Pastor Allan Kircher
Shell Point Baptist Church
July 13th 2014
John 5:1-17
Do you want to get well?
The fifth chapter marks a major division in the Gospel of John.
• Prologue John introduces the life of Jesus
• 1st-4chap.Jesus presents himself/Jews/promised Messiah
• Chap 5, John begins to trace a growing rejection/Lord
• Rejection/gather/three remarkable acts of healing by Jesus:
• Chap 5/Chapt 9/opening/eyes/man born blind/Chapt 11
• greatest of our Lord's miracles
• All/increases/hostility against Jesus/culminates/last/death.
Today we will look at the first of these miracles, the healing of the impotent man, John 5:1-5
Three observations
1. Feast/Passover/April/Pentacost/Tabernacle/October…..
• Probably interrupted/Galilee ministry…back to chap 6
2. V. 4 Missing.
• Most versions footnotes/explain/presence.
• Explain pool……
Established a reputation as a place where people could be healed.
3. Multitude of People……..blind/lame/sick/paralyzed……
• 38 years he waited.
• Jesus picks him out of the crowd of hundreds……
• He did not empty the five porches, healing everybody
• He did not lay hands on them; nothing of that sort.
• He went to only one man.
• The value of a story like this……
• reason it is in the gospels/truth about Lord
• Show us how God proposes to deal with human helplessness and weakness.
Undoubtedly it/helplessness of this man drew Jesus to him.
We all can see ourselves, in a sense, helpless, weak, crippled and lame, lying at the pool of Bethesda this morning.
• We all need help.
• We all find ourselves paralyzed at times
• Unable to do the thing we want or ought to do….
• We find we are lame
• we do not walk very well
The Focus turns to Jesus.
1. Knowledge of Jesus
“When Jesus saw him and knew he had been lying there a long time, he said to him, "Do you want to be healed?" (John 5:6)
• Strange question ask man sick for 38 years!
• "Do you want to be healed?
• Jesus never asked a foolish question in his life.
• it was important for this man to answer the question
• "Do I want to be healed?"
• immediately he knew the man’s story
======================================
God knows our story
• how long you have been struggling/problem
• All there is to know about you and I.
• Your pain/sorrow/worries/reservations
• discouragement you may be feeling.
• help that you may need.
• what may be facing you tomorrow.
I cannot think a thought/my mind God does not know what I’m thinking.
====================================
Many people today who do not want to be healed
• Do not want to receive divine help in their problems
• Do not want to be helped out of their weakness.
• They love their weakness, their helplessness.
• They are always craving the attention of others through their helplessness.
• You cannot help somebody who does not want to be helped.
One of the things that is true this morning, as our Lord moves among us, is that he will only ask this question of those who want to be healed.
• He will say nothing to those who do not.
====================================
Some may not have yet reached the place this man had reached.
• They are not helpless enough yet
• Not ready to give up on human efforts to solve their problems
• not ready to admit they cannot make it on their own
• Still determined to get into the water when it is troubled
• Jesus can do nothing for them
2. Compassion of Jesus
• Jesus chose to go to the pool.
• Samaria/royal official dying son
• Jesus moves toward need, not comfort.
• Toward brokenhearted sinners, not the self-righteous
• easily moved by the misery you feel
• compassionate to us in our misery
• Sympathetic High Priest for those who will trust him.
=====================================
The sick man answered him, "Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is troubled, and while I am going another steps down before me." (John 5:7)
In other words I've tried, I've done everything I know how.
• I want to get into that water, I want to be healed
• I lack the ability/no one to help me/given up/no hope.
Many people here this morning are like that.
• They have given up on their situation
• Refusing to believe there is any hope it can change.
They have resigned themselves to being weak, failing and faltering Christians for the rest of their lives.
• I know there are some like that among us; there always are. I do not know what your problem is.
• Maybe/tried to stop drinking
You know alcohol is ruining your life, your family, your home.
• You thought you had it under control.
• You tried to stop but you discovered you could not
Amazing to me how many people feel they/control of something that really has control of them.
