One of my facebook friends posed the following question in a discussion group this morning:
If Jesus broke the Sabbath [John 5.18], why can't you?This friend went on to emphasise his belief that the Master broke the Sabbath by quoting verse 17:
Jesus answered them, “My Father is always working, and I too must work.”He claimed that our Messiah's assertion in John 5:17 shows that he "worked" on that Sabbath day!
Far from breaking the Sabbath, our Master Yeshua the Anointed One actually did the opposite.
In John chapter 5, the Jewish authorities accused Yeshua of breaking the Sabbath because he:
(1) healed a man who had been sick for 38 years by the pool with five porches, near the Sheep Gate.
(2) after the healing, he told the man to take up his mat and walk.
There is no commandment in the Torah that says you cannot heal a sick person on Sabbath. Nor is there any commandment that says you cannot pick up your mat and go home. Yeshua did not break the Fourth commandment. He merely went against some man-made rules.
We will do well to remember the words of the Messiah in his sermon on the Mount:
Matthew 5:17-20 NKJV
17 “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. 18 For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled. 19 Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 For I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.
Even in this account of healing, our Messiah told the man whom he had healed,
John 5:14 ESV
. . . “Listen, you are well now; so stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.”
It is unthinkable that the Anointed Yeshua would have taught the man to ignore or break the Fourth Commandment.
As for your question about what Yeshua meant when he said that he is the Master of the Sabbath, well, he certainly DID NOT mean that we can break the Sabbath commandment. Otherwise, would his followers have kept the Sabbath, as we can read about the women doing so in Luke's gospel:
Luke 23:56 ESV
Then they returned and prepared spices and ointments. On the Sabbath they rested according to the commandment.
My brothers and sisters, let us keep the Fourth Commandment. Shabbat Shalom.
