Healing 3 Barriers
Chris Knepp

Healing 3 Barriers

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Hope & Healing Week 3 – the Text

Stories of Hope and Healing

Barriers   John 5:1-18

John 5:1-18

5 After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 2 Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades. 3 In these lay a multitude of invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. 5 One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. 6 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?” 7 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.” 8 Jesus said to him, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.” 9 And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked.

Now that day was the Sabbath. 10 So the Jews said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to take up your bed.” 11 But he answered them, “The man who healed me, that man said to me, ‘Take up your bed, and walk.’” 12 They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take up your bed and walk’?” 13 Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, as there was a crowd in the place. 14 Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you.” 15 The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him. 16 And this was why the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. 17 But Jesus answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.” 18 This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God. (ESV)

Where are we in John’s Gospel?

John’s Purpose: John 20:30-31

30 Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; 31 but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

“The Book of Signs” (Chapters 1-12)

•       Water into wine (John 2:1–11)

•       Healing a royal official’s son (John 4:46–54)

•       Healing a disabled man (John 5:1–15)

•       Feeding 5,000 (John 6:1–14)

•       Walking on water (John 6:16–21)

•       Healing a man born blind (John 9:1–12)

•       Raising Lazarus from the dead (John 11:1–43)

Jesus in John’s “Festival Cycle”

•       Sabbath (5:1-47)

•       Passover (6:1-71)

•       Tabernacles (7:1-52)

•       Hanukkah (10:1-42)

Where are we in Jerusalem?

By the Sheep Gate at the Pool of Bethesda (“house of mercy”), or Beth-zatha (house of the olive”) in the NRSVUE. Adjacent to Crusader-era Church of St. Anne

Was there a Pool of Bethesda?

“When Jesus heals the paralytic in the Gospel of John, the Bethesda Pool is described as having five porticoes—a puzzling feature suggesting an unusual five-sided pool, which most scholars dismissed as an unhistorical literary creation. Yet when this site was excavated [late 19th century], it revealed a rectangular pool with two basins separated by a wall—thus a five-sided pool—and each side had a portico.” Bible History Daily

What were people doing at the pool?

The earliest and best Greek manuscripts do not answer this question, but the now-omitted verses 3b and 4 provided an explanation:

For an angel went down at a certain time into the pool and stirred up the water; then whoever stepped in first, after the stirring of the water, was made well of whatever disease he had. (NKJV)

•       Reverence for water as a valuable resource; every pool had its spirit

•       Probably fed by a natural spring, causing bubbles (“stirring”)

A Healing Sanctuary

“[O]nce a site was identified as a sanctuary of healing, the tradition was impossible to stop. Excavations at the site show that after the New Testament era, the pools  continued to be used as an Asclepion [after Asclepius, the Greek god of healing]....” Gary Burge, NIV Application Commentary John

Questions and Observations – Jesus

•       Why did he go to the Pool of Bethesda? (He seems to be alone.)

•       Why did he single out this particular man for healing?

•       What kind of a stupid question is “Do you want to be healed?”

•       Does Jesus correct the man’s superstitious belief? What little does Jesus say to the man?

•       Does Jesus suggest a connection between sin and sickness, at least in the case of this man?

•       How does Jesus respond to the accusation that he was violating the Sabbath regulations?

Questions and Observations. - The Invalid

•       What does the mention of 38 years tell us?

•       Who initiates the encounter? Does the man ask Jesus for healing? Does he answer Jesus’ question?

•       What are the barriers to this man’s healing? Are they only physical?

•       Does the man demonstrate faith? What did it take for the man to receive the healing power of Jesus?

•       Is there a spiritual healing in this encounter with Jesus? How is he to respond to the grace shown to him by Jesus?

•       Was it unlawful for the man to carry his bed on the Sabbath?

•       What does it say that the man didn’t even know who healed him?

Questions and Observations - “the Jews”

•       What causes this beautiful miracle story to turn into a murder plot?

•       Does anyone seem to care that the man has been healed?

•       Is the conflict ultimately about the law?

A Closing Question and Observation

“Jesus selects a man who is a particularly difficult ‘case.’ He does not reach out to those who are spiritually on the margin but socially ‘safe.’ Instead, he reaches out to someone whose suffering and isolation are beyond measure....

What implications does this have for where the church ‘goes’ today?”

Gary Burge, NIV Application Commentary John