“After these things there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 2 Now there is in Jerusalem by the sheep gate a pool, which is called in Hebrew Bethesda, having five porticoes. 3 In these lay a multitude of those who were sick, blind, lame, and withered, [waiting for the moving of the waters; 4 for an angel of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool and stirred up the water; whoever then first, after the stirring up of the water, stepped in was made well from whatever disease with which he was afflicted.] 5 A man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he had already been a long time in that condition, He said to him, “Do you wish to get well?” 7 The sick man answered Him, “Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I am coming, another steps down before me.” 8 Jesus said to him, “Get up, pick up your pallet and walk.” 9 Immediately the man became well, and picked up his pallet and began to walk. Now it was the Sabbath on that day. 10 So the Jews were saying to the man who was cured, “It is the Sabbath, and it is not permissible for you to carry your pallet.” 11 But he answered them, “He who made me well was the one who said to me, ‘Pick up your pallet and walk.’ ” 12 They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Pick up your pallet and walk’?” 13 But the man who was healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had slipped away while there was a crowd in that place. 14 Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “Behold, you have become well; do not sin anymore, so that nothing worse happens to you.” 15 The man went away, and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. 16 For this reason the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because He was doing these things on the Sabbath. 17 But He answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working.” 18 For this reason therefore the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because He not only was breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God.”
Although I’ve never made an attempt at counting them, and I don’t foresee ever having a need to, I would presume to say that there are hospitals and medical facilities all over America and probably many places in the world that have the word ‘mercy’ in their name.
In Merced, California where two of my children live one of the hospitals in that town is Mercy Hospital (in fact, Merced is Spanish for ‘mercy’).
It’s an appropriate name for a facility that ministers aid and treatment to those physically ill or injured; isn’t it?
I’m sure that it is out of a sense of mercy and compassion for people that many caregivers go into the professions that make up the medical field, from doctors to nurses to emergency medical people who drive ambulances and so forth.
So it is fitting that this place Jesus came to when He arrived in Jerusalem for this unspecified feast of the Jews, is called the pool at Bethesda, which means ‘house of mercy’.
Because all around this pool lay ‘a multitude of those who were sick, blind, lame, and withered’.
Unfortunately, we don’t get the sense from the text that there was a whole lot of mercy being shown there. I get the feeling that people in this place are largely abandoned to their misery.
It wasn’t a hospital. At best it was a hot spring believed to have healing properties. There is a parenthesis as you can see, from the second half of verse 3 through verse 4, that talks of an angel coming down at certain times to stir the waters and when he did whoever got to the pool first was healed.
The reason for the parenthesis is that this portion is not in the oldest manuscripts, and this is not an isolated case – there are other portions of the New Testament that include parentheses around certain passages for the same reason.
So, of course, there has been quite a bit of speculation as to whether an angel really stirred the waters or if this was just some scribe’s way of explaining that people back then, when they saw the waters churning, believed it to be the work of an angel. I do not see the necessity of examining this further because frankly, the man in this account was never able to get to the water anyway so the issue of the nature of the water is rendered moot as pertains to this account.
Here is what matters. It was a place where anyone with a heart of compassion would grieve at the very sight. “Multitudes”, it says. Multitudes of people who were sick, blind, lame, withered.
Can you imagine the sounds? The crying? The moaning? The pleas for help anytime anyone appearing to be healthy passed by? Can you imagine the smell of ‘multitudes’ laying on mats, leaning against walls and pillars, unable to bathe themselves, unable to care for their most basic hygienic needs?
I wonder how many people from out of town came to Jerusalem for a celebrated feast day and ever gave a moment’s thought to going straight to the ‘house of mercy’ – the pool of Bethesda, to visit the sick and blind, and lame and withered.
That’s what Jesus did. And I wanted to open this way; I wanted to focus on the name of this place and the great need there, and I wanted to draw your attention to the great compassion and mercy of our Lord whose great heart must have broken every time He looked upon the afflictions introduced into His world when sin and death came in.
I wanted you to see that first, because in fact, this recorded account in the early ministry of Jesus Christ is not a happy one and there is not one word I can find in the text to indicate that even one character mentioned was changed for the better.
