Do You Want to Be Healed?

Stand Alone Sermon | John 5:1-18

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

In case we haven't met before, my name is Patrick Braun. I'm a Spanish teacher here in South Lion, and I also work part-time for a youth ministry called Young Life. And if you're wondering why they asked a Spanish teacher to preach this morning, I'm also one of the elders around here. If we haven't had the pleasure of meeting yet, please come and find me after the service. I'd love the opportunity to meet you and get to know you. Since this is my first time preaching here, I'd like to help you get to know me a little bit by introducing you to my family. I think they're gonna throw up a picture real quick. You're looking at adorable children. You can have the appropriate response. Good job. It's my wife, Christine, my youngest daughter Natalie, and my oldest daughter, Chloe, and then the ugly person in the picture is me. They're a lot prettier than I am. Being on a teacher schedule means that I am blessed with the opportunity to spend a lot of time at home with these wonderful ladies during holidays and over the summer. My wife, Christine, was also a public school teacher before staying at home with our kids. And now that they're school age, she's actually become their primary teacher because we've decided to homeschool our kids. The nice thing about homeschool is that there's a lot of flexibility. You get to choose when, where, and how to educate your children. Some families do school in the morning, others do it in the afternoon, some take the summer off, others go year round. Much to the chagrin of our children, we are a family that goes year-round, which means that over the summer, I get a front row seat to watch Christine teach our kids. It's honestly one of the best parts of being home. She's an absolute master of her craft, and as her husband, I couldn't be more proud of her. But if you ask any of us, we'll all tell you the exact same thing. Like everything else about parenting, homeschooling is extremely easy. There are never any real challenges or frustrations. You can count on your kids understanding everything you teach them the very first time and remembering everything with perfect accuracy. Their behavior is bound to be flawless in every imaginable way at all times, and life is just rainbows and sunshine all day, every day. Are there any homeschool parents in here? Am I right? Yeah? Oh, okay. Uh no, of course not. Obviously, I'm lying. Every aspect of parenting comes with its joys and challenges, and homeschooling is no different. There are days when everything goes extremely smoothly, and before you know it, you're already playing outside or you're going to the park. And there are days when there are pencils flying across the kitchen, children are screaming, and the whole house just feels like it's burning down around you. Teaching is hard, parenting is hard, it's to be expected. One challenge that comes up from time to time is when we're teaching one of our girls a brand new skill, and they have to work through the frustration of not being good at it yet. Usually they handle it just fine, but every now and then, for whatever reason, frustration just takes over. Christine will patiently explain a strategy that would solve the problem, walk them through it step by step, and offer them all the help that they need. But sometimes the main issue isn't just that they don't understand, it's that they've decided they don't want help. They stop listening. One of those kids that you saw in particular, I'm not gonna say which, will look us dead in the eyes and just stick her fingers in her ears as we are talking to her. Sometimes they'll even purposely do the exact opposite of what's being suggested, making the problem worse and trapping themselves into a spiral of deeper and deeper frustration. As a parent and a teacher, eventually you realize there's nothing more you can do in that moment. You can't force someone to receive help. All you can really say is, Do you want my help or not? This morning we're taking a short break from our series in Joshua to look at an episode in Jesus' life where in his own way, with perfect patience and yet a very real sense of urgency, I think he's asking us a similar question. If you have your Bible with you, we're gonna be in John chapter 5, verses 1 through 18. If you don't have a Bible, you can use one of the Bibles into the seats in front of you, and you can feel free to take that home with you as our gift to you. We're gonna walk through the text this morning in two parts, thinking about two very different groups of people. We'll spend the majority of our time in verses one through nine A, where we'll meet a crowd of suffering people who have placed their hope in a pool that cannot heal them. And then briefly in verses 10 through 18, we'll deal with religious people who have placed their hope in rules that cannot save them. To provide some context on where we are in the text this morning, in the first four chapters of John's gospel, Jesus has been steadily revealing who he is. He's turned water into wine at a wedding in Cana, cleansed the temple in Jerusalem, taught Nicodemus about what it means to be born again, shown compassion to the Samaritan woman at the well, and most recently healed an official son from a distance with nothing more than his word. Everywhere he goes, Jesus is