Healing Waters

Lord Jesus, we do come before you this evening to trust in you. Oh Lord, to place our hopes in you, to receive what you have for us in your Word and sacrament. Lord, we are grateful for the means of grace that you work through in our hearts and our minds. And I pray, oh Lord, through the preaching of your Word and the administration of your supper that you would feed us and that you would nourish us this evening in Christ’s name. Amen.

Well, we’ll be in John, chapter 5, verses 1 through 18, in this series of the pastors’ favorite passages. You might be wondering, why is this your favorite passage? Well, I’ll say a word about that in a minute. John, chapter 5, verses 1 through 18 – hear the word of the Lord:

“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. And in these lay a multitude of invalids, blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been an invalid for 38 years. 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.’ And Jesus said, said to him, ‘Get up, take up your bed, and walk.’ And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked. Now that day was the Sabbath. And so the Jews said to the man who had been healed, ‘It is the Sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to take up your bed.’ But he answered them, ‘The man who healed me, that man said to me, ‘Take up your bed and walk,” and they asked him, ‘Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take up your bed and walk?”’ Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, as there was a crowd in the place. And 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.’ This man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him. And this is why the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. But Jesus answered them, ‘My Father is working until now, and I am working.’ This is why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him. Because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father and making himself equal with God.”

Well, this past week was our annual pastors’ retreat up in the mountains. And as you might imagine, there’s lots of good fellowship when we go on these times together. I’m truly grateful. It’s a blessing. Pleased to inform all of you that all of your pastors actually get along, and we enjoy one another’s company. And so, it’s good to get together with the guys. And as you might imagine, we have lots of conversation. And Kevin is always good to tee up some probing and searching questions for us, as pastors. Now, it might not surprise you, knowing that I’m in the counseling ministry lane, that I love good probing, searching questions. And there’s nothing like a question that makes someone uncomfortable. Personal questions. Even some of you are squirming right now thinking about, well, what kinds of questions did he ask? I’m glad I wasn’t there at the pastors’ retreat. But I love questions that get to the heart. And of course, Jesus was full of good questions. He asked his disciples questions like this: “Who do you say that I am?” And after washing the disciples’ feet, he asks, “Do you realize what I have done for you?” And in John 5, he asks this question of the lame man: “Do you want to be healed?” Now, of course, you may be reading this and think in context, we could see this merely as a passing question. It’s not quite the point of the passage, but the counselor in me can’t help but to hear it as a probing question. I can’t unhear it or unread it. It’s often grabbed my attention. In fact, I often bring it up at the beginning of a counseling process, whether it’s a marriage issue or relationship issue or a sin issue. The inevitable question often comes down to this: do you want to get better? Because getting better means a total change in our condition. I would like for that question to linger in the back of our minds as we look at the heart of this passage.

Well, what’s at the heart of this passage, if it’s not that question? What is at the heart of this passage is the miracle and the message behind it – the miracle and the message behind it – because it reveals something to us. Like all other miracles, it reveals something to us about Jesus, about his identity, about his person, about his work, about his authority, about his compassion, about his mercy, about his mission as the Messiah. And we’ll see that tonight in some form. And yet, each miracle gives us a unique picture – a unique picture, not merely of physical realities, but spiritual ones as well. And we all sort of intuitively know this. When we think of Christ causing the blind to see or making the lame to walk, we often picture what Christ does for us spiritually. And so with that in mind, I want us to see a picture in this passage this evening with three things. We will see a pool. We will see a pressing question, the one I just alluded to, and we will see the person of Christ. A pool, a pressing question, and the person of Christ.

