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Hey, everybody.

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Yeah.

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Sorry about all that front stuff. Oh.

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Thanks for being with us as we start
another week and start another chapter.

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The gospel of John.

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We're in chapter five today, and,

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coming off the story of Jesus healing

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an official son, another healing today
and a kind of an interesting transition,

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I think, in
that we go from a healing story

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to what looks like another healing story.

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But this one introduces
a layer of tension,

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and that will increasingly be true
throughout much of the rest of the book.

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So we'll look at this today.

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Start reading in verse
one will go for a while,

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and then we'll come back
and talk it through.

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After this there was a festival
of the Jews, and Jesus went to Jerusalem.

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Now in Jerusalem

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by the Sheep Gate
there is a pool in Hebrew called Masada.

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It has five porticos.

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In it lay many invalids,
blind, lame, and paralyzed.

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One man who was
there had been ill for 38 years.

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When Jesus saw him lying there,
and knew that he had been there

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a long time, he said to him,
do you want to be made well?

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The sick man answered him, sir,
I have no one to put me in the pool

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when the water is stirred,
and while I'm making my way,

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someone else steps down ahead of me.

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Jesus said, stand up,
take your mat and walk.

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At once the man was made well,
and he took up his mat and began to walk.

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Let's stop there, Michael, and just talk
about the miracle story itself here.

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So, we have this pool,

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based off the.

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And the idea is the waters are stirred,
whether this is a natural spring

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or some kind of hot springs.

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The legend has grown up around this pool
that if you can be

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the first one in the water,
that it has healing properties.

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And so, this is kind of a backstory
that John takes for granted.

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There's a little bit of reference
here, but,

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we know some of these things from
other sources and from other commentaries.

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And we meet here, this man, we
don't get his name, but he's been there.

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What looks to be his whole life, 38 years.

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Doesn't necessarily say that,
but certainly that's been his experience.

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And we are told that this man is lying
there and he had been there a long time.

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He says, do you want to be made?

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Well,
which seems like an interesting question.

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There are lots of ways to interpret this.

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Some have suggested that
that if Jesus heals this man, he's

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taking away the potential income of

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getting alms or getting donations.

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Not maybe begging, but not necessarily

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others have suggested
that Jesus is not forcing

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the man into something that he
he is checking with him.

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And you can read this

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a couple of different ways,
and the church has read it different ways.

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But the man,

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interestingly enough, Michael
doesn't respond really with a yes or no,

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but with a reason
or a kind of explanation of his struggle.

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In other words,
he wants seems to want Jesus to know

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that not only is he in difficulty
because of his health,

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his health makes it difficult
for him to pursue getting better.

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So one of the temptations in reading
the Bible is to just start kind of reading

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forward and sort of start speeding up,
get on, fast forward a little bit.

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And I think that this section of John
here, this particular grouping of stories,

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would be really easy to get on the freeway
here, just to give it a metaphor.

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And I think we just have a healing story.

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You mentioned that, Clint.

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I just want to make sure that we all go
back and we make sure that we remember.

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So this is the the healing story
we had last.

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The royal official's son who lays ill.

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Okay.

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So we have a healing story
that precedes it's the royal official.

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Now let's skip ahead here, friends.

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Chapter five, verse one,

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there's a festival of the Jews
and Jesus goes up.

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Where to?

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Jerusalem, the capital city.

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The center of Jewish life.

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It's striking
that we just have a woman at the well.

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Right. Go.

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Jesus goes.

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Lives in Samaria two days,
then he goes and heals an official son.

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Now Jesus comes to the heart
of the Jewish religion.

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So the heart of Jewish identity.

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And it's at this place
where Jesus encounters this man.

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And I do think that question

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is somewhat haunting, and scholars
certainly don't give us a hard and fast

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answer as to what's happening.

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I just want to add another possibility
here that when Jesus asked,

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do you want to be made?

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Well, there's a foreshadowing
of some of the implications

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of what being made well might mean for
this man's religious life.

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It's not just the fact that this man

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has now
sort of got a pattern for living, right?

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He he's been able to make it by this pool,
though.

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He's not been able to be healed.

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He has food,
he has drink. He has what he's needed.

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He's lived there for 38 years.
That's a long, long time.

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And he has a way and pattern of
of living in that place.

