The Healing at the Pool

The Historical Setting of John 5 and the Importance of Papyrus 45

This morning our study will continue out of the Gospel of John, entering into Chapter 5, the Gospel of John, Chapter 5. If you are new to us or visiting with us, we have, during the rare opportunities when I have opportunity to speak in the Sunday morning and Sunday evening services, have been pursuing a study for about a year now.

It's an unusual study because it is based upon the contents of an ancient manuscript of the New Testament called Papyrus 45. As some of you know, I am engaged in a full-time PhD study of that particular manuscript, and so it seemed like wisdom to try to tie things together.

And so if P45 contains any portion of a chapter, then we are preaching through that chapter. However, I confess I stretched the rules just a little bit because there is one tiny little fragment, about 25 total words, that I've actually never even seen.

I've never found a photograph of it. It's separated off. It's at a different place than where the rest of the manuscript is kept today. And it contains a little portion of John Chapter 4 and a little portion of John Chapter 5.

But, as I've said before, I made the rules to this sermon series anyway, so no one can really get too upset with me. And besides that, John Chapter 5 is just simply, I think, one of the most stellar sections of the New Testament.

The balance and beauty of this particular chapter, its importance cannot be underestimated. I believe that especially as we speak on the subject of Christology and who Christ is, that there are few texts that provide us with more insight and depth of understanding, specifically of the relationship of Father and Son.

Yes, we have, obviously, John Chapter 1. We have John Chapter 10. We have John Chapter 17. We have Colossians Chapter 1, Philippians Chapter 2, Hebrews Chapter 1. Yes, we have other texts that are extremely Christologically significant.

But let's be honest. One of the greatest stumbling blocks to the world around us is the reality of what we believe about Jesus. If we were to simply present Jesus as the rest of the world's religions present their founding prophets, we might not have quite as much pushback.

We might say, as the rest of the world says, well our founding prophet was sent by God, he has a very important message, and you would do well to obey his message. But we obviously go far beyond that.

We not only say that his message is true for all people, we actually say that he is Lord of all people. We say that he died and rose again, that he is coming again, and that he sits enthroned over all the nations.

And we go so far as to say that this man, who lived in a small region of Galilee and Judea, almost never went outside of that area as far as we know, was actually the incarnation of the second person of the Divine Trinity, the creator of this vast, vast universe, and that he upholds all things by the word of his power.

Orthodox Christology Versus Modalism

Now that is an amazing statement. And there are many people, there's one man, I've debated him a couple of times, who's written a book called The Trinity, Christianity's self-inflicted wound. And there are many who would say, look, if you want to make Christianity intellectually significant and acceptable to this world, you've got to get past this mythology that you have built around your founder.

And our Muslim friends will tell us, you know, Jesus was a prophet, and in fact we believe he performed more miracles than you do, but you've gone into excess. You've gone beyond what Jesus himself taught by elevating him beyond the truth of who he really was.

And so we are faced with numerous attacks against our orthodox faith in regards to the person of Jesus Christ. And many Christians struggle in providing a meaningful response, not just simply to the Jehovah's Witness that comes to your door, as well-trained as they may be, and throwing various objections out, but to the whole realm of objections to what we believe about Jesus.

And part of the reason is, in our own thinking, in our own thinking, we struggle to see where the balance is. We struggle with the relationship of the divine persons. I think for most Christians, monotheism, okay, we get that, there's only one true God.

And we can talk about the deity of Christ, we know a certain number of texts, even though we may struggle with some other texts to explain exactly how all that works, but it's the relationship of the divine persons that, in my experience, the majority of Christians, in their honesty, will say, that's where I have my least confidence.

That's where I have my least confidence. And that leads to an incipient, and I think very prevalent, error in the thought of many Christians, which I have labored diligently over the decades to make sure does not exist amongst us.

But it may yet still lurk in some dark corners. And that is the concept of modalism. The idea that you have one God who sometimes acts like the Father, and sometimes acts like the Son, and sometimes acts like the Holy Spirit.

There's only one person, but taking different modes of relationship to the world. And sometimes it's the mode of the Father, and sometimes the mode of the Son, and sometimes the mode of the Spirit. Or, as it exists, interestingly enough, where I will be next week, I'm going, I think for my 16th or 17th year, I've started losing track, to St. Charles.

