John 5:1-18
The Context (v. 1 – 3)
“Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for a feast of the Jews. Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by 5 covered colonnades. Here a great number of disabled people used to lie – the blind, the lame, the paralyzed.”
The first two miracles Jesus did were somewhat private. Now He was going to be more public. As a result, we are going to see from chapter 5 on the growth of public opposition to Jesus. This opposition is because the Jews will be realizing the claims Jesus is making about His identity. Jesus is God – in the flesh. He is the eternal Word of God who was God in the beginning (John 1:1). He is the Son of God, the Christ, whom God the Father sent into the world to save the world from sin. As this message becomes more public, so does the opposition to Jesus from the Jews grow more public.
Chapter 4 ends with Jesus in Cana of Galilee doing a long-distance healing of a boy in Capernaum. And without telling us how long he stayed there, John tells us Jesus is back in Jerusalem for the 2nd time. He’s there because of a feast, but, John doesn’t tell us which feast. We know that every male Jew of age was required to go to Jerusalem 3 times a year for the 3 major feasts: Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles. It could be any one of these – we don’t know.
Now, there was on the north side of the temple – outside of the temple - a pool that was spring fed. The name of this pool was Bethesda, which means “house of mercy.” It was actually two pools side-by-side to each other. All together the size was about 360’ long, 130’ wide, and 75’ deep. This pool has been excavated and can be seen today. John says that there are 5 covered colonnades, or porches, and that is what has been dug up.
It is here that John is going to describe a 3rd miracle that Jesus performed. The mercy of God is going to be described by John in a place of outcasts – a place where the lame, the blind, and the paralyzed gathered. They came here to Bethesda hoping to be healed. Why were they hoping to be healed?
Now, you may notice that your Bible is missing the last part of verse 3 and all of verse 4, or, they may be in there but are in brackets. “And they waited for the moving of the waters. From time to time an angel of the Lord would come down and stir up the waters. The first one into the pool after each such disturbance would be cured of whatever disease he had.”
The reason for this passage being omitted or in brackets is that it does not appear in the earliest and most reliable Greek manuscripts. Some Greek manuscripts mentioned it, but, they are marked as spurious. Many scholars believe that these words were added later on as footnotes to explain a popular superstition, but, somehow made their way into later copies of the gospel. It seems highly unlike the mercy of God to create a contest between disabled people and the winner would be healed. A better picture of the mercy of God is in His Son Jesus Christ, as we will see in the life of one man mentioned in verse 5.
The Condition (v. 5)
“One who was there had been an invalid for 38 years.”
Why was he an invalid? We can see from this passage that his sin has caused his condition. In verse 14 Jesus says to this man after he healed him, “See you are well again.” So this man was not born with his condition. He was in good shape at one time in his life. “Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.” Apparently some kind of sin in his life was the cause of him becoming an invalid. Jesus tells him to stop sinning so that something worse doesn’t happen.
This scene at Bethesda is a picture of the spiritual condition of Israel when Jesus came to them. This man had been disabled for 38 years. According to Deuteronomy 2:14, the Israelites wandered for 38 years in the wilderness. They replaced God’s Word with their own man-made rules, they worshipped God with their lips, but their hearts were far from Him, they had become so hard, so arrogant, and so blind, and so lame that when their long awaited Messiah came and stood in their midst, they could not even recognize Him. The opposition to Him that we see developing in chapter 5 is going to grow until it climaxes with the Jews crucifying their own Messiah.
The Cure (v. 6 – 9)
“When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, ‘Do you want to get well?’ ‘Sir,’ the invalid replied, ‘I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.’ Then Jesus said to him, ‘Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.’ At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.”
Jesus went to this man. Jesus came to the nation of Israel, John 1:11 says, “He came to that which was His own”.
Jesus sought this man out by His own sovereign will to heal this man. The man did not ask to be healed, he did not have faith in Jesus as the Savior or as a healer, he didn’t know who Jesus was.
