Faith or Frustration: Series - Meet Messiah: A Simple Man's Commentary on John Part 2, Chapters 5-12

By Paul Murray

We begin the second part of this four-part series on the Gospel of John called Meet Messiah. In Part 1, "Behold the Man," we saw the introduction of the Messiah to both the human family and the nation of Israel. In Part 2, "Faith or Frustration," we will join His disciples as they walk in the footstep of the Master from chapter 5 through chapter 12. Here, opposition to Jesus and His ministry begins in earnest. Up through chapter 4 of John's gospel, the leadership of Israel was curious about whom this new rabbi really was. The ministry of John the Baptist had captured the attention of the nation with his proclamation that the kingdom of God was at hand and that folks needed to repent of their sins in preparation of the coming Messiah. At first, the Jews just dismissed Jesus as another new rabbi on the block. But His popularity had grown rapidly, outstripping even that of the Baptizer. The signs that He was doing had caught the attention of the masses as well as the Jews. When He cleansed the temple and chased out all the vendors, which was a primary source of income for the priests, He became a regular topic of conversation in the Great Sanhedrin. We will begin to see that the curiosity of the Jews turned to frustration, their frustrations turned to anger, and their anger turned to hatred, until finally a plot was devised to have Him killed. That was the only way they would ever stop Him and save their positions of power and control over the people. Strap in for the ride. It's going to get really, really bumpy. Who ever said being a Christian and being bold in your faith would ever be easy? The truth is it could get you killed, and history has demonstrated that many have died for their faith. Let's follow along with the One they have all been willing to die for.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: May 30, 2019
• ISBN: 9781644927137

Paul Murray

Paul Murray was born in 1975 in Dublin. He is the author of the novels An Evening of Long Goodbyes, which was short-listed for the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award. Skippy Dies (2010) was long-listed for the Booker Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. The Mark and the Void (2015) was the joint winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize and was named one of Time’s Top 10 Fiction Books of the year.

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FAITH or FRUSTRATION

A Simple Man’s

Commentary on John

Part 2: Meet Messiah

Chapters 5–12

Paul Murray

ISBN 978-1-64492-712-0 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64492-713-7 (digital)

Copyright © 2019 by Paul Murray

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Introduction

We begin the second part of this four-part series on the gospel of John called Meet Messiah. In part 1, Behold the Man, we saw the introduction of the Messiah to both the human family and the nation of Israel. In this second section, Faith or Frustration, we will join His disciples as they walk in the footstep of the Master from chapter 5 through chapter 12.

Here, opposition to Jesus and His ministry begins in earnest. Up through chapter 4 of John’s gospel, the leadership of Israel was curious about whom this new rabbi really was. The ministry of John the Baptist had captured the attention of the nation with his proclamation that the kingdom of God was at hand and that folks needed to repent of their sins in preparation of the coming Messiah.

The Jews (the leadership of Israel) were stunned at the crowds, and the popularity of the Baptizer had stirred in the folks. There had been no prophet in Israel for the past four hundred years; and now, indeed, a true prophet had arisen. But was John just a prophet? Could he have been more, maybe even the Messiah who had long been awaited?

After the inquisition sent to John by the Sanhedrin, it had been determined that John was neither the prophet talked about in Deuteronomy who would precede the Messiah nor the reincarnation of Elijah nor even the Messiah himself. It was determined that John was nothing more than a reed blowing in the wind, a popular fad that would soon die out.

As John’s ministry did begin to grow, something very unexpected happened. It didn’t actually become a fad; it began to go through a metamorphosis. John had identified a Nazarene named Jesus whom John claimed was the Son of God, the Lamb of God who would take away the sin of the world. John was encouraging his massive following to follow Jesus, and they were doing it.

At first the Jews just dismissed Jesus as another new rabbi on the block. But His popularity had grown rapidly also, outstripping even that of the Baptizer. The signs that He was doing had caught the attention of the masses as well as the Jews. When He cleansed the temple and chased out all the vendors, which was a primary source of income for the priests, He became a regular topic of conversation in the Great Sanhedrin.

As the masses of followers began to believe in this new rabbi, the curiosity of the leadership of Israel began to turn to frustration. His claims began to boarder on blasphemy, in their opinion, and they were losing their grip on the people. Their scholars couldn’t seem to stump Him. In fact, they began to get the feeling that He was unstoppable.

