WEEK THREE
Day Four
DAILY SCRIPTURE
John 5:6-9
LEADER GUIDE QUESTIONS
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Know: Read John Chapter 5
Note: Mark keywords, including pronouns and phrases. (Father, live, testimony, believe, Jesus)
Ask questions: (Use tools such as interlinear bibles to search the original meaning of words- free tool here) For example:
Who?
What?
When?
Where did this take place?
Why?
How did Jesus explain the Father?
Observation: Read Genesis 1-2, Exodus 16, Hebrews 4
What: What does today’s study reveal to you about the nature of God? What truth do I need to apply to my life today?
Healing at the Pool of Bethesda
“Do you want to be healed?” John 5:6
“Sacred Cows” are pet doctrines taught through the years, which feed unbelief. Unbelief is one of the greatest enemies of a believer’s life. It is the thing that kills even the smallest seed of faith because it is the opposite of faith. The Bible refers to these ideas as “strongholds.”
For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ…” 2 Corinthians 10:4-5
I want to dive a little deeper into this story found in John 5 to challenge unbelief.
Not only have I heard pastors teach that the Angels who stirred up the waters were demons, but I have also heard something like this: “Jesus stepped around all the others just to touch that one man.” And then, as most imagine the story to proceed, Jesus would have left the premises, leaving everyone else sick. What an honor for just that one man; too bad for everyone else. I have heard this story used as the primary reason not to get your hopes up - to live for the hope of Heaven, where you will ultimately get healed, but not to put your hope while you are alive. There is no guarantee of Healing, so it is best not to disappoint anyone. If you are sick, consider it a great honor to carry that sickness like a badge of honor, as it shows that God is honoring you with the responsibility of displaying to the world that you can endure a great trial and still hold on to God.
I don’t wish to offend (I love and honor the teachers who brought us the Word even if there is disagreement. “Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater” is an excellent motto to live by as a maturing believer). Still, I want to push you to new boundaries of questioning your belief system just in case you believe in a “sacred cow.” This is your invitation to consider the idea that there may be a greater truth God may want you to discover. Either way, take it or leave it.
Let’s observe this scene again. The Pool of Bethesda was a place where an angel would trouble the waters at a particular season of the year. The first person who got into the pool during that event would get healed of whatever they had. (Demons/ or Angels of Darkness bring oppression, and sickness is defined as oppression. Angels of God are messengers of Heaven).
First, the fact that the first person who got into the water got healed of whatever they had agrees with the principles of Divine Healing. Isaiah 53 prophecied what Jesus would accomplish when He died on the cross. One of which was every stripe on His back was for our bodily Healing. There is no exception to this sacrifice, just as there is no exception to His dying to forgive the entire world of sin. Why doesn’t every person get saved even though Jesus died to forgive them? The answer to that is the same for Healing. We must first hear the truth and then believe and take the fact for ourselves.
There were no exceptions to the Israelites who looked on the serpent after being bitten by vipers; whoever kept their eye on it got healed. The woman with the issue of blood (found in the other gospels) decided the moment of her Healing. At that point, nobody’s faith had been stirred enough to determine how they would be healed. Jesus was walking to help someone else when she reached out and determined that His power would heal her. Jesus did not even know the woman touched him until power was released. She determined her moment of Healing and acted on it. Scripture is full of stories in which people determine the moment of their Healing based on their faith and working on it.
Second, Scholars believe the season of the waters being stirred fell during the Passover season, which also lines up with the truths of Healing in the Atonement. As you read about in the previous week, Passover was the remembrance of the exodus from Egypt. It is a story that tells of what the Lamb of God would do for mankind. The pool was found near the Sheep Gate along the walls of Jerusalem. This is significant, considering everything in the Old Testament speaks of Jesus. Everything begins and ends with Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. It’s all about His blood shed and finished work on the cross.
(An interesting side note is that this Sheep Gate is mentioned at the beginning and end of Nehemiah 3. This gate was built by the High Priest—(Jesus Christ is our High Priest.) His death opens the way for us and restores free access to the Father. The Sheep Gate represents our salvation. Salvation is through the shed blood of Jesus Christ. The Sheep Gate had no bolts or bars. Redemption through the blood of Jesus has no bolts or bars. It is freely available to everyone who believes in Him. Jesus always entered Jerusalem through The Sheep Gate except for His Triumphal Entry. The Sheep Gate also led to Golgotha, Jesus's pathway to the crucifixion. The Sheep Gate reminds us of His sacrifice. Jesus, the Lamb of God, the ultimate sacrifice, takes away the world's sins. “Behold, the Lamb of God, Who takes away the sin of the world!”)
