John 5:1 15
Last weekend, Dr. Sung Choe (surgeon, LAC Ministry Council member, and brother in Christ) came through "my door" after the service. Knowing that this week, we will be studying John 5 and the story of the disabled man at the Bethesda Pool in Jerusalem, Dr. Choe said, "All next week, I think I should ask my patients the question Jesus asked the paralyzed man, i.e., 'Do you want to get well?'"
Here's the report:
I found it impractical and inappropriate to ask THE question to EVERY patient at the risk of being insensitive. Therefore, I decided to pose the question only to the new patients.
Initially, everyone seemed somewhat surprised at the unusual (perhaps obvious) question. Here are some samples of their answers: "of course, I want to get well!" "I've been suffering from this problem for a long time. I just want to get better. "
I also want to share with you an unexpected blessing for me. After asking the "obvious" question, I then was able to explain to them about why I asked the question. It goes like this: our pastor will be preaching about a man who had been sick for 38 years and invalid. etc. etc. One day Jesus came to him asked him if he wanted to get well. And Jesus healed him. I would then briefly tell them about spiritual implications of the story.
I think I need to be more intentional in introducing Jesus to my patients. I didn't realize a question like this (no matter how absurd and perhaps asinine it may seem) can serve as an entre' to someone's soul and spirit, and a divine appt to introduce that person to Jesus Christ!
Notice several things;
*The question comes across as potentially inappropriate and insensitive -- absurd and even "asinine."
*The question seems to have an obvious answer; i.e., "Well, of course." But, it has a "stinger in the tail." The healing may require surgery, a change of diet, or even a change in a whole way of life!" In other words, the sick person may say, "If that's what it takes to get and stay well, I'm not sure I want it."
*The question opens doors to much deeper discussion.
As I read John 5:1-15, I see all of this happening when Jesus chooses to ask this same question of a man who had been paralyzed for 38 years. Many people think Jesus' question seems pointless but today I pray that you will see that it is not.
This weekend, I am praying that many will hear that Jesus asking the same kind of personal question.
A preliminary thought: Two levels in this story – two kinds of healing
Like almost all the stories we will read in John, this one happens on two levels – the physical and the spiritual. The report is about a paralytic being miraculously healed. But the story is talking about something much bigger than a physical healing. Why do I say that?
#1. Jesus draws a clear link between the physical problem and sin in verse 14. That's not always the case as we can see with a blind man in John 9. His blindness, Jesus said, was NOT due to his own sin. But, in this situation, Jesus wants us to see that link. This story is about this mans physical and spiritual life.
#2. The passage is filled with symbolism. John won't let us miss the point of the five covered colonnades, which the Jews understood as representing the five books of Moses. Trying to keep all the laws in the Books of Moses could not be done in human strength. The law alone would never lead to real living. There is also the 38 years John mentions, exactly the time of the wandering in the wilderness. God's Word, then, is pointing us to the futility of every kind of human attempt to make a person well and good. They don't work.
So, with that in mind, let's look at the four stages of "healing" in the story
I. The Helpless Condition: We cannot heal ourselves (5:1 5).
By the pool there is a man who had been an invalid for 38 years. For 38 years, he had waited to find a solution to his limitations but there was no change. Now, it seems that there was a superstition that when this pool bubbled, the first one to dive into it would be healed. The pool periodically rippled because of a subterranean pool and at least once, a man had said that he had been healed when he was in it. The pool had become legendary. Notice that the Bible doesn't confirm or deny whether anyone had actually been healed there. Whether it happened or not is irrelevant to the story. Whether magic or not, this pool had done this man no good at all, for he couldn't get down into the pool even if he wanted too. V.7.
Do you see what John is portraying for us in this man? The man in John 5 had no power to save himself. He was not just sick needing an aspirin. He was not an arthritic man needing a crutch. He was a paralytic needing a miracle. He's like Nicodemus whose law-keeping had not made him alive to God. He's like the woman at the well whose daily trips to the well had not brought her satisfaction.
I see in this man a symbol of all of us in our relationships to God. Some say that Christianity is just a crutch for the weak. But the Bible won't even allow us that much. We're not weak morally, we're paralyzed. The five covered colonnades representing the laws about living well in the books of Moses did the man no good (just like Nicodemus). The water in the pool did him no good (just like the woman at the well).
Why? Because the pool could only help, even according to the superstition, when the man had the ability to obey the requirement to get into the pool. But this man couldn't do it. He says he wants to be different; he blames others that he isn't different; he tries to be different, but he can't.
The water tantalized him with healing he could never reach. In the same way, we all know that we try to be good and righteous but we keep falling short. That's why only the Bible's statement about our condition fits reality. We're tempted and give in. By ourselves, we can't fully do what is perfectly good no matter how hard we try. Only the Bible is forthright enough to tell us why that is.