Well, our passage opens with Christ coming to this man by this pool in Bethesda. This, what it says is a colonnade, or something of a portico, was a gathering place for those who were lame and blind and paralyzed. And commentators note that the name of Bethesda actually means house of mercy or house of outpouring. And so you can think of a large crowd coming to this house of mercy and this house of outpouring, gathering around this pool in hopes that their infirmities would be healed. And among them, there’s this man who’s lame. Now, the scriptures tell us that he’s been there for 38 years. 38 years. Well, that’s remarkable. You might think of other miracles: Christ heals the woman with the issue of blood – 12 years. Well, this is 38 years. In our time, that would take us back to 1987. Now, what do you remember about 1987? My kids are always after me because I’m so nostalgic about the ‘80s. I’m a child of the ‘80s. I don’t know how much you remember about 1987. Well, let me give you a couple of obvious things: Ronald Reagan was president. Dave Lapp would recall that the Washington Redskins won the Super Bowl that year. Perhaps someone would remember that great song Living on a Prayer by Bon Jovi was a number one hit. And perhaps someone here this evening would still claim The Three Amigos as one of their favorite movies. It topped the charts as well. That was 1987. You think back to your life going back all that time, such a long time ago, but the duration – if we think about that – the duration points to the severity of this man’s condition, really seemingly irreversible. And yet, he’s been here all this time, holding out hope that he would find healing here at this pool.

Well, we might ask, what brought him to this pool in the first place? Or perhaps more profoundly, what kept him there for 38 years? Healing springs were common during this time. Many were thought to have medicinal value. In some cases, it’s probably true. Especially this pool was such a large gathering place. It had a spring that flowed into it. And every now and then, the waters would be stirred by that spring, and legend or some attributed the stirring or the disturbance of the waters to the activities of angels. And so you can imagine the rush of invalids as the waters began to stir. And so clearly that’s a superstitious pagan belief. And this man has been here and he’s tried this for 38 years. You’ve heard the definition of insanity. What is it? It’s doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. So we see something of the futility of where this man is. What is more, commentators note that many held the belief that the first person in the pool was the one who received the healing. So you can imagine the stir. Everyone climbing over each other, getting others to help them, trying to get in the pool, believing if they are number one, they’re actually going to be healed. And this man lays out his problem. Others are getting in before him. And so here we have this man who’s been at this pool for this duration of time, this long amount of time, and he has no ability to help himself. And what is more, he does not have anyone who loves him enough to get him in the pool. And all this while, if we think about this location, he’s come to an apparent house of mercy and outpouring, but he’s not found it here. So I want to present to you, this pool stands out to us as something of a picture of futility and false hope.

Now, maybe he feels like he doesn’t have anywhere else to go, but clearly he’s come to the wrong source for healing. Yeah, it begs the question, if we stop and pause here: where are we looking for an outpouring of mercy? Where do we look for an outpouring of help or hope or healing? What’s our pool? Made me think of going to Yellowstone National Park last summer. And if you’ve been there before, you can walk along the boardwalk, and there’s these pools there. They’re just beautiful with different shades of blue and orange and all kinds of different colors there. And they’re so beautiful, you’re kind of tempted to jump in. But if you know anything about those pools at Yellowstone, they’re not pools to swim in, and they’re definitely not pools of healing. Actually, they’re deadly pools of boiling water. If you jumped in, you would instantly die. And there’s a picture there of different pools. It’s something of a metaphor of what we might be tempted to gather around. There’s the pool of alcohol, the pool of pornography, the pool of human approval, the pool of escapism, of the endless scroll – to treat them as life-giving and life-saving sources for us. Part of the point of this passage is to draw us away from those to the true source.

And so we first see the pool, and then we see the pressing question in verse 6: “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?’” Now, notice first that there’s a bit of a contrast between the pool and Christ – this pool the man has come to and what Jesus is doing. First, quite simply, note that Jesus comes to him. He meets him as he is, in his crippled state. This is not a half and half scenario, like it would have been with a pool – just muster up enough strength so you can somehow pull your way into the healing waters. No, in fact, it’s the opposite. And it’s always the case with the mission of Jesus that he’s coming to us. And so he goes to this man, he’s familiar with him. He says knowing he had been there a long time, and he asked him this question: “Do you want to be healed?” Now, that’s a curious question. On the surface, it seems like something of a foolish or ridiculous question. He knows this man. He knows his condition. He knows how long he’s been here. And it seems self-evident that this man would want to be healed. After all, he’s at the pool. But Jesus asked him the question anyway. Now, it could be that this is just a passing question, and knowing the answer would be yes, Jesus asks him. Or it could be a probing question. Do you want to get better? It seems to suggest that one could be at the pool seeming to desire to be healed but not actually want to get better. Whether this is the point of Jesus’ question or not, it’s profoundly true. Whether it’s a sin issue or seeking marriage counseling or some other relationship issue, we might want to do a little better in our own efforts. We might want some degree of change, but we might not want what Christ has to offer us, which is a total transformation of our condition. Do we really want to get better? Do we want the kind of change that comes not by our engineering, not by our own strength, or not by the strength of others, but by the authority and work of Jesus. Do we really want that? And so there’s this pool, then there’s this pressing question, which leads us to the person of Christ, which is what this passage is all about.