In this lengthy section, we’ll see the curiosity of the Jews turn to frustration, their frustrations turned to anger, and their anger turned to hatred, until finally a plot is devised to have Him killed. That was the only way they would ever stop Him and save their positions of power and control over the people.

Strap in for the ride. It’s going to get really bumpy. Who ever said being a Christian and being bold in your faith would ever be easy? The truth is it could get you killed, and history has demonstrated that many have died for their faith. Let’s follow along with the One they have all been willing to die for.

Chapter 1

A Lame Situation

John 5:1–15

I hate being sick. In fact, I don’t even like going to the doctor, and my doctor is a really good friend and a good guy. He’s got a beautiful wife and two amazing daughters. But seeing him in his office is not for me. I’ll meet him at HuHot any time for some Mongolian grill, just not in his office.

Hospitals are even worse than the doctor’s office. That phobia stems from my time in the hospital as a high school senior. I had been originally diagnosed as having tuberculosis. When they stuck that little needle in my forearm to test for tuberculosis, my whole forearm swelled up, red and hot.

After four weeks of isolation at home, flat in bed, my lungs collapsed. They rushed me to the hospital. The process of draining the fluid off my lungs was one of the most painful experiences of my life. They had me lean to my left as far as I could while they stuck a needle between my ribs as big as a garden hose! I almost fainted. But they got a little more than two quarts of fluid out.

After extensive testing, I was diagnosed as having reticulum-cell sarcoma (lymphoma), a very rare bone marrow cancer. The very next morning, three of the ribs on my right side were removed, and my lungs were scraped. After several days in recovery, the surgeon who did the operation came into my room and sat on the bed next to me. He wanted to have a heart-to-heart talk.

The upshot of our little discussion was that I needed to explore all the possibilities of exercising my mind. He told me that I might not walk again and would certainly never be able to be active in any sports. At that time, I enjoyed gymnastics, had gone out for football, loved to bodysurf, and was learning to board surf. I loved all the activities of the beach where we lived in Costa Mesa, California.

When Dr. Tully told me I needed to explore my mind, I thought he had been drinking! I was barely making it through high school academically. Sports were everything. He might as well have told me to climb into a casket and die! That was in 1960, and that’s why I don’t like doctors or hospitals to this day. It’s my phobia that if I go to either one, someone will find something terribly wrong with me. At the end of this chapter, I’ve included a copy of the original letter Dr. Tully sent my mom seven years after that surgery. The letter was in response to her request for my medical records. It’s an interesting read.

An Awful Place

This takes us to the scene in John 5 with this lame guy. My heart goes out to him. The scene is set:

1 After these things 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, which is called in Hebrew Bethesda, having five porticoes.

3 In these lay a multitude of those who were sick, blind, lame, and withered [waiting for the moving of the waters;

4 for an angel of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool, and stirred up the water; whoever then first, after the stirring up of the water, stepped in was made well from whatever disease with which he was afflicted.]

5 And a certain man was there, who had been thirty-eight years in his sickness.

Verse 1 mentions that there was a feast of the Jews. Some believe this to be a Passover feast, but that doesn’t seem likely to me. Three Passover feasts are mentioned in John’s gospel, one in 2:13 where He cleansed the temple for the first time. The second is mentioned in 6:4 when Jesus was about to feed the five thousand, and the third is mentioned in 13:1, which was the Passover when Jesus was crucified.

John mentions this feast without any specificity simply to give the reason Jesus was in Jerusalem at this time. My guess is that Jesus was nearing His second year of ministry. That would account for the strong opposition we will find in this passage, especially the comment about killing Him in 5:18.

The Sheep Gate, mentioned in our text, is also referred to as the Sheep Market and was perhaps the place where sheep were sold for sacrifices. It was apparently the gate through which sheep entered the temple area when they were led to sacrificial slaughter. John mentions it to identify the location of the Pool of Bethesda, which was really a double-pool structure. How fitting that the good shepherd would be among His sheep.

This pool and these porticoes were only discovered in 1963. There used to be some question about their existence, but all has been put to rest. Around the pool are several porticoes at different levels. This is just outside what is now called St. Stephen’s Gate, which is the exact sight of the original Sheep Gate on the north side of the temple compound.

