John 5:1-18
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Jesus Our Deliverer
Jesus Our Deliverer
In John’s gospel Jesus is shown as going to all of the Jewish festival, and here at the beginning of John 5 the scene is set with Jesus returning to Jerusalem for a Feast.
This specific story takes place at a pool by the Sheep Gate. A pool named Bethesda which means “House of Mercy.” What a popper name for what Jesus does in this section of scripture.
As we come to the text Jesus had just shown amazing mercy and compassion for a women who was in sin, a man who’s child had fallen ill and was going to die and now in our section of scripture someone who had spent most of their life never getting any help from anyone.
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 Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, as there was a crowd in the place.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.
Why were all of these lame, blind, and paralyzed at this pool? We know these pools in Jerusalem were occasionally fed by artesian wells. The wells would start to flow and the pools would be stirred with an influx of water with special characteristics—something like the hot springs people visit even today for therapeutic reasons.
Jesus walks upon this hopeless situation for this one man. At this pool named “House of Mercy” where he is just one in a sea of “invalids”- the blind, the lame and the paralyzed. A scene of hopelessness, Yet in walks Jesus Christ, God in the Flesh.
It is important to note that this it a historic site. This pool has been found and the excavations of this pool has found this very porch with its five covered colonnades. This all confirms the accuracy of the description given here in the Gospel of John.
What do we see?
The Amazing Compassion of Jesus
The Amazing Compassion of Jesus
Jesus is the Word made Flesh. He reveals God, and even says in John 14:19, “ If you have seen Me you have seen the Father.”
And again in John 1:18, “No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.”
Jesus here shown us that God is a God of Compassion.
But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.
All through out the gospel Jesus is often moved by compassion. He is God and therefore has the same compassion as God.
He feels sympathy- He feels the pain of the fallen sinner
He has compassion fort he physical suffering, which is why He heals people
He has compassion for the demonic suffering which is why he delivers people- Mark 5
He has compassion for the sin suffering which is why He saves people.- John 3:16
God by His nature is compassionate and so is Jesus
The gospel is “Good News” because it is a message of God’s compassion for us while we were sinners, and when we respond to it we find the greatest healing- salvation from sins.
In these lay a multitude of invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed.
This Compassionate God shows up on a seen that pictures the sad spiritual plight or condition of the world.
In John 5:1-8 Jesus Shows mercy to a man who has recieved no mercy- Isn’t this the gospel message.
No one acted on his behalf- no one would help him
No one said “since you have been here so long why don’t you go first.”
But there would be mercy from Jesus after nearly 40 years
There is a contrast between the people who saw this guy everyday and never helped him, and Jesus who this man didn’t even know who showed Him amazing compassion.
In John 4 Jesus shows what the mission field that He came for look like when He shows this outcast women mercy without morality. Where the Jews condemned the Samaritans, Jesus saw sheep that were without a shepherd and harassed.
“Do you wish to get well?” This seems like a strange question to ask a guy who has been lying by this pool for 38 years lame. Jesus here directs the conversation to the immediate need. It is as if He is asking “Have you lost all hope?” “Is there anything left of Hope within you?”
R.C. Sproul tells this story: One day years ago, when I was working at a gym in the East Liberty section of Pittsburgh, I left work and headed home after dark. Just as I was walking past a jewelry store, a man rushed out the door with the owner right behind him hollering, “Stop, thief!” The thief ran into me and almost knocked me to the ground. At that point, I reacted instinctively—I grabbed the man and said, “Hold it!” I half expected him to pull out a gun and shoot me, but he only looked at me and said, “I give up.” Soon the police came and took him to jail.The next day, I saw one of the police officers whom I knew and asked him about the man and his curious behavior. He said: “Oh, we know him. We can put him in jail for six months, but the day he gets out he’ll go do something like this.” It turned out that the man committed crimes in hopes of getting caught because he wasn’t able to survive outside of jail. He was used to living behind bars, where he had a bed every night and three meals a day. There are people like that, who are satisfied in their paralyzed condition and who are threatened by life to such a degree that they don’t want to have to deal with the vagaries of human existence.
Jesus directs the attention to the need and how it has never been solved. There is a focus on here on the physical , but Christ does get to the bigger problem that this man has and the is in the spiritual realm. Man’s great problem is that either they don’t recognize that they are sick, or they don’t want to be cured because they are happy, for a time in their sins. Sometimes the chaos and darkness becomes comfortable and it is all they know, so it is safe.
For the first time here is somebody who cares about him. In this mans time he would have been an outcast viewed as being punished by God, But the Savior cares for Him, and even seeks this man out!- Jesus says to the Pharisees when they question Him in Matt 9:11-13, “ And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” 12 But when he heard it, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. 13 Go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Here we see this amazing mercy that God has. This story is truly a display of the Gospel message- Light has come!
