The Healing at the Pool | John 5:1-15 | Week 10

Good morning. My name is Chase Denoux for those of you who don’t know me and for those of you that are visiting with us, we are so grateful to have you. If you’re a member, it is wonderful to see you, as always. And we are excited to have you here for our Walk for Kids Sunday.

I’m excited about today for many reasons. I love that we have the opportunity to partner with an organization like 4 Kids. I just want to thank you for Andrew being here again. I actually got to meet him at a workshop that I went to that they put on, that was just wonderful. And every interaction that I’ve had with the organization, whether it’s someone personally, staff member, going to an event, serving with them, I’ve just been very impressed.

And so I’m grateful for the work that they do. I also love that we’re getting to do this walk and this potluck as a family. I’m looking forward to walking the course with you all and talking and that fellowshipping afterwards with food. And I’m excited to preach the word this morning as well. So let’s go ahead and dive in.

If you’ve been with us the last couple of months, you know that we’re in a series called The Ministry of Jesus. And I love that over the first 30 days of the year or so we got to do a reading plan as a congregation and read through the Gospels together. And now we’re getting to walk back through and really dive deep into the interactions of Jesus. And we see that as we’ve walked through, the stories kind of build on each other.

We see Jesus do something in one story, have certain conversations. You kind of learn, okay, he’s capable of doing this. And you see it kind of pop up. And we’ll talk about that a little bit as we walk through today. But last week we got to hear from Josh Franco, who did a great job, one of my dear friends, and he spoke about the healing of the official’s son in John chapter four.

And a few of the things that he brought up that really stuck out to me was that we need to trust Jesus word, that we don’t need to continually be proved over and over that we can trust Jesus at his word. And tied with that he talked about as we follow Jesus, there should be a progression of our faith. And so today we’re going to move into John chapter five, and we’ll be discussing another healing. And I love that Tony kind of set this up, talking about how Jesus really brought this new teaching about helping people that were overlooked. And although it’s a little bit different way today, that is what we will see from Jesus.

So you can be turning to John chapter five. The verses will be on the screen as well. We’re going to start in verse one. And just so you’re aware I’m going to be reading from the ESV version this morning. Starting in verse one, it says after this there was a feast of the Jews and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. If you remember from Joe’s lesson, it’s talking about up to Jerusalem because it is elevated is higher than the rest of the cities.

So Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is 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 38 years. We’ll stop there for a moment, just a few quick things that I want to point out in these first few verses. It mentions that Jesus went to Jerusalem for one of the feasts. Now we believe this to be one of three feasts. It could be Passover, a feast called Purim or Pentecost. And from what I was reading oftentimes in the Scriptures, when it says a feast or the feast, it’s mentioning Passover.

So a lot of people think it is Passover, but it could be one of those three feasts that’s neither here nor there. Just to nugget for you. The other thing I wanted to point out really quickly, as you might notice on my slide, that it jumps from verse three to verse five. And it’s not a typo. If you’re looking at your Bible, if you have an NIV or ESV, a few other versions, you’ll see the same thing as well.

It might be italicized or there might be a note at the bottom. And I just want to explain really quickly so you don’t think your Christian life is a lie because verse four has gone missing. There is a reason why. And I just wanted to quickly explain, as we know, the Scriptures were originally copied down and then they had scribes that copied the copy, copied the copy. And so once they found the earliest and most accurate manuscripts of John five, they saw that verse four was not included.

So they think that John didn’t actually write verse four, that someone may be included it for historical context, but that’s not really what matters. What matters is what’s happening here. And so I’m going to read verse four as it’s written in other versions, just for context to the story. So verse four, it says from time to time it’s talking about the pool that was mentioned earlier. 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. So this verse, it gives us a little insight as to why all these people are gathered around this pool. See, their hope was stored up and getting a chance to be the first one in the water when it was stirred up in the hopes that they would be healed of whatever they have. So I don’t want you to get caught up in the fact that some versions have verse four and some don’t, because that’s not what’s significant. What’s significant is that we learned from verse four that during this time period, it was believed that an angel would come down and stir the water from time to time and provide healing to the individual that got in first.