Now that is not to say that Jesus did not accomplish what He came there to do. I believe that He did, and very effectively. But I doubt at this point that you would guess what I think it was He came to do. So I’m going to tell you.
POOL PITY PARTY
Let’s begin with Jesus’ approach to this man.
John doesn’t specify what feast this was, but most commentators I’ve researched have agreed that it was probably one of the Fall feasts, just because the timeline provided by a harmonizing of the Gospels would seem to indicate so. It must not really matter or John would have said which feast it was.
Jesus went up to Jerusalem. There were a few feast days that called for people to come to Jerusalem; one was Passover in the Spring, one was Pentecost 50 days following Passover, and one was the feast of ‘Booths’ or ‘Tabernacles’ in the Fall. So it may have been that feast, since Jesus seemingly always came to Jerusalem when there was going to be large gatherings of people and high public activity among the Pharisees.
Verse 6 says simply, ‘When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he had already been a long time in that condition, He said to him, ‘Do you wish to get well?’.
Now in the same way that Jesus knew what was in men’s thoughts and in their hearts, I believe that His knowledge that the man had been for a long time in this condition was out of a divine knowledge of the man and his circumstances. We have a sort of vague confirmation of that later in the Temple when Jesus tells the man to stop sinning so he won’t get sick again.
So the approach sounds a little strange to us, doesn’t it? No sick person would choose to remain sick. On the other hand, the phrasing of Jesus’ question further reveals to us that He already also knew the condition of the man’s heart, as is made evident by the man’s very response.
Notice that he doesn’t really answer the question. He didn’t even ask who this was who was speaking to him, or challenge His ability to correct the problem.
His answer seems to come from a psychological makeup that has resigned itself to its fate and has accepted the inevitable; although not necessarily gracefully.
His answer reveals that the man was placing the blame for his circumstances on what somebody had not done for him.
He was having his own pity party by the pool, and was so bound up in his circumstances that he could manage no better response than a whiny complaint.
A STRANGE COMMAND
In retrospect, Jesus’ next command seems almost as out of place as his original question. First, He asks the man if he wants to be well.
Then in response, not to faith – indeed, apparently not really in response to the man at all, Jesus says, ‘Take up your pallet and walk’.
This was not a response to prayer, so far as we know. Nothing about the man’s demeanor seems to indicate that he spent a lot of time praying.
And it wasn’t because Jesus had been given any clear indication that the man wanted to get on with a normal life and be set free from the chains of his physical condition. This may be the clearest example we have in the gospels of what the Lord meant when He told Moses, “I will have mercy upon whom I will have mercy, and compassion upon whom I will have compassion.”
Not only are we not shown any evidence of faith in the man by the pool, we also are not shown any evidence of gratitude.
In other accounts of Jesus’ miracles we see people giving thanks to God. We hear a man testifying, ‘I was blind, and now I see’. We see people falling at Jesus’ feet and declaring Him both Lord and God. We even have the story of the leper who was so excited he came back later, searching for Jesus, for the sole purpose of thanking Him.
Not this man. He picked up his pallet and walked away, apparently without a word. When the Jews criticized him for carrying his pallet on the Sabbath – because they were such a compassionate bunch – he couldn’t even tell them who made him well. “He who made me well was the one who said to me, ‘take up your pallet and walk’.”
Not my fault! I was just laying by the pool, minding my own business, and this guy came up and miraculously healed me of a 38 year infirmity and told me to carry my pallet. So if you have a grievance, take it up with him!
In John 9 when the man who had been healed of blindness testified that he had been healed the Pharisees kicked him out of the Temple. Not in this case.
On this day they were apparently so intent on finding out who dared violate this all-important Sabbath law that they gave no more thought to the man. He was found later by Jesus, in the Temple.
SOME INSIGHT
Then, we’re given a little insight into this man’s life by Jesus’ exhortation: “Behold, you have become well, do not sin anymore so that nothing worse may befall you”
Notice Jesus did not say as to others, ‘your faith has made you well’ or as with the woman taken in adultery, ‘go and sin no more’. It was a common belief in that culture that when people were seriously injured or ill it was because of sin in their life or that perhaps they were even suffering for the sins of their parents.