These pools were given the name Bethesda. Bethesda means house of mercy or pity. Poor, desperate, discouraged, and helpless people gathered here hoping to find mercy and pity from God. Here, it is believed, was where the Author of all mercies showed up to give mercy to the merciless. The two pools were surrounded by five porticoes. The term five porticoes refers to covered colonnades. This was typical Roman architecture.

In John’s description of this scene, he specifically identifies four types of maladies. These are the sick, blind, lame, and withered. Sick would typically mean those who were physically ill because of some kind of disease. It could include a great variety of diseases from measles to cancer and everything in-between. I don’t think we are talking about the common cold or flu as being included in this category. The whole scene speaks of something more serious than the sniffles or a headache. Folks were here to get healed. Sickness would speak more of a long-lasting sickness or chronic illness.

Blind would refer to folks who were blind. This could include anything from a birth defect, like the man born blind in chapter 9, to severe cataracts. It might also include those blinded by accident or injury. As we know from other passages of scripture, blindness was completely debilitating, reducing a man to begging as the only means of making a living.

Lame would mean those who were crippled, including those born with birth defects, those who had lost limbs, those who had withered limbs, or those who had been made lame through a serious accident.

Withered would mean those who had become debilitated over a long period of time and had suffered muscle atrophy and general physical deterioration. This would include folks who had suffered for years. Their bodies had simply worn out. These were perhaps the bleakest cases by the Pool of Bethesda.

These categories are mentioned to cover the whole gamut of those in society who are hopeless, helpless, discouraged, and defeated. They’ve tried doctors, medicine, and every remedy known to man. They have clearly lost all hope in any human effort to cure their malady. Their only remaining hope is in something outside the realm of man, something supernatural. They have been reduced to hoping in superstitious belief because there was no natural remedy possible.

From a big picture point of view, all these maladies of men can be seen as a picture of the fallen nature of all humanity. Sin has broken all of us. The ravaging effects of the fallen human condition have left us all hopeless, helpless, discouraged, defeated, confused, and depressed. The masses lying around these two pools illustrates for us of the condition of a world without God and a world without hope. This is the result of the fall of man and his rejection of his God. All the effects of that evil are here expressed in human, physical turmoil.

The Story Behind the Story

You will notice that the end of verse 3 and all of verse 4 (unless you have a King James version) are in brackets. That is to indicate that this was not in some of the original or oldest texts. It was added later by the scribes to make sense of why these folks were by these pools.

There was a multitude of sick folks lying around in the porticoes near the pool. I used to think that they were always there, but the text doesn’t say that. If you think about that, it doesn’t make sense that they would always be there, night and day. Where would they go to the bathroom? How would they eat?

Family members or friends would bring these folks here as often as they could. Most likely, the vast majority of them were here only on the Sabbath. There is no doubt the biggest crowds, the multitudes we have here, showed up during the festivals of Israel which, according to verse 1, is what was going on at this time. They numbered in the hundreds, perhaps thousands on festival days.

There was a popular superstitious belief that at certain or various times an angel of the Lord would stir the pool and the first one in the water would be healed. There is no evidence to confirm nor deny this. This belief was passed down as folklore. According to what I have read on this, geologists have discovered that at different times, underground springs and reservoirs will surge causing the wells in the area to rise and fall rapidly. This could explain the stirring of the water. Whether the healing effects happened or not, it cannot be verified, thus the brackets.

But there have been similar things like this around the world. Lourdes in Southern France has a spa which many believe has healing capacity. The Shrine of Guadalupe in Mexico City has thousands of crutches stacked against its walls from folks who have been healed. Even here in Washington State, Soap Lake in the central part of our state is said to have healing powers and was very popular a few decades ago. I would agree that some of this is really bizarre and inexplicable, but beware of other forces at work that parade as angels of light.

If you think about this scene for a moment, what a cruel thing this would have been if it were really true. There is nothing about this superstitious belief that is consistent with the character of God. There were multitudes of distraught people, desperately hopeful, wanting to be first into the pool and be healed. It was believed that the first to get in benefitted, first come, first served.