The diagnosis: Our emotions, our desires, and our wills are permeated by something that affects all human beings – failure and imperfection. We are not fully what God made us to be and we do not live as God made us to live. We have a problem and that problem is with what we are. The Bible calls it sin. That's the awful thing about sin. When I don't do well in school, I can just say, "I failed math." But sin is an intransitive verb. It is: I sinned. I failed. That me that person I am is flawed. So, I may see what I should be; what I should do -- but I can't get there.
What is that like? When I was young and we'd be travelling in the car, I'd get bored. So, I tried to make the car go faster by pushing on the seat in front. Now I know that that not only made my Dad angry, but it was futile. Even if I was strong enough, it did no good. You can't move a car from inside like that. As hard as your arm pushes on the seat in front, your bottom pushes the seat behind.
In the same way, in our spiritual condition, we push and struggle in vain. How can I cast out all my imperfections when even my desires and will to cast it out aren't perfect? We need help from someone outside fallen humanity. Only then is there hope. And, you see, it's just that sort of person human but sinless who now enters the story.
II. A Vital Question: We wrestle with our own "wills" (5:6-7).
We see Jesus' question in v. 6, "Do you want to get well?" Why was this a serious question?
*We get "used to" our situations. It's like a bad odor in the house. The first time you walk in and notice it, it knocks you over. But stay there a while, and you may get used to it. We know that "getting well" might mean a major change of life. We become like the beagle Snoopy in Peanuts: "Yesterday I was a dog. Today I'm a dog. Tomorrow, I'll still be a dog. Ah, there's so little hope for advancement for us dogs." And then Snoopy blissfully goes back to sleep on his doghouse.
*We've been in the situation too long already -- The man we meet had been sick for 38 years. 38 years is a long time. By this time he could have become quite settled into a life with his infirmity. As is still the situation all over the world (including here in CA), people could make a living by begging. He almost certainly had done that. After all, what would he do if he were healed?
*We've learned to live with excuses – "I'm too old." "I'm this way because I had a distant father." The "I'm a victim mentality" becomes addictive. Some people often even thrive in their problems -- There are many who live by telling others their problems, and how life has treated them.
*We know that healing would require a change of life -- This way of life had become his identity. What would he do if he were healed? What if Dr. Choe told the patient, "You will have to change your diet and exercise patterns. You have to go through surgery. And, quite frankly, you'll have to change your whole way of life"? They may think twice before saying, "I want to get well."
Oh, there are good reasons for asking whether he wants to be healed. Do you? You see, in this story, Jesus' question comes to all of us. Look at your life now: Is there something that keeps you paralyzed – something you know is not right. You know you need a change but... Maybe this is something you work at to keep hidden from those around you. Maybe it makes you depressed. It makes you feel guilty. Do you want to be healed?
Maybe you make excuses "It's my hormones. It's my background, my disability, my upbringing." Like little children you may blame anything else "It wasn't my fault. I couldn't help it! God made me that way." Do you want to get well?
Perhaps you've come to the point of thinking you cannot change. "That's how I am." Maybe you've even come to the point of enjoying the pattern of life so much you don't want to change. What if there is something wrong in our lives... and we know it... and it hurts our relationship to God and others...?
But Jesus bursts through all those excuses and simply asks, "Do you want to be healed?" And He places the ball in one court in the court of our wills. Do you want to be well?
On one day in Palestine for some unknown reason Jesus walked through the multitudes of disabled people and broke into the life of one individual. He may be doing the same to you today. This message is for you. Something hinders you and keeps you from a vibrant life with God do you want to be healed?
Don't say, "I'm okay. I'll take care of this thing later." A drowning man can't pull himself out of the water by his own hair. You need someone else. And this story in John 5 shows us who it is. And He only asks one question do you want to be healed? Do you want to be healed?
III. A Powerful Command: We must respond to Jesus' call (5:8 9).
V. 8: Get up! Pick up your mat and walk. If Jesus' question about "Do you want to get well?" sounded nonsensical, what do you think of this command? He's telling this man to do the very thing that for 38 years he'd been completely incapable of doing, i.e., to get up and walk.
But, you see, this powerfully demonstrates to us just how Jesus heals people how He saves people. He doesn't just say, "Try harder to get into the pool." Or, "Here's some medicine to help you." Or, "Here are some exercises for you to begin to do." Remember, we are spiritual paralytics so He does the one thing that can help He works a miracle.
There's a prophet in the OT, Ezekiel, who is commanded to go out into a field of dry bones and bring them back to life. That's probably the craziest sounding thing any Biblical prophet is ever told to do. It's like me holding an evangelistic service in a cemetery. "Oh, dry bones. Hear the Word of the Lord." That's what Ezekiel had to say to them. Can you imagine anything more ridiculous? But that's what God's Word is always doing. It speaks to people like us who, on our own, are spiritual paralytics and it tells us to get up and walk – to leave church with a new beginning.
