The Pool of Bethesda (John 5:1–15) — A Sermon by R.C. Sproul

0:01 Once again, we return now to our study of the gospel according to St. John. And today we begin at chapter 5, verse 1, reading through verse 15, where we have the account of the healing of the paralytic by the pool of Bethesda. After this, there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

0:35 Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, which is called in Hebrew Bethesda, having five porches. And in these lay a great multitude of sick people, blind, lame, paralyzed, waiting for the moving of the water. For an angel went down at a certain time into the pool and stirred up the water.

1:07 And whoever stepped in first after the stirring of the water was made well of whatever disease he had. Now a certain man was there who had an infirmity 38 years. And when Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been in that condition a long time, he said to him, Do you want to be made well?

1:33 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. Jesus said to him, Rise, take up your bed, and walk. And immediately the man was made well, took up his bed, and walked. And that day was the Sabbath. And the Jews therefore said to him who was cured, It is the Sabbath. It is not lawful for you to carry your bed. He answered them, He who made me well said to me, Take up your bed and walk. Then they asked him, Who is the man who said to you, Take up your bed and walk? The one who was healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, a multitude being in that place.

2:40 And afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, See, you have been made well. Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you. The man departed and told the Jews that it was Jesus who made him well. He who has ears to hear the Word of God, let them hear. Let us pray.

3:12 Father, as we now contemplate the significance of this incident recorded in sacred writ, we pray that you would condescend to help us through the illumination of the Holy Spirit. that we may understand the text correctly and apply it to our lives in a manner that would be pleasing to You. For we ask it in Jesus' name. We mentioned at the beginning of our study of John's Gospel that John is different from the other Gospel writers. The other Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, are called the Synoptic Gospels because they provide a biographical synopsis of the life and ministry of Jesus. And even though John gives us other insights into Jesus' person and work, nevertheless, the goal of this gospel is not to give us a complete synopsis of the life of Jesus.

4:20 In fact, about two-thirds of the material found in the Gospel of John covers the last week of Jesus' life. And we have seen the development of the Gospel this far, and we've looked at a couple of incidents where Jesus encountered people like Nicodemus and the woman at the well at Sychar, and so on. and now we have another miracle story that tells us of an encounter that Jesus has with this man who presumably was paralyzed. But if you note the mood and the editorial structure of the beginning of chapter 5, you'll see that John is not giving us a focus on this man, But rather he's introducing the winds of hostility that are starting to blow from the hierarchy of the Jewish establishment against Jesus.

5:28 And we're beginning to get some insight as to why so much fury broke out against Christ from the leaders of his day. So with that in mind, let's look at the text as it unfolds. Chapter 5 begins with this introductory statement. After this, there was a feast of the Jews, something unusual here, that every time that John provides a setting for an event that takes place during a Jewish feast, he tells us which feast it was. This time he doesn't, so we don't know. There's been lots of speculation, but the bottom line is nobody really knows which feast it was that Jesus went up to Jerusalem to observe. But there he is, and we're told there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, which is called in Hebrew Bethesda, having five porches. Now this area of the city of Jerusalem where the Sheep Gate was was in the northern section of the city.

6:36 and what they had there were actually two pools side by side and they were covered by five columns and these columns had a covering at the top that stretched back onto the roof, I believe, of the temple. But in any case, there was this shelter beside these two pools and the people who had illnesses and maladies would come there, stay under the shelter, waiting for their opportunity to go into the water. Because we read here something rather unusual and fascinating, for it says,

7:14 In these lay a great multitude of sick people, blind, lame, paralyzed, waiting for the moving of the water. And then that's explained for us in verse 4. For an angel went down at a certain time into the pool and stirred up the water. And then whoever stepped in first after the stirring of the water was made well of whatever disease he had. Now this is the only time in sacred scripture that we find anything that would indicate that there was a pool in Jerusalem that an angel visited periodically, stirred up the water, and gave miraculous healing to the first person who got into the water. Now, before I tell you what I'm about to tell you, let me remind you that at one time I was the president of the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy because I've spent my whole life defending the doctrine of the inerrancy of sacred scripture.

8:10 And what I'm about to tell you may shake you up and make you wonder how somebody who believes in inerrancy could bring up the problem that I'm about to bring up. Now those of you who are seminary students will recognize what this is that I'm holding in front of me now. It's that which creates terror in your hearts when your professors call upon you to translate from the Greek. This is the Greek New Testament as you well. Mine is dog-eared and I hope yours will be dog-eared in 30 years as well. But in any case if you can see the pages of this thing, they're starting to fall off. On this page here, there's a couple of little footnotes at the bottom. Can you see that? You can't see that? Can you see? Can you see that?

8:57 And then And at this point where my finger is on this page, that ends the text and everything below it are footnotes. Now what that's called in the Greek text, technically, is the apparatus. And what the apparatus does is that it rehearses for us using literary symbols and a kind of code system for academicians about manuscript readings, schools of manuscripts, of copies of the biblical text. That is to say, this apparatus in the Greek text is part of the science that we have in theology called textual criticism. Textual criticism is this.