Can you imagine the competition among the sick people and their family members helping them to get in the pool once the waters were stirred? It must have been fierce. In fact, one would think that when someone thought the water had been stirred, people were trampling over one another to get in first. Pushing, shoving, and thinking only of themselves would have been the attitude. There is nothing about this that seems to be consistent with the character of a loving, benevolent, merciful God. However, when you are desperate, you take desperate measures, especially when all other hope is lost.

The text tells us that a certain man was lying there. Really? A certain man? Weren’t there a multitude of certain men? I love the way God chose you and me. We were just one of the masses until God put His eyes on us. It was at that moment we became that certain man. Jesus said in verse 17 that "My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working." The clear implication is that Jesus was doing what the Father was directing Him to do. It was the Father who had selected a certain man for Jesus to heal at this particular time in this particular place.

That raises a huge question in my mind, "Why?" What is God doing and what is God wanting us to understand from all this? On a superficial level, it seems clear that God had a distinct purpose for this one person, exclusive to the rest of the multitude of the sick, blind, lame, and withered lying around. God in His sovereignty chose only to heal this one man. Apparently, Jesus’ direction from the Father was not in healing the whole crowd. But why him? More to the point, why me?!

Why Just One

I want to digress for a moment here, but I’d like you to seriously consider this digression. If it was a cruel hoax when the water was stirred to heal only the first one in (because of all the chaos, pushing, shoving, and scrambling to be first, especially when those with some mobility had the advantage), how much crueler was it of Jesus to pick only one out of a multitude of desperate people to heal? What about all the others who were just as needy? The text tells us in verse 13 that after healing this man, Jesus slipped away. He purposely didn’t stick around to heal anyone else. Could He have healed them all?

I know 99.9 percent of you reading this will automatically say, Yes, He was God. He could heal whomever He wanted, whenever He wanted. But wait a minute. Think more closely. Yes, He was God, fully God; but He was also man, fully man. Here’s the thorny heart of this question: Could Jesus do something the Father did not want Him to do?

I would say yes. He could. However, to do something contrary to the Father’s will would have been sin. So, if you believe that Jesus could have healed everyone, because He was God, and doing so would have been contrary to the Father’s will, then you are admitting that Jesus could have sinned, even though He was God.

Maybe there’s another potential answer to this. We know from Jesus’ own testimony He did only what the Father directed Him to do. If Jesus were truly a man, He could only do what the Father empowered Him to do. If the Father told Jesus to turn the water to wine, the Father would give Jesus the ability to turn the water to wine. If the Father told Him to heal the royal official’s son, the Father would give Him the power to heal the royal official’s son. If the Father directed Him to go over and heal one man who had been lame for thirty-eight years, the Father would enable Him to do that. But if Jesus knew that the Father did not want Him to heal the whole multitude, then there would be no power available to do so. Jesus derived His power and ability through faith, trust, and dependence upon the Father. That, I believe, is the point of this illustration.

Some say the reason we can’t do great miracles today is because our faith is too small. If we just had great faith, we could do great things. I say baloney! I’m not against great faith and I do believe there are tremendous advantages to great faith, but Jesus said it only takes faith the size of a nearly microscopic mustard seed to move a mountain! That’s not great faith.

The point is God will give you the capacity to do whatever He calls you to do (even move a mountain) regardless of the size or greatness of your faith. Jesus slipped away because He knew His job at the Pool of Bethesda that day was over. The Father didn’t want Him to heal anyone else, and slipping away was the best way to compassionately deflect the multiple of requests that would certainly have followed if He had hung around.

This drives our thinking to why the Father didn’t want to heal them all. That is a great question with a relatively simple answer that seems a bit harsh. Your physical healing, especially when it is as desperate as those around these pools, is not a top priority for God. Health, wealth, and prosperity are not God’s top priorities for any believer, despite what you hear on a late Sunday night on Christian television. There are millions of believers around the world in poor undeveloped countries who will never know health, wealth, or prosperity.

God’s top priority for you is your spiritual healing and health. Why? Because God knows that you are an eternal being. You are going to live for all eternity. There are several expressions in the scriptures that describe your earthly life, expressions like a vapor,¹ a withering blade of grass,² and a momentary light affliction.³ In comparison to all eternity that stretches before us, this life is only a brief flash.

