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DO YOU WANT TO GET WELL?

John 5:1-15
Key Verse 5:6

When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”

By Yvette Shin

With a title like, “Do You Want to Get Well?” it’s pretty obvious that the theme of this morning’s message will be healing. Strangely, though, the healing event takes place in John 5 is unique—it is unlike any other in the Bible. Most of the major healing episodes in the New Testament follow a pattern; the anatomy of a healing event looks something like this:

1. Chronic, Debilitating, Incurable and/or Fatal Disease or Condition
   • leprosy, paralysis, blindness, demon-possession
2. Desperate Visit and Plea for Help
   • The four friends who brought the paralytic through the roof
   • Blind men shouting, “Son of David, have mercy on me!”
   • A bleeding woman desperate to touch the edge of Jesus’ cloak
3. A Profound, Pre-healing Word from Jesus, usually a comment about faith
   • “I am willing. Be clean.”
   • “Take heart, son, your sins are forgiven.”
   • “I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith.”
4. Miraculous Healing
   • Blind see
   • Lame walk
   • Lepers are cleansed
5. Happily Ever After…or not
   • A paralytic walks ending a dependent existence
   • Ten lepers are cured and can re-enter society
   • Two demon-possessed men are cured but townspeople kick Jesus out because of their ruined pig industry
   • A man born blind man is cured but is excommunicated for standing up for Jesus

The healing event at the pool of Bethesda is missing one element of this pattern: #2. There is no desperate visit, no frantic plea for help. It is this glaring omission that makes the healing of the man at the pool very intriguing. How is it different from the other 22 healing events in the gospels? And what kind of healing did Jesus really provide for this man? Let’s see.

Verses 1-5 provide the backdrop for this incident. Though the exact time is ambiguous, according to verse 1, it took place during one of the three major annual feasts, putting Jesus and his disciples in the city of Jerusalem. There were several gates into the city, one of them called the Sheep Gate through which the animals for sacrifice were brought to the temple. Just inside this gate was a pool. It was architecturally striking because it was surrounded by covered colonnades on all four sides and also down the middle. The pool was known as Bethesda, meaning “house of mercy.” Over the years, a belief arose about the pool and its healing properties. The NIV footnote on verse 4 tells us that when the waters moved, it was believed that an angel stirred the water, and that the first person in would be healed of his infirmity. For this reason, the colonnades surrounding Bethesda were packed each day with all sorts of sick and ailing people.

Imagine being at Bethesda on a hot, sweltering morning. Jerusalem is packed with pilgrims so the number of sick and disabled is higher than usual, all hoping to bank on the generosity of the city’s many visitors. Your ears are overcome with the constant begging for alms. Everywhere you look people are crammed into every nook and cranny surrounding the pool, the stronger ones jockeying for position to jump in first, the weaker ones vying for a shady spot by the columns. You look around and see every disease and ailment you’ve ever heard about, perhaps even some that you haven’t. And the smell is simply unbearable.

Verse 5 points us to one person in the crowd. “One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years.” When Jesus heard that the man had been in this condition for a long time, he approached him and asked, “Do you want to get well?”

Being an invalid, this man was helplessly dependent on others. He needed help to eat, get dressed, go to the bathroom, virtually everything. Living like this for one day is frustrating enough. Imagine living like this for 38 years.

This past April, I reached a milestone in my life: I turned 40. Thankfully, there was no mid-life crisis, no nervous breakdown. Believe it or not, I’m actually looking forward to the next decade. I think that one of the reasons that I can welcome being 40 is that I can see how much I’ve progressed in these years. I’m not the same person I was at 30 or 20. I’ve learned a lot. Here are some of the gems of wisdom I’ve picked up in my meager 40 years of life:

• Decide what you want to do with your life before starting college.
• Save money!
• Appreciate your parents (no matter how annoying they are).
• Appreciate your children (no matter how annoying they are).
• Start eating right and exercising when you’re young.
• Don’t take relationship advice from romantic comedies.
• Trust God in EVERYTHING.

How I’ve grown in my 40 years of life is precious, a priceless treasure that I would never trade. But what if I had never grown or learned anything? What if I were the exact same person for those 40 years? Stagnant. No change in my thinking. No change in my situation. No change period. That would be hell to me, as it probably was to the invalid at the pool. For thirty eight years of his existence, he experienced a hellish sort of monotony. When he was younger, he may have been more hopeful, thinking that he actually had a shot at being healed. But others always beat him in. Eventually, he gave up on the pool and focused his efforts on begging for alms. But even then, the louder and stronger ones were more successful than he. As the year passed, hope faded into despair. He still managed to be brought to the pool, but with no real hope of healing or change. So, when Jesus comes to him and asks, “Do you want to get well?” he doesn’t recognize it as an opportunity to be made whole, but as an opportunity to complain. ⁷“Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.” (7)

We have to wonder, why does Jesus bother to ask an obvious and even unnecessary question? Simple. Because it was not an unnecessary question, but a very necessary one. When Jesus asked, “Do you want to get well?” he was forcing the man to probe his heart and discover what he truly desired.

