The Church of Eleven22 - Lent Devo Episode 7: The Invalid Man

Episode Date: March 9, 2020

John 5:1-9

What is it in? Some of the miracles. Jesus has all your... The Church of 1122 is a movement for all people to discover and deepen a relationship with Jesus Christ. Welcome to our Lent podcast. Good morning. My name is Mike Riley, the high school minister at our San Pablo campus. This Lent season, we are working through some of the miracles of Jesus shared with us across the gospel accounts.

We're also looking at how each of these miracles points us to the greatest of all miracles, the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. The miracle of Jesus we're focusing on today is found in John 5, 1 through 9. So here it is. Afterward, Jesus returned to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish holy days. Inside the city near the sheep gate was the pool of Bethesda with five covered porches. Crowds of sick people, blind, lame, or paralyzed, lay on the porches. One of the men lying there had been sick for 38 years.

When Jesus saw him and knew he had been ill for a long time, he asked him, would you like to get well? I can't, sir, the sick man said, for I have no one to put me into the pool when the water bubbles up. Someone else always gets there ahead of me. Jesus told him, stand up, pick up your mat and walk. Instantly the man was healed. He rolled up his sleeping mat and began walking. But this miracle happened on the Sabbath.

So pause me real quick. Jesus returns to Jerusalem after performing a miracle in the region of Galilee. He visits a pool inside the city located near one of the gates where crowds of sick people would often gather and encounters a man who had been sick for the past 38 years. 38 years. This man hadn't experienced healing for 38 years. Jesus sees the man, understands his condition, and asks him if he wants to get well. The man responds with utter hopelessness stating that he can't get well.

because no one has been there to help him get into the water when it starts to bubble. We'll talk more on that later. But he, this man believes that his hope for physical healing is tied to being able to enter the water at the proper time as it is bubbling. He's been constantly beat by someone else to his source of hope for the past 38 years. Jesus responds to this man's defeated response with a command to do three things. Stand up, pick up his mat, and walk. It is assumed that he has been unable to perform any of these actions for quite some time since he hasn't been able to even help himself into the water for 38 years.

But suddenly the man is instantly healed and instantly made capable of doing the very thing the Lord had commanded him to do. He rolls up his mat and starts walking. All this took place on the Sabbath day, by the way, which was the day the Lord had commanded his people Israel to rest from work as a remembrance of how the Lord rested from his work on the seventh day of creation. This day would serve as a time not just to rest from work, but to delight in and reflect on God himself.

So Jesus essentially commands the man to live as if he wasn't ill, and as soon as Jesus speaks, the man is made well and made free to obey. So a couple of things we want to look at here when it comes to the context of this miracle. Jesus healed this man at a pool, which held significant meaning to the people who resided in that area. because sick crowds gathered by the pool waiting to be healed along with the sick man, it should be understood from what this man said that there was a superstitious, popular belief that if you were the first one in the water, once the waters got stirred up,

that you would be healed of whatever illness you had. There would have likely been streams that fed into this pool that would cause it to bubble at certain times, but this is a local superstition. This man, for the last 38 years of his life, was likely looking for relief, in whatever was made available to him. We don't know his specific illness. We just know that he was really incapable of moving. And in this case, it was a belief in miraculous healing that this man sought.

He was looking for a miracle in the wrong place, however, one that was based on superstition rather than truth. Jesus not only heals the man, but heals him on the very day that the reigning religious authorities, the Pharisees, would have been most angered at. In an effort to keep God's rules to not work on the Sabbath, the Pharisees and other religious authorities had over time created a more complex system of man-made rules designed to make it even harder to disobey the real rules that God had gave concerning work.

They focused solely on what people did and not the heart God wanted his people to have. So what God gave man to help him, religious legalism twisted to burden him. Let me repeat that. what God gave man to help him, religious legalism twisted to burden him. Jesus chooses to do work to help a hurting man by healing him. As you can see when you read further into the chapter, this was seen as outrageous to the Jewish people. Jesus essentially chose to help a man on a day it wasn't culturally acceptable to help this man.

So this miracle that Jesus did released this man from 38 years of great misery. Jesus gave this man the opportunity to live again. He could walk, he could travel, he can move. He went from likely needing to be completely dependent on others to being able to act for himself. Everything changed for this man. What his false hope in the water couldn't give him for 38 years, Jesus provided in an instance with just his words.

This miracle points us toward the resurrection in a few ways. Just as the man was helpless and unable to walk until Jesus commanded him, all humanity, us included, have been spiritually helpless, unable to save or help ourselves, looking for salvation in all the wrong places. Jesus interrupts our searching for useless cures by offering us something better, healing and forgiveness of our sin through his death and resurrection, released from our bondage to sin by his own divine will. Jesus' words healed the man, his words. Jesus' words healed him. John mentions earlier. in the first chapter of his book that Jesus is the word of God.

Jesus literally commands healing. John seeks to build the case from the beginning of his book till the end that Jesus is not just a man, he is literally God himself. This is just another example of Jesus' divinity, and for our sake, he has to be a sufficient sacrifice for our sins and rise from the dead the way that he did. So what does this mean for us? I believe we can look at this miracle, we can look at the miracle of this sick and lame man knowing that not only in the resurrection of Jesus are we granted true life and healing,

but also both for salvation and for the rest of our lives here. We don't need to find another cure for the problems that we have in life. Ultimately, whether it's emotional, spiritual, we have Jesus, God himself, who took our punishment for us and rose from the dead so we too could have a new life with him. Only in Jesus' true salvation and true healing found, the kind of healing that heals us from our sin. So let's pray.

Father, we ask that you would often remind us that we don't have to look for healing or forgiveness for our sin in any source but you. You alone satisfy us. You alone give us life and purpose and meaning. Lord, just as you offered healing to this man, you offer your peace and joy to help us on this earth. Father, would you please keep our eyes fixed on Jesus

so that we can walk in those blessings? Thank you for giving us your son, the Word of God to come and to die and to rise again for us. And in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Thanks for listening. Our prayer is that this podcast will help you deepen your relationship with Jesus. For more resources, go to C-O-E-22.com forward slash lent.