You may say, well what does this man really need? It is clear and evident in this passage – what this man needs is Christ. What he needs is Christ – his word, his strength, his power, his work. And this man is presumably – he’s rather stupefied by Jesus’ question. But he tells him his condition. Now, it’s interesting that Jesus doesn’t tell him to get in the pool, and he doesn’t help him in the pool, but rather he tells him simply to get up, take up your mat, and walk. And at once, this man is healed. And here we see Christ’s authority and his power on display. Think about that. It’s the word of Christ – just one word, just one command – that heals this man. And he rises at Christ’s command and starts walking, not in his own strength, but in the strength of Christ. It’s a beautiful picture, isn’t it? Not of this man’s faith. We don’t even know if he had faith or not, but of the identity and the authority and the power and the mercy of Jesus. And so, what are the scriptures plainly telling us here? They’re telling us that Jesus is the source of healing.

As Tim Keller says of this passage, Jesus isn’t helping the man into the healing water because he is the healing water. Elsewhere we see in Scripture water as a sign of purification, as a sign of washing and renewal, water as a sign of life. So Clay read John 4: Christ speaking of life-giving water. Elsewhere, Christ speaks of living waters that would flow out of us. John 7:38, “Whoever believes in me, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.” And so we see here the authority of Christ, the power of Christ, the mercy of Christ, the healing waters of Christ.

Well, we’d love to think that the story stops there, right? You want to kind of cut it off. Jesus heals this man, and he’s been there so long, and he just jumps up and rejoices and praises Jesus, and this miracle leads him to faith, and Jesus says, “My child, go in peace.” But that’s not what happens. How does this man respond? How do the religious leaders respond? Do they get the message behind the miracle? Well, we see the tension begin to rise here. Jesus heals this man on the Sabbath. And this highlights the real issues in this passage, which are not physical, but spiritual. We see a different kind of paralysis in this man, and it’s the fear of man. And we see the spiritual blindness of the religious leaders in verses 10 and 13. The religious leaders, they see this man walking around, and rather than being amazed, they’re appalled, because they see him carrying his mat on the Sabbath. Now, the religious leaders had added rules to the Sabbath command of the Old Testament as to what constitutes work. And carrying one’s mat, moving one’s station, as it were, was seen by their rules as work and conducting business as usual – just conducting business as usual on the Sabbath. But clearly this is not business as usual that has him carrying this mat. No, it’s the mercy of God that has him carrying this mat. It’s been 38 years. Now just think about that. The religious leaders, they see this man walking around, and they say, “What is he doing, working?” when they should be saying, “What is he doing, walking?” They should be amazed at this miracle. We had this in a skinny little microcosm as parents. Think of the fuss make when your child makes their first step. Everyone loses their mind. Get the cameras. You know, there you took the first step, they fall on their face. But we’re amazed that they actually began to walk – call the grandparents, all of those sorts of things. This man has been lame for 38 years. And they see him up and about with his mat, and they miss it. Instead of being amazed, they are indignant.

