How Does God Work?
John 5:1-18,
After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
2 Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades. 3 In these lay a multitude of invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. 5 One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be healed?” 7 The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me.” 8 Jesus said to him, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.” 9 And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked.
Now that day was the Sabbath. 10 So the Jews said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to take up your bed.” 11 But he answered them, “The man who healed me, that man said to me, ‘Take up your bed, and walk.’” 12 They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take up your bed and walk’?” 13 Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, as there was a crowd in the place. 14 Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you.” 15 The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him. 16 And this was why the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. 17 But Jesus answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.”
18 This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.
One of the realities of our humanity is that we can be wrong sometimes.
Being wrong, a lot of times, isn’t a terrible thing, we know we don’t always get it right — but there are some big things in life that we can’t afford to get wrong because the stakes are too high. And Jesus targets one of those things in our passage today, John Chapter 5.
It’s all about the way that God works in this world. That’s the focus in this passage — it’s the activity of God, the power of God, the working of God in this world. We must get that right. And we find here two things it is not, and one thing it is.
And that’s the outline of this sermon. We’re going to consider two misconceptions about God’s work and then thirdly, we’re gonna see how Jesus answers both.
Father, the unfolding of your word gives light. This morning, we ask, that by the power of your Spirit, shine on our hearts, and speak to us, in Jesus’s name, amen.
1. God’s work is not impersonal to us.
John starts in verse 1 with the setting of this story: Jesus is back in Jerusalem, and he’s in a particular part of the city John describes for us. By the Sheep Gate (in the northeast part of the city) there was a pool called Bethesda.
This pool would have been a pretty big rectangle — think the size of a football field — and then surrounding the pool is what verse 2 calls “five roofed colonnades.” This is a shelter held up by columns. There would have been a shelter surrounding the four sides of the pool, and then a shelter through the middle section, and verse 3 says that under this shelter, or in these colonnades, lay a “multitude of invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed.” Keyword there is “multitude” — down in verse 13 John says that there was a crowd in the place, so we should imagine here:
A long pool, surrounded by a swarm of people. And many of the people in this area would have been disabled folks, many of them were likely homeless and they found shelter here.
So imagine this to look like a homeless encampment. There’s lots of people who hang around here, and there’s shopping carts scattered around and backpacks and pallets and stuff laid out.
And one person in this multitude, verse 5 says, was a man who had been an invalid for 38 years. We don’t know the exact details of his condition, but most likely he was paralyzed in some way.
Everybody find verse 6 for a minute. There’s an important detail to the story in verse 6 I want you to see. John 5, verse 6:
“When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, ‘Do you want to be healed?’”
Again, imagine what’s going on here: It’s a swarm of people. People everywhere. But Jesus saw this one man in the crowd and he knew he’d been there a long time — now how’d Jesus know that?
We’re not sure. Maybe he knew because he knows things, or maybe he asked around, either way, Jesus was interested in this man. He knew he’d been there a while, and he wanted to know what the man was looking for. So Jesus asked him, verse 6, “Do you want to be healed?”
And this is when the action starts. Kind of like in Chapter 4 with the Samaritan woman, Jesus asks the questions and that’s when things start to unravel …
The Unraveling Begins
The man responded to Jesus with an implied “Yes” but he jumped straight to the problem. Look at verse 7. The man said:
“Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me.”
What in the world is he talking about? Again, there’s some unraveling here …
This is the situation that was going on: during this time in Jerusalem there was a superstition that God would occasionally send an angel to infuse these pools with healing power — the waters would apparently be stirred up — and whoever would get in the water first, would be healed. (So it was like part healing, part contest.)
The reason the man had been there by the pool for a long time was because he was waiting for his moment — and apparently a lot of other people were doing the same. Remember it’s a multitude of people. They’re all looking for their chance. But each time the ‘magic’ came, this man was too disabled to get himself in the water first. So he was constantly just missing out.
So I think the man’s reply to Jesus in verse 7 is an indirect request.
Try to track with this: in verse 7 the man is telling Jesus his problem to see if Jesus would solve this problem by helping him get to the pool. Because this man thinks that’s where the power of God is. He thinks God’s work is in the pool, and he thinks his problem is that he doesn’t have anyone to help him get access to where God works — and he’s telling this to Jesus! Which is super ironic, isn’t it? We’re supposed to read this and be like Oh my goodness! We should think: This guy has it all wrong.
He is complaining to Jesus about not having access to where he thinks God works.
All he needs is for Jesus to say the word, like Jesus did in Chapter 4. He just spoke the word and 25 miles away the fever broke!
The Vaguely Spiritual
What this man gets wrong is that he thinks the work of God in the world is impersonal to us.