9:52 It is that science by which scholars try to reconstruct what was in the original documents of the Bible. We don't have the original letter to the Romans. We don't have the original entire Gospel of John. What the church possesses are hundreds and in some cases thousands of copies that were made from the earliest days and then copied again in the next generation and copied carefully and carefully and carefully. Now inevitably when you have those copyings taking place, every now and then one of the scribes nods and he turns an I into an E or an L into a T or he skips a word or he might jot something in the margin that we call marginal gloss that the next scribe sees, thinks, oh, thinks that's part of the manuscript and the original text and he sticks it in there.

10:53 And so you have these errors in the copies. Now don't get alarmed. Again one of the best sciences we have is the science of textual criticism, the science of reconstructing what was in the original text. And somebody once said that 99, 44, 100 percent, you recognize that if you have snow on the roof, ivory soap, you know, that there's no discrepancies, there are no textual variants, there are no textual problems or anything to be worried about. But every now and then you will find different manuscripts differing as to what was in the original text. And I'm laboring that because some of the best texts in the Gospel of John do not have verse 4, isn't it? So it's very possible that this statement about an angel that comes and stirs up the water and heals the first person who steps into the water may be a textual gloss that reflects more the superstition of the people in and around the pool of Bethesda than the actual truth of God. So I just put that out for your consideration, because we know that those two pools there in Jerusalem were fed not only from a reservoir, but also occasionally they were fed by artesian wells. And when that water came in and had special characters, and it's something like our hot springs that even today people go for therapeutic reasons, that when those wells would kick in, the water would be stirred and people would rush then to take advantage of the curative powers that were thought to be in this water. So that's the background of this text. I don't want to take it any further, only to mention it in passing. No reason to abandon your confidence in the inspiration of the Scripture or anything like that. So, anyway.

12:49 here's this man who thinks this should have been in the original text because he believes that that angel is the one that's throwing up the water, and he's convinced that if he can just get in the water first, that he's going to get cured. But for 38 years, this man, in his malady, presumably a kind of paralysis, was never able to take advantage of the curative powers of this pool. And so we read in verse 6 that when Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been in that condition a long time, said to him, do you want to be made well?

13:30 Now again, John leaves us to guess why Jesus said that because he doesn't explain to us why Jesus said that. And you know the psychologists have a field day with this. They say that, well, obviously Jesus is assuming that this man is in his miserable condition because he doesn't want to be made well. He's become satisfied in his state of inertia, as it were. And we know that there are people like that. On the other hand, Jesus may not be involved in psychologizing here, but maybe he's just simply aware of the fact that if this man is made whole after 38 years of paralysis... this could be a radical threat to the well-being of his existence. Because this man has learned to depend on others to tend to his matters, to tend to his business, because he's been helpless for 38 years. If all of a sudden Jesus makes him whole, that changes everything. No more handouts. No more assistance.

14:34 Now he's going to have to be productive. Now he's going to have to function in a society where he has been unable to be productive for 38 years. Now at that point I think we do learn that there are folks who really don't want to get better because being better represents a threat that they cannot handle. I remember one day I was finished working at a gym in the East Liberty section of Pittsburgh. It was Vesta's birthday. I was hurrying home because we were going to go out for dinner, and I was in downtown East Liberty. It was dark, and I started to walk past the jewelry store, and just as I'm walking past the jewelry store, this man rushed out the door, ran into me, almost knocked me to the ground and the store owners right behind him hollering, stop thief!

15:32 Robbery in progress. Almost like a gin game at Heathrow, a robbery in progress. But in any case, that's another story. Anyway, this guy runs right into me. And what do you do when a crook who's just pulled up, a hold up, runs right into you? I just reacted instinctively and I grabbed him and I said, hold it. And he looked at me, didn't take a gun and shoot me. He said, I give up. Just like that. I got home to my wife, I said, you never guess what I did on my way home tonight. Wyatt Earp has nothing on me. I said, I nabbed this guy right there. So here come the police. They take him, card him away, take him to jail. The next day I see the police. I knew them. And I said, what happened to that guy last night?

16:28 And he said, I said, you know, he didn't even try to get away from me. He said, oh, we know him. We put him in jail for six months. The day he gets out, he'll go do something like this. He didn't have a gun. He didn't have anything. He wants to get caught because he can't survive on the outside. He's used to living in the jail. He gets to bed every night, three square meals a day. There are people like that who are satisfied in their paralyzed condition, who are threatened by life to such a degree that they don't want to have to deal with the vagaries of human existence. And so Jesus said, do you want to be made well? And the sick man answered him, Sir, calls him Lord, but in the polite form, Lord, I have no man to put me in the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I'm coming, another steps down before me.

17:35 And so Jesus said to him, Rise. Get up. Pick up your bed. and walk. Now the bed he laid upon was a bed made of a mat made of reeds that you could roll up as it were. And so he would roll up his mat, put it on his shoulder, and start to walk away as Jesus had instructed him. Immediately, the man was made well, and he took up his bed, and he walked. Now comes the ominous signal of what is soon to come to pass. that day was the Sabbath.

