John 5

John tells us the story of a man who had been sick and disabled for thirty-eight years, a man who was so ill, he couldn’t make his way into the pool of Bethesda to be healed. Jesus asks the 64-thousand dollar question: “Would you like to get well?”

The man didn’t say, “Yes,” but “I can’t, sir.” Jesus told him, “Stand up, pick up your mat, and walk!” He did that very thing.

The only problem with this wonderful miracle was that Jesus did this on the Sabbath. That was a big no-no. I don’t know if the Pharisees saw the miracle, but we know they confronted the man who had been healed because he was carrying his sleeping mat on the Sabbath. He told them the man who healed him had told him to do so, and when asked, told them he didn’t know. Jesus had disappeared into the crowd.

After Jesus found the healed man in the Temple, he told him to stop sinning or something even worse may happen to him. Do you think that means people get sick because of sin in their lives? I don’t think so. In the story of Lazarus as recorded in John 11, we find Jesus saying that Lazarus was sick “for the glory of God so that the Son of God will receive glory from this.”

After the healed man finds out who Jesus is, he goes to tell the Jewish leader that it was Jesus who healed him.

Verse 16 says “So Jewish leaders began harassing Jesus for breaking the Sabbath rules.” When Jesus made himself “equal with God,” they tried harder to find a way to kill him. But don’t think that Jesus didn’t know their hearts or what was in their minds. He did and he confronted them, explaining to them that he was the Son of God and brings it down to this: “If you really believed Moses, you would believe me, because he wrote about me.”

Tomorrow, we’ll read Matthew 12:1 – 21 and Mark 3 and Luke 6.

Until next time…