But Jesus knew him, and he knew not only the physical condition he was in, but, the whole condition he was in. He asks the man if he wants to get well. Of course! That’s why he’s been sitting there at the pool, hoping to be healed. But Jesus always has a purpose in what He says. He is testing the man’s will. We can see in verse 7 that he was not only crippled physically, but, his will. I like what someone said about this man’s response:
It would be easy to see this next point as very cruel and insensitive; but I want to stress that there is really some very profound psychology involved in Jesus' question. You see; not everyone who wants to be relieved of their misery necessarily wants to be relieved of all the other things that their misery might bring them. I have been involved in pastoral work long enough now to know that this is very often the case. Someone can suffer from something so long that, when faced with having that suffering alleviated, they are scared to death that they won't know what they'll do without it. Sometimes, people can almost build a whole identity around their suffering. Their suffering is how other people have come to relate to them. Frankly, it's very often the thing that lets them off the hook in other areas of life. And if you were to really press them on the matter, they would say that they want to be freed from their suffering - but, at the same time, they don't want to be entirely freed from it
Jesus was asking him if he really wanted to be well again. He was testing the man’s will, which may very well have withered away with his health.
How many of those at the pool felt that way? They were in this place which was outside the temple – the temple which was the center of Jewish life. They couldn’t be a part of the most important aspect of Jewish life – temple worship. So they put their hope in the superstition that an angel would come down, stir the water up and then sit back and watch everybody race to get in first. That’s what their hope had been reduced to.
The Jews had the temple, but, the nation of Israel was outside of God’s will. They had forsaken their covenant with God, transgressed His law, rejected Him, and now they were lame, blind, paralyzed and sitting by the pool of their religion hoping for something they didn’t know what.
Furthermore, Jesus only healed this man and no one else at the pool. Why? Because it wasn’t for gaining popularity by putting on a show of miracles, and it wasn’t for a social cause of eliminating disability, lameness, disease, and poverty that Jesus came. Jesus healed this man not for this man’s benefit, but, for the greater purpose of confronting the Jews.
The Controversy (v. 9 – 13)
“The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, and so the Jews said to the man who had been healed, ‘It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.’ But he replied, ‘The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk’’ So they asked him, ‘Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?’ The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.”
The problem here is not WHAT happened, but, WHEN it happened. The Jews were not upset that Jesus healed someone; they were upset that He healed someone on the Sabbath and then told that man to carry his mat on the Sabbath.
This isn’t the first time Jesus created controversy on the Sabbath. In chapter 9 he heals a man born blind on the Sabbath and the Pharisees say that Jesus was a sinner because He didn’t keep the Sabbath. In Matthew 12 He heals a man with a shriveled hand and the Pharisees are outraged.
The Sabbath was the 7th day of the week. The Jews were allowed by God to work the first 6 days, but, the 7th day was a day of rest. The Jews were not allowed to go out and labor or work on this day as it was a holy day given to them by God and they were to keep it holy.
Over time, the Israelites created extra-biblical laws to help keep the Sabbath, but, these laws became a heavy burden on all the people. Furthermore, they treated these “rules taught by men” on the same level as God’s law. The Jewish Mishna has 39 specific tasks that were forbidden on the Sabbath. Now, these are man-made laws that had been added to God’s Law and treated as God’s Law – even though they weren’t what God commanded.
So when this man was found carrying his mat they got mad because he’s breaking one of their laws - but he’s not breaking God’s law.
Notice something here. In verse 8 Jesus commands the man to carry his mat. Jesus is God in the flesh – the same God who gave the Jews the law in the first place. The Jews who told the man that the law forbids him to carry his mat were assuming that because he wasn’t following their man-made rules about the Sabbath, that he was therefore breaking the God-given law of the Sabbath.
