In John 5, Jesus healed a man who had been paralyzed for 38 years.
But instead of being excited about this miraculous event,
the Jewish leadership was angry at Jesus.
They accused him of breaking the Sabbath.
In today's study, we'll talk about the contrast between Christ's mercy and the Pharisees' legalism.
One of the things that God just hates is when you call evil good,
and when you call good evil and today's text the most wonderful thing is going to happen there's
going to be this paralyzed man a sick man for 30 years he hasn't been able to move everyone knew
this guy you pass him by it's oh it's that guy this man that the people knew was sick was ill
was helpless was hopeless this man is healed to the point he's able to stand up and walk and jump
to me remember the guy who was lying there the reaction to that by the jews of his age was not
joy. It was anger. And this is the sort of thing that just boggles the mind of God when we routinely
call it which is good evil and that which is evil good. And the Pharisees were experts at this. If
you want to know why the Pharisees were constantly at odds with Jesus, it's because time and time and
time and time again, he would do something good and they would call it evil. They would flip-flop
the two great moral imperatives. And because they would flip-flop it, they would demean the one who
undertook them. They would demean Christ. They would denigrate his miracles. They would refute
his words. They would turn others against the things that he was saying. And in place of the
grace that he was offering, and the kindness, and the mercy, and the charity, and the like,
they substituted something. They substituted works, and laws, and legalism, and things that
made religion just a chore. Just this albatross around the necks of broken, hurting people that
were already under the boot of Rome. You have a guy show up, and he's preaching grace, and these
people are preaching laws. All the while, they're all under the boot of Rome. And you would think
one day the Pharisees would wake up and go, boy, this doesn't seem to be working out so well for
us. We're all constantly miserable. Well, Jesus came to set them free, and their response again
was to kill him. Now, furthermore, of the things that they messed up, of the things that they
distorted, of the things that they took something wonderful and made it just awful, towards the top
of the list in their day, in the first century, was what they had done to the Sabbath. Why did
God give us the Sabbath? Is it something that's meant to be hard or laborious or difficult or
are to us of course not the sabbath is made for men it's made to give us rest it's a good thing
it's a blessed thing it's a joyous thing sabbath is meant not only to give us physical rest from
our labors but to instruct us to the great rest that awaits the sabbath is wonderful absolutely
wonderful but the pharisees had made just the most joyless thing imaginable and part of it's because
they departed from the book we talked about this in our sunday school class one of the things that
the pharisees did and rome is done later on and the like one of the things the pharisees did is
they took the bible they had up to that point the old testament but they took that and they said
that's a good start but on top of that we're going to add some stuff specifically they said we're
going to have our traditions the rabbinical schools have been meeting for centuries and the rabbis had
great traditions or at least a lot of traditions now among the traditions which are recorded in
various places including something called the jewish mishnah there were 39 laws for things that
you had to do on the sabbath or that you couldn't do on the sabbath so god says out of the sabbath
keep this holy. It's a day of rest. They say, okay, okay, amen and amen. But also, also do this.
There was 39 laws. Among those laws were these. I'm not going to read all 39. It would take some
time. But among the things you couldn't do, you could not sow. You couldn't sow seeds. You couldn't
plow. You couldn't plow your fields. You couldn't bake. You couldn't weave. You couldn't tie things
up. You couldn't build anything. You couldn't destroy anything. And notably for today's text
about this guy who was going to carry his bed, you know what else you couldn't do? You couldn't
carry things. The amount of things that were limited, the amount of things that they told you
you cannot do. Has anyone ever lived in an HOA that was really restrictive? You know, your grass
is an inch too high and you get a letter, you know, that sort of thing. The Pharisees were those sort
of individuals. The Pharisees were like the HOA people, you know, looking around to see who had
your grass one inch too high. And because of that, they see this guy dancing, he's got his bed and
he's healed. And they don't see the happiness and the joy and the miracle, they see him carrying a
bed. And so they say that's wrong. Now, where did they appeal to? Did they appeal to the book and
say it's wrong here? No, they appealed to their traditions. And the traditions in almost every
case were silly and impossible to enforce. And when you did enforce them, the enforcement was
stupid. And I'll give you an example. A few years ago, I went to Israel. Went to Israel and had a
wonderful time, saw the sites, had good encounters with other believers. It was wonderful. With that
said, we stayed in a hotel. I think it was in Tel Aviv, but we stayed in a hotel. And on the Sabbath,
I encountered something I'd never encountered in my life. There was two elevators in this hotel.
