Talk 6: The Man at the Pool
Alan Wilson · Encounters with Jesus
11 August 2024
https://media.glenabbey.church/talks/talk-6-the-man-at-the-pool

[0:00] Well, good morning.
[0:03] It's good to be with you again this morning in Glen Abbey.
[0:06] And this morning we're going to be looking in John's Gospel and the passage that we're going to be looking at is in John chapter 5.
[0:13] So if you have a Bible and you'd like to have that open in front of you, that would be great.
[0:18] Otherwise, the words will be on the screen.
[0:20] Hard to beat.
[0:21] It is hard to beat having the Bible in front of you at the same time.
[0:24] I must say that.
[0:26] You can always go back to your your printed Bible and you can see what's there and go back over the story.
[0:32] Harder to memorize what's on the screen in a PowerPoint.
[0:36] Anyway, I didn't mean to preach about that, but John chapter five, and we're going to actually read the first 18 verses.
[0:44] Sometime later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals.
[0:50] Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate, a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda, and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades.
[1:00] Here, a great number of disabled people used to lie, the blind, the lame, the paralyzed.
[1:06] One who was there had been an invalid for 38 years.
[1:10] And 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?
[1:19] Sir, the invalid replied, I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred.
[1:26] While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.
[1:31] Then Jesus said to him, get up, pick up your mat and walk.
[1:37] At once the man was cured.
[1:40] He picked up his mat and walked.
[1:43] The day on which this took place was a Sabbath.
[1:46] And so the Jewish leaders said to the man who'd been healed, it is the Sabbath.
[1:50] The law forbids you to carry your mat.
[1:53] But he replied, the man who made me well said to me, pick up your mat and walk.
[1:59] So they asked him, who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?
[2:03] The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.
[2:10] Later, Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, see, you're well again.
[2:17] Stop sinning, or something worse may happen to you.
[2:21] The man went away and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had made him well.
[2:27] So because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him.
[2:33] In his defense, Jesus said to them, My father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.
[2:43] For this reason, they tried all the more to kill him.
[2:47] Not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own father, making himself equal with God.
[2:56] May God help us as we reflect on this encounter.
[3:02] There is an urban legend which talks about a philosophy exam from a number of years ago.
[3:11] And this philosophy exam was alleged to have included the following question.
[3:16] Is this a question?
[3:20] One student apparently answered, if that is a question, this is an answer.
[3:27] Now, as I say, it's an urban legend.
[3:30] Nobody's quite sure that it actually ever happened.
[3:32] But whether or not it ever happened, I simply tell you that just to get us thinking a little bit about questions.
[3:39] Because questions play a very significant part in human communication.
[3:45] Think about children, especially those of you who have young children.
[3:49] Think about children and the questions that children ask you.
[3:54] There are various estimates that you'll come across if you do a little bit of research on this, various estimates about the numbers of questions that small children ask in any given day or any given hour.
[4:06] I actually came across one, and this is from a fairly reputable source, and it said that children between the ages of two and five, ask some 107 questions per hour when interacting with adults.
[4:21] And some of you are going to say, that's just about right.
[4:24] That seems like right from our experience.
[4:26] And then they say, but this rate of asking declines rapidly when the children attend school.
[4:34] Think more widely about the role that questions play in communication generally.
[4:41] We use questions to obtain information.
[4:46] Where can I find a bus that will take me to Belfast?
[4:49] How much would it cost me to change my car?
[4:51] Where's the nearest ice cream shop?
[4:54] All kinds of questions that we ask and use questions to obtain information.
[4:59] Sometimes we want to ask a question to find out what somebody thinks about something.
[5:04] Or if it's in an educational setting, questions are asked to try to assess how much people know or how much they understand.
[5:12] Questions are asked to develop personal relationships.
[5:16] All kinds of questions in all kinds of settings.
[5:19] And someone's actually said that no real communication can take place without questions.
[5:27] And it's by means of a question that Jesus engages this man whose story we've read about, this man at the pool in Bethesda John chapter 5.
[5:41] And we're going to think about the question that Jesus asks this man.