This is how God is able to work in people. He tells us to do things that we can't on our own and then we find we do it because God's Word isn't like human words. In the Bible, God created through words. He spoke and everything was. So, when Ezekiel preached that "ridiculous" sermon to dry bones, the bones did come back to life. It was supernatural but that's what the Word of God is when it's spoken to a person. It works miracles in our lives when we hear it and say, "Yes, Lord."
I tell you, we stroll too frivolously through the church doors to hear God's Word taught. We open our Bibles too casually. For this is a book that commands people to do what they cannot do and then in the very act of commanding it, gives them the power to do it.
So Jesus commanded this man to walk. What the man was unable to do himself, what philosophers or self help programs can never enable a man to do, Jesus did with His Word. In the same way, Jesus calls you and me to repent and believe. And though we are dead spiritually, though we are paralyzed morally, He expects us to obey Him. The man could have said, "I'm not even going to try Jesus. I've been here 38 years, you know. I know what I can and cannot do. I'm staying right where I am!"
So, I warn you, if you admit your need to Jesus and tell Him you want to be changed, you're opening the door to complete transformation. He will speak to you personally. You'll begin to see who Jesus really is. You'll begin to enjoy being with followers of Jesus – some of them people you would never have wanted to know before. You'll begin to enjoy hearing the Word of God taught. You'll begin to want to pray.
And, most of all, you will become more and more sensitive to issues of right and wrong you'll begin to have a sense God's will in moral matters. And it won't be legalism but a deep sense of what is good. "Rise, take up your bed, and walk," Jesus said.
For years, some habit or pattern may have carried you. Now you can begin to carry it. The sexual lust that drove a man begins to be tamed. The hatred and anger that festered in your heart begins to turn to love. The thing that carried us, we begin now to carry.
And that brings us to the final phase of this story.
IV. A Healing with Consequences: Jesus won't leave us as we were (5:10 15).
V. 14: See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you. It's often the case that a person hears about Jesus, takes the first step of faith, but still is left a bit confused about what really happened and about where things will lead especially when it happens as suddenly as it did with this man. This man was not even fully aware of who Jesus was. Unfortunately, some legalistic religious people came along with no real spiritual life themselves and they tried to drag this man back into a rules-centered religion. They aren't thrilled at all about the man being able to walk . "Hey, what are you doing there with that mat on the Sabbath," they said. He probably said, "I was lame for 38 years but just now got healed." "But you're carrying your mat on the Sabbath! You can't do that!" They threw cold water on a spiritual fire.
But notice: When Jesus heals us, there is to be something different about our lives afterward. There is always a consequence to Jesus entering our lives. Imagine a mother sacrificing everything to get her son out of jail after he's been convicted of robbing banks. What would she do if, on the drive home, he said, "Pull over here, Mom. There's something I need to get at that bank over there before we go on..." Jesus doesn't save us just to send us back to the same way of life.
So, what would be the evidence of this new spiritual health? Jesus makes it plain: "Stop sinning!" That's how you'll know you're truly well." It's noteworthy that the Bible refuses to identify what the man's sin was. If it had, we might think, "Oh good. I don't struggle much with that particular sin. This has nothing to do with me." But, the Bible won't allow that. This speaks to all of us.
And, I know that "stop sinning" is another pointless command to a person "dead in sin." When sin is our problem the one thing we can't do is stop sinning. We have tried before but couldn't get there.
But to one who is made alive by the Word of Christ, God gives us a new moral capability. We are to go out into the world and demonstrate a growing freedom from past ways. It's only possible when God's Spirit dwells in you and begins to empower you. That's what begins when you hear Christ's call and believe. We hear God say, "Go from that worship center and live for me instead of the way you have lived before." That is to be your commitment when you leave this place today.
Jesus declared in Matthew 5, "You are the light of the world. Now, let your light so shine that men may see your good works and glorify your father in heaven." Yes, they'll know this new life isn't from you. They've seen you at work before. They'll glorify your Father.
Can you imagine this man immediately after his paralysis going back to the same way of life, lying down, and waiting for the pool to bubble? "I'll get there this time." But, of course, he wouldn't do that. No more can Jesus imagine a man healed of his sin just continuing on in his sin. The evidence of the man's physical health was his walking. The evidence of our spiritual health is walking with God. Jesus simply will not leave us where we are – in our paralysis. As Tim Keller says, "I'm so sinful that Jesus died for me. I'm so loved that Jesus died for me."
Question 1: What paralyzes you today?
Question 2: Do you want to get well?
Declaration 1: Jesus will forgive your past and give you power for tomorrow to be different.
Declaration 2: Do not go back to that former way of life. Go and sin no more.
Greg Waybright • Copyright 2010, Lake Avenue Church