JOHN 5:1-18 - A Stubborn People and an Authoritative Christ

Introduction

Several years ago a men’s medical health initiative put up billboards around the country encouraging men to go for routine checkups—the billboard said in big white letters on a red background, “This year, thousands of men will die of stubbornness”. At the bottom of one of those billboards was a spray-painted response, “No we won’t!”

You probably know a few stubborn guys like that, right? They wouldn’t acknowledge what was good for them if it was staring them in the face? And wouldn’t admit it if they did need something?

We are studying the third sign that Jesus performed in John’s Gospel—these signs that he included “so that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you might have life in His Name” (John 20:31). And there is a change that comes over John’s narrative with this sign—for the first time, Jesus’ works draw opposition to Him. The first sign hardly anyone knew about except His mother, the servants and the disciples (and besides, who could possibly object to more wine??) The second sign was performed for the royal official and his household; what possible objections could be raised over His healing of a little boy with a fever!?

But here in our passage this morning we see the first signs of the opposition and hatred of Christ that will lead to His crucifixion—and it comes from men who stubbornly refuse to see Him for Who He is. We see it in Verses 10-12:

John 5:10–12 LSB

So the Jews were saying to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to carry your mat.” But he answered them, “He who made me well was the one who said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’” They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Pick up your mat and walk’?”

We learn in Verse 5 that this man had been sick for thirty-eight years. It is simply inconceivable that the individuals who confronted this man about “breaking the Sabbath” did not recognize him as the crippled man who had been there for decades.

But when they saw him walking and carrying his mat—this man who had not walked for decades, mind you—all they could think to say to him was, “Who told you you could carry your mat??” Talk about being blinded by stubborn spiritual pride!

This is even more shocking when we see just how completely Jesus demonstrates Who He is in this sign. John records this sign to create and sustain faith in his readers, and what we see in this passage this morning is that

Christ’s authority OVERCOMES the stubborn PRIDE of His people

The stakes continue to rise as we follow Jesus through these signs—from a lack of wine at a wedding to a desperately ill child, we come now to a man who had been paralyzed for almost 40 years. John includes this sign in order to demonstrate that

I. Christ has authority over SICKNESS (John 5:1-9a)

Verses 1-4 set the scene:

John 5:1–4 LSB

After these things there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is in Jerusalem by the sheep gate a pool, which is called in Hebrew Bethesda, having five porticoes. In these lay a multitude of those who were sick, blind, lame, and withered, waiting for the moving of the waters; for an angel of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool and stirred up the water; whoever then first, after the stirring up of the water, stepped in was made well from whatever sickness with which he was afflicted.]

Now, your Bible may mark off the end of Verse 3 through Verse 4 because some early manuscripts of John do not include those verses—and while there may be reasons on one side or another as to whether those verses were originally written by John or not, the issue is not that we don’t believe that an angel could have come down and stirred those waters! We believe that God created the heavens and the earth out of nothing in six days, for heaven’s sake! We believe that Jonah was swallowed by a fish, that Moses parted the Red Sea, that Elisha made an iron axe-head float, that Balaam’s donkey scolded him for beating her, and that Jesus was born of a virgin—an angel stirring up waters for healing barely moves the needle for us!

In any case, the point of this passage isn’t about ancient Greek texts or whether angels can stir waters—John’s point is the man laying there next to the pool:

John 5:5 LSB

And a man was there who had been sick for thirty-eight years.

This is the first thing we see about Christ’s authority over sickness—

This is not a FAKE healing

Everyone at Bethesda knew him; everyone would have recognized him. He was well-known to have a long-term, profound and complete disability. This was not a man, in short, that the likes of Benny Hinn would allow on the stage at one of his rallies, because there was no chance that he could be psychologically manipulated into standing up—much less walk around!

And notice here that Jesus specifically sought him out! In Verse 6 we read that “Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been sick a long time” (v. 6). Jesus was making it clear that He has complete authority over every illness.

The conversation between Jesus and this man in Verses 6-7 go on to show us that not only was this not a fake healing,

This was not a FAITH healing

Notice that unlike the royal official last week, this man does not come to Jesus asking for healing—Jesus comes to him and asks, “Do you wish to get well?”