[5:45] We're also going to think about another question that comes up a little later in the story.
[5:49] And basically what I want to do is to try to guide us through the story in two parts.
[5:53] First of all, thinking about the question that Jesus asks him, would you like to be made well?
[5:59] And secondly, to think about the controversy that unfolds thereafter.
[6:05] And it's a controversy which also has a question.
[6:08] And the is, who is this man?
[6:12] So those are the two things.
[6:13] That's where we want to go over the next little while.
[6:16] We start with this question, do you want to be made well?
[6:19] Now, the first three verses, if you want to look back at them, the first three verses set the scene.
[6:24] We're in Jerusalem.
[6:27] We're at a pool called Bethesda.
[6:29] Actually, there's been some discussion about the exact name, but Most people seem to think that Bethesda is the best way to understand it.
[6:38] We actually know from archaeology that there were actually two pools there.
[6:44] And we also know the details given to us by John that the pools were surrounded by several colonnades, covered areas with columns and pillars.
[6:53] The occasion on which this incident takes place is a visit by Jesus from one of the Jewish festivals.
[7:01] from time to time, he went to Jerusalem for one of the festivals, for the Passover, for example.
[7:08] Now, we're not told specifically which festival it was.
[7:12] Was it the festival of Passover?
[7:14] Was it the festival of Tabernacles?
[7:16] Was it some other festival?
[7:17] And obviously, John doesn't tell us because the detail doesn't really matter.
[7:22] He's more interested in saying, well, Jesus is finding himself here in Jerusalem.
[7:27] And what turns out to be more significant is the fact that the events which happen and which John describes to us take place on a Sabbath.
[7:35] So the specific festival doesn't matter so much, but the specific day matters a lot because it's a Sabbath.
[7:43] Now you may have noticed in the reading, we don't get that detail right away.
[7:46] It's not given to us in the first few verses.
[7:48] We've got to wait till the second half of verse nine before we get that information.
[7:53] But it's very significant for reasons that we will see a little bit later.
[7:59] Now, apparently this pool or these pools at Bethesda were believed to have healing properties.
[8:05] Again, there's archaeological evidence at a later period under the Romans that there was a sacred pool on this site.
[8:16] The actual source of the healing is maybe open to question.
[8:22] Certainly, there was some understanding, and you'll notice this.
[8:25] If you have a footnote in your Bible, You'll notice there's a footnote which gives a little bit of extra information in part of verse 3 and part of verse 4.
[8:34] It's omitted from most of our translations because it's not really based on the most reliable manuscripts.
[8:42] But there was a theory that an angel of the Lord would come down from time to time and stir up the waters.
[8:50] And that information was evidently inserted by a scribe later on, probably to try to explain something of what's going on in verse seven, where the man says, I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred.
[9:05] Whether there was an angel or not, the fact is that people at this time believed that the water had power.
[9:12] And if only you could get into the water in the pool at a particular time, you would be healed of whatever condition you had.
[9:22] That's why the surrounding area around the pool, in these colonnades, it was filled with a whole range of people who were unwell.
[9:30] John says some of them were blind, he says some of them were lame, and some of them were paralyzed.
[9:36] And they're all waiting in the hope of being healed through whatever power there is in the waters.
[9:44] And among these people is one particular individual.
[9:49] John doesn't tell us specifically and clearly what his condition was, but it's evident that he has mobility issues.
[9:57] He's either one of the lame or one of the paralyzed.
[10:04] And there he is lying beside the pool.
[10:07] He's been unwell for 38 years, unable to move for 38 years.
[10:12] And for a long time, he has been there alongside this pool, no doubt dependent on other people to move him, to bring him food, to care for him in some way.
[10:24] The only missing piece was that there was nobody to help him to get into the water when the time came and there was a possibility of healing.
[10:34] Now, Jesus is going to heal him.
[10:36] We don't know for sure why he picks it.
[10:39] We're not told why he picks out this particular man when there were so many people there.
[10:44] No doubt there were reasons, and perhaps that begins to unfold with the rest of the story.
[10:49] But he will heal him.