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The disruption to being healed

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would not just simply be
that those things would go away.

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It would radically transform his life
and and it would

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radically transform
his place in the community.

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John is always showing us what happens

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when Jesus reveals himself to people,

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and then what they do in response to that.

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Some become witnesses.

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Some see Jesus for who he is.

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That revelation
makes a deep impact in their spirit,

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and then they go out and become witnesses
and they testify to what they've seen.

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There are others for whom
the revelation of Christ

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is almost like throwing a rock
at a beehive.

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It creates tumult and struggle,
and there's almost a violent response.

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And for this man, this question
that comes, do you want to be made?

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Well?

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When he replies and says, well,

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you see, the problem is
I have no one to put me in the water.

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He's clearly not understanding
what Jesus is offering.

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He's thinking
that maybe Jesus is a bystander

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offering to get him into the water,
but it's when Jesus

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then gives him this command stand up,
take your mat and walk that that.

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Now the rising action of this story
is going to begin,

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because Jesus has used his authority
to give this man instruction.

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And what is going to follow from
this healing

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is only going to increase the complexity
and difficulty of the story.

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So I'm not going to rush ahead
or point out what's happening there.

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But Clint,

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I just want to sort of make note
of the fact that we we're transitioning.

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We have this healing story.

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It may seem like a duplicate.
Why is there another healing?

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Well, now we're in a different place,

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and now this healing
is going to have a different impact.

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So let's be careful, readers.

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And what we're going to discover is
John is showing us

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that not every healing results
in the same response or the same outcome.

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And this is part of the complexity
of the story that John's going to tell us.

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Yeah, I want be careful, Michael,
because it's it's probably easy to,

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psychologist this question, you know,
do you want to be made well.

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But what is interesting
is the inference that

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sometimes there is a cost to be, well,
right to

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to move on to something new means
to let go of something old.

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And whether that's what Jesus has in mind,
telling this man, once

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I heal you, you're you're going to have to
come up with a new life.

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Maybe that's it, but there is a certain
letting go that has to be

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done, has to be accomplished
in order to move forward.

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And I think there's a lot of power
in that question, though.

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As you said, even Bible scholars
don't know exactly

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what it's
how it's meant to function in the text.

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But regardless, we get to that moment that

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Jesus says, stand up,
take your mat and walk.

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And, this is often
the case in the gospel at once.

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The Bible always has a little bit of an
urgency as it tells Jesus stories at once.

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The man was made well,
and he took up his mat and began to walk.

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And the Bible wants
us to be amazed by that.

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That's an incredible moment.

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And so really,

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that completes the front part
of this story, which is the healing.

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Jesus has been confronted
by a man with the need.

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Jesus has inquired about the need.

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The man misunderstanding him has said
something else, and Jesus has given him

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wholeness, has given him healing.

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Now, from there, things get complicated.

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The next thing we read in the story is now

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that day was a Sabbath, and

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when we get a Sabbath detail
in the Gospels, it's

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almost always more than just calendar
stuff.

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It's a kind.

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Flicked is coming.

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And so that's what happens here.

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We jump back in,

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at, at that verse, verse ten.

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So the Jews said to the man
who had been cured, it's the Sabbath.

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It is not lawful
for you to carry your mat.

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But he answered them,

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the man who made me well said to me,
take your mat up and walk.

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They asked,
who is this man that said this to you?

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Take it up and walk.

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Now the man who had been healed
did not know who it was,

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for Jesus had disappeared in the crowd
that was there.

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Later, Jesus found him in the temple,

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and he said to him, see,
you've been made well.

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Do not sin any longer,
that nothing worse happens to you.

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The man went away and told the Jews
it was Jesus who made him well.

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Therefore the Jews started persecuting
Jesus because he was doing

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such things on the Sabbath.

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But Jesus answered them, My Father is
still working, and I am also working.

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For this reason, the Jews were seeking
all the more to kill him,

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because he was not only breaking
the Sabbath, but was also calling

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God his own father,
thereby making himself equal to God.

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So, just a reminder,
if this is new information to you,

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that the Jewish religion of Jesus day
and still in this day in many contexts,

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take the Sabbath,
which is Saturday, Friday sundown

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to Saturday sundown as their holy day,
and on it they are forbidden to do work.