Whether we want to admit it or not, we are invalids in one way or another. We may be brilliant, incredibly able and gorgeous on the outside, but in some way, we are paralyzed just like this man by the pool—stuck, stuck in a rut, with absolutely no hope of getting out.

Maybe your paralysis comes from the fact that you have no control over your life. Your family and friends don’t approve of you and so you are forced to cater to their desires.

Maybe you’ve worked hard and achieved success and found it completely unsatisfying. Is this what it’s all about—work hard, play hard, and pay the bills until we die?

Maybe you’re lonely, and don’t think that your life will truly begin until you find that right person to complete your life. Just holding your breath until Mr. or Mrs. Right comes along.

Maybe you’re in debt or in severe financial need. All your efforts are focused on nothing else but working to pay off a debt that just keeps growing.

Maybe you’ve completely devoted your life and your family to God, making numerous sacrifices, and the result is meager at best. You wonder, “Where is the fruit?” You are stuck in despair thinking that you have failed.

Jesus comes to us in our helplessness and hopelessness, providing an answer to all these things. He is not the one who will show you how to improve your life, he IS life. He is not the medicine that will make you feel better; he is the CURE. He’s not a matchmaker; he IS your soul mate. He is the treasure that money cannot buy, our very shield and reward. The problem is that we do not desire him, but something else.

Why do we desire something other than God? I recently read a book by a pastor who was once a marketing executive and whose main account was Porsche. He explains how his job was to find exploitable data from consumers’ lives and manipulate it to sell expensive cars.

It took me a few years to realize that I was actually promoting a counterfeit gospel. Before you start judging, you should know I never offered cheap grace—the gospel according to Porsche will set you back between $80,000 and $150,000, depending on how much salvation you need.

My task was to hijack your imagination, brand your brain with our logo, and then feed you opinions you thought were your own.

-From Flickering Pixels by Shane Hipps

His job was to create in people a desire for something they neither wanted nor needed. This manipulation of desires reminded me of something in Genesis: when the serpent tempted Eve to eat the fruit. When God told the man and the woman not to eat the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they were fine. But when the serpent did a commercial advertising its good qualities, insinuating that they wanted it and needed it, a desire was born—a completely manufactured desire that led to sin and death. The devil has so manipulated our desires that when the one true desire of our hearts comes along, we are apathetic or indifferent, or sometimes even hostile toward him because he blocks our way to the other things that we have come to desire. Identifying what we truly desire is very important. So Jesus asks us, very seriously, “Do you want to get well?”

How does Jesus respond to the man’s complaint? Let’s read verse 8. “Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” Remember when I mentioned earlier that this healing episode is different from the other 22 mentioned in the gospels? Well, I discovered that the healing of the man at the pool is actually more similar to a resurrection event. Other than his own, the gospels record three resurrection events. And in each one, Jesus commands the dead person to rise in similar ways:

• Jairus’ daughter – “Talitha koum!” (which means, “Little girl, I say to you, get up!” ) –Jn 5:42
• Widow’s son at Nain – “Young man, I say to you, get up!” –Lk 7:14
• Lazarus – “Lazarus, come out!” –Jn 11:43
• Invalid – “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” – Jn 5:8

In this healing event, do you know why there was no desperate visit or plea? It’s because dead people can’t come to Jesus. Jesus comes to them, not just to heal them, but to infuse them with life. This is why he doesn’t tell the invalid, “Your faith has healed you,” but rather, “Get up!” God has already breathed life into us; if he hadn’t, he couldn’t tell us to get up. God has already done his part be sending Christ to visit us in our deadness. The life is ours for the taking. The questions is do you really want it? Are you willing to get up from your paralysis and live a full life?

But there’s more. Jesus did not only say “Get up!” but also, “pick up your mat and go.” Why pick up his mat and go? Verse 9 tells us that the day on which this took place was a Sabbath. Jesus healed the man and told him to pick up his mat and go on the one day of the week that it was considered unlawful to do so. This is no coincidence. Jesus prompted him to make a choice: to break with custom and live a whole new life at Jesus’ word, or to remain as he was in order to comply with human tradition. In order to grasp on to the life that Jesus provides, we are required to live on an entirely new level, where the law of love and mercy supersedes the letter of the law. This was a brave new world that required breaking rules and taking risks. Jesus gave his life to create this world, what he called the kingdom of heaven, and he was seeking out people who were ready to do the same.