[10:50] Just as four chapters later in John chapter nine, he'll heal another man who's also been suffering for a long time, a man who was born blind.
[11:01] And at some point, if you want to dig into this a little bit more, you can look at the parallels between chapter five and chapter nine.
[11:08] Two healings, Both of them happen on a Sabbath day.
[11:11] Both of them involve men who have been ill for quite some time.
[11:15] Both of them involve a pool.
[11:17] Both of the men who are healed have later encounters with Jesus.
[11:21] And both of them are interrogated by the Jewish authorities.
[11:24] Interesting parallels.
[11:25] And we'll come back to that right at the end.
[11:28] But to get back to this man in chapter 5, Jesus asks him, Do you want to become well?
[11:37] Now think about that question for a moment.
[11:40] do you want to become well?
[11:43] It's an odd question to ask someone, is it not?
[11:47] At least to ask someone who's sitting beside the pool.
[11:50] I mean, if he didn't want to get well, why would he be sitting beside the pool?
[11:55] Obviously, he was hoping or had been hoping at some point that he would get well.
[12:00] That's why he was there.
[12:02] And yet, Jesus asks the question.
[12:05] And because the question seems a little bit odd,
[12:10] it makes us wonder, why then did Jesus ask the question?
[12:16] It's going to be a little bit like what happens in Mark chapter 10, where you have the story of a man called Bartimaeus who was blind.
[12:22] He'd been sitting beside the road.
[12:25] Jesus comes along, and when he hears that Jesus is coming along, he calls out for mercy.
[12:30] Some people pick him up and bring him to Jesus.
[12:33] And as he's there in front of Jesus, Jesus says to him, what do you want me to do for you?
[12:39] And again, you think, well, he's blind.
[12:42] Why would you ask him what he wants you to do?
[12:47] And you wonder.
[12:48] But for some reason, Jesus wants to hear Bartimaeus say what he wants.
[12:55] And here he is, and he says to this man who's beside a pool, hoping at some level to be made well, he says, do you want to become well?
[13:04] Why would he ask that?
[13:06] Well, here's one suggestion.
[13:08] This is from Tom Wright.
[13:09] Tom Wright says, clearly the man Jesus found lying there had made a way of life out of his long wait for healing.
[13:17] Jesus' question to him is perhaps quite pointed.
[13:20] Do you really want to get better?
[13:24] Or are you now quite happy to eke out your days, lounging around with the feeble excuse that someone else always gets in first.
[13:34] Now, I see what Tom Wright means by that.
[13:38] Because in a strange way, and some of you might resonate with this, but in a strange way, I think there are times when our afflictions, be they physical or emotional or circumstantial, Our afflictions become our identity.
[13:59] And the thought of being made well is a little bit frightening.
[14:05] Because if someone takes that away from us, well, who are we?
[14:10] It may feel as though we're going to lose part of our own identity, part of what we're known for.
[14:16] And that means that it becomes a kind of comfort zone.
[14:21] And it's too much to think about leaving it behind.
[14:27] And according to that reasoning, the suggestion then would be that Jesus sees this man, he's beside the pool, and Jesus is saying, look, you're beside this pool, you've been here for a very long time.
[14:39] Do you actually want to be well?
[14:44] Well, it's one way to understand it.
[14:47] And you can think a little bit about that.
[14:49] You can think whether that's a valid way to understand it.
[14:52] I think probably most of the commentators reject that.
[14:56] But it may simply be an invitation.
[15:00] Jesus comes along and sees this man, and he knows that he's been there for a long time.
[15:05] He knows that he's got no hope of getting to the water.
[15:08] So Jesus simply says to him, would you like to become well?
[15:13] And it's an invitation, or it's a question that has an invitation behind it.
[15:17] And the invitation actually offers this man far more than he could ever have imagined.
[15:24] And the man may even have thought about it as a very unhelpful question.
[15:30] Of course he wanted to be well.
[15:31] Why are you asking me that?
[15:34] Why else would I be here?
[15:35] But if I don't have anybody to help me when the waters are troubled and it's the right moment to be in the waters, then I've no chance.
[15:44] And this man, that's how he answers Jesus.
