Bethesda: Despair, Desire, and Deliverance

Speaker A: 00:00:06

He offers us the command to rise out of our wilderness, take up our past, and walk forward in deliverance, not merely as sinners saved by grace, but as more than conquerors through him who loved us. The Deep Waters Way, Where Scripture, Theology and Transformation Meet.

Welcome once again to the Deep Waters Way, where scripture, theology and transformation meet. I'm your host, Ray Cooper.

Today we're continuing our journey into the deep by looking at Jesus' healing of a lame man and how our will intersects with God's work. So grab a cup of coffee or hot tea and settle in for the journey. It's time to slip the moorings and head for the deep waters.

What if Jesus asked you a question that promised to change your life, that promised a new beginning? For a large part of my life, I wrestled with that question. I was content with my Christian walk.

I had accepted Jesus during a revival when I was in fifth grade, but my life largely went on as it was. I even once agreed with the sentiment that it was possible to be too Christian. And yet something deep inside me yearned for something more.

My life mirrored that of Israel that we see in the Old Testament, desiring a deeper, fuller relationship with God and seeking it out and then slowly falling back to the life I had before. And while a lot of that can be attributed to my own personal struggles, the pattern remained.

It wasn't until years later, when I finally submitted to the work God was doing in me, that things truly began to change. It was such a radical transformation, my wife said she could see it in my eyes.

Today we're looking at a story from Scripture about a man in need of radical transformation and about how his encounter with Jesus completely changed his life. Now let's look at the first part of our Scripture passage. We're in John chapter 5, beginning in verse 1 and going down at the moment to verse 9.

And as we read through this, take note of the scene, listen to John's description, and try to picture what it would have looked like. The porches created a shaded place for people to sit. The water in the pool. The multitudes of people gathered, waiting, desperate.

John says, "After this, there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is in Jerusalem, by the sheep gate, a pool in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades.

In these lay a multitude of invalids, blind, lame and paralyzed. One man was there who had been an invalid for 38 years.

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?" 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 down, another steps down before me. Jesus said to him, "Get up, take up your bed and walk."

Now, Jesus has come to Jerusalem for a festival. John doesn't tell us which one, and really, which one is irrelevant. There is some discussion about possibilities, but it doesn't matter to the story. The festival is not what's important here. It's just the mechanism that brings Jesus to Jerusalem.

I'm reading from the English Standard Version, and you may have noticed if you're following along in a different translation, I seem to have skipped verse four.

This is not because the English Standard Version is trying to remove anything from Scripture, but based on early manuscript evidence, it appears that verse four may have been added later to explain the stirring of the waters the man is talking about. However, there is still substantial discussion about this detail.

Regardless, the important thing to note is everyone here was waiting on movement, not looking for the mover.

Now, let's take a moment to talk about Bethesda, because for you to move deeper into this passage, you need some historical and archaeological context. The name Bethesda means house of mercy, and it seems people came here over a very long period of time seeking just that, mercy.

t at some point. By the early: 1800

And then in the late: 1800

Later excavations revealed two pools with a dividing wall between them and five covered porches, one on each side and one on the dividing wall between the two pools, just north of the Temple Mount, all just as John had described here. Scholars believe the southern pool was used as a mikveh, that is, a ritual purification pool fed by flowing water.

And the northern pool was used to retain water and keep the southern pool filled. The rediscovery of this pool isn't just an archaeological curiosity. It is evidence that the writer of John's Gospel, who I believe absolutely was the Apostle John, was someone familiar with Jerusalem prior to the Roman destruction in AD 70. And given the detailed description that he gives us of this event, very likely he was present when it occurred.

One final historical detail needs to be mentioned before we move on. I mentioned that the pools seem to have been in use for some time. At some point after the destruction of Jerusalem, the pools were repurposed as a temple to the Roman god of healing. People were coming here looking for mercy on the basis of the belief that the waters could heal.

Just as the bronze snake Moses, made by God's command in the wilderness, became an idol, so too this house of mercy had become a place where people idolized the waters. They came looking for movement and healing. And it is into this setting that Jesus walks that day.

John tells us that there was a man here who had been an invalid for 38 years. Now, John doesn't tell us much about this man, but he tells us about Jesus.

He tells us that Jesus saw the man and knew how long he had been defined by his condition. This lack of details actually allows us to see ourselves in the story. Imagine yourself in this man's place.

Think of your own situation, your own life, your own need, your own wilderness and despair. And now hear Jesus' question, do you want to be healed? What is your desire? Do you long for healing and transformation? Are you waiting for a moving of the waters?

