The only thing being broken was a pharisaical interpretation of one of God’s laws. The issue was not the breaking of God’s command, for Jesus fulfilled the Law and was completely subject to it (Matthew 5:17). All they could see was that someone had violated a rule. Jesus was a bona fide Miracle Worker, but the religious leaders couldn’t see the miracle. The reaction of the Jewish leaders shows that, no matter how much proof God provides, there will be some people who refuse to see the truth. The Jews inquired who would so brazenly promote Law-breaking, but “the man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd” (verse 13). The man told them that he was simply obeying orders: “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk’” (verse 11). “The law forbids you to carry your mat” (John 5:10). As the man left Bethesda, the Jewish leaders saw him carrying his mat, and they stopped him: “It is the Sabbath,” they said. The day Jesus healed the man at the poolside happened to be a Sabbath. The man needed Jesus.Īmazingly, not everyone was happy about the man’s miraculous healing. The man did not need quicker reflexes or beneficent angels or enchanted water. The man was instantly cured, and “he picked up his mat and walked” (verse 9). Jesus swept aside all superstition and bypassed altogether the need for magic water with one command: “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk” (John 5:8). He blamed the fact that he was never healed on his tardiness in getting into the water. Obviously, the man believed the urban legend about the stirring of the water. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me” (verse 7). The man replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. Jesus asked the man if he wanted to be healed. On the day that Jesus visited the Pool of Bethesda, there was a man there who “had been an invalid for thirty-eight years” (John 5:5). The Bible does not teach that this actually happened-John 5:4 is not included in most modern translations because it is unlikely to be original to the text-rather, the superstitious belief probably arose because of the pool’s association with the nearby temple. Legend had it that an angel would come down into the pool and “stir up the water.” The first person into the pool after the stirring of the water “was made well from whatever disease with which he was afflicted” (John 5:4, NAS). The covered colonnades would have provided shade for the disabled who gathered there, but there was another reason for the popularity of the Pool of Bethesda. It means “House of Mercy.” John tells us that “a great number of disabled people used to lie -the blind, the lame, the paralyzed” (John 5:3). The name of the pool, “Bethesda,” is Aramaic. Sometime during the Hasmonean Period, an additional pool was added to the original one. The mention of the “Upper Pool” in 2 Kings 18:17 may be a reference to the Pool of Bethesda. The Pool of Bethesda was used in ancient times to provide water for the temple. It was at this pool that Jesus performed a miracle showing that He is greater than any human malady and that superstition and religious folklore are foolish and feeble substitutes for faith in God. John gives the additional detail that the pool was “surrounded by five covered colonnades.” During Jesus’ time, the Pool of Bethesda lay outside the city walls. The Pool of Bethesda was “in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate” (John 5:2), which places it north of the temple, near Fort Antonia.
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