broadcast as you listen to me answer questions about the Lord's Supper from time to time, is just that we're not just neglecting what Jesus said.

We're not just, you know, sort of setting that aside and making it up as we go. In scripture, that's usually, you know, a bad idea, especially when it comes to worship. You know, think of Nadab and Abihu in Leviticus chapter 10, right?

You know, they approach the Lord and offer strange fire to the Lord, and God strikes them down. God doesn't just care that he's worshiped, friends, but he cares about how he's worshiped. This is why Hebrews chapter 12 says, you know, we're receiving a kingdom, we need to worship God with reverence and awe. And that's something I would really love to see recovered more and more in our churches is that sense of reverence, that sense of awe, that sense of we are coming before a holy God to worship him and to receive the gifts that he's giving to us according to his word. I think that we need that, and so that's something that I'm concerned with, but with regard to your questions and bread and, you know, gluten-free bread and grape juice and whatnot, I think the important thing specifically here is that we're approaching God in faith in the Lord's Supper. And so thank you, Eric, for your question, and may the Lord bless you. You're listening to CORE Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. If you have a question for us, you can always send us an email at questionsatcorechristianity.com, or you can leave us a voicemail as well. 833-THE-CORE is our number. Let's go to Maisie calling in from Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. Maisie, what's your question for Adriel? Oh, thank you so much for taking my call.

I really appreciate it. I am just wondering, it's probably a pretty basic question about cremation versus burial. And if you want to be cremated, and what would the implications be of that?

Yeah, well, you know, it's a question that we get with some frequency, Maisie, and so it's not a bad question at all. I mean, this is something that people are really concerned about, and I think it's important for us to get to the bottom of it because, you know, we're talking about life, we're talking about death, we're talking about wanting to honor God. And one thing I'll say is scripture does have a high view of the body. Sometimes we can have this false dichotomy, this sense that, you know, like, when we die, we just go to heaven and we're freed from the shackles of our bodies, and we get to exist for all eternity in this sort of spiritual state, no longer weighed down by my old body.

And so we can have a very negative view of the body. We can be overly spiritual at times in Christian circles, but the reality is our bodies were created by God and ultimately are going to be raised again. This is what we hope for, this is what we believe as Christians, that we're not just going to be in heaven for all eternity in a disembodied state, but that we're going to be in heaven for a period of time, you know, apart from our bodies, it's what we refer to as the intermediate state. And then on the last day, the day of resurrection, God is going to raise us up, all of us, and we're going to receive new and glorified bodies and live on a new heavens and a new earth and worship the Lord for all eternity there. And in that reality, God is going to restore his whole creation.

That's what we're looking forward to. And so we as Christians have a high view of the physical world and of the body because we know that it's the object of God's redemption just like the soul. And so the question that people have is, is it dishonoring to my body and to God to be cremated as opposed to buried? Does that have any bearing even on my eternal state? And I would say that the answer to that is no, I don't believe that it is. I don't believe that it's, you know, a desecration of the body.

I think this is a wisdom issue for families to consider and to think about and to do, you know, whatever you feel like is best for your family. And you can do that with a clear conscience. We're raised again, not on the basis of how we were buried, but on the basis of who we trusted and while we were alive. You know, did I have faith in Jesus? Am I united to him, a participant in his death and resurrection, a recipient of his death and resurrection life by the power of the Holy Spirit?

That's the most important question. In other religions, other civilizations, you know, there was this sense of, boy, the way that I'm buried has this bearing on my eternal existence. You think about the ancient Egyptians, for example. There's this museum here where I live in San Diego.

It was called the Museum of Man for the longest time, and then they changed the name. But I loved going to it as a child because you could see these mummies, these ancient Egyptian mummies that were there. And I was just fascinated by these mummies and, you know, the information, you know, beneath the exhibit about their burial practices and how they would be buried with all of these things, these trinkets that they hoped to take with them in the afterlife. But the reality is we can't take any of that with us. It's not how we're buried that matters first and foremost.

It's whether or not we know the one who was buried and rose again from the dead for our life. And so the other stuff is, I think, a wisdom issue for you and your family to consider. May God bless you and give you wisdom in this.

Thank you for calling us, Maisie. Maisie, we actually have a free download for you on that topic. It's called Can a Christian be Cremated? If you go to corechristianity.com forward slash downloads, you can find that.

So something to help you out as you discuss that issue with your family. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. There is a special group of people we want to say thank you to today. We call them our inner core. These are people that support us on a regular basis because they believe in what this ministry is doing. In fact, we had a recent Zoom call with many of our inner core supporters just in the last few weeks, which was a real blessing.

Yeah. Honestly, thank you so much to our inner core members. We get letters, emails, phone calls about ways that this program is blessing and encouraging people in their walk with the Lord. And you partner with us in that.

