February 20 2022
John 5:1-24
This past while I have been thinking a lot about my friends that I met through helping out with the prison ministry at Belmont Correctional. Ever since Covid reared its ugly head, the prison, understandably, has had to put a stop to a lot of the programs like Kairos prison ministry. It was through Kairos that I got to meet some really great brothers in Christ who reside behind prison walls. I hope that they remember the love that we have for them and the things they were taught while we spent time with them.
It is interesting how the Kairos ministry is set up. Out of the prison population of around two thousand men, the chaplain will select eighteen or twenty-one men to be part of a Kairos weekend which begins on a Thursday afternoon and lasts until Sunday afternoon. During that time, a team of men who have been meeting for eight weeks prior to the Kairos weekend, come into the prison from the outside, most of whom are not pastors. The team from the outside comes in to, first, show their love to a group of men who need to be reminded that even though they have been incarcerated, God still loves them and desires to have a relationship with them. The way that this love is expressed is through cookies, lots and lots of cookies. The team bakes and asks for cookies in order that every resident gets at least one dozen homemade cookies which means that we take with us at least two thousand dozen cookies. That’s a whole lot of love.
Yet, there is more to the weekend than just eating cookies. There are a series of talks that are given to the selected group of men that help them come to have faith in the grace offered by Jesus and how they can keep their faith after the weekend is over. The first talk that this select group of residents hear is a talk concerning the choices that these men make. Now, its seems a little strange to talk about choices to a group of men who have had many of their choices taken from them. They don’t get to choose what they will wear or what they will eat. They don’t get a say in where they will sleep which is with two hundred other men in a dormitory lined with bunk beds. In spite of most of their choices taken from them there is one very important choice they do get to make and that is that they get to choose who it is that they will run with while they are at prison. Who they hang out with is going to be one of the biggest factors of whether or not they will be able to keep their faith in Jesus alive while they do their time behind prison walls. What is interesting about this choice that the residents must make, just who it is that they will be spending time with, this choice is not only vital for them it is just as important for those of us here on the outside. The truth that is found behind prison walls is the same truth found within the walls of our homes, who a person listens to and allows to influence their life is one of the single greatest factors of keeping their faith in Jesus.
As we come to the fifth chapter of John we see how John is now going to address just what it is that keeps the glorious future that he has described in the first four chapters from happening. The first issue John is touching on is the first subject we addressed when we spoke to the residents of Belmont, we have a choice to make. We have to choose just who it is that we are going to run with, just who it is that we are going to allow to influence us, because it is this choice that makes an incredible difference in our faith. The story that John uses to communicate this point begins when Jesus goes up to Jerusalem to attend a feast. While he is there he walks past a pool of water located by what is called the Sheep Gate. This is a place where those who were lame, paralyzed and blind would come to find healing in the pool of water. The belief was that when the water in the pool would be stirred up, perhaps by the wings of angels, then if those who suffered along the edge of the pool entered the water they would be healed. We are told that there was a man who had been unable to walk for thirty-eight years. Now, right here, I believe that John is giving us a clue that unlocks this story because this is such an unusual number. As people learn pretty quick when the read the Bible, the length of time that is most often spoke about is forty, forty days, or forty years. Why is this number thirty-eight? Well, if you read the second chapter of Deuteronomy you find that thirty-eight years is the length of time that it took for the generation of people of Israel who had rebelled against God to perish in the wilderness. You see, the reason that it took almost forty years for Moses to get to the Promised Land wasn’t that he wouldn’t stop and ask for directions but rather the reason it took this long is that he had to wait for all those who angered God with their unbelief to die off. This story of the unbelief of the people that God had rescued from slavery, this plays in the background of the story of Jesus healing of this man who was paralyzed. The question John wants us to consider is this: will this man be able to hold on to his faith in Jesus?