But they were wrong. This man was in the perfect will of God because He was obeying the Word of God – Jesus Christ. Don’t be surprised that when you obey Jesus – which is what proves you’re His disciple and that you love Him – that you will be in direct conflict with religious people.
The Jewish religious establishment thought that healing people on the Sabbath was a sin. They called Jesus a sinner for doing miraculous healings of people on the Sabbath. But, Jesus said in Matthew 12 that God desires mercy – not heartless religion. The Word of God said that doing good on the Sabbath, therefore, is lawful. In that confrontation Jesus said that doing good means having mercy. The work of God is the workings of His mercy towards man being displayed in Christ.
The real trespass here is the breaking of the 3rd commandment by the Jews. By treating their rules as God’s commandments they are saying God endorses their rules even though God did not say those things. This is a real dangerous place to be. Using God’s name in vain doesn’t simply mean using it as a curse, it means misrepresenting His name in anyway – including saying He said something that He did not say. The caution to us is that we are to remain learned and faithful to the Word of God, and not our own emotions or opinions.
The Caution (v. 14)
“Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, ‘See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.’
Jesus seeks him out a 2nd time. Make a note that it is God who seeks the lost sinner and it is God who saves the lost sinner. God takes the initiative with us.
Jesus tells him to stop sinning or something worse may happen to him. Apparently there was a sin in this man’s life that caused his condition. And Jesus warns him to stop sinning or the consequences next time around are going to be worse. We don’t know what the sin was, and we don’t know what the possible consequences could be that Jesus was referring to.
This is a passage we need to be careful with. The Bible teaches that sometimes sin is the cause of physical problems, but not all the time. This man’s sin caused his problem. Listen to what Paul tells the believers in 1 Corinthians 11, “Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep.”
He’s talking to believers and he’s saying that the cause of many of them being sick and weak and even some of them dying is because of their sinning against the body and blood of the Lord in the way they were taking communion.
While sometimes sin IS the cause of physical problems, the Bible teaches that when someone is sick or disabled it is not necessarily or generally because they have sinned. In John 9:2-3, there is a man who was born blind and the disciples ask Jesus whether he or his parents sinned to cause his blindness. But Jesus says that neither he nor his parents sinned.
In Luke 13 Jesus is saying that it’s not because they are more guilty than people who aren’t going through hardship; it’s not because they are worse sinners that they have suffered. Their sin did not cause their calamity.
God sovereignly chooses to heal and He sovereignly chooses not to heal. Jesus who is God, sovereignly chose to heal this man and He sovereignly chose not to heal the rest of the people there at the pool.
He warns the man to change his ways or something worse may happen to him. This man makes no profession of faith, he expresses no gratitude in the passage. It may be that he has waited 38 years to be able to get back into normal Jewish life and participate in temple worship. Maybe he didn’t want to risk losing that entrance back into society so to speak by putting his faith in Jesus which would only lead to being ejected by the leaders. But we have no evidence that he ever came to faith in Christ. How sad.
The Conflict (v. 15 – 16)
“The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jews persecuted him.”
And so we see the first charge against Jesus – He is breaking the Sabbath. Jesus does not stop here though. He is going to continue to show that doing good on the Sabbath is lawful. He is going to continue to heal people on the Sabbath specifically to challenge the Jewish leaders.
What has kept you from trusting Christ? What has He said that you can’t seem to accept? These Jewish leaders rejected His claims. Their hatred towards Him grew all the way until they were shouting “Crucify Him!” And He was crucified. He’s not a good man. He’s the God-Man. He didn’t preach social justice – He preached that the world is evil and that unless you believe in Him you will die in your sin.
Do you believe Jesus came from God as the Son of God to be the Lamb of God who takes away your sins? His death on the cross, ultimately was not the result of the Jewish leaders – His death was the plan of God from before time. God planned that in His death on the cross He would bear all your sins, all your guilt, all your shame and all your punishment. Do you trust that is who Christ is? Your Savior?