St. Louis is the home of the United Pentecostal Church International, and they teach that Jesus was two persons. That the human aspect of Jesus was the Son, so the Son's not eternal. The Son has not eternally existed.

But he was indwelt by God, who is the Father, and so he was both the Father and the Son. And so Jesus' prayers, for example, were his human side communicating to his divine side, but it was an internal conversation.

Jesus is two persons with two natures. And so we have all these different perspectives, and you hear this sometimes when you're in a situation where you're listening to others praying. And when they pray, you sense this confusion as to who they're addressing.

You'll hear someone say, oh, our dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for today, we thank you for your love toward us, we thank you that you died for us. Well, it may, in your mind, you may go, well, they shifted their thinking from the Father to the Son there, and just didn't mention it.

Or maybe they just don't understand. The Father was not incarnate. The Spirit was not incarnate. It was the Son who gave himself. And so you sometimes catch these things, and you might say, well, you know, that's pretty advanced theology.

Well, actually, the nature of our God is rather basic theology. If you look at our catechisms and our confessions, that's right up there at the beginning. It's not toward the end. It's not in the appendix.

These are things that if you really want to go deep, you might want to learn these things. In fact, as Christians, we identify as one of the main problems of paganism is the idea that they worship unknown gods.

We don't worship an unknown god. We've been given his word. And so, especially when it comes to the relationship of the Father and the Son, and especially in understanding how the Son, in his humiliation, in his incarnation, relates to the Father, John chapter 5 should be very, very helpful to us.

Very, very helpful indeed. And so, we turn to John chapter 5, and we see that John says, he gives us a timeframe. After these things, there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Well, immediately, we have a problem.

The Uncertain Feast and the Chronology of Jesus' Ministry

And we're not going to spend too much time on this, but I want to apprise you of it. And it may be something, some of you might find this to be a very, very interesting study. But how long was Jesus' ministry?

Well, traditionally, it has been understood to be approximately three years. But it's interesting that the evangelists are not really all that interested in giving us those types of specifics. They give us a lot of tantalizing ideas, and a little reference here, and a little reference there.

And here's one. If the word feast had an article in front of it, then it would probably refer to the major feasts. But how many feasts does John refer us to? And how many times does he refer to Passover?

And there were a number of feasts that could be referred to. And this doesn't have the article in front of it, so it could have been a minor feast. We just don't know. And some people have tried to work on the chronology of the Gospel of John, and they've actually made it work real well, as long as you reverse chapters 5 and 6.

So if you put chapter 6 before chapter 5, then you can assign a certain feast to this, and it all works out great. But, of course, there aren't any manuscripts that have it that way. So that causes a bit of a problem.

It is fascinating to seek to try to study the chronology of the New Testament and things like that, and the reality is that it's a complex study. And so we're not exactly sure what feast is being referred to here, but there are a number of them you can choose from, and depending on what you land on will also impact how long Jesus' ministry was, at least as it is contained in the Gospel of John and how many feasts are referred to there.

But that wasn't John's point. And, in fact, it's interesting that as we encounter the first story here in John chapter 5, one of the questions I'll ask of you to think about is what do you think of the man who was healed?

What do you think of this man who was healed as we read the text? It's very interesting to me that there are many commentators, sound, historic commentators, that would say there isn't much positive about this man anywhere in this text.

You don't see anything about repentance. You've got the warning of Jesus, don't go on sinning. He just doesn't seem... You compare and contrast him with the man who's healed in John chapter 9. Remember him?

And it's a strong contrast. But then there are others. There are others that really don't see that the text is communicating anything negative about the man at all. They just see him as one that Jesus healed and really didn't have much information.

And you really can read the text both directions. And I would suggest to you the reason is this. It's not John's purpose to focus us upon this particular individual. He doesn't give us a name, doesn't say any more about him.

He sort of leaves it open to interpretation as to exactly where this man came down. I found it interesting that the great reformer John Calvin, who's well known for, we all know John Calvin was a hard-nosed, cold man.

At least that's what we're told. I'm not really certain that the parishioners in Strasburg, when he was in Strasburg when the plague hit, that he went and ministered to them in their sickness. I'm not sure that they would have found him to be quite as cold-hearted as historians like to view him.

