Spiritual Paralysis | Sermon 01/29/2023

Please turn with me in your Bibles to John chapter 5.

We're in a new chapter.

John chapter 5.

Gospel according to John.

We're going to be in verses 1 through 15.

And the title of this sermon today, church, is Spiritual Paralysis.

Spiritual Paralysis is the title.

Starting in verse 1 of chapter 5 of the Gospel according to John,

hear now the inerrant and infallible words of the living and true God.

Waiting for the moving of the waters, 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 of the water, stepped in was made well from whatever

disease with which he was afflicted.

A man was there who had been ill for 38 years.

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?

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'm coming, another steps down before me.

Jesus said to him, get up, pick up your pallet, and walk.

Immediately the man became well and picked up his pallet and began to walk.

Now it was the Sabbath on that day.

So the Jews were trying, were saying to the man who was cured, it is the Sabbath and it is

not permissible for you to carry your pallet.

But the man answered them, he who made me well was the one who said to me, pick up your pallet and

walk.

They asked him, who is the man who said this to you, pick up your pallet and walk?

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.

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.

The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well.

Thus ending the reading of God's holy and inspired word, let's pray quickly.

Father, would you please speak through me today, Lord?

God, would you please illuminate the scriptures to your people?

Would you please edify us and teach us by your word, Lord?

We need your word, dear God, to sharpen us and to whittle away, Lord,

all of the old that remains in us, dear God.

So Lord, would you please be with us in this moment in the proclamation of the word?

I pray this all in Jesus' name, amen.

The verses we're going over today

are just one part of the greater drama unfolding in the

rest of chapter 5.

We simply can't go over the rest of chapter 5 today.

I know most of you want to go home, so we will only go through the first 15

verses today.

One thing we will see next week is the result of this healing is that the Jews

started persecuting Jesus.

It actually reports that the Jews persecuted Jesus

for this healing.

That's right.

And if we didn't know the biblical accounts, it would baffle us.

It should.

This is the long sought -after, prophesied, and revered

Mashiach, or Messiah.

The prologue told us that he is the Logos from all eternity, was always

with God, and has always been God.

This is God in their very midst.

They cried for a deliverer for multiple millennia, and now he's

finally here.

And now that he's here, they've rejected him.

And what we're going to see is that the Jews in the first century have become the

ultimate false religion.

Now, say that word lightly either.

All false religions typically have some major components to them, okay?

But I think we're going to see two major components to false religion as

detailed in the text here.

And the first major component to have a false religion is to have spiritual

experiences.

There must be an aura of the supernatural.

In fact, unexplainable things will occur even around these typical

sites of religious sites all over the world, okay?

Many Mormons will testify, I know, who said they saw the temple for the first

time, maybe in their city or the one in Salt Lake City, and they have this awe -inspiring nature.

They say they asked if this is true, and they stand in front of these temples, and

a light turns on or something, and they think it's this wonderful spiritual moment.

Many can recall stories while in or around temples

that they can only chalk up to the supernatural, of course.

There have been moments that people have been in false things where they've experienced supernatural stuff.

Millions of Roman Catholics will travel to sites like the Grotto of Lourdes in

France.

There have been reports of many people receiving healing from great ailments

by touching the waters there at the Grotto.

Hindus will say that they have visions of deities when they are standing in front

of statues of these supposed deities, and there are many other

examples besides that.

The Bible says that there is one Holy Spirit, one divine Holy Spirit.

He's part of the Godhead.

Then there are also many lowercase s spirits.

In fact, John tells us, he admonishes us in one of his epistles, he says, test the spirits.

Test what spirit is doing this, doing that, okay?

I can also accept that in God's common benevolence, in God's common goodness over the

whole world, because this is God's creation, that he can do good

things for people who don't know him at that moment yet.

I believe that.

You should, too.

God does good things all over the world for people who even curse his name.

In this passage in John, we will see the spiritual component of the Jews' false

religion take place in the people's belief of a sacred pool

over the God who heals.

And the second major component of a false religion is rule -keeping.

Rule -keeping.

God has given his one and only transcendent law for mankind.

Paul says in Romans that that law is written upon our hearts, but we suppress the truth in

unrighteousness.

But God's law is a representation of his very nature and character.

However, false religions will distort that law.

They will add to God's law.

They will create manuals.

They'll create pamphlets.

They'll create additional unbiblical revelation, prophetic utterances contrary to God's Word.

And in the case of these first century Jews, they created what?

They created what's called the tradition of the elders.

You see Jesus mention that a lot.

So God's Word wasn't enough at this time.

They had what was called the tradition of the elders.

These rabbinical teachings added on top of God's revelation.

We're talking man -made rules that supposedly need to be adhered to with perfection

in order to obtain the goal of whatever that religion is aspiring to.

These two components make up the religious atmosphere at the time here of the first century in which

Jesus walked.

They believed that they had established a religion, a covenantal response to Yahweh, the one true and

living God.

But this God, Yahweh, the only God, arrives and

comes into his own creation and finds that it is nothing like he had commanded,

nor do the people believe in him.

They built something for someone else.

It's like when Moses tarried on Mount Sinai

and the people make a golden calf and they actually dared to call that golden

calf Yahweh.

They did.

They called the golden calf, this idol, the Lord.

Just because they call it that doesn't make it the Lord God.

And just because you call something blessed by God doesn't make it blessed by God.

And that will be the case as we unpack this today starting in verses 1 & 2.

In verse 1 it says,.

After these things there was a feast of the Jews and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

We don't know how much time has passed from the healing of the royal official

son.