demonstrating that he's far more than just another teacher or prophet. John, as an eyewitness to these events, is going to great lengths to show that Jesus is the promised Messiah, the all-powerful Son of God. The story picks up like this in John chapter 5, verses 1 through 6. After this, there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is in Jerusalem by the sheepgate a pool in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades. In these lay a multitude of invalids, blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been lying there a long time, he said to him, Do you want to be healed? Now, astute readers will notice something very peculiar about this passage. If you look at the little numbers above the words in your Bible, you'll notice that we actually jump straight from verse 3 to verse 5. Like I said, I've been watching Christine teach our kids, so I recently learned that that's not how counting works. So where did verse 4 go? There's actually a really interesting explanation. The oldest and most reliable Greek manuscripts of John's gospel contain the words that you see in your Bibles now. But it kind of feels like we're missing some important context to help us understand a couple of things. First, why have so many people with physical disabilities gathered in this particular place? And second, why, just one verse later in verse 7, does it say, 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. What does he mean by the water stirring, and why does he want someone to put him in it? You can actually go and visit the site of the pool of Bethesda today, and you can see the ruins of the very same pool mentioned here, complete with the five colonnades and everything, which is pretty cool. Archaeological excavations at the site show that the pool was connected to a water system fed by natural springs. Springs like these can periodically surge because of underground pressure changes, causing bubbling, rippling, or sudden movement in the water. So when the man in verse 7 talks about the water being stirred, he's likely describing this real observable phenomenon. We can explain that scientifically today, but people in the ancient world didn't have our same understanding of geology or hydrology. When they saw the water suddenly move, they tried to make sense of it the best way they knew how, which over time developed into a local superstition. And as it turns out, we actually have a record of exactly what that superstition was, appearing in what older Bible manuscript traditions call John 5, 3b through 4. And it says this. However, as the gospel spread to new regions and new generations of Christians, readers naturally began asking the same questions that we have today. Why were so many disabled people gathered around this pool? And what did the man mean when he spoke of the water being stirred? At some point, likely in the second or third century, based on the textual evidence that we have, a well-intentioned scribe added a note in the margin, kind of like the commentaries that you find in modern study Bibles, describing the local folklore that an angel stirred the water and that the first person into the pool would be healed. Later, another copyist mistakenly incorporated that note into the body of the text itself. And from there it became a part of the manuscript tradition for a while, until the discovery of earlier manuscripts showed that these words were not a part of John's original gospel. So, with that background in mind, let's return to the scene that John is painting for us. Jesus has come to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish feasts, and as he makes his way through the city, he arrives at a pool called Bethesda, which is often translated as House of Mercy. But ironically, what he finds at the house of mercy is heartbreaking. Surrounding this pool is what the Bible calls a multitude of invalids, people who are blind, lame, and paralyzed. And it's difficult for us to fully appreciate just how desperate this crowd would have been. Physical suffering is awful in any age, including our own, but in the ancient Near Eastern world, it's hard to overstate how vulnerable and isolated these people would have been. This was an agrarian society where a person's ability to earn a living and often simply to survive depended upon physical labor. Beyond that, many people viewed disability as an evidence of divine judgment or personal sin. And so it was commonplace to shun people because of their physical disabilities. As a result, those who were blind, lame, or paralyzed were often pushed to the margins of society, cut off from community, and left with little or no security or support. These people are waiting at the pool, just watching for the water to move. They've gathered here because they believe that the stirring of the water represents their best and maybe their only chance at healing. Day after day, they sit there hoping for their turn to get into the water first. In other words, Jesus walks into a scene filled with desperate people who have placed all of their hope in something that has no power at all to help them. Among them is one man who's been suffering for 38 years. We don't know exactly what his condition was. John simply tells us that he was an invalid and makes it clear that he couldn't get where he needed to go on his own. Whether he was born this way or became disabled later in life, we