Sermon Central
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The Man By The Pool Series
Contributed by Brady Boyd on Feb 8, 2024 (message contributor)
Summary: Sometimes the pain of trying to get well is more severe than just accepting a new normal and staying sick.
John 5 - The Man by the Pool
February 11, 2024
John 5:1-11 NIV
Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for a feast of the Jews. 2 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. 3 Here a great number of disabled people used to lie — the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. 5 One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. 6 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?" 7 "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." 8 Then Jesus said to him, "Get up! Pick up your mat and walk." 9 At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.
Sin brought misery into the world.
This man was friendless, helpless, and hopeless.
Jesus sees a man that everyone else ignored.
v.6 – “Do you want to get well?”
It would seem obvious that he would want to get well. That is not true all the time.
Sometimes the pain of trying to get well is more severe than just accepting a new normal and staying sick.
PRISON THINKING – Man in New York breaking into prison to reminisce.
v. 7 – “I have no one to help me.”
This was not a healthy community.
We need people who will help us.
Most people stuck in the vicious cycle of abuse and poverty could escape if they had someone to help them.
Notice the three verbs/commands from Jesus in v.8
1. Get up!
This is salvation language.
This is the moment he had to have faith.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!
2. Pick up your mat!
This mat was now his testimony.
All of us have scar stories.
3. Walk!
He was at the same place every day.
His life was centered around his illness.
Pain keeps us in a prison. Grief, hurt and trauma are all the things that keep us in a small space.
