We have arrived at a transition point in John’s Gospel. I hope you still have your guide. The revolution we found speaks of believing. We now move on to a new message which is about life. We are called to live.

 

Read John 5:5-18 page 1068

What is amazing about this healing is the almost negative attitude of the man. Here is a man who for 38 years had been a loser and knew it. Branded as disabled, sick. Ostracized because he was sick and therefore somehow a bad sinner compared to healthy and therefore good people. He was lonely and repelled help. He could have been living in South Ruislip as many do, alone, miserable, without hope.

 

Jesus,, as we know from last week has demonstrated his power in a sign of healing the Official’s son. The man’s anxiety was visible. His desperate hope was in Jesus, he was also respected. Yes, this sort of person was a clear candidate for a blessing from God.

 

But John butts  these two signs together. The first healing is about believing. The second is about being made whole from sin. If you are  someone who marks their Bible, I want to pick out one word ‘hugi-es’‘Whole’  It only appears 13 times in the New Testament and  5 of them are in this passage. It is more than making better, it is about complete healing.

It is translated ‘well’ in verse 6;

In verse 9 it is translated ‘cured’;

In verse 11 it is translated ‘well’;

In verse 14 it is translated ‘well’;

In verse 15 it is translated ‘well’

 

          You see Jesus was not just interested improving this man’s condition, he wanted to heal him fully. Jesus is not just some super medic in the skies. He is into complete healing. It is a scary implication of this story that only one of the crowd at the pool was healed. The rest were left, not even mentioned by John. Jesus came to do more than patch people up. He came to make men whole.

 

The man by the pool actually needed more than healing. First and foremost he needed faith and hope.  

 

Hope transforms any person.  It gives energy, and alertness and even joy in the most difficult of circumstances. But this man had had all the hope knocked out of him. He was sick and there was no cure. He was among the people by the pool, waiting for death. The only security was that his place by the pool. His status was a beggar. When asked “do you want to get well?” he is distracted by the impossibility of the task and is not able to say “yes”. Do you know many people are happier ill than healed? It seems strange but when you are ill you have status, people care for you, you get visited, get prayed about. When you are well, they expect you to get on with life. No-one mentions you in the prayer meeting! So sometimes we make play on our ailments to attract the love and care we crave.

 

So, this week pick up the Prayer Diary and work your way through it, praying for every single person. And if God nudges you about someone, ring them up. Tell them God loves them. Be an active Church member.

 

Anyway, back to the pool. Jesus is having a hard time convincing this fellow he wants to healed. He is full of what he needs to do and can’t do. Jesus crashes in on the ‘poor me’s with an electric statement. “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk”

Lets look at the three bits.

Get up! The word here is ‘rise’ the same word as in verse 21.

“For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life.”

The get up call is to a new life. A dead raising life. A life given by God the Father. Jesus is not inviting the man just to totter to his feet, He is commanding him to have life!

 

Pick up you mat. Now anybody who has sunbathed on a Mediterranean beach will know the significance of this. Take up your beach towel and you lose your right to the sun bed! So Jesus is saying to the man , leave the poolside life, you are going to a new address, a new life. You don’t need the security and status of the old life. Being made whole means leaving the old life behind.

 

And walk. He has got to step out in faith. The man who has no hope, no faith, no interest is suddenly has a job to do! So if you read on he is found walking around with a bed under his arm. Why? Because Jesus told him to! The religious authorities can’t get him back on the bed! They can’t convert him to Sabbath keeping because Jesus has made him whole.

 

This reminds me of a child just starting to walk. All they want to do is walk. They are not interested in where it gets them or how fit they are or whatever, it is just walking itself they have discovered. This man was just that. He was healed so he could carry his mat and walk. The rest was for another day.

 

The fact he collides with the gotta follow all the rules to get to heaven brigade is incidental. Jesus slipped away until he had the opportunity of a quiet word.

Once all the excitement of walking and carrying had worn off, Jesus teaches him a vital lesson. Healing is not everything. There is worse than 38 year illnesses. A lot worse. Cancer, AIDS, leprosy and the like are bad news but sin. Sin kills. Sin ends you in hell. Sin is bad news.

But Jesus wants this man to be whole not healed. So he moves from the physical to the spiritual sickness. We have seen already in John’s gospel how Jesus confronts sin.

He is the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world in John 1:29. In John 3 we discover that God sent his son into the world to give us life. In John 4 he challenged the woman on her moral state.  Now he commends this man to ‘no longer sin’. It isolation they were not much of the hope that Jesus gives. But you need to understand that John is making a point not filling all the details. Sin is by far a more serious sickness. That is the point. If this man is to learn about the ‘how to’ of no longer sinning he will have to walk with Jesus. In other words he is healed so that he can go with Jesus.

