Miracles of Physical Healing— The Healing At The Pool
John 5:1-18
When you get sick, what are you like; Oscar the Grouch? Superman? Rip Van Winkle?
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Jesus Heals a Lame Man
John 5 1 Afterward Jesus returned to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish holy days. 2 Inside the city, near the Sheep Gate, was the pool of Bethesda,[a] with five covered porches. 3 Crowds of sick people—blind, lame, or paralyzed—lay on the porches.[b] 5 One of the men lying there had been sick for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him and knew he had been ill for a long time, he asked him, “Would you like to get well?”
7 “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.”
8 Jesus told him, “Stand up, pick up your mat, and walk!”
9 Instantly, the man was healed! He rolled up his sleeping mat and began walking! But this miracle happened on the Sabbath, 10 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!”
11 But he replied, “The man who healed me told me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’”
12 “Who said such a thing as that?” they demanded.
13 The man didn’t know, for Jesus had disappeared into the crowd. 14 But afterward Jesus found him in the Temple and told him, “Now you are well; so stop sinning, or something even worse may happen to you.” 15 Then the man went and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had healed him.
Jesus Claims to Be the Son of God
16 So the Jewish leaders began harassing[c] Jesus for breaking the Sabbath rules. 17 But Jesus replied, “My Father is always working, and so am I.” 18 So the Jewish leaders tried all the harder to find a way to kill him. For he not only broke the Sabbath, he called God his Father, thereby making himself equal with God.
Footnotes:b. John 5:3 Some manuscripts add an expanded conclusion to verse 3 and all of verse 4: waiting for a certain movement of the water, 4for an angel of the Lord came from time to time and stirred up the water. And the first person to step in after the water was stirred was healed of whatever disease he had.
Would you like to get well?
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Questions of Discovery
Seeking God’s Message Then and Now
1. How do you picture the setting of this story? Describe the sick at the pool of Bethesda. (John 5:2-4) What is the smell? The noises? The atmosphere?
2. How would you picture the invalid? (John 5:5-7)
3. How long had one man been ill? (John 5:5)
4. What did Jesus mean by what He asked the man? (John 5:6)
5. What was the man's answer and what did he hope Jesus might do? (John 5:7)
6. What did Jesus tell the man, what was the result? As the invalid, would you feel? (John 5:8-9)
7. When some Jews told the man it was not lawful to carry his bed on the Sabbath, what was the man's answer? (John 5:10-11)
8. What then did the Jews ask? Could the man identify Jesus? (John 5:12-13)
9. What did Jesus tell the man when He found him in the temple later? (John 5:14)
10. Why were the leaders so upset? How do you suppose they responded to the healed man's testimony? Why did the Jews then persecute Jesus? (John 5:15-16)
11. When Jesus told them, "M Father" works, and I work, the Jews sought to kill him. What two reasons caused this reaction in the Jews? (John 5:17-18)
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Questions for
Personal Reflection
1. In what ways to people today try to be healed without Christ?
2. How would you respond to someone who said all sickness is a result of sin?
3. Why would Jesus ask, "Do you want to get well? Describe the time you would have said “No.”
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