I want to tell you a story of God’s Pervasive Grace; it’s a story of His Personalized Grace.
As with any story, it started out with the setting: “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 five covered colonnades.”
If you visit St. Anne’s Church in Jerusalem, they will show you the deep excavation that has revealed the ancient Pool of Bethesda. The Hebrew name Bethesda has been spelled various ways and given differing meanings. Some say it means “house of mercy” or “house of grace,” but others say it means “place of the two outpourings.” There is historical and archeological evidence that two adjacent pools of water served this area in ancient times.
We do not know which feast Jesus was observing when He went to Jerusalem, and it is not important that we know. But it’s important to realize this is not the place for Jesus to be to observe whatever the Jewish religious ceremony to take place. The five covered porticoes on four sides of and between the pools attracted a large number of disable people as the text described here, “Here a great number of disabled people used to lie - the blind, the lame, the paralyzed.”
Why were they there for? All manuscripts earlier than 400AD omit the end of v.3 and all of verse 4, as your NIV footnote shows, “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.” Is this just a superstitious rumor? The fact that all the sick people gathered here (and the man’s words in verse 7) would suggest that something special had happened here. Why would anybody, especially a man sick for so many years, remain here if nothing were occurring? You would think that after thirty-eight years of nothing happening to anybody, the man would go elsewhere! It seems like something extraordinary kept all these handicapped people at this pool, hoping for a cure.
Pervasive Grace
Grace is what God gave us even when we don’t deserve it. But “Pervasive Grace” is the grace which available to all. For example, we don’t deserve to get any healing outside of the name of God, but He allows it. We all read reports of healing from other religions, sometimes even from questionable sources such as the one mentioned here.
And here is also “Pervasive Grace”: it is the grace available to us, even when we don’t know about Him, or even when we stand against Him. This “Pervasive Grace” of God can be seen in the self-healing capability of our physical body. Don’t you realize that without that built-in capability, all medicine would be of no use? Students of medicine know that antibiotics were just like weapons for our white-blood-cells to use in order to kill off foreign cells. This “Pervasive Grace” of God can be found in our own internal psyche. Why is it that we just won’t get any satisfaction in drinking, partying, indulging and even achieving? Augustine said that our hearts will forever go wandering until it found God, because God had already “set eternity in our hearts”. The “Pervasive Grace” of God is available for all of us. Do you realize that even when people use God’s name as a curse word, God Himself sustains the air they breathe so that they could curse Him in their ignorance?
Personalized Grace
But God’s Pervasive Grace is also presented to us in a very personal manner, even when we don’t know Him. Here, the text go on, “One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time.” Invalid was from the Latin invalidus (from in, not; and validus, strong), it is like a form of paralytic from what we can gather from the story. There were many sick people there, but Jesus did not come to all of them; He singled out one man. Did He single out this man because of his enduring hope despite the long history of illness? Or did Jesus just pick a person, any person, to be a representative of the healing everyone would have in eternal life [1]? We never know for sure. The only thing we knew was that that Jesus came to the man, spoke to him, healed him, and then met him later in the temple. This is the proof of God’s wonderful grace and mercy, a grace that is personalized to each one of us, a mercy that is individualized for each one of us.
Each one of us have already have God’s Pervasive Grace. Didn’t Jesus die for the sin of the world, including each one of us? But have you receive God’s Personalized Grace; the-grace-story-with-your-name-on-it?
Here we see grace become personalized for this man: "Jesus 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."
Some of you asked me how could I handle career, family, ministry, and seminary all in the same time? Beside the great woman I married to, I want to let you in on another secret: I have a low-stress day job! I have been working at the college for a long time. I started working part-time as a student there, then they gave me full-time when I was 23. The job was enjoyable, pay well, and low-stress! Without it, there is no way I would have any juice left for anything else.
And what did I do to deserve such a treatment? Nothing! Worse, when I was 23, I was hostile to God, running my own life and didn’t care much about anything else! Yet, God granted me a great job anyway. That was my Personalized Grace story.
What about you? What was your Personalized Grace story?
Perhaps it was the story of God saving your life from a tragic accident; or the love you received unexpectedly from someone; or even a chance meeting which turned your perspective of life completely around.
Remember, God’s Personalized Grace lavished on us even when we didn’t know who He was. The text here said, "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."
Notice that the Jewish religious leaders were asking "Who is this dude who told you to break the rules?" Back in those days, the temple authority had listed thirty-nine tasks that were prohibited on the Sabbath, and carrying a burden (like this mat) was one of them. By asking the wrong questions, focusing on the wrong things and they’ve missed seeing God’s grace in life. What they should have asked was, "Who is this guy who turns your life around?" But instead of recognizing the wonderful deliverance of the man, the religious leaders condemned him for carrying his bed and thereby breaking the law.