It doesn't tell us.

And we also don't know what feast this is in particular.

The last time John shows Jesus in Jerusalem was in chapter 2 at the Passover and

the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which are in the spring.

Okay, the springtime.

Passover, Feast of Unleavened Bread.

50 days exactly after that is the

Feast of Weeks, Pentecost.

That's what it means.

50 days, which would have been an incredible feat if Jesus was in Galilee, in the

Galilee region.

He had just healed this royal official son in Cana and then for him to be able to come all the way

back down again, it would have been a lot for him to go through.

It's possible this is the Feast of Trumpets in the autumn.

So there's these spring feasts, then these autumn, fall, harvest type

feasts.

Also the Day of Atonement is in the fall.

And so this could be the feast.

The fact is John references every other feast name every time he mentions a feast.

This is the only time he doesn't reference it, in which probably tells us that it just doesn't matter.

It just doesn't matter in this particular moment.

It has no relevance at this time.

The point is Jesus is back in Jerusalem.

So verse 2 shows us more precisely where this scene begins.

Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheik a pool, which is called in Hebrew Bethesda,

having five porticoes.

John says there is in Jerusalem, just a side note because I'm a

post mill partial preterist sort of guy.

John says now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheik a pool.

He says there is.

He doesn't say there was.

I mentioned it before, but it's my belief that every single New Testament gospel or letter was

written before the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70.

To me it doesn't make sense that things like the Revelation or other

letters or Gospels would have been written in the 80s or 90s.

So I do think there's early authorship for all the things in the New Testament.

That something as cataclysmic as the destruction of the temple, their very way of life, would have

somehow made its way through onto these pages, but they weren't.

So anyways, many will probably go, okay, well there's sometimes that these

authors write in this present tense way, even for past tense stuff.

Okay, that could be true, but I think it's because John's writing this and these

things are still there.

That's what I would say.

Okay, there is a pool by the

Sheep Gate.

The Sheep Gate was a little way west of the northeast corner of the city wall, and the first time we

see this Sheep Gate in the Bible is in Nehemiah.

When they're rebuilding the second temple, it says in Nehemiah 3, then

Eliashib, the high priest, arose with his brothers, the priests, and built the Sheep

Gate, and they consecrated the Sheep Gate, and they hung its doors.

So the Sheep Gate was the very gate in which the sheep that were selected

without spot or blemish out in the pasture with the shepherds, those perfect

sheep, would then be brought through this Sheep Gate, through the city, into this special

gate to the temple to be sacrificed.

That's what this is.

But there was also a pool just outside the Sheep Gate area, which is called Bethesda.

It has five porticos.

Now a pool like this was primarily used for bathing, cleansing, or even

therapeutically for the sick, and a portico is a

porch cover.

It's like a colonnade, or maybe nowadays they're using that word pergola a lot.

It was this covering that had openings on the side to let breezes go through, but there was

a way to provide shade from the sun.

And if you look up the word pool in a Bible concordance, you would see that there's actually many different pools in the

Bible, in the Old Testament and the New.

Some appeared to be natural springs, while some other pools were man -made.

Officials believe, actually, that they have found these pools.

This exact pool, they believe that they have found this today.

If you go home after this and you search the pools at Bethesda, you will see pictures in

Jerusalem outside the city walls, near the temple actually,

and you will see these pools.

It matches the exact description in that there was technically two pools.

There was two pools, and there was four porticos, and in the center of the

two pools was a fifth.

I mean it matches it perfectly where it would be in the description of it.

Now the southern pool had these broad steps with landings so that people could come down and

wade in the water, while the northern pool was much deeper and would continually then

replenish and bring fresh water into the less

deep pool.

Many people, as we see, thought that there was healing powers in the water.

And centuries after this moment with Jesus, a church would be built

on the site.

It's still there today, over this Bethesda pool complex.

People visit this place today.

So again, check it out if you'd like.

Go to verses three and four.

I'm just laying a foundation here, giving you information, because I'm a nerd like you guys.

So I like hearing about these things.

Verses three and four.

In these lay a multitude of those who were sick, blind, lame, and withered,

waiting for the moving of the waters, 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 of the water, stepped in was made well from whatever disease with which he was

afflicted.

So these pools were open to the public.

They were completely open to the public.

Anyone could go, and they would bring a multitude of people, as you see.

Sick people, lame people, people who were completely fine would come here.

Even beggars would come and sit at the edges of the pool, and they would beg for money because of the amount of

traffic and pool attendees that were there.

This would have been a fairly honestly pathetic sight to see this

magnitude, it says, this multitude of those who were sick.

A sad sight to see the infirmed there waiting under porticos

to get into the water.

The word sick here can be a host of ailments, some leading to death, some not so intense.

It could even mean generally weak, but altogether those were typically undiagnosed

issues.

They couldn't sit in the water long due to the sun that was over them, so they would lay under these colonnades in

the shade.

There was the blind.

Some were congenitally blind from birth.

Some were newly blind recently.

They would have to wait until someone took them by the hand to lead them to the pool.

Lame meant some sort of crippling ailment.

Some would crawl even on all fours to the pool's edge.

Some had to be carried.

And withered here, which is the last word, withered here isn't what you would think in the

Greek.

It doesn't necessarily mean like a wrinkly old person, you know, someone withered down

that we would maybe think in our mind.

Withered actually can mean paralyzed, someone who's fully paralyzed,

unable to walk.

They had no strength left in their bodies to even drag themselves to the water's edge.