The Context (v. 1 – 3)
“Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for a feast of the Jews. Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by 5 covered colonnades. Here a great number of disabled people used to lie – the blind, the lame, the paralyzed.”
The first two miracles Jesus did were somewhat private. Now He was going to be more public. As a result, we are going to see from chapter 5 on the growth of public opposition to Jesus. This opposition is because the Jews will be realizing the claims Jesus is making about His identity. Jesus is God – in the flesh. He is the eternal Word of God who was God in the beginning (John 1:1). He is the Son of God, the Christ, whom God the Father sent into the world to save the world from sin. As this message becomes more public, so does the opposition to Jesus from the Jews grow more public.
Chapter 4 ends with Jesus in Cana of Galilee doing a long-distance healing of a boy in Capernaum. And without telling us how long he stayed there, John tells us Jesus is back in Jerusalem for the 2nd time. He’s there because of a feast, but, John doesn’t tell us which feast. We know that every male Jew of age was required to go to Jerusalem 3 times a year for the 3 major feasts: Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles. It could be any one of these – we don’t know.
Now, there was on the north side of the temple – outside of the temple - a pool that was spring fed. The name of this pool was Bethesda, which means “house of mercy.” It was actually two pools side-by-side to each other. All together the size was about 360’ long, 130’ wide, and 75’ deep. This pool has been excavated and can be seen today. John says that there are 5 covered colonnades, or porches, and that is what has been dug up.
It is here that John is going to describe a 3rd miracle that Jesus performed. The mercy of God is going to be described by John in a place of outcasts – a place where the lame, the blind, and the paralyzed gathered. They came here to Bethesda hoping to be healed. Why were they hoping to be healed?
Now, you may notice that your Bible is missing the last part of verse 3 and all of verse 4, or, they may be in there but are in brackets. “And they waited for the moving of the waters. From time to time an angel of the Lord would come down and stir up the waters. The first one into the pool after each such disturbance would be cured of whatever disease he had.”
The reason for this passage being omitted or in brackets is that it does not appear in the earliest and most reliable Greek manuscripts. Some Greek manuscripts mentioned it, but, they are marked as spurious. Many scholars believe that these words were added later on as footnotes to explain a popular superstition, but, somehow made their way into later copies of the gospel. It seems highly unlike the mercy of God to create a contest between disabled people and the winner would be healed. A better picture of the mercy of God is in His Son Jesus Christ, as we will see in the life of one man mentioned in verse 5.
The Condition (v. 5)
“One who was there had been an invalid for 38 years.”
Why was he an invalid? We can see from this passage that his sin has caused his condition. In verse 14 Jesus says to this man after he healed him, “See you are well again.” So this man was not born with his condition. He was in good shape at one time in his life. “Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.” Apparently some kind of sin in his life was the cause of him becoming an invalid. Jesus tells him to stop sinning so that something worse doesn’t happen.
This scene at Bethesda is a picture of the spiritual condition of Israel when Jesus came to them. This man had been disabled for 38 years. According to Deuteronomy 2:14, the Israelites wandered for 38 years in the wilderness. They replaced God’s Word with their own man-made rules, they worshipped God with their lips, but their hearts were far from Him, they had become so hard, so arrogant, and so blind, and so lame that when their long awaited Messiah came and stood in their midst, they could not even recognize Him. The opposition to Him that we see developing in chapter 5 is going to grow until it climaxes with the Jews crucifying their own Messiah.
The Cure (v. 6 – 9)
“When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, ‘Do you want to get well?’ ‘Sir,’ the invalid replied, ‘I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.’ Then Jesus said to him, ‘Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.’ At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.”
Jesus went to this man. Jesus came to the nation of Israel, John 1:11 says, “He came to that which was His own”.
Jesus sought this man out by His own sovereign will to heal this man. The man did not ask to be healed, he did not have faith in Jesus as the Savior or as a healer, he didn’t know who Jesus was.
