This is my talk from Time for Praise today. We had thought about recording it, but didn’t pull it off in the end so here are my notes for if anyone fancies reading over it. The passage is the Healing at the Pool from John 5:1-18.
I’ll be back to do a big update tomorrow when I get the chance.
Introduction
I am and always have been really competitive. Way back in primary school I had to be the best in my class academically and at sports as well. And even now if you put a ball in front of me or a tennis racket or a snooker cue I have to be the best. It takes a lot of willpower for me to carry on doing something, to keep doing my best, if I know that I have a disadvantage playing something or that the person I’m playing is better than me. It’s really bad!
That’s why I really feel for the man at the pool. Everyday he lies in wait for the pool to start bubbling, hoping that if it does he will be the first one in. But he’s slowed down because he can’t walk or run on his own, and as he tells Jesus, he has no friends or family to help him make it into the water first. So he lies there knowing pretty much that, unless there’s a miracle, he won’t ever be the first in as long as there are other men who are more fit than him around. And this goes on everyday for 38 years! 38 years! Can you think what you were doing 38 years ago? I would have been -20 years old, my Dad would have been in Primary School. It’s a long time to spend, sitting, waiting desperately, but knowing that unless there’s some major change, you will never quite win the race.
Think about how desperate this man must have been to be healed, to still be waiting hopefully after 38 years.
Then the lame man encounters Jesus – the real, living God and is changed forever. So as we quickly unpack this encounter with Jesus, what can we draw out that should affect the way we encounter Him now, in our lives?
1. The Point: Jesus is Lord
Here’s the first thing: Jesus is Lord. He has God’s power and he’s equal with God. We see really clearly that he has the power to heal.
We see in verses 3 and 4 what happens as Jesus begins to talk to the lame man:
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?”
“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.”
I don’t think Jesus is asking this man because he isn’t sure that he’s trying hard enough to win the race, the get into the pool quickly enough, to help himself. Jesus already knows how the man is going to reply – He already knows that this man has been determined, trying to get well for 38 years. I think he wants the paralyzed man to admit that he needs Jesus’ help. He wants him to admit that he can’t do it on his own – that he’s tried and failed for 38 years and knows that short of a miracle, he won’t ever make it.
We need to recognise that Jesus is God, and that we can’t do it without His help.
So, let’s look back to the passage. Jesus responds really simply to the lame man – he simply tells him to pick up his mat and walk. And he is healed. There are no magic words – no sparks of light, no heavenly choruses, no light shining down on Jesus’ face. All we’re told is that the man picked up his mat and walked. As simple as that, Jesus heals him. How awesome is it that our God doesn’t need huge sound effects or flashes of lightning to show how amazing he is – he doesn’t have to surround his miracles with smoke and pyrotechnics to show how good they are – it’s obvious. God is an awesome God who works in amazing ways! Jesus sees what the man needs, its right in front of Him, and responds to it by healing Him. And he can do the same for us today. Once we’ve admitted that we need Him that we want to live everyday of our lives His way and with His help, He will see our needs and respond to them.
2. Jesus responds to our needs
The healed man had an obvious major need in his life. It was really easy for Jesus to respond to the man’s need – even though it was such a big need – because Jesus is so amazing. If Jesus can respond to the needs of a man who had been lying, paralyzed, in the dust for 38 years, then surely he can respond to our needs as well. In verse 17, Jesus says: “My father is always at work to this very day, and I, too, am working.”
Sometimes, though, it can be hard to see what God is doing in our lives.
So what things can prevent us from noticing what God is doing? Sometimes we are focused on the wrong thing entirely. God calls us to make Him the Lord of our lives – to make Him our focus. It can be easy to get stuck on focusing on other things – being popular, our jobs, careers, sport, TV, even things that its really good to focus on like schoolwork and exams, our friends and families, even singing worship songs can stop us from seeing what God is doing if we’re focussed on them too hard. Imagine you’re life is like a car – Jesus needs to be in the driving seat, the most important place. There’s still room in the passenger seat, in the back and in the boot for everything else – but Jesus needs to be our main focus for us to see what he is doing in our lives and in the lives of those around us.
3. Results Matter – we change and we understand more about Jesus
Finally, as Jesus works in our lives, he wants us to change and he wants us to understand Him more through our experiences. Let’s look at verse 14 together. So after the man is healed, Jesus disappears before the man can even find out his name – but later at the temple, Jesus catches up with Him:
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.”
Now, these might seem like pretty harsh words, but they are the truth. What use is it that the man has been healed if he doesn’t then look after his new life and his newly healed body? Jesus just wants the best for him. Would the healed man be any better off by being able to walk if he goes off and uses his body to do wrong things than if he hadn’t been healed at all and was still lying by the pool? Probably not.
When Jesus works in our lives, when we encounter him as we worship or when something amazing happens like a miraculous healing, what defines how amazing it was is what happens afterwards. If we learn nothing about God from it, and if our lives don’t change at all, then what signs are there at all that we’ve met with Jesus? We need to show to the world that God is working in our lives by letting our experiences of Him change us – and by learning more about Him, His personality and His love for us, through what has happened.
Conclusion
As we come to an end looking at this passage, let’s just take another look at the main things we can draw out of it. Here’s the point: Jesus is God – he’s God’s son, equal with Him, with the power to heal and the power to help us in our lives today. We need to let Him be Lord in our lives, so that he can respond to our needs and so that we can see Him working in us – then, as a result of Him working in our lives we need to change, change the way we live, the way the think and the way we talk.
Labels: bible, p
ersonal
