John 5:19 Jesus gave them this answer: "I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.
He healed a man, changed everything about him beginning with his circumstances, ordered him to take his bed roll and get out of the place he was in, and now He has told the Pharisees that he is the Son of God. They want Jesus dead, and will probably feel fairly justified in doing so. That is what has just happened.
Watch any of the television show COP's and you will observe human nature in its purest state, broken. Confronted with accusations, the defense system kicks in, and the mouth starts going. Attorneys are trained to give a strong defense and so are Christian apologists. The attack by the Jews is only verbal at this point; it could get worse, and according to the law they would be right in doing so.
Jesus responds to them, but watch the direction that he takes them. He goes to the source, the creator of the law. Only the originator can define and explain the hows and whys of what has happened before them. Speaking to Jews, deeply entrenched in religion, he speaks in clouded terms. This was no parable, but they did not get it.
"I tell you the truth, the son can do nothing by himself;.."
Jesus already told them that he was God's Son. If I gave a "prophetic word" to someone, and tacked on "this is what God says" then in a way I may have manipulated the persons response to the word that I gave.
(If God should tell me to say that, it would be a different story, but he never has. I know that far to much of my humanness gets involved in what I say.)
Jesus said that He was the Son because He was, and because He did exactly what the Father told him to do. God himself told him to speak such to these men. Consider the moment in the garden when the guards came to get him. They asked him "are you the one" and he responded with I AM. Oh dear lord, the Majesty. His response put them on their backs. This world has tacked the term Your Majesty to mere humans, and those humans have strutted around as though they were somebody. Someday they will fall prostrate before the King.
People may say that Jesus was being humble in making this statement. I say that the Father intended to put the religious community on its ear. The time of change had come. The Pharisees were up to their necks in the law, but then so was Moses and he saw through it, and saw that there was freedom being displayed through the law. Moses, because of his actions was deemed the most humble man on earth until Christ came.
What made Moses the most humble man on the earth?
When the going got tough he turned to God. He was like a cattle rancher, trying to herd some of the most unruly cattle on the face of the planet. When Moses came off the mountain and hears the big party going on, he finds his own brother Aaron leading the crowd around a golden idol that they had made; totally contrary to what they had been told to do. What does Aaron say about the idol? We threw all the gold in and this is what pop out. Are you kidding me, and if so you decided to worship it?
Even the Samaritans were looking for the Messiah to come. They knew it would be one like Moses. That would imply a humble man.
One of the Greek words for humble is tapeinos and it is an adjective. In the NT it is always used in a good sense, but metaphorically to denote someone of low degree or a low estate. It can also mean humble in spirit.
Webster's dictionary defines humbly as an adverb. Meaning: in a humble manner; or modest submissiveness.
Back to Moses. Though he was considered to be the most humble man on the earth, at the time, this was not a man without a backbone. You cannot rule over that many people without a backbone. Moses was trained in the Egyptian courts, with the potential of taking over as a future Pharaoh. Choosing instead to be a Jew, he eventually leads Israel into "freedom".
'he can do only what he see his Father doing,.."
A man with a backbone; a carpenter, and a man that learned to submit to the voice and instruction of the Father. Standing before these Pharisees he tells them that I am only doing what I see the Father doing.
So now we have gone from I can do nothing by myself (I suspect that is more of a submissive state, for this man before them spoke the worlds into existence, and they did not know it.), to I only do what I see the Father do. This to had to push them over the edge. How could you see what the Father was doing. These men were the trained, Doctors of the law, and there was nothing humble about them. They could see the into the law, and it showed them nothing more than what their reactions demonstrated.
Think about this. Paul, John, Peter, and James (the brother of Jesus) all had that same law, yet they came to see the freedom that was embedded in the law, and the basis for it's being written. Hebrews tells us that the law was a shadow of the good things to come. The man that cast the shadow was standing before them.
The Greek word for see is blepo, and means to behold, beware, to look on, regard.
Did Jesus see things differently than we see, or could he have meant that same ability to see in the spirit that we have. Looking into the spirit (that is hard to define) is something that you do in faith. God, by the Holy Spirit, gave us that ability. It is a special gift in some, and an everyday way of life in the rest of us.
"because what ever the Father does the Son also does."
God created the laws that the Jews were using against Jesus, and yet by this statement God was overriding those same laws. If Jesus was only doing what the Father does, then without further explanation God is breaking his own laws and that makes him a liar. That cannot happen so there is something more to the picture than what we see. Moses understood all that. I will say it again, "the law was only a shadow of good things to come." How could that possibly be? The law carries the connotation of restrictions and bondage when most hear the term. What are we missing?