They relied completely on the goodwill of others to carry them there.

It was truly a sad sight.

Jesus has come upon these pools.

They're sick everywhere and they need him.

Now the leper, the leprous though couldn't even come.

The lepers could not come to this pool.

They were considered a blight on society.

They were considered unclean.

So they would be outside the city even in these leper colonies.

Now it appears as it says the water would get stirred up, or the in the Greek it says disturbed, the water would get

disturbed, it would stir up, and it confirms this in verse 7 as well later.

Now according to Carson the twin pools were fed by large reservoirs called Solomon's pools

and they must have been fed by even sometimes intermittent springs, maybe from

underground, which would then either the replenishment from Solomon's pools

into the Bethesda pools or an underground spring would cause this

turbulence, light turbulence in the water.

That's what officials think.

Some ancient witnesses by the way even speak to the fact that maybe the waters were even pale red,

which we now know that waters throughout our country or in other countries, waters that are

slightly red like that have what's called calebiate, I think is the word,

which means salts of iron, iron salts.

So iron turns red in water being exposed to oxygen like that.

But before I go on I need to cover something.

I have marked the end of verse 3 and all of verse 4 in red

and we don't have the time to cover everything that's going on in this section,

but I do have to mention it.

We have come to our very first textual variant in the gospel according to John.

That is to say some of you may look in your Bible right now, maybe you have an ESV, and you

look and it goes from verse 3 to verse 5.

You would see no verse 4, okay?

Now I have a New American Standard Bible 1995 and it gives me all my variants but it puts them in

brackets and there's an asterisk and it says these were not in the earliest and oldest

manuscripts that we have today.

Some of you may have an NKJV or a KJV and there's nothing.

It's just that's what it says.

It's got this completely, okay?

So what's going on here?

The end of verse 3 after Withered and all of verse 4 may have been

a scribal edition, okay?

Because it is not in the oldest and earliest manuscripts that we have

found since the making of the Textus Receptus around the 1500s and

when the KJV was made which was based off of the Textus Receptus.

They only had so many manuscripts at that time.

Archaeology wasn't completely done.

There was only so many Greek and Hebrew manuscripts to make an English Bible.

Now we have thousands and beyond thousands and we have found manuscripts that date to

ages far older and closer to the time of Jesus than what they had in

the 1500s, okay?

This is a very touchy subject because there are people who are like, just don't touch it.

Leave it alone.

We have what we have.

Don't even put brackets around it.

Leave it alone.

But then there's some, like my fellow pastor in Arizona, Dr. James White, who does what's called,

you know, textual criticism manuscript tradition.

And there's men in this world as Christians who go, look, we know providentially God gave us the

end of verse 3 and all of verse 4.

However, if there's a chance that we have really old manuscripts back to close to the time of the

Apostles and we could see what was there, then that would be good to study that and

get completely down to what they originally wrote, okay?

That's kind of the mindset.

Some people want to leave it.

Some people don't.

Now the process is this.

The writers of the Gospels and the Epistles would send their copies to the churches, okay, in the first century.

They would send out their letters.

They would send them out and the churches would receive them and it was clear to them that these things were God

-breathed, that they were inspired.

What Paul sent to the Romans, the Roman Christians were like, this is God's Word.

It was clear to everyone that these were the words of God.

And so letters would circulate even among the church.

So if even the church at Colossae got a letter, the church in Ephesus would be like, well, hey, can we

have that?

Because we're gonna copy it down.

We'll give it back to you.

Then it would go to another church.

And that's not to say it's like what we've been charged with, where there's this game of telephone.

We have found that almost that all the thousands of manuscripts are perfectly lined

up except for a few articles, a few letters, and then a few of these

variants, okay?

But I want to say that we can have trust in our translations now.

There's only been small additions.

I want to make that clear.

There's been no redactions.

There's been no removal of text over the centuries.

And so what we think, what the scholars think, is there's been times where these letters were

there and one of the churches took the Gospel according to John from this

church in Antioch, and they looked at this and go, oh, I know that tradition.

The tradition is that they waited for the angel to stir the waters, and the first one to get in the pool,

excuse me, would be healed.

And so they knew it.

They filled it in for us.

And then that manuscript went forward for centuries, and it was discovered.

Then the original one was, without this explanation, also went forward

for centuries and was discovered, and it was proven to be older.

So that's what's happening here.

The key is, I don't want you guys to be disturbed.

If you've never heard this before, on our YouTube channel we even have Dr. White talking about

what's happening here.

The point is, you guys can have trust in your translation.

Whatever translation you have, whether you have KJV or NASB or ESV or NKJV,

you guys, we all have the Word of God.

The Word of God is completely in full in all of our translations, but some

scholars are like, but there might be a few too many words or some extra

articles.

So let's just remove those, but it changes no Christian doctrine.

It changes none of the accounts.

It changes nothing in a devastating way.

The manuscript tradition shows that they are sound, because we have what's called a

free text instead of a controlled text.

You see, like, it's always easy to bring up the Mormon Church.

The Mormon Church has had what's called a controlled text, which means in the 1800s,

Joseph Smith made his manuscript, and the church as an organization

has made all of its redactions, all of its edits.

It is the one that has made its thousands of changes, whereas the amazing thing about the

Bible, the free transmission of the biblical manuscripts, is that these letters and these

Gospels went everywhere all over the world, and so many copies were made and made and

made, and they were made, and there's this free transmission, not this controlled transmission, and all of a sudden

we find all of them, and they're almost perfectly in sync.

Again, the point is there's maybe a few extra words here.