None of those questions are irrelevant. Because when it comes to the Holy Spirit's transforming work, your desire matters.

Desire doesn't produce the change or bring healing. It's not even something really that we generate in ourselves. It's stirred up in us when God moves in our midst.

It's our internal response to God's ever present grace. Jesus saw the man, he sees us. Jesus moved toward the man, he moves toward us. Jesus spoke to the man and he speaks to us.

God's grace is made real to us as he moves and speaks. And something shifts inside us when Jesus asks this question. The question is not, how much do I want this?

The question is, what is happening inside me because Jesus is near. Jesus has just asked, do you want to get well? Picture it in your mind.

You've been in this condition for 38 long years, unable to provide for yourself, stuck here at this pool countless times, always hoping, always crushed in despair. It's absurd. Of course you want to get well. Of course you want your life changed. Of course you want a new beginning.

And now here's this guy, someone you've never met, singling you out and asking something utterly ridiculous. And there's no way to answer the question, not really. So you try to explain.

You offer your story, your hope, your attempts to avail yourself of the healing waters and how every time the water gets stirred up, your hope gets crushed because someone always beats you to the water.

Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up. And while I'm going another steps down before me, here lies a large part of the problem. He needs help getting into the water, which means he needs help getting to the pool to start with.

But whoever helps him get there never stays to help him when the water moves. Maybe he hopes Jesus will help him the next time the water's stirred. Regardless, he doesn't actually answer Jesus question.

He tries to explain why he can't be healed. And you and I do the same thing in our own lives. We want a new beginning. We want to be different. We want more. And yet we just can't see it.

We can't figure out how to make it all work. And so we sit here in our silent cage of despair, hurting, longing, desperate. And we offer reasons why things can't change.

I know from my own experience that there were many times I desperately wanted things to change. And yet they never did. At least not for long. I could pray and cry and force myself along, but nothing ever really changed. Not like I wanted.

And this is where Jesus steps back in. Not to help the man into the pool, not to fulfill his hope in the system that's left him in his sorry state for so long. But by offering him something real, something fulfilling, something new.

Have you ever noticed that when God breaks in, he does so in ways that defy conventional wisdom? To use Paul's words, God is able to do far more abundantly than all that we can ask or think. When God moves, it's not like the small stirring of the waters people were waiting for. He often moves in ways that overturn our expectations.

And that's exactly what Jesus does here. He doesn't help the man into the water. He doesn't offer comforting words. John tells us Jesus said to him, get up, take up your bed and walk.

And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked. Now, notice two things here.

Jesus is the one who's initiated and led this whole interaction, and he is the one who has brought it to this new beginning. The man brought nothing to this moment, but he did do one thing.

One thing that left undone would have left him lying on a mat, hoping to finally get a dip in moving waters. He obeyed. And in doing so, he experienced not moving water, but living water.

There's something else here I don't want you to miss. Notice the command Jesus gives. Get up, take up your bed and walk. Jesus could have ordered those words in any way possible. He could have simply said, you're healed.

In fact, he does say something similar to that phrase in other instances. But here he says it in this very specific way. And I think there's meaning in that.

You see, grace restores the person first. Get up in English is a direct command. But in Greek, the structure also implies a completed action. It's the physical restoration of the man's strength and health.

We often offer comforting words to others, but we forget or don't know that comfort has a Latin origin, meaning with strength. Jesus isn't offering kind words or sympathy. He's offering real strength, seen in the healing and transformation of this man.

And then the command, take up your bed mirrors the same formula. It's a decisive, completed act. The thing that once defined the man, the thing that once carried him, he is to now carry.

And this is what grace does in us. It doesn't just remove the past, it changes our relationship to the past. It no longer defines us. It becomes the evidence of our healing and transformation.

But the command to walk here is different. The structure of the word emphasizes not a completed action, but an ongoing action. This man is now to walk out his new beginning for everyone to see.

After 38 years, everyone who saw him knew his past. They knew where he had been. They knew how long he had been there. They knew he couldn't do this on his own. And now he himself is a living example of the transforming grace Jesus offers.

And again, John, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, doesn't give us many details in his narration of this event other than telling us what Jesus sees. The only real detail John gives us is that this man has been sick for 38 years.

And it's a very odd detail. Why include it? Why be specific about the number? It would have been sufficient to say he had been there for a long time. But it's a detail that I think would have drawn in John's earliest readers. They would have recognized the number 38 years.

In Deuteronomy 2, we're told that from the time Israel refused to enter the Promised Land at Kadesh Barnea, until they began to make their final approach to the Jordan river, was 38 years.

