OPEN: There’s a story I read once of 3 umpires who were talking about the feeling of power they had on the baseball field. As they talked about what gave them this sense of empowerment, the 1st umpire said – “I call ‘em as I see ‘em.”
The 2nd smiled and said, “That ain’t nothing. I call ‘em as they are.”
And the 3rd ump lifted his chin and said: “Well boys… until I call ‘em… they ain’t nothing.”
APPLY: In our story this morning we have three major players: There’s Jesus, the lame man… and the Jews (undoubtedly led by the Pharisees). The Pharisees were the self-appointed set of “umpires” in Israel. The Pharisees “called ‘em as they saw ‘em” … and even when they didn’t see ‘em, they still called ‘em. If there was law in the Old Testament was too vague the Pharisees would “clarify it” for God. For example, the Law declared it was illegal to work on the Sabbath, but it didn’t define what work was… so the Pharisees helped God out on that. I’m told that The Pharisees defined 1521 ways that you might break the Sabbath
• For instance, if the wick of your lamp burned out on the Sabbath, you couldn’t replace it. You had to remain in the darkness.
• You couldn’t cut your fingernails, tie a knot, or kill a fly or a flea.
• Women were not allowed to look in the mirror because they might see a gray hair and pull it out – which would have been reaping.
AND of course, as we saw in our story this morning, you weren’t allowed to heal someone on the Sabbath.
Now the story we read this morning is the 3rd of the signs/miracles that John focused on in his Gospel. It is also (perhaps) one of the most unique of the miracles that Jesus performed. John 5:1-8 tells us
"Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades. In these lay a multitude of invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, 'Do you want to be healed?'
The sick man answered him, 'Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me.'
Jesus said to him, 'Get up, take up your bed, and walk.'"
Now, for years skeptics claimed that this pool never existed. The very idea of people supposedly would go down to this pool in the hopes of being “healed” strained the imagination of critics, who mocked the belief this had ever occurred. They concluded that this was just a story made up by John as window dressing.
But THEN somebody found the pool!
(We showed a picture of the present day site) It took a lot of digging because over the centuries, one layer of the city was built on top of the other. You can see how deep this pool is now.
But back in the days of Jesus, it looked more like this: (we showed an artist’s conception of the Bethesda with the Temple close at hand). It was close by the sheep gate where sheep that were sacrificed were brought into the city. As you can see, the pool is not too far from the temple itself.
Inside the pool at Bethsaida/Bethesda, it may have looked a little like this: (a shot from a movie where Jesus healed the man at the pool). It was here that the lame and blind and the paralyzed waited in hopes of getting into the water just as the boiled. It was an urban legend of the day that IF you could just be the 1st one in pool as the waters stirred you’d be healed. If anyone claimed to be healed it was most likely a placebo effect. Some claimed to have been healed at the waters… but most weren’t. And if you weren’t healed by the waters it was because you either lacked faith or you just weren’t the first guy in the pool!!
The man Jesus healed that day had never made it to the pool in time. For 38 years he’d tried - but he was lame and had no one to help him down into the waters. So for 38 years he’d laid here, hoping against hope he MIGHT one day make it.
Then Jesus saw him. And Jesus healed him. and this is where the story gets a little unusual.
john 5:6 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?”
Now this is odd for a couple of reasons… but the oddity I want to focus on today is this: There’s perhaps 200 others there at the pool who needed healing too - but Jesus didn’t heal them! The ONLY person Jesus healed on this day was this man. That doesn’t seem fair. Why would Jesus ignore all the others and just heal this man?
Well, the Bible doesn’t tell us… but I got a couple of ideas on the matter.
1st – This guy has been lame for 38 years. Everybody in town knows this man has been lame for 38 years. There is no question that for 38 years he’s never walked and there was no question he was never going to get into the water. SO, when Jesus healed this man, there was no question that it wasn’t the pool that healed him. There’s no question this is a legitimate miracle.
2nd – I believe this man was specially chosen by Jesus for a little bit of “show & tell”. I believe Jesus used this man as a SIGN to get somebody’s attention. So the question is: Whose attention was Jesus trying to get?
Well, to find the answer to that question - we have to answer two other questions:
1. What day of the week did Jesus heal this man? (Sabbath). Do you realize Jesus could have healed this man on any other day of the week? He could have healed him on Monday, Tuesday, Weds. Etc. but He waited until the Sabbath.
2. What did Jesus tell the man to do immediately after he was healed? (Pick up mat) This was the Sabbath… carrying your mat on Sabbath was a violation of the rules. That was “WORK!”