The response of the man wasn’t that he lack the desire to be healed, but rather he didn’t have the means to be healed.
Jesus said to him, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.”
Jesus gives these three commands, “Get up, Pick up, walk.” John 5:9 As with the story of dead Lazarus in John 11:43, Jesus’ word accomplished His will.
Here we see the illustration of conversion in our lives. This man was hopeless until the Hope of the World stepped in. It is similar to the story were Lazarus was dead and in a tomb until Jesus “Come out” Eph 2 and “We were dead in our sins and trespasses, But God!”
When we come to Christ and obey His command to believe, God works in and through His Word. “Spirit Gives birth to Spirit!”
It doesn’t say anything about the man’s faith. He didn’t need to believe to get well, and he didn’t even know who this man was. But Jesus knew him John 5:6 “knew he had already been there a long time.”
Why did Jesus pick the Sabbath?
Why did Jesus pick the Sabbath?
Why didn’t Jesus just wait one more day, so that He could’ve followed the “Rules”. Jesus was picking a fight.
Jesus picked the Sabbath for the confrontation. The man could have been healed three days later or three day earlier. Jesus knew the controversy that would be started by telling the man “pickup you mat.”
And he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.
The Jews had perverted the Sabbath from a gift of God for rest, into the worst day of the week, and the day of the greatest bondage- Luke 6 Jesus heals a man with a withered hand and asks the Jews “Is it lawful to do good or do harm, in order to save a life or destroy it?”
The Sabbath was the focal point of their self-righteous, legalistic religion.
Jesus refused to obey the legalistic man made rules for the sabbath which was actually Rabbinic tradition. He knew they had turned a gift into a burden, a day fo worship into a day of bondage.
The Sabbath was a means to glorify God and Honor God, a gift given by God to man. Yet the Jews turned it into a burden in which they could demonstrate their false righteousness.
So Jesus attacks them at the heart of their system by an act of compassion. This amazing compassion of Jesus is followed by the amazing contempt of the Jews
John 5:10 The Amazing Contempt of the Jews
John 5:10 The Amazing Contempt of the Jews
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.”
The Jews could have care less that the man could walk and was healed. “Forget the miracle, who told you to carry your mat?”- There was an intimidation that was happening with this questioning- “Why are you breaking our laws?”
There was nothing but contempt. They missed the healing because they were blinded by religious rules. More importantly they had nothing but contempt for Jesus and what he had done.
The scribes had listed thirty-nine tasks that were prohibited on the Sabbath, and carrying a burden was one of them. Instead of rejoicing at the wonderful deliverance of the man, the religious leaders condemned him for carrying his bed and thereby breaking the law.
This wasn’t scripture but it was added to the scripture. They had taken something that wasn’t even in scripture and put it on the same level and authority of God’s words.
How sad is it when something that is a gift becomes a burden. When we take what is from God and make it less or more then what it truly is.
Our salvation is one place where this happens all the time. It gets added to by saying is “It’s about what you do. You earn your salvation because:
So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.
or the opposite where we say all I need is faith
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,
Well which is it? Is it my action that save me or my faith? Really our actions are not the means of our salvation but rather they are the fruit of our faith. The idea isn’t contradictory but they work hand in hand in our life. The Jews faith was in their law and traditions, so their actions proved this!
John 5:11-14 The Amazing Testimony of the Man
John 5:11-14 The Amazing Testimony of the Man
This man was chosen by Jesus as an act of Grace because of His need and also to display God’s glory in him, and then Jesus slips into the crowd- so for the moment Jesus is unknown.
Then it is Jesus finds the man and has a conversation with him, which is probably longer then what we read here. John 21:25 “Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.”
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.”
There is something that is more important then the healing that Jesus is addressing here. The thirty-eight years of illness with no compassion is nothing compared to an eternity away from God. “You have been made well, go and sin no more.” Jesus here gives the means that are necessary for forgiveness, which is the same thing He did for the women at the well in John 4, and for Nicodemus in John 3 - He reveals Himself.
Jesus is not merely interested in healing a person’s body, but far more important is the healing of the person’s soul from sin.
Physical Sickness last for a season, but the Sickness of Sin has eternal effects.
What does the Man do after?
It is almost like an act of penance to get back in right standing he tells the Jewish leaders “it was Jesus who healed me and told me to carry my mat.”
There is an important distinction that needs to be made - Jesus did not say that the man’s sins had been forgiven as He did in dealing with the sick man who was lowered through the roof in Mark 2:1-12
It is possible to experience and exciting miracle, or be a part of an awesome experience in a service, yet still not be saved and go to heaven.
We don’t see or hear of this man again, and some view this as a sad story of someone who experienced an amazing healing miracle but never followed Jesus. He just returned to the religious rulers and their system- He returned to the ordinary everyday life of that time. Jesus offered freedom for the bondage yet he return to the bondage.