But Calvin, interestingly enough, did not have anything negative to say about this man at all. He did not read him in a negative light. But there are many others who followed in Calvin's footsteps who did.

So keep that in mind as we look at this. So we begin in verse 2. There is in Jerusalem, by the Sheep Gate, a pool, which is named in Hebrew, Bezathah, having five stoa, or porticoes. Now, it's fascinating to read older commentaries on John, because there's so much symbolism that drives the interpretation.

And so, for example, if you have the number five mentioned, now, let me warn you ahead of time, it has nothing to do with the five points, okay? You can just skip that one right now. It has nothing to do with TULIP.

If you have the number five, and you have sick people laying around a pool with five porticoes, what might that refer to? Well, it's five books of Moses. It's the old law. It's the old system, you see.

And it was sick and about to die. And Jesus is delivering people out of the old system, you see. And when people have that mindset, oh, when they go through chapter four, and they find in the Samaritan woman all sorts of symbolism and Mount Gerizim and all that kind of stuff, you know, you can come up with some fascinating sermons if you want to go that direction.

But all that, you know, I can understand why people want to go there. But it's really hard to go there, especially over the past 20, 30 years, because it was only 20, 30 years ago that in doing archaeological work, we've found this pool.

And guess how many porticoes it has? Five, yeah. It's an amazing thing. It has five porticoes in it. And they dug down there and said, hey, look at that. We knew it was there, just hadn't dug it up yet.

And there it is. And so you have this pool. And what a sight it must have been. I want you to try to see in your mind's eye what this looked like. Because in that place, there is laid out a, I'm going to use the term plethora, because that's what the Greek word is, a multitude of the weak, the sick, the blind, the crippled, the lame.

I mean, the words refer to also withered hands. And basically, a lot of these folks, we could probably help today, but not all. But here you have people where the very, very, very limited medical science of the day has said nothing we can do.

All the salves and ointments and everything else just didn't have any impact. And so the majority of these people here either have fundamental issues with appendages, they're not able to walk properly, or their arms and things like that, or the term sick can simply be people with cancer or all sorts of issues that have been laid here by the pool that we call Bethesda or Bethatho.

And notice it says there's a multitude. And Jesus had been here before, but we're not introduced to him going there. And there's a multitude there now, and what happens? And there was a certain man. Just a certain man.

But he'd been there for 38 years. He was there in his weakness, in his sickness, and it's specifically called a sickness. It's not, we're not told what it is, but there is some kind of sickness that he had, and had he been there at the pool all that time or had he had this sickness for 38 years, it's sort of hard to say, but let's just say here was someone who had been experiencing significant physical trauma and difficulty for a very long time.

And, of course, as soon as you have a number, 38, 38. Well, some people point out that that's the specific amount of time, not including going out and coming in, that the people of Israel were wandering in the wilderness or something along those lines.

And so, you know, that way you can connect it with the five porticos, and, you know, you just come up with all sorts of stuff. Numbers like that, it's just, it's fun. You can do all sorts of things. But he was just one of those people that obviously had pretty much given up.

Pretty much given up. Just a man. But it says in verse 6,. And Jesus seeing this man lying there and knowing how long he had been there. Now, it's sort of hard to avoid the reality that Jesus knows something very, very special about this individual.

He has supernatural knowledge. It's not like, you know, you got a tag that says, Yeah, this is my 38th year here. And so everybody can go, Wow, you're quite the veteran. You get one of the better spots or something like that.

No. Jesus has supernatural knowledge of this particular individual's situation. And for some people, that makes the question that Jesus asks of him sound almost cruel. Because Jesus says to him, Do you wish to be made whole?

Do you wish to be whole? Well, what kind of a question is that? You're at the pool. And I didn't mention, and I should have mentioned, I apologize, the major textual variant. I just popped over it because it's not in my Greek text in front of me.

But it's certainly an issue. Because if you have the King James or the New King James, and if you have the Numerican Standard, it's in brackets, I think. I don't remember if the ESV has it or not, if it's there in brackets or if it's down at the bottom.

No, it's down at the bottom of the page in the ESV and the NIV, if I recall correctly. Verse 4. Verse 4 gave an explanation. Why are there so many people lying around this particular pool in Jerusalem?