And on the Sabbath, one elevator was just a normal standard elevator, and the other elevator was
called the Shabbat elevator. Anyone have an idea what that elevator did and didn't do? Well, here's
the thing. If you were a devout Orthodox Jew, one of the things that the 39 laws said that you
couldn't do, remember the 39 rules, was that you couldn't start fires, that you couldn't start
fires. So fast forward all these centuries later with the invention of electricity and the like,
you know how they've interpreted electricity? They've interpreted it as the start of a fire.
So what they've created in these hotels and the likes, they've created elevators. One's a standard
elevator. You go in, you go boop, and you ride up to whatever floor you're looking. The other
elevator on the Sabbath, what happens? That elevator stops at every single floor, up and down.
And an Orthodox Jew will get on that elevator, why?
Because they don't have to push a button to start a fire.
This is the whole idea.
They'll go into the elevator.
Stepping isn't against the 39 laws.
You can step into something, but they don't have to take any action.
No work.
I don't have to push a button.
I don't have to start a little tiny fire that's going to send this to the 7-4 or what have you.
The Shabbat elevator stops at every single floor, even to this day.
That's legalism.
It's silliness.
But it's also the sort of silliness and legalism that we see here.
Well, the Jews and the elites and the Pharisees and the scribes and the Sadducees
and whoever was gathered there sees a guy carrying his bed
and they freak out because he's carrying his bed on the Sabbath.
Today's text involves this one-on-one encounter with this guy.
But you know what this text is really about?
The winds of persecution begin to blow right here.
The things that would lead to the last two-thirds of the book of John,
where Jesus is going to be persecuted and ultimately crucified,
here the winds start brewing.
because Jesus is going to do two things
that they're not going to like.
Number one, he's going to do a healing on the Sabbath
and this man is going to respond
by breaking the Sabbath regulations
and carrying his bed.
So that's going to offend them at the outset.
But then, then he's going to do something
you're going to hate even more
and they're going to say, we're going to kill you.
He's going to say something that is going to link himself,
Jesus the Son, with God the Father.
And it's going to break their brains
and for the rest of the book of John,
they're going to be out to get him.
All right, let's look at verses one through four
and then work our way through this passage.
Verses one.
Verse 1 says, After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
As a side note, we have no idea what feast it is. It isn't named here.
And secondarily, when it says Jesus went up to Jerusalem,
in that context it didn't necessarily mean that he went from the south to the north.
Going up to Jerusalem is this idea that you went up to the mountain, up the hill,
up into Jerusalem because the altitude was higher.
So after this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
Now there is in Jerusalem, by the sheep gate, a pool,
which is called in Hebrew Bethesda, having five porches.
In these lay a great multitude of sick people,
the blind, the lame, the paralyzed, waiting for the movement of the water.
For an angel would go down at a certain time into the pool, stir up the water.
Then whoever stepped in first after the stirring of the water
was made well of whatever disease that he had.
In verse 1, Jesus goes to this unnamed feast in Jerusalem,
But he's really going right into the hornet's nest, so to speak.
Because the overwhelming majority of the enemies who would make it his life
are going to be right here in Jerusalem.
And the holy city, God's holy city, ironically, are the greatest enemies of God.
So he goes up into this holy city in verse 1 there.
Now, interestingly, just as a side note, in verse 2,
it says that he goes in by the sheep gate.
Now, what went in the sheep gate?
I'll give you one guess.
It was sheep.
Principally, it was sheep that went in through the sheep gate.
That's why all the sick people are hanging out there.
This is the smelly gate, right?
He goes in through the sheep gate, which is fascinating.
When you think about all the gates, all the ways that he could have entered the city.
He goes in through the sheep gate.
Well, the sheep gate, obviously, is where the sheep went in.
But why did sheep go in the city?
Were they crazy about sheep?
Why did the sheep go in the city?
Well, the sheep were taken into the city to be what?
Sacrificed.
Jesus goes to the sheep gate.
All right, so you have them go to the sheep gate.
And then near the sheep gate, there's this pool that's believed to have these miraculous healing properties.
because of these miraculous healing properties, verse 3 says that multitudes would hang out there.
