Do you want to be healed?

Introduction

In the passage today, we see this man who has been sick for a long time. Perhaps he had been paralyzed and unable to walk, and Jesus performs a miracle of healing his paralysis. But before we dive into the passage, I want us to first set the scene, because we have archaeological evidence of this exact site that the Bible is talking about.

Show picture of Pool of Bethesda.

So as you can see in this picture here, archaeologists believe that this is the very site of the Bethesda pool where Jesus healed this man of his paralysis. They discovered this site and excavated it in the 19th century. Now over time what happened was that as Christians over the subsequent centuries took control over these sites, they liked to mark these areas of important events in Jesus’ life and his miracles, so they built chapels and churches over these sites. And you can see how there is this chapel that has now been excavated, covering the site where the pool used to be.

Now what’s really interesting is when archaeologists first read this passage in the Bible before actually having found this site, they thought that this record of John was historically inaccurate and John just made it up, because if we see in verse 2, John has this very peculiar description of the pool having five roofed colonnades.

Show picture of colonnade.

Colonnades are these long rows of columns with a roof over the top, and these would have surrounded the pool. And assuming that the pool was rectangular in shape as most pools are, then you would expect 4 colonnades. But John says there is 5, so unless the pool is a pentagon in shape, this made no sense. But when they actually found the Pool of Bethesda and excavated the site, they found that there was actually two pools with another colonnade separating the two, therefore confirming John’s description of five colonnades.

So before we even dive into this passage, I just want to remind all of us that the Bible is not just a story, it’s not a fairy tale. It’s actual history, and it’s God acting in history in a supernatural history. Jesus was there at this site of the Pool of Bethesda in flesh and blood, you could touch him, you could hear him, you could see Him, and this man claimed to be God. So no one can get away from the fact that Jesus was real, these things really happened, and now it’s up to us how we respond to that.

The Helpless State of Humanity

So what was going on at this site? Let’s read John 5:3 together “In these lay a multitude of invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed.” Lying under these long rows of columns with a roof overhead, there were a ‘multitude’ of people, perhaps even hundreds, desperate to get healed. There were people with disease and sickness, those who were blind, those who were paralyzed and couldn’t walk just like this man. Imagine walking into this scene - it’s not like going to Aqualink going for a leisurely swim. Rather, it would have been a scene of complete despair and helplessness. Whether young or old, whether male or female, you would have been surrounded by people with bodies wasting away, their minds in complete anguish. It would have been a scene where you see the pitiful state of broken humanity.

And in a sense isn’t this describing us? Without Christ, when you peel back the layers of our lives that we try and use to find some meaning, hope, or joy in our existence, what are we left with? Nothing, nothing but death and the perishing of all that we ever worked for. There is a certain, almost unspoken desperation and struggle of humanity to combat the inevitable effects of sin and death. On a societal level, we desperately try and fight against global warming, subscribe ourselves to what we perceive to be noble ideologies and movements like the pro-Palestinian or pro-Israeli movement whichever side you are on. On a personal level, we may try and leave a legacy in a desperate attempt to immortalise ourselves after death, or focus all or efforts and energy into our families and raising our children, or try and build a career where we find a sense of fulfillment and also receive fame and recognition from others. Whatever it may be, without Christ, I think all of us fight against this helplessness state that we are in, using things that are made of dust, and to dust they will return.

But do you want to be healed?

In the context of this struggle, I think Jesus asks a very interesting question here. If we look at verses 5-6, we see that Jesus encounters this man who had been paralyzed for 38 years, and He asks him ‘Do you want to be healed?’ That’s almost an insulting question. Imagine you were paralyzed for 38 years, and someone just walks up to you casually and asks you, ‘do you want to be healed?’ I think I would be pretty annoyed because of course I want to be healed, why do you think I’m lying beside this pool trying to get healed for the past 38 years?

But when you think about healing, when you think about being cured, it’s not just being healed or cured of the disease, but it’s also the implications of that healing, what follows after the healing - it all comes as a package. And sometimes, we may not want that. We may want the healing, but we may not want what comes with the healing. For example, beggars and the sick in Jesus’ day often earned a pretty good living, so by being healed they may be losing their source of income. And I think for some of us, we are the same: sometimes our illnesses, our afflictions, our issues, our problems in our lives, become so ingrained in us, that although they cause us much suffering and grief, at the same time they have almost become part of our identity and we don’t want to lose it.

I used to work as an intern in the psychiatric unit at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, and a common mental health condition I saw was a disease called Borderline Personality Disorder. These are people who quite often have a deep trauma or hurt in their life, resulting in a very unstable sense of their own identity, and the way that manifests is this extreme fear of being abandoned, they have these extreme negative emotions. And this ultimately destroys their ability to form stable and meaningful relationships with others, because the only way they know how to relate with others is by manipulation and extreme often destructive behaviours. And this is not because they are bad people - this is what has been ingrained into their behaviour as a result of they have gone through in life. And sometimes they know they are behaving in the wrong way, but they just can’t help themselves. They are scared to leave this way of life behind.

