Congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ,
Have you ever heard this before: God helps those who help themselves? It’s actually a very common idea!
- For instance, if you have someone who complains about being poor and ‘doesn’t God care about me!’, when they actually just lie in bed and watch TV all day, you can easily imagine some well-meaning person saying, “Get up and go and get a job. God helps those who help themselves!”
- But the idea that God helps those who help themselves can also be how people view salvation. As they see it, God sent Jesus and He died on the cross for the forgiveness of sins. So salvation is now possible for everyone. But that’s all that God can do. It is now totally up to each individual to choose or reject Jesus. But if they do; if they help themselves by choosing to believe, well, God can then respond by giving them His Spirit and welcoming them into His family. So, God helps those who help themselves.
- And there is actually a name for this understanding of salvation – Arminianism. It is named after a 17th century Dutchmen. He looked at verses like John 3:16 that talk about God loving the world and whoever believes shall have eternal life and said, See! Salvation is entirely about our free-will choice. He didn’t agree with the idea that God chooses some to salvation and brings them to faith in Christ. Uh-uh, said Mr Arminius, when it comes to salvation, God helps those who help themselves.
Well, as we think about this miracle in ch. 5, we shall see that it is actually a vivid and revealing picture of salvation. It is the third of the seven miracle signs that John records in his Gospel “that we might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing we may have life in His name.” And the miracle itself is quite astonishing.
But you wouldn’t think this from the reaction of the Jews, right? To them, what happens here is a crime. Their focus is not the incredible healing of this man but the fact that he is carrying his mat on the Sabbath! And that is how this miracle leads into the third of the seven discourses or conversations that John records in his gospel that also reveal Jesus to be the Christ. And we are going to see that this was very deliberate; Jesus intentionally performed this miracle on the Sabbath in order to bring about the discourse. But we will leave that part of ch. 5 till next time.
- Today we will just focus just on the ‘crime,’ the miracle. And what we learn here is that rather than God helping those who help themselves, God actually helps the helpless. And we will see this as we simply work our way through this episode beginning with the desperate condition of the man as it is laid out in vv1-7.
- 4 began with Jesus leaving Judea and Jerusalem and heading North to Galilee. Well, as ch. 5 opens, Jesus has returned to Jerusalem for a feast of the Jews. John does not tell us which feast it was, so for us to say anything more than that would just be a guess. He will mention specific feasts in the coming chapters, but the focus of this chapter is the Sabbath day. But because the national feasts are going to be very prominent in this next section of John’s Gospel, let’s think for a moment about the significance of the Jewish feasts. We are NT Christians. Right? That means we know that the Jewish feasts were all about What? Jesus! They all looked forward to and pointed forward to the coming of Messiah. And here He is! He comes to His own people. He comes and does amazing things at their feasts! And their response is to hate Him, reject Him, and eventually to kill Him during one of the feasts. And we will see an example of that here in relation to the Sabbath day, which was the weekly feast day of the Jews, which also pointed forward to Messiah.
- Well, we learn about a pool, which in Aramaic was called Bethesda. It was clearly a pool that John’s readers would have known about. It was a part of the temple surroundings. You can actually visit the ruins of this pool today. Archaeologists uncovered it in the 19th century and you can even see where the five covered colonnades were. And we are told that lots of disabled people would lie there, protected from the heat of the Sun by the colonnades.
- Now, I want to tell you boys and girls about a trick that will help you win a ‘Who knows the most Bible memory verses off by heart?’ competition. If your school teacher asks you if you know a Bible verse off by heart, you can say, I know 16 of them! And when your amazed teacher asks you to recite them, you start with John 5:4 and then say nothing. Have a look at John 5:4. There is no John 5:4! Do you see that? It goes from v3-v5! And there are 16 of these ‘missing’ verses in the NT! So what’s going on here? Well, King James Bibles do have John 5:4 and the other 15 verses. So why don’t our NIV or ESV Bibles have them? Well, you probably have a note on the page that explains this, but the answer is that the NIV and ESV Bibles are based on what Bible scholars believe are the oldest Bible manuscripts. And those manuscripts do not have v4. But they were found after the King James Bible was printed. So that’s why those 16 verses are in the King James Bible but not in the NIV or ESV. You see, before the days of printing, Bibles were made by hand-copying; you would copy an existing Bible to make a new one. Well, you can see from v7, which is in all Bibles, that the waters of this pool were stirred. So one possible explanation for how v4 came to be included in the KJ Bible is that way back in history, long before there were chapters and verses, someone who knew about the stirring and had an explanation for how the stirring happened, made a note of it in his Bible. But then someone copying his Bible included his note as part of the Bible, as did the next person, and so on. Now, I don’t want you to be all worried now that maybe your Bible isn’t reliable. Over 99% of the verses in all Bibles are the same. It is just a few verses that are in this category and none of those verses are important verses that would change any doctrine or fact. Your Bible is totally reliable and trustworthy.
