Video Teaching
Verse-by-Verse Commentary
Full Transcript

Video Teaching

Commentary

5 Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. 

1. Christians disagree on which unnamed festival Jesus was going to Jerusalem for in this instance.  Passover or Shavuot tend to be the ones most gravitate towards.
   1. If it was Passover (which Jesus also goes up for in John 2:13, 6:4, and 11:55) it would reasonably fit into Jesus’s 3.5 year period of public ministry.  Symbolically, healing during Passover would show that Jesus is liberating people today, just as Moses liberated in the past, painting him as the greater Moses.
   2. Passover happened at harvest, but John 4:35 says harvest was still four months away.  Shavuot was a festival that happened around that time.  It was a celebration of Moses receiving the law at Sinai.  Symbolically, healing on the Sabbath (a violation of the law, strictly interpreted) and then lecturing the Jewish leaders about the law afterwards would be fitting for a festival about God’s law.

2 Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. 3 Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed.

1. The pool was located in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate, a gate used primarily for moving sheep and other livestock in and out of the city.
2. The covered colonnades were a beautiful work of Roman architecture, but here it had been essentially turned into a homelessness camp by the poor and desperate who were hoping to find healing in the waters.  This was a place of immense suffering.
3. The pool of Bethesda was a local legend, not widely known throughout the empire. It was almost forgotten by history until archaeologists found it. Its modern remembrance is primarily because Jesus visited it.

—and they waited for the moving of the waters. 4 From time to time an angel of the Lord would come down and stir up the waters. The first one into the pool after each such disturbance would be cured of whatever disease they had.

1. This addition to verse three and the entirety of verse four is subject to scholarly debate.  It does not appear in some of the earliest version of the text.  It may have been a scribe’s explanatory note that was later incorporated into the text.
2. Regardless of its scriptural authenticity, the verse is helpful because it explains that people were waiting and watching for the water to bubble, at which point there would be a “mad dash” to be the first one in.
3. This intense focus on the pool caused the people to miss Jesus, a great healer, when He came.
4. “Their eyes were fixed on the water, expecting it to be troubled; they were so taken up with their own chosen way that the true way was neglected.” -Charles Spurgeon, “Jesus at Bethesda; or, Waiting Changed for Believing”, April 7 1867.

 5 One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”

1. The man Jesus approached had been an invalid for 38 years.  His whole life defined by his condition.
2. When Jesus asks him, “Do you want to get well,” it is not a silly question.  Being healed would be hard!  It would completely change the man’s life. He would lose his means of getting charity, have to find a trade, and possibly lose the community he knew by the pool.

7 “Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”

8 Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” 9 At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.

1. The man responded with an excuse, explaining that he has no one to help him into the pool. Jesus doesn’t ask for or need an explanation or justification.
2. Jesus commands him, “Get up. Pick up your mat and walk.” This healing requires the man to take initiative and trust Jesus, even though it may have seemed irrational or been physically difficult.
3. If you want to be healed from the unhealthy things in your life,pick up your mat and walk, trusting that Jesus’s power, mercy, and grace are available if you take the initiative.

The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, 10 and so the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.”

11 But he replied, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’ ”

12 So they asked him, “Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?”

13 The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.

1. After being healed, the man is confronted by authorities who are upset that he is carrying his mat on the Sabbath. They want him to preserve the status quo and effectively “go back where he came from.”
2. When we experience healing in Christ, some people may be frustrated and want to drag us back to our old, unhealthy ways.

14 Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.” 

1. Healing is not a “one and done” event. One must continually choose to live as a new creation and not slip back into sin or brokenness.

Full Transcript

A buddy of mine told me about a little church that he once served. It was a tiny country church, about twenty-five people in attendance on the average Sunday, and they were older—significantly older. They recognized that if they didn’t do something to start reaching out to younger people, they didn’t have that much time left, so they decided to have a meeting to come up with ways that they could reach out to younger generations. The pastor was quite pleased with this. He himself was younger and he recognized that, truth be told, this was something they probably should have talked about well before now, but late is better than never. They all came together and had this meeting.

There wasn’t a lot of energy in the room. People didn’t really seem to know what to do. They didn’t really know any young people or what they might like, so it was awkward stumbling for that first while. The pastor spoke up and tried to give them some direction. He said, “Most of you have children, and a lot of your children live in this community. They come sometimes on Christmas. Have you ever asked them what stops them from coming more regularly? That’d be a good starting place to give us a place to start working from.”

