The Disciple Jesus Loved Tells All!

Studies in the Gospel of John #6

John Chapter 5

 

Today we are going to go someplace that for me has a particularly familiar feel to it.  In his memoirs of his life with Jesus, John takes us today to a porch.  You might know that these days our family is constructing a wrap-around porch on our house.  In John 5 (page 716), starting with verse 1, we find that there was a feast of the Jews, and so Jesus went up to Jerusalem.  Verse two says, “Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, which is called in Hebrew Bethesda, having five porches.”  So this was an elaborate porch, which surrounded a pool of water.  With all the rain we’ve had this month, it sounds more like my place all the time!

 

At this porch, by this pool of water, a Public Miracle occurred, which led to a Powerful Message by Jesus.

 

Public Miracle

 

Up until now, the amazing signs that Jesus has done have been more or less private.  In chapter 2 we read of Jesus turning water into wine at a wedding in Cana.  Only a few people knew what had happened – the disciples, Mary, and the servants who had put water into the pots, and had taken wine out.

 

The healing of the nobleman’s son found at the end of chapter 4, was really only known to the family and friends of the man himself.

 

But this healing takes place at a very public place – the Pool of Bethesda, in the heart of Jerusalem, a crowded place on a crowded day – during a feast time in the capitol city.  This was a well known spot.  People who were sick, blind, lame, paralyzed would wait by the water for the water to be disturbed by an angel.  The first one in the water after would be healed.  A man who had been paralyzed for nearly 40 years lay there, waiting for his opportunity, but when the water would be disturbed, another person would jump in ahead of him.  Jesus came there, and asked the man, “Do you want to be made well ?”

 

Isn’t that an interesting question?  Think about it for a moment.  “Do you want to be well?”  It may seem like an obvious thing to be answered, but you know, sometimes when we have things that paralyze us either physically, emotionally or spiritually, it is a valid question.  If the man is healed, he will have to leave his friends at the pool that he has been with for 38 years, he will have to get a job, he will have huge changes in his life – and sometimes we get comfortable where we are. 

 

Paralysis, generally speaking is not caused by sin – it is usually physical.  But in this man’s case, if you go to the very end of the story, in verse 14, Jesus says “See you have been made well, Sin no more, or a worse thing will come upon you.”  That leads many to believe that his paralysis was due to some sin in his life.  If that is true, this question is even more important.  Do we really want to be freed from the sin that paralyzes us?  Are we willing to make the life-changes that are necessary?  Do we want to be free – or have we gotten comfortable in our sin-induced paralysis?  Something to think about as we look at this big picture.

 

Which, by the way, brings me to a point that I want to make real clear to you.  In these days here at Gateway we are doing an overview of John’s biography of Jesus.  There is more than one way to do such a study.  We could get out a microscope and examine this book at the molecular level if we chose to do so – examining every verse, sometimes even every word in the original Greek – to gain every nuance of inspired truth from John’s pen.  When I was a teenager, the pastor in my church spent 3 years preaching on the book of Romans – and he constantly told us that he was just scratching the surface!

 

Another way we can study is to use a helicopter, and view the bigger picture, looking at the book with the broad objectives that John had in mind when he wrote this book.  Remember, he had two clear purposes in mind when he wrote this biography – first, that we would know who Jesus is, and secondly, that we would have life by believing in Him.

 

We are doing the helicopter approach.  The verse-by-verse study is important, and I encourage you to follow along in our weekly studies by reading and meditating on this book as we proceed through it, but on Sunday mornings, we are focusing on the highpoints, the main objectives

 

Now, when Jesus healed the impotent man at the pool of Bethesda he got into trouble because he chose the wrong day to do his healing. According to the rules of the Jews, no one was to do healing on the Sabbath day. Jesus got into trouble because, in the presence of human agony, God does not keep the Sabbath. Jesus responded to a need and was called to account for that. In response, he explained to the Jews that he was going to keep on doing such things because it was the will of his Father; that he and the Father worked together.

 

This is not coincidental.  Jesus certainly could have shown up a day earlier, or come back a day later, and healed the man – after all he had been there for 38 years!  But remember that Jesus works on HIS AGENDA.  He is always keenly aware of His mission.  Nothing in Jesus life happens by accident – He orchestrates and controls each event  in order to fulfill the mission the Father has given Him.  In this instance, the very public miracle was done at this place and this time to provide Him a platform from which He delivered a Powerful Message…

 

 

Powerful Message

 

The message Jesus set out to deliver is really quite astounding.  As I have read through his chapter in the days leading up to this morning I have felt overwhelmed by the magnitude of what is here.  In chapter one of this book, you might remember that John gave us seven titles that identified Jesus, that told us who He is.  They were THE WORD, THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD, THE SON OF GOD, THE LAMB OF GOD, THE MESSIAH, THE KING OF ISRAEL AND THE SON OF MAN.  Those titles were used by various individuals in that first chapter, John himself, Philip, Andrew, John the Baptist, and Jesus.

 

In chapter five, after Jesus has performed this Public Miracle, He uses the opportunity to deliver a Powerful Message that has one overriding, overwhelming point – Jesus is God!