One of the biggest one will be John chapter 8.

We'll get to that in a few chapters.

John chapter 8 is the largest variant we have.

It's what's called the pericope adultery.

That is, the Mormon cotton adultery was added, was in

manuscripts that we found much later.

In our earliest manuscripts, we don't see that story whatsoever.

So anyways, we'll get to it.

I just want to give you guys a little intro on that and

really get you wet your appetite in what this looks like.

Again, I want you to know that you can have trust in the Bible that you have.

The full Word of God is there.

The full Word of God is in your translation, okay?

So, then the oldest manuscript of John would then read,

"...in these lay a multitude of those who were sick, blind, lame, and withered.

A man was there who had been ill for thirty -eight years.".

That's how that manuscript would go.

And we have this image of this man who's been ill for 38 years.

Thirty -eight years is a very long time.

That is a long time.

Some of you may know people who've been sick longer.

That is hard.

That is a very long time.

"...Thus far any visit to the waters rendered no healing for this man.

Waters that he had placed his faith in.

Just as water purification pots couldn't purify from sin in chapter 2, just as the water from

Jacob's well in chapter 4 couldn't eternally quench the

Samaritan woman's thirst, the healing waters of these pools couldn't heal

everyone, and they show the superstitious hope of the people.".

Go to verse 6.

"...When Jesus saw the man lying there and knew that he had already been a long time in that condition, he said,

Do you wish to get well?".

So, at this time Jesus is likely around 30 years of age.

It's possible that since he was a small child and he had been going to Jerusalem for the

Passover feast with his parents, that he's even seen this man here before.

Everyone knows the man who's been there for 38 years.

He's been in that condition for a long time and that's possible.

He also, of course, has supernatural knowledge of this man and his condition as well.

So, if he'd never saw him before, that would be no obstacle.

But there's no reason given here for Jesus's choice.

We don't see why he chose this man when there was a multitude.

But he did.

This man wasn't brought to him or presented to him.

Jesus demonstrates, though, that he is kind.

He is compassionate.

He feels for people in their suffering.

Now, some have said that Jesus's question here is ridiculous.

They have looked at this question that Jesus gives, Do you wish to get well?

And they laugh at it.

Some would say that Jesus's question is kind of like driving by a car that's on the side of the

road with the hood up and smoke coming out and a guy standing there frustrated with black on his

fingers.

And you roll up to that car that's on the side of the road and you go, Got problems with the vehicle?

And the guy would be like, You think so?

Right?

He'd be frustrated.

Or maybe there's a guy at a subway and he's in the train

station and they're going by and he's sitting there with a cup and he's hoping to get, you know,

money from people.

He's asking for coins, dollars, whatever you have.

And someone goes up to the guy and says, Down on your luck, huh?

Need money?

And the guy's like, Yeah, why wouldn't be here unless I needed money?

I needed help.

So some people look at his question that way.

But I don't see it like that.

I don't see it like that.

And some would say, Of course he wants to be made well.

But what is Jesus going to ask?

How are you?

How are you doing?

He's gonna ask him, How are you?

My friends, this is the tender mercy of Jesus.

He asks something that he knows he can accomplish.

That's the point.

Anyone else asking this question would be cruel.

But because Jesus can actually do something about it, it's merciful.

It's kind.

Do you want to be made well?

It's kind of like his other questions, which he already knows the responses to.

Do they want what he has to offer?

It can often even be translated, Do you wish to become well?

This would be genestai, which is related to that word egeneto

which is in a prologue, chapter 1.

If you haven't listened to those yet, what we have to keep in mind is that Jesus has come to

recreate.

And John might be trying to show a link to the prologue that the eternal Word made flesh has come

to heal.

Verse 7 there, the sick man answered him, Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water

is stirred up.

But while I am coming, another steps down before me.

The sick man doesn't know who Jesus is.

And just like Nicodemus' confusion on being born again, just like the Samaritan women

thinking Jesus was talking about the well water, this man doesn't realize that the power

to healing is standing literally right in front of him.

He doesn't know.

He recites the obstacle to his healing.

No man, not a single person has helped me for 38 years.

Now we are to help people regardless if personal sin led to their sickness or

their calamity or simply general sin from the fall.

As Christians we ought to help people.

So it's sad to hear that no one offered him help.

For 38 years no one thought to say, look I know there's a lot of you here, you're all hoping to get in the pool, but this man's been here

for 38 years.

Why don't we all stop and wait and if the waters start turning and getting stirred up,

let's let him go first.

Let's all carry him and let's pray that God heals him.

It doesn't say that.

It doesn't say that anyone helped him in that way.

His response also confirms the belief though that they thought that they could get healed in the

water.

In general we see the Bible has passages that show the cleansing and healing aspects of water, but

only typically when they're accompanied with messianic prophecies that Jesus came

to wash us of our sin.

It's more in a spiritual sense.

The other time that we see water healing someone was in the Kings

with Elisha and you have Naaman the Syrian.

If you remember Naaman was covered in sores.

He was a leper and Elisha tells him to go wash in the Jordan River seven times and

he does and the miracle occurs and he's cleansed of his leprosy.

But that was an isolated occasion in the Old Testament.

This sort of belief though was common in the ancient world that there was places with healing

waters.

That idea even still exists today.

I'm telling you it's all over.

If you search places where miracles happen you'll find this Roman Catholic place,

this Muslim place, this place, that place where you could go and you could visit and you could

see a statue of Mary with blood under her eyes or you can you know touch the the feet of

some icon of Jesus and you know there's all these places all over the world where people say

this occurs.