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So the idea that this man is carrying
something that is not of necessity,

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it's not for life
saving, it's not demanded.

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He doesn't need to do it,

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and therefore it
constitutes him doing work on the Sabbath.

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So the Jews in it, as John's terms

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them, sees this happening,
and they confront the man.

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Why are you carrying this?

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This man defending himself
said, well, the guy who healed me told me

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to carry it.

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And notice what's fascinating,
I think, Michael,

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is that they don't they don't say,
what do you mean healed?

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They don't they don't seem intrigued
at all by the healing.

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They said, who is it?

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Who told you you could do this?

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And then we get. Well, I don't know.

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And, we'll get into some of the later
part of the story in a moment.

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But, it's a fascinating moment
where, again, we're going to see this over

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and over and over in John, what John calls
the people, John calls the Jews,

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which he specifically means
those religious leaders who are misguided

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miss the Christ

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because they're looking through the filter
of their own interpretation of law.

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And, they don't see the forest
for the trees.

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And here we have this example
as they try to pin this man down.

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Is there a better example of someone
who's expressed intention

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is to Revere and honor

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God through the Sabbath in verse ten,

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and then in the face of God himself

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doing miraculous work

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is literally hostile to God, right?

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I mean, that sort of the contrast here
is not to be lost on us, that

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the the expressed purpose
is that we keep the Sabbath law,

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because the Sabbath law is God's law,

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that God calls us to this,
that God didn't work on the Sabbath.

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Who are you that you imagine doing
work on the Sabbath?

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And now this man, freed
from 38 years of captivity

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to his illness,
takes his mat and walks home.

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I think, Clint, Westerners and,
you know, maybe

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exclusively Americans
mostly who listen to this study.

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I what's the big deal, man?

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You just carry this mat.

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We don't get it.

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We don't have the same kind of cultural
understanding of the gravity,

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of the reverence
that's intended by keeping this command.

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But even still, the idea that your goal is

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we're going to honor this day
because it's God's day.

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And then when a person's life
is restored to them in God's name,

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that that that's completely
passed over without a second,

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question.

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I mean, the way that John tells this story

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makes it abundantly clear here
with the transition in verse nine.

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Now, that day was a Sabbath.

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We now we're clued
in. Why is there another healing story?

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Because this story is a disruption
of what people think should be

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that it's not just about a person
who's restored,

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but it's about what the implications
of that restoration are for that man

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and how this plays out, in

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contrast to what we've seen before,

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is essential
to why John is telling us this story.

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Well, and then we go from something
relatively clear to a couple of verses

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that are very confusing
and not clear at all.

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Later, Jesus finds the man in the temple.

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He says to him, see,
you've been made well.

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Don't sin anymore
that nothing worse might happen to you.

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And there are all kinds of ways
this has been interpreted,

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that maybe this man is, some kind of a,

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not entirely moral.

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I've heard
people make the case that this guy is

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is not a very upright
man, is not a very moral person.

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Others simply say Jesus is telling him,
look, follow the laws.

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Now, don't you know, don't carry your mat.

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Whatever.

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You don't want to get in trouble
with the Jews.

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I don't know of anybody who can confirm
and at least say what John has in mind

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here telling this, and it's
complicated again by the next verse.

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So the man went away and told the Jews
it was Jesus who made him.

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Well, it is that out of spite
is he trying to get Jesus?

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I don't think

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if there is a

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very good explanation of these two verses
in what they mean

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in the context of the story,
I don't know it.

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I these are the kind of things
that New Testament scholars love

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because they're confusing.

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And so because that's the case,
you have hundreds

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of kinds of interpretations
and people trying to take guesses

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at what this means,
but there's not a lot of consensus.

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Whatever John has in mind,
I think is a little cloudy to us now,

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but it moves the story along
so that ultimately

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the confrontation is now
Jesus and the Jews.

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And that's where it was always headed.

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Yes, we get a couple of question
marks along the way, but at the end of the

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story, at the end of the day,
Jesus has done something that has offended

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the religious sensitivity
of the people who should know better.

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And when they look at him, they don't see
the one who calls God Father.

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That healed a lame man
who has been infirm 38 years.

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They see a troublemaker

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telling other people
to do to break the rules on the Sabbath.