[15:47] He doesn't realize that this person who's asking him this question has the power to make him well right there and right then without any need of troubling the water or getting him into the water.
[16:06] Now, I think there's a principle in all of that that's actually very relevant to us.
[16:11] And here it is.
[16:14] Experience shapes expectation.
[16:18] Experience shapes expectation.
[16:22] If you've sat by that pool for years, decades, and you've never been healed, each year has been a new disappointment.
[16:35] If you've been in that situation and someone comes and asks you the question that Jesus asks, Well, you're conditioned to understand that question and answer it in a particular way.
[16:46] You've got a frame of reference, and your expectation is shaped by your experience.
[16:52] John Calvin, writing so many centuries ago, said that the long duration of the disease had taken away all hope of its being cured.
[17:03] Our lived experience shapes our expectation.
[17:08] It's a principle of life, actually.
[17:11] You think about how we depend on a certain amount of predictability in life.
[17:18] For example, you expect the sun to rise in the morning because it has risen in the morning every day of your life so far.
[17:28] So if you were to wake up tomorrow morning and the sun hadn't risen, well, you would think there was something badly wrong.
[17:34] You depend on it.
[17:35] The world depends on it.
[17:40] or in a more trivial example, at this time of the year, you expect that honeycomb ice cream is going to taste good.
[17:49] Why?
[17:49] Because it always has up to this point.
[17:52] We depend on a certain amount of predictability, and our experience of that predictability shapes what we expect.
[18:01] Now, take that into your relationship with God, and the positive way to think about this is that we are meant to recall our experiences of God's faithfulness.
[18:13] That's why we sing hymns like Great is thy faithfulness, morning by morning new mercies I see.
[18:21] We're meant to recall those experiences of God's faithfulness, and those experiences of God's faithfulness lead us to expect that God, who has been faithful and who has been good in our lives up to this point, We'll continue to be faithful and we can continue to trust him.
[18:38] Experience shapes expectation.
[18:43] But I think there's actually a downside.
[18:47] And it's this.
[18:50] What if God wants to do something in us or for us or through us that we have never experienced before?
[19:03] Well, we'd get very nervous, wouldn't we?
[19:05] Well, we don't really expect that that could possibly happen to us.
[19:09] But what if he does want to do something new and fresh in us?
[19:13] What if God wants to do something new and fresh here in Glen Abbey?
[19:19] It could happen, couldn't it?
[19:22] But wouldn't it be just too bad if God wants to do something fresh and new that goes beyond our previous experience, but our experience hasn't simply shaped our expectation.
[19:37] It has limited our expectation.
[19:41] And that's a challenge.
[19:43] And what if God is saying this morning to some of us as individuals or even to the church across Northern Ireland, what if God is saying the way that he did speak to his people way back in the Old Testament through the prophet Isaiah, I'm doing a new thing.
[19:59] Now it springs up.
[20:02] Do you not perceive it?
[20:04] Be careful that your expectation is not limited by your experience.
[20:15] Here's Jesus standing in front of this man.
[20:17] He's ready to offer him something that he'd never experienced before in all of his years lying by the pool.
[20:24] He has no idea.
[20:26] And then Jesus simply says to him, get up, pick up your mat, and walk.
[20:32] there's not a great deal that's made of this man's faith in Jesus but as Tom Wright says there must have been some level of belief because he does actually get up he picks up his mat and off he goes Jesus has healed him that's halfway through verse nine and it's then that we get the information that all this has happened on the Sabbath and that takes us to the second thing that I want us to think about for a little bit.
[20:59] It's the controversy.
[21:01] Who is this man?
[21:02] So there's a question.
[21:03] The question is, would you like to be made well?
[21:08] Which challenges our sense of expectation.
[21:11] And then there's this controversy.
[21:13] Who is this man?
[21:15] Now, if you're familiar with the Gospels, particularly the other three Gospels, you'll know that really from quite early on in the gospel accounts.
[21:23] In Mark, for example, the issue of Sabbath observance was a common point of contention between Jesus and the Jewish leaders.