We don’t really know if this was true or if it was superstition, but something happened at this pool because it was enough to where people waited there day after day and year after year to try to be the first one in. So they put their hope in that pool. If they were blind, deaf, lame, they put their hope in that pool. So that’s the scene. You have these people who are sick that are hoping to be healed by this water.

And then verse six enters Jesus. Verse six says, When Jesus saw him and it’s talking about the man who’s been an Invalid for 38 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? You know, I love this little section here because I love that it says, Jesus saw him lying there and knew. Now I know in other versions, like NIV, it says, and Jesus learned. But from context and the things that we’ve learned so far, Jesus knew this man right?

When I read this, I thought back to the woman at the well and how she said Jesus told her everything she had ever done. And I love, like I said earlier, how these stories are building on each other. You see that Jesus has this ability to look at someone and know their life. So we understand that he has done that already. And it talks about how he knew him.

And not only did he know that he had been there a long time, like it said, he knew that he was an Invalid, but he knew the condition of his heart and his soul as well, which we’ll learn later in the story. And this is no different from us, right? Jesus knows us. He knows you. He knows me.

He knows the good, the bad and the ugly of our lives. He knows the past and the present and the future. And so I want to ask you, are you encouraged that Jesus knows everything about you? And if you aren’t encouraged, I want to change your mind, because I think it can be easy to be discouraged or ashamed and think, man, I don’t like that Jesus knows that part of me. Because think about it.

If we knew everything about each other, I’m talking every thought, every crazy thought, every crazy action. We don’t know everything about each other. It might be hard for us to even approach each other the same, right? If we knew every crazy thought that we had. But what does Jesus ask this man?

Knowing everything about him and approaching him, he asked him, do you want to be healed? See, I think as people, we spend so much time hiding our weaknesses and the things that we’re going through, putting up a front that everything is okay and that’s what the world teaches us to do. But that’s also exactly what Satan wants us to do. But Jesus is leaning down to us and he’s not ridiculing us or shaming us, but simply asking, do you want to be healed? You know, I pictured Jesus here stooping down low and so lovingly asking this question.

I don’t know if you’re anything like me, but as we walked through this series, I’ve tried to picture what Jesus demeanor is like in each interaction. And so I kind of pictured Jesus just kind of crouching down to this man, and maybe he puts his hand on his shoulder, smiling at him, looking him in his eyes and asking him this layered question, do you want to be healed? And I think that this is the demeanor that Jesus has with us as well. And so that’s why I say be encouraged that Jesus knows everything about you. Now, if he asks you to change and you don’t, maybe the demeanor might change a little bit, too.

But be encouraged that Jesus loves you and he wants you to be healed. All right, let’s keep reading and see the man’s response to Jesus question. In verse seven it says, 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. You know, I’ve heard this story preached on and lessons done on this story and I think many times it’s easy for us to see this answer and think, this guy, he’s just making excuses. He’s not answering the question that Jesus asked him, right? Jesus asked, do you want to be healed? Not why can’t you be healed? And look, I get that point.

I get that we can pull things from that for ourselves today, to not make excuses and all those things. But I want to take a moment to think about this man’s life before we jump all over him for saying these reasons why he can’t be healed. Just imagine what it must have been like to be this man. He’s been an Invalid for 38 years. And to put that in perspective, the life expectancy during this time was 34 years.

And being at the pool of Bethesda, maybe he had tried other things before he got there, right? Maybe he had person after person after person trying to heal him in different ways or give him promises that were broken. We don’t really know, right? But it had to be a journey to get to this pool. And now every single day he has to either try to find someone to help bring him to this pool, or maybe he stays there all the time and never moves.

I would imagine he had to beg for food. And each time the pool is stirred, he struggles to try to be the first one in, only to fail each and every time.

I imagine this scene is something that’s hard to see, right. I don’t know if you’ve ever had an experience where something is painful to look at, but you can’t look away. I remember pretty vividly my first interaction with someone that was homeless when I was a child. I was probably in second or third grade. My mom had taken me after school to Burger King, bought me some food.

We sat down to eat. And I remember a homeless man walked in and was asking people for money. And I remember looking at him and just not understanding why he looked the way he looked. He was dressed the way he dressed had an odd assortment of items.