People go to the Dead Sea.

They go to the Dead Sea and they lay in it and they think because Jesus was near there that they'll be healed.

They go to the Jordan River where Jesus has been there and it's been

mentioned in the Bible.

They expect to be healed.

It's just it's all over even today.

This superstitious thought is still happening now.

The charitable reading though is to look at this man's

response as a desperate plea.

But John doesn't put him in that light later.

He avoids issues with Jewish authorities by blaming the one who healed him.

He's so uninterested in the one who healed him that he doesn't even ask for Jesus's name.

And later when he finds out Jesus's name, the man reports him to the Jewish

authorities.

He is completely unlike the man who was born blind in John chapter 9 whom Jesus heals,

which it's going to be a fantastic account when we get there.

I think he is responding to Jesus as he would any passerby.

The reality is he doesn't need a man to put him in the water.

He needs Jesus and he doesn't even realize that.

He needs Christ.

As he even answers Jesus, his face is probably looking towards the waters.

That's where his salvation from his sickness lies.

Jesus says, do you want to be made well?

And he's just, sir I have no one.

He's staring at the waters.

I have no one to take me here.

That's where his hope is.

Any little bit of movement, he sees a small splash.

Is it time to get in?

Will someone take me in?

He's got to get in there.

It's hard for him to see anything else.

He doesn't even see his sinful state from what we can tell, which his sinful state

needs healing itself.

Listen, if you've been sick for a very long time and you don't know Jesus, you need Jesus

more than you need physical healing.

That's for sure.

I pray that that also comes.

I pray that physical healing comes for anyone.

But most of all, people who are ill need Christ.

They need salvation.

We are a finite people.

And as I said, we're standing on the very precipice of eternity.

Eternity can be tomorrow for many, many people.

In fact, thousands of peoples.

Eternity starts tomorrow.

We have to be ready.

And it was not uncommon for people, including the Jews, to have magical or superstitious beliefs along

with their religious devotion.

This is the state of the first century of Jesus's people.

It's almost as if they see a disconnect between the power that is supposedly in this pool and the

God who gives healing.

They've put their hope in a pool, not in the personal living God.

And Jesus has come to reveal that.

He's come to expose that.

Verses 8 and 9, Jesus said to him,

get up, pick up your pallet, and walk.

Immediately the man became well and picked up his pallet and began to walk.

Now here is quite the sight.

If you or I saw this, we would be in utter shock.

Jesus speaks, he gives his word, and healing comes immediately.

Rise up, get up.

He makes a command.

In fact, he makes three commands.

Get up, pick up your pallet, and walk.

Those are all in the imperative.

And creation bends to the Creator's will.

It obeys him.

It bows to him.

The man is healed.

If Jesus says it, it's gonna be done.

His voice is that powerful.

His word is that powerful.

Even later, in this very same chapter, in verse 25, Jesus will say, truly, truly, I

say to you, an hour is coming, and now is when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of

God, and those who hear it will live.

Wait, dead people can't hear.

Dead people will hear the voice of God, and they'll live.

They'll hear his voice.

He'll command Lazarus, come forth.

He'll command Lazarus to live, and Lazarus will come out, and he will indeed be alive.

The creation bends to the Creator's will.

Now these pallets were made of, typically they were made of straw.

They were flexible.

They could even be rolled up if needed, carried under one arm.

One commentator made a great statement that I just had to relay to you.

He says, what once carried the man is now carried triumphantly by him.

It's amazing.

Thirty -eight years of having this infirmity that left him unable to walk is contrasted by

one second of immediate healing, and the single second is

far more stunning than how long he was lame.

The man doesn't need physical therapy.

He doesn't need to build back muscle for a time in his legs.

He doesn't need to use crutches temporarily.

He doesn't even need to learn how to walk again.

Jesus doesn't have to hold his arms while he regains at least some familiarity in his legs.

The healing is instantaneous.

The text called him the sick man previously.

Now he's just called the man.

It's done.

And it says the man, eganeto, well, he became well.

Here it is again.

And it doesn't speak though to some sort of faith that he had, but it speaks to the power of Jesus

making things come into being from the void and from things that are completely different.

He makes new things out of them.

Sickness to wellness made new.

Blind to sight made new.

Death to hearing made new.

And we see at the end of verse 9 though, an interjection.

It's right there in the corner.

This narrative interjection by John.

He says, now it was the Sabbath on that day.

It was the Sabbath.

Now I want you to know the scene isn't changing from healing to a Sabbath controversy.

The healing wasn't a solution to a conflict.

That was the introduction to the conflict.

That was the backstory.

Now John is trying to tell you here really the issue begins.

We're not unfamiliar.

If you've read the New Testament, we shouldn't be unfamiliar with all these Sabbath conflicts that Jesus has.

Plucking grain heads on the Sabbath.

He was chastised.

Healing the man with the withered hand.

They were angry with him in Mark 2, 23.

Matthew 12.

He healed a woman who was bent over.

Her body was like this her whole life.

And he healed her on the Sabbath.

He healed the blind man in John chapter 9 on the Sabbath.

And so the opposing Jews often want to kill Jesus because of these Sabbath conflicts.

However, the same superstitious beliefs and rule -keeping, the same false

religion that will be shown in the Jewish leaders now as well.

They will be so busy with their rituals, they won't realize the Messiah is

standing right in front of them.

Just as the healed man seems unfazed, indifferent, ungrateful, so will the Jewish

authorities.

So go to verses 10 through 13.

