The Miracle at the pool

John 5:1–15 (NLT)

1Afterward Jesus returned to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish holy days.

2Inside the city, near the Sheep Gate, was the pool of Bethesda, with five covered porches.

3Crowds of sick people—blind, lame, or paralyzed—lay on the porches.

5One of the men lying there had been sick for thirty-eight years.

6When Jesus saw him and knew he had been ill for a long time, he asked him, “Would you like to get well?”

7“I can’t, sir,” the sick man said, “for I have no one to put me into the pool when the water bubbles up. Someone else always gets there ahead of me.”

8Jesus told him, “Stand up, pick up your mat, and walk!”

9Instantly, the man was healed! He rolled up his sleeping mat and began walking! But this miracle happened on the Sabbath,

10so the Jewish leaders objected. They said to the man who was cured, “You can’t work on the Sabbath! The law doesn’t allow you to carry that sleeping mat!”

11But he replied, “The man who healed me told me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’ ”

12“Who said such a thing as that?” they demanded.

13The man didn’t know, for Jesus had disappeared into the crowd.

14But afterward Jesus found him in the Temple and told him, “Now you are well; so stop sinning, or something even worse may happen to you.”

15Then the man went and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had healed him.

INTRODUCTION

I. You are in the right place for a miracle.

2Inside the city, near the Sheep Gate, was the pool of Bethesda, with five covered porches.

A. The pool of Bethesda was a double pool surrounded by colonnades on four sides, with a fifth colonnade standing on the dividing wall that separated the northern and southern pools. The five porches were in the colonnades on the two sides, with two on each end and one in the middle.

3Crowds of sick people—blind, lame, or paralyzed—lay on the porches.

II. There is a flow of healing and mercy for everyone.

III. Do you want to receive your miracle?

IV. Every miracle requires an act of faith.