So when the Pharisees and their followers saw this… they were furious. And they cried out: “It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat." John 5:10
Jesus did that on purpose!!!
He did it to get their attention so they would hear what He had to say. And they were NOT going to LIKE what they hear!
Now for the rest of this sermon, we’re going to focus on what they heard Jesus say that day.
Jesus knew full well that once the crowd saw this man carrying his mat they were going to be angry - because this is a crowd led by Pharisees with over 1500 ways to get angry with people who violated their man-made Sabbath laws. And sure enough the Jewish crowd was angry… and they came looking for Him. And when they found Him they had only one question on their minds: By WHAT RIGHT did you do this on the Sabbath? By what right did you heal this man on THIS day?
(PAUSE)
Well… by what right DID Jesus heal this man on the Sabbath?
That’s right – He had to right to heal on the Sabbath because He was God. He was the Lord of the Sabbath. He was the one who made the rule about the Sabbath to begin with.
Jesus is always having this confrontation with the Pharisees, and most of the time it was because He set them up. In the book of Matthew we read about Jesus and His disciples plucking grains of wheat in the field to eat. Only problem was – they were doing this on the Sabbath… and… you guessed it - they were violating another Sabbath rule. So Jesus gives the Pharisees a Bible lesson about the time David was running from King Saul and asked for food from the Priests at the Tabernacle. The Priests give him bread from the Temple that only the Priests were permitted to eat.
Then Jesus says: “Yet I say to you that in this place there is One greater than the temple. But if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.” Matthew 12:6-8
In other words, I do what I do on the Sabbath because I have a right to. I am the Lord of the Sabbath.
Now on this occasion (after healing the lame man) Jesus is a little more in their face. He says: “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working.” (John 5:17) And this created an immediate firestorm. We’re told… “For this reason the Jews tried all the harder to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, MAKING HIMSELF EQUAL WITH GOD.” John 5:18
Now notice I capitalized that phrase: “Making Himself equal with God.”
It doesn’t say they MISUNDERSTOOD Him to say that “He was equal with God”
It doesn’t say Jesus DIDN’T MEAN to say “He was equal with God.”
It says Jesus deliberately said what He said so they would understand what they understood: He was making Himself equal with God.
This is a repeated theme throughout the Gospel of John. One of John’s purposes was to show his readers that Jesus was God, and he begins in the very first verse of his Gospel. In John 1:1 & 14 we read “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
In John 14:9 (Jesus said to Philip) “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father….”
And in John 10:30 Jesus declared: “I and the Father are one.” After Jesus said that last statement, the crowd tried to stone Him for heresy. The crowd knew EXACTLY what Jesus was saying, and it WOULD have been heresy - if Jesus were not God.
Now there are cults like the Jehovah Witnesses that reject this because they can’t understand it. In their minds – if they can’t understand it, it can’t be true.
I’m sorry – it doesn’t matter if you or I can understand something in Scripture. All that matters is whether or not this is what the Scripture teaches. And it IS! This is exactly what the Bible teaches!
There’s a lot of stuff in this world I don’t understand. (Shrug) I know it’s hard to believe, but it’s true. There’s just some things I can’t wrap my mind around.
ILLUS: Back in 1945, a scientist was walking through a radar test room when he came too close to a magnetron tube… and the candy bar in his shirt pocket began to melt. Thus began the discovery of microwaves, which in turn led to the development of those great little machines in practically every kitchen in America – Microwaves.
I’ve got one of those. Last week I put a potato in my microwave. I shut the door, punched the buttons, pressed start, watched light inside come on and the little plate go round and round. When the time was up, I opened the door and took out my potato – but it was still cold.
I figured I must have done something wrong. So I put the potato back in the machine, pressed the buttons, pressed start, watched the light go and the plate go round and round. When the time was up I opened the door and pulled the potato out again. It was still cold.
I did that 4 times before I figured out that my microwave wasn’t working! (Pause)
Undaunted, I figured it might just be a fuse or something that I could replace, so I went over to my computer and tried to look up a tutorial on that particular model. What I found took a little while to decipher, but essentially I saw a bunch of diagrams I couldn’t understand, followed by instructions that went essentially like this:
IF YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING you can replace these 2 or 3 items on your microwave. But, IF YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING, you probably need to find someone who does. You see, there something called a capacitor in your microwave that stores up electricity even after you unplug the model… and if you go poking around where you shouldn’t be poking – you can electrocute yourself.
(LONG PAUSE)
So I went out and bought myself a new microwave.
