Sermon Tone Analysis

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.

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

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.

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.

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 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 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.”

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

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.