18:32 And the Jews, therefore, said to him who was cured, it is the Sabbath and it is not lawful for you to carry your bed. Now where in the Word of God does it say it's not lawful for a person who was healed of paralysis to carry his bed? You know the answer to that question nowhere. But the rabbis, in their historical interpretation of the laws, enumerated 39 specific types of work that was illegal to be engaged in on the Sabbath day. And the 39th rule of Sabbath observance, the very last one in the list, was the one that prohibited carrying something like this from one place to another. so the Jews see this man that they'd seen under the portico there for 38 years the man who was hopelessly paralyzed and now they see him walking and instead of responding to the miracle of his healing and saying how is it possible that you're walking You say, why are you carrying your bed?

19:48 How wicked and deceitful is the human heart. They were so caught up in the laws they had added to the law of God that they were more concerned that this man was disobeying rabbinic tradition than they were excited about his astonishing relief from suffering and from healing. Now, we're going to see later on in John a similar story regarding a man who was born blind, whom Jesus healed. And we'll look at that when we get to it. We've already seen the encounter that Jesus had with the woman of Sychar. And when Jesus revealed Himself to her, she runs into the town and she tells everybody in Sychar that she has just met the Messiah.

20:50 She can't wait to bear witness to the greatness of Jesus. How about this, Pala? Pharisees come up to him the leaders come up to him and say it's the Sabbath that's not lawful for you to carry your bed what does he say hey I'm so happy you know I want to throw this bed in the air and catch it and skip and leap all the way home no he says He who made me well said to me, take up your bed and walk. It wasn't my idea. Somebody comes along, tells me to walk, and I walk for the first time in 38 years, and they tell me to pick up my bed and carry it, what do you think I'm going to do?

21:49 I'm going to pick up the bed and carry it. You have a problem with that, go talk to him. When's the first time you read that kind of thinking in the Bible? The woman that you gave to me, she ate and made me do it. Huh? Nothing's changed from the fall, from the Garden of Eden until this guy who, instead of rejoicing and defending the glory of the man who just healed him, he says, this other guy made me do it. Well, what's his name? I didn't get his name.

22:30 Can you believe that? What did he do? Leave a silver bullet and you say, who was this masked man? No, he never gave me his name. Well, didn't you try to find out his name? You've been here 38 years, sick as a dog. He cures you with one command, with one word. He says, rise, and you rise. Walk, and you walk. And you didn't get his name. He who is embarrassed to confess me before men, Jesus said, I will be ashamed. to confess them before my father.

23:23 I may have already told you the story of Alexander the Great. His troops were engaged in a very serious battle. In the course of the battle, one of the soldiers fled the scene. He was a coward. And after the battle, the coward was apprehended And he was brought to Alexander the Great's tent. And he stood there trembling now before his general. And Alexander looked at him and he said, son, why did you run? The boy said I was afraid. He said, I see. He said, what's your name? The boy mumbled his answer.

24:16 Alexander didn't hear him. He said, speak up. I asked you, what is your name? The young soldier looked at him and he said, my name is Alexander. And Alexander the Great looked at this young soldier and said, son, either change your behavior or change your name. Christian. if you are embarrassed by Jesus and are afraid to confess Him before men. and change your behavior or change your name. afterward Jesus found him in the temple and he said, see, you have been made well.

25:19 Sin no more, lest a worse thing befall you. Now, just quickly, there are many passages in John's gospel, in John chapter 9 and elsewhere, where we are warned against ever coming to the conclusion that a particular calamity that befalls us is the direct result of a specific sin. But even though we're warned in the book of Job and in John 9, never to assume that a person's calamitous event is directly related proportionately to their sin. Don't ever come to the conclusion that calamity is never a result of sin.

25:54 As Jesus said, when the temple fell upon the innocent bystanders, unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. parish and so he says to this man stop your sinful lifestyle lest a worse thing befall you And then what's the next line? This guy runs to the authorities. and tells them it was Jesus who was the one who inclined him to break the law. what a marked contrast this man is to so many others who encountered the living Christ who once they received his touch once they received the blessing from his hand they would have crawled over glass to bear witness to him as their Lord But this man who received the physical blessing of healing apparently never went past the physical and never acted out of saving faith.

27:18 How easy it is for us, beloved, to be faithful to Christ, to be faithful to God, only if and when we receive some benefit from His hand. I say to myself, I preach to myself, I say to myself, self, if God never blesses you another moment for the rest of your life, you have no reason under heaven to do anything but glorify Him, adore Him, and be grateful to Him for the blessings I've already experienced.

27:55 If he abandoned me tonight, which I know he won't, I would have no excuse to do anything but serve him until my last breath is taken. Let us learn from this man how not. to receive the blessings of Christ. Let us pray. Father, we, like Augustine, as we struggle with our sin, sometimes don't really want to be made well. We say, oh Lord, make us clean. but not quite yet.

28:49 Rather, Father, help us to desire. to get out of the ditch and off the bed.