Yet, the extreme importance of this life God has given every one of us is precisely this: This is the moment, our time on earth, to decide how we want to spend all eternity. Do we want to spend it with God or without God? The choice is really that simple. Yes, life is hard, very hard; but that wasn’t the way God designed life to be. Life is hard because of sin, because of the fall of man that has enslaved every one of us who are sons of the first Adam.

We have inherited his sin nature, and we continue to perpetuate the effects of that nature through our own self-centeredness. Jesus died to pay the penalty of that sin and to give us the choice to be set free from its enslavement. Will we choose that freedom, or will we choose to continue to live in death? That’s the choice life gives us. God’s priority for us is that we choose life in His Son, whether we are lame or not.

The fact that this man had been for thirty-eight years in his sickness simply underscores and emphasizes the utter hopelessness of his condition. All of his adult life was spent in misery and pain. I’m going to suggest that he was about fifty-six years old. I wonder if some doctor of his day sat on the edge of his bed when he was eighteen years old and told him to forget about ever living a useful life and to develop his mind!

For thirty-eight years he had been trying to get into the pool first. For thirty-eight years he had been frustrated at every attempt. It is amazing that he kept showing up when it was so hopeless. All of his efforts were without result or success. If this man had any one good quality, it was tenacity.

This teaches us one amazing and very important principle: We cannot save ourselves no matter how long or hard we try. Even those around us, who love us the most, who try to help us, can’t save us. We are enslaved to our sin just like this poor, helpless man was enslaved to his lame condition. Sin is the ultimate crippler. It keeps us lying with the blind, lame, and withered in life, always looking and hoping for something better but never finding it.

The Father directed Jesus to this man because of the sheer desperateness of his situation. Perhaps the thing that caused the Lord to single out this guy was the very fact that he had been so consistent in coming and seeking to be healed. Seek and ye shall find, Jesus must have been thinking. It doesn’t say how long to seek; it just says seek. Seek until you find. That is exactly what this man did. This man had come to the conclusion, like most of the rest, that the only help that could heal him had to come from outside himself. His only solution had to be supernatural.

The Encounter

The story continues:

6 When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he had already been a long time in that condition, He said to him, Do you wish to get well?

7 The sick man answered Him, Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I am coming, another steps down before me.

8 Jesus said to him, Arise, take up your pallet, and walk.

9 And immediately the man became well, and took up his pallet and began to walk.

How did Jesus know that he had been for a long time in that condition? Many would argue that it was because Jesus was omniscient, that He was God and that’s how He knew. I say wrong! Yes, Jesus was God. But omniscience was one of the privileges of deity Jesus gave up in becoming flesh and dwelling among us, along with omnipresence and so many other privileges of deity. We covered this topic in Meet Messiah Part 1, and I don’t want to rehash it here, but to believe that Jesus operated out of the privileges of deity undermines His model for us in living the Christian life. You and I don’t have divine privilege by which to handle life’s situations.

Jesus knew he had been in that condition for a long time because this wasn’t Jesus’ first trip to the temple in Jerusalem. He had been coming here, perhaps three times every year, all his life. He was very familiar with the Pool of Bethesda. He was very familiar with the superstitions surrounding the stirring of the waters.

Many times, as a teenager and young man, Jesus had come out here and looked upon the masses of desperate humanity and grieved over the destruction sin had ravaged in the human soul and spirit. I’m sure He often prayed that the Father might one day use Him to bring some hope to these hopeless people.

He had often seen this lame man before. The man had become almost legendary over his thirty-eight years visiting these pools, hoping upon hope to one day be the first person in. So many of his friends had died before him. Yes, Jesus had seen this man many times before. His story was well known.

For Jesus, this visit to the Pool of Bethesda was different. He spotted the man he had seen many times before, right there in the same spot he had always occupied. The Father stirred Jesus’ heart to action, and Jesus headed straight for him, stepping around and over others as He approached the man. As His disciples followed behind Him, the stench of rotting humanity, urine, and the filth of excrement nauseated them. As Jesus came up to him, stooping down beside him, He asked a very unusual (even awkward) question, Do you wish to get well?

My first thought on reading this was, "Are you kidding me? Of course not! I love to be lame and lie here day after day, for the past thirty-eight years, among this misery and stench without any hope of ever getting into that pool. Duhhh. Yes, I want to get well!" Why did Jesus think he had been coming here for thirty-eight years if he didn’t want to get well?

