The Jesus Series
“38 Years at the Pool”
John 5:1-18
July 18, 2004
Jesus Christ was God come in the flesh, we believe, and we’ll discuss that some more today; at the same time, Jesus was a Jewish man, Who grew up with Jewish religious practices. Thus, it isn’t at all strange that we find Him returning to Jerusalem for one of the several Jewish feast times of the calendar year. We are not told exactly which feast is in view here; commentators differ in their guesses, to which my own personal response is that if God felt it germane to the story, He’d have included it in His perfect Word. As John tells the story, there was in Jesus’ time a pool—actually, according to archaeological research, likely two adjoining pools which were separated by and surrounded by five distinct porches. These twin pools lay on the northeast side of the city of Jerusalem, and were large and very deep, perhaps as deep as 75 feet. Now, the King James unfortunately contains what is almost certainly an addition by some overeager scribe, which make up the end of verse 3 and all of verse 4, which suggests that God sent an angel periodically to roil the waters of the pool. According to the King James, each time the angel disturbed the water, the first one down into the pool would be healed of whatever ailment afflicted him.
What seems clear is that this was the superstitious belief of many, who lay around on these porches that surrounded the pool hoping to win the health lottery, as it were. In point of fact, what is much more likely is that the periodic disturbances were caused by an intermittent underground spring which would from time to time burst into action and cause a bubbling appearance. Perhaps this natural phenomenon attracted this superstition for the same reason that mineral springs have long been frequented for their healing properties; during our trip out west, we visited just such a place: Hot Springs, South Dakota. For years the springs were valued for their medicinal purposes; today, the site of the main springs houses a building that is used for a…water park! Personally, barreling down a water slide is a bit more fun than sitting in mineral baths! But I digress…
At any rate, Jesus has an agenda in mind as He makes His way to the pool that day. Of all the people waiting there in what would resemble a doctor’s office waiting room (without the appointments), He chooses one man, a man who for some 38 years has suffered with some form of paralysis, and engages the man in conversation. He asks what at first blush might appear to be an obvious question: “Do you want to get well?” Let’s take a look for a few moments at the lame man, as we consider the study in contrasts that we find between the characters in the story.
A Study in Contrasts
I. The Lame Man
Observations:
I’m going to ask you, this morning, to help out with some observations that you might have about this lame man. What might be true of him? (Allow for congregational participation; make sure to make the following points)
Desperate – despite the title of my message, the fact is that we’re not sure how long he had hung out at the pool, only how long he had been paralyzed. But the fact is that he has likely exhausted all other resources and is hanging out by the pool on the odd chance that there might there be found a cure.
Gullible – we must say that he is gullible if he has pinned his hopes on the magical. At the same time, we see so much of this today, do we not? Last week we read of a woman who won $118 million after taxes playing the lottery; what we didn’t hear of was all of the losers, which was everybody else, from the guy who threw away a buck to those who wasted much greater sums. The lottery ads say, “odds are, you’ll have fun!” Well, maybe so, maybe not, but odds are that you will lose far more money than you will ever win! Others believe that they’ll get out of their fix if they say enough “Hail Mary’s” or make the sign of the cross enough or put a plastic Jesus on their dashboard. We could go on and on, but this fellow is banking on a miracle from a dubious source.
But notice as well
II. The Loving Savior
Jesus is the hero of the story; in fact, if we were to skip over to John 20:31, we’d read that John says that he has written his entire gospel for the purpose “that (people) might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing (they) might have life in His name.” Though we’ll talk about the Jewish leaders, they aren’t the point. Though a man goes away healed, his healing isn’t the point. Jesus healed many people, and yet only a select few have their stories recorded in the Bible. John chooses this story because it helps us know more about Jesus, Who is the Point!
A. Grace-oriented - :6
He didn’t have to walk up to this man, but He did. The other religious folk, as we’ll see in a moment, had little concern for the health of this man, for the pain he was enduring, but Jesus did. Jesus was oriented, throughout His entire ministry, toward grace and compassion. The woman taken in the very act of adultery? They wanted to stone her, but Jesus extended grace. The list of disciples looks like some sort of Rogues’ Gallery, with a thieving tax collector, a rabble rouser, a sword-swinging fisherman, and a couple of brothers who had earned the nicknames, “Sons of Thunder” making up the mix. And Jesus, approaching them with grace and compassion, turned the world upside down through these individuals. He approaches us today with the eyes of grace!
B. Powerful - :8
“Do you want to be made well?” Jesus asks the man what, as we said, might seem like an obvious question—and it turns out that, while the man doesn’t really answer the question, it is obvious that he does. Still, as one commentator pointed out, sometimes paralysis of the body is attended by a paralysis of the will. A beggar healed in Jesus’ day and age would stand to lose a good living made by begging. William Barclay makes the point that “the first essential towards receiving the power of Jesus is the intense desire for it. Jesus comes to us and says, ‘do you really want to be changed?’ If in our inmost hearts we are well content to stay as we are, there can be no change for us. The desire for the better things must be singing in our hearts.”
