I'm going to take a minute and
put that other microphone on. If I stood up here like a statue
and didn't move, it would work okay. But if I step back at all,
it starts to make the sound go down. So this is a real handy little
thing. There we go. Now this is one of my favorite
stories from the life of the Lord Jesus. the one that our
brother read to us about the Pool of Bethesda. Now it contains some details
that might be overlooked. You just might think they're
like what's in the background of a picture and you wouldn't
take notice of them. And if you didn't take notice
of them, it's not as though you would miss the primary message
that this story conveys. But as I was preparing for this
message, I discovered something. I say I discovered. Somebody
else discovered and I read what they discovered. But some details
that give this story another dimension. And if you are a believer
in the Lord Jesus, you will rejoice in what is revealed
in some of these details. Now, the first thing to note
here, one of the details to note, is that our Lord did live entirely
as a man. I'm not saying he wasn't God. Philippians chapter two describes
to us the mystery of the incarnation. I say it describes it, it just
states it. There is no describing it, there is no understanding
it, but it says, he who is by nature God made himself nothing. They say, how can God do that?
Don't ask me. But there's a lot of things God
does, I don't know how he does them. But Jesus Christ, everything
He did during His natural life, He did as a man. Even the miracles He worked were
not an expression of His own divine power. Rather, He said,
the Spirit of the Lord is upon me to do these things. Now, why
would our Lord do that? Why would He not engage his own
powers. Well, simply because he came
here, not simply to die for us, he came here to live for us.
Before he could die as our suitable substitute, he must live as our
substitute. And he must perform that which
we never performed or couldn't perform. and he must show himself
to be without sin, otherwise he will not be a suitable sacrifice. And the only way for him to do
that is to confront all the things that you and I confront in this
life with nothing more than what any sinless man would have at
his disposal. And so he lived that way. And
I bring this up because it says Jesus went up to Jerusalem for
a feast of the Jews. Now, did he go up there because
he didn't have sufficient work in Galilee to do? Now understand,
when it says go up to Jerusalem, it doesn't mean Jerusalem was
farther north. Actually, it was farther south. But they didn't
even have those concepts back then. Jerusalem was on a high
mountain. It was higher than just about
all the rest of Israel. So they always talked about going
up to Jerusalem. And so he went up to Jerusalem.
Why did he go? Because he was not only a man,
he was a Jewish man. And Paul says he was made under
the law. And the law required that the
men go to Jerusalem three times a year. holy convocation. And so our Lord did all that
was required of him under the law as a Jewish man. He went
up there in a sense for the same reason that he was baptized. Now, John went out preaching
the baptism of repentance. What did Jesus have to repent
of? I mean, he never did anything
wrong. But nonetheless, he goes to the water to be baptized,
and I understand exactly what John meant when he said, I can't
baptize you, I need to be baptized by you. And the Lord said, now
John, let it be so, for it is fitting that we fulfill all righteousness. Repentance was required of sinners. Now, our Lord could not repent
of anything He had done or thought, but He acknowledged the message
of John to be true and right, just as any man or woman should
have done in that day. You see it? Our Lord didn't just
come down and do the big things, so to speak. In the details of
His life, He did all that was required, including going to
Jerusalem on a feast day. Second, we see here a perfect example
of the sovereign and particular work of the Lord Jesus Christ
in saving sinners. Now this is one of these details
you will not pick up in your English Bible. And you likely
would not even pick it up if you knew how to read Greek, unless
you knew some Greek mythology. But the people who were reading
this when John wrote it would have been familiar with those
things. They knew how to read Greek, of course, and they would have
been familiar with Greek mythology and the Greek gods and goddesses
because the Romans took the same gods and goddesses and just gave
them different names. But. Most of your older. English translations
or any English translation that's based on a text called the Textus
Receptus. It's the Greek text of the New
Testament that the King James people had access to. They actually have more in their
translation than what we see here in the New International
Version. And if you were following along as Bernie read it, you
would have caught that he read some things that you don't find