All the sick and lame and diseased people in Jerusalem, if they're going to heal and go
anywhere, they would go to this pool. And the reason they went to the pool, we see there in
verse 4, is because an angel would come down, apparently daily at these intervals, and would
stir the waters, and the first person in would be healed. Now, as an aside, as an aside, not all
translations include verse 4. The ESV does not. The New King James does. Not all translations
include verse 4 because some of the original text, there's some question mark as to the
authenticity of verse 4. There's the thought that maybe this doesn't depict something that
actually happened, but this depicts something that the Jews believed happened. So you may find
that verse 4, especially if you open the ESV, that it is not there. I think there is a greater
burden of proof that it is part of the biblical narrative. And part of the reason I believe it
is part of the biblical narrative and not what we call marginal gloss to the side, but part of the
reason I believe it is part of the biblical narrative is because it's the only way to make
sense of the verses that follow. The reason people hung out by this pool is because something
happened. The reason they waited to go in and their desires and this guy for years hung out there
is because people were healed. I think the burden of proof is certainly on those who would say the
verse 4 is not part of the witness. I absolutely believe that it is. With that said, there was a
biblical precedent for immersion in water followed by healing. Going to the water, we see in 2 Kings
5, you have the Syrian general, a guy named Naaman. He's healed. He goes down in the Jordan River and
he's healed of his leprosy. If you were a sick person sitting there by this pool, you could look
back at your own text. You could look back at the Old Testament and say there was other examples of
water having these healing properties. And water was obviously symbolic of purification and
cleanliness and the like. So there's more than one reason why the people were there, but the very
least they were there because people got healed there. And this one individual who'd been sick
for 38 years, he hoped that they would come when he would be healed too. All right, let's look at
verses five through nine. Now a certain man was there who had an infirmity for 38 years. Now Jesus
saw him lying there and knew that he had already been in that condition a long time. He said to him,
do you want to be made well? And the sick man answered him saying, sir, I have no man to put
me into the pool when the water is stirred up. Again, it doesn't make sense if that water wasn't
being stirred up. But while I'm coming, another steps down before me. Verse eight, Jesus said to
him, rise, take up your bed and walk. And immediately the man was made well. He took up his bed and he
walked. And then we hear something ominous. And that day was the Sabbath. All right. Verse five,
Jesus spots this man who was a fixture at this pool, a fixture at this pool of Bethesda. And what
we see there is that Jesus sees him in verse six, and he knew that he'd been in this condition for
a long time. And so he approaches him. It wasn't the other way around. It wasn't like the guy
clamoring for Jesus. Here he approaches this guy. He says, do you want to be made well? Now, if you're
the guy, what was your answer? Yes, absolutely. You see, my problem, good sir, is yeah, I want to be
made well, but see, all these other people have people who care about them, and you know, the water
gets stirring, and the people are clamoring, and relatives are bringing them, let's get them in the
water and the like, and they get in, and I don't, and I've been waiting, and sir, I lack a man to
help me out in this regard. So Jesus asks him the question that, in a greater sense, he asks all of
us, do you want to be made well? And he answers in the way that some of us do answer, yeah, yeah.
But notice here that he saw this one, this Jesus, as the means to an end, but not the end. Yeah,
if you can wait right here, and when the water moves, you'll see, when the water moves, you take
me down into it, and I'll be good. I'm going to jump up, and all is going to be well. He saw Jesus
as a means to an end. Jesus came to him with the question, do you want to be made well? He affirms,
I do want to be made well, and he sees Jesus as the means to that end. How often do we do that?
It's not hard to get people interested in Jesus, as long as the Jesus that you propose to them is
a Jesus who can cure their finances, who can cure their cancer, who can heal their illness, who can
make some miraculous provision for their circumstances. People want that Jesus. You will
have a line up and down the road. If Jesus did as small a thing as give everyone a free po' boy here
in town, they'd come for that, let alone if everyone got healed who came in here. If everyone
who walked through these doors right here could be healed, all of Gulfport would show up. People
have no problem turning to God, turning to the church, turning to Jesus on the basis of their
lack of wellness. Do you want to be made well? Yes, I do. Absolutely. But their problem is they
don't necessarily come to him. And the sad thing we're going to see about this guy is he's going
to affirm, Jesus, I want to be made well, and Jesus is going to heal him, but the man doesn't
want Jesus thereafter. We're going to get to that in just a few moments. With that said, again,
verse 9, we need to linger on this point for verse 9. This passage really isn't about this dude.
