John 5 Bible study: My Father is still working

"After these things, there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem" (5:1). The Gospel doesn't name the feast. "Now in Jerusalem by the sheep gate, there is a pool, which is called in Hebrew, “Bethesda”, having five porches" (5:2) (tap pool). "In these lay a great multitude of those who were sick, blind, lame, or paralyzed, waiting for the moving of the water" (5:3). "A certain man was there who had been sick for thirty-eight years" (5:5). Jesus saw him lying there, "and knew that he had been sick for a long time" (5:6), and asked him, "Do you want to be made well?" (5:6) (tap well). Here is what almost everyone misses: the man doesn't say yes. "The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I’m coming, another steps down before me.”" (5:7). And Jesus doesn't put him into the pool. "Jesus said to him, “Arise, take up your mat, and walk.”" (5:8) (tap mat). "Immediately, the man was made well, and took up his mat and walked" (5:9). Only then does the Gospel add, "Now that day was a Sabbath" (5:9).

Numbers 9:8→leads toJohn 5:30

When the unclean men asked, "Why are we kept back…?" (9:7), Moses didn't give them an answer of his own. He said, "Wait, that I may hear what the LORD will command concerning you" (9:8), and the answer came from the LORD (9:9-14). Jesus said of himself, "I can of myself do nothing. As I hear, I judge; and my judgment is righteous, because I don’t seek my own will, but the will of my Father who sent me" (John 5:30). Jesus doesn't mention Numbers 9, and the New Testament doesn't link his words to this chapter. What they share is not answering from oneself, but deciding by what is heard: Moses waits to hear what the LORD will command, and Jesus judges as he hears, seeking “the will of my Father who sent me”. These are Jesus' own words set beside this chapter, not a fulfillment of it.

πατήρpatersay pat-AYR

Strong's: "a ‘father’ (literally or figuratively, near or more remote)". The word comes 15 times in this chapter, counted in RP2018, the Byzantine text the WEB translates, and every time it is God. It begins with Jesus's answer about the Sabbath, "My Father is still working, so I am working, too" (5:17), and the next verse says the Jews sought all the more to kill him because he "called God his own Father" (5:18). Then it runs all through his answer: "the Son can do nothing of himself, but what he sees the Father doing" (5:19), "For the Father has affection for the Son" (5:20), "For as the Father raises the dead" (5:21), "For the Father judges no one" (5:22), and on to "I have come in my Father’s name" (5:43). John's Greek has the word 138 times, more than any other book of the New Testament (counted in RP2018). Earlier, in the temple, Jesus said, "Don’t make my Father’s house a marketplace!" (2:16).