In John chapter 5, Jesus is traveling again. He returns to Jerusalem because "there was a feast of the Jews". The city is crowded and the temple area is bustling with people in a festive mood. Jesus chooses to walk through a shady area around a pool of water called Bethesda, just outside the Temple gates.
This pool was part of an Urban Legend which said that if the water started stirring or moving, the first person who reached the water would be healed of all his/her infirmities. So obviously, many sick, lame, blind and diseased people were here every day to see if the waters moved and if they could be the first to enter the water. That day was no exception.
I wonder what Jesus felt as he looked around at the throng of desperate people and the loved ones who had brought them here? Was He overwhelmed by their need and suffering? What would it have felt like to know you had the power to heal each one but not the calling to do so? There was one person here whom He was called by His Father to help and He quickly finds him.
The man had been a cripple for 38 years! Jesus walks up to where the man is laying, earnestly watching the water, and asks him a very silly question "Do you want to get well?" (NIV) The man does not answer the question of "Do you want?", he answers the question of "How?" He says he can't get to the water fast enough because there is no one to carry him. So Jesus gives him something to do for himself "Take up thy bed and walk!" And the man was healed at that moment! He did rise, did pick up his bed and he began to walk!
But this was the Sabbath, and when the Jewish leaders heard of the commotion the first thing they notice is the man is breaking the sabbath! He is carrying his bed! And someone broke the sabbath to heal him as well! Scandalous! But when they question the man as to who had healed him, the poor man couldn't answer because Jesus had slipped away into the crowd. So the leaders let him go on his way.
However, Jesus was not through with this man yet... Even though He had healed the man of a decades long disability, there was something more important that this man needed from Jesus. Jesus searches the faces of the people in the temple and finds the man He had healed. He says to him "Behold, thou art made whole, sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee" So, there were more important things for this man to do than just picking up his bed and walking. There was sin in his life, sin that needed walking away from, sin that would eventually lead him to something worse than a life time of sickness and suffering if he did not turn around now!
So of all the people at the pool that day, Jesus was called to heal this man. Why? Was it because of the "something worse" that loomed in his future? When we look at our lives, are we focusing on our problems, wanting to walk away from them, not looking at the "something worse" we are walking into?
Jesus says to us: "Rise... Pick up your problems... and Walk with Me... and walk away from sin."