[21:32] He seemed to have a much more liberal view of the Sabbath than they did.
[21:37] Remember, he said one day, the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath.
[21:46] He felt that the Jewish leaders had got that the wrong way around.
[21:50] And here we have John talking about a Sabbath controversy.
[21:53] Initially, the controversy is because this man's carrying his mat on the Sabbath.
[21:57] And you might think, you might look at that and think, well, goodness, that's hardly work, is it?
[22:02] Yes, it certainly says in the Ten Commandments that we're to keep the Sabbath, we're to do all of our work in six days, and then we're to rest the way God rested on the seventh day.
[22:11] It's hardly work to carry your mat.
[22:13] Well, that's what you might think.
[22:15] But Jeremiah chapter 17, verse 21 said that God's people were to be careful not to carry a load on the Sabbath day or to bring it through the gates of Jerusalem.
[22:27] Now, a command like that, what happened in the Jewish world with a command like that was many of the scholars thought, well, some of these things need a little bit more definition.
[22:36] We need to make sure that we understand exactly what we're talking about.
[22:40] And so some people reckoned that you could carry something if you stayed in your own house.
[22:46] But if you carried it outside of your house into the square, for example, then that was work.
[22:52] There were all kinds of things like this.
[22:53] And so when these Jewish leaders see this man coming along and he's carrying a mat, well, he's not inside his own house, he's carrying the mat, this is work.
[23:00] And they say, you're breaking the Sabbath.
[23:03] Isn't that a pity that these poor people, if they'd been, let's assume that they were aware of the miracle.
[23:10] And if they were aware of the miracle.
[23:13] Instead of thinking, wow, what happened to you?
[23:16] You've been lying there for years.
[23:19] We're so pleased that now you've been healed and you're able to walk about again.
[23:23] They weren't really concerned about that.
[23:25] They were just bothered by his flagrant breach of the law.
[23:30] Believe me, there are still people like that today in the Christian church.
[23:38] Now in verse 11, the man answers them.
[23:42] And he says, well, the person who healed me told me to carry the mat.
[23:48] Now, he's either saying something like, well, if that person has the power to make me well again, then I'm happy to do what he says about the Sabbath.
[23:56] I'm happy to shelter in his authority.
[23:58] Or it could simply be that he's saying, well, hey, don't blame me for breaking the Sabbath.
[24:03] I'm only doing what I was told.
[24:06] And that, of course, leads to the question in verse 12 then.
[24:08] who is this fellow?
[24:09] At least that's how the NIV puts it.
[24:11] I think the translators are trying to capture what they think is the tone in which this was said.
[24:15] But the simple words that the ESV, which plays much more safe with this, simple words are, who is the man who said this to you?
[24:26] Who is this man?
[24:28] Well, the guy who'd been healed doesn't know, but then he meets Jesus in the temple.
[24:33] And notice what Jesus says to him, because it's intriguing.
[24:35] Verse 14, he says to him, See, you are well again.
[24:40] Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.
[24:45] Now that raises questions too, doesn't it?
[24:47] It's very interesting to compare this with John chapter 9, the story of the man who was born blind.
[24:54] And there Jesus makes it very clear to his disciples that the man's blindness had nothing to do with anybody's sin, either the man's sin or anybody else's.
[25:05] But here, from the way that he talks to this man, there's a possible implication, isn't there?
[25:11] He says, see you are well against, stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.
[25:17] There's a possible implication that his condition had been related to sin that he'd committed previously.
[25:24] Possible, not certain, but possible.
[25:27] And at any rate, what does seem to be clear is that the warning says, if you go on sinning, if this man goes on sinning, that could leave him open to something worse happening to him.
[25:40] It's interesting to put John 5 and John 9 together on that.
[25:43] And I think it's a reminder to us that there's a careful line for us to walk.
[25:47] We need to be terribly careful about trying to link cause and effect when someone is ill.
[25:54] Be desperately careful about all of that.
[25:57] There are all kinds of reasons why people suffer illness or why things happen.
[26:04] We know from 1 Corinthians that there were people in the church in Corinth who were ill because of the way they were mistreating the Lord's table.