People started to say things. One woman said, “My son doesn’t like the music.” Another person said, “My daughter says there’s too much drama, that this community has too much politics, and so she just doesn’t want to be involved.” Another person spoke up, “Well, my grandkids have ball games on Sunday, and they don’t want to miss the ball games.” Then a woman stood up and she said, “This is ridiculous. I’m tired of this. What are we doing? Why are we sitting around trying to come up with ideas on how we need to change? They’re the ones that need to change. It’s not us, it’s the young people! They need to change!”

Then the room got cooking. People loved what she said. They spent the next thirty minutes talking about what was wrong with young people today. I wonder why there weren’t any young people in their church. Go figure.

After a full thirty minutes, they were coming near the close of the meeting and realized they had not come up with any ideas about how they might reach out to young people. They decided, “Let’s just wait on that. Let’s give it some time. You never know. We’ll look again next year.”

Change is hard. Change is really, really hard. Even when we recognize that we are not healthy—that there are things actively wrong with us—it is really hard to look a problem in the face and change our behaviors. A lot of times, it’s easier to just deal with the problem, to learn to live around it, and just be content with being unhealthy rather than face the terror of a new world in which we actually address the problems in our lives. Sometimes we cloak that by saying, “Oh, we’re just going to wait. Let’s just wait a little longer. Let’s see what happens. Maybe it’ll just solve itself.”

It is easy to see that with this little dysfunctional church, but I think most of us can relate to that. Most of us have something in our lives that we know isn’t healthy—whether it be pride or negativity or lust or rage—something that we know means we’re not living our best life. Every so often we trot it out and think about it. We say, “Man, maybe we should do something.” But sometimes we decide not to because change is hard and change is scary. We tell ourselves, “It’s a really busy time of the year. The holidays are coming up. We’ll look at it again in January. Really, who knows? Maybe it’ll be gone by then. Maybe a miracle will just drop out of the sky and solve all of our problems.”

The passage we’re looking at this morning is about someone who had lived with a problem for thirty-eight years. His whole life had been defined by a problem until one day Jesus came to him and asked him, “Do you want to be healed?”

We’re at John chapter five, verse one. By the way, we are almost to the end of the five chapters of John that we set out to look at, so I’d like you all to do something. I’m giving you homework this week. I want you to go home and look back on the five chapters that we looked at and just see what you learned. Start with the pre-incarnate Word. Read through the story of John the Baptist, the story of Nicodemus, and all of these stories to see what stuck with you. What is one thing you want to remember that you think was important?

It doesn’t have to be something that I said. Maybe it’s just a certain verse that stood out to you differently because of your life circumstances this time around. Maybe there was a particular song in worship that brought out a dimension of this scripture that you hadn’t seen before. Maybe it was another pastor you were reading that struck you. I don’t care where you learned something, but I want to know what you learned. I think it is so important as we come to the end of a project to take a minute and look back, because if we don’t intentionally think about what we want to remember, there is a good chance we’re not going to remember anything. Next week, I am going to include a little slip of paper in your bulletins and ask you to write down one thing that you learned.

The week after that, I want to share what you guys learned. I think there are so many things that people learn that can build each other up just by seeing what God has taught us across a period of time. You don’t have to sign them, so you don’t have to be worried about doing “good enough” that people are impressed with you. That’s not what this is about. Just think about something that would benefit this community—something you learned in the book of John that you’d be willing to share. You’ve been warned: next week, papers.

John chapter five, verse one: “Sometime later Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. Here, a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed.”

When we’re at a miraculous site, sometimes it can be easy to assume that this place was somehow more dignified than others, that somehow God’s grace just shone through a little clearer in this place. This is not the case with Bethesda. Bethesda was an ugly place. This was not the kind of place you would be delighted to spend a lot of time in, and you can see it in the details. First off, the pool of Bethesda is near the Sheep Gate. You can guess how the Sheep Gate got its name; it is a gate that was used predominantly for sheep. If you had sheep that you needed to get in and out of Jerusalem, that’s the gate you took them through. Occasionally some other livestock might come through, but this is primarily an area for animals.

There is a pool by the gate for animals. It would be incredibly reasonable to think that sheep might have stopped to drink from it if they were thirsty on the way in. It’s a place for animals, and yet people are here—some of the people who are most vulnerable, who are hurting, paralyzed, can’t walk, blind. All of these people are scattered around.

I think the NIV does a bit of a disservice here by saying there are “covered colonnades.” It’s a fine translation, but I don’t use that phrase in my regular speech. The King James Version perhaps does it better by just calling them “porches.” There are five porches. Another way to think about these structures might be shelter houses. These are not nice places to spend time. “Colonnade” suggests they’re somehow a beautiful ancient ruin just because the word is fancy, but these were not fancy. These are just buildings with no walls. They are makeshift structures to protect people from the sun and the rain. Essentially, what we’re coming across here is a pool surrounded by a homelessness camp. It is not beautiful. There is a lot of suffering by this pool.

