Do You Want It? - John 5:1-18
1 After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 2 Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades. 3 In these lay a multitude of invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed.
Pool at Bethesda
The Pool of Bethesda was a real double pool near the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem, with five porticoes fed by intermittent natural springs that caused the water to stir.
The belief that an angel stirred the water developed later as an explanation for why people waited for healing during the spring surges.
Archaeology shows that the site later included Greco Roman healing elements connected to Asclepius, which influenced local expectations about supernatural healing.
John places Jesus in this setting to show that true healing does not come from sacred water or pagan ideas but from the authority of Jesus Himself.
5 One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be healed?” 7 The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me.”
The invalid
Rather than being taken to the temple to pray for healing, he consistently finds himself at this pool hoping for healing, by chance, not by faith
Do you want to be healed?
This is a question Jesus will often ask people in the Gospel accounts
Questions to reflect on:
What do I want to be healed?
Self? Marriage? Physical? My heart?
Do I truly want it or am I fine the way I am?
Faith takes work and it’s uncomfortable to step outside of something that has comforted you and given you a sense of safety
What has comforted you so much that faith is scary and answering Jesus faith and action makes you uncomfortable?
8 Jesus said to him, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.” 9 And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked. Now that day was the Sabbath.
What is God speaking to you?
Will you exercise faith?
It took faith for this man to rise and walk
At once he was healed
Always remember God is the God of at once, anything can change in an instant
Sabbath
A command of do not work (your profession or things to sustain you) to 39 laws within this command
10 So the Jews said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to take up your bed.” 11 But he answered them, “The man who healed me, that man said to me, ‘Take up your bed, and walk.’” 12 They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take up your bed and walk’?” 13 Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, as there was a crowd in the place.
This is the entire point of this passage because the rest of this chapter is pointing to the fact that Jesus is God
14 Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you.” 15 The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him.
Stop sinning
The implications that something worse than what he had experienced will happen if he keeps sinning
In short, if he keeps sinning, he will remain unrepentant and will die and not spend eternity with Jesus
Other notes
The issue is not whether this man was a major sinner, but whether some tragedies in Scripture (and this one in particular) are seen as the outcome of specific sin. The answer is surely affirmative (e.g. Acts 5:1–11; 1 Cor. 11:30; 1 Jn. 5:16).
Elsewhere in this Fourth Gospel, illness and death seem to be tied to the glory of God (John 9:3, 11:4)
The clause ‘something worse may happen to you’ should be understood in line with Luke 13:1–5 - the Galileans who suffered so badly at Pilate’s hands, and those on whom the tower of Siloam fell, were not pre-eminently guilty, and in the same way the thirty-eight years of paralysing illness cannot serve as an index of this man’s guilt.
In James 5:13-16 we clearly see that healing and confession (repentance) of sin are closely knit together
16 And this was why the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. 17 But Jesus answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.” 18 This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.