In fact, the man’s response to Jesus even comes across kind of crusty—he doesn’t even directly answer Him!

John 5:7 LSB

The sick man answered Him, “Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I am coming, another steps down before me.”

“Well, I would get better if someone would just roll me into the water!” This was no starry-eyed “believer” that just knew his miracle was on the way! His healing had nothing to do with his faith; he didn’t have any! He didn’t know Who Jesus was—and from the clues we gather from his behavior later on, he doesn’t seem to care!

It’s probably overstating the case to say that this man was an unwilling participant in this sign, but he certainly wasn’t coming to Jesus in faith—Jesus doesn’t tell him (as He tells so many others in the Gospels) “Your faith has made you well.” Nevertheless, even though this man did not seek healing from Jesus or even ask Him,

This was a FREE healing

Consider the grace of Jesus in this moment! Sorry, but if I had the capability of restoring this man’s ability to walk and when I asked if I could help him he snapped at me about how it was so unfair that everyone else got help and he was so badly used and ignored and he was such a victim… I’d have been sorely tempted to say “Copy that” and move to the guy on the next mat over!

But look at the heart of our Savior here—he freely and gladly gives this man the healing that he didn’t even ask for! Just marvel for a moment at the free and undeserved and overflowing grace of Jesus Christ! To freely and without hesitation bring healing to a lonely, bitter old man.

This was a free healing, and

This was a FULL healing

Verses 8-9 tells us

John 5:8–9 LSB

Jesus said to him, “Get up, pick up your mat and walk.” And immediately the man became well, and picked up his mat and began to walk. Now it was the Sabbath on that day.

He didn’t slowly get the feeling back in his legs; it wasn’t like he sat up for a while and then slowly started crawling. There was no physical therapy; he didn’t need someone to help him get up off the ground. He immediately picked up his mat and began to walk. Once again, Jesus is demonstrating His power as creator; able to create a new reality for this man with just His words, able to compel obedience in this man with just His words! Jesus says, “Get up” and he got up. He says “pick up your mat”; he picked up his mat. Jesus says “Walk!” and he started walking. John includes this sign in his Gospel so that you might believe that Jesus Christ is completely, utterly and undeniably in full authority over all sickness.

He has authority over all sickness, and in the rest of this account we learn that

II. Christ has authority over the SABBATH (John 5:9b-18)

It is possible that if Jesus had performed this sign on any other day but the Sabbath that He would not have drawn the opposition He did from the Jewish observers to this miracle. But just as Jesus deliberately chose the most impossible healing at that pool, in the same way He deliberately chose to perform this sign on the Sabbath. He picked this fight.

Jesus deliberately set up this confrontation so that He would have opportunity to exercise His complete authority over the Sabbath—and by extension, to demonstrate His complete authority over all of the Law of Moses!

First of all, notice that Christ’s authority over the Sabbath means that

He defines the SCOPE of it (vv. 9-10)

The Law of Moses commanded God’s people to observe the Sabbath, most clearly in Exodus 20:8-10

Exodus 20:8–10 LSB

“Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. “Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath of Yahweh your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female slave or your cattle or your sojourner who is within your gates.

Over the years, the prohibition on the kind of work that was forbidden grew and grew, as the legalistic hearts of fallen men kept adding more and more regulations. By Jesus’ day, the definition of “work” had grown to include things like spitting on the ground on the Sabbath (which created mud, which was used in masonry work, and so was forbidden), lighting a fire (or extinguishing a fire, for that matter!), and so on. Carrying his mat from one location to another was considered “construction work” by those traditions, and so was prohibited on the Sabbath.

But here’s the thing: When Jesus tells you you can carry your mat on the Sabbath, you can carry your mat on the Sabbath! If He has complete authority over the sickness that laid you low, He certainly has full authority to define what was work on the Sabbath! As He says in Matthew 12,

Matthew 12:8 LSB

“For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”

He defines the scope of the Sabbath, and Christ has authority over the Sabbath because

He establishes the PURPOSE for it (v. 14)

When He walked through the porticoes of Bethsaida that Sabbath morning, He was doing the work that is fit for that day. It is a day to be devoted to acts of mercy, as Jesus said when he was confronted in Matthew after healing a man with a crippled hand:

Matthew 12:11–12 LSB

And He said to them, “What man is there among you who has a sheep, and if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will not take hold of it and lift it out? “How much more valuable then is a man than a sheep! So then, it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.”