Looking at verse 10 first, it says, so the Jews were saying to the man who was

cured, it is the Sabbath and is not permissible for you to carry your

palate.

Can't do that man.

What are you doing?

Can't carry your palate.

Now the commandment of the Sabbath is not to work.

But the question that has plagued Jews and people for so long, what is work?

Right?

What is work?

And from what we can deduce from the Scripture, we can see that it was vocational

work, work in the home, and commerce.

Those are the three things you were to cease on the Sabbath.

And carrying beds was likely not the vocation of this man, seeing as how he couldn't walk before.

I doubt he made a living delivering palates, okay?

Exodus chapter 20 gives us the command, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.

Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of the Lord your God.

In it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servants, or your

cattle, or your sojourner who stays with you.

I can't read it all, but in Nehemiah 13, once again this is at the time of the construction of the

second temple, Nehemiah is trying to get reform to occur as they're

rebuilding the temple.

Remember they were just exiled in Babylon and the northern kingdom was spread out by the Assyrian

captivity, and they're trying to repent and follow God again, and they're building the

second temple, and Nehemiah is just trying to get everyone to obey what God's Word has said, and he

says, in those days I saw in Judah some who were treading wine presses on the Sabbath.

They were bringing in sacks of grain and loading them on donkeys as well as wine, grapes, figs, and all

kind of loads, and they brought them into Jerusalem on the Sabbath day.

So you have these merchants, these merchants are coming into the city specifically on

the Sabbath, which I believe happens Friday at dusk and goes on

through Saturday and ends also Saturday at dusk from my understanding,

and they were bringing in carts and carts of merchandise to sell to the people,

and he warned them that they could not sell at that time.

He said, no load now.

From now on, I'm not even gonna let you bring in your load and let you just kind of keep your

cart down and be ready for the next day.

From now on, we're not even letting you bring in your cart into the city.

You guys have to stay outside of the city walls, you merchants and traders.

Stay out, lest we break the Sabbath.

So breaking the Sabbath for the Jews, as I said, was working vocationally, working in the home or engaging in commerce,

and what the Jewish leaders accused this healed man of was not something prohibited in Scripture,

but prohibited in what I told you was the tradition of the elders, the Mishnah.

The Mishnah has 39 categories of labor that were forbidden with,

believe it or not, hundreds and hundreds of subcategories, all related to the Sabbath.

39 main categories and hundreds of subcategories of

obeying the Sabbath.

I can't read you all the categories and of course the subcategories, as we don't have enough time, but here are some

examples.

On the Sabbath, you can't sow, plow, reap, that makes sense, but there's no

kneading of bread, no baking, no cooking, no stretching material, no

tying knots, can't untie a knot, cannot write anything, cannot erase anything,

you can't light a candle, you can't extinguish a candle, you can't carry

anything, whether in your home or carry it in the public or anything like that.

I truly, I left out so many.

There's so many beyond that.

The rabbis decreed that no one that not only should

one avoid forbidden acts, but also that they must not do anything that even resembles

the possibility of work in these categories, or something that could be confused with it.

They added more burdens than were actually there.

What was to be a day of rest, Jesus says, do you remember Jesus says, the Sabbath wasn't made for

God, the Sabbath was made for man, right?

He says, I'm the Lord of the Sabbath, this was made for a day for man to rest and to focus on God, to

focus on God.

So what was a day of rest became the most stressful and taxing day of the week.

The Sabbath was the Jewish leaders sacred pool, I think.

In their minds, Sabbath and rule -keeping would heal them and save them.

The fact is, receiving healing won't save you from your sin.

Keeping man -made rules won't save you from your sin.

They've got to put their faith in Jesus Christ and not in these

impersonal forces.

Verse 11, but the man answered and said to them,

he who made me well was the one who said to me, pick up your pal and walk.

To be fair, Jesus did tell him to pick up his pal and walk.

He was the one.

However, what we see is this man is not trying to argue, hey but don't you realize

I've been made well by this man?

He didn't argue that.

He pushed blame off of himself to Jesus.

He wants to get the heat directed away from himself.

So in verse 12, the Jewish authorities asked the healed man, identify this healer then.

Notice they don't say, who was the one who made you well?

They say, who's the one who told you to do this?

That's where their focus is.

They don't marvel at the miracle of this man's healing.

They don't want to investigate and meet the one who performed an act of God.

They want to know who broke the rules.

That's what they want to know.

One day of what they consider Sabbath -breaking is more significant than 38 years or

13 ,870 days of sickness.

One day that this was done is more important to them.

They are blind.

They see a violation over a miracle.

How come this lame man was never counseled or challenged in his belief and in

his hope over the pool for 38 years?

How come these Jewish leaders never came to help him?

But now that he is actually healed and he's doing this, the day that he was healed

is what's their focus.

In their minds, if there's someone telling others to go against the 39

categories of Sabbath prohibitions, that is more concerning to them than the man right in front

of them.

So God heals someone on the Sabbath, which is lawful to do, and these men who bind

consciences would accuse even God himself.

Like they're going to tell God when and where to work his miracles, his power.

Excuse me, God, not today.

No healing on this day, God.

No working in that way, God, not today.

Like as if they have the authority.

But the man didn't even know Jesus's name according to verse 13.

And by this time Jesus had already withdrawn from the pools at Bethesda.

He blended in with the crowd and slipped away.

For some reason throughout the Gospels, Jesus is really good at like slipping away unnoticed.

That's so amazing to me.

You know, it's Isaiah 52 and Isaiah 53 that says Jesus came and he has just a

humble appearance.