But be not so quick. This is a critically important question. The truth of the matter is there are a lot of sick, lost, lonely, desperate, poor, needy people who don’t want to be healed or made whole again because if they were healed, they would have to become responsible for their lives again. They wouldn’t get the sympathy, support, and attention that they had become accustomed to enjoying. They would no longer be able to blame their failures on their malady.

For millions of people on our planet, being on the public dole is preferable to being whole and healthy. It gives them an excuse to not be responsible for their own lives. So the first and most important question to ask is, Do you really want to get well?

The first question every sinner must ask himself is, Do I really want to get well and be forgiven of my sin? or Do I believe I have done nothing to be forgiven of and I like my lifestyle as it is? The reasons I just stated above make that a crucial question.

If your answer is that you like your lifestyle just as it is, then God can’t help you if you reject the grace He offers and don’t want anything to do with Him. One of the things the lame man showed us through his persistence over thirty-eight years is that he was very open to divine intervention, in becoming whole again.

The very reason Jesus came to this place was because these folks were emblematic of the lost He came to seek and to save. They had no access to God in a literal sense. The Jewish law forbade any unclean or lame person from coming into the temple. That’s why we see the lame, blind, and beggars begging outside the temple or near the temple. There was no other place for this poor man to go for divine help but to the pool.

So Jesus went to the sinner! Hmmmm. How amazing. How like Jesus to do that. I’ll bet there was not another Jewish leader there. I’ll bet there was not a Pharisee in sight nor a scribe nor another rabbi nor a priest nor anyone from the religious community, just Jesus. What an illustration this is of Jesus climbing into the sewer of humanity to save lost sinners. He left the purity of heaven to come to the sludge of a fallen world, just to seek you and me out so that He might save us! That is amazing.

When Jesus asked the question, Do you wish to get well? for the first time in decades this man felt a real sense of hope and expectation. No one had ever asked him that question before. Everyone assumed that was what this man always wanted. Jesus brought that assumption into focus.

Refocusing

Before a sinner can be delivered from his sin, he must bring into clear focus his need to be saved. The issue before every sick, blind, lame, withered man is not Do you want a better life? or Do you want a nicer retirement? or Do you want a stress-free life? or even Do you want financial freedom? No, the first and primary issue every man must face is Do you want to be forgiven of your sin? Do you want God to remove the sin in your life that has kept you captive? A man must first come clearly to grips with that issue.

The lame man’s answer to Jesus’ question was rather indirect. He didn’t say yes, but he did explain his frustration. He had tried to get well by getting into the pool first. He wanted to get well, and that’s why he kept coming here, but he had continually been frustrated for thirty-eight years! He claimed that his problem was that he had no man to help him. He didn’t say this exactly, but he was dependent on men, not on God. Well, guess what. The God-Man had just showed up to help him.

Maybe the purpose of the question was to help this man rethink where he was placing his faith. From his point of view, without man’s help, he had no chance of ever being healed. His faith needed to be in the right man to help him, the God-Man, Jesus of Nazareth.

Right here I think it is very important to understand what Jesus did not do. He did not say, Well, I’ll help you get into the pool. That would have delighted the man, but that was not Jesus’ intent. He did not say, Hang in there. Keep coming. I’m sure someday you will win the lottery. He didn’t try to encourage the man to keep doing his best. He could have, but that was not Jesus’ intent. He didn’t say, Let’s at least make you comfortable. I’ll get a new mattress and bring a bright bouquet of flowers to cheer you up while you lie here. He could have said that, but that was not Jesus’ intent.

Three Commands

Jesus simply gave this man three commands in verse 8: Arise! Take up your pallet! Walk! The first command was impossible. It was something the man wanted to do for the last thirty-eight years but had been unable to do. Why did Jesus ask this man to do the impossible? What must have gone through this man’s mind when Jesus said Arise?

Do you think this man had any idea whom Jesus was? I do. John 2:23 tells us that many had believed in Jerusalem having seen the many signs He had done there. It would seem almost inconceivable that this man would not have at least heard about Jesus. He might have never seen Him, but surely he had heard of Him.