The same authority is in view here in John 5, as Jesus uses the Sabbath day for healing.

But see another purpose that Jesus establishes for the Sabbath in Verse 14 of our text. From Bethsaida, Jesus went up to the Temple, where he found the man who had been healed. Perhaps he went there because he had been accused of “breaking the Sabbath” by carrying his mat and wanted to show that he was a good faithful son of the Covenant. Perhaps he had been wanting to go to the Temple for 38 years and this is his first chance.

Whatever the reason that drew him there, Jesus had another reason for seeking him out:

John 5:14 LSB

Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “Behold, you have become well; do not sin anymore, so that nothing worse happens to you.”

In every one of His signs, Jesus has sobering words for those involved with the sign—His response to Mary, “What have I to do with you?” (John 2:4), His response to the royal official, “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will never believe” (John 4:48). And now here to the man he healed He warns that something worse than thirty-eight years of paralysis is coming for him! The Lord of the Sabbath shows us that one of the purposes of the Sabbath is repentance from sin. We don’t know from this text what sin Jesus is warning him about—perhaps his paralysis was the result of some sinful act or rebellion or crime—but Jesus makes it clear that unless he repents, the day will come when this man would look back on nearly four decades of paralysis as “the good old days...”

Jesus demonstrates His authority over the Sabbath by defining the scope of it—what can and can’t be done on that day; He demonstrates His authority by establishing the purpose of the Sabbath as a day for works of mercy and repentance; and He shows his authority over the Sabbath day as

He reveals His DEITY through it (vv. 15-18)

It would seem that the healed man did not take Jesus’ warning to repent very seriously, because the very next thing that he does is go back to the authorities to rat Jesus out:

John 5:15–16 LSB

The man went away, and disclosed to the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. And for this reason the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because He was doing these things on the Sabbath.

The word “persecuting” here has the connotation of following someone around in order to cause them to suffer. This was the beginning of the established Jewish religious authorities’ systematic opposition to Jesus and plotting to take Him out. The Sabbath was in many ways a stand-in for the whole Law of Moses: If you broke the Sabbath, it was as if you were breaking every one of the commandments of Moses!

But look at how Jesus answers their accusations in Verse 17:

John 5:17 LSB

But He answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working.”

In other words, “If God the Father continues to do His work of governing and ordaining and judging the world on the Sabbath, so I keep doing My work on the Sabbath! And this is what sent the Jewish authorities into a rage against Him—they knew exactly what He was saying:

John 5:18 LSB

For this reason therefore the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because He not only was breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God.

This sign that we have here in John 5 is a gigantic billboard with blazing spotlights trained on it, and written in big bold letters across the middle of it is written “JESUS IS THE MESSIAH, THE SON OF GOD”. And scrawled in spray-can graffiti across the bottom is the response of these Jewish authorities, “No, He’s not...” That hateful, prideful stubbornness of those authorities led to the crucifixion and death of Jesus. And tragically, that prideful stubbornness led to the eternal death of those same authorities as they repeatedly rejected the signs that pointed to Jesus as their own Messiah.

What does this sign show you, Christian? Jesus reveals Himself in this sign as the Lord over all sickness—with a word He heals a man who had been crippled for thirty-eight years; who had been isolated and alone in his suffering until Jesus simply told him to stand up, take his mat and walk.

But for so many of you this morning, you feel like you’re still laying by that pool—no one has been able to help you get well. We can read this account and lose sight of the fact that there were a multitude of those who were sick laying by that pool, watching Jesus heal that one man. And there is no more reasonable question in the world than “If He is Lord of all sickness, why hasn’t He healed me?”

It may be a natural progression of thought to go to Jesus’ warning to the man He healed, “Stop sinning so that something worse than 38 years of paralysis might happen to you” and conclude that all sickness is a result of some sin you have committed. While it is certainly possible that a life of drunkenness can lead to cirrhosis of the liver or stubborn faithless anxiety and mistrust of God can lead to stomach ulcers, it does not follow that every illness is the result of sin. But at least one thing is certain from what Jesus tells this man—there is no earthly, physical suffering that is anywhere near the eternal suffering of a soul that refuses to stop sinning.