And we want to invite all of you. If you listen to the broadcast and you're encouraged by the work that we're doing, you're growing in your understanding of the Bible and your relationship with the Lord as a result of our labors. Would you consider partnering with us and helping us to continue to spread the word that the inner core is a monthly donation of $25 or more. As you sign up, you're a part of the inner core. And more than anything, you're partnering with us to help get the word of the gospel out and encourage people in their walk with the Lord. And so I do hope that you will prayerfully consider joining the inner core. You can find out more by going to coreChristianity.com forward slash inner core. We would love to have you join that special group of people and put you on our mailing list for some of those special resources that we have just for our inner core members. And perhaps joining us for our next Zoom call with Adriel coming up here in a couple of months. So check that out.

CoreChristianity.com forward slash inner core. Well, let's go to a voicemail we received from one of our listeners. This came in earlier this week from one of our listeners named David. My question has to do with the word person. Whenever I've talked to people that God is a person and the person of God, it brings up a problem where people seem to say that, well, a person is a human being. And so when we speak about the three persons of the Trinity, how is it that God who's a spirit is a person? Is person always relevant to being equal with a human being?

Thank you. Hey, thank you for that question. Yeah, getting into some technical language about the Trinity. When we're talking about persons with regard to the Trinity, we're talking about what distinguishes the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. So we've got to be careful that we don't try to directly associate our human thinking and how we would define a person or personhood for us as creatures, as human beings, and just sort of carry that over to God.

In fact, God is in a different category altogether than we are. So what we're doing when we come up with this language, the language that we have related to the doctrine of the Trinity, one God, one in essence, three distinct persons, is we're taking the revelation of God found in Holy Scripture and we're trying to come up with words to describe it in a way that's faithful to God's revelation and coherent and makes sense. So that's what Christians have done for 2,000 years, and that's where we get this language from, God being three distinct persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one divine essence. Throughout the history of the Church, the idea of personhood as it relates to God has been defined in various ways, but really some simple definitions that are out there.

There was one individual who talked about the divine person as an individual substance of a rational nature. So we're thinking about a someone here in terms of personhood, and in particular within the Trinity, relations between these three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, that communicate to us that there's distinction, there's difference with regard to personhood, but we can still talk about oneness or unity when we're talking about essence, power, glory. And again, we're just trying to make sense of what Scripture teaches, of the revelation that's given to us in Scripture about God, and it's clear when we're reading the Bible, when we read through the New Testament, we read the Gospels even, think about the baptism of Jesus where he's baptized, you hear the voice of the Father, this is my beloved Son with whom I'm well pleased, the Holy Spirit hovering over him in the form of a dove, we're told. You have these three distinct persons who are unique, we're not talking about the same person here, who are in relation to each other, and yet they're one God. This is why Jesus says we baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. God, we don't baptize into the name of a creature, of a created being, we're baptized into God, the Holy Trinity. And so we have to be careful that we don't assume that just because we use that word in our everyday language and speech and talking about humans and creatures, that what we're saying about human beings is the exact same as when we talk about God. We're talking about something distinct when we talk about the Lord, the persons of the Holy Trinity. So that's what I want to say about that, and I would say when we think about the Trinity, it's easy to try to create analogies and illustrations for how to explain the Trinity, but it really is a mystery that's revealed to us in Scripture, something we're called, someone, right?

The three persons of the Holy Trinity that we're called to adore and worship, not to speculate about, and that's what we see also in Scripture. So may God help us as Christians and as churches to worship God, the Holy Trinity faithfully, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one in essence and undivided. God bless.

Amen. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. We do receive emails here, and you can send us your question by email anytime.

Here's the email address. It's questions at corechristianity.com. Here's one from a listener named Jason, and Adriel, he says this, Did Jesus break the Sabbath in John 5 18?

Yeah. So, you know, turning over to John chapter 5, Jesus heals a man on the Sabbath day, sort of one of those repeat stories in the Gospels, right? Like Jesus knows that when he does this, when he heals somebody on the Sabbath, that people are going to get upset, in particular the religious leaders, but he keeps on doing it. And then in verse 18, we read, This is why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God. Now, the Sabbath commandment is the fourth commandment of the Decalogue given to us as a people. Now, let me just say, the Bible makes it absolutely clear that Jesus never broke any of the commandments of God, that he was sinless, perfect in his obedience to the law of God, tempted in all ways as we are, the author of the Hebrews says, and yet, without sin, this is what makes Jesus the perfect substitute for us, the perfect propitiation for us and for our sins, that he never sinned, he was sinless.

And through his perfect obedience, we receive salvation, the free gift of God's grace and mercy. And so, no, Jesus was not breaking the Sabbath. He was upsetting the religious leaders, though.

One of the problems was the religious leaders essentially exalted the law and the ceremonies in Israel above, just caring for people, loving people. And Jesus highlights this in other places. He says, you know, which of you, if your ox falls into a ditch on the Sabbath, or your child falls into a ditch, would you say, oh, I can't climb in there and pick him up or rescue him because it's the Sabbath day?