So just like the beggars of Jesus’ day, just like this disorder I’ve talked about, I wonder if we in our lives have certain things that we don’t want to be healed of, we don’t want to surrender to Christ, because we are scared to leave it behind, or it has just become so ingrained in us, or perhaps we may even like it.

What kind of healing do you want?

But even if we want healing, even if we want the cure, what is the healing or cure that we have in mind? The healing that Jesus brings into our lives, is not always the way we picture it. It may not always be the way we want it. In this passage, did you notice there is no verse 4? That’s because this was a much later addition to the book of John that wasn’t in the original manuscript. And it describes this myth around the time of Jesus where people thought that an angel intermittently disturbed the waters, and when that happened, whoever rushed into this water first, would be healed of their disease. Now this wasn’t actually true because the reason the water was stirred and disturbed is because the pool was probably linked to another channel, and whenever there was a disturbance in the water of that channel, that resulted in the water of the pool to be pushed around.

But we see that this paralyzed man must have believed in this myth, because what does he say in John 5:7? “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.” So he must have believed in this superstitious healing property of this pool. This shows us that when we think of God’s actions in our lives, God’s healing and works in our lives, we have a tendency to picture God’s work through the lens of our own understanding. We have certain biases that tell us how God should act in our lives. Just like how this man expected God to work in his life and bring healing through an angel disturbing the waters of the pool, we may have certain false expectations that we place on God. If only God did X, then all my problems would be solved. If only God helped me make more money, I would be able to afford this house and be able to tithe more. If only God gave me good grades then I would be happy. But this passage shows us that we cannot limit God to our mere understanding. We cannot try and squeeze God into the tiny world that our minds can perceive and fathom. God is much greater than that and He completely transcends all that we can think of and imagine.

So not only does the first few verses of this passage show us how helpless we are without Christ, but it shows us that even in our helpless we often don’t even want the healing that Christ brings, and even if we want the healing, we want it in our own limited way. This is the state that mankind is in.

Jesus’ Gracious Healing

But what does Jesus do with this helpless man? Let’s read John 5:8 “Jesus said to him, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.””

Jesus perfectly and completely healed him. His legs which he couldn’t move, which had shriveled with all the muscles wasted away, suddenly had strength and he had the strength stand up and he could now miraculously walk. So we can see that God works and brings healing into our lives despite our complete helplessness. God works in our lives even though, as we said before, we may not even want it. He works in our lives even though we try and limit God’s actions to our puny understanding. Jesus commanded Him saying ‘Get up, take up your bed, and walk’, and immediately this man was healed, took up his bed and walked!

Now it’s important to see how John paints this man. To give a bit of a preview, John shows us how completely undeserving this man was of Jesus’ healing. When he was healed, the Jews were really unhappy about it because Jesus had performed this miracle on the Sabbath which they did not allow. And this man must have clearly known about these Jewish regulations, but when the Jews ask him about who healed him, rather than defending Jesus, he dobs him in. Read John 5:11 “But he answered them, “The man who healed me, that man said to me, ‘Take up your bed, and walk.’ ”” Not only that, if we read the next verse (John 5:12) he couldn’t even remember the name of the man who healed him - he was really ungracious. But what is really revealing is what Jesus says in John 5:14 “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.”” John tells us here that the reason this man was sick and paralyzed was because of his sin. Now I’m not saying that this man was worse sinner than everyone else to deserve this - remember that we are all sinners. I am also not saying that all disease and sickness in this world is due to sin or wrong actions - I think the vast majority of patients in hospitals are sick not because of a particular sin they have committed. But at the same time, it is also true sin has consequences in our lives, the most obvious of which is God’s judgement and death, so sin can also have material consequences that we experience in this life, and just one example of that may be disease such as this. So overall, John is showing how sly, ungrateful, unloyal this man is to Christ, the very one who healed him, and on top of that he is a sinful man. He is completely undeserving of God’s mercy and help. And if you think you are any better than this man, think again, because we are just like him. Completely undeserving of God’s works in our lives and His healing. And this is affirmed by Paul Romans, lets look at Romans 3:9 “For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin.”

And yet, God heals this man. And yet God saves us, heals us, works in our lives, he cares about our hurts and pains and our suffering, even though we are undeserving. This is grace. God saving us and giving us his gifts, despite our unworthiness. This man did nothing to earn his cure, and yet Jesus cured him. And it’s the same with us - we did nothing to earn our cure, or even our salvation, and yet God saves us and heals us, and even gives us eternal life. God’s grace means that he does not require anything from us, and He gives to us purely by His own will, desire, power, and love.

The Response

I think it’s also important that we look at the response to all this. This is a moment of great joy and celebration. This is a story of how one man who was suffering from paralysis for 38 years is suddenly miraculously freed from his disease! But how do the religious leaders of the Jews perceive this? Read John 5:10 “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.”” See also John 5:15–16 “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.” So we can see that rather than celebrating, the religious leaders are deeply unhappy about the situation.