And my mom kind of noticed me looking at him and understood that I was confused. And so my mom, my mom described to me why this man looked the way he looked, had the things he had. And I remember losing my appetite because I came to the understanding. Now, as I explained it now, I didn’t understand it this well as a child, obviously. But I came to some sort of understanding that I knew when I walked into that Burger King that my mom was going to take care of me right? My mom was going to make sure I ate. I was going to eat my fill and maybe not even finish it and throw the rest away.

And I came to an understanding that this man wasn’t guaranteed that same thing. He was hoping that someone would extend a hand and help him, which my mom did thereafter. The point is that there was a degree of desperation in this man when he walked into Burger King right? He didn’t know if he was going to eat or not.

And me as a child, that was hard for me to look at and see. And that’s how I imagined this man at the pool being. Imagine what the scene must have looked like when the water was stirred up and everyone was trying to be the first one in, right? It’s not like when we were kids and we were like, last one in is a rotten egg. Like there was probably scratching and clawing and pulling people away from the pool, fights breaking out.

Everyone wanted to be healed.

It wasn’t a peaceful Florida day at the pool. And this man, not being able to walk, would have been crawling belly on the ground, groveling, trying to get to this water. And it was probably a bit demeaning. Now, taking all of this into an account, you can understand the answer to his question. Do you want to be healed a little better.

Sir, no one can help me in. And when I try to get down, someone jumps down ahead of me. See, he heard the question that Jesus asked him, but he was looking past Jesus into the water, which he had put all his hope in and was losing the only hope that he thought he had. See, this man was a picture of hope and hopelessness wrapped up into one.

David Giusick said it like this, the man is an interesting case of hope combined with hopelessness. He had hope or would never have come to the pool of Bethesda. Yet once there, he had little hope to be the favored one to win the healing that day. So my question for us is, what do you keep groveling to in the hopes of healing? You know, this man was so focused on the water and had put so much hope in it that he was seeing right through the one who could truly heal him.

So what is it for you? Are you groveling back to a relationship that’s never been good for you? Are you groveling back to pornography? Are you groveling back to your comfort zone or to drinking or drugs or selfishness or whatever it is for you? We all know what it is for us, but Jesus is asking us the same question as he’s asking this man, do you want to be healed?

Check out Romans 15, verse 13. It says, May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. See, abounding hope, not just hope, but overflowing abounding hope was staring this man in the face, but he was fixated on the false hope of that pool. So ask yourself, are you looking past Jesus to false hope? Are you groveling back to things that aren’t going to provide true healing?

Let’s continue to read Jesus response in verse eight. It says, 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. You know, I love the way this is worded. It says, at once he was healed and took up his bed and walked.

It’s not like Jesus said, Get up. And then the man kind of like stretched out his hammies and then hopped up and had like baby giraffe legs. It was immediate. The man hadn’t walked for 38 years. Some of us have been sitting for 30 minutes and it’s going to take us a second to get up and get our legs going before the walk.

The point is, is that when Jesus says something, it happens. Check out Psalm 33, verse nine. This is talking about God, it says, for he spoke and it came to be he commanded and it stood firm. Later in John, chapter five, the chapter that we’re in in verse 19, it says, so Jesus said to them, Truly, truly. I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing.

For whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise. Like Father, like Son. And I love that in Psalm 33, the verse that we just read, it says, he commanded and it stood firm. See, Jesus won’t help you just to stand up, but he’ll help you to stand firm. No, baby, giraffe legs.

And I love that Jesus asked this man to do exactly what he cannot do. And Jesus’s words are enough to make the impossible possible. I also love that Jesus says, Take your bed. Now, I know there’s a point later that talks about doing this on the Sabbath, but I think that there’s another point of emphasis here. Going back to the story about the Samaritan woman at the well, one of the points that Tony made later in his sermon was that she left her water jars at the end, right, because she didn’t need the temporary water anymore.

She had found the living water that was Jesus. And I think that this is similar, right? Jesus is telling me, Take that bed with you. You don’t need it here anymore. You’ll never have to come back to this pool ever again.

