Friday of the First Week of Lent | John 5

Today in John chapter 5 where Jesus helps the powerless and tells the powers that be who's really holding the power. When I was a kid in the 80s, there was a film that perfectly summed up the powerlessness that all kids feel when they desperately want something but lack the power to obtain it. In the classic holiday film, Christmas Story, Ralphie knows what he wants for Christmas. The official red rider carbine action 200 shot range model air rifle but every time the grown-ups are repeatedly telling him, “You’ll shoot your eye out” and refuse to help him and fulfill his fantasy of obtaining his holiday Holy Grail, kids everywhere all over the world share Ralphie’s gut punch of powerlessness in their own lives. We've all known what it's like to be powerless well, John chapter 5 opens up with a paralyzed man who had yearned for the same thing for over 38 years. But was powerless to fulfill his wishes for healing for four decades. John sets the scene in verse 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. 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 38 years. 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?” Does that strike you as an odd question? Do you want to be well? But Jesus’s questions often tell us more than the person's answers. You see Jesus is exposing some obstacle, that the man doesn't think he can overcome. Remember he feels powerless, and he speaks it in verse 7, “Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me to get into the pool when the water is stirred. While I'm trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.” Did you detect a bit of self-pity there? I have no one to help me, someone else goes down ahead of me. There was a superstition about the pool of Bethesda, that when the whirlpools suddenly swirled that an Angel stirred the water, healing the first one in, the problem was there were two pools and you never know which pool the whirlpool would form in. So, the huddled masses, laying by the pool day in and day out would suddenly claw and jockey for position to plop over the side as soon as that water moved and that's hard to do if you're crippled, almost impossible and definitely dangerous if you're paralyzed. “I have no one to help me, someone else goes down ahead of me,” perhaps he'd even given up hope, giving up on trying, even giving up on praying. But Jesus tells him to do something to do be impossible verse 8, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk. At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.” Jesus is allowing the man to experience what faith is. It's when you trust God despite your circumstances in “getting up” as Jesus tells him, that that man was bypassing his own ability or inability or anyone else even to help him and simply placing his faith in the words of Jesus. But if you think it’s shocking for Jesus to tell a man who can't move to get up and walk. Imagine what he tells him before he leaves, stop sinning or something worse will happen to you. Now that might sound weird but keep in mind that certain diseases like syphilis, a sexually transmitted disease could cause blindness and paralysis and Jesus is telling the man not just to walk in this passage but to walk differently from now on. But Jesus is the one who's actually about to go on trial for being a Sinner. We're told that Jesus heals on the Sabbath and for the religious teachers, that made Jesus a lawbreaker. To be clear the Sabbath or to us Saturday, was a day off work to worship God, but the religious leaders had distorted it into a cosmic killjoy on the calendar where everyone just sat around like the lame man and did nothing. The religious authorities roll in and begin picking on Jesus for healing a man paralyzed for 40 years on the Sabbath. Let’s look at that again. Jesus heals a man paralyzed for 40 years and all they can think about, is Jesus did it on a Saturday. Verse 17, In his defense Jesus said to them, “My father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.” For this reason, they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God. “My father is always at work” Jesus drops a bomb on them here. He tells them it's not actually him doing the miracles but the father who's working on the sabbath. In other words, Jesus is saying, hey guys, God broke the Sabbath not me. Yahweh is a Sabbath breaker; I'm only working when my father is. If you've got a problem, take it up with him. No wonder the passage says they tried all the more to kill him, they're asking him who do you think you are? In verse 27 he tells them, I'm the Son of God, I'm your judge. He is given authority to judge because he is the Son of Man. Do not be amazed at this for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out and those who have done good will rise to live and those who have done what is evil will rise to be condemned. Jesus knows he's dropping bombs that are leaving them in shock, that's why he says “don't be amazed” in verse 28 but they were amazed, he was claiming to have the same authority of God himself, he was also claiming they were standing in the presence of the judge, they would meet after death. All who are in the graves will hear his voice. Here they thought they were judging him. You see they rolled in as the religious authorities ready to judge Jesus for breaking the Sabbath, healing on the Sabbath and yet they became the ones on trial, they were being the ones judged at that very moment, they just didn't realize it. The irony. Like the Pharisees, we live our lives thinking we are in a position to judge Jesus, but quite the opposite. It's he who judges us. Jesus turns the tables on them putting them on trial. Trial for what? They will be judged he says for not believing who he is. The judge the Son of God, the Son of Man, but Jesus knows they won't just take his testimony about himself as fact. So, in verse 31 he says “If I testify about myself, my testimony is not true. There is another who testifies in my favor, and I know that his testimony about me is true. “If I testify about myself” Jesus knows he can't act as his own defense attorney, your honor as my first witness I'd like to call myself. Jesus knows they need witnesses. How you convince someone of something they don't believe? You call on authorities they respect and trust. This happens in advertising all the time, which commercial sounds like it has more weight to you? We think our toothpaste is the best or four out of five dentists recommend such and such toothpaste. The four witnesses Jesus uses to testify and calls to his defense are John the Baptist, the miracles they witnessed, the father's own voice at boom from heaven it is baptism and lastly the scriptures themselves. Let's walk through these four briefly. Verse 32 Jesus calls his first witness, “There is another who testifies in my favor” and in verse 35 he identifies it as John the Baptist. “John was a lamp that burned and gave light, and you chose for a time to enjoy his light” but then in the next verse Jesus calls his second witness, miracles. Verse 36, “I have testimony weightier than that of John. For the works that the Father has given me to finish-the very works I'm doing-testify the Father has sent me. The works are miracles, were an even more powerful testimony according to Jesus about his authority and in verse 37 Jesus calls his third witness the father's voice from heaven where God turned the amp up to 11 verse 37, And the Father who sent me has himself testified concerning me. This happened when the father's voice boomed from heaven, “This is my beloved son” at the baptism where John the Baptist was there it was heard by a huge crowd, but Jesus has a fourth and last witness to call him verse 39 the Old Testament scriptures and this one is like a bullet between their eyes. Verse 39, You studied the scriptures diligently because you think by then you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life. Wow, that's an airtight case. Jesus says yet you refuse to come to me that you might have life. The chapter ends with the Pharisees in suspended animation, leaving this conversation and their eternal destinies unresolved. Just like people do, every day. Despite the evidence of Jesus’s transforming power, change lives, miracles, history and even the scriptures themselves be it the testimony by witnesses or fulfilled prophecy. People still today remain unconvinced, paralyzed as it were and unable to change their lives all because like Jesus said, “They refused to come to me.” The chapter closes out and the story moves on, but you don't have to. Why not weigh the evidence today and consider if you haven't, to come to him that you might receive eternal life.