A Gate, a Man and Jesus
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Setting the Stage
Setting the Stage
After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate 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.
Sheep Gate - a gate in the city wall that did not have a door or bars…it was where sheep were able to enter the city
Bethesda - house of hope
There was a legend that at a specific time of the day an angel would stir up the water of the pool and the first person in the pool after that would be healed
This was a place where many sick, paralyzed, blind people would be left
A place where they could beg - anyone bringing animals to the temple to sacrifice would have to pass through here
If the legend was true, they could be healed
Enter Jesus
When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be healed?” 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.” Jesus said to him, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.”
I can’t get to the water…and Jesus said, “Be Healed”
And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked.
Now that day was the Sabbath.
The Pharisee’s questioned the man about why he was carrying his mat on the Sabbath, because it was “unlawful” to do that…I am not going to get into all of that, because Sara is covering it very well on Wednesday nights...
I want to focus on a couple things:
Jesus walked in, right past the “multitude of invalids - blind, lame and paralyzed” and walked up to one man…and dealt with that one man and then turned around and walked out
There is a teaching that says that it is always God’s will to heal, physically. They will say that if God does not heal you, then the problem is with you…you didn’t have enough faith or you have sin in your life or whatever…but here’s the thing…when God was walking on the earth, He did not heal everybody. People still died, and only a handful of those that dies did Jesus bring back. People were still lame…we can know this for sure because the lame man that was sitting at the temple in Acts 3 was clearly there when Jesus went into the temple…which He did regularly.
We might say, “well of course, Jesus was limited to His physical body, He couldn’t be everywhere.” He didn’t have to be…let’s look at the story I said we skipped over
So he came again to Cana in Galilee, where he had made the water wine. And at Capernaum there was an official whose son was ill. When this man heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went to him and asked him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. So Jesus said to him, “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.” The official said to him, “Sir, come down before my child dies.” Jesus said to him, “Go; your son will live.” The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and went on his way. As he was going down, his servants met him and told him that his son was recovering. So he asked them the hour when he began to get better, and they said to him, “Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him.” The father knew that was the hour when Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live.” And he himself believed, and all his household. This was now the second sign that Jesus did when he had come from Judea to Galilee.
Jesus didn’t have to “go there” He was able to speak and the man was healed. jesus told the man, “Go home, your son will be ok” and it was at that very moment that the son recovered.
Talk about Bil
Talk about Peyton
Here is what I know:
God is good
Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good,
for his steadfast love endures forever!
and whatever God does is good…and a person who is not physically healed on this earth, might disagree with us about how God let them down…becasue they go to that place where there is no pain and there is no sorrow and there is no death...
2. Jesus asked the man if he wanted to be healed. The word Jesus used is hugies and it means well, true, sound or whole…there is something else going on here. Of course the man wanted to have whatever his physical affliction was taken care of. That’s why he was there…but Jesus was looking at something more…something deeper…like the woman at the well a couple weeks ago, Jesus was looking past the physical affliction to the spiritual need...”do you want to be made whole?” and Jesus healed him.
The reason I think there is something more here is because Jesus found the man later and went up to him and said:
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.”
it was a common idea then that people were sick or had physical issues because of sin, so we could easily write it off that Jesus was referring to the belief of the time…if you don’t stop sinning you will have something worse happen to you…but, when Jesus came face to face with that idea on another occassion, look at what He said:
As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.
The reason we get sick or the reason that people are born with physical or mental issues is a sin thing…but not what we do, what Adam and Eve did. One of the results of the fall was that Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden. In the Garden was a tree that they could have ate from called the Tree of Life. Eating from that tree would have supplied health and eternal life…but we are cut off from it…and because we are, there is sickness and there is death…So, when Jesus said to the man “Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you” He was not talking about physical maladies.
The word Jesus used was cheiron and it means more evil. I would submit that Jesus was telling the man that he needed to look after His soul. he was telling the man to get right with God.