And the reason that is given is that an angel would come down and trouble the waters, and the first one down in the waters would be healed of his affliction. Now, that particular text is not found in the earliest manuscripts of the Gospel of John.

It comes much later, and in all probabilities is one of the clearest examples we have of where an explanatory note that someone wrote in the margin of a manuscript of the Gospel of John was incorporated into the text at a later point in time.

This was a part of the preservation of the text, and let me explain that. If you were copying a manuscript and you did not know the author, which would be very, very frequently, many manuscripts have notes in the column.

Now, some of you remember. I know you young people. This is going to date me. I'm sorry. Some of you are going to come up to me and ask about dinosaurs and things like that. I understand. It's understandable.

But back when I was in high school and college, I wrote my papers on an IBM Selectric. If you're nodding your head, you are dating yourself, so you need to be careful about the rest of the people in the congregation.

Now, that was pretty nice to have that, because in our house, we had a 1940s vintage electric typewriter. We're talking the black thing. If you look at the movies from back in World War II, when they would be typing stuff up, we had one of them, but you could actually plug it in.

It made a racket. Oh, my goodness. But I remember as a kid learning on that thing, and then I went to high school, and I was smart. I took typing early on, and boy, was that a smart thing to do. All the guys mocked me for it, but they weren't mocking me toward the end of high school.

But anyway, I had an IBM Selectric. And when you type a paper, it's not like today, where you type away on a computer, and then when you want to print it and submit it, it puts in all these beautiful footnotes, and it just comes out from laser-printed.

Oh, that's so nice. You had to remember when you had footnotes. You had to figure out when to stop to be able to put the footnote in. And sometimes you'd just be buzzing along, and all of a sudden you realize you went too far.

You didn't have room for your footnote. You know what you had to do? You took that piece of paper out, that beautifully typed piece of paper, and you crumbled it up, and you put a new blank sheet in, and then you start it all over again, because that's just how we did it.

That's why you young people need to respect us older people. Amen, that's right. But another error you could make was if you were copying from a book. Yes, they did not have Select, Control, C. That didn't work.

No, you could do that all you want. It wouldn't do anything at all. I remember the first time I did that. I was like, oh, thank you. No, no, no, no, no. You had to actually somehow put your book, and we came up with the most imaginative ways of putting books on top of books and rubber bands and everything else to try to keep a book open so you could copy out of it.

And so you're copying away, and all of a sudden you look back and you realize, oh, I skipped a line. And you know what you did? You took that piece of paper out, wadded it up, and threw it away, and started all over again.

OK, this is why older people are more patient than younger people. This is why. This is why. Well, when you were writing a manuscript, the same type of thing would happen. And in scriptoriums, a person might produce a manuscript, and maybe they skipped a line, but there were proofreaders.

There was a corrector in the big scriptoriums where you were actually, you know, someone was paying real money to have this thing done well. You'd have a corrector would come along, be checking things, go, oh.

Well, what do you do now? Well, that parchment wasn't cheap. It's animal hide. You know, you didn't want to go kill a few more sheep just simply for something like that. And so very frequently, even in professional scriptoriums, you would write the missing text in smaller print in the column.

So if you've got someone's manuscript, you don't know, you can't go back and say, excuse me, did you write this in the column as an explanation, or was this something that was skipped? If you can't go back and ask them, the wonderful thing is that Christian scribes were very conservative.

They wanted to keep everything there. And if they didn't know, they would copy it. And so what happens is, in all probability, someone, probably sitting in a service similar to ours here, heard an explanation.

The explanation of, why are these people laying around this pool? And so they put in the column, oh, angel came down, troubled the waters, first one in, gets healed. Well, 20, 30, 40, 50 years later, someone has that person's manuscript.

It's been passed down. They can't go and ask them. And so when they make a copy of it, they include it in the text, assuming that it had been left out and added in, that it was supposed to be a part of the text.

That's probably where verse four came from. And that's why your NIV and your ESV go from verse three straight to verse five. And then you look down at the bottom of the page and you find what is down there.

So I skipped over that. I apologize for doing that. It's a story I've told many, many, many times before, but I did not want to just pass over it. And unfortunately, P45 does not contain that section.

It would be nice to have another early witness in regards to that issue, but it does not. So we go back to where we were. Jesus has seen this man. There's all these people. And if he had walked up to any one of them and said, do you want to be made whole?