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And John doesn't really nice job
of setting up that conflict.

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And if we don't get too bogged down,
these other questions are interesting.

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But even if we don't have good answers
to them.

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But ultimately, this is where the story
was always trying to take us there.

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Don't don't try to oversimplify a story
like this, please.

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Because there are other New Testament
references where Jesus directly rebuts

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that idea.

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That's a person's sinfulness
that's responsible for their sickness.

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And then ultimately, in those stories,
it's often their faith or their response

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to Jesus
that that, precedes their healing.

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I think, Clint,
what we may miss for our struggle

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to understand some of these things
is the clarity of the ending.

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And John goes out of John's
way to make this clear for us.

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So let let's just see it.

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But Jesus was calling God his own father.

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And as if we don't, in case we miss it
therefore, or thereby

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making himself equal to God.

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Clint, I mean, this in there's
no mark in secret here.

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There's no like Jesus saying,
I don't go tell anybody.

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No, John, the writer is explicitly

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telling us with narrator privilege

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they're angry
because Jesus is claiming equality to God.

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This is thoroughgoing, John.

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And it is something for us.

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The point of this story,

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that there's a beautiful kind
of concluding force of this,

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that the thing that makes the Jews angry,
the Jews being those religious leaders.

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This is the way that John speaks a bit
like you said, Clint,

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the thing that makes the Jews angry in
this moment is the fact

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that they are understanding Jesus's claim

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rightly, that they are hearing

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what Jesus is saying,
and they are not pleased with it.

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They are angry.

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So while they may not understand
the background, they may not understand

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the complexities and subtleties of the

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the theological point
that Jesus was making here.

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Granted, what they do understand
is the simple point that Jesus is claiming

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God as Father and that it is

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God's power that makes it possible
for this man to be healed.

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That is an unacceptable outcome
for these individuals,

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and they are rightly responding
from their vantage to that heresy.

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And Jesus, who we are being intended,
being led, we are.

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We're walking alongside
John as he wants us to see Jesus

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as John sees
Jesus, we are to know that Jesus,

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he is the revealed God
and that Jesus has the right authority.

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But unfortunately for this man
who finds himself

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caught in the crosshairs
between misunderstanding

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and also maybe on the other side,
that maybe even ill will or intention

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in all disbelief, wherever that is on
the spectrum, this man is caught

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in the crosshairs of this
this new and growing tension.

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And, John wants us to be clear.

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Jesus claims a thing.

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It's the thing that Jesus claims
that that they're angry about.

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We will have a story in a few chapters
that is similar to this.

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It's a little bit more expanded and and
it will cover some of these themes again.

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But I do want to point out,
as we get ready to wrap up here,

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that in regard to what has offended

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that the Jews here, the religious leaders,
we have to be careful with that word.

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The way John uses
that is is very specific is not general.

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What John has in mind here

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is that the thing that has offended them

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is the perception of legal code,

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the perception of legalism, of laws,

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of barriers, things
that, keep people in boxes

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when Jesus has just set a man free
from his infirmity.

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And I think the way that John,

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one of the ways that John very subtly

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says this or points
this out to us, notice at no point

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do these religious leaders

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ever mention the work that Jesus has done.

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Yeah, all they care about
is there's a guy carrying a mat.

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They miss what the power of God has done,

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just as they miss who it is
standing before them calling God Father.

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That that's, I think,

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the way this is written in which

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he stands up and is made well,
and then it's never mentioned.

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Nobody seems to care or be amazed

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that Jesus has done this thing.

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Instead, you have this little nit
picky stuff about,

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well, yeah, but when did he do it?

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And did he tell him to take the mat?

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Because you're not supposed
to take the mat.

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That's the epitome of of misunderstanding
for John. And,

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I don't want to say this.

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I don't want to say this wrong, but.

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But John relishes

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telling us in those moments
because it's so clearly,

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portrays for him
the disconnect between Jesus

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and the world, particularly
the Jewish religious world.

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I think it's
well said. It's a great summary.

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If you made it this far,
like the video helps us a lot.

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Subscribe if you want to stick with us
and certainly join us as we continue along

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this study.

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We're going to be quick,
to the study tomorrow.

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So I hope you'll join us
right on the beginning of the hour,

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and we'll see you then. Thanks, everybody.