You may remember the disciples asking Jesus if the man born blind was that way because he sinned or because his parents did. In that case the answer Jesus gave was ‘neither’, but so that the Father might be glorified. And of course the Father was glorified in both the gift of vision given to the man and in that grateful man’s testimony later.
But there are times when God uses malady to stop people sinning and of course we know that illness or injury can be a direct result of sinful behavior.
Here at the pool of Bethesda it seems that out of knowledge of this man’s past life, Jesus is indicating that his 38 year illness was a result of sin, and now that he was healed purely by the grace and power of the One talking to him, he should learn from it and not go and continue in that sin.
For all we know though, 38 years on his back still did not make him look up to God. The last thing recorded for us about this man before he drops completely from history and from the pages of Scripture, is that he ‘…went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well’.
Now we have seen in previous studies that by this point in His ministry Jesus has become very popular with the people and very well-known. His confrontations with the Jewish rulers have also been very public and clearly seen.
We can excuse the man as ignorant if we say, well, he was an invalid at the pool of Bethesda and possibly hadn’t heard all the news. I personally find that hard to swallow, but it is feasible, so I won’t deny him that excuse.
But the Pharisees haven’t exactly been his friends, have they? When he is healed of a 38 year infirmity and told to pick up his pallet and go home, he is probably not even off the Temple grounds yet when Pharisees stop him and scold him for carrying his pallet on the Sabbath. They don’t show any concern for him or any rejoicing that he has been made well; they only care about their strict adherence to their religion and Sabbath traditions.
Yet the last time this man is mentioned – his 15 minutes of fame – ends with him running back to the enemies of the One who gave him health, and snitching Him off.
WHAT WAS THE PURPOSE?
Ok, earlier I said I would tell you what I thought Jesus’ purpose was in this particular action.
Let me preface my statements by confirming to you that Jesus is compassionate and merciful. I do not accept for a moment that He came there only to use this man as a pawn or to accomplish some political maneuvering with no heart-felt concern for the man.
Jesus is the Lord and Creator of all, who cares for every one of His created children, who knows each one deeply and intimately, and because He is Holy God can do no wrong to anyone. Every word or thought or action of God toward men and women or toward mankind in general is for good and for His glory. His love for this man was not less than His love for anyone.
But Jesus came to do the Father’s will and accomplish what He was sent to do, and a significant part of the process of doing that will perfectly, involved confronting evil, confronting false religion, confronting head-on the false teachers of Israel; and every instance recorded for us in the Gospels of the conflict Jesus had with these men was instigated by Jesus Himself.
In every case of confrontation we have between the Jews and Jesus, it begins with Jesus doing or saying something that causes a reaction from the hypocritical religious elite, and this account in John 5 is a prime example.
TAKE A CLOSER LOOK
Let’s just look again at the actions of Jesus through this encounter. We’ve already studied the man by the pool. Within the scope of the limited picture we’re given by John, the man was full of self-pity and he was self-focused. In response to a query as to whether he wanted to be well he could only complain that no one had helped him yet.
When he was told to do something that for 38 years he had been incapable of doing, he immediately stood, picked up his mat as instructed, and headed out with apparently not so much as a ‘thank you’ or a glance backward.
When the Pharisees criticized him for working on the Sabbath he shifted the blame to his unknown benefactor, and when later he was approached by Jesus in the Temple and learned who He was, the man went to the Pharisees and told them what they wanted to know.
Now let’s look at it from the perspective of Jesus’ approach.
He came to Jerusalem and apparently went directly to the pool of Bethesda. At least, we’re not told that He did anything else first.
Now I’d like for you to keep in mind throughout this, that Jesus has divine insight and knowledge and authority, all being exercised here.
He apparently wades through this multitude of people who are sick, blind, lame and withered, and finds this particular man. Then with no small talk, nor addressing anyone else [by the way, there is no mention in this entire account of where His disciples are at the moment – we get the feeling He is acting entirely alone], Jesus simply asks ‘Do you wish to get well?’