He's not the focus here. The focus is on this phrase, and it was the Sabbath, because everything
is going to turn. Everything is going to hinge. The trajectory of Jesus and his relationship with
everyone in Jerusalem is going to hinge on this verse and the response that people are going to
have to him healing man on this day so that day was the sabbath verse 10 now the jews therefore
said to him who was cured so they go to the guy they see him he's carrying his bed and he's excited
the jews said him was cured it's the sabbath it's not lawful for you to carry your bed what a weird
thing to say to this guy debbie downers here verse 11 and he answered them so look at his response
they come to him and they're all the fire is they're just you know who did this what's going
on. Why are you doing this? What's the deal here? In verse 11, he said, he who made me well said to
me, take up your bed and walk. So they come to him and say, why are you carrying your bed? And then he
says, that guy told me to. Which guy? Oh gosh, I don't see him. Did you get his name? No, but he
told me. The reason I just broke the law and one of the 39 laws is because that guy told me to do so.
we see that in verse 11 so verse 12 then they asked him who is it who is the man who said to
you take up your bed and walk because now they're rolling up their sleeves all right we're gonna
find that guy then so who is the man who said take up your bed and walk but the one who was healed
did not know who it was because jesus had withdrawn a multitude being in that place all
these sick people just everywhere and you know he gets lost in the crowd but then interestingly
Verse 14, afterwards, Jesus found him in the temple.
Jesus seeks this guy out twice.
Jesus comes to this guy twice.
He finds him in the temple, and he said to him,
see, you have been made well.
But then he says something interesting.
He says, sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you.
And finally, verse 15, then the man departed
and told the Jews it was Jesus who'd made him well.
rather than rejoice in this man's healing as we said a few moments ago the jewish leadership of
that day they did a holy harumph harumph they said to this man harumph what's the deal here
they're like that overzealous hoa board we talked about earlier so they ask him what's the deal
what's going on you're carrying your bed put that thing down and who did this and he says that guy
which guy i don't know he went somewhere else so that led up to this moment where then jesus goes
and finds him. Jesus comes and finds him and tells him, hey, see, you've been made well. But then
interestingly, interestingly, Jesus then says, now sin no more, lest a worse thing should come upon
you. Now, there's a lot of ways that could be interpreted, and most of them are wrong. This
verse does not mean that everything bad that's ever happened to you is a form of judgment. There
are those who will have something happen to them. They'll get into a fender bender. They'll have a
sickness. They'll have a cold. Something will happen to their vocation or their finances.
Something will happen, and their instinct will be to say, this happened because I did something
wrong. This is punishment for what I did. That's simply not the case. Everything bad that has ever
happened to you is not a function of your sin. How many bad things happen to Jesus, and how many of
them were a function of his sins? Zero. This is true of Paul, virtually most of his ministry.
Paul's doing wonderful, good, righteous things, and yet suffering and bad things are happening to him.
So there's not a one-to-one correlation between I messed up and God's punishing me in some form.
I did this thing wrong, so tomorrow I can expect him to deal with me in some way.
So that's the wrong conclusion.
But it's also the wrong conclusion to think that he never responds to our sins through some sort of temporal punishment, because he does.
And this is what he says right here.
Sin no more, lest a worse thing should come upon you.
We don't know how and when God doles out such punishments.
But I know this much, that there are temporal consequences for temporal deeds.
And we are wise to walk righteously and to avoid the discipline of our master.
So we see this in verse 14.
That's effectively what he is telling this individual.
And then in verse 15.
So the guy hears that.
Sin no more.
He's like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then verse 15.
The man departs.
It's like the moment the conversation ends.
The man departed and told the Jews that it was Jesus who made him well.
Now, what was his motivation?
Honestly, we don't know.
There's commentators who say all sorts of things.
They ascribe every possible motivation to this guy.
But, while we don't know exactly what was going on in his heart,
we can look at this text in John 5 and compare it to when Jesus heals the blind guy in John 9.
Now, the blind guy that he heals later on is excited and professes and tells the leadership straight forward it was Jesus.
He does not shirk, does not hide, does not run.
He openly confesses, this is the one who healed me, not this guy.
There's no sign of his promotion of the healer.
There's no sign that his response was one of faith.
And some read into verse 15, and they say, you know what he did?
Jesus comes and finds him.
He'd been looking to point him out to the leadership earlier
so he could get himself out of trouble, and then Jesus came and found him.
And so he goes to the Jewish leadership and says, see, it's that guy right there in the temple.
That's the guy. That's the guy. He did it to save his own skin.
I don't know. I don't know what his motivation is, but I know this much, that him identifying
Jesus put all the eyes like laser beams upon him there in the temple. Let's look at our last verses
for today, 16 through 18, to see the response of the Jewish leadership of this time. Verse 16.
For this reason, this, this, this reason the Jews persecuted Jesus. Remember, because he healed
someone and told him to carry your bed. That was it. The bar for killing Jesus was pretty low.
For this reason, they sought to kill him because he healed someone and told him to carry his bed.
Okay? Apparently that's the death penalty. If they had described that sort of thinking inwardly to
themselves and all to their malevolence and naughty deeds, man, they would all be smited moments later.
