Many years ago, one of my pastors preached a deeply
meaningful sermon on God’s healing. He started with the description of the
miraculous types of healing—instantaneous, radical, awe-inspiring. We all
leaned in, grasping and gasping toward those stories that capture our imaginations,
dreams and wishes. Then there was the final healing—release from this present,
mortal body and into the new eternal life. We all relaxed in the hope of this
final stage of our salvation existence. But then he took us to another place.
This place was the one that did not have all the gilded glory and glittering
hope. This was a different type of healing work—that of God’s sustaining grace
and provision. God’s healing power is also demonstrated in how he sustains us
through the unpredictable, during the unimaginable, alongside those who suffer
with chronic disease, and partnering in all our suffering. The Apostle Paul related
what Christ communicated to him in 2 Corinthian 12:9. But he said to me, “My
grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
Today we are going to look at a passage of Scripture that
appears to house all three of these aspects of healing. You will want to open
your Bibles to John 5. The Apostle John placed this story just after his first
recorded healing by Jesus—the healing of a royal official’s son (4:43-53). The
powerful official had tracked Jesus down and begged him to heal his son—and
Jesus did. John moves quickly to a counter-story of a man whose status was not
of privilege nor did he have anyone truly advocating for him.
Let’s read John 5:1-3.
Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of
the Jewish festivals. Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool,
which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered
colonnades. Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the
lame, the paralyzed.
John does not seem to be particularly concerned about which
festival Jesus was at. Perhaps that would have detracted from the location and
particulars of this event. The location was a pool that had been considered by Jewish
people as miraculous. Scholars and archeologists both describe historical
references and discoveries in this regard. In fact, verse 4, which is usually
cited as a footnote because it was in less reliable manuscripts, gives this
very account. The NIV footnotes it in this way: “and they waited for the moving
of the waters. From time to time an angel of the Lord would come down and stir
up the waters. The first one into the pool after each such disturbance would be
cured of whatever disease they had.” The Wycliffe Bible Commentary also cites a
similar Eastern superstition that probably preceded the time of this story.[i]
In today’s narrative, disabled people gathered around a particular pool near
the Sheep Gate. Imagine with me this scene. Is it hard for you to picture this
kind of gathering? Many of us are not often around the indigent and especially
around large numbers of them. Does it make you feel uncomfortable or move you to
see this kind of suffering and need? It did not make Jesus uncomfortable and it
did move him. Indeed, he deliberately walked right into the midst of them! The
name of the pool, with its varying origins, means House of Olives, House of
Mercy, House of Grace. How appropriate—and even more so after this encounter.
Then, in verse 5, John describes a particular man. One
who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. Thirty-eight
years! Craig Keener opens up the reality that “the man had been sick there
longer than many people in antiquity lived.”[ii]
Later the man himself described his situation: “I have no
one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred.” (v. 7) Oh, how
this man needed healing!
And Jesus saw him. In verse 6a John wrote:
When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this
condition for a long time . . .” Imagine with me Jesus, the Healer,
walking into an area where many were demonstrably in need of healing. What must
that have been like for his great and loving heart? Let’s go back to one of our
categories of healing. Had not God sustained all of these people in their
conditions—rich or poor, mobile or immobile, believers or unbelievers? They
were at least well enough to get to a place where they thought they might have
the opportunity to be healed. When Jesus sees us, he sees us all the way
through. He sees every need—physical, psychological and spiritual. And he wants
our engagement in the process.
John 5:6-9a
When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had
been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get
well?”
“Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me
into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone
else goes down ahead of me.”
Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and
walk.” At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.
In three straightforward commands, Jesus refutes
superstition and demonstrates his power over brokenness, illness, time and
place. He did not need the water. He did not need that precise location. He did
not need an angel. He did not need assistance or permission! His word alone
heals. His power alone heals. His presence alone heals! His grace, indeed, is
sufficient!
What appears to be a ridiculous question asked by Jesus to a
man, who had struggled to even get near this “magic” water, may have been more
of a device for engagement. Jesus had stood back watching, had learned about
his case, and then approached him. Do you want this? This was a simple
question that was hungering for an honest answer. The man’s own assessment of
his resources was narrow and small. He thought that he just needed someone to help
him get up and that he just had to be faster. He was still focused on his
present, small reality and limited resources. But One stood by who was all
resource and all power!