[26:14] But at the same time, we know that there are times when a person's illness is simply the result of a decaying body in a fallen world.
[26:27] So we need to be careful.
[26:30] But Jesus certainly speaks to this man about the possible consequences if he goes on sinning.
[26:38] Now, the man goes off and speaks to the Jews in verse 15, and he says, well, it was Jesus who made me well.
[26:47] And with that, the man disappears from the story.
[26:50] And again, you've got a question.
[26:51] You've got to say, well, why did this man go back to tell the Jews?
[26:55] Was it because he was witnessing to them?
[26:56] Was he wanting to go back and say, oh, do you know that you were wondering about who it was who had done this amazing miracle?
[27:02] Well, I discovered, and he is an amazing person, his name is Jesus.
[27:06] Is that the spirit in which he's doing it?
[27:09] Or is it more likely that he's trying to keep in the good books of the Jewish leaders?
[27:15] And it's maybe a bit much to say that he betrayed Jesus, but it's very clear that by going and telling the name of the person to the Jewish leaders, it's very clear that his action leaves Jesus in the crosshairs of the Jewish leaders.
[27:30] Verse 16, so because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him.
[27:41] So the man has gone, but now we've got a whole controversy that has blown up.
[27:49] Initially around Sabbath observance, because not only was the man praying is mad, but here's Jesus who's healed someone on the Sabbath.
[27:57] That old chestnut is back again.
[28:00] And that whole debate begins to swirl around the Sabbath.
[28:05] And in turn, because of the way Jesus answers it, it leads to the question of Jesus' identity.
[28:12] He says in verse 17, My father is always at work to this very day, and I too am working.
[28:22] Now, in verse 17, there are a number of theological questions that are lurking in there.
[28:29] I'm just going to mention one of them very quickly.
[28:32] And it's a question that was debated by Jewish rabbis, a question that many people have wondered about because it says in Genesis chapter two that God rested from all his work.
[28:45] And yet here he is working.
[28:47] And if he's working all the time, does that mean that God is a Sabbath breaker?
[28:51] You can find some of the rabbis in the early centuries who debated this question.
[28:58] But I think the reality is this.
[29:01] God rested from his work of creation.
[29:03] That was finished.
[29:05] But his work of sustaining the world, of governing the world, his providence, his plan of redemption, well, that doesn't stop every seven days.
[29:13] I mean, if it did, well, would it be the Sabbath?
[29:15] Would it be Sunday?
[29:16] Does God say, hey, I'm off today so the world can just spin out of control?
[29:21] Well, God doesn't do that.
[29:22] He continues to sustain it.
[29:24] He sustains the life of every one of us.
[29:28] He continues to work as he watches over what he has made.
[29:31] Now, that's a debate that is kind of implied in the verse, but what's more important in terms of where John is going here, the significance is about the fact that Jesus has referred to God as his father.
[29:46] And in the eyes of the Jewish leaders, if what they had seen was breaking the Sabbath, that was serious.
[29:55] But what was even more serious was calling God his father.
[30:01] Because in their eyes, it meant he was putting himself on a level with God.
[30:06] He was making himself equal with God.
[30:10] And that, in their minds, was blasphemy.
[30:12] How could you make yourself equal with God?
[30:15] Are there two gods?
[30:18] And so they turn on Jesus.
[30:23] And we discover that they were actually determined all the more, verse 18, they tried all the more to kill him.
[30:32] Not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own father, making himself equal with God.
[30:41] So you see that question they asked the man who'd been healed, well, who is this fellow?
[30:46] Who is this man who's made you well?
[30:49] Well, it's actually a much bigger question than they'd even imagined, isn't it?
[30:53] Because this question of who is this man, well, it turns out to be a question of, is this man who he says he is?
[31:02] Is he the son of God?
[31:05] Is he actually equal with God?
[31:09] Is it true that just as he has raised up this man who was lying by the pool, he also has the power to give life to whoever he chooses?
[31:19] That's what he claims.
[31:21] Is it true also as he claims, that he has the authority to judge and that his father has given him the authority to judge?
