The Third of His Signs

Introduction

Illustration: Happy New Years everyone! It’s January 5th. I don’t know how many of you set New Years Resolutions, but for those who do, how are you doing so far? This first week of January is usually the most motivated I get with my personal goals. So far I’m doing pretty good at my reading goal, but my write everyday goal is 0 for 5. But seriously, for those who set New Years Resolutions, why do we set the goals we do? Usually because we have something in our lives that we say we value, but that isn’t getting the time and/or effort that it deserves.

We all want to get our priorities straight don’t we? We all know that as many have said in many different forms that on our deathbeds we won’t wish we spent more time in the office. We all know that. Yet in the day to day when the rubber hits the road we often spend a lot of time on things that we don’t value or at least that we don’t value as much as the things which we barely give any time to.

Well what does the Bible say we should put first in our lives? What matters according to God’s Word? After all He’s the one who created us and who will one day judge us, so shouldn’t we see what He has to say? I believe that these things are illustrated well in this account in John Chapter 5 of Jesus healing a paralytic, the third of John’s seven signs that Jesus performed. Let’s take a look:

John 5:1–18 CSB

After this, a Jewish festival took place, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. By the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem there is a pool, called Bethesda in Aramaic, which has five colonnades. Within these lay a large number of the disabled—blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been disabled for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and realized he had already been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to get well?” “Sir,” the disabled man answered, “I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I’m coming, someone goes down ahead of me.” “Get up,” Jesus told him, “pick up your mat and walk.” Instantly the man got well, picked up his mat, and started to walk. Now that day was the Sabbath, and so the Jews said to the man who had been healed, “This is the Sabbath. The law prohibits you from picking up your mat.” He replied, “The man who made me well told me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’ “Who is this man who told you, ‘Pick up your mat and walk’?” they asked. But the man who was healed did not know who it was, because Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there. After this, Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you are well. Do not sin anymore, so that something worse doesn’t happen to you.” The man went and reported to the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. Therefore, the Jews began persecuting Jesus because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. Jesus responded to them, “My Father is still working, and I am working also.” This is why the Jews began trying all the more to kill him: Not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal to God.

Now this passage has a lot to teach us about who Jesus is and how valueable He is and what He wants us to be valued if we look closely and pay attention. I think we can see three things clearly in this text. We can see that if we want to be truly whole the only way to do so is to go to Jesus, and that no other substitute will do. We see the importance of valueing true righteousness and spiritual health over keeping traditions of men. We also see that Jesus being God means that He earns top spot in our lives over all.

Do You Want to be Healed?

Illustration: I can’t be the only one that occasionally mixes up Home Hardware Home Depot and Canadian Tire, am I? On a few isolated occasions I have been known to find something online that I need to buy, and then accidentally go to the wrong store. Like when I was looking for a water filter. Home Depot didn’t have my water filter in stock. If you go to the wrong place, chances are that you won’t find what you are looking for. Imagine if you went to a mechanic because you had heart problems, or to a grocery store looking for building supplies.

Now those are silly examples, but we do sometimes go to the wrong place looking for something, don’t we? Perhaps the most popular example being people who go looking for a romantic partner to find their life’s meaning. Or people who look at horoscopes for advice, or the internet for wisdom. That’s really not the way to find what you are looking for. So what are we really looking for? A lot of us are looking for different things in life, but there’s an ultimate search out there for truth, meaning, for ultimate spiritual well being.

The paralyzed man in our story was looking for something, wasn’t he? He was looking for healing. Understandably so! But where did he go looking for the healing he so very much needed? Well let’s take a look at what John tells us in:

John 5:1–9 CSB

After this, a Jewish festival took place, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. By the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem there is a pool, called Bethesda in Aramaic, which has five colonnades. Within these lay a large number of the disabled—blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been disabled for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and realized he had already been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to get well?” “Sir,” the disabled man answered, “I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I’m coming, someone goes down ahead of me.” “Get up,” Jesus told him, “pick up your mat and walk.” Instantly the man got well, picked up his mat, and started to walk. Now that day was the Sabbath,

Let me tell you a few important background facts about this pool called Bethesda that Jesus comes to in our passage. This was a famous spot for healing. Why? If you look at your footnote in your Bibles, or some of them might just still have this in the text, you’ll find the end of verse 3 and all of verse 4 have been removed from the main text of modern translations. That’s because we’ve found older and better copies of John that do not have this verse and scholars believe that it was probably added by later scribes. If you want to know more about that kind of thing we can talk about it another time, but this is what that removed portion says:

. “waiting for the moving of the water, 4 because an angel would go down into the pool from time to time and stir up the water. Then the first one who got in after the water was stirred up recovered from whatever ailment he had.[1]”

[1] Christian Standard Bible (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2020).