And so we see this man – sadly, he’s in the mode of self-protection. He answers them, the man who healed me, he told me to do it. It’s kind of like they walk up to him, and he’s standing there, miracle of miracles, and hey, I don’t know what happened – I’ve been lying here for 38 years, this guy comes along, he heals me. Here I am with my mat, and he told me – it’s his fault. So you can see his self-protection at work and his fear of man at work. Now, we don’t know if this man was lame because of some sin in his life – seems maybe that was possibly possible, because of what Jesus says to him. Doesn’t mean that all suffering is a result of sin, obviously. But in this case, we just don’t know. But we see in verse 14, Jesus, it says, afterward Jesus found him in the temple, and he said to him, “See, you are well. Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you. And the man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him.” And so Jesus finds this man and he says, “Stop sinning.” He points to his real need, which is not physical, it is spiritual. He says, “See, you are well.” It’s as if he says, see what I’ve done for you. Let that change you. Let that lead you to faith and repentance. Look at what I’ve done for you. Now stop sinning. Look at the grace of God that should lead us to repentance. This man has gotten a little taste of that. But sadly, this man can’t even see what Christ has done for him. He’s too concerned with everyone else around him. And he immediately goes and tells the Jews that it was Jesus who healed him. Now, let’s just stop and think about that for a second. You know, Ed Welch wrote the book When People Are Big and God Is Small, well, this man is a case study of that. The crowd around him is so large. The God before him is small. He doesn’t seem to get the message of the miracle. Who has the power? Who has the authority? Who has the mercy? It’s Jesus. And who knows if this miracle ultimately did him any good? We don’t know. It’s a cliffhanger. So, we see the fear of man.

But in these closing verses, we also see the spiritual blindness of the Jewish leaders. Verse 16 says that the Jews were persecuting Jesus because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. And Jesus answered them in verse 17, he says, “My Father is working until now, and I am working,” and that really took the cake. I mean, this is really in the gospel of John where the tension begins to mount. Verse 18 says this is why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God. So the poignant moment in the gospel of John, when opposition to Jesus really begins to rise. And in response to these questions, Jesus highlights God’s work on the Sabbath. He’s got exhibit A right in front of them – the healing of this man – not breaking the Sabbath, but fulfilling the Sabbath, giving sight to the blind, healing the lame, setting captives free, all of the things that Jesus said is going to be his mission. And that we know from the Old Testament was the mission of the Messiah. Redemptive acts of mercy that ultimately culminate in his death and resurrection. These are the acts of God, and they were ultimately unrecognizable to the religious leaders, perhaps because they did not see their own need for mercy. And so, when Jesus says my Father is working and I am working too, he lays all his cards out on the table. The implications are obvious, as the text tells us. He was making himself equal with God.

And so we see the self-protection of this man. We see the spiritual blindness and opposition of the religious leaders. They don’t get the message behind the miracle, and it’s a bit of a warning – can be in some ways – to us, but the point of the picture is that you and I this evening would get the message behind the miracle, that we might see Christ for who he is and that we might see what Christ has done for us, which takes us to communion this evening. Brothers and sisters, it’s a wonderful thing to tell you that because of who Christ is and what he’s done for us, we are not gathering around a pool of desperation this evening, but a table of fellowship. We are not scrambling to get into the healing waters because the healing waters have come to us. And what we have before us this evening is a table of true mercy and true outpouring from the true life-giving and life-saving source, which is Christ himself. So I want to encourage you that we come to the source of hope and healing and help and salvation. We come to do two things. First, we come to receive. We come to receive what he has done for us by faith. And let me give you one more. We come to acknowledge our need of him. To acknowledge our need of him. And maybe this is the point of application for you, where you’re saying, “Yes, I want to be healed.” And you may be saying here this evening, “Lord, would you heal my life? Would you heal my heart? Would you heal my relationships? Would you heal my marriage?” And the message is to simply come to Jesus, open for his Word, his work, his power to work in your life and heart, and to do it in his way. And so let’s pray, as we come to the table this evening.

Father in heaven, we do thank you for your grace and mercy, for the outpouring of mercy that is ours in Christ. We thank you, oh Lord, for your wonderful, miraculous grace we read about in this passage, and that indeed, Lord, even as we have been spiritually blind, you’ve opened our eyes. Even we who are spiritually lame and could not walk, you have healed our legs, and you have set us free by your death and your resurrection and forgiveness of our sins and brought us to this table of fellowship to commune with you. And so we give you praise this evening, in Christ’s name. Amen.