Now, most of us are familiar with Israel's 40 years in the wilderness. But Scripture is clear. That 40 years was comprised of 38 years wandering, followed by two years of moving toward the goal. 38 Years before crossing the brook Zered, the people chose doubt and fear over trust and obedience. They refused to enter the land.

And God swore that that generation of fighting men who had left Egypt would perish in the wilderness. And so they wandered in the wilderness of despair, one generation being punished, the next being prepared.

38 Years of wandering aimlessly, wondering if God would move, desperate for something new. And now it was time to get up, take up what had for so long defined them, and walk in obedience.

And in our story, not on the banks of a brook, but beside a pool of water, we see God's grace unfold once more. A man with no one to help him told to rise, take up his bed and walk.

And just in case that connection isn't profound enough, let me add to it for you. Joshua is the one who leads the people out of the wilderness into the promise. Joshua in Hebrew would be pronounced as Yehoshua. It means Yahweh saves.

And here's the connection to our story. The name Jesus comes to us through the Greek as iesous, which is simply the Greek form of Yeshua.

And Yeshua is a shortened form of Yehoshua that was common in first century Israel. And now Jesus, Yahweh's salvation in person, for real, not a shadow stands in front of someone with no man to help him.

He doesn't offer to help him into the pool. He offers a new beginning and a new way to walk.

But John hasn't finished the story. Verse nine adds, now that day was the Sabbath. This isn't accidental. Jesus intentionally chooses to heal on the Sabbath, near the temple, provoking a confrontation.

Because he didn't just come to heal physical brokenness. He came to heal spiritual blindness, lameness and paralysis. And his question resounds even to the religious leaders, do you want to be healed? Not just physically, but fully.

Now let's slip back into John's narration, beginning verse nine, continuing down through 14. "Now, that day was the Sabbath. So the Jews said to the man who had been healed, it is the Sabbath. It is not lawful for you to take up your bed.

But he answered them, "the man who healed me, that man said to me, take up your bed and walk." They asked him, "who is the man who said to you, take up your bed and walk?" 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.

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."

So the man obeys Jesus. He gets up, takes up his mat and starts walking. But it's the sabbath. And Exodus 20 tells us the Sabbath is for rest. And carrying is defined as work under the religious leaders teaching.

After the exile, they had established a fence of strict regulations around the law to prevent the incidental breaking of it. And as so often does, what began as a protection became a burden on the people.

But even the leaders were burdened by this fence because of their requirements. They missed the heart of the command, mercy, doing good, and God's ongoing provision and care for creation.

Notice, though, not once do they deny the healing. They don't deny that something has occurred, but they don't acknowledge it either. They're more concerned with tradition than with celebration.

They refuse to see the grace of God in action. And there's an old proverb that fits here. There are none so blind as those who will not see.

Later, John tells us Jesus found the man in the temple. After 38 years of not being able to enter, here he is. We don't know if he had gone there to offer prayers or sacrifices or even just to see the temple for the first time in nearly four decades. Regardless, here he is, and Jesus reminds him that he has been healed and that he should sin no more.

This is almost the exact same phrase we see in John 8:11, where he tells the woman caught in adultery to go and from now on, sin no more. It's really very simple, God's grace always draws us to a response, and our response leads us to one of two places.

We either refuse and perish in the wilderness of our own design, or we surrender in faith and enter into a new beginning as we trust what God is doing.

And this is where you and I fit into this story, because what we see in Scripture continues today. Jesus still comes to interrupt our lives, shake up our beliefs, and offer us a new beginning and a fulfilled hope of healing and transformation. He takes us out of our past and metamorphoses us into new creations.

He offers us the command to rise out of our wilderness, take up our past, and walk forward in deliverance, not merely as sinners saved by grace, but as more than conquerors through him who loved us.

My pastor often says that to be a conqueror is to overcome your own sin or past failures by God's grace. But to be more conquered than a conqueror is to share that grace with others to help them overcome as well.

And this fits in nicely with what Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 13:4, that God is the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

He doesn't just heal our pasts, transform us, and bring us into new beginnings solely for our own benefit. He strengthens us so that we might strengthen others and be an example of his grace in action.

Now, this raises a number of questions for us. What pool have you settled beside? What moving of the waters are you waiting for?

What wilderness have you normalized? What shallows have you accepted? Have you heard Jesus, Yahweh's salvation, call you to rise? And if you have, how have you responded?

Thank you for joining me today. As we close out today's episode, don't forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode.

It's time to slip the moorings and head for the deep waters, The deep waters way. Where scripture, theology and transformation meet.