What do you think is going through this man’s mind? Here’s this stranger, asking him what would seem to be an easy question. “What, is this guy toying with me? Of course I want to get well.” And he goes through what is truly a pitiful story; lodged in his mind is this belief that, if only someone would help him into this bubbling water, he can be healed. And then Jesus says, “Get up. Roll up that mat of yours and take it with you when you leave.” Remember, the man didn’t know Who this stranger was…so why did he try to get up? Was it to demonstrate for the stranger the impossibility of doing it? “OK, watch this”, might have been his thought, as he put his hands against the stone and tried to push up, knowing the futility of it all. Only…only it wasn’t so difficult as he imagined. In fact, there was a power there that hadn’t been before, flowing through those atrophied limbs and muscles, so much so that to his astonishment, he quickly found himself standing! Jesus, with a word, has changed the physical condition of a man who had lived 38 longs years with terrible paralysis.
But notice that Jesus’ ultimate focus isn’t on the physical, but rather upon the spiritual. The man has been confronted by the religious leaders about his alleged transgression of carrying a mat on the Sabbath, and has made the claim that he didn’t know Who it was Who healed him. Jesus finds him in the Temple—did he go there out of gratitude to God for his healing? We don’t know, but we do see that Jesus is
C. Spiritually-focused - :14
He says to the man, “don’t sin anymore, or something worse will befall you.” While Jesus in other places makes it clear that there is no 1-to-1 correlation between a particular sin and illness, it is nonetheless also true that sometimes our physical infirmities come as a direct result of our sin. The sin of gluttony quite often leads to heart disease and diabetes. The sin of drunkenness leads to liver disease. Some believe that this man was paralyzed in some way as a result of some particular sin. I don’t know that the text demands that interpretation, though it is possible, but regardless, Jesus demonstrates a concern for the man’s soul when He says, “Stop sinning, because something worse will happen to you if you don’t.” Was Jesus speaking of a further physical ailment? I believe that Jesus was speaking of spiritual loss, of the fact that if the man did not repent and turn from his sin, his very soul would be required of him. Jesus is concerned about bodies, but He is more concerned about souls.
D. Mission-oriented - :17
Jesus tells the Sanhedrin, the Jewish religious leaders, that He is all about doing what God the Father is doing: working. Jesus can be accurately described as the first Missionary; He is sent on a mission by God, the very same mission that God is undertaking.
E. The Co-Equal Son of God - :17,18
Our Jehovah’s Witnesses friends sadly miss this point, but those who heard Jesus speak understood exactly what He was saying: When Jesus said, “my Father” in the terminology He used, He was “making Himself equal with God”, according to John. So let’s sum up what John has told us about Jesus in these few verses: He is
Co-equal with God the Father
Come on God’s mission to earth
Equipped with God’s miracle power
Showing Himself to be compassionate
With an eternal and spiritual focus primarily
To continue our comparison, let’s look at
III. The Legalistic Sanhedrin
The Effects of Mere “Religion”
A. Rules-oriented
Religion makes us all concerned about rules. It did in the Pharisees’ day; it does in ours. In fact, the second point ties in with the first; they were
B. Willing to add to Scripture
Scripture wasn’t enough; the religious leaders and the Pharisees had to make up their own rules about how Scripture was to be obeyed. Some examples:
“On the Sabbath, a man may borrow of his (friend) jars of win or jars of oil, provided that he does not say to him, ‘Lend me them’”. This would imply a transaction, and a transaction might involve writing, and writing was forbidden on the Sabbath.
“If a man put out the lamp (on the night of the Sabbath) from fear of the Gentiles or of thieves or of an evil spirit, or to (allow) one who was sick to sleep, he is not culpable; (but if he did it with a mind) to spare the lamp or to spare the oil or to spare the wick, he is culpable.”
As regarded healing on the Sabbath, there was a provision that a man may not put vinegar on his tooth to cure a toothache, but that he might eat vinegar on his food, with the attitude of the rabbis being that, “if he is cured, he is cured.”
Face to face with a man who has been paralyzed for 38 years, now suddenly walking around whole, all that the Jewish religious leaders are concerned with is his violation of their rule. Further,
C. Not compassionate
Jesus was filled with compassion; these religious folks had no concern for the man at all. It’s doubtful that they’d even given him, or any of the other pitiful folks at the pool of Bethesda, hardly a passing glance. His former condition nor his healing mattered!
D. Judgmental
This comes across in their words, as they hurl accusation after question after charge at the man, who is guilty merely of doing what Jesus said to do! Ultimately, their judgmentalism led to being
E. Driven to hatred
We’re told in verse 16 that the religion boys “persecuted” Jesus, though we’re not told how, and then when He equated Himself with God in the sense of a personal, Father/Son relationship, they decided to try to kill Him, ultimately being successful.