• "It's easy to stop smoking. I've done it hundreds of times!"
• That is a revelation, of course, of how much it controls him.
===================================
• Many/tried to stop taking drugs
• discovered you are hooked
• Habit you began by innocent experimentation has got a hold of you although you want to stop.
• Maybe you have given up wrestling with an inner problem of lust, of reading pornography.
• Perhaps you do not see any hope for your marriage……
======================================
What did Jesus say to a man who had lost all hope, a man who had given up on himself?
Did he say…..need someone to sit with you……flowers….
What does Jesus say
• First, he asks an impossible thing Rise
• secondly, he removes all possibility of a relapse Take up
• Thirdly, he expects a continued success. Walk
"Rise, take up your pallet, and walk." And at once the man was healed, and he took up his pallet and walked. (John 5:8b-9a
4. The Power of Jesus
• “At Once” signify Immediacy
• When he speaks, diseased muscles and bones obey
• They obey “at once.”
• John 4:52–53 where the official’s son was healed at exactly the seventh hour 15 miles away when Jesus said the words.
This is how you get to know Jesus.
• how you build a relationship with Jesus
• meet him here in his word/speak to him
• ask him to shape your thinking
• Then you walk out of this room
• Live in the fellowship of this Jesus.
• Not an imaginary one. Not a self-made one
• Real living Jesus revealed with absolute authority
===================================
Go home and pour out the alcohol!
• Get rid of the drugs! Burn your bridges behind you.
• Say no/friends who have been luring you on into evil.
• Cut off any possibility of going back.
• Let somebody know the new stand you have taken
• Burn your bridges, is what Jesus is saying.
• Our Lord knows what he is talking about
• "take up your bed."
=================================
"Walk." Do not expect to be carried -- walk.
Many people want to be carried after they are healed
• Expect everybody to gather around them and keep them going
• Common area of failure.
• if Jesus gives you the power to rise
• Jesus/One who can give you/power/walk every day/keep going.
=================================
John now traces the immediate reaction of others to this event:
The day on which this took place was a Sabbath. So the Jews said to the man who was healed, "It is the Sabbath, the law forbids you to carry your mat." But he replied, "The man who made me well said to me, 'Take up your mat, and walk.'(John 5:9b-11)
• “Oh, no!” Is this raising a conflict?
• No, bringing out the glory of God. v. 17
• Jesus knows what he has done
• Healed a man/Sabbath
• Told him to carry his bed/sign/celebration he is whole.
• He knows this will create conflict.
Conflict/ministry/Jesus/furnace where the steel of his identity is forged.
• In the fires of conflict, his glory is made to shine.
• The man is in trouble. Verse 13:
The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.
• Had he stayed there/would have been a tumult/miracle-seeking
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.” V. 13-14
• Wonderful word, "Jesus found him."
• The issue is holiness mainly, not health.
• “I have healed you to make you holy.”
• It is very important.
Do you see this? “Sin no more. Stop sinning.
• My aim in healing your body is the healing of your soul.
• I have given you a gift. It’s free.
• It came first, before my command.
• You didn’t earn it.
• You weren’t good enough for it.
• I chose you freely.
• And I healed you. Now, live in this power.
• Let the gift of healing, the gift of my free grace, be a means to your holiness.”
“I have healed you that you may be holy
• That you may stop doing evil
• That you may not rise to the resurrection of judgment
• but to the resurrection of life.
• I have pointed you to myself as a life-giver.
• I heal in more ways than one.
• Don’t turn from me to a life of sin.”
==================================
John gives a final word about this incident in Verses 15-17:
The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him. He had to explain who it was had healed him, and he told them.] And this was why the Jews persecuted Jesus, because he did this on the Sabbath. (John 5:15-16)
Jesus explains why he breaks the tradition:
But Jesus answered them, "My Father is always at his work, to this very day, and I, too, am working. John 5:17
Let us leave it now with this question that Jesus asks each one of us:
"In some area of your life, do you want to be healed?"
If you say, "Yes," he will say, "Then stand up, take up your mat, and walk."