Not, ‘do you believe God can heal you’ or ‘do you want Me to heal you’; no comment about faith or lack of faith or any of the things that we see said or demonstrated in any of Jesus’ other encounters with the people He heals; just ‘do you wish to get well’?
Then the command.
Get up, pick up your pallet and walk”.
Now. Stop right there. Did Jesus know it was the Sabbath? Yes, Jesus knew it was the Sabbath. Did He know the Pharisees would spot and confront anyone carrying something as large as a mat big enough for a man to sleep on? Yes, He did. Did He know that He would be criticized for His own actions here when they found out? Yes, He did. He had already been accused of working on the Sabbath on more than one occasion in response to His healing of people.
Did Jesus need to publicly approach this man later and reveal to the man who He was? No. What He said in the Temple could have been said right there by the pool.
Am I imagining things? No, I don’t believe I am. If we just read the rest of the narrative of this account what I am saying will be confirmed. Look at verses 15 through 18.
“The man went away, and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. 16 For this reason the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because He was doing these things on the Sabbath. 17 But He answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working.” 18 For this reason therefore the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because He not only was breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God.”
There are two points of evidence in these closing verses to confirm that Jesus was deliberately causing a confrontation with the Jews for the purpose of deepening their resolve to kill Him.
First, when they criticize Him for working on the Sabbath – and their criticizm would have been based on both the healing and His having instructed the man to carry his pallet – His response is “My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working”
What did He mean by that? Well, fundamentally He was saying that God works and gives the Son work to do, and the fact that the day is the Sabbath does not dictate the divine schedule.
All four of the Gospel writers record confrontations between Jesus and the Pharisees over this same issue. Mattew and Mark both record the instance of the man in the synagogue with a withered hand. Without so much as touching the man Jesus heals his hand with a command, and the Jews go out from there all the more intent on finding a way to kill Him.
In Luke 13 when a woman is healed of an 18 year hemmorage and the Jews criticize Him, Jesus rebukes them saying that any one of them would lead his ox out from the stall on the Sabbath to provide food and water, the basics of life for the animal, yet here was a daughter of Abraham who had been released from an 18 year bondage and they resented both her and Jesus for it.
He called them hypocrites. He told them that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. He called Himself Lord of the Sabbath.
In effect, Jesus was taking everything they believed and taught about the Sabbath day and man’s obligation according to their traditions to strictly obey it even to the point of absurdity, and He was turning it upside down.
This alone made them angry.
Secondly, He referred to God as His Father, saying that the works He was doing were His Father’s works, and in so doing was claiming equality with God.
Now I want you to notice something about this that I think is a point often missed unless we think these things through.
The Pharisees knew and understood that the Son of God was Himself, God. They did not have a concept of a higher God and a lesser God by virtue of a subservient relationship or position between one and the other.
In that culture sons were always subservient and submissive to their fathers as the patriarch of the family. As long as the father was alive he was the authority in the household and had the last word on every subject. It wasn’t until the father died that the eldest son would then step in and take his place.
But when Jesus says, ‘My Father is working until now, and I Myself and working’, the Apostle writes that the Jews, as a direct result of His saying this, were seeking ‘all the more to kill him’, because of two things. He was breaking the Sabbath, and also was calling God His own Father, (listen now) ‘making Himself equal with God’!
They knew! They knew who Jesus was, and folks once more I will submit for your meditation that they wanted to kill Jesus because He was the Messiah, not because He claimed to be and they didn’t believe it.
At the river John the Baptist declared Him to be the Son of God.
All of Jesus’ teaching and miracles and demonstrations of power showed Him to be the fulfillment of Old Testament predictions of the Messiah.
Here He had given a simple command to a man 38 years invalid and the man had done immediately what had for 38 years been impossible for him to do.
And when Jesus said, “My Father is working and I Myself am working”, He was claiming equality with God the Father and they KNEW it!
INGRATITUDE IN THE HOUSE OF MERCY
Listen to the words of the Apostle Paul to the Romans, chapter 1, verses 18 through 21.
“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, 19 because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. 20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. 21 For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.”