 

As we said, the Jewish Leaders are challenging Jesus for his work on the Sabbath day.  He responds by saying, in verse 17, “My Father has been working, until now, and I have been working.”  From the first word of His first statement of this Powerful Message, Jesus claims deity.  Jews never referred to God as “My Father.”  They would refer to Him as “Our Father,” meaning that God is the Father of the people, but Jesus, in this statement was claiming personal Father-and-Son relationship with God, and by equating His work on the Sabbath with God’s work on the Sabbath, He was making himself equal to God.  Which is exactly what John says in verse 18.  And because of that, the Jewish leaders wanted to kill Him. 

 

Then Jesus launches into the heart of His message.  In it, He makes multiple claims to be God in the flesh. 

 

In verses 21, Jesus says that “As the Father raises the dead, and gives them life, so the Son gives life to whom He will.”  Jesus gives you life.  No matter who you are, if you are alive and breathing, that life is a gift from Jesus Christ.  John wrote in chapter 1, “in Him was life, and the life was the light of men.”  But more than physical life, Jesus gives eternal, spiritual life to those who believe in and follow Him.

 

 

In verse 22 and in verses 24 – 30, Jesus claims that He alone is the judge of the world.  He says in verse 27 that God “has given Him authority to execute judgment.”  The Bible is clear that one day we will all stand before God and be judged.  We will be judged not on the merit of our works, but on the response we had to His grace.  If we reject Jesus, then we will be condemned for our sins.  But if we believed on Him, we will have eternal life.  It’s just that basic.

 

That is why in verse 23, Jesus says, “Everyone should honor the Son as they honor the Father.” 

 

Then in verses 31 – 47, Jesus provides a four-layered witness to His claim to deity.

 

First – the witness of John the Baptist.  Everyone in Israel had agreed that John was a prophet from God, the people had heard from John, and He had identified Jesus as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” 

 

Beyond that, Jesus points out that the Father Himself gives witness to Jesus’ identity through the miracles that He does.  The very fact that the man had been able to get up an walk away from the pool of Bethesda seems to be lost on these people – they are more concerned with the fact that he is breaking the rules!  But Jesus reminds them that something amazing has happened here – and it validates His claim to be the Son of God.

 

Jesus also points out that the Father has given witness to His identity by his own words.  John the Baptist testified that when he baptized Jesus, a voice from heaven spoke and said, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.”  (Luke 3:22)

 

In addition to those three witnesses, Jesus points out that the Scriptures bear witness of His identity.  He says in verse 39, “You search the Scriptures, for in them you think that you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of me.”  The entirety of Scripture points to Jesus Christ.  From the earliest pages of Genesis, when God promised that one day an offspring of Adam would crush the head of Satan, to the last pages of Revelation, where Jesus is shown in His ultimate glory, the Scriptures point to one central figure – Jesus Christ.  He is the fulfillment of all Scripture.

 

I want you to take some time this week to read this message from Jesus to the Jews found in chapter 5.  It is an amazingly powerful message!  If it were recorded and put on TV, it would be like Martin Luther King, Jr.’s  “I Have A Dream” speech!  The statements made here are incredibly powerful!  Just listen to some of them: 

 

            He who hears my word and believes in Him who sent me has everlasting life.

            As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is righteous.

            You are not willing to come to me that you might have life.

            I know you, you do not have the love of God in you.

            If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for He wrote about me!

 

Those are words that would have stunned the people in the audience!  Here stands a man claiming to be God!  Here is one claiming to be greater that the religious leaders, greater than the prophets, the subject of Scripture!  Imagine if someone were to make that claim today!  We’d lock Him up and throw away the key!  We’d call the guys from the loony bin! 

 

It’s easy for us to read these pages and go, “Yeah, OK, so Jesus said a bunch of religious stuff to these people, move on!”  But folks, this is earth-shaking stuff – these claims are outrageous!

 

C. S. Lewis, in his book Mere Christianity, says,


(Many) people say about [Jesus]: "I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher but I don’t accept His claim to be God." That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

 

 

Profound Moment

 

Jesus powerful message, presented here, brought His audience and now brings us, to a Profound Moment.  He is drawing a line in the sand – calling the people to make a decision to believe or to reject Him.

 

 

Over the past month nearly two dozen people have indicated that they wanted to follow Jesus.  That is great – but I want you to be keenly aware of just who it is you have decided to follow: 

 

 

Now don’t get me wrong – This life that Jesus calls us to is not a drudgery, nor is it a life of bondage – it is the greatest life you can find!  But you must go into it with your eyes open.

 

This is a moment when we must choose.  Jesus said to those Jewish leaders in verse 40, “But you are not willing to come to me that you may have life.”

 

Is He describing you in that statement?  Are you unwilling to come to Him?  Will you believe in Jesus and find life, or will you chose rather to minimize Him to a good moral teacher, but not God, and certainly not the only way to God?  Listen – reject me if you want – walk away from Gateway and never come back – that is really not the important issue here – but don’t reject Jesus. 

 

If you want to live – if you want to live a real life of fulfillment now and life of glory in His presence one day – then you must accept Him for who He is.  He is God and He Loves YOU!

 

Prayer.