Here’s the deal. I don’t have a clue about what makes a microwave work. I don’t understand the inner workings of those machines. But I do know that when they do work, all I have to do is punch the proper buttons and it does marvelous things. I don’t have to understand the machine for it to work.
And God tells us that’s always going to be true about Him. There’s always going be something about Him you’ll not understand. In Isaiah 55:8-9 God tells us
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
God is so far above our understanding that is pure folly to say “Well… something can’t be true because I can’t grasp the concept”. And this concept of God being Father, Son and Holy Ghost is no exception. The Bible clearly teaches this idea and I just need to accept that it’s going to be hard for me to comprehend - and let it go at that.
But now, here’s the BIG question: why would Jesus care if we knew He was God?
And the answer is this: Jesus cared because ONLY God could do what Jesus came to do. It mattered, because - Only God could offer Himself on the cross for our sins. NO mortal man/woman who would be pure enough to take our sins upon them.
In Isaiah 59:15-17 God spoke of the coming Messiah. And we read:
“The LORD looked and was displeased that there was no justice. He saw that there was no one, he was appalled that there was no one to intervene; so his own arm worked salvation for him, and his own righteousness sustained him. He put on righteousness as his breastplate, and the helmet of salvation on his head; he put on the garments of vengeance and wrapped himself in zeal as in a cloak.”
God looked everywhere and could find NO ONE who could bring us our salvation… so He did it Himself. Salvation was something that only God could do.
That’s why Philippians 2:5-8 tells us
“Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing (literally “emptied himself), taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”
When Jesus stepped down out of heaven, He made Himself nothing - He literally “emptied” Himself of His Godness - so that He could come live amongst us and die for us. That’s what the Virgin birth was all about. There was NO earthly father. The angel said to Mary:
“The HOLY SPIRIT will come upon you, and the power of the MOST HIGH will overshadow you, and for that reason the HOLY CHILD shall be called the Son of God.” Luke 1:35
All three members or persons of the trinity are mentioned in this verse – the Spirit, the Most High and the Holy Child.
Later the angel appeared to Joseph who was giving serious thought to quietly divorcing Mary because it’s obvious to him that there’s another man in the picture. But the angel tells him: “do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us). Matthew 1:20-23
But still - why should Jesus make this such a big deal about this?
Well, He did so because the Law of God called for a perfect sacrifice to take away sins. SOMETHING perfect had to DIE in order for us to live.
But no mortal was sinless.
And God can’t die!
So, Jesus emptied Himself of His Godhood - took on the form of man. And because the perfect God became a mortal man - He could die … and He could take away our sins. This is such a powerful concept about Jesus that it is interwoven into the teaching and the examples about God throughout Scripture.
CLOSE: But it goes beyond a theological thing. It goes beyond the logistics of God becoming a man to die for us. It goes to the very heart of our God… who loved us so much that He gave His only begotten Son. John 3:16 doesn’t say He loved us so much that He sent someone else. He didn’t send an angel, or a prophet, or a “really nice” guy to take our place on that cross. It tells us this sacrifice cost HIM. He suffered in our place.
A writer named John Stott said it this way:
“In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? I have entered many Buddhist temples in different Asian countries and stood respectfully before the statue of the Buddha, his legs crossed arms folded, eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing around his mouth, a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of the world.
But each time, after a while I have had to look away.
And in imagination I have turned instead to the lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn-pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in god forsaken darkness.
That is the God for me! He laid aside his immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us. Our sufferings become more manageable in the light of His. There is still a question mark against human suffering, but over it boldly stamp another mark, the cross which symbolizes divine suffering.
(John Stott, “The Cross of Christ”)
It is the God, taking our place on the cross that gives us the power to face our own sufferings.
ILLUS: At the inhuman prison in Germany every Friday the Nazis made the prisoners completely undress for medical inspection. They were humiliated, the women, at having to march by grinning guards. On one of those mornings Corrie Ten Boom says, “yet another page in the Bible leapt into life for me.”
“He hung naked on the Cross.”
“I had not known – had not thought… the paintings, the carved crucifixes showed at least a scrap of cloth. But this, I suddenly knew, was the respect and reverence of the artist. But oh – at the time itself, on that other Friday morning – there had been no reverence. No more than I saw in the faces around us now.
“I leaned toward Betsie, ahead of me in line. Her shoulder blades stood out sharp and thin beneath her blue mottled skin.”
“’Betsie, they took His clothes too.’”
“Ahead of me I heard a gasp. ‘Oh Corrie. And I never thanked Him…’”
(“The Hiding Place”, Fleming H. Revell, Co., p. 196)
INVITATION
