It’s difficult for sick people to move. It’s a real feat for lame people to move. But it’s impossible for paralysed people to move on their own.
2000 years ago, multitudes of people, sick, lame, and paralysed, were brought and left around a certain pool in Jerusalem to wait for their only chance of a miracle. For most, that miracle never came. Only one person at a time could take their miracle, if they were the first to enter the pool after there had been a stirring of the waters.
There’s been a popular portrayal in recent years of this one particular man who couldn’t make it to the pool to take his healing. He’s been made out to be pathetic, unwilling and weak.
The fact that he was in the vicinity of the pool says something about his need to be healed. One day Jesus walked through that place and saw him, and stopped. He asked him, ‘do you want to be well?’ That’s been interpreted as meaning he had all sorts of excuses for wanting to be well.
I don’t know if that’s true but I see three things in this story. One, this pool was at the sheep gate. Jesus is the Shepherd of sheep, and the bible says He goes out of His way to find lost sheep. Two, Jesus found him. Out of the multitude, Jesus found that man. That man needed saving and Jesus saved him. Three, Jesus teaches us to confess with our mouths if we want to be saved and asks us to declare it by faith. That lame man acknowledged his need for healing and picked up his mat in faith and walked.
We all need help. We all need Jesus to recognise us. We all need Jesus to ask us, ‘do you want to be well?’ We all need to confess that we can’t do it on our own. If we’re looking to something else to heal us (like the pool), and to take it ourselves (relying on our own strength), we won’t find our healing.
This story is about this man’s sin and his need for Jesus to do what he couldn’t do himself. Even though the pool looked within reach it might as well have been on the moon. He couldn’t take any healing for himself by getting into the pool because he could not move himself there. He was physically paralysed. Perhaps he'd also become paralysed in his circumstances. Perhaps he had given up. Whatever his thinking, his beliefs, and his physical situation. He was paralysed and he needed help. Many of us can relate to some of those limitations.
He was a lost sheep inside the sheep gate (in the vicinity where he needed to be) and he was only restored because the Shepherd came to him. He was never going to be healed any other way.
He wasn’t the only one who could never make it to the pool in time to take his own healing. Multitudes of people around him were in the same situation.
Why was Jesus there?
Jesus was there for the same reason he was at the well at just the right time to meet the woman in Samaria (John 4). For the same reason he was there for the woman caught in adultery (John 8). For the same reason he was there for Matthew the tax collector who became his disciple (Matthew 9), Zacchaeus the tax collector who was friendless (Luke 19), for Nathanael sitting under the fig tree wondering about the Messiah (John 1), for the woman with the issue of blood (Luke 8). All of them were looking for something to save them and they all found their saving grace in the person of Jesus. Jesus became their miracle.
Why do people want to ridicule the man at the pool, when we’re all that man?
We all have hang ups. None of us can get to the pool and be healed on our own. We all need Jesus. That’s why He came. For our sin. For our miracle. For our healing.
John 5:1-15 (NKJV)
After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 2 Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, which is called in Hebrew, Bethesda, having five porches. 3 In these lay a great multitude of sick people, blind, lame, paralyzed, waiting for the moving of the water. 4 For an angel went down at a certain time into the pool and stirred up the water; then whoever stepped in first, after the stirring of the water, was made well of whatever disease he had. 5 Now a certain man was there who had an infirmity thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he already had been in that condition a long time, He said to him, “Do you want to be made well?”
7 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.”
8 Jesus said to him, “Rise, take up your bed and walk.” 9 And immediately the man was made well, took up his bed, and walked.
And that day was the Sabbath. 10 The Jews therefore said to him who was cured, “It is the Sabbath; it is not lawful for you to carry your bed.”
11 He answered them, “He who made me well said to me, ‘Take up your bed and walk.’ ”
12 Then they asked him, “Who is the Man who said to you, ‘Take up your bed and walk’?” 13 But the one who was healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, a multitude being in that place. 14 Afterward Jesus found him in the temple, and said to him, “See, you have been made well. Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you.”
15 The man departed and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well.
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