Miraculously, the invalid responded to Jesus’ words. ^“At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.” (9) In Jesus’ presence, his hope was restored and he responded to Jesus’ command. Life returned to his dead body and dead spirit and he was made whole. But soon after, the fallout began. The religious authorities caught wind of the event and confronted the man. When faced with the miraculous healing and the Sabbath transgression, of course, they focused on the Sabbath transgression. Jesus performed seven healings on the Sabbath which angered the religious leaders of his day and caused them to plot his death. Whereas Jesus came to bring life, those in authority were consumed with murder and death. It revealed their own paralysis, how they repressed themselves and oppressed others with human laws and traditions. God’s laws were meant to point us to Jesus and true life in him; they were not meant to control and condemn. They bullied the former invalid into identifying Jesus as the culprit, despite Jesus’ warning to him, “Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.” (14) The invalid’s body had been cured. But the struggle for his spirit had just begun. Healing and new life is a process. We must press on by faith until we are fully healed—body and spirit—in Christ.

When I chart out my spiritual growth for the past twenty-five or so years, this is what it would look like:

I was sixteen when my mind and heart began to open to Christ through one-to-one Bible study. But when I hit college, I plateaued a bit. It’s not that anything was wrong, it was just that things became easy. I went to a pretty easy university and earned straight As my first two years. I was bored and unchallenged and just plain lazy, so I didn’t grow.  Then around 22 and 23, things got tougher. My early to mid-twenties were some of the most difficult yet most fruitful years of my life. And then I hit another plateau. Again there was no big crisis, nothing traumatic, just the normal ebb and flow of life. We were both working full-time, we had two small children, lived paycheck to paycheck but still managed to make ends meet. And with all this, we were full participants in ministry, attended all the meetings, shared testimonies every week, had a few Bible students each. We were still doing what we were supposed to do, but there was little to no growth. Then a few years later, the line goes up. What caused this? A move to a major city. During those first few years of transition, I prayed more than I had ever prayed in my life. But after we were all adjusted and settled? Complacency. And another plateau. Even a little bit of a backslide. But my mid-thirties were a time of personal revival and self-discovery. I felt that hunger again, do you know what I mean? I was so eager to know God. Every time I searched the Scriptures I was blessed with new revelations. I couldn’t wait to write testimonies, to put down on paper those things that were burning in my heart. And I wanted to share those things with others. Teaching the Bible was fun; I looked forward to excavating for truth with others, hearing their perspectives and sharing in their struggles. I was born again, or perhaps more precisely, born anew. Can someone who is born again be born again? I’d like to say that this is the end of my testimony and that the line of growth just continues going up and up and up. But it doesn’t. It plateaus…again. The past couple of years have been kind of frustrating, coping with resignation, dissatisfaction and apathy.

Studying this passage and charting out my life has shown me that I am the invalid at the pool of Bethesda, but with one significant difference: Jesus has visited me there not just once, but many times throughout my life. Every plateau is a visit from Jesus at the pool. And he will meet me there again many more times in the future. Because healing and new life is a process. When we are critically ill and visit the doctor, it never takes just one visit. We need to go again and again, not because the doctor is inept, but because the disease is so severe.

I don’t think I’m alone in my struggle. Each week our testimonies are full of regrets, and broken decisions, and sincere intentions to try better next time. Sometimes it seems that we are stuck in a cycle: we pray for the same things, make decisions to do the same things, then fail to do the same things, repent for the same things and ask forgiveness for the same things. And then the cycle repeats. Years ago there was a Bible student who always talked about how bodybuilding was his idol and how he would set his alarm at 3am in the morning in order to eat tuna fish sandwiches for the protein. It was funny at first. But he wrote the same thing in every single testimony…for the next three years. For three years, this was the only significant change in his life. I thought, really, is that all? I started looking at my own testimonies. Was there anything new, or was it the same old same old? A transformed life requires a desire, a hunger to grow and progress, and courage to take risks. It requires a decision and it requires sacrifice. Sometimes it requires going against tradition. Sometimes it means disappointing your loved ones and defying their expectations. It requires leaving our comfortable mats and getting up and going to places we don’t want to go. We tell ourselves all the time, “I want to serve others,” but are we willing to make the sacrifices required to do that, to put someone else’s needs above our own? We tell ourselves that we want to be better Bible students and Bible teachers, but how much time and effort do we really invest in one-to-one and group Bible studies? We tell ourselves that we want to grow in prayer, but how often have we chosen to skip prayer when something more pleasurable comes along? We say that God comes first in all things, but our words and actions and desires betray us. Sometimes I’m more excited about seeing a blockbuster summer movie than worshipping God.

So I ask myself and I ask you, “Do you want to get well? Do you REALLY want to get well?” This is an extremely important question that we must respond to. What do we truly desire; what do you REALLY want, Jesus or something else? The next thing to do is respond to Jesus’ command, “Get up, pick up your mat and walk.” Are you content to remain in your paralysis, or are you ready to leave your comfort zone and take some risks? It won’t be easy and it definitely won’t feel good, but it’s the only way out of the ruts of life. Jesus came to bring us healing and new life. Let’s decide to be born again…again.

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