According to how this man viewed the world: he believed that God was the one behind miraculous things — God was the one who made the water magic — but that’s the thing: it was the water that became magic at random, arbitrary times, which means the power of God is disconnected from the person of God. This thinking disconnects the work of God from the will of God.
And this kind of thinking, this misconception, still exists today in those who we could call the vaguely spiritual. That’s the title I’m putting on this thinking. These are people who don’t deny the existence of a higher power — they’re not atheists — but they’re also not committed to the God of the Bible.
And you find this everywhere. I remember one Sunday I was talking with someone after the service and they were going on and on about Sedona, Arizona and this rock formation that has divine healing power. It’s making the work of God impersonal to us. That’s what the vaguely spiritual do.
A lot of these people might even consider themselves to be Christians, but they really only appreciate the ‘inspirational’ side of things. They only want the self-help stuff — which is an attempt to have blessing without relationship.
And this is where we start to see that the belief that God’s work is impersonal is not just something people get wrong, it’s also a preference.
People are very interested in the good God can do for them, but they’re not interested in daily trusting him. A lot of people love the idea of ‘getting from God what we want without having to deal with God on his terms.’ See, that prefers to keep things non-committal and vague.
The vaguely spiritual are ‘spiritual’ enough not to be atheist, but ‘vague’ enough not to be subject to God’s moral demands. But look: that’s wrong … Wrong.
That’s not how God works. God’s work is not impersonal to us. Here’s the second thing we see about God’s work in the world.
2. God’s work is not dictated by us.
Jesus says the word, heals this man, and then John tells us, verse 9,
“Now that day was the Sabbath.”
Verse 9 is like a hard right turn that takes us into what seems like a whole different topic. We go from pool superstition to Sabbath controversy like this. Verse 10 says right away that the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed:
“It is the Sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to take up your bed.”
And it’s interesting here how the man deflects the blame. He said he took up his bed because the man who healed him told him to. Baked into that statement is a recognition of authority. It’s like the man is saying, I’ve been paralyzed for 38 years, and a man just showed up from this crowd and told me to get up, and I did. So yeah, I’m just gonna do whatever he says.
Look how they respond, verse 12. Again, they just want to know who healed him and where he went — not so they can meet Jesus and be in awe of him, but because they want to correct him.
And again, the irony here is thick. The only person who does not need to be corrected in this story is Jesus. That’s how misguided these people are!
And in case you were wondering, there’s no law in the Old Testament that says you can’t take up your bed on the Sabbath. The statement in verse 10 that it’s not lawful is according to the Mishnah — that’s Jewish oral tradition. A bunch of rabbis had analyzed the Sabbath command and came up with 39 categories of prohibited work, one of which included that on the Sabbath you can’t carry anything from one place to another. That was their rule. So the Jewish leaders here are not trying to defend God’s word, but this is their own word.
Again, there’s irony: they think they’re defending God’s law, but they’re actually defending their misapplication of God’s law in opposition to God himself!
I wanna make sure you see what’s going on here: These Jewish leaders meet this guy who has been paralyzed for 38 years and now he’s not! He’s up! He’s walking! They don’t give him a high-five! They’re not amazed by the fact that this man has been healed! But instead they interrogate him because according to them the timing of his healing didn’t make sense!
For them, this healing, which was God’s work, happened when it wasn’t supposed to, and that became their concern.
The Legalistic Henchmen
What these Jewish leaders get wrong is that they think the work of God in the world is dictated by us. According to how these people viewed the world, they believed that God did miraculous things, but only so long as it fits with their expectations and their standards. The issue here is that they’ve disconnected the work of God from the word of God by making it subject to their own word. They’ve separated the power of God from the freedom of God by putting themselves in the place of God.
And this kind of thinking, this misconception, still exists today in those who we could call the legalistic henchmen. That’s the title I’m putting on this one. These are people who believe that God is at work in the world, but they’ve drawn very clear lines of where that work can happen and where it can’t, and anything outside their lines is rejected. If it doesn’t fit in their construct and conform to their rules then it’s dismissed.
And this is where we can see that this belief also — the belief that God’s work is dictated by us — is not just something people get wrong, it too is a preference. Because it means that we as humans are the ones in control. The ‘legalistic henchmen’, see, never get corrected, but they’re always the ones doing the correcting, because “they’re always right and they’re the only ones who really do God’s work.”
Now there are very few people who would admit that they think this way, but it’s out there.
It’s the inability to appreciate God’s work in things you had nothing to do with. The legalistic henchmen are so blinded by their own man-made ideals that they miss the work of God when it’s right in front of them. That’s what’s going on here. And it’s wrong … Wrong.
That’s not how God works. God’s work is not dictated by us.