The response of probably any one of them would be, well, yeah, that's why I'm here. I mean, this isn't just where all the cool people hang out. How can you ask me this question? But it is interesting, I think, that the sick man answers him and says, Lord, I do not have anyone.

I don't have a man. So that when the water is troubled, they might pick me up and carry me into the pool. As I am coming, while I'm trying to get there, another one gets down there before me. So the answer is not, yes, I wish to be made whole.

It's, well, this is why I haven't been. This is why I haven't been. Now, are we reading too much into that? It may just simply be communicating to us the fact this man doesn't know who Jesus is, doesn't realize that he has the ability to make him whole, and he's just simply explaining why it is that he is still there after all of this time.

Maybe it's frustration. I don't know. Or maybe he's not focused upon what's really important. Don't know. It's difficult to figure out. But Jesus responds to him and says to him, get up, rise up, take up your pallet, your bed, and walk.

Now, the man immediately was made whole, and he rose up, and he took up his bed, and he was walking. Now, we're not told, did he all of a sudden feel a sensation back in his legs? We're not even told exactly what the nature of his illness is, but somehow he knows instantly that something very special has taken place.

And he takes up his bed, his pallet, the little mat that he would have been laying on, and he's walking. We're not given any information about further conversation. Doesn't seem to have been any. Maybe as he was looking down, and he sees that he can walk, and as he's gathering his paltry possessions together, he looks around, and where is that man?

Or maybe the people around him who knew his name were crying out his name and going, what's happened? What's happened? And maybe some of them that could sort of hobble or something, they surround him, and Jesus disappears, does not see him any longer.

We're not told. There must have been quite a stir, especially amongst those who, like him, had been there for decades, for long periods of time. You'd get to know those people after a while. What was the conversation like?

And how many laid there going, why him? Why not me? I've been praying. I've been asking. I've just been subsisting. Why not me? Now, they happen to be the Sabbath day. Well, it didn't just happen to be.

You know very well that it was Jesus' purpose to go to that place at this time, in this fashion, and heal this particular individual on the Sabbath day. Therefore, the Jews were saying to the man who had been healed, it's the Sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to be carrying your mat.

Now, there were differing interpretations as we look at the Mishnah, and as accurately as that might reflect the traditions of the days of Jesus. There are differing traditions. You can carry your mat around your house.

You could do what needed to be done inside your domicile to get it ready for the day's activities and for living, because you had to use most of that space for people sleeping, and so you had to roll stuff up and store it out of the way and things like that.

But not out in public, not outside of your domicile, such as this. This would look like you're carrying it for work, as a part of work. And so, since he doesn't live where he's walking, it's not lawful for you to be carrying your mat.

And the man answered them and said, the one who made me whole, that one said to me, take up your mat and walk. And he used the exact same words as Jesus used, so he was accurate in his quotation. Now, is he deflecting the accusation?

Is he keeping himself safe, or is he just simply, hey, I'm just so excited to be walking that all I can tell you is the guy who made me whole told me to take up my mat and walk? Don't know. You can read it either direction.

And so they ask him, well, who is this man that said to you, take up and walk? So in other words, taking up and walking is still illegal. So who is it that told you to do something illegal? And the healed one did not know who it was, for Jesus was hidden by the crowd that was in the place.

And so we're not exactly certain whether he purposefully does this. It seems that's probably the case. Or it's just simply the fact that Jerusalem's not that huge of a place. You put this many people into it, and it's very easy for someone to disappear into the crowd.

And so the man can honestly say, I don't know who it was. Jesus had not introduced himself. He had not given his name, et cetera, et cetera. And so they seemingly let him go, probably with a stern warning or something.

But after these things, verse 14, Jesus found him. Now that, I think, is significant. Jesus sought him out. He wanted this conversation to take place after the conversation the man had already had with the Jews.

Jesus is indeed in charge in this situation. And Jesus finds him in the temple. Now why would he go to the temple? Well, because the lame and the halt and the blind would have been allowed in there in the first place.

Now he gets to go. He'd been in the shadow of it for a long time. Now he gets to go. And Jesus finds him there. And he says to him, see, you have been made whole. You have been made well. No longer sin in order that something worse may not happen to you.