[31:29] And is it true in verse 23 that if you fail to honor Jesus as the son, you actually fail to honor God?
[31:42] Now, all those were questions that the Jewish leaders were gonna have to deal with.
[31:46] But I wanna suggest that they're questions, they remain questions for every one of us.
[31:52] fundamental question.
[31:54] Who is this man?
[31:55] Who is this man in this story who comes along and says to someone who hasn't walked for 38 years, get up and walk?
[32:03] Who is he?
[32:05] That's a question for each one of us.
[32:07] There may be some of you who've come recently into the church here.
[32:13] You've been exploring.
[32:14] You've been wondering what's going on in the world.
[32:16] You've been coming along here to see if there are answers.
[32:20] And you're wondering, maybe even wondering this morning, who exactly is this man?
[32:25] Could he be the son of God?
[32:27] Could he be equal with God?
[32:30] There are many of us here this morning, we've already made up our minds.
[32:34] But for some of us, it actually is the question that needs to be the burning question in our minds this morning.
[32:42] Now remember that John chose the signs that he did.
[32:45] He tells us this at the end of his gospel.
[32:47] He says, I've told you a certain number of the things that Jesus has done.
[32:52] I couldn't tell you everything.
[32:53] There wouldn't be room to tell you everything.
[32:56] But I've chosen these ones.
[32:58] Because I want you to believe that Jesus is the Christ.
[33:03] And that by believing, you would have life in his name.
[33:08] So as there's an encounter between Jesus and this man by the pool in Bethesda, so there's an opportunity for us to have an encounter with Jesus.
[33:23] An encounter where we put our faith in him and we become his followers.
[33:31] And just as I finish this, as we think about this man, he's a bit of an enigma, isn't he?
[33:37] He's a bit ambiguous.
[33:39] He had enough faith to do what Jesus asked him to do, get up and walk.
[33:44] But you're left wondering, was there really anything more to it than that?
[33:50] Doesn't really seem to be, does there?
[33:52] Did he ever become a disciple?
[33:56] It's interesting, actually, again, I refer back to this.
[33:59] It's interesting that for all the parallels that there are between his story in chapter five and the blind man's story in chapter nine, one of the great contrasts is that this guy just kind of disappears.
[34:14] The blind man who's healed, when he meets Jesus the second time, he says, I believe.
[34:23] And John tells us that he worships Jesus.
[34:27] There's none of that with this man at Bethesda.
[34:32] And that means we've got to ask ourselves, what about us?
[34:34] What about you and me?
[34:36] What would be said about our discipleship?
[34:38] What would be said about our relationship or any encounter we've had with Jesus?
[34:45] Do people know that we believe?
[34:48] Do they?
[34:50] Do people see that our lives are devoted in worship to Jesus?
[34:58] Or could it be that we've met him in a moment, we've experienced his work, something has changed, But the fear is that it's maybe been short-lived or it hasn't adequately gone into the depths of our hearts and touched our hearts.
[35:21] Could it be also that some of us have just settled for so much less than what the Lord wants to offer us because we've allowed our experience to limit our expectation.
[35:39] Let's bow together just quietly for a moment
[35:44] and reflect as we've thought about this story, what are some of the things that maybe have particularly spoken to you this morning.
[35:54] For some of you, it will be that challenge that for a long time, you've maybe settled into a way of life and your experience has limited your sense of expectation of what God can do.
[36:13] And for some of you, it's still the wrestling with that question.
[36:18] Who is this man?
[36:23] And for all of us,
[36:27] it's that question of whether our encounter with Jesus has truly shaped our lives.
[36:40] Lord, thank you for your word.
[36:42] Thank you for the stories that you have recorded for us.
[36:48] And thank you that you haven't just left us with stories just for the sake of a good story.
[36:56] But you've left us with these stories to point us to a living Jesus.
[37:03] who has died for our sins, who is alive again, and who waits to be part of our lives, who calls us to follow him.
[37:16] Lord, would you speak to us in these moments in all of our different circumstances.
[37:24] Help us to receive from you what you want us to receive.
[37:30] In your name, amen.
[37:31] Amen.