aren't told. What we do know is that he spent a lifetime waiting for something to make him whole. As I was studying this passage, there were two things that I found puzzling. First is what Jesus doesn't do. He doesn't arrive at the pool of Bethesda and start indiscriminately distributing miracles to everyone in sight. There's no mass healing event, no sweeping display of power where every blind, lame, and paralyzed person suddenly just gets up and walks away. Despite being surrounded by a crowd of desperate, suffering people, Jesus makes a beeline for just one man. And that feels striking when you set it next to other moments in his ministry. Take Matthew 14, for example. Jesus tries to retreat by boat to a desolate place to grieve the death of John the Baptist, but a massive crowd of well over 5,000 people chases him into the wilderness. The best known miracle from that passage is when he feeds that huge crowd of people by multiplying a few loaves of bread and some fish. But that's not the only miracle that happened that day. Matthew 14, 14 says, When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them and healed their sick. In that setting, his compassion spills outward broadly across the entire crowd. So why here at Bethesda does he not do the same thing? Where is that same compassion for this multitude of broken people? And the second puzzling detail is the question that Jesus asks in verse 6 Do you want to be healed? On the surface, that feels like a completely unnecessary question. This is a man who's been unable to walk for 38 years and who admits in verse 7 that he has no family or friends. He's also sitting beside a pool that's widely regarded as a place of healing. And Jesus asks him, Do you want to be healed? It almost feels like asking someone standing in the rain, holding their hands above their heads to block the water, like I was when I ran in this morning, if they'd like an umbrella. Of course he does. Of course he wants to be healed. So why ask the question at all? I think the answer to both of these questions comes into focus when we take a step back and we see what's really happening. Jesus is not indifferent to the crowd, nor does he lack compassion for their suffering. Rather, he's exposing something deeper. He knows not only their physical condition, but also the conditions of their hearts. In Matthew 13, 58, we're told that in Jesus' own hometown, quote, he did not do many mighty works there because of their unbelief. Notice that Jesus didn't lack the power to perform miracles, nor did he lack the compassion for the people of his hometown. Rather, the unbelief of the people there expressed itself in a refusal to receive what he was offering. They were so fixed in their assumptions about him that they weren't open to him at all. And so he did not do many mighty works there. I think that something similar is happening at the pool of Bethesda. The issue isn't just that these people are physically suffering, it's that they're spiritually anchored to something else. They've placed all of their hope in a particular story about this pool. A belief that healing is tied to the stirring of the water. And Jesus, intimately knowing them even better than they know themselves, knows that they aren't willing to let that superstition go. Charles Spurgeon put it this way: A blindness had come over these people at the pool. There they were, and there was Christ who could heal them, but not a single one of them sought him. Their eyes were fixed on the water, expecting it to be troubled. They were so taken up with their own chosen way that the true way was neglected. That's the tragedy in this scene. Jesus is present, healing is standing among them, but their hope is directed elsewhere. So when Jesus walks through that crowd, he's not lacking compassion or withholding mercy. Rather, his compassion is purposeful. He cuts through a crowd full of suffering people and he stops for one man and asks him, Do you want to be healed? Because he knows that this is the one man in the crowd who is ready to respond to the kind of healing that only Jesus can provide. And that response comes in the next couple of verses. Verses seven through nine. 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'm going, another steps down before me. Jesus said to him, Get up, take up your bed and walk. And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked. A lot of the commentaries that I read while preparing this sermon were really critical of the sick man because of his response in verse 7. After all, I just argued that this was the one man in the crowd who was ready to receive the healing that Jesus wanted to provide. But when Jesus asks, Do you want to be healed? he doesn't simply answer yes. Instead, he starts talking about the pool. Some commentators take that as evidence that he was just as trapped in superstition as everyone else around him. But I also think it's reasonable to read this a bit differently. Think about this man's situation. For 38 years, this pool has been the only hope he's ever known. When Jesus asks whether he wants to be healed, he answers from the framework of his experience. He isn't rejecting Jesus. He simply doesn't yet understand who Jesus is and what it is that he's offering. His response is less an expression of unbelief than it is a window into the depth of his desperation. He spent so many years believing that healing