Jesus Heals On The Sabbath (J18(

Bethesda Pool was surrounded each day
By the lame, blind, and ill, hoping for a cure;
When the water stirred, the first one in may
Be healed; so it was told, but none was sure!
One man had lain there thirty-eight years;
When Jesus’ tender heart led Him to ask,
“Do you want to be healed?” Through sudden tears,
“For me to get in is too great a task!”
Jesus, in Jerusalem for a feast,
Had inquired and learned how long he’d lain;
“Pick up your mat and walk!” The long wait ceased,
The man stood up, walked away, free of pain!
The healing was done on a Sabbath day,
Fanning Pharisees’ anger Jesus; way!

"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. Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there, he 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, some one 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. The day on which this took place was a Sabbath.” (John 5:1-9)

This is the third of only seven miraculous signs by Jesus that John selected to include in his gospel. Since there is quite an aftermath to the miracle that I intend to add to this poem/commentary, I won’t tell you at this time the significance of the healing to prove the deity of Jesus. However, there are a few lessons about this incident that are important.

The first thing that is shown by the healing is the tender heart of Jesus. Undoubtedly He would have healed everyone lying about the pool, if doing so would not have caused such an uproar among the Jews in Jerusalem. He inquired about this particular invalid and healed him, then slipped away into the crowd. It is not in our Savior’s heart that any of us, righteous and unrighteous. should suffer. This poor man was trying to do the impossible—to move his immovable body into the pool ahead of hundreds of others, and he had been trying to do so for thirty-eight years. Jesus solved his problem in an instant.

Remember that there were many disciples with Jesus at the time. Also, the healing occurred on a Sabbath day. Since the party of the Pharisees had arisen 500 years earlier, during the Babylonian captivity of Judah, these strictest of the strict had devised hundreds of ticky-tacky rules about what constituted “work” on the Sabbath. These rules were not part of the Mosaic Law given by God; they were offensive to God and burdensome to the Jews who were forced to obey them. Called the “oral tradition”, they were the chief reason Jesus excoriated the Pharisees more than any other group/ It is what He had in mind during the Sermon on the Mount, when He said, Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisees, you will not enter the Kingdom of God (Matthew 5-7). There will be more explanation of this in my next few blogs.

“That if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord’, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved,” (Romans 10:9)