THE MAN AT THE POOL

The pool at Bethesda is a picture of our world today.

Around this pool gathered the helpless and hopeless, the broken, “a large number of the disabled—blind, lame, and paralyzed” (John 5:3). Similarly, our world is full of the spiritually dead and destitute, seeking but not finding, hoping but hopeless, rich but worthless.

When Jesus visited the pool located just north of the temple complex in Jerusalem, he surveyed the scene, and focused His attention on a single individual within the crowd of twisted and deformed humanity. “One man was there who had been disabled for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and realized he had already been there a long time, he said to him, ‘Do you want to get well?’ ” (John 5:5)

That’s an odd question. “Do you want to get well?” Of course he wanted to be well. He’d been immobilized, paralyzed, disabled for “thirty-eight years.” The Bible doesn’t say, but I have a sneaking suspicion that he was thirty-eight years old. He’d never walked. As a child, he’d never had the ability to run and play. He’d been helpless for his entire life.

There was a superstitious belief that an angel would randomly stir the waters in the pool. When this occurred, the first person to jump into the water might be miraculously healed. When Jesus asked the man if he wanted to be well, he responded, “Sir… I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up” (John 5:7).

Jesus looked him in the eyes, and without any hocus-pocus, confidently said, “Get up … pick up your mat and walk”(John 5:8). Just as He had once said, “Let there be light” (Genesis 1:3), Jesus commanded weak muscles to be strengthened and brittle bones to be straightened. “Get up… and walk!”

He did.

Where did he go? “Jesus found him in the temple” (John 5:14), where he’d likely gone to praise God and give thanks for his deliverance!

“… think on these things” (Philippians 4:8, KJV).