Nicodemus recognized Jesus as a teacher who came from God because of the signs He was doing that no one else could have done without God’s power. The Galileans had received Him warmly having seen all the things He had done in Jerusalem.⁴ This lame man lived in Jerusalem and clearly had heard of the Miracle Worker who was causing such a stir. Could that be the man who was now squatted beside him?

When Jesus issued this command Arise, the man had two choices. He could have reasoned, That’s ridiculous. I can’t ‘arise.’ I’m sick. I’ve been lame for thirty-eight years. Are you kidding me? Or he could respond to the impulse that was rushing through his mind and heart. Should he believe, by faith, what Jesus was asking him to do and give this thing a shot?

To the man’s credit, he chose to believe what Jesus was asking (believe that Jesus would give him the ability to do it). In the very act of making the effort to get up, he found that he had the ability. Verse 9 says immediately the man became well. So, at the point the man put his faith in what Jesus was asking and acted upon that faith, he was completely healed.

He needed to act on what Jesus commanded by attempting to get up, which he did, and he found he had been healed. Faith always requires that you do something. Faith is an action word. It is putting your belief into action. This was also illustrated by the royal official in John 4 who started off after believing Jesus’ word that his son was made well.⁵

The second command was pick up your pallet. What’s the point of that command? I like what G. Campbell-Morgan says here. His opinion is that Jesus commanded this in order to make no provision for relapse. The man could have reasoned he’d better leave his pallet where it was, close to the pool, in case he had a relapse. He needed to save his spot. In other words, he’d better be prepared for the worst-case scenario, a relapse.

Jesus was teaching this man something very important once he had been healed: Don’t make any provisions for ever going back, and burn all the bridges that have gotten you into that mess in the first place. This is where many who are saved fail. God may have delivered you from some addiction. If He has, go home and pour out all the liquor. Go home and flush all the drugs down the toilet. Burn all the bridges with those who have become your support group in that sin. Delete their names from your electronic devices. Don’t associate with them again. Take up that pallet and get out of there.

I had the privilege several years ago to lead a Buddhist woman to Christ. She was married to a man who had graduated from a Baptist seminary. One Sunday they would come to church as a couple; the next Sunday only the husband would come. Once I noticed that, I inquired of the husband why his wife came only every other Sunday. His response was that she was Buddhist and that on the alternate Sunday she would drive into Los Angeles to worship her guru, a living person. This couple had just begun to come to a midweek Bible study group I was leading.

His wife asked if we could meet in my office and talk about being forgiven of sin. She recognized that she was a sinner, but there was nothing in Buddhism that acknowledged or dealt with sin. She wanted to talk about that. She felt that her sinful deeds clung to her like dirty clothing. After several lengthy visits, she came to the place where she admitted to her husband, to me, and to our Bible study group that Jesus was the only real Savior and that her guru and Buddhism offered no solution for the problem of forgiveness of sin. She gave her heart completely to Jesus.

That same night, she and her husband filled two 35-gallon trash cans with all the paraphernalia of Buddhism (statues, books, magazines, candles, trinkets, pictures, everything). She had devoted one bedroom of their home and a closet (as a prayer room) to the worship of Buddha. All of it was removed and taken to the dump. Nothing of Buddhism was left. She made no provision for the flesh. That was what Jesus was asking of this lame man: Pick up your pallet. You’re not to go back there again.

The third command was walk. What is the lesson in that command? It is precisely this: Don’t expect to be carried anymore. Don’t expect everyone to gather around and help you along. Carry your own load. Bear your own burdens. Be dependent on Jesus and not the system or your network of friends. It’s time to walk on your own two feet (and keep walking). It’s grow up time. You are now no longer looking to your friends for help. You are now looking to the Lord for His strength to sustain you. I’m not saying you don’t need support; you do. I’m saying it’s time to take responsibility for your own faith. It’s time to walk with Jesus.

Imagine the Scene

Can you imagine the reaction of the multitude and the scene that must have taken place the instant this man got up, folded up his pallet, and began to walk out of there? Put your imagination hat on. You are lying there when Jesus comes along, not fifteen feet from this guy. You’ve been lying there for a long time yourself. This lame man, whom you’ve come to know very well over the years, is lying just a couple of bodies over. You’ve had many conversations with him.