Your suffering from an illness that Christ has not yet chosen to heal does not mean that He is incapable of healing you or unwilling to heal you. His aim is to do you far more good than you are capable of asking Him for, and if His aim is to teach you greater dependence on Him in your pain and a stronger desire for Heaven and a softer heart for others that suffer, then He is working in you a holiness and a perfection in godliness that you could not have in any other way. As Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4:17

2 Corinthians 4:17–18 LSB

For our momentary, light affliction is working out for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

He is Lord over your suffering, Christian—He holds all authority over sickness, and that means that all sickness and suffering in your life is obedient to Him and will always serve His purposes. There is no uncontrolled sickness, no pointless suffering, no moment when you are outside of His watchful eye as He does His work in you; healing you now in this life or healing you forever at the Resurrection of the dead.

This sign that Jesus performed in this passage revealed the stubborn hearts of religious pride on the part of his Jewish opponents. Look again at Verses 10-12:

John 5:10–12 LSB

So the Jews were saying to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to carry your mat.” But he answered them, “He who made me well was the one who said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’” They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Pick up your mat and walk’?”

Does anything about that seem strange to you? They never refer to Jesus’ miracle at all! The man calls Jesus “the man who made me well”, but they never acknowledge that Jesus did anything miraculous! They remained willfully blind to Christ’s work, refusing to believe that He was Who He said He was.

It is the same today with people who turn a blind eye to Christ’s declaration of Who He is in the Scriptures—Thomas Jefferson famously re-wrote the Gospels to separate the “diamonds” of His moral teaching from the “dunghill” of the miracles. They cannot acknowledge His power revealed in His miracles, or else they would have to acknowledge that He is God. And if they acknowledge that He is God, then they are obligated to submit to Him.

John includes this sign in his Gospel so that we might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing, we might have life in His Name. But then the opposite must also be true—if, like those spiritually proud men, you reject this sign that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, then in rejecting Him you will have death. You cannot separate His words from His power and authority. You cannot be indifferent to the signs He demonstrates—either He is a fraud and a lunatic to be pitied and ignored, or He is Messiah and Lord, God in human flesh.

We are by nature a stubborn people; but we have before us in these Scriptures an authoritative Christ. When He commands a lame man to stand, no paralysis can keep him down; when He calls a stubborn heart to come to Him, He is able to make all resistance and all excuses and all opposition fall away.

This sign is presented to you this morning so that you may believe Jesus is Who He says He is. The man who was healed went to the Temple afterwards; Jesus went to find him to warn him that just showing up in the congregation of God’s covenant people was not enough—he had to turn away from his sin and turn towards Christ.

In the same way, He comes to you here, gathered in the midst of His covenant people, to call you away from your stubborn clinging to your sins—He invites you to turn away from that stubbornness, that pride, that constant drive to make yourself good enough for God.

And the authority in that invitation is enough to set you free from all of that stubbornness. Why would you continue to be paralyzed by your guilt and shame, why do you want to limp along in your self-righteous attempts to prove to God that you are good enough for Him to love? Why would you ever want to turn a deaf ear to His invitation to lay down your resistance and receive the forgiveness He is offering you?

Would you really prefer to lay by the pool and stubbornly complain that no one is helping you while He stands before you with an invitation to stand and walk? Are you really so proud of your own good works that you would rather cling to them and reject His authority to make you truly righteous by His blood?

Beloved, the authority of Christ calls you out of the paralyzing stubbornness that has crippled you into the true freedom that comes when you repent of your sin and submit to Him—freedom to lay down your life before Him, freedom to give Him complete authority in your life to do what He commands, freedom to go where He leads, freedom to delight in Him above all, and freedom to rest in His authority to govern and guide and protect and strengthen and comfort you all the days of your life and all eternity with Him in glory. These things are written so that you might believe that He is Who He says He is, and that in believing you will have eternal life in His Name—your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!

BENEDICTION

Hebrews 13:20–21 LSB

Now the God of peace, who brought up from the dead the great Shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the eternal covenant, our Lord Jesus, equip you in every good thing to do His will, by doing in us what is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.

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