So let’s just track what we’ve seen so far in the pool superstition and the Sabbath controversy. Two misconceptions:
So far we know that God’s work is neither impersonal to us nor dictated by us. We don’t wanna be vaguely spiritual or legalistic henchmen — so how should we be?
How should we understand God’s work in the world?
3. God’s work in the world is what Jesus is doing, who is both personal and active.
I want you to see how Jesus engages both of these misconceptions.
First, let’s go back to what Jesus said to the paralyzed man. This is for the vaguely spiritual. Jesus says to the man in verse 8,
“Get up, take up your bed, and walk.”
Verse 9: And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked.
I want you to see here that there is a beautiful contrast between where this man was looking for healing and what he actually experienced.
He is looking to somehow find his way into that pool because he thinks the work of God is impersonally connected to the water, meanwhile, the true work of God is in the person of Jesus Christ who finds his way to this man. In this crowd, Jesus saw him and learned about him and healed him.
And look at verse 14. After the healing there was some commotion and Jesus withdrew from the crowd. But verse 14. Look at verse 14:
“Afterward Jesus found him in the temple …”
Not only did Jesus see him that once, and learn about him, but Jesus was looking for him again. How much more personal can this get?! Jesus found him again!
Look, some of you in this room should know that the reason you’re here today is because Jesus has been looking for you. Jesus has found you.
Look what Jesus says in verse 9. He says,
“See, you are well! [Yes, you’re walking! I just hear the joy of Jesus in these words! … Then he says:] Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you.”
Jesus here is calling this man to a new way of life. He’s calling this man to true faith and repentance. What is worse than being paralyzed for 38 years is to be able to walk but still die in your sin.
You know one thing about the Gospels and these stories is that they show us real-life people who encounter Jesus, which makes me think of other real-life people who have encountered Jesus. People at our church.
This story makes me think of Jean Swenson, our dear sister. This man had been paralyzed for 38 years, and Jean has been there for 45 years (and she has an amazing testimony — if you’ve not heard it, Jean wrote something for our church I’m gonna share this week).
Jesus has not healed Jean’s body yet, but Jean has experienced the work of God in her life in the most important way. She has believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. She has been forgiven. And Jean has a perspective on life that we all need. She says, “My value lies in something that can never be taken away…and that’s the fact that God loves me.”
Do you hear that? “God loves me.”
Jean knows: Jesus sees her, knows her, he found her.
There’s nothing impersonal about that.
Jesus Is Working
Lastly, here, I want you to see what Jesus says to these Jewish leaders in verse 17. This is for the legalistic henchmen.
Now John gives us a summary statement in verse 18 — the reason these Jewish leaders despised Jesus is not just because he was breaking their man-made rules about the Sabbath, but, end of verse 18, “he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.”
Jesus was doing that in verse 17, when he said, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.”
See, implied here is that God the Father is always working. God doesn’t take breaks. He neither sleeps nor slumbers, Psalm 121. God is exempt from having to stop work on the Sabbath because we need him constantly to uphold the universe. We need God to always keep things in orbit and sustain life, and the Jewish worldview understood that. Jesus says, The Father is working until now — and they all would have been like, Yes, of course — but then Jesus says, and I am working.
And they knew what he meant. Jesus was saying that his working, what he’s doing, is what God is doing. What God is doing is what Jesus is doing.
Jesus is not one of several different ways God works, but Jesus is the only way. God’s work in the world is never apart from Jesus, but it’s always through Jesus, centered on Jesus, lifting high Jesus. We will see more of this in the Gospel of John. Jesus will say in Chapter 14, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
That is the final answer to our question …
God’s work in the world is what Jesus Christ is doing, and he is both personal and active. Jesus finds us where we are, he calls us to himself, and he is doing this all the time. He’s active every single day.
Which means, as for God’s work in the world, we should be neither vaguely spiritual nor legalistic henchmen, but we should be attentive to Jesus Christ. Focusing on Jesus Christ. Remembering Jesus Christ.
And that’s what brings us to the Table.
The Table
I’m convinced that the greatest need in the Christian life is to keep Jesus clear in our hearts. We need to remember his realness in all of life. And that’s something we do on purpose together at this table each week.
We remember that the definite work of God in the world was when Jesus died for us on the cross. Jesus was working then, and Jesus is working now by his Spirit every time the message of his cross is heard and shared and embraced. And that’s what we’re doing at the table.
If you’re not a Christian yet — if you’ve not put your faith in Jesus — this moment is an invitation for you. Trust in Jesus. That could look like a prayer of the heart that says:
Jesus, I can’t save myself and I’m done trying.
You died on the cross to save me, and I trust you. Save me.
And for those of us who have done that, who have trusted in Jesus, we receive this table with thankfulness, and we remember Jesus and his work in our lives, in our church, in this world. Rejoice in Jesus Christ.