Though this probably isn’t original to the gospel of John, it probably does reflect the sort of idea that these people had about the pool. This is reflected in the man’s response in verse 7 that he needs someone to get him into the water when it’s stirred up.

Why do I bring up all that stuff? The point is that this man came to the pool of Bethesda to look for healing because of a superstitious story about angels healing the first one to get into the pool when the water was “stirred up,” something that probably happened because of natural springs that fed into the pool. In other words, this man was in the wrong place for healing.

This lends a bit of a different flavor to Jesus’ question, “do you want to get well?” I can’t help but wonder if it’s the sort of thing like when I see one of my children doing something strange, and I stare at them for a minute before going, “oh, are you trying to ____.” As if Jesus is asking this man with the tone of voice that says “are you trying to get healed? Because this isn’t how you get healed?” We can’t know for sure because the written word doesn’t convey tone of voice, but we do know the sort of thing the Hebrew Scriptures say about seeking out mystical healing apart from God.

Jesus knows that this is not the way. So He looks at this poor man who has been disabled for 38 years and sitting in desperation by this pool for a long time, and He offers him healing. Of course just like most people in John’s gospel, the man misunderstands Jesus and thinks that he needs to be brought into the water. Instead, Jesus simply tells Him to get up and walk. And He does. By the very words of Jesus the man is made well and able to stand and walk and carry his makeshift bed of straw.

Maybe none of us are paralyzed and desperate to walk, but we all need healing don’t we? The question is, where are we going to find our healing? Our true source of wholeness? The only true source is Jesus Himself. You could fly to Israel right now, though given the current situation over there it might not be such a good idea, and find the excavated pool of Bethesda. But getting in that pool wouldn’t make you well. Only Jesus can do that. So my friends, let us go to Him to make us whole.

Righteousness and the Law

Illustration: Getting distracted by the business of Christmas. Who hasn’t been so consumed with getting everything done that they forgot to enjoy the holiday? Or even more broadly, who hasn’t been distracted from enjoying time with family because of the business of life.

It’s very easy to get our priorities mixed up. As the saying goes, to miss the forest for the trees. To get so distracted trying to make an excellent career for ourselves, to master our hobbies, even to find joy in spending time with friends, and neglect the weightier things, like our relationship with Jesus. What after all is more important than that? What is more important than our spiritual health? Those other things aren’t bad, in fact we should try to do our work well, we should do things that we are talented in, we should enjoy time with friends. The problem is when our walk with God loses out to all of those things, and He gets the scraps of our time, or almost none of our time at all.

The Jewish religious leaders in our passage were distracted from the main things for certain. Remember the end of verse 9, where John tells us that this man was healed on the Sabbath day? The Sabbath day was given to the Jewish people as a day of rest once a week starting at Sundown on what we would call friday until sundown on Saturday. Let’s see how the Jewish leaders react to finding out this man was healed on the Sabbath.

John 5:10–14 CSB

and so the Jews said to the man who had been healed, “This is the Sabbath. The law prohibits you from picking up your mat.” He replied, “The man who made me well told me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’ “Who is this man who told you, ‘Pick up your mat and walk’?” they asked. But the man who was healed did not know who it was, because Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there. After this, Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you are well. Do not sin anymore, so that something worse doesn’t happen to you.”

I want you to imagine something with me. Imagine that you’ve been paralyzed for 38 years. All you have been thinking about for decades is how much easier life would be if you could walk. Then finally a man stops by and tell you to walk and instantly you find yourself able to stand and even to carry your own mat. Then the buzzkills show up and get made at you for carrying your mat.

We’ve talked before about the crazy strictness of the traditions the Pharisees had concerning what you could and couldn’t do on the Sabbath. One of those was a regulation that said that carrying any burden into or out of one place into another was considered work. I mean, that seems a little restrictive, doesn’t it? And even if it wasn’t, what kind of priorities do you have when you witness a miraculous healing and all you can think about is the fact that the man who can now WALK WHEN HE COULDN’T FOR 38 YEARS happens to be carrying a mat made of straw on a Saturday.

This is the kind of thing Jesus was condemning them for in Matthew 23:23

Matthew 23:23 CSB

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You pay a tenth of mint, dill, and cumin, and yet you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy, and faithfulness. These things should have been done without neglecting the others.

Meanwhile, what is Jesus concerned about in this moment? He tracks down the healed man and advises Him to live a righteous life. In John 5:14

John 5:14 CSB

After this, Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you are well. Do not sin anymore, so that something worse doesn’t happen to you.”