He healed a man, changed everything about him beginning with his circumstances, ordered him to take his bed roll and get out of the place he was in, and now He has told the Pharisees that he is the Son of God. They want Jesus dead, and will probably feel fairly justified in doing so. That is what has just happened.
Watch any of the television show COP's and you will observe human nature in its purest state, broken. Confronted with accusations, the defense system kicks in, and the mouth starts going. Attorneys are trained to give a strong defense and so are Christian apologists. The attack by the Jews is only verbal at this point; it could get worse, and according to the law they would be right in doing so.
Jesus responds to them, but watch the direction that he takes them. He goes to the source, the creator of the law. Only the originator can define and explain the hows and whys of what has happened before them. Speaking to Jews, deeply entrenched in religion, he speaks in clouded terms. This was no parable, but they did not get it.
"I tell you the truth, the son can do nothing by himself;.."
Jesus already told them that he was God's Son. If I gave a "prophetic word" to someone, and tacked on "this is what God says" then in a way I may have manipulated the persons response to the word that I gave.
(If God should tell me to say that, it would be a different story, but he never has. I know that far to much of my humanness gets involved in what I say.)
Jesus said that He was the Son because He was, and because He did exactly what the Father told him to do. God himself told him to speak such to these men. Consider the moment in the garden when the guards came to get him. They asked him "are you the one" and he responded with I AM. Oh dear lord, the Majesty. His response put them on their backs. This world has tacked the term Your Majesty to mere humans, and those humans have strutted around as though they were somebody. Someday they will fall prostrate before the King.
People may say that Jesus was being humble in making this statement. I say that the Father intended to put the religious community on its ear. The time of change had come. The Pharisees were up to their necks in the law, but then so was Moses and he saw through it, and saw that there was freedom being displayed through the law. Moses, because of his actions was deemed the most humble man on earth until Christ came.
What made Moses the most humble man on the earth?
When the going got tough he turned to God. He was like a cattle rancher, trying to herd some of the most unruly cattle on the face of the planet. When Moses came off the mountain and hears the big party going on, he finds his own brother Aaron leading the crowd around a golden idol that they had made; totally contrary to what they had been told to do. What does Aaron say about the idol? We threw all the gold in and this is what pop out. Are you kidding me, and if so you decided to worship it?
Even the Samaritans were looking for the Messiah to come. They knew it would be one like Moses. That would imply a humble man.
One of the Greek words for humble is tapeinos and it is an adjective. In the NT it is always used in a good sense, but metaphorically to denote someone of low degree or a low estate. It can also mean humble in spirit.
Webster's dictionary defines humbly as an adverb. Meaning: in a humble manner; or modest submissiveness.
Back to Moses. Though he was considered to be the most humble man on the earth, at the time, this was not a man without a backbone. You cannot rule over that many people without a backbone. Moses was trained in the Egyptian courts, with the potential of taking over as a future Pharaoh. Choosing instead to be a Jew, he eventually leads Israel into "freedom".
'he can do only what he see his Father doing,.."
A man with a backbone; a carpenter, and a man that learned to submit to the voice and instruction of the Father. Standing before these Pharisees he tells them that I am only doing what I see the Father doing.
So now we have gone from I can do nothing by myself (I suspect that is more of a submissive state, for this man before them spoke the worlds into existence, and they did not know it.), to I only do what I see the Father do. This to had to push them over the edge. How could you see what the Father was doing. These men were the trained, Doctors of the law, and there was nothing humble about them. They could see the into the law, and it showed them nothing more than what their reactions demonstrated.
Think about this. Paul, John, Peter, and James (the brother of Jesus) all had that same law, yet they came to see the freedom that was embedded in the law, and the basis for it's being written. Hebrews tells us that the law was a shadow of the good things to come. The man that cast the shadow was standing before them.
The Greek word for see is blepo, and means to behold, beware, to look on, regard.
Did Jesus see things differently than we see, or could he have meant that same ability to see in the spirit that we have. Looking into the spirit (that is hard to define) is something that you do in faith. God, by the Holy Spirit, gave us that ability. It is a special gift in some, and an everyday way of life in the rest of us.
"because what ever the Father does the Son also does."
God created the laws that the Jews were using against Jesus, and yet by this statement God was overriding those same laws. If Jesus was only doing what the Father does, then without further explanation God is breaking his own laws and that makes him a liar. That cannot happen so there is something more to the picture than what we see. Moses understood all that. I will say it again, "the law was only a shadow of good things to come." How could that possibly be? The law carries the connotation of restrictions and bondage when most hear the term. What are we missing?
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