Now what the Pharisees of Jesus’ time believed was that not only did they follow all the laws of the Old Testament, but they made all these extra other laws in addition to their Old Testament laws. And one of the most important laws was the keeping of the Sabbath. In the OT, the Sabbath was the day that you were not allowed to work, your normal employment or job. But the Pharisees added numerous other regulations on top of that to the point that they analysed and scrutinised the idea of work to the minute detail, and created 39 classes of work that were prohibited. And one of those 39 classes of work was carrying anything. So because this man who had been healed carried his bed, he was technically breaking one of those laws. But they were even more unhappy about Jesus, because he performed a miracle on the Sabbath.

Now to be fair, we need to understand where these Pharisees were coming from. You have to understand that the history and context of the Jews of Jesus’ time. Only a few hundred years prior, they had been enslaved by various other nations, and the reason they were enslaved was because they did not obey God’s commands, and they did not keep themselves separate, holy and pure, from other Gentile nations - they intermarried and even ended up worshipping other gods. And now that they had learnt their lesson, they were almost overcompensating, by not only obeying the laws of the OT, but adding even more rules and regulations to it. They were hyperprotective of their laws and regulations, because this is how they protected their identity and their religion from surrounding influence, like the culture of the Greeks and Romans, and other surrounding religions.

So it seems their intention is good and noble. But what are they ultimately doing? Rather than taking God’s law and obeying God’s law for its true intended purpose, they are turning the law itself into an idol. And rather than worshipping God, they end up worshipping the law itself. And this results in a religion of legalism, rather than a religion of grace. It’s a religion of rules and standards, rules and standards that are not even in the Bible, rules and standards that are our own, rather than Gods. And when we do this, we can no longer look at one another with love, grace, and mercy, but rather when look at one another, we judge them according to our own standards of spirituality, which just like all the extra rules of the Pharisees, may not even be biblical. And do you know what it does? It blinds you. When the Jewish leaders hear of this wonderful healing of this paralysed man and how it breaks their rules, they are blind to the former, and are only interested in the latter. They think they see what is important, but there are none so blind as those who think they see correctly by their own standards, rather than God’s true standards.

And don’t we do this when we look at our brothers and sisters in Christ, and at the church? We all have our own standards about what Christianity, the church, should look like. But we need to deeply examine ourselves. Our own biases. Are our standards truly according to the Bible? Or they perhaps reflect an influence from outside the Bible? Perhaps a worldly philosophy? Or a previous experience in your life? Or a previous experience in a different church? A negative encounter with a church member in the past? Whatever it may be, when we have our own agendas and our own standards by which we hold other believers and the church to, it blinds us to the work of Christ in our lives, our brothers and sisters lives, and the life of the Church. And not only does it blind you, but it sucks the joy out of it. Look at not only the blindness, but the bitterness of the Pharisees - they were not only persecuting Jesus, but actually seeking to kill him.

And what is the antidote to this? To go back to the standards of Christ. To surrender, and humbly submit how we view and judge others and the church to Christ. Because it is only Christ who can set the standard. If we read John 5:17 “But Jesus answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.”” Here Jesus provides the true interpretation of the Sabbath law. Yes the Sabbath is in remembrance of God’s rest, how he rested on the 7th day, and how we are are also to rest on that day. But, Jesus states that ‘My Father is working until now, and I am working.’ So Jesus reveals to us not only does God the Father rest, but in a divine mystery he works at the same time, because remember all of creation is sustained by God so God has essentially been working constantly since the beginning of creation, and therefore Jesus himself can also do this work of grace and mercy on the Sabbath. And Jesus has the authority to do that because as we see in verse John 5:18, Jesus called God his own Father and was equal with God. Only Jesus’ has this unique and powerful authority to set the standard for how Christians are to live, so we must surrender to that.

Conclusion

So to wrap up, John teaches us through this passage how completely helpless we all are. And not only are we helpless and in need of Christ, but sometimes we don’t even want his help, and even the help he gives we try to shape and place our own human expectations on. But despite our helplessness and unworthiness, Christ is still gracious to us, and gives us salvation, healing, and doesn’t place a price or any requirement on us. And when we see this great work of God in our lives, other Christians, and our Church, we have to be really careful and introspective, to really make sure whether our standards of judgement are our own or are informed by God’s word, because depending on which one it is, it can blind you and take the joy out of your faith. And the only way we can ensure that the way we view this world and the church is through the lens that God gives us, is when we realise Jesus is God Himself and approach Him and His commandments with the reverence and awe that He deserves, and therefore let his word shape and transform our lives, our behaviour, and thinking.

Resources

· PNTC – Carson

· Bible Speaks Today – Milne

· Preaching the Word (x2) – Hughes

· https://www.viator.com/en-AU/Jerusalem-attractions/Pool-of-Bethesda/overview/d921-a23617

· https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-sites-places/jerusalem/the-bethesda-pool-site-of-one-of-jesus-miracles/

· https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonnade#/media/File:Wikimedia_Conference_2015_photo_by_Pine_-_28.jpg