could only come one way that he could not yet imagine another. If he truly lacked faith, then verses eight and nine would look much different. In verse eight, Jesus commands him to do something that is completely humanly impossible. He says to a man who can't walk, get up, take up your bed, and walk. At that moment, I think that an unbelieving man would have objected. An unbelieving man would have said, You weren't listening. I just told you I can't get into the pool. I can't walk. How much easier, how much more likely does it feel like it would have been to dismiss Jesus and return his attention to the water like everyone else around him? But he doesn't do that. Instead, somehow sensing in his heart that he's in the presence of the Messiah, he obeys. For 38 years, this man has unable, has been unable to do the very thing that Jesus commands. Yet when Jesus speaks, he obeys. Without argument, without hesitation, without demanding proof, he trusts Jesus' words, and he does something that was literally impossible for him to do on his own moments earlier. In that sense, his obedience is itself a profession of faith. Now that day was the Sabbath. 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. But he answered them, The man who healed me, that man said to me, Take up your bed and walk. They asked him, Who is the man that said to you, Take up your bed and walk? 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. 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. The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him. And this was why the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. But Jesus answered them, My father is working until now, and I am working. This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him. Not only, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own father, making himself equal with God. As we move into verse 10, the focus of the story shifts from a pool that cannot heal to rules that cannot save. The tragedy of the first scene was physical brokenness. The tragedy of this scene is hard-heartedness. In a beautiful collision of heaven and earth, a man who has been through a lifetime of suffering has just been healed by the miraculous power of God. His life completely transformed in an instant. The kingdom of God has broken into an ordinary human story. Yet, when the Jews, which is a term that John uses throughout his gospel to refer to religious leaders, see the man walking and carrying his bed, they completely miss the miracle. They couldn't care less about his healing, which is the power of the king and creator of the universe on display before their very eyes. Their only concern is that someone Appears to be violating their interpretation of the Sabbath. Earlier in the chapter, a crowd of suffering people sat around a pool because they had invested all of their hope in superstition. Now we see a group of religious leaders who have invested all of their hope in a different kind of system. Over generations, God's good gift of the Sabbath, along with a host of other Old Testament laws that God gave his people to help them prosper, had become complicated by layer after layer of human tradition and regulation. Those extra rules were not just theological convictions, they had become a source of authority and control. The religious leaders had built an entire power structure around being the experts, the interpreters, and the enforcers of those rules. And so when God Himself shows up and begins working in ways that they don't approve of, they refuse to see him. Just as the crowd at Bethesda had their eyes fixed on the water, these religious leaders have their eyes fixed on their rules and they completely miss him. Finally, we come to maybe the best moment in the passage. Sometime after the healing, Jesus actually goes out of his way to seek this man out again. He finds him in the temple and he says, See, you are well. Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you. In this interaction, we see that the miracle itself was never the ultimate point. A theme throughout John's Gospel is that physical healings point to a deeper reality. Jesus didn't just come to restore broken bodies. As wonderful as that is by itself, physical healing is ultimately still only temporary. The kind of healing that Jesus is pointing to, that Jesus is pointing people to through physical healing is permanent. He came to reunite broken people with their God. Giving the guy his legs back was extraordinary, but it was only a sign pointing to something even greater. The pool could not truly heal him, the rules could not truly save him. But Jesus could do both what the water never could and what the law never could. He could restore a sinner to fellowship with his perfect God. The suffering crowd missed him because their hope was in the pool. The religious leaders missed him because their hope was in their rules. But really, both groups missed him for the same reason. They were looking somewhere other than Jesus for what only Jesus can provide. In November 2005, 60 Minutes aired an interview with Tom Brady. At the time, he was 28 years old. He had already won three Super Bowls, and his team, the New England Patriots, had just completed back-to-back championships following the 2004 season. Steve Croft was interviewing him and reflecting on everything that he had accomplished. At one point in the interview, Brady