“After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem” (John 5:1).
The gospels always speak of “going up” with regards to Jerusalem. That’s because it’s built on a hill. The temple, where God dwelt, was in Jerusalem. Eventually, the New Jerusalem will come down out of heaven from God. God will be there. And there will be no need for a temple, for all Spirit-indwelt believers are temples of God.
Jesus goes to Jerusalem to a place called Bethesda, where a multitude of people are waiting for an angel to move the water. “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” (John 5:4).
In Hebrews 1, the angels are put in their proper sphere so that Jesus is the only one worthy to receive worship, and who ranks the highest over all. In this story, John will redirect angel-worshiping readers’ attention to Jesus. His goal, stated in John 20, is for his readers to believe in Jesus, not in angels. What are you believing of Jesus today? Do you have a fixation on angels that belongs to Jesus?
“Now a certain man was there who had an infirmity [ailment] thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he already had been in that condition a long time, He said to him, ‘Do you want to be made well?’ 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’ ” (John 5:5-7).
Perhaps the man thought Jesus was offering to help move him to the waters. Such was not the case. The Living Water was coming to him.
A side background note: These people who were disfigured in any way could not approach the tabernacle. Only the Levites could enter the holy place of the temple. In John 2:19-22, Jesus referred to His body as a temple. Jesus, filled with the Godhead, was a mobile temple on earth. With Jesus, the mobile temple, God in mercy goes out to the disfigured. (Bethesda means House of Mercy.)
How mobile is Jesus to you? Jesus isn’t a shepherd who wonders where the missing lamb is and decides to wait to see if it will return. He’s the shepherd who seeks what is lost and finds it and carries it home with him. According to the gospel, he is as near as our mouth and heart (Romans 10:9). If we call him Lord out of our need, and believe He was raised from the dead, then all other things become possible.
“Jesus said to him, ‘Rise, take up your bed and walk.’ And immediately the man was made well, took up his bed, and walked. And that day was the Sabbath” (John 5:8-9).
The commentaries will conjure up all kinds of ways to get the man having faith in Jesus for healing. But his faith is absent from the text. Remember that Jesus raised the dead. Where was their faith?
Jesus said that He did nothing on His own. He only did what the Father was doing and worked where the Father was working (That’s coming up in John 5:19). Because of this incident at Bethesda, later in the chapter we will learn these precious truths. We may wonder why Jesus did not empty the pool area of all the sufferers like He had healed scores of people in the other three gospels. In this case, the Father’s interest was on this particular man, so Jesus healed him alone.
It is possible this healing took place to reveal much about Jesus (later in connection with this man) that we may never have known otherwise. We would have been the worse with this whole chapter missing. In it we’ll find a fuller knowledge of the relationship between the Father and the Son, and how we can relate to working with the Son. Also, it presents the strongest case for the divinity of Jesus in a single chapter. God is sovereign. He knows exactly what will happen to benefit the readers of today. Healing this man was the tipping point for dominoes to fall. Back then the Father wanted this man healed. Through this chapter today, many more could be healed.
