John 5:1-9

 “Do You Want To Be Made Well?”

1 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.

“Do You Want To Be Made Well?”

All the Jews traveled to Jerusalem for the passover feasts. Jesus was a Jew, which is why He would have needed to travel there as well. We are told in verse 2 about a pool called “Bethesda”. It is described in detail for us which is very cool, and here is why. In 1888, Conrad Schick found the remains of the pool of Bethesda beneath the surface of the earth. The details of it are what we read in verse 2. It was “by the sheep gate” and had “five porches”. According to the archeologists’ findings, it was a deep pool of about 13 feet. Prior to 1888, scholars did not think this pool existed. This just gives more proof that the Bible is true. Archeology helps to prove the Bible’s validity. According to verse 3, this was the place where the sickest of the sick and the weakest of the weak were taken. Can you imagine what a sad scene this had to be? Five porches full of people who didn’t have much hope at all. Their only hope was the angel and stirring of the water. It sounds like this stirring of the water didn’t happen often, and when it did happen, only the first person in the water would be healed. How sad! One article that I read said that the angel could have been a myth, and the stirring water could have been air moving through an aqueduct. But…..the Bible doesn’t say it is a myth. It says an angel went down and stirred the water. The pool obviously had a reputation for healing or all these people wouldn’t have been lying all around it. Whether or not healing actually happened periodically or not is not the point of the story. I’m going to take the description of this pool and those around it in a different direction. Here goes! All of these poor, pitiful souls were put around this pool together away from everyone else. They were a group of people that were without much hope for a normal life. No one wanted to see them, because it was not a pretty sight. Most people probably just went about their day not giving these physically sick people a second thought. In much the same way, all the spiritually sick people are gathered together in the world separated from all of us who are in Christ. It is not a nice thought to think about people being lost for eternity. Do I push this out of my mind because it is not pleasant to think about? How often do I go through my day and not give them a second thought? 

What does this account show us about Jesus? Jesus showed up at this pool where not many people would want to hang out. I would venture to say that none of the religious leaders would have set foot in this area. I bet there were a lot of people at this pool who could not care for themselves, and had no one else to care for them either. It probably smelled. There was probably crying, sadness, and pain. I can’t even imagine what it was like. This wasn’t the first time Jesus had shown up in an unpleasant place, according to the Jews anyway. He showed up in Samaria……where the Jews would have never set foot. They considered the Samaritans as filthy and beneath them. Do we see a pattern? Jesus went to what most considered unpleasant places. He went to the most vulnerable and needy people. I feel the closest to Jesus when I am in my most vulnerable or weakest moments. That’s because He wants me to turn to Him at those times. He wants me to cling to Him when I am at my worst, whether it’s physically, mentally, or spiritually. He loves me at my worst, so shouldn’t I love others at their worst? When I look at the lost, I need to be like Jesus, and not be afraid to go in after them. How else are we going to help them unless we go to them? Matthew 28:19 tells us to “go”, not to wait for them to come to us. My toes are definitely stepped on as I write this. 

So…..we are told that there was a “great multitude” of sick people around the pool. We can only imagine the sadness of the scene. Jesus shows up at the pool and chooses one man…..a man who had been sick for 38 years. We know that Jesus never did anything by chance. He didn’t come there just to pick someone at random. There was always a reason for the things Jesus did, the people He attached Himself to, and the places He went. Just like He had a reason to cut through Samaria to meet the woman in chapter 4, He had a reason for going to this pool. But…..why this particular man out of all of the “great multitude”? Well…..maybe it was because the man had been sick longer than anyone else there. We don’t know that, but possibly. Maybe it was because Jesus knew that the man would be noticed immediately by the Jews, causing them to question him. Maybe it was the hopelessness within this man that stirred the compassion within Him. The poor man was so hopeless that when Jesus asked him if he wanted to be healed, he didn’t even say, “yes I do!” Most people would say “of course I want to be healed!” Not only was the poor man without hope, but he was alone and without hope! That is even worse! When the man told Jesus that he had no one to help him get to the water, Jesus responded with a command. He didn’t offer to help him get to the water. He didn’t tell him how sorry he was that he had been sick so long. He just commanded that the man get up, pick up his bed, and walk. That’s it! Jesus took action to help this man. He didn’t want this man to be in this hopeless state any longer. But still…..why this man? 