Now I don’t think as some do that this implies the man was paralyzed because of some sin and that Jesus was warning Him that he’d get even sicker if he continued to sin. I think the “something worse” that Jesus was warning him about was not another illness, but about the fate of those who die apart from Christ. Continuing to live in sin would set Him on the path to hell, which is a far worse fate then sitting by a pool paralyzed and begging.

This shows us something about the nature of our priorities as disciples of Jesus. That we shouldn’t neglect the heavier and more important matter of living righteously and looking after our spiritual health by getting distracted by other things. In the case of the Pharisees it was strict traditions of their fathers. These distractions take many other forms. What matters at the end of the day is whether you’re giving your first and best to living in the light as John would say, following after Jesus and obeying His commands out of love for Him. That’s the first and best priority that we can have.

Equal to God

Illustration: Hereditary authority is nowhere near as common now as it used to be. Of course we as Canadians are still technically the subjects of a Hereditary Monarchy, but it used to be that the authority of a father passed to his sons in a lot of other smaller ways. Like a step down from a King, a lord’s land and all his servants would pass to his son. A tradesman would pass his trade on to his son and the work would pass naturally to him over time. It was much more common to think of a son carrying the same or similar authority to his father, especially an adult son.

In a society more built around this kind of dynamic, if the crown prince asks you to do something, you probably do it. This is because as the prince and future king he anticipates and shares his father’s authority. Not to the same degree, but lesser.

In the case of Jesus, the words He says about His relationship with His Father seem to imply not only a derived authority from His Father, but one that makes Him equal with God. Let’s take a look at

John 5:15–18 CSB

The man went and reported to the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. Therefore, the Jews began persecuting Jesus because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. Jesus responded to them, “My Father is still working, and I am working also.” This is why the Jews began trying all the more to kill him: Not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal to God.

Now I’m not sure why this man went to the leadership and “tattled” on Jesus here, but that’s besides the point. They were angry with Jesus because He dared to do a healing on the Sabbath. Now many argued that in a crisis you could privide healthcare during the Sabbath, but something chronic like this was different. It could be treated on any day, so the Sabbath was forbidden. They begin persecuting Jesus as a breaker of the Sabbath.

How does Jesus respond? He doesn’t correct their view of the Sabbath. In this case He doesn’t challenge the authority of the traditions of their elders. Both of these things would have been correct to do. The Pharisees I can pretty confidently say were mixed up about how to properly honor the Sabbath day. Instead, Jesus makes the controversy much worse.

He says that it’s okay for Him to work on the Sabbath because His Father is working. Now in multiply places in the Hebrew Scriptures the image of a father son relationship or sometimes a father daughter relationship are used to describe Israel. But that is never used as a reason to work during the Sabbath. Their status as sons of God did not make them above the command to honor the Sabbath and keep it Holy. So Jesus can’t be claiming sonship in that same smaller way. No, He’s making a much bigger claim. He’s claiming that in the same way God is not subject to the Sabbath, He is not subject to the sabbath.

This is why it says in verse 18 that they try to kill him for “making Himself equal to God.” By saying that He can by virtue of His Father working on the Sabbath work on the Sabbath Himself, He is saying that He has the same level of authority as God Himself. Who has God’s authority? Only God. So this is a bold statement in a subtle way that Jesus is in fact God in the flesh. He’s going to make that even more clear in our text for next week.

So then if Jesus is in fact equal to the Father, than that means we owe Him our allegiance. If He is God He deserves to be worshipped and obeyed as God. That’s why we call ourselves Christians and pray to Jesus and follow after Him as His disciples, rather than just praying to the Father and living according to the Hebrew Scriptures alone. We follow Jesus because we believe that what He told these Jewish leaders is true. That He is the Son of the Most High, and as He says elsewhere in Scripture, Lord of the Sabbath.

Conclusion

So what ties all these different points together? I would argue that what this passage really boils down to is an emphasis on giving yourself to what really matters. In the case of our paralytic he was looking for healing in all the wrong places. His is a story that illustrates the importance of looking to Jesus and not to cheap counterfeits in order to find wholeness and peace. In the case of the Pharisees they were too preoccupied with their traditions to see the work of God right in front of their eyes. Seek Jesus Himself over the traditions which we can sometimes mix up with Christianity itself. Finally by making Himself equal to God, and it being the actual true case that He is equal to God, Jesus shows why He is the absolute most important part of all of our lives. He is God Himself, our Lord who deserves the best of our time and energy.

So what are we putting first in our lives? Is it Jesus? If you wrote out a detailed log of what you spend your time on how high would Jesus be on the list? Can’t we all stand to move Him up a space or two on our priority list at least. This year let us set first things first and give Jesus the first fruits of our lives. Let us make 2025 the year we put our time and energy into serving Jesus well.