In every type of movie

you can kind of see this aura around a superhero, but Jesus, who's God in the flesh,

looked like a normal man.

And he could slip away from things.

He could just get away.

It was just so cool.

He's kind of like a, I don't know, he's very, very sneaky, I guess.

But he was good at this probably because it wasn't his time to go to the cross, right?

Not too early, not too late.

He can't go to the cross yet, so he has to slip away when he needs to.

Let's go to our final verses.

Verse 14 first.

Afterward, Jesus found the man in the temple and said to him, Behold, you have become well.

Do not sin anymore so that nothing worse happens to you.

So Jesus sought this man out.

He found him in the temple.

Jesus doesn't find people by happenstance.

All who Jesus desires to find will be found by him.

And this is the third time became, or ginomai, or egineto is used once

again, that theme from the prologue.

Jesus is the creator.

He can change any of his creation.

He can bend it according to his will as he chooses.

And he chose to go against nature, in that sense, and heal this man.

Jesus tells him, You have become well.

Do not sin anymore.

The Jews told the man to stop rule -breaking.

While Jesus cuts to the very heart of it, he says, Stop sinning.

Stop sinning.

Although the Bible demonstrates sickness and death can be consequences of a specific

sin, if you remember, we went over that in James chapter 5.

If you need to revisit that, go to that.

We've seen in the Bible that there are examples where individual sin can

lead to sickness.

If someone is having problems with idolatry, they'll

become a drunkard.

The sin of drunkenness.

And then they're liver will fail and they will die.

There can be sicknesses that are a result of our sin.

That's sometimes the case, according to the Bible.

But sometimes sickness or death cannot be because of personal individual sin.

We see that in the Bible too, as well.

Case in point, the man born blind in John chapter 9.

If you remember, which we're gonna get to, as I said, Jesus says that this man did nothing

to sin to be born blind.

He says he was born blind so the glory of God would be made known.

We, of course, know that Job's friends accused him of

his terrible state.

He had boils all over him, and he had lost all his children, and his wife tells him

to curse God and die.

And we know the backstory, though.

We know that Job did nothing to incur this sickness.

He was innocent in that way, and that's for another time to go over, as well.

But there are some times personal sin can lead to sickness, and there are times when people are

sick, and it wasn't because they did anything for it.

It's because there's sin in the world.

General sin.

Sin from the fall of man.

Sin and sickness and death have come into the world, and it plagues us all.

Even people have done nothing to receive it.

So,

in this situation, some scholars see the healed man's personal sin had to do with his

affliction.

Behold, you have become well.

Do not sin anymore, so nothing worse happens.

Some scholars look at that, and they would say that because of this man's personal sin,

he was afflicted for 38 years, and he couldn't walk.

But I think that this might even be more of a general command.

A general command to stop sinning.

Cease what makes you idolize and have faith in a pool.

He doesn't just need healing in his physical body, but the healing that Jesus offers with

eternal life.

And see, the woman at the well recognized the water she had wasn't enough.

She needed Jesus's living water.

This man, though, doesn't see his need for healing beyond his recent infirmity.

He's been healed of his infirmity, but he doesn't see the need for healing

from sin.

The Jews need to question themselves.

They need to ask themselves, how could this healer, Jesus, do this apart from the direct working of God?

For both the healed man and the Jewish leaders, the sin is the unwillingness to believe that

Jesus is the monogamous Theos.

He's the one and only God, Son of God, who can explain the Father.

He is the visible Son who explains the invisible Father, as chapter 1 says.

And they can't accept it.

That's the point of this.

And we will see that further demonstrated in the rest of chapter 5.

Jesus is saying, not necessarily stop the sin that led to this sickness.

Jesus is saying, stop your sin.

Stop your unbelief.

Stop your unbelief.

The point is not what made the man sick, but what John's point is in sharing this account is to

lump this man with the Jews together, the Jewish leaders, as

people fully consumed with the sin of unbelief.

The rejection of the Messiah is the rejection of God.

Don't sin lest something far worse happen to you.

The concern Jesus has is that the man is not considering his eternal

state, only his temporal.

You see, the far worse things that can happen to you are things like eternal torment,

things like going to hell, things that Christ saves us from.

That's what this man ought to be concerned with.

Do not sin anymore lest anything worse happen.

Verse 15 reads, the man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well.

He learned who he was.

He doesn't fall to his knees and recognize Jesus as the Savior, as the Messiah.

He doesn't have this great gratitude towards him for what he's done.

I don't even need just this.

I need healing everywhere.

Please help me.

He reports to the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus of Nazareth that made him well, and

he's not trying to assign praise for Jesus among these leaders, as he

already saw that the Jewish authorities were upset and already disregarding the

miracle of God in verses 11 through 13.

This man knew the Jewish authorities stance was opposing to Jesus.

He knows the breaking of the Sabbath, though, can carry grave consequences,

capital punishment being the worst.

It continues to show he is more concerned with his physical life than life after death.

He is so focused on his body and his immediate sickness and not the sickness of

sin.

And so when he goes back and tells the Jewish authorities that it was Jesus, I don't necessarily think this was

some great betrayal or great treachery, but I do think it's a man simply trying

to get the Jews off of his back.

They saw me.

They were angry with me.

Now that I found out who it was, I'll get them off of my back.

This is the guy who told me to do this, okay?

Still, his actions led, as we will see next week, to, it says,

persecution for Jesus.

But all this, all of it, was part of the sovereign plan of God.

Jesus is going to be in situations and conversations that he is planned to be in.