I love how Jesus heals this man. I mean, he first asked him if he wants to be healed, isn’t that a bit strange? Doesn’t it just make sense that if this paralyzed man is at this pool known for healing that he is there in hopes that he is going to find a way to walk again? Yet, in spite of what appears to be obvious, Jesus is there asking the question, “Do you want to be healed?” The man does not reply with a “Yes” or a “No”, he just explains that he has no one to put him in the pool when it is stirred up. Imagine the frustration of seeing the waters become stirred but being unable to move into that healing. But here is Jesus who is bringing healing to this paralyzed man right where he is at. Jesus tells the man to take up his bed and walk and just like that the man takes up his bed and he walks off.
It is right here that we have to pause our story for a moment to ask just why did Jesus insist that this man take his bed with him? I mean, Jesus had to know that it was the Sabbath and if this man was seen to be carrying anything on the Sabbath the powers that be would have a fit. Maybe though, that was the very reason why Jesus told the man to carry his bed so that in doing so he would be proclaiming that God had come in a powerful way into this man’s life. When this man was stopped and questioned as to why he was carrying his bed he had a choice to make. Would he answer with a story of how God in his mercy had set him free from an almost forty year prison sentence? Or would he choose instead to succumb to the fear of the religious authorities? Well, it is quickly found out that instead of taking the moment to testify to God’s power this man instead takes this opportunity to throw Jesus under the bus. The man says the only reason I am carrying this dumb bed is that the guy who healed me told me to do so, this is the guy’s story in so many words. Think about what he is saying. There is no mention of God in his story. Wouldn’t you think that if you hadn’t been able to walk for thirty-eight years and then one day you had become healed that, you know, maybe God would be somewhere in the conversation? The guy is speaking to a Pharisee who is one of the religious elite, one of those who thought that God had to be pretty happy to have a guy like him on his side yet in spite of being in the presence of this supposed godly man the man who had been healed can’t even bring God up when he speaks to him. Isn’t this a little odd? Yes, it is not a little odd it is very much odd and that is what John is trying to make sure we understand about this situation.
This conversation of this man who was healed and the Pharisee is just as odd as the situation John has already pointed us to, the situation of the people of Israel refusing to enter into the Promised Land. The reason they wanted nothing to do with this gift that God had to give to them is that twelve spies had been sent out to check out the Promised Land and when they returned with their report, ten of them cried out that the land was full of giants and scary things and there was just no way that they would be able to conquer them and survive to live there. What they were focused on is what they could do under their own power and their own strength totally forgetting that their own power and their own strength had nothing to do with them being free in the first place. These people had totally drawn a blank about God coming down to Egypt through his servant Moses and making a way through the sea for his people to escape. They had no recollection of how God had made bread fall from heaven so that they could eat and how God had brought water from a rock so that they would not perish from thirst. No, just like the man who had been healed, the miracles they had personally experienced vanished into thin air. How could this be? The answer is that fear brings about a kind of spiritual forgetfulness. You see, when those ten spies came back from the Promised Land all they could remember were those things which frightened them. This fear made them forget all of the great things about the land, that it was a land of milk and honey. They forgot that it was a land that had been promised to them and had not God made good on all his other promises? Hadn’t God told them that he was going to set them free and then through wonders and miracles do just that? This episode is spoken of in the third chapter of the book of Hebrews where the writer of Hebrews first quotes from the ninety-fifth psalm which reads, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, on the day of testing in the wilderness, where your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for forty years. Therefore, I was provoked by that generation, and said, “They always go astray in their heart; they have not known my ways. As I swore in my wrath, “They shall not enter my rest.” The writer of Hebrews says that from this we should, “Take care so that there will not be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God.” This is what John is telling us about this man that Jesus healed. When he encountered the Pharisees, this man was filled with fear. He was filled with fear because the Pharisees, were the rule keepers and if you break the rules then you should be afraid, very afraid. So, when this man that Jesus healed encountered the Pharisee, he was surrounded