Stand Up (John 5:1-15)
===
jeremy_1_05-12-2025_142022: [00:00:00] How much time do you spend thinking about things that should have happened? Like I should be married by now or I should have a kid by now, or I should have a better job. I should have a bigger house. I should have, something where I don't have to deal with this health issue. I should be happier than I am.
We can come up with all sorts of ways to fill in this sentence, but as the author, Sam Chand has said, your happiness is inversely proportionate to the shoulds in your life. The more shoulds you have, the less you're going to experience happiness. We're gonna see this in John chapter five. Our story we're gonna look at today is a fascinating story and one that we may not be able to immediately relate with, and yet the premise of what is going on here you're gonna see is just as applicable for us today [00:01:00] In John chapter five, verse one says, afterward, Jesus returned to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish Holy Days.
Inside the city, near the sheep gate was the pool of Bethesda with five covered porches. Now, crowds of sick people, blind, lame, or paralyzed, lay on the porches, and one of the men lying there had been sick for 38 years. Now this pool is dedicated to the healing power of the Greek God asclepius. And this was right kind of in the center of things.
They would go to this pool so that this Greek God could heal you. So it's possible that these blind, lame, and paralyzed people are not waiting for Israel's God to heal them. No, this is a place where the Greek gods will heal you. And so maybe the Greeks had something better to offer. Now, fun fact, if you're reading a version like [00:02:00] mine, you probably have no verse four. Seriously, check it out. If you've got a physical Bible, just look at your verses numbered, and you probably don't have verse four.
It just skips right over it. Now, there is a verse four, and it talks about an angel that would stir up the waters, and most people believe that was added later by the scribe, so it's often not included in our versions today. And so there's lots of ways to try to explain what was going on in these healing waters.
Was it. The Jewish God, was it the Greek God who was doing the healing? Now, what is this guy's condition? This guy that we've been talking about, he's either physically paralyzed or psychologically paralyzed. Either way, he's stuck. Now, this is to be expected when you've been dealing with the same thing for 38 years.
Now, I want you to think about what's the longest you've ever prayed for something. One [00:03:00] single prayer request. What's the longest you've ever done? Now, some people they could trace back years. They've prayed for something, but perhaps you can think about things you used to pray for that you don't pray for anymore.
What changed? Why did you stop praying for those things? Now you might have concluded God wasn't gonna answer it, at least not the way you were praying it. Or maybe you just got used to it, you just accepted the way things were and you stopped praying about it. That might be some of what's going on here, where this guy has gotten so used to what's going on, and he doesn't even know if something else is possible.
Then you get to verse six. When Jesus saw him and knew that he had been ill for a long time, he asked him, check out this question. Would you like to get. Well, now this seems like a ridiculous question at first, yet. This is a pivotal [00:04:00] moment in this story because Jesus is addressing a victim mentality. Now, what is a victim mentality where you can break it down into three things?
Bad things happen and they will keep happening. Other people or circumstances are to blame, and there's no point in trying to make it. Better. This is what leads you to a victim mentality. And Jesus is inviting this guy to take ownership of his life. What is it you want? And this man may have been thinking, well, it doesn't matter what I want.
And Jesus is asking him this question, you have a part to play in this story. To verse seven. I can't, sir. The sick man said for, I have no one to put me into the pool. When the water bubbles up, someone else always gets there ahead of me. This guy has gone into full victim [00:05:00] mode. No one will help me. There's nothing I can do about it.
Everybody else seems to get healing from this, and this is a temptation that you and I have when things don't go. Our way is to go into the same way of thinking that life is happening to us and there's nothing we can do about it. And this man probably had a good reason he'd been like this for 38 years.
And you probably have good reasons to think of yourself as a victim as well. Life has a way of bringing enough pain that most of us could be justified in choosing a victim mentality. I. Here is what I have found. A victim mentality works against what Jesus wants to do in your life, which is why Jesus asked this guy point blank, what is it you want?
Do you want to get healed? Verse eight. Jesus told him, stand up. [00:06:00] Pick up your mat and walk. Instantly the man was healed. He rolled up his sleeping mat and began walking. But this miracle happened on the Sabbath. So the Jewish leaders objected. They said to the man who was cured, you can't work on the Sabbath.
The law doesn't allow you to carry that sleeping mat. The religious people completely miss the point. That's not how it's supposed to happen. They get stuck on the how and they miss. The what, and we're gonna explore that more next week. But I want you to notice here that Jesus does not tell the man to get into the water.
It's almost as if Jesus is dunking on the Greek Gods here to say, look, I don't need this water to heal you. It's not the Greek God sleepies that's going to provide this. It is me. I'm the one healing and I don't even need this water. The pool of bethesda's, Jesus showing his superiority over these Greek [00:07:00] gods, and then we finish it out in verse 11, but the man replied, the man who healed me told me, pick up your mat and walk.
He's defending himself Well, who said such a thing as that? They demanded? The man didn't know for Jesus had disappeared into the crowd. I, I don't know who that was, but afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, now you are well. So stop sinning or something, even worse, may happen to you.
This is probably a reference to going to idols and worshiping them. And the man went and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had healed him. why does Jesus ask this guy? To carry his mat. Wouldn't it be more dramatic to leave the mat behind to leave it at the pool of Bethesda, as a tribute to his former life?
No. See, I think Jesus wants you to carry your healing with you, carry your healing with you, bring your story [00:08:00] with you. It is part of how we fight. Against a victim mentality. We don't leave our old life behind. We carry it with us. We show people, this is what my reality used to be, and here's who I am. Now
That journey becomes part of your story. So the most offensive part of all of this is that Jesus told the man to carry his mat to work on the Sabbath, and the man does and gets ostracized for it, and we're gonna explore that next week. But I want to close with a powerful idea for any of us, and maybe this is you today and you're fighting against a victim mentality.
Maybe you can relate to saying, well, why do all these things happen to other people? Why do other people seem to have their prayers answered and not me? I love what Christine Cain has said. There comes a time that we have to make what Jesus has done for us bigger than what someone has done to [00:09:00] us.
I want you to imagine Jesus saying to you, what do you want? Do you want to be healed? You have a say in your own life and as you experience whatever that healing may look like, you get to bring the healing with you. I'll see you next week on Rebuilding Faith.
