Sermon Tone Analysis

Get on The Bus

We don’t know what feast Jesus was going up to Jerusalem for.

It really didn’t matter, and is not necessary for the understanding of this story.

Realistically, Jesus went to Jerusalem at the time of the feast because he had business there.

His business, guised in a feast of the Jews, actually had much to do with a man who was laid at the edge of a pool for 38 years.

You see, scripture (John 2:23-24) says that Jesus knew all things.

This man did not take Jesus by surprise.

No, he actually had an appointment with Jesus that HE did not know about.

This pool was near the “sheep gate” that is mentioned in old testament scriptures, particularly in Nehemiah.

It was the entry point for livestock and feeding/watering.

This would be the proper place for Jesus to come, particularly as we’ve been told earlier in this gospel by John, in john 1.29 that this Jesus is the “Lamb of God”.

Sick, lame, paralyzed.

Laid here daily and with reason, reason we don’t necessarily fully see, until we get to a later verse…verse 7 mentions that when the water is stirred something happens.

If you are the first in, you get to be healed.

Blind.

Lame.

Paralyzed.

What havoc sin has wrought in this world.

The healing of these infirmities was one of the ministries of the messiah in Isaiah 35.3-6

I’d like you to see something important.

In most bibles, verse 4 is missing.

There’s a reason it is missing.

But first, let’s go back to the KJV to see what’s missing.:

Why did this verse get edited out in later versions of the bible?

There’s a reason.

Like with a great mystery, archaeologists and biblical scholars sometimes have to piece together the bible a piece at a time.

And like biblical sleuths, they must get their evidence a piece at a time.

Sometimes they have all of their information, sometimes they do not.

The New Testament has been preserved in more manuscripts than any other ancient work of literature, with over 5,800 complete or fragmented Greek manuscripts catalogued, 10,000 Latin manuscripts and 9,300 manuscripts in various other ancient languages including Syriac, Slavic, Gothic, Ethiopic, Coptic and Armenian.

The dates of these manuscripts range from c. 125 (the {\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}📷52 papyrus, oldest copy of John fragments) to the introduction of printing in Germany in the 15th century.[citation

needed]

The earliest New Testament manuscripts were written on papyrus, made from a reed that grew abundantly in the Nile Delta.

This tradition continued as late as the 8th century.[7]

Papyrus eventually becomes brittle and deteriorates with age.

The dry climate of Egypt allowed some papyrus manuscripts to be partially preserved, but, with the exception of {\displaystyle {\mathfrak {P}}}📷77, no New Testament papyrus manuscript is complete;

Papyrus 37-

Matthew 26:19-37, 26:37-52

You probably didn’t need to know that, but I thought you needed to know it.

so there.

It helps us to understand John 5:7 that is coming up here.

You see, this uniquely is not a Christian pool of water.

This is not a yahweh event in the pool of Bethsaida.

This is a pagan event.

It is something extra yahweh, extra Jesus, extra christian essentially.

It is a pagan event that this man is waiting to have happen.

Note, Jesus is fulfilling in his life the hopes and dreams of the Jewish world.. Here, Jesus is perhaps revealing that he can fulfill the hopws and dreams of the pagan and gentile world as well.

If “salvation is of the Jews”, then as Jesus brings that salvation it must spread out to the wider world as well and maybe this story points to that fact.

38 years.

Important note.

He would have been so weak he would have not been able to walk or stand.

His muscles would have been atrophied beyond usefulness.

He was up in years, we don’t know when this paralysis began… but he was a hopeless case.

He was certainly the most needy.

I don’t want to get caught up in numbers, and typically do not.

But interestingly, 38 years is the number of years that Israel had wandered in the wilderness.

Spiritually, Israel was a hopeless and powerless nation wandering and waiting for something to happen.

Perhaps Jesus saw this image in this man who laid daily at the pool, waiting for something to happen- but never actually having the will for something to happen.

Do you wish to be healed?

What a question.

What a naive or uncaring question.

But Jesus is calling to the man’s will… his years of discouragement may have worked on him.

Do you WANT to be healed?

(the will to be changed).

We know from the story that Jesus heals the man.

We know that he walks away upright and his legs strengthened.

But Jesus had a lesson in this healing.

We have to read all the way to verse 40 to find it, but please see that Jesus had a spiritual lesson he wanted to be taught.

This man did parallel the state of the nation of Israel.

The Jews who had challenged the man after he was healed are addressed by Jesus.

He is saying to them that they are no different than the man who was laying at the pool.

They have the very means of salvation, of healing for them, laid out before them… but they don’t take it.

They don’t reach out and grab it.

It is Jesus.

This man had lost his own determination.

He had been unsuccessful for so long that he had given up… He didn’t have the personal gumption, the wherewithal to make it to the pool.

Now, this verse tells us something that we should really pay close attention to.

Jesus said, “Get Up” to a man who didn’t even have the will to do so.

So, while you are looking at the miraculous healing of Jesus, please also see a sub-miracle if you will.

Jesus was able to not only heal the physical condition of this man, he was able to give the will to get up as well.

This man never requested of Jesus to be healed.

Please see that.

Jesus didn’t grant a request, he didn’t respond to a request…this man was healed without ever knowing that Jesus could do this in the first place.

This appears to be the third of Jesus’ miracles, but whose counting.

It is doubtful that he heard of the water turned to wine or the conversation with the Samaritan woman… Jesus just came along and healed him.

This healing also did not reflect an act of faith on the part of the lame man.

There is no indication that he placed his faith in Jesus at all.

Jesus simply did what Jesus can do.

Jesus did the impossible.

And he asked this man to do the impossible.

That will which was broken from 38 years of laying at that pool, that will was renewed.

And in verse 9 we see that this man not only got up- he walked away.

What does John want us to see in this story?

I think that if we look a little further along in the story we get a glimpse of what John is pointing to.

Look at John 5:25-29:

You see, in our story here at the pool of Bethsaida, Jesus uses “resurrection” language.

Look closely at his command, “Get up!”

This is a word that is used in the gospels to describe the resurrection.

Here is the secret of Jesus’ work.

He wants us to see what the new creation will look like.

He wants us to see what His kingdom really looks like, what he came to do and be and why he created us and what our intended purpose is as well.