Sabbath Sunday!!

Today is a day of rest. Exodus 34:21 in the Bible tells us that, “Six days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest.”  Today on this day of rest, we want to look at Jesus, the ultimate model of doing justice, and the one who commanded us to do justice based on Micah 6:8. We will look at how Jesus spent His sabbath days doing justice through healing the sick, setting the oppressed free and walking out the pure love of God the Father.

John 5:1-17 After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades. In these lay a multitude of invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years.

When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be healed?” The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me.” Jesus said to him, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.” And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked.

Now that day was the Sabbath. So the Jews said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to take up your bed.” But he answered them, “The man who healed me, that man said to me, ‘Take up your bed, and walk.’” They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take up your bed and walk’?”  Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, as there was a crowd in the place.  Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you.” The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him. And this was why the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. But Jesus answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.”

This was 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.

Join us tomorrow as we talk about how not to forget the injustice in the world and live in a way that causes us to do justice and love mercy in the face of injustice. 

**All this information comes from the 30 Day Prayer and Action guide by Steps of Justice. Hard copies of the book are for sale here for only $5 or free downloads are available here.