by a system which was powered by fear. The God of the Pharisees was a God who was going to get you if you step out of line, if you go against the status quo. So, there amongst all that fear it was easy for this man that Jesus had healed to forget, to forget the God who had healed him just as when his ancestors had done when they encountered the fear of the Promised Land. Surrounded by their fear they too forgot the God who had set them free and had given them a new life. When we know this it isn’t hard to understand that when Jesus finally runs into the man he healed, he had some pretty harsh words for him. Jesus tells him, “See, you are well, Stop sinning, don’t sin anymore, that nothing worse might happen to you.” Jesus knew that this man had a bad case of unbelief even though Jesus had not that long ago had healed him. This unbelief was what the writer of Hebrews calls the deceitfulness of sin, and this is what Jesus is addressing when he tells this man to go and sin no more. Jesus is trying to remind this man that when Jesus had spoken to him, it was God, the Father, who had worked in his life. Jesus pleads with this man, can’t you see that you are well, stop allowing fear to take your belief from your heart because if you don’t you will experience a greater tragedy than just being paralyzed for thirty-eight years which is that he would never enter into the rest and peace that God had to offer him. He would end up a man who had been healed of a physical paralysis only to find himself being paralyzed by fear, unable to be free from the agony of life lived under the power of fear. Yes, his his immovable legs had been healed but what he needed is for his heart to be moved by this act of God’s mercy so that now that he had experienced God’s love for him he could be set free from the fear which oppressed him.
Sadly, it appears, that the message of Jesus could not penetrate the hardness of this mans heart. We are told that the man went away and told the Pharisees that it was Jesus who had healed him. Jesus countered this man’s story by saying that the healing was the work of his Heavenly Father and because of his heavenly Fathers work he then was able to work the miracle that he did. The miracle that happened was to be a way to bring new life to this paralyzed man not just a physical healing but a new life that had encountered the mercy and love of God. Sadly, this did not happen at all because of this thing called fear.
The point I believe that John is making is that after you have encountered the power of God, you must be careful to not hang out with people who are fear mongers, people who think fear is a great motivator to get people to tow the line. All that fear will do is fester and become a deadly unbelief. What is needed is to surround ourselves with people who know that love is really what life is all about because as John tells us in his first letter, the fourth chapter, when we love each other then God lives in us and his love is made perfect in us. What it means for love to be made perfect in us means that this love does in us what it is supposed to do which is to drive out fear. This is what John goes on to say that this love is perfected in us when we have confidence for the day of judgment because there is no fear in love. Fear has to do with punishment so whenever we fear this means that God’s love has not achieved what it is supposed to do. There is a reason that John counters the story of fear and unbelief of the man that Jesus healed with the teaching of Jesus that whoever hears his word and believes that word will have eternal life. The word that Jesus speaks is the command to love. When we hear that command to love then God comes to live with us, his eternal life becomes ours. So, as Paul says in the eighth chapter of Romans, If God is for us, then who can be against us? And if we love then there is no need to worry about judgment day because we are already living the life of eternity.
You see, there’s a real danger if we aren’t in a fellowship of love where we love and are loved by others. If we just hang out with the people of this world caught up in all of the fear that’s flying around then we are going to find ourselves driven by that fear and in that fear we are going to lose sight of God. Focused on fear were going to find it easy to forget what God has done for us, afraid to testify to the world to the greatness of our God. This is how fear becomes unbelief which is really the deceitfulness of sin. So, we need to do a fear check once in a while and ask ourselves just how much have we allowed fear to influence us? We have to ask ourselves does what we hear in the news and on social media cause fear to take over our life? If we find that fear has made its home with us perhaps its time to shut off the voices that speak of fear and instead hear again the voice of God who speaks his word, a word that commands us to go and love. Go out and love on somebody, maybe bake some cookies, and in doing so discover once again that when you love, right there, God is with you. Allow the love of Christ which was shown to you upon the cross to do what it is supposed to do in your life, cast out all your fear and in its place discover the faith which leads to eternal life. To God be the glory!Amen!
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