He's right where he should be.

So to be clear, John shows no indication whatsoever of belief or faith in this

healed man.

We see none.

We see no indication that there was belief in Jesus in this healed man.

He is depicted actually in quite the opposite way.

And the reality is, church, is that there was thousands of people that Jesus

healed, removed demons, did all these things, these miracles and these

signs, people who were fed by Jesus, taught by Jesus, helped by Jesus,

and they didn't believe still.

And they didn't believe.

That's the ultimate false religion, that God could come before his people and they don't

believe that he is God and they reject him.

That's a false religion.

It's damning.

So let me wrap this up, church.

The real issue, as I said, of this section of Scripture is not necessarily the healing

or the Sabbath, but their denial that Jesus is God and sent by the Father.

That'll be further demonstrated as we move through the rest of chapter five, that there is unbelief among the

people.

There are people who have experienced the healing hand of God in this life and yet they have not believed.

There have been people who have kept every single rule and tried their best to perform every law

and yet they still even haven't believed.

Those things happen today.

There are people in pagan countries who have sick or lame people healed.

Does that mean that the false deity that they prayed to performed it?

Or are they further suppressing the truth as they worship the creature rather than the Creator?

There are Orthodox Jews today, by external standards, that have

never broken a single law and their hope is literally in their performance.

They think they're gonna be able to stand before God because of what they performed, because of what they adhered to.

That's not the grace that we see of Jesus Christ.

He said he came to save sinners.

In each case, both individuals trust in what they perform or what they've made with their hands

or what they can see.

They were guilty of disconnecting the power of God from God himself.

To them, the power is in a law or the power is in a healing pool.

So the admonishment to us here today, and any who might watch, is if you have been healed,

if you've had spiritual experiences, if you have put hope in objects, places, or waters,

repent and put your faith in Christ.

He is greater than all the single places of miracles.

Jesus is greater than the waters of Bethesda.

He is greater than any place that supposedly has miracle properties today.

Christ is greater.

Put your hope in him, if you don't know him.

Every good and perfect gift comes from above, coming down from the Father of lights.

Don't look at the thing or the experience.

Look at the wielder of the miracle, God Almighty.

And for those of us who have already believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, be careful

not to make 39 categories of prohibitions to be a good Christian.

We so easily defer to this ability to, oh, I'm saved by grace.

It's all that Jesus did.

Then we start making all these rules for us.

Now there's good commands that God has given us and we ought to obey them, but they aren't what

earns us salvation.

They're what we do now on the other side because Christ has saved us.

So here's the commands that God has given us and some people think that'll earn

justification.

No, those things are now things that we can do freely because we have been justified and saved by Christ.

You couldn't do anything to get that.

You couldn't do a single thing to get that.

But now that you've been given it, obey him.

But know that your obedience doesn't come back to that point and affirm that, you know,

oh, that's because I'm saved because of these things.

No, they're fruit.

They're not the root, as I always say.

Obey his law in the freedom and liberty of Christ.

Don't legislate on things God never commanded his law.

Have your non -essential or secondary convictions, but don't make them salvific.

I talked about textual criticism and manuscript tradition.

There are people out there today who would say those of us in this room who don't use a KJV,

a 1611 King James Version, they would say we're going to hell.

We pray to Jesus.

We worship Jesus.

We have faith in Jesus.

We sing to Jesus.

We read his Word.

We love Jesus with all our hearts, but because we don't use a KJV, we're going to hell.

False religion.

False religion.

You see?

You add those components, you create false religion.

You make a shadow of true religion, and the shadow is damning and devastating.

Okay?

Have your convictions, but don't legislate on them.

Don't make them law for other people around you.

Colossians 2 .8 says, see to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty

deception according to the traditions of men, according to the elementary principles of the world,

rather than according to Christ.

So don't do things in such a way where you're doing them according to the

tradition of men.

Don't bind others with these traditions, and don't be captive by them either.

Be captive by Christ.

Traditions are good.

They can be good, but when we make them law, when we make them salvific, we've just made a false religion.

When we have faith in spiritual experiences and not Christ, we've made a false religion.

So that's the lesson today.

Let's pray.

Lord, we praise you for the word that went out today.

God, I recognize how easy it is for us to

rely on these things.

I recognize, God, how easy it is to start legislating again.

It's so much easier to make rules to follow than to be led by your Word and by your

Spirit.

So much easier for us.

We're rule -making people, but God, that's not how we're saved.

Let us remember the pure grace and love of Jesus Christ.

And God, let us not look at a text like this.

How easy is it for us to look at the man who was healed, and yet

wasn't eternally healed, and look at his blindness, his spiritual paralysis, and think,

how could you have done that?

It's so easy for us, Lord, to look at these Jewish authorities and think that we would never do

what they did, but we do.

We're not just the sinners in the story who are being healed and saved,

or even the ones like the Jewish authorities who are considered righteous.

We do both.

So God, let us remember that.

Let us humble ourselves.

Let us fall before you, recognizing, Lord, that it's only

by your grace that we are saved, and it's all according to your will, whether you

heal or whether you don't.

Let us be able to trust you with it, God, because we know ultimately, Lord, there will be

perfect healing.

Every tear will be wiped away at the consummation of all things, at the final day.

So we look forward to that, Lord, when suffering is no more, when disease is gone, and

sin and death have been put under your feet and cast in the lake of fire.

So, Lord, thank you for your word.

Thank you for teaching us, and thank you, God, for edifying us.

We love you, and we praise you.

I pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.