No, there are certain things that you do on the Sabbath. We might refer to them as works of necessity or works of charity, things that we just have to do in God's providence, you know, this happened and I need to do this. And in this situation, this is very much a work of charity, a work of necessity, where Jesus on the Sabbath is healing these people who have been captive to sickness or to Satan even. And when he does that, when Jesus rescues these lives, the religious leaders bound up in their hypocrisy, they get upset. They're so blinded by their sin that what are they doing in verse 18 there? They're plotting murder. They're seeking to kill Jesus.

Why? Because he's healing people, he's helping people on the Sabbath. You can see how backwards this is. Jesus in his action is actually fulfilling the law of God. What if the summary of the law of God, love God perfectly and love your neighbor as yourself? He's loving his neighbor, if you will, by helping this individual.

He's not breaking the law, he's fulfilling the law. Ironically, the ones who are breaking the Sabbath there in John 5 and throughout the Gospels, when they're raising a fuss about what Jesus is doing on the Sabbath, it's these people who could care less about their neighbors, about those who are suffering and those who are sick. Jesus is showing us what it really looks like to follow God and to obey the Sabbath. And so, no, Jesus did not break the Sabbath. He was perfect, he was sinless, and thank God for that because we are not and we need a perfect and sinless Savior.

We sure do. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. I got an interesting email, Adriel, from a listener named Joshua. He says, something that keeps me from pursuing ministry in the pulpit is my opinion of the scholarship of pastors. What I mean is, I believe a pastor should be a theologian, or at least a very well-studied scholar, as well as a pastor.

Someone who can answer a multitude of questions, apply those answers to modern questions, as you do. I feel this way because I'll study a topic thoroughly and then hear a pastor mention it, sometimes incorrectly. And I don't want to be the one to lead someone either astray or into false doctrine.

What are your thoughts? Honestly, I'm also frustrated about these things at times. I think there can be a really low view of the pastoral office and of the kind of training and preparation that should go into this. I remember when I was in seminary studying to be a pastor, I went to a great school, and oftentimes they would just emphasize. You go to the doctor and you want to entrust the care of your body to someone who knows what they're talking about, to someone who has studied physical health. Or if you're going to have surgery, you don't want your surgeon to have learned how to do surgery on YouTube, through watching YouTube videos or just reading random sources that he or she found on their own. You want someone who has been trained.

Why? Because you're entrusting your body to them. In the life of the church, when we're in a church in one sense, we're entrusting our souls to the care of these shepherds, to these pastors and teachers and elders. In fact, this is what the New Testament says. These individuals should know what they're talking about when it comes to the scriptures, when it comes to Christian theology, when it comes to church history. That requires, I think, time. It requires training.

It requires diligence. It's sad. It's a sad reality that for many people, they just sort of call themselves to the ministry. They don't take the time to do those things. Oftentimes, you will have a situation where somebody in the church who's maybe just done a little bit more theological reading than the pastor, begins to see things in the church that are actually not good, maybe not in line with scripture, not in line with the Christian faith, and begins to ask questions. Oftentimes, they can get shut down because those pastors who haven't studied very much feel very defensive.

I've seen this go poorly. There was an article that I read years ago, and I never forgot it. It was an NPR article. This is the title.

I just pulled it up. It says, American with no medical training ran center for malnourished Ugandan kids. One hundred and five died.

It was this article that I read. It was an American missionary, or somebody who just basically said, I want to go be a missionary and help these kids in Uganda, this sort of romanticized view of missions. I'm just going to go out there and save people, which it seems noble, but in one sense, it sort of exposes something about the way we view ourselves.

Oftentimes, as Americans, we're just going to go fix everything and everyone, which is a problem. This person had no medical training, and they go out, and they want to save people, but in the end, because they don't know what they're doing, it's devastating. That same thing can happen in the ministry. I just have these big, high views of myself and plans to change the world for Jesus. I'm going out there, and I'm wielding the sword of the Spirit to help people.

If you don't know what you're doing, you can actually end up cutting folks up pretty bad. It's so important for us. When you think about what Paul told Timothy, study to show yourself approved, a workman that does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. Friends, as pastors, we need to have a very high view of the Scriptures, of what it means to study the Scriptures and to present those Scriptures to others.

We're always learning. We're never going to be perfect, but it is a sobering thing. This is why James says in James 3, verse 1, Let not many of you be teachers, brothers, knowing that we'll receive a stricter judgment. God takes this seriously.

We should take it seriously. We should hold our pastors to a high standard in terms of what they're teaching, because ultimately, they're called to steward the mysteries of God. I pray that you, friends, are in churches where you have a faithful pastor who's doing that, who knows what he's talking about, who's preaching the word faithfully, and who should be in the pulpit.

And if you don't, find a church where that is the case. God bless. Thanks for listening to CORE Christianity. To request your copy of today's special offer, visit us at corechristianity.com and click on offers in the menu bar, or call us at 1-833-843-2673. That's 833-The-CORE. When you contact us, please let us know how you've been encouraged by this program. And be sure to join us next time as we explore the truth of God's word together.