Lastly, John's Gospel ends with this, “Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.” John 21:25
Because only one story is highlighted to us (the man’s Healing at the pool), we cannot assume the man at the pool was the only one healed that day. After the woman with the issue of blood was healed by her faith, it triggered an avalanche of healings too numerous to mention. The man’s story was highlighted to show us something about Jesus, not to feed our unbelief.
Jesus “went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil;” (Acts 10:38). If Jesus went about the Father’s business, healing the sick, then it would have been wrong if He left anyone sick who wanted to get well because “whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.” James 4:17. Jesus was without sin, so we cannot assume that the man at the pool that day was the only man Jesus touched.
“Afterward, Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you.” John 5:14
You are what you behold. Jesus was teaching this man at the pool to behold his wellness. The word sin in this verse means “to be without a share in.” To sin is to live out of context with your design-Sonship, Son/ Daughter of God. Anything that would distract us and cause us to live out of harmony with God’s purpose and design for us is sin. Jesus revealed a Father whose nature is Healer. To say this verse confirms that God uses sickness to punish sin is an error. A few verses later, Jesus declared that the Father judges no- one. Jesus revealed a God who would rather become sickness than send sickness to us. When we live out of step with Jesus’ finished work, we open ourselves up to oppression. This is what Jesus was warning this man about.
John 5:17-47
“My Father has been working until now, and I have been working.” John 5:17
John 2 tells us about a different Temple that Jesus said would be rebuilt in three days.
In John 3, Jesus teaches Nicodemus about a different birth- not a womb birth but one of Spiritual origin.
In John 4, Jesus tells the Samaritan woman at the Well of a different kind of well- one that burst from within.
In John 5, Jesus defends healing on the Sabbath. He shows a different Sabbath than the one the Jewish tradition observed.
God introduced us to Sabbath on the seventh day of Creation to rest from His perfect work. God created Adam and Eve as the pinnacle of his work and then declared them “very good.” God’s rest was seeing His perfect work in His likeness. God saw more than His perfect Creation, however. “The Lamb having been slain before the foundation (or Fall ) of the world.” (Revelation 13:8). God made provision for mankind’s failure even before they fell.
God did not rest because He was exhausted but because He was satisfied with what He saw and knew concerning His Creation. He invited Adam and Eve into that rest. However, Adam failed to enter God’s finished work in the Garden. They were the gatekeepers to the world God gave them to care for, so when they failed, all failed.
After every day of Creation, there was a finality to each day: “And it was evening, and there was morning.” But on the seventh day, there was no finality. It was deliberately excluded to show us that God’s rest from His perfect and finished work had no end.
Later, God introduced the Israelites (after delivering them from Egypt) to a Sabbath day with the command “Do No Work,” a weekly reminder to them that God’s work cannot be improved upon. They had been rescued from slavery but found themselves in slavery to a try-harder system of observing a “day” while forgetting why they were observing it. It became about their ability to “do no work” instead of God’s perfect work of rescuing them from slavery and leading them to a place of rest. Because Isreal did not believe God and His promises for them when it was time to inherit their promised land, they failed to enter God’s rest just as Adam did. As a result of their unbelief, they perished in the wilderness, never tasting fully of their freedom from slavery.
The Sabbath of God is His perfect work, which was planned before the Fall, of redeeming mankind- His image and likeness. When Jesus healed on the Sabbath, He was confirming what Sabbath is all about. It was about Him. He was the Lamb slain before the Fall. He was the substance of every prophetic shadow. He became sickness, sin, and oppression to bring us back into right relationship with Elohim and for God’s image to be revealed once again through us- His image bearers. Jesus restoring someone to wholeness was affirming Sabbath. The command, “Do No Work.” still stands, but it is not about our ability to not work; it is about ceasing from OUR striving. Resting in Him is to celebrate His work which is unveiled in us. You cannot improve upon you. You are His workmanship, His masterpiece. When Jesus succeeded, all succeeded. “In Adam, all died; in Christ, all are made alive.” (1Corinthians 15:22)
The language of religion is “try harder.”
The language is Grace is “Done.”
Watch a message I spoke on Rest and the Finished Work here.
DAILY QUESTION
Why were the religious leaders so upset? How is Jesus different from what the people of the day expected?