The pool itself doesn’t have great storied legends. Don’t think that we remember this place because it was just so uniquely special. As a matter of fact, the Bible is pretty much the only source that references Bethesda. There was a period of time where archaeologists started to think that Bethesda didn’t exist, and maybe the person who wrote the Bible was wrong or mixing stories because they just couldn’t find a pool in the place where it was described. Sure enough, they found it given time, but that’s the thing—this place was almost forgotten about. It did not have this vast legend that people all over the empire knew about; it was a local legend.

The reason we remember this place today is because it is a place that Jesus graced with His presence. That’s what made it memorable. As ugly as it might have been, when you think about how Jesus graced it with His presence, it can be tempting to think, “Man, I wish I were there so I could see Jesus heal someone.” Heartbreaking though it may have been, I wish I could see that. But Jesus repeatedly assures us throughout the scriptures that He is with us. He says, “Where two or more are gathered, there I am.” He says, “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Jesus is with us in Walnut Grove. If you want to see Jesus heal someone, go to Him.

Now we have the mystery of verse four. Depending on what translation you are using, you may or may not have verse four in the text proper. If you are using the NIV like me, you will notice it is not in the text; it is a footnote. It reads: “From time to time, an angel of the Lord would come down and stir up the waters. The first one into the pool after each such disturbance would be cured of whatever disease they had.” It’s an explanation of how the pool worked.

Some of the older versions of John that have been found do not contain this verse. There is a debate: was this actually intended to be scripture, or did some well-meaning scribe add this note as just a little piece of commentary explaining how this particular area worked? As people copied the gospel again and again by hand, did they start to accidentally think that this piece of commentary was actually a part of the scripture itself? I read up a little bit on it and it is complicated. There are really good arguments to be made in either direction, and I cannot say that I feel comfortable weighing in definitively. Either way, whether it is a piece of commentary that has snuck in or is intended to be a part of the scripture proper, I think it’s helpful. It tells us what’s going on at this place—how it functions and what the people are doing.

All these people who have gathered there and are staying by the pool are waiting and watching for a miracle. They are waiting and watching for those bubbles to come out, and the second the water starts to bubble, there’s a mad dash because the first one in the water is healed. You can imagine that’s where all of the attention is wrapped. If you are waiting there for years, you don’t want to miss it because you weren’t paying attention for a minute. This is the focal point of these people’s lives: waiting and hoping for a miracle from this pool.

Even when Jesus comes—a great healer—no one seems to recognize Him. We see already in the book of John that Jesus has become something of a local legend. People know Him and seek His healing, and yet a whole camp of people waiting on healing don’t recognize Him. I think Charles Spurgeon put it really well. He says, “The blindness had come over the people at this pool. There they were, and there was Christ who could heal them, but not a single one of them sought Him. Their eyes were so fixed on the water, expecting it to be troubled; they were so taken up with their own chosen way, that the true way was neglected.”

All of us, to some extent, have that same potential. Instead of seeing problems and addressing them and taking them to Jesus, trusting that He can help, sometimes we wait. We just wait on it, kind of like that church. “Let’s give it another year. Let’s wait a little longer. Who knows what’ll happen? Maybe there’ll be some grand miracle and the problem will just go away.” It is easy to want to wait and not have to face the problem properly—not to take it to the infinitely better source that we know is there. We know we can take our problems to Jesus. We know He is a much better solution than waiting for a random miracle. Because, let’s be honest, what are the odds of a random miracle, right?  Occasionally you hear stories about people who have random, totally out-of-the-blue miracles that change their lives. Occasionally you’ll hear a story about someone who led a really rough life—a lot of drugs, a lot of crime. They end up in prison and, lo and behold, they have a vision from God out of nowhere. God says, “Hey, I have plans for you. Get it together.” Their life is changed, and everything is different from that moment onward.

It does happen; you can find these stories. There is a chance that a random miracle just plops out of the sky, but that doesn’t happen for most people, does it? You can see that even at this pool. There are tons of people in need waiting by the pool, and how many are healed when those bubbles come around? One.

There are a lot of people who are stuck waiting forever. Random miracles are not common. They are not a normative, expected way that we should expect our problems to go away. We need to take them to Jesus.

Continuing on, we see the story of one particular man who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?” That might seem like a silly question. Surely no one wants to be paralyzed; of course he wants to be healed. But imagine what it would be like to be him. Imagine if you were this guy for thirty-eight years. You’ve been living by that pool and your whole life is defined by that. You’ve learned how to get food by staying there. Your friends are all people you met while you were there. You don’t even know what’s down the street.