This right here is actually a common theme: Jesus healed many who would never follow Him. The man turned right back to the damning religion.
“Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and love greetings in the marketplaces and the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at feasts, who devour widows’ houses and for a pretense make long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.”
“They devour the widows’ houses,” How do they do this?
Jesus looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the offering box, and he saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. And he said, “Truly, I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them. For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.”
This is the religion that Jesus says in Luke 21:6 “there will not be left a stone upon another that will not be thrown down.” Jesus says “I am going to tear this whole thing down.”
John 5:16-18 The Controversy
John 5:16-18 The Controversy
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.
The Jewish Leaders didn’t prosecute the man who was healed and broke their sabbath laws, but they did persecute the Lord Jesus
Jesus healed on the sabbath a demonic Luke 4:31-37, defended His disciples for picking grain on the sabbath Matt 12:1-8, would heal a a man’s withered hand on the sabbath Matt 12:9-14.
He deliberately challenged the legalistic traditions of the scribes and Pharisees because they had taken the Sabbath- God’s gift to man- and had transformed it into a prison house of regulations and restrictions.
Jesus when confronted says “I am only doing what my Father has been doing!”
God’s sabbath rest had been broken by man’s sin (Gen 3) and ever since the fall of man, God has been seeking lost sinners and saving them.
But Jesus answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.”
“My Father”- This one statement would be the kickoff to the cross. They persecuted Jesus for healing on the Sabbath, but they wanted to kill Him because he made Himself equal to God. John 3:16 “Only begotten.”
“Of course, the penalty for such blasphemy was death. It is here that the “official persecution” of Jesus began, culminating in His crucifixion. In the days that followed, Jesus often confronted His enemies with their evil desire to kill Him (John 7:19, 25; 8:37, 59). They hated Him without a cause (John 15:18–25). They ignored the good deeds that He performed for the helpless and hopeless, and centered their attention on destroying Him.”
Jesus made Himself equal to God because He is God- this is the theme of John’s Gospel- The Jewish leaders could not disprove His claims. Light had come into the world but they remained inn the shadows, so they sought to destroy Him and get Him out of the way, and allow themselves to remain in darkness: Yet in His crucifixion and HIs resurrection, Jesus openly affirmed His deity and turned His enemies’ weapons against them-
As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.
This is the work of Christ. What the religious leaders ment as a means to rid themselves of Jesus, Jesus used as a means to bring salvation to many- innumerable
All this was God’s plan. Paul writes in Acts 13
For those who live in Jerusalem and their rulers, because they did not recognize him nor understand the utterances of the prophets, which are read every Sabbath, fulfilled them by condemning him.
These men here are fulfilling the will of God by condemning Christ, because “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son,” as an atoning sacrifice so that we sinners who stood condemned in our sin could find new life, a redeemed life.
What about you?
What about you?
There is an important question we must ask ourselves, Do we love Christ, and embrace Him as Lord and Saviour?
Or are we still captive to a religion that we a loyal to that is led by false teachers telling us lies and making us prisoners and captives?
Are we prisoners to the old ways, have we put the chains back on that once held up prisoners.
The Warning is there is only one hope of Salvation and that is the Lord Jesus Christ. To Reject Him is to be lost forever.
It is an old maxim that nature can never rise above itself. Water, coming from the top of a hill, will rise as high as its source. But unless there is some extraordinary pressure put on it, it will never rise higher.
So it is with human nature. Scripture says it is exceedingly vile; we cannot expect good works out of an evil nature. Can a bitter well send forth sweet water? As poison does not grow on healthful trees, with healthful fruit, so healthy fruit cannot grow on poisonous trees.
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,
Eph 2:1-3 shows hopelessness, and helplessness, much like the man in our story. There was no salvation, no forgiveness, there was not New life. Everyone was stuck in their sins.
“But God”- introduces God’s action toward sinners. He is described as being rich in mercy, and it is because God has acted on our behalf, we can find salvation.
He sent the gift of His only Begotten Son Jesus Christ, who chose a cross for those who were lost, in darkness, and dead in their sins.
The Call of Christ is open to those who would respond. He cries out in Matthew 11:28, “Come to Me all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
John 7:37, “If any one is thirsts, let him come to Me, and drink.” Come and be satisfied by the Lord Jesus Christ.
John 4:10 “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”
This is the call of Jesus today. Are you thirsty? Are you tired of struggling to find forgiveness, to find redemption? Tired of striving to be the best you can be, yet continue to fall short? are you tired trying to be a “religious” person but not finding life? “Do you want to be healed?”
Then Come to the one who was pierced for your transgression. Come to the one whom by His stripes you are healed. Come to the fountain of Life and drink. Find Forgiveness, find hope, find New Life in Christ Jesus.