I found an explanation in my research as to possibly why Jesus chose this particular man. Let’s key in on the number 38. First let’s set the stage. This account takes place during the Passover, specifically one of the feasts as we saw at the beginning of chapter 5. The Passover represents the time when God brought the people out of Egypt, and then brought them through the wilderness to the land that he had promised them. Listen to Deuteronomy 2:14-15:  “And the time we took to come from Kadesh Barnea until we crossed over the Valley of the Zered was thirty-eight years, until all the generation of the men of war was consumed from the midst of the camp, just as the Lord had sworn to them. For indeed the hand of the Lord was against them, to destroy them from the midst of the camp until they were consumed.” It took 38 years for all the Israelite people that God punished for their sins to die out. This journey to Canaan should have taken two weeks, but it turned into 38 years because of the people’s sin against God. Those people were hopeless spiritually…..just like this man was hopeless physically. 

Now, let’s compare the water in the pool of Bethesda with other water that we have found in the book of John so far. The water in the pool was useless to the man, since he had no way of getting in it. Let’s compare the useless water in the pool to the water that John baptized people in, the ritual cleansing water pots at the wedding in Cana, and  the water that the woman had come to draw out of Jacob’s Well. All of that water was spiritually useless. None of it was the living water that Jesus was going to provide. Jesus’ living water would replace all of this physical water. John’s baptism of repentance was needed at that time to help prepare the way for Jesus, but would later be replaced with the baptism for the remission of sins after the death of Jesus. This made John’s baptism useless at that point. The ritual cleansing water pots would not be needed as Jesus would spiritually cleanse His people for all time. These water pots were rendered useless. The water from Jacob’s Well might quench a person’s physical thirst temporarily, but Jesus, the living water, would quench a person’s spiritual thirst for all time. The water in the well was spiritually useless. I love all the parallels and comparisons within the signs in the book of John. I had no idea the depth of them until I began this study. This is the third of the seven signs recorded in the gospel of John. 

Let’s continue with the comparison. There was no one to advocate for the people who died in the wilderness wanderings. But Jesus came, and is now an advocate for everyone who believes and obeys Him. That is what is significant about the healing of this man. There was no one to advocate for this poor sick man at the pool. He had no one who would stand up for him, help him get to the water, and say to others who tried to push their way ahead of him, “No, he’s been waiting 38 years. He’s got next!” That man who had been sick for 38 years, represents the children of Israel who wandered in the wilderness for 38 years before dying in a hopeless state. But Jesus came to the pool of Bethesda, and intervened on behalf of this man, and made him physically well. Jesus will intervene for all who belong to Him…..past, present, and future, and make all of us spiritually well. Jesus’ blood flows forward and backward. It flows forward to future generations, and backwards to those people who were not allowed to go into the land of Canaan because of their sin. You know…..Moses wasn’t allowed to go into the land of Canaan, but I fully believe that we will see Moses in heaven someday. Jesus will advocate for him. Moses made a mistake, and was punished for it, but Jesus’ blood flows all the way back to Moses, and has washed him clean. The same thing happens to us when we make mistakes. We repent, and are cleansed. We are cleansed by the blood of Jesus that we came in contact with through the obedient act of baptism. Jesus will not leave us in the wilderness to die. All we have to do is believe and obey His will. He has done His part. We just have to do ours. Now…..as we move into verse nine, we see a very important word……”immediately”. 

“Immediately”…..instantly, without any time passing, without hesitation, a man who had been chronically ill for 38 years, unable to even walk to the pool to be healed…..suddenly gets up, bends over, picks up the mat that he was lying on, and walks. No therapy was needed, no assistance, not gradually…..instantly! Do you wonder how the other invalids and sick people around the pool reacted when they saw this? I wonder…..were they all crying out and begging for Jesus to heal them too? Of course, it doesn’t say how they reacted…..that is just where my mind went. My first thought was, “But what about the other poor souls around the pool? Don’t they need healing also?” I can’t help where my mind goes. However, I also have to remember that Jesus did many other things that are not written down, and if they were all written down one at a time, “the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.” (John 21:25)  So….who knows? Jesus could have gone back to the pool at another time, and healed all the rest of them. In Matthew 4:23 and Matthew 9:35 it says that Jesus went all around Galilee and Capernaum healing every disease and affliction. Plus there were times when people brought loved ones to Him to be healed. Oh the love, compassion and power of Jesus! 