says, quote, Why do I have three Super Bowl rings and still think there's something greater out there for me? I mean, a lot of people would say, hey man, this is what it is. I reached my goal, my dream. He goes on to say, there's gotta be more than this. When Croft asks him, what's the answer? Brady responds, I wish I knew, I wish I knew. Despite being one of very few people to have ever actually literally achieved everything that he ever set out to accomplish, despite being the person whom the term goat was invented to describe, Tom Brady comes face to face with the reality that in his words, there's gotta be more than this. See, whether or not you happen to be the greatest quarterback of all time, the same question that Jesus asked the man at the pool 2,000 years ago echoes through time and it meets every single person where we are today. Do you want to be healed? We were created by a perfect God with purpose, to experience the peace and joy of walking in relationship with Him, to flourish under His perfect rule, and to be filled up and made whole by His presence and His presence alone. But because of our sin, that relationship is broken. We sense the reality that we are broken, and apart from Christ, we are spiritually crippled. And so, like the multitude in our text this morning, we find ourselves staring at a pool, watching and waiting for the stirring of the waters, tethering our hope to things that we convince ourselves will make us whole. I wonder what the pool looks like for you in your life? Are you waiting for the relationship that you've always wanted? Convinced that if the right person would finally reciprocate your feelings, you would finally have worth? Maybe you're chasing the fairy tale marriage, believing if you can just fix your spouse, you'd finally be fulfilled by that relationship. Are you pouring yourself into your career, convinced that the next promotion, the bigger office, or the more impressive title will finally give you the significance you've been looking for? Are you waiting for a raise or a financial breakthrough because you believe that if you can just pay off that debt, buy that house, or reach that number in your bank account, you'll finally have peace? Are you consumed with your appearance, telling yourself, if I can just lose the weight, if I can just get healthy, if I can just look like they do on Instagram? Are you living for approval, refreshing your social media feed, measuring your value in likes, comments, and affirmation from people who might not even know you? The tragedy of our passage this morning isn't just the physical suffering at the pool. It's all of the people fixated on what couldn't heal them while the one who could was standing right in front of them. And if we're honest, we do the same thing. We fix our eyes on money, success, relationships, comfort, achievement, and so many other good things that are fine to want, but we lie to ourselves when we tell ourselves that they'll fill us up and make us whole. And every time that we think we found real peace, real joy, real purpose, we end up right back where we started. Tom Brady's words become our words. There's gotta be more than this. If there's anyone here this morning that does not yet have a saving relationship with Jesus Christ, you need to hear Jesus' words for what they truly are. It's not a trick question, it's not abstract theology. It's the voice of God confronting the deepest need of your life. With perfect grace, perfect patience, and awesome authority, Jesus cuts through the crowd, makes a beeline straight for you, and asks, Do you want to be healed? If you're here this morning and if you haven't yet put your faith in Jesus for the forgiveness of sins, if you've never had the opportunity to answer yes to that question, please don't leave here today without talking to me, Pastor John, Pastor Andrew, or any of our other elders. For those of us who do know the Lord, the question still remains. Jesus wasn't finished with the man after he healed him. He went out of his way to find him again in the temple and called him not just to a moment of healing, but to a lifetime of flourishing in the form of repentance and obedience. In a sense, Jesus was asking the same question a second time. Now that you've been healed, will you choose to walk in that healing? The Holy Spirit continues to ask us that same question every day. Because if we're honest, so often we're like my kids at the kitchen table during school time with our fingers in our ears, flinging pencils across the room. Our Heavenly Father, who loves us, offers us healing, and yet we choose to return to whatever pools we used to wait at for peace and joy and purpose. We forget that in Paul's words in Galatians 5 1, for freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. In other words, if you've put your faith and trust in Jesus, you've already been made whole. Stop going back to the pool for your worth, your purpose, your peace, your joy, your identity. You're not going to find it there. You've already found it at the cross. Thankfully, the mercy of God is that he doesn't meet our drifting with abandonment. He pursues us again and again every day. He reminds us that when we obey his word, we don't forfeit our joy, we're led to it. And so every day with grace and authority, Jesus asks us the same question he asked the man at the pool Do you want to be healed? Pray with me.