The attitudes of the Jewish religious leaders illustrates the dangers of stark religion divorced from real Christian faith, and there are those—perhaps many sitting in this building this morning—who have attempted to morph Christian faith into mere religion. We see in the actions of Pharisees old and new some clear tenets of God-less religion:
Sees God as One to be appeased
Sees us as the initiators of that appeasement
Leads to pride on the part of those who deem themselves to have attained a level of religious respectability and of superiority over others
Judges those who do not measure up
Reacts with true contempt to those who question the system
If it loves at all, it does so conditionally, loving those only who will love in return, and sees love as a means to an end
Do some of these descriptions characterize a contemporary form of knock-off Christian faith? More to the point, are some of the things that we see in the Pharisees the things that we see in ourselves, if we are honest? Would our friends and neighbors and co-workers characterize us as religious people by this definition, or as people who truly are following Jesus? I know that I, for one, have seen some who would call themselves Christians, but who, truth be told, acted much more like Pharisees. So this raises some
Inescapable Challenges for Christ-Followers
The first of these is this:
1. Is Jesus enough?
Maybe that’s not even the best question. Maybe the best question is, “who or what exactly is it that you are following?” Who or what exactly is it that matters to you? Is it really Jesus? We changed some things up today in our service in ways that we never have before, and quite probably never will again. I don’t personally like some of the things that we did (although I liked some of them just fine!). But I wanted them done in order that we might come face to face with just what it is that matters to us: is it Jesus, or a particular style of worship? Is it Jesus, or is it the way Pastor Harvey dresses on Sunday morning? Is it Jesus, or is it the opinions of your co-workers? Is it Jesus, or is it your reputation? Is it Jesus, or is it your money? Is it Jesus, or is it your material possessions? Is it Jesus, or is it your comfort? Is it Jesus, or is it patriotism for your country? Is it Jesus, or is it your family? Is it Jesus, or is it your friends? Is it Jesus, or is it the warm emotional experience you get when you sing praise choruses? Is it Jesus, or is it how much you enjoy hearing the preacher preach? Is it Jesus, or is it how much you love to hear special music? Is it Jesus, or is it religion? Is it Jesus, or is it you?
Changing the way we did some things this morning is designed for just this purpose, to ask you to come face to face this morning with whether you are a Christ-follower, or in reality, whether your practice of faith more closely resembles that of the Pharisees. Because it wasn’t God for the Pharisees; it was religion, and it was their preferences, and it was their rules, and it was their pride; it wasn’t God, it was them!
2. What does Jesus—not “religion”—produce in us?
Before we finish this morning, let’s think for a few moments about how we will know whether we are more like the legalistic Pharisees or true followers of Jesus. There are some tests right here in the example of Jesus which transfer nicely to our context and help us to answer the question. First, whereas religion produces in people a rules-oriented legalism, Jesus produces
A. A Grace Orientation
When I look at others, through what lens do I see them—particularly those who don’t follow our Jesus, those who mock His name even, those who oppose us and whose lives are lived in open rebellion to God and His purposes? Is there a person whose face pops into your mind when I say the word “enemy”—and if so, is that because the person has set his/her mind to be that—or because you have contributed to the estrangement? Upon whom do you “look down your nose”? For whom would you not buy lunch if you had opportunity? What categories of “sinners” are people you wouldn’t associate with? What if a person told you she was an AIDS patient? A member of the ACLU? A drug dealer? “Married” to someone of the same sex? Mere religion draws lines and separates people into categories, and some categories are beyond love and grace. Do you find yourself doing that?
B. Spiritual Power
Granting the fact that we will not experience power in the same sense as Jesus did, nonetheless we ought to experience the power of God in our lives, changing us and molding us and overcoming sinful thoughts and words and habits.
C. A focus on the spiritual and the eternal
Why is it that most prayer requests on most church prayer lists are focused on people’s bodies? Why are so few, comparatively, focused upon spiritual needs? Is it because most of us are so earthly-minded that we’re little heavenly good?
D. A real sense of mission
Jesus was laser-focused on His purpose. Are you? Do you know why you are here? In the general, God calls you to live for His glory. His purpose is to change you that you might become an eternal change agent. Further, in the specific, He has gifted you and given you talents and interests and aptitudes that are uniquely your own, in order that you might be personally involved in the work of the kingdom.
Here’s a rubber-meets-the-road test: how deeply does it matter to you that we have deviated today from some of the normal ways we worship? Will the topic of your thought and dinner-table discussion be that “we didn’t sing any praise choruses today” or “can you believe that Pastor Harvey preached in a golf shirt?” or “where was the order of service in the bulletin?” You may not like me of these differences, and neither do I, but the greater point is, where is your heart? Is it all about Jesus, about His work in the world and in your life, or like the Pharisees, is it really, ultimately, all about you?