Jesus asked the man a question. He is asking each of us the same thing. “Do you want to be made well?” Do we want to be made spiritually well? Sometimes, we don’t want to be made well, do we? We like what we are doing and where we are at in life, and because of that, we try to make excuses to justify the sin that is making us spiritually sick. We try to make it ok. We might say things like, “There are a lot of people who do a lot worse things than I do” or “I’m a good person. I just _____every now and then (we can all fill in that blank with something)”. Sometimes, we are so engulfed in sin that we don’t realize how spiritually sick we really are. Sisters and friends, I have been there. Believe me, I have made every excuse. Whether we are a Christian who has fallen back into the world, a Christian who is struggling in some way, or a person who hasn’t become a Christian yet, the first step is admitting that we are spiritually sick and need healing. Jesus is the Great Physician. He is the only one who can make us well in the only way that really truly matters. Are you spiritually well? Is your soul well? We all want to be physically well. We do things all the time to keep our physical bodies well. Let’s personally ask ourselves this question if we are members of the Lord’s church, “Am I doing the things that I need to do to stay spiritually well? Am I spending time in prayer? Am I opening God’s Word daily? Am I attending worship and bible study services faithfully? Am I involved within my congregation?” Maybe you need to ask yourself some different questions like, “Have I allowed Jesus to heal me by saving my soul? Have I  repented of my sins, and been baptized for the forgiveness of those sins?” In our congregation, we sing a song often that really sums it up well. It is one of my favorites, and it is called “It Is Well With My Soul”. Can each one of us honestly say, “It is well with my soul”?  The song is about having assurance in Christ…..assurance that no matter what happens in our lives, we can say, “it is well with my soul”. But, if we are not Christians or if we are wayward Christians who are not right with God, then we don’t have this kind of assurance. I don’t know about you, but I want peace within. Do you have peace within? Are you well?

Click on the link below to read the words of the beautiful hymn, “It Is Well With My Soul”.

https://www.hymnal.net/en/hymn/h/341

God means for everyone to learn what the Bible teaches about how to be saved. It only takes an open heart for Jesus, and a willingness to put away what we’ve been taught in the past, and truly read what God’s Word says for ourselves…..and then accept what it says and obey it. If I can help you in any way, I would love to! Are you walking in the light? Are you in Christ? Are you saved? If you aren’t or you are not sure if you are, I’d love to help you. Are you a member of the Lord’s church, but are struggling spiritually in your walk with Christ? If you are…..believe me, I’ve been there many times, and I’d love to help you. If you have any questions, please reach out. 

I love God’s Word. It challenges me to be better…..to do more in His service. It is interesting and keeps me on the edge of my seat wondering what is going to happen next. It gives me confidence and builds me up, and it brings me to my knees when my soul needs convicting! Thank you Father for the wonderful gift of Your Word!

God’s Plan of Salvation

Below is the plan that God has set forth in His Word, for humankind to receive His grace that leads to salvation and an eternity with God in heaven. This plan is straight from the Bible. 

We have to hear His word. (Romans 10:17) 

Upon hearing the message of Jesus, we believe it. (Mark 16:16) 

Then, we confess Jesus’ name before men. (Matthew 10:32) 

Next, we repent of our sins. (Acts 2:38, Acts 3:19) 

Finally, we are baptized into Christ for the remission of our sins.  (Acts 2:38, Matthew 28:18-20, Mark 16:16, Romans 6:3-4, Acts 22:16, 1 Corinthians 12:13, Galatians 3:26-27) After baptism, God adds us to His church. (Acts 2:47)

Then, we remain faithful in our commitment to Christ until death. (Revelation 2:10, 2 Peter 2:20-22)