Now it seems pretty clear that this is not, yeah, in some hypothetical sense, be a good boy from now on. There seems to be a specific sin that Jesus knows about and the man knows about that says, stop sinning lest something worse happen to you.

So it's pretty difficult to avoid the conclusion that this man's sickness was related. Maybe that's why Jesus pointed him out and went to him. It's hard to say. And it becomes even more mysterious because once Jesus says this to him, in order that something worse may not happen to you, immediately the man goes away.

This is why I think there's probably a negative undertone here all along. Because it's not like, oh Lord, yes, thank you. I deeply appreciate it. I'm deeply repentant. I know exactly what you're talking about.

It's not John 9. This is John 5, and it's very different. And the first thing is he went away, the man, and announced, sort of like, oh, hey, guys, guys, announced to the Jews that Jesus was the one who made him whole.

So it does seem to me, I would take the negative perspective here, it does seem to me that the man's reaction is not the reaction of a thankful person who's like, oh, thank you. Yes. Or even, Lord, to what sin do you refer?

Help me to understand. There seems to be a hardness in this man's sinning. I don't know what happened to him. No one does. No one tells us. There's no tradition that I know of from church history. I could have missed it, I suppose.

Not that it would be overly relevant. And then he's gone. He's gone. No more commentary. Nothing more said. The last thing we see of him is he's announcing to the Jews, it was that guy. And the commentary is, and for this reason, the Jews were pursuing, persecuting, coming against Jesus because he did these things on the Sabbath.

The Sabbath Controversy and the Healing as a Sign of Christ's Glory

Now, we have seen similar situations numerous times in Matthew, Mark, Luke, different contexts as far as who it was and how the healing took place and things like that. But the idea, obviously, is the continued condemnation of the blindness of the Jewish leaders in not being able to see that God is the one who is active in these situations and hence they are so focused upon their rules that they can't see God acting in their very midst.

We get that. But what this entire story in history does, which John roots right in a place that we have discovered archaeologically in Jerusalem. And don't let that pass your thinking. Be thankful. We can still be thankful even after Thursday and before next year.

Be thankful that the Bible roots its teaching on even the highest things such as Christology in history. The very event that triggers the self-revelation of Jesus and his relationship with the Father that begins specifically in verse 17 took place at a specific place at a specific time in history.

That's very important. The world's religions at that time, other than Judaism, were not concerned about the specificity of time and place because their stories they told about their gods were recognized to be myths that could be changed and altered and put into different forms.

But that's not how the New Testament writers understand what they're saying. They are not saying, oh, I'm just making this up on the fly. It's rooted in history. And so what comes as we're going to listen to Jesus saying, you need to understand, I'm not some deity out on my own in opposition to the Father.

There is absolute perfect harmony and unity between myself and the Father. And yet I am not the Father. I am the Son. And I do what I see the Father doing. That balance is going to allow us to not only look back into eternity and see the relationship of Father and Son before the Incarnation, but then have an understanding of what does it mean that the second person of the Trinity would enter into human flesh and be subject to the Father.

What does that look like? John chapter 5, I think, is probably the most important text on that subject in the Bible. And it comes to us rooted deeply in what took place in history. You can go there today.

You can look at it with your eyes and go, ah, this isn't some myth. We're not looking around for Mount Olympus. Well, that might be it. I don't know. Zeus, Jupiter, I don't know. No. That is not what we have in the New Testament.

And so there's the story of the man. I'd like to think that maybe he was just ignorant or something, but it just seems to me that especially the way John expresses the first word of verse 15, goes away, goes away, the man.

And then the words used to announce, it's like, hey, hey, guys, guys, it was him. Could that reflect that he now sort of felt like now that he wasn't a cripple any longer, maybe he'd get in good with the religious leaders?

I don't know. We can only speculate. I wish I could think better of the man. But I think what we have here is the fact that Jesus heals, and when he heals, he doesn't do so based upon some kind of merit.

Jesus didn't sit there and look at that field of people and go, you know, that's the best guy. That's the nicest guy. Because if that were the case, you don't come up to him later on and say, you better stop sinning or something worse is going to happen to you.

God extended his power in healing this man to show the glory of Jesus and give Jesus the opportunity of saying, as he's going to say later in the chapter, you need to honor the son just as you honor the father.