- What we do know is that the usually calm pool water would start girgling away every now and then. It might have been the work of an angel. But it is equally possible that this was a natural spring effect that people said was the work of an angel. There were many ‘healing pools’ like this in the world of that time. You boys and girls might remember the story of Naaman the Syrian general who was healed after dipping himself into the River Jordan. So it is easy to see why people believed that some pools and rivers had miraculous healing powers. And probably because some claimed they had been healed, it was believed that the first person in after the stirring would be healed. Notice though that the miracle here is not about the pool, is it. There was a pool. That is where this healing happened. But the healing is about Jesus!
- Well, among the blind and lame and paralyzed persons there, we learn that there was a man there who had been an invalid for 38 years. That is a long time! And it becomes clear that he was paralyzed; he could not walk.
- Now, today, a paralyzed person receives full-time care from the day he or she is born, including physical and financial assistance. But things were quite different in Bible times. Later on, after he was healed, we read Jesus saying to the man, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.” And the plainest way to understand those words of Jesus is that this man was paralyzed as a result of his sin. Now, later in the Gospel, we will read a healing account about a blind man. And Jesus’ disciples asked Jesus if this was because of the blind man’s sin or his parents’ sin? But Jesus replied, “Neither”; the blindness was not because of personal sin. So just to be clear, the Bible does not teach that all illness is the result of personal sin. But the common understanding of those times was that all illness was because of personal sin. And because this man and his condition were well-known, it is possible that his sin was well known also. But even if it wasn’t, the assumption of everyone would be that he must have sinned, seriously, to be ill like this.
- Can you imagine then how difficult life was for this paralytic? He couldn’t physically walk there anyway but he was not allowed into the temple, because of his disability – so no temple worship for 38 years! And everyone ‘knew’ that he was a sinner, so he was viewed as unclean. Most people wouldn’t go near him.
- And speaking of being unclean, and not wanting to be indelicate, think about the personal hygiene of a person who cannot walk to a toilet. This man would be filthy, desperate, and alone; a complete outcast. And we see that this is so as he explains to Jesus that he has no-one to help him get in the pool after it is stirred. Not even family members, if there are any, are willing to sit with him to try and help him into the water; he has no-one.
- How did he survive? Only by begging and charity. There are debates in wider NZ society today about what defines poverty, but here you have a man on the absolute bottom rung of the poverty ladder.
- But in v6 we see that Jesus approaches him. And even before we look at the spiritual significance of Jesus approaching him, there is a lesson here about where we aim our evangelism, isn’t there. We have just seen Jesus heal the son of a royal official, but here He heals the social outcast; the difficult And so, our evangelism today, by which I mean showing kindness and speaking about Jesus, must surely also include people like the homeless, and those in dementia homes, and those caught in the grip of drugs like P – the ‘difficult cases,’ the messy lives, those society would prefer to hide out of sight. Don’t they need to experience and hear about the love of Christ, also?
- Well, Jesus approaches this man and asks him if he wants to get well. NOTE! It is not the paralytic asking Jesus to heal him. In fact, even after Jesus asks him if he wants to get well, the invalid’s focus is the pool; he explains to Jesus that can’t get well because cannot get into the pool at the right time. He doesn’t even realize that Jesus can heal him!
- And this, congregation, is why this miracle is a perfect picture of salvation. This is not Jesus helping someone who has helped themselves. This is Jesus helping the helpless; this is Jesus healing someone who isn’t even seeking healing from Him! And even immediately after he was healed, he still had no clue who Jesus was! This man was totally passive. This was a work of total grace. This was underserved favour.
- And this is not me telling you that I think this healing is a perfect picture of salvation, this is a Spirit-intended function of this miracle. Look ahead to verse 20 where Jesus reflects on this miracle. He says, “For the Father loves the Son and shows Him all He does. Yes, to your amazement He will show Him even greater things than these [meaning this miracle]. For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom He is pleased to give it.” This invalid is a picture of those who are spiritually dead in their sins, who don’t even know that Jesus can save them. But Jesus gives them life. Jesus heals/saves them.