Three commands required three responses. The man got up. He
picked up his mat. The man walked. This is the hard evidence of immediate
healing, one of the three types of healing. This is one of those glorious,
spine-tingling, wave-the-hanky-in-the-air moments! We could stop right here.
But what is it like to live healed? How do habits and patterns have to change?
What adjustments will need to take place in the community, the family, and life?
How about the religious community’s response to these kinds of things?
John 5:9b-13
The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, and so
the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath; the
law forbids you to carry your mat.”
But he replied, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick
up your mat and walk.’ ”
So they asked him, “Who is this fellow who told you to
pick it up and walk?”
The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus
had slipped away into the crowd that was there.
John here introduces one of the arguments that the religious
leaders would use from this time forward to accuse Jesus and eventually be part
of leading to his wrongful conviction and death. Sabbath-keeping was one of the
indicators that someone was following the law of God. They were so focused on the
breaking of this law, that they missed not only the miracle, but the person of
the healed man and the Lord of the Sabbath! (See Matthew 12:8.)
In John’s account this is so early in the ministry of Jesus
that it appears that even his reputation has not quite spread to the extent we
see later on. Jesus was nondescript, he was like us in many respects—indistinguishable
in a crowd. Not many knew his name yet. But how they had to reckon with that
power!
Let’s return to the three questions above. What is it like
to live healed? How do habits and patterns have to change? What adjustments
will need to take place in the community, the family, and life? Certainly,
these are things that require some processing and working out.
Jesus recognized and identified one other issue in this
particular man’s life. And it required a fourth command. This is where we must
be very cautious about assigning sin to every illness. Scrolling through the
many stories of healing in the New Testament, there can be found healing that
is not tied to sin. But in this case, Jesus identifies it clearly. In John 5:14
we read: Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, “See, you are
well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.” There was
further work to be done. For this man’s immediate healing to be sustained, and
for the final type of healing to be secured, there had to be heart-cleansing
that day and every day forward. Eternal salvation is secured by the power of
God in a believer’s heart and by that believer’s faith and living relationship
with God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. It is not a “one and done”
matter. It is entering into the on-going relationship with the One who saves us
daily and will keep us eternally.
We do not know if this man obeyed the fourth command given
to him by Jesus. We can hope that he did. This command is given to all who
believe so that we will live in relationship with God and by the power of the Holy
Spirit until that final, eternal healing. The man was quick to tell the
religious leaders, though. While some commentators, cast this in a negative
light—that of “telling on” Jesus to keep the man’s community status in tact—others
think differently. Jirair Tashjian, in the Illustrated Bible Life, wrote:
If we consider the original Greek
of the verb told in this verse, it may give us a better handle on the question
of the healed man’s motives. The Greek verb is used four times in John and
always in a positive sense. It would be more accurately translated “announced,”
“proclaimed,” or “made known.” ... it seems reasonable to conclude on the basis
of the positive tone of the verb that this healed man had no ill intent, and
that he may even have become a follower of Jesus.[iii]
In this great story, penned by the beloved disciple John, we
are able to explore the three types of healing: the sustaining grace and
provision of God, the miraculous and instantaneous, the final and eternal
healing. Perhaps today you need some healing. Won’t you look up to see Jesus
seeking you out in the crowd? Won’t you accept his command by faith? Won’t you live
in his promise and provision and live by faith until you enter into his great
rest?
Today, also, let us pray together for the healing of our world
during this pandemic. I invite you to pray this prayer aloud. It starts with
the ancient Jesus Prayer and expands out.
Lord
Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
Lord Jesus Christ,
Son of God, have mercy on all nations.
Lord Jesus Christ,
Son of God, have mercy on your world.
Amen.
I invite also invite you to view and listen to this powerful
prayer in song entitled “Kyrie (Lord Have Mercy)” written by Charles
Billingsley.
M.R. Hyde
Copyright
2020
[i] Wycliffe
Bible Commentary, Moody Bible Institute of Chicago, 1990, p. 1082.
[ii] The
IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, Intervarsity Press, Downer’s
Grove, IL, 1993, p. 275.
[iii] Illustrated
Bible Life, Commentary on John 5:1-15, The Foundry Publishing Company, Kansas
City, MO, 2020.
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