But here, this guy does this wonderful thing in response for this reason. Verse 16, the Jews
persecuted Jesus and sought to kill him because he had done these things. And not just he'd done
them but he'd done them on the sabbath remember the laws of 39 things he broke one therefore it's
all over but verse 17 but jesus answered them and said my father has been working until now
and i have been working he's saying this to people who had 39 you know laws that they could pull out
here's the 39 things you can't do don't work don't work don't carry no fires don't push a button and
he goes and says to them, my father's been working, which is okay because God the Father,
he was exempt from their laws. They did have an understanding that God is at work. God is always
working. So they understood that. That's not the part they have a problem with. He says, my father
has been working, there verse 17, and I have been working. That they understood with no equivocation
to mean he was yoking himself to him, yoking the son to the father. Jesus' answer is that my father
has been working until now and i have been working now how do they respond how do we know that they
made that connection how do we know that he was testifying and explained to them his divine nature
how do we know that that's what he did because look at how they responded verse 18 verse 18
therefore the jews sought all the more to kill him because he not only broke the sabbath but also said
that god was his father making himself equal with god they understood exactly what he said and what
he meant. Exactly. So to summarize these verses and the overall persecution that was manifest here
and that was going to follow, there were two reasons they wanted him dead. The first involved
breaking their made-up laws. However, again, healing a man is not a violation of God's laws.
If anyone tells you that you can't work on the Sabbath, they're wrong in this regard. You can
work as long as your work is confined within the fields that we would call mercy and necessity.
If I have a heart attack, do we have any doctors in the room? If I have one, I hope a doctor comes
up. I hope that there's doctors in this room, and I know that there's several. I hope a doctor comes
up and helps me out. That doctor would be working, but the work would be a work of mercy, and I would
argue necessity. Mercy and necessity would be manifest at that moment. At the same time, I hope
that Gulfport's finest are out thwarting crime and dealing with evildoers. Again, this is mercy
and necessity. These are good and appropriate works to be done on this day. With that said,
healing a man who was born in this condition, or for 38 years was in this condition, certainly
falls within the realm of mercy and necessity. Secondly, they want him dead not only because of
that, but because of what he said in verse 17. Again, in the Jewish, it's in the Talmud. The
Talmud says that God can and does work on the Lord's day. And Jesus said, I can too. And so
they understood that he was saying, I am God and I'm equal with God. That was the implication. They
heard it and wanted him dead. So this sets the stage. We'll wrap up in just a moment here, but
this sets the stage for all the rest of the book. We're only here in chapter five, but what we've
seen right here is what we would call the catalyst for everything that's going to happen.
All the persecution and anger and hatred and animosity, it starts here. And not simply because
a guy healed someone and not simply because a guy carried a bed, but because of this claim we saw
in verse 18 where Jesus is identifying himself as divine. People heard it and they wanted to kill
him. This morning, the good shepherd came through the sheep gate. He came to broken, hurting people
saying, do you want to be made well? This morning, there are broken, hurting sheep in this room.
Numerically, I can bet the house on it. There are broken, hurting sheep in this room. Jesus comes to
you and says, would you like to be made well? Almost all of us will say yes. Jesus, I want you
to cure this issue, this cancer, this illness, this hardship, this relationship, this financial
issue, this occupational issue. Cure it all. Yes, I want to be made well. But that's not the wellness
that Jesus came to bring.
He did heal those who were hurting,
and he does answer prayers.
God answers prayers with regards
to the hardships in our lives,
but that's not principally the problem that you have.
Your problem is not singularly your relationships,
your finances, the other things going on in your life,
even your health.
And due time, all that can
and probably will be taken from you.
Your problem is that you've offended a holy God,
you stand under his wrath,
and the wages of sin is death.
Jesus, the great shepherd,
came through the sheep gate with the intention
not only to heal the people he found on the periphery,
but to go to the cross, to take his message, to take his gospel, to take himself and to be hung
up visibly for all those to see and for our sins to be imputed to him that his righteousness might
be granted to us. Do you want to be made well? What do you want to be made well of? If the answer
to that is my sin and the cataclysmic gap between me and the one who's made me, that's what I need
to fix. If that's your object, that's your desire, then two things. Number one, Jesus did come to do
exactly that to save us and reconcile us with our maker and number two that should be the great
priority of our life and of our testimony into the fallen world jesus came to offer temporal good and
temporal miracles and temporal healings and all these things but principally came to save us from
the wrath of the father by laying down his own life if that's what you want if that's the wellness
that you seek jesus comes to offer it and to offer it abundantly turn to him and live let's pray