But Jesus knew him, and he knew not only the physical condition he was in, but, the whole condition he was in. He asks the man if he wants to get well. Of course! That’s why he’s been sitting there at the pool, hoping to be healed. But Jesus always has a purpose in what He says. He is testing the man’s will. We can see in verse 7 that he was not only crippled physically, but, his will. I like what someone said about this man’s response:
It would be easy to see this next point as very cruel and insensitive; but I want to stress that there is really some very profound psychology involved in Jesus' question. You see; not everyone who wants to be relieved of their misery necessarily wants to be relieved of all the other things that their misery might bring them. I have been involved in pastoral work long enough now to know that this is very often the case. Someone can suffer from something so long that, when faced with having that suffering alleviated, they are scared to death that they won't know what they'll do without it. Sometimes, people can almost build a whole identity around their suffering. Their suffering is how other people have come to relate to them. Frankly, it's very often the thing that lets them off the hook in other areas of life. And if you were to really press them on the matter, they would say that they want to be freed from their suffering - but, at the same time, they don't want to be entirely freed from it
Jesus was asking him if he really wanted to be well again. He was testing the man’s will, which may very well have withered away with his health.
How many of those at the pool felt that way? They were in this place which was outside the temple – the temple which was the center of Jewish life. They couldn’t be a part of the most important aspect of Jewish life – temple worship. So they put their hope in the superstition that an angel would come down, stir the water up and then sit back and watch everybody race to get in first. That’s what their hope had been reduced to.
The Jews had the temple, but, the nation of Israel was outside of God’s will. They had forsaken their covenant with God, transgressed His law, rejected Him, and now they were lame, blind, paralyzed and sitting by the pool of their religion hoping for something they didn’t know what.
Furthermore, Jesus only healed this man and no one else at the pool. Why? Because it wasn’t for gaining popularity by putting on a show of miracles, and it wasn’t for a social cause of eliminating disability, lameness, disease, and poverty that Jesus came. Jesus healed this man not for this man’s benefit, but, for the greater purpose of confronting the Jews.
The Controversy (v. 9 – 13)
“The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, and so the Jews said to the man who had been healed, ‘It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.’ But he replied, ‘The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk’’ So they asked him, ‘Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?’ The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.”
The problem here is not WHAT happened, but, WHEN it happened. The Jews were not upset that Jesus healed someone; they were upset that He healed someone on the Sabbath and then told that man to carry his mat on the Sabbath.
This isn’t the first time Jesus created controversy on the Sabbath. In chapter 9 he heals a man born blind on the Sabbath and the Pharisees say that Jesus was a sinner because He didn’t keep the Sabbath. In Matthew 12 He heals a man with a shriveled hand and the Pharisees are outraged.
The Sabbath was the 7th day of the week. The Jews were allowed by God to work the first 6 days, but, the 7th day was a day of rest. The Jews were not allowed to go out and labor or work on this day as it was a holy day given to them by God and they were to keep it holy.
Over time, the Israelites created extra-biblical laws to help keep the Sabbath, but, these laws became a heavy burden on all the people. Furthermore, they treated these “rules taught by men” on the same level as God’s law. The Jewish Mishna has 39 specific tasks that were forbidden on the Sabbath. Now, these are man-made laws that had been added to God’s Law and treated as God’s Law – even though they weren’t what God commanded.
So when this man was found carrying his mat they got mad because he’s breaking one of their laws - but he’s not breaking God’s law.
Notice something here. In verse 8 Jesus commands the man to carry his mat. Jesus is God in the flesh – the same God who gave the Jews the law in the first place. The Jews who told the man that the law forbids him to carry his mat were assuming that because he wasn’t following their man-made rules about the Sabbath, that he was therefore breaking the God-given law of the Sabbath.