 

The lesson here is clear. Much is made of healing of the body these days. Jesus heals but only because it can demonstrate and begin a greater healing the making a man or woman whole, complete, fulfilled, to have abundant life. Should you seek healing this morning, we will pray for you, we, should ask, anoint you. But that is only part of the wholeness business. Ian spoke two Sundays ago about palliative care rather than assisted suicide.  As Christians we not into assisted suicide, we are into quality of life in all stages from conception to death. Our conviction is that God has created us a purpose and that he brings all sorts of trails to test us and those around us to demonstrate his love and power in our lives.  That drives us to provide for those who are terminally ill as part of our belief in a God who seeks to bring us to wholeness in Christ. But it has to begin and end with Christ. You can’t buy it to the health bit of Christianity without the spiritual part. You would particularly come unstuck because God does not heal on demand. He heals as and when he chooses. Many here suffer a variety of debilitating conditions, but not often do we see miraculous healing and often we wonder why God does not act. But he is sovereign and he has plans for our good which sometimes means that we have to live with limitations, pain and sickness so that we might learn to depend on him in every situation.

 

But this man was healed as a sign. A sign of what?  Well you will need to come next week as we study what follows but for now we will look at one statement.

Jesus’ answer to the grumblings about Sabbath breaking was “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too am working.” (verse 17)

 

Notice that John goes on to declare that Jesus was declaring himself equal with God. Not surprising in the context of this book. It is the antidote to Dan Brown and his conspiracy theories. Jesus was fully man and fully God. The Gnostics said he was not God and the Docetists said he was not man. But both are answered in our Gospel, John’s Gospel. He was the son of the Father and the Son of God.

 

But what has God working got to do with the argument?

 Well,you need to go back to Genesis 2:2 (page 4) to understand this passage.

“By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating he had done.”

 

Who rested? God did. Why? Because he had completed the creation. The seven days and this verse all underline the idea that this was a complete whole creation. God is a finisher. He is into wholeness and the Sabbath celebrates not so much a day off for the workers but a day of celebrating the wholeness of God’s creation.

But it goes further. A reading of Genesis 1 will give you the next point. We are living in the seventh day. God at rest. But Jesus says “My Father is still working, including this very day”. SO what is he doing resting or working? Well, the simple answer is he is resting about creation and he is working on salvation. This beautiful world he created has been infected by human sin. This is the silent planet, out of communication with the rest of the universe. And God has entered in  Jesus to bring wholeness, salvation and life.

 

That work was completed as Jesus died on the cross which is why he triumphed in death with the words “It is finished” What followed was another Sabbath, a time based one, before he came alive again, triumphing over death.

 

God has not created the world and gone on holiday. He is always at work in the world; he sent Jesus to restore a broken world to himself. But he didn’t go on holiday then. He sent the Holy Spirit to bring that life to every corner of this globe. One day he will take us to be with himself and then we all have a holiday. You can read about it in Revelation 21-22.

 

It is important to understand where we fit into this. We were created on the sixth day, ready for the Sabbath. We are saved by grace not works. We are called to a Sabbath rest – read about that in Hebrews 4. And we will be with Jesus forever.

 

Sabbath has a lot to do with God’s purpose in our lives. It was also made for man. Jesus said Mark 2:27 page 1004

 

“The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of man is Lord even of the Sabbath”

 

Do not be fooled by the apparent wealth and happiness around you. This country is reaping the whirlwind over the Sabbath. Every piece of research will come up with the same result. Humans need one day off in seven. That is how we were created and while we try to live our of sync. with the creator we will ultimately nothing of value.  But the Jewish authorities had made it another rule to beat themselves and their followers with. God wants you to observe the Sabbath for your good. He wants you to meet with his People and enjoy his rest. To exult in the finished work of Christ. That is what a Sabbath is for. The Church merely moved it from Saturday to Sunday so to emphasis that the resurrection was the final piece of the new creation. It is complete. Christ has died, Christ is risen, Hallelujah!

 

But returning to Jesus’ statement “My Father is always at work to this very day, and I too am working”  It tells us two things about Jesus. First equality in not independence but total interdependence. Jesus is equal with God but he and the Father are one so this is not two super-powers capable of mutually assured destruction as USA and Russia were in the 1950-70s. They are inseparable.

 

Secondly Jesus is revealing what God is up to by his actions. The water into wine, the two healings are a revelation of the Father’s will to bring joy and healing and wholeness and salvation to a broken down community, only capable of more and more restrictions in a vain attempt to change the hearts and minds which are darkened by sin. Jesus is life.

 

The man at he pool tells us more than Jesus heals. He wants to do more than deal with our physical ailments, He wants to give hope, deal with sin in our lives and he calls us to believe and turn way from our selfishness – repent of our sins.

 

Life is more than health, wealth and happiness. While you see those as your only goals, you are losing out on the real blessings that Jesus wants to give. Life the Jesus way is about hope, forgiveneness and release from the guilt. It is eternal life both in that it goes on for ever and it has a quality that nothing and nobody else can offer. It is Jesus the life – giver that John sees revealed in his words and actions. Open your heart and mind and will to him. He wants to say to you, rise up, roll up the past failures and walk the Jesus walk.