And similar to us, the things that we run to that are not Jesus in the hopes of healing. He’s telling us, don’t do it anymore. You don’t need it. You know, maybe Jesus or someone in your life that Jesus is using is asking you to do something that you feel like you can’t do or to stop something that you can’t stop. But through Jesus words, through the Scriptures, the power is being made available to you, just like it was being made available to this man when Jesus said, Stand up and walk.

So lean on Jesus for the healing that you truly need. You don’t need to grovel back to temporary pleasures or comforts that won’t provide true healing. And look, I am certainly not Jesus, and no one here is, but we can definitely point you towards his words that help heal. So if you’re in need of that today, dive deep in the scriptures, ask someone for help so that you can get true healing. All right, let’s keep reading.

In John five, it says, now that day was the Sabbath. And if you don’t know what the Sabbath is, it’s kind of pointing back to Jesus, I’m sorry. God created the heavens and the Earth in six days and rested on the 7th day, which he didn’t need to do. But it was a model for us that we would work six days rest on the 7th. Now, that day was 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. He memorized that verse quickly.

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. Afterwards, 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 healed him. You know, I couldn’t help but laugh a little bit as I was preparing the sermon and I read those first few verses.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a situation where someone that has no authority or has no idea what they’re talking about is trying to tell you how to do something. That’s what it feels like here, right? The Jewish leaders tell this man, hey, it’s not lawful for you to carry your bed because it’s the Sabbath. And he’s like, well, see, my legs, they hadn’t worked for 38 years. And this man, he made them work.

So I think he has a little bit more juice than you. So I’m going to go ahead and listen to him and do what he said, because I’m walking right now. And what’s crazy is that after he told them this, right? You would think they would be like, wow, what your legs work. That’s crazy.

Like, Good for you, man. I’m happy. And instead, what do they do? They say, who told you that? Who told you to take up your bed and walk?

See, when Jesus heals you and you make changes in your life, there’s always going to be people that don’t like it or question it. And some might be even kind of okay with it. They’re like, okay, you’re going back to Church and making changes. Cool. That’s cool.

But when the changes become vast, they become uncomfortable and they change friendships a little bit. You might be asked the same question that they asked this man in the passage. Who told you that? Who told you you can’t do that anymore? Who told you you’ve got to do that now?

So I want to give you a simple and direct point. So simple it might sound kind of dumb, but here it is. If you know Jesus said to do something, do it. If you know Jesus said, don’t do something, don’t do it, right? No matter who tells you otherwise.

If you see Jesus command something in the Scriptures, do it. Situations in our lives get complicated and they get messy. But the Scriptures and the commands that Jesus gives are straightforward. One of the many reasons why I love that we’re walking through the Ministry of Jesus is that every week we’re seeing everything that Jesus had to say, and we’re having to examine ourselves to see if our lives match up with Jesus words. So we have to ask ourselves every week, are our lives matching up with Jesus words?

You know, I also love this last little interaction that Jesus has with the man that he healed. Jesus says to him, See, you are well. Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you. This is where we kind of see that Jesus knew more about this man than just a physical need, right? He knew the condition of his heart and that he needed spiritual healing as well.

You know, I was reading through this story several times over the last handful of weeks, preparing the sermon and I realized that when I read stories about Jesus healing someone, like last week, like this week, like others that we’ll get into, in my simple mind, I thought that the physical healing was the highlight of the story. And to be fair, it is the thing that draws our attention and we look at it’s, the miraculous sign. But here we see that this man coming into contact with Jesus is the highlight of the story. The physical healing was just icing on the cake because although it did change his life, it didn’t change his soul, that his legs were not working.

Jesus says sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you. But see the fact that for so long, even into my adult life, I saw the physical healing as the highlight of the story. It made me ask myself the question, Am I here more for the healing or the healer?

And I started to think on that a little further. And what I realized and I’ll explain this when I say it, I was confusing healing and blessings. Right? And what I mean by that is that there’s things when we come to Christ, right? When we study the Bible, we get baptized, we’re forgiven of our sins, we get the gift of the Holy Spirit.

We are healed of things of our past, or we have the opportunity to be healed from things in our past. And we all get that if we truly follow him. But there’s things thereafter that we want that we think we need healing from. But really, we’re just comparing blessings.

You know, Jesus healed one man that we know of at that pool in this passage. Maybe some of the onlookers who were also sick thought, why did this guy get healed and not me?