The teaching of Paul here is not only of the general revelation of God through what has been made; although that is certainly a part of what he is teaching, and I think that often this portion of his letter to the Romans is used to teach that truth before moving on to teach about man’s rejection of the more specific revelation of God to His chosen people.
But the verses I’ve just read to you apply aptly to these Jews of the days of Jesus’ ministry, as they apply to all the ungrateful and unbelieving of every nation and tribe in the history of man.
‘For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.”
Unbelief and ingratitude go together like soup and sandwich, folks. These religious men characterized in this account taking place in the Jerusalem Temple on this day during this particular feast of the Jews, persecuting the Messiah for doing the works of God, is a prime and perfect characterization of all the unbelieving of this world in any place and any time in history.
This unnamed man and these hypocritical and ultra-religious men with murder in their hearts are simply a microcosm of fallen mankind.
God does His work in the hearts and lives of men, saving, healing, conforming them to the image of Jesus by His sanctifying Holy Spirit, and mankind responds to His grace and goodness with ingratitude and unbelief.
Do you know that unbelief is deliberate? That’s what Paul said in Romans one.
Are you aware that man’s ingratitude toward God does not rise out of ignorance but out of the sinner’s rejection of God’s goodness and desire to be his own god?
What would we expect to be a Godly response and reaction to all that happened at the house of mercy that day in Jerusalem?
A man leaping for joy that the Savior had made him well? A desire to know the name of his benefactor so he might bow down and worship this One who obviously displayed divine works in his previously useless body?
A desire to tell everyone around that he had been touched by this Jesus of Nazareth who must be the promised One from God?
Would we expect leaders of the nation that God called into being, delivered from bondage and gave His Law and His wisdom and His promise, to remember their Scriptures and all that the prophets said the Messiah would be and do, and as the teachers of Israel cry out from the watchtowers that the Christ had come and was working the works of the Father in their midst, calling for everyone to come and sing His praises and bow down to Him in worship?
Is that what we would expect should be the proper response?
But we live in a fallen world, don’t we? We live in a world ruined by sin and death and we are from a people without hope and without God in the world, and unbelief and ingratitude are the order of this day; this hour, until He comes to claim the kingdom of this world.
I submit for your consideration today that the people we see characterized in this account are in the church also. If there was nothing for us to learn from this story the Holy Spirit would not have preserved it for us.
While the true church is comprised of all the redeemed of the Lord who have been born from above and have life by His indwelling Holy Spirit and are now heirs and even joint-heirs with Jesus Christ and have a place secured by Him and for Him forever in the home of the Father…
…sin still manages to rear its ugly head…tares among the wheat…the fallen nature struggling to defy the will of God in the life even of the believer.
But Jesus still says “My Father works until now, and I Myself am working”, and let’s not miss this today –
In the face of the ingratitude of the invalid, and the ingratitude of the Pharisees, the work of the Father and the work of the Son was, out of God’s great heart of compassion, healing where healing was undeserved and even unsolicited. It was the work of the Son continuing His walk toward the cross of Calvary, where in fulfillment of all that the Father sent Him to do He shed His blood and died for sin, then rose bodily from the grave, the firstfruits of the resurrection.
And all of this was done in the face of our ingratitude and unbelief. We didn’t ask Him to do it for us and we were only self-pitying and self-focused. But the Father’s house is the House of Mercy, and to our eternal benefit and bliss His mercy was never dependant upon our deserving; and it did not require our belief or our gratitude in order to finish its redeeming work. For it was by His grace alone that He saved us.
“But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), 6 and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” Eph 2:4-7
What was the work of the Father and the purpose of the Son that day at the pool of Bethesda?
It was to show mercy in the House of Mercy even in the face of ingratitude – it was to bring the Son’s work just a little bit nearer to completion even in the face of unbelief – because in the mercy and grace of God His purpose and goal was to redeem to Himself a people who will spend eternity with Him and before His Throne and in His blessed presence, forever expressing in word and life the gratitude of those who have been shown the riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior.
If that’s you, if you are one who has received His mercy and have His Holy Spirit in you, what better time than now to begin joyfully expressing gratitude both in word and life?
“For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.” Eph 2:10