But they were wrong. This man was in the perfect will of God because He was obeying the Word of God – Jesus Christ. Don’t be surprised that when you obey Jesus – which is what proves you’re His disciple and that you love Him – that you will be in direct conflict with religious people.
The Jewish religious establishment thought that healing people on the Sabbath was a sin. They called Jesus a sinner for doing miraculous healings of people on the Sabbath. But, Jesus said in Matthew 12 that God desires mercy – not heartless religion. The Word of God said that doing good on the Sabbath, therefore, is lawful. In that confrontation Jesus said that doing good means having mercy. The work of God is the workings of His mercy towards man being displayed in Christ.
The real trespass here is the breaking of the 3rd commandment by the Jews. By treating their rules as God’s commandments they are saying God endorses their rules even though God did not say those things. This is a real dangerous place to be. Using God’s name in vain doesn’t simply mean using it as a curse, it means misrepresenting His name in anyway – including saying He said something that He did not say. The caution to us is that we are to remain learned and faithful to the Word of God, and not our own emotions or opinions.
The Caution (v. 14)
“Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, ‘See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.’
Jesus seeks him out a 2nd time. Make a note that it is God who seeks the lost sinner and it is God who saves the lost sinner. God takes the initiative with us.
Jesus tells him to stop sinning or something worse may happen to him. Apparently there was a sin in this man’s life that caused his condition. And Jesus warns him to stop sinning or the consequences next time around are going to be worse. We don’t know what the sin was, and we don’t know what the possible consequences could be that Jesus was referring to.
This is a passage we need to be careful with. The Bible teaches that sometimes sin is the cause of physical problems, but not all the time. This man’s sin caused his problem. Listen to what Paul tells the believers in 1 Corinthians 11, “Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep.”
He’s talking to believers and he’s saying that the cause of many of them being sick and weak and even some of them dying is because of their sinning against the body and blood of the Lord in the way they were taking communion.
While sometimes sin IS the cause of physical problems, the Bible teaches that when someone is sick or disabled it is not necessarily or generally because they have sinned. In John 9:2-3, there is a man who was born blind and the disciples ask Jesus whether he or his parents sinned to cause his blindness. But Jesus says that neither he nor his parents sinned.
In Luke 13 Jesus is saying that it’s not because they are more guilty than people who aren’t going through hardship; it’s not because they are worse sinners that they have suffered. Their sin did not cause their calamity.
God sovereignly chooses to heal and He sovereignly chooses not to heal. Jesus who is God, sovereignly chose to heal this man and He sovereignly chose not to heal the rest of the people there at the pool.
He warns the man to change his ways or something worse may happen to him. This man makes no profession of faith, he expresses no gratitude in the passage. It may be that he has waited 38 years to be able to get back into normal Jewish life and participate in temple worship. Maybe he didn’t want to risk losing that entrance back into society so to speak by putting his faith in Jesus which would only lead to being ejected by the leaders. But we have no evidence that he ever came to faith in Christ. How sad.
The Conflict (v. 15 – 16)
“The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jews persecuted him.”
And so we see the first charge against Jesus – He is breaking the Sabbath. Jesus does not stop here though. He is going to continue to show that doing good on the Sabbath is lawful. He is going to continue to heal people on the Sabbath specifically to challenge the Jewish leaders.
What has kept you from trusting Christ? What has He said that you can’t seem to accept? These Jewish leaders rejected His claims. Their hatred towards Him grew all the way until they were shouting “Crucify Him!” And He was crucified. He’s not a good man. He’s the God-Man. He didn’t preach social justice – He preached that the world is evil and that unless you believe in Him you will die in your sin.
Do you believe Jesus came from God as the Son of God to be the Lamb of God who takes away your sins? His death on the cross, ultimately was not the result of the Jewish leaders – His death was the plan of God from before time. God planned that in His death on the cross He would bear all your sins, all your guilt, all your shame and all your punishment. Do you trust that is who Christ is? Your Savior?
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