And what they missed out on was the most important part of the story is that Jesus was in their midst and he could heal their soul because we didn’t see Jesus healing anyone else in these passages. But we also didn’t see anyone calling out to him either. So don’t mistake the healing that you get from coming to Jesus with blessings you think you need for healing, that you really don’t. And I’m going to give you an example for my fellow single people, since that’s my demographic. I know that many, if not all of us want to have a family, want to get married.

And I understand that I’m with you, right? And it can be easy to look around and say, man, why does this guy or this girl get to date that person or have a husband or wife when I have done X-Y-Z? Well, you know, you don’t deserve that. I don’t deserve that.

But the thing is, is that everyone that’s married and have families, they don’t deserve it either. It’s a blessing that they have that you don’t. And you have a blessing that you have that they don’t. And whether you get that thing or not, right, the highlight of your story is that you’ve come into contact with Jesus, and that’s the case for all of us, right. No matter where we’re at in life.

I’m just using that example because that is the demographic that I am in. But there’s something like that for all of us where we look to someone else and we think we need healing. When you’ve already been healed, you’ve come into contact with Jesus. He’s healing our hearts. Everything else is just icing on the cake.

You know, we’re seeing that in the early stages of Jesus Ministry, he’s all about the big picture, the condition of our hearts and our souls wanting us to be saved. But what I just mentioned, the needs and the wants, the things we think we need and the things that we want, they’re not lost on him. See, Jesus still heals the man’s legs. Now, it doesn’t mean he’s going to get everything he ever wants in life. But the thing that he wanted then wasn’t lost on Jesus. And I love that about him. He takes the things that we desire to heart. So as we close today, I want to recap and give us some things that we can think about, some questions that we have.

So the first thing is be encouraged that Jesus knows everything about you. Invite him and others into your life and your lives and share the struggles that you have. And through it know that Jesus loves you and he wants you to be healed. The second thing, pinpoint what your pool is. What are the things that you’re groveling back to when you’re hurting and you’re looking for healing?

Do you go to Jesus first or do you look past him to the things that don’t provide real healing and hope? And lastly, is coming into contact with Jesus the highlight of your story? You know, if you’re a Christian today, have you lost sight of the best thing that has ever happened to you because you’re looking at something you think you need?

If you aren’t a Christian here today, I want to encourage you that now that you have come into contact with Jesus to allow him to be the highlight of your life. Explore his words, see if they’re matching up with your life. Ask for help. We have great resources here, people that want to help. We have our Discover class, which would be a great place to start.

Last week we talked about trusting Jesus at his word. And today we see how Jesus changed someone’s whole life in three sentences. Look back at the story. Jesus said three sentences and changed a man’s whole life. See, Jesus words are powerful and they can help you stand firm and I hope that you allow them to change your life and provide healing that your heart and your soul truly needs.

You know, as we take Communion together this morning, consider these things that we’ve discussed today. Give thanks that Jesus, knowing all the ways in which we’ve fallen and we failed, has decided to stoop down, to come down. And by dying has given us an opportunity to truly heal through his sacrifice. Amen. Let’s pray together.

Dear Heavenly Father, thank you so much for sending your son, God, for giving us examples like the one we see in the story today where Jesus approached this man. He didn’t approach Jesus. We see like last week where people do approach Jesus and ask for healing. But Jesus went to this man and saw that he needed healing not just of his body, but of his soul. God, I pray that as we learn from Him, as we walk through His Ministry, that we imitate Him.

And we know that again, like we’ve been talking about. We are not Him in these stories. We are the ones that are sick and lame and paralyzed in our lives. We are the ones that are self righteous and sinners and we need Him. God, I pray that we can follow his example, but we understand that we are following Him and leading people to Him, not leading people to us.

God, I pray that we can go to you when we need true healing. God, I pray that we won’t look past you at the things that we think we need when we only truly need you. God, we pray for 4 kids and the work that they do. God, I thank you so much for being able to partner with them. God, I pray that the money that is raised can really, really stretch.

God, I pray for all the children that are in need of foster families that just love them, that that will be provided. God, we love you. We thank you again for your son. It’s in his name. We pray.

Amen.