Repairing
the Breach
// 3
John 7:21 (NKJV)
“I did one work, and you all marvel.”
John 5:1-3 (NLT)
“Afterward Jesus returned to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish holy days. Inside the city, near the Sheep Gate, was the pool of Bethesda, with five covered porches. Crowds of sick people—blind, lame, or paralyzed—lay on the porches.
John 5:4-6 (NLT)
“One of the men lying there had been sick for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him and knew he had been ill for a long time, he asked him, ‘Would you like to get well?’
John 5:7-8 (NLT)
“‘I can’t, sir,’ the sick man said, ‘for I have no one to put me into the pool when the water bubbles up. Someone else always gets there ahead of me.’ Jesus told him, ‘Stand up, pick up your mat, and walk!’
John 5:9 (NLT)
“ Instantly, the man was healed! He rolled up his sleeping mat and began walking! But this miracle happened on the Sabbath .”
“So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him.”
John 5:16 (NIV)
“For this reason He had chosen the Sabbath upon which to perform the act of healing at Bethesda. He could have healed the sick man as well on any other day of the week; or He might simply have cured him, without bidding him bear away his bed. But this would not
“have given Him the opportunity He desired. A wise purpose underlay every act of Christ's life on earth. Everything He did was important in itself and in its teaching. Among the afflicted ones at the pool He selected the worst case upon whom to exercise His healing power,
“and bade the man carry his bed through the city in order to publish the great work that had been wrought upon him. This would raise the question of what it was lawful to do on the Sabbath,
—Ellen White (DA 206)
“and would open the way for Him to denounce the restrictions of the Jews in regard to the Lord's day, and to declare their tradition void.”
“The Sabbath was Christ's busiest day for healing the sick. On this day He could best reach those who were laboring during the week. Wherever He went, He was a medical missionary, an unerring physician, speaking words of comfort and love!
“From Him flowed a stream of healing power, and the sick were made whole. He healed men and women with unhesitating willingness and with hearty joyfulness; for He was glad to be able to restore suffering ones to health.”
—Ellen White (5 MR 84)
“So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him. In his defense Jesus said to them, ‘My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.’”
John 5:16–17 (NIV)
John 7:22–24 (NKJV)
“Moses therefore gave you circumcision (not that it is from Moses, but from the fathers), and you circumcise a man on the Sabbath. If a man receives circumcision on the Sabbath, so that the law of Moses should not be broken,
John 7:21 (NKJV)
“are you angry with Me because I made a man completely well on the Sabbath? Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment.”
“In his defense Jesus said to them, ‘My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.’”
John 5:16–17 (NIV)
So what is God’s work?
Luke 4:18-21 (NKJV)
“‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,
Because He has anointed Me
To preach the gospel to the poor;
He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,
“‘To proclaim liberty to the captives
And recovery of sight to the blind,
To set at liberty those who are oppressed;
To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.’
Luke 4:18-21 (NKJV)
“Then He closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. … And He began to say to them, ‘Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.’”
Luke 4:18-21 (NKJV)
“Therefore the Jews sought all the more to kill Him, because He not only broke the Sabbath, but also said that God was His Father, making Himself equal with God.”
John 5:18 (NKJV)
“Most assuredly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the Son also does in like manner.
John 5:19 & 20 (NKJV)
“For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself does; and He will show Him greater works than these, that you may marvel.”
John 5:19 & 20 (NKJV)
“I have a greater witness than John’s; for the works which the Father has given Me to finish—the very works that I do—bear witness of Me, that the Father has sent Me.”
John 5:36-40 (NKJV)
“And the Father Himself, who sent Me, has testified of Me. You have neither heard His voice at any time, nor seen His form.
John 5:36-40 (NKJV)
“But you do not have His word abiding in you, because whom He sent, Him you do not believe.”
John 5:36-40 (NKJV)
“You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me. But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life.”
John 5:36-40 (NKJV)
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.
John 1:1-4 (NKJV)
“All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.”
John 1:1-4 (NKJV)
“So when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, “It is finished!” And bowing His head, He gave up His spirit.”
John 19:30 (NKJV)
“Therefore, because it was the Preparation Day, that the bodies should not remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day),
John 19:31-33 (NKJV)
“the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away. … But when they came to Jesus … [they] saw that He was already dead.”
John 19:31-33 (NKJV)
“This is the will of Him who sent Me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day.”
John 6:40 (NKJV)
“I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world.”
John 6:51 (NKJV)
“If I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me; but if I do, though you do not believe Me, believe the works, that you may know and believe that the Father is in Me, and I in Him.”
John 10:37 & 38 (NKJV)
“This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”
John 11:4 (NKJV)
“Then the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered a council and said, ‘What shall we do? For this Man works many signs.
John 11:47 & 48 (NKJV)
“If we let Him alone like this, everyone will believe in Him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and nation.‘”
John 11:47 & 48 (NKJV)
“Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You, as You have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him.
John 17:1-5 (NKJV)
“And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.
John 17:1-5 (NKJV)
“I have glorified You on the earth. I have finished the work which You have given Me to do. And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.”
John 17:1-5 (NKJV)
“So when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, “It is finished!” And bowing His head, He gave up His spirit.”
John 19:30 (NKJV)
“Jesus came, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, ‘Peace to you!’
John 20:26 & 27 (NKJV)
“Then He said to Thomas, ‘Reach your finger here, and look at My hands; and reach your hand here, and put it into My side. Do not be unbelieving, but believing.’”
John 20:26 & 27 (NKJV)
“And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.
John 17:1-5 (NKJV)
“And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, ‘Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God.’”
Revelation 21:3 (NKJV)
If knowing God is the highest
realization of human experience—and
this is the reality the Sabbath
represents—then Jesus died to assure
the very thing the Sabbath has
enshrined all along. Thus, the Sabbath
and the life, death and resurrection of
Jesus are not passing connections, but
bound by an unbreakable bond.