...help me Lord...

8 “Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.  9 At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.    The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, 10 and so the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.”    11 But he replied, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’ ”

12 So they asked him, “Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?”

13 The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.    14 Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, “See, you are well again.    Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.”   15 The man went away and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had made him well” John 5:8-15.

There were 3 obligatory Jewish feasts — Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles.   Every adult male within 15 miles of Jerusalem was required by Jewish law to attend.    John always shows us Jesus attending the obligatory feasts in Jerusalem.    Like most Jews Jesus did not worship out of duty but out of personal joy.   It was mid-April — the time of Passover — so Jesus arrived alone without His disciples to celebrate Passover.    He found His way to the famous pool, called Bethesda, which means House of Mercy.    The pool was deep enough to dive into.   It was a subterranean stream which every now and then bubbled up and stirred the waters.   The belief was that this was caused by an angel of God, and the 1st person to get into the pool after the stirring of the waters would be healed from any disease or illness.

You and I may view this as superstition — but this kind of belief spread all over the world in ancient days.   People believed in all kind of spirits and demons.   Every tree, every stream, every river, every hill, every pool had its resident spirit.   In ancient times water was holy — especially the water of rivers and streams and springs.  Water was precious and sometimes powerful.   There are many folklore stories about traditions used whenever a person crossed a river.   (Read Joshua 3 to see how Israel crossed the Jordan after 40 years.)

It may be that as Jesus walked around the pool, and the man of this story was simply pointed out to Jesus as a most pitiable case.    And because of his disability — it made it very unlikely — even impossible — that he would ever be the first to get into the pool after it had been stirred.   He had no one to help him in, and Jesus who was always the friend of the friendless, and the helper of the person who has no earthly help, noticed this crippled man.   Notice that Jesus did not trouble the man by delivering a lecture on the useless superstition of waiting for the water to be stirred.   Jesus’ one desire was to help, and so he healed the man who had waited so long.

In this “sign” in John’s Gospel, we see very clearly the conditions under which the power of Jesus operated.    Jesus gave his orders to people and, in proportion as they tried to obey, power came to them.   

(1) Jesus began by asking the man if he wanted to be cured.   It was not so foolish a question as it may sound.   The man had waited for 38 years, and it might well have been that hope had died and left behind a passive and dull crippled man with no thought of being made well.    In his heart of hearts, the man might have been content to remain an invalid for the rest of his life, and if he was cured, he would have all the burden of making a living.   He might have grown accustomed to his disability, being able to leave the working and the worrying to someone else.   But his response to Jesus’ question was immediate.

He wanted to be healed, though he did not see how he ever could be healed since he had no one to help him enter the pool when the waters were stirred.    The first essential thing towards receiving the power of Jesus is to have intense desire for it.  Jesus says: ‘Do you really want to be changed?’    If in our inmost hearts we are content to stay as we are, there can be no change for us.

(2) Jesus went on to tell the man to get up.   It is as if Jesus said to crippled man: ‘Man, bend your will to it and you and I will do this thing together!’   The power of God never dispenses with just human effort.   Nothing is truer than that we must realize our own helplessness; but in a very real sense it is true that miracles happen when our will and God’s power cooperate to make them possible.

(3) In effect, Jesus was commanding the man to attempt the impossible.    ‘Get up!’ Jesus said. His bed would simply be a light stretcher-like frame – the Greek is krabbatos, a colloquial word which really means a “pallet” – and Jesus told him to pick it up and carry it away.   The man could very well have said — with sarcastic resentment — that for 38 years his bed had been carrying him and there was not much sense in telling him to carry it.   But he made the effort — along with Christ – and the thing was done.

(4) Here is the road to achievement.    There are so many things in this world which defeat us. When we have desire and determination to make the effort, hopeless though it may seem, the power of Christ gets its opportunity, and with Him we can conquer the things that for a long time have conquered us.

In John 5:14 it says that “Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, ‘See, you are well again.    Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.’”   Jesus’ self-defense was shattering.    God did not stop working on the Sabbath day and neither did Jesus.  For Jesus’ words meant nothing less than that the work of Jesus and the work of God were the same.   It seemed that Jesus was putting himself as an equal with God.   What Jesus was really saying — what Jesus was really teaching was that human need must always be helped; that there is no greater task than to relieve someone’s pain and distress, and that the Christian’s compassion must be like God’s — unceasing.    Other work may be laid aside, but the work of compassion never.

So today in your prayer simply ask the Lord for His help in your life today!

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me a sinner.