The Seeking God Series

INTRODUCTION

• Imagine that you have some disability, one from which you have suffered from most of your life, it not all of it.

• You have tried everything and every treatment, as well as some that are off the books.

• You hear about a special pool where you can go to be healed, but there is a catch.

• You have to be the first one in the water once it stirs to be healed.

• Somehow you have been making your way to this unique pool for many years.

• Healing is so close you can almost touch it; however, the relief you sought was just out of reach for you all these years.

• Today we continue our study of the signs of Jesus.

• A sign, as the author of John uses it, is a visible experience of God working through Jesus in the world for our salvation.

• In John 5, we see Jesus enter Jerusalem to attend a feast (v. 1).

• Though the exact site is not certain, the place where this most likely happened has been excavated.

• The place consisted of two large twin pools.

• The entire structure was surrounded by a portico, with one running down the middle of the two pools as well (Craig Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament[Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2014], 262).

• People would come there to be healed, believing that the one lowered into the water would be healed (vv. 3–4, 7).

• Out of this multitude of invalids, Jesus approaches one man.

• Today, we will see that the healing of the disabled man shows that God seeks out the lost to save them.

• Let’s begin with John chapter 5, verses 1-7!

John 5:1–7 (CSB)

1 After this, a Jewish festival took place, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

2 By the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem there is a pool, called Bethesda in Aramaic, which has five colonnades.

3 Within these lay a large number of the disabled—blind, lame, and paralyzed.

5 One man was there who had been disabled for thirty-eight years.

6 When Jesus saw him lying there and realized he had already been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to get well?”

7 “Sir,” the disabled man answered, “I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I’m coming, someone goes down ahead of me.”

SERMON

THE SEEKING GOD:

I. Seeks the misguided.

• Ok, we are going to start with Bible Nerd time!

• When you read this passage, you will notice that in many of your bibles, the last part of verse 3 is not there as well as verse 4.

• You may find that verse in the margin or the notes section.

• In the CSV, the passage is in the notes.

• Briefly, here is why.

• The last part of verse 3 and verse 4 is not in the majority of manuscripts or the earliest manuscripts.

• The passages appear in the early second century and the later manuscripts.

• According to the NET Bible, Second Edition Notes:

• The majority of later mss (C3 T ? 078 f1, 13 𝔐) add the following to 5:3: “waiting for the moving of the water. 5:4 For an angel of the Lord went down and stirred up the water at certain times. Whoever first stepped in after the stirring of the water was healed from whatever disease which he suffered.”

• Other mss include only v. 3b (Ac D 33 lat) or v. 4 (A L it).

• Few textual scholars today would accept the authenticity of any portion of vv. 3b–4, for they are not found in the earliest and best witnesses (𝔓66, 75 ? B C* T pc co), they include un-Johannine vocabulary and syntax, several of the mss that include the verses mark them as spurious (with an asterisk or obelisk), and because there is a great amount of textual diversity among the witnesses that do include the verses.

• The present translation follows NA27 in omitting the verse number, a procedure also followed by a number of other modern translations.

Biblical Studies Press, The NET Bible, Second Edition. (Denmark: Thomas Nelson, 2019).

• The NASB 1995 Edition includes the passage listed here with a note that these verses were most likely a later scribal addition in the side column.

John 5:3–4 (NASB95)

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.