Can you imagine how his life would change if he were healed? It would change, and it would be terrifying. No one would give him charity anymore; no one is going to give a healthy man charity. He is going to have to find a trade. He is going to have to go into town and figure out how to live, and he has no experience with that. A lot of his friends are probably going to say, “What are you doing here, man? You can’t hang out by the pool anymore. It’s weird. Move on.” There are all kinds of reasons not to want to be healed. Being healed is infinitely harder in the short term than just sitting and languishing. So Jesus asks, because if you don’t want to be healed, it’s not going to work out.

He asked the man, “Do you want to be healed?” The man responds, “Sir, I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.” He gives an explanation as to why he’s there—an excuse. To be fair, I don’t think this is a bad excuse; I think it is a great excuse. He is prevented from being better. He has been stuck there for a fair reason. I am not going to fault the guy; I can’t imagine what else he would have done. But Jesus does not want an explanation. He did not ask for one, and he’s not seeking one. This man doesn’t have to justify why he is where he is to be worthy of healing. Jesus doesn’t care how we got there. Do you want to be healed now?

Yes, life is unfair. Yes, wrong things happen. There is a very good chance that you are here and you had nothing to do with it. But even if you are the cause of your own problems, Jesus asks, “Do you want to be healed?” No explanation is necessary. Jesus responds to the man, “Get up. Pick up your mat and walk.” The way He heals in this particular situation, He gives the man His power and His grace. All of it is right there at his fingertips. If you want to change your life, take it. But you have to take it. You have to stand up. You have to take initiative.

Think about how hard that would have been for that guy to think this was rational. He has been there for thirty-eight years; he doesn’t even know who Jesus is. This stranger comes up and says, “Stand up. Pick up your mat. Go.” That would have seemed laughable. We don’t know how hard it would have been to stand, either. We don’t know the details of this particular miracle. Had his legs atrophied? Could he remember what it was like to walk? Was it easy? Was it painful? Was he afraid it would be painful? There are all kinds of reasons not to do it, just as there are all kinds of reasons not to change. There are always ways you can convince yourself not to take initiative, but Jesus’s power is there. His grace is there. His mercy is there. All the man has to do is trust Him—trust that He can heal in the way that He’s claimed.

The man does it. As the story goes on, people come around and they’re frustrated with this guy. Authorities come around and they come up with this goofy reason to be upset: “You picked up your mat on a Sabbath. Can’t do that.” This man who has been paralyzed for years can stand, and rather than celebrating that with him, they want him to go back where he came from. They want to stop this because he is upsetting the status quo. The status quo was good. They don’t care if he is healed or better; they just want to live in the status quo. They need him to put back that mat where it came from and get right back next to that pool.

It’s absurd, and it’s true in real life. When we experience the healing and health that Jesus makes available to us, sometimes there are people who are frustrated because they liked things the way they were. They want to drag us right back to where we were, to our unhealthy ways.

But what does Jesus say? Jesus sees this man in the temple and He says, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning, or something worse may happen to you.” You are well again. Stop sinning. Don’t go back to being defined by brokenness or by hurt. Don’t go back to a bad way, even if it’s a different bad way. The man can’t literally go back to being paralyzed without a bizarre instance, but there are all kinds of ways he could slip back into a different sin, into a different way of being that was not what God created him to be. Jesus has given this man healing. He has made him closer to what he was made to be.

If we want to be changed by Jesus, it’s not a “one and done.” You have to continually make the choice to live into that healed self, to be the new creation He made us to be, rather than slipping right back down just because we solved one problem. If we want to be a new creation, we have to choose to stop living in unhealthy ways and live into the life that He’s made available to us.

I would bet a lot of us have problems or unhealthy things in our lives that we know are wrong—ways of living that are not good that we have trotted out before and said to ourselves, “This isn’t the time. Maybe later we’ll address it.” We tell ourselves this is not the time to take this to Jesus. Maybe we’re comfortable being unhealthy. Maybe that just seems like the way we are, and there is nothing we can do to change that. Or maybe we’re just hoping a random miracle plops down out of the sky and makes things easier for us.

Jesus asks us, “Do you want to be healed?” We don’t have to live that way. Do you want to be healed? If the answer is yes, pick up your mat and walk. Trust that His power, His mercy, and His grace are available. All we have to do is take initiative. He will help us every step of the way. Pick up your mat and walk. We are invited to trust that Jesus is the healer He says He is. Amen.