But God’s Personalized Grace could become so Pervasive and hard for us to realize until we choose to see it. The miracle would have been easier to see if it didn’t occur on the Sabbath Day. Jesus certainly could have come a day earlier or even waited a day later. But He intentionally did it on the Sabbath. God’s grace was designed so that everyone will have it, but only the one who choose to see it will see it. So, if you struggled with finding a Personalized Grace story in your life, it was not because God didn’t write it in your life, but because you are not familiar with His handwriting. Stop looking for His signature, for He doesn’t sign everything He have been written, but look for His hand writing and you will see His handiworks everywhere. [3]
Why Would God Gives Grace?
Often, it’s the job of the patients to look for the Doctors to thank them after they were cured. But our story was different, the man didn’t find Jesus, Jesus found the man! The doctor goes look for the patient! Our text read: "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.’"
Why did Jesus go find the man? Can God just do good deeds anonymously without seeking for recognition and appreciation?
This is the biggest misconception of our time: Some people proposed that God is bigger than any of our religions. They believed that all roads will lead to heaven, that the Christians’ God, the Muslims’ God, the Buddhists’ God, the New Age’s God, and even the Wicca’s God were all the same God; may be with different names, but it is still the same God! That is far from the truth! That’s not what we see here!
God do care about us knowing that He is the source of His Grace! And this is why Jesus came to the man: so that he knows the healer. The man was in the temple, no doubt thanking and praising God for healing him. And Jesus came to him in that temple, to reveal to him God, in the flesh. God is not an abstract universal and transcendental life force, but he can be known specifically and personally in a person: Jesus. As we see next week, Jesus spent the rest of his time talking to the religious leader on this precised point.
But back to our story here: Jesus Himself went to find the man so that he could know him personally. He said to the man, "Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you." Some people think that the man’s sin caused his sickness 38 years earlier, while some other people jump, “Woa, what a guy! Just back on his feet and he had started sinning already!” For me, I think that sinning here was referred to the man’s spiritual condition: he was healed physically, but personally he was not in a personal relationship with his healer yet. Warren Wiersbe put it this way: “It is possible to experience an exciting miracle and still not be saved and go to heaven!” Yup, it is possible to be in the midst of the temple back then or in the middle of the church today and still not have any relationship with God. It seems strange that the man did not actively seek a closer relationship with the One who healed him, but many of us today are in the same boat: we often would have gratefully accepted the gift and ignored the Giver.
Person of Grace
Finally, it is hard to classify the relationship this man had with Jesus. John concluded the story with this line: "The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well." In the context here, the “Jews” were the same religious leaders who harassed him back in verse 10. So, did the man “report” Jesus to the authority because of fear, so that the Jewish leaders leave him alone and go after Jesus? (In chapter 9 later we will find out another guy who was thrown out the synagogue for siding with Jesus). Or may be this man was just naively think that he was honoring Jesus for telling them about his healer? We will not know for certain. There is no evidence for us to say that he believed Jesus and was converted; yet we cannot say that he was opposed to the Savior either [4]. What do you think? How did he respond to the grace of God?
As I studied this text with Yen (over Email), he offered this observation:
This passage is about Grace of God vs. the apathy of man:
[quote]Man suffers, God comes and offers grace, man doesn’t really realize the significance, God extends grace anyway, God goes away, man is satisfied but doesn’t follow after God, God comes back, God gives warning.....Now, it’s up to man to respond appropriately.
This same pattern played out over and over again in the Old Testament narratives. In this case of the invalid, it’s the same way:
He suffered, Jesus offered to heal, the invalid guy didn’t realize who is talking to him, Jesus healed him anyway, Jesus quietly left, the guy is now happy and didn’t even know who healed him; Jesus came back to him and gave him a stern warning about his condition. The guy now realizes who saved him, and is left with a choice.[end quote]
But enough about the poor guy; how about you? How do you response to the grace of God?
Have you ever realized how Pervasive his grace was in your life in the stuff that didn’t have his signature on, even before you knew Him? Was God’s grace personalized to you; is your name there in the story? Or are we a just a bunch of ungrateful people?
To overcome ungratefulness and become a person of grace, we need to start with what we see every day.
First, we need to see the gifts of grace all around us, and be grateful in everything; drop that attitude of “I deserve it!” or “I deserve better”; but instead start thank God for everything He had already provided for you. (Eve’s original sin was not disobedience but that she was ungrateful with all that God had provided for her).
Secondly, we need to see The Giver, the one who able and love to give, but not compelled to give. If we just occupied ourselves with seeing only the gifts from an abstract God but not realizing the love of the Giver for us behind everything, we are missing the point. We could become people who considered themselves fortunate, but not the people with a grateful heart.
Thirdly, it would help if we understand what we stand to lose without these gifts. Unlike the secular concept of grace as in “grace period”, “grace note”, graceful moves”, a concept of something extra; the grace of God is something totally essential.
Two men losing their job from a company which went bankrupt; their boss took both of them to work for a new company: one was a new college graduate, the other was a middle-aged man; who would be more grateful? The middle-aged man, of course, for he stood to lose much more if he won’t have a job. [6]
Are you grateful for God’s grace, both Pervasive and Personalized?
Let us walk boldly in thanksgiving and honoring God for the grace He lavished on us.
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For study footnotes, go to:
http://i12know1stdraft.blogspot.com/2004/10/invalid-grace.html