- Look over to the next chapter and v44. There Jesus says, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” That’s what this miracle is showing us – we don’t go to Jesus, the Father draws us to Jesus. And that word ‘draw’ when it used in regular human situations in the Bible, is always used in the being compelled or dragged or forced against your will sense – fishing, prisoners, lawsuit.
- And that is how it has to be with salvation because of our desperately sinful condition. I want you to listen to these verses from Romans; listen to how they describe our utter helplessness and passivity when it comes to salvation: (5:6) “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.” The paralytic was powerless. (5:8) But it gets worse for us. (5:10) “When we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to Him through the death of His Son. (8:7) “The sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so.” Before the Holy Spirit works within us, we are not sympathetic, friendly, inquirers; we are powerless, hostile, enemies. Ephesians 2:1 sums up our condition in this way, “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins.”
- So the desperate condition of this paralytic is a perfect picture of the desperate condition of all humanity in their fallen state. We cannot help ourselves. What we need is a Saviour who helps the helpless. And the message of this miracle is that we have one in Jesus!
- And we see this as we very briefly consider the immediate effect of Jesus’ command. From v8, “Jesus said, ‘Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.’ At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.
- Now, we have already made this point in connection with a previous miracle, but it is worth noting again. What we have here, which is very intentional on John’s part, is an echo of Genesis 1. What do we read in Genesis 1, again and again? And God said, “Let there be … and there was ….” God spoke and it instantly came to be. And how is Jesus described in John 1:1? As the Word of God. And what do we read here? “Jesus said… and at once the man was cured.”
- Now, most of us here have probably had a broken bone or a muscle or tendon injury of one sort or another. We keep our brother Brett in business as an Osteopath J Well, when you have an injury like that, you need treatment and then exercises to rebuild the strength of those muscles. And there are some of us who just can’t play the sports we once played because the ankle or the knee or the hip or the back or all of the above just can’t handle it anymore; we are basically broken down.
- Well, imagine the condition of the muscles, tendons, ligaments, and bones of this man after 38 years of paralysis! But “at once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.” No surgery, no physiotherapy, no osteo work, no anti-inflammatories, no Physiapp to install on his smartphone with a list of rehabilitation exercises, “at once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.”
- How can this be? It can be if Jesus is God! And that’s the message here, isn’t it. Jesus is God. What you have on the page in front of you is an eye-witness account of something that many people saw – a 38 year paralytic gets up and walks! This happened! Jesus did it! The only question is, do you believe it?
- But even more importantly, Jesus is standing over you today, my friend, looking down at you in your sin and filth and guilt and misery and brokenness and inability and He is saying, “Do you want to get well?” Do you want to be saved? Do you want to have your guilt taken away? And don’t think to yourself, Well, I have been listening, Pastor, and you said I can do nothing; it is God who must save me! For notice that when Jesus told this man to get up, he got up! He obeyed and responded. And you, having heard the gospel must repent of your sins and believe in Jesus.
- What does that mean? Well, to repent is to recognize that you are a guilty law-breaker and to commit yourself to change. To believe is to be convinced that Jesus is the Son of God and that what He did on the cross, He did for you.
- So you say something like, Lord Jesus, I am sorry that I have sinned against you by breaking your commandments. Please help me to live in a way that pleases you from now on. Thank you for dying on the cross so that all my sins are forgiven.
- And then you ‘get up and walk,’ which means you live the rest of your life in the utter amazement and joy that you were saved by grace alone! It was not you; it was all Jesus, the helper of the helpless! And you become a member of a congregation and you worship and study the Bible and serve with other saved sinners, and you share the gospel of God’s grace with others who are helpless.
- And to those of you who already are believers: Is this your life today? Do you see yourself as the spiritual equivalent of this man – a healed paralytic? Are you amazed by and motivated by God’s grace in your salvation?
- Boys and girls, are you trying to obey Mum and Dad because God saved you?
- Young people, are you working on commitment and kindness and using your time well because God saved you?
- Husbands, wives, parents, employers, employees, are you Christian husbands, wives, parents, employers, and employees? Does the way you conduct yourself as a husband, wife, parent, employer, or employee reflect the grace you have been shown in Christ? Are you patient? Humble? Gentle? Kind? Are you selfless? Are you forgiving?
Congregation, when it comes to salvation, God does not help those who help themselves. Instead, as the picture of salvation that is this miracle reveals, God helps the helpless. Amen.