in here. The last half of verse 3 and then all of verse 4 is
not in the New International Version, and here's why. Since
the Greek text behind the King James and virtually all translations
up to about 1900, since then they have found more and older
manuscripts. And the older manuscripts do
not have that part that says that an angel of the Lord would
come down and trouble the waters, and the first one to get in would
be healed. And what likely happened, and
it makes sense to me, somewhere down the road, a scribe A copyist
is making copies of that Greek New Testament. And he says, it's
been long enough. People aren't going to know the
significance of the Pool of Bethesda. So he inserted what he thought
was a correct explanation of what went on there. That an angel
from the Lord would come down, stir the waters, and the first
one in was healed. Now, that supposed clarification actually
has obscured a very potent truth in this Scripture. In fact, with that little bit
in there, that the angel of the Lord would stir the water and
all that, we're confronted with some problems. We must explain
why God would have something that looks like the superstitious
shrines of pagan religion. It's more magical than miraculous. Everybody's sitting there waiting,
they're waiting for a little something to happen in the water, something
to stir up. And lo and behold, you could be healed if you're
the first one to jump in. And you don't read anything else
in the Bible that even remotely resembles God doing that. Having this permanent place of
miraculous events that occur on cue. If we leave that verse in place
and don't recognize it as an attempt at explanation made later
on, We've got to explain why that place was not completely
overrun with sick people. I mean, look at how many sick
people the Lord encountered as He went from city to city. Well,
if there was a place where that explanation really happened,
don't you think that they'd have been there, hoping they could
get in first? But most of all, if we leave
that verse, you know, the last half of verse 3 and verse 4,
as appears in your older English translations, if we leave that
in there, we must explain why God would have anything to do
with a system of blessing that amounted to a race. And each
person would be concerned with their own selves, trying to get
ahead of everybody else and be the first one in. That's utterly
contrary to the way God does things. God has never given anything
to winners. That is, He has never set up
a foot race and put people in competition with one another
to see who could get God's blessing. And if He did, then what would
that make us doing? It would mean that we're standing
there and there's some people on this side, people on that
side, and we're determined to be the first one there. And we
don't care about whether they get a blessing. Now, when you
hear the pool of Bethesda described as a place where an angel from
the Lord would stir the waters and the first one that gets in
gets healed, that's the kind of place you're describing. God
giving blessings to the strongest, giving healing to the least sick,
and everybody looking out for themselves. There is some archaeological
evidence that points to the Pool of Bethesda as being not a place
devoted to Jehovah, but to the Greek god Asclepius, the god
of healing. Now, you see on some medical
documents, and sometimes the doctors wear a pin, and it shows
these two snakes entwined around a stick. That's the symbol of Asclepius,
the Greek god of healing. Now, he is according to Greek
mythology, the offspring of Apollo. And then Asclepius also had daughters
of his own. One named Hygeia and the other
Panacea. Now we get the word Hygiene from
the name of this Greek goddess. And of course the word Panacea
means a cure-all. So Hygeia, became the Greek word
for health and well-being. Of course, panacea just means
a medicine that will cure anything. Well, there were 400 or so such
shrines to Asclepius throughout the Roman Empire, and we should
not be surprised to find one in Jerusalem. You know, we have
this idea that the Jews were a faithful people, and that they
were very strict. No, that's not how they were.
In fact, one of the main complaints that God had against them was
their constant return to idolatry. And there was a time when they
had even set up right next to the brazen altar at the temple, what
was called an asherah pole. It was a representation, a symbol
of the goddess Ashtaroth. And they had brought into the
Lord's holy temple the idol of another god and set it right
next to the central place in the temple, the place of sacrifice. And this happened over and over
and over and over throughout the book of Judges. So we shouldn't be surprised
that there were some people in Israel, even in Jerusalem, who
had an affection for the false gods of the Greeks. And so this
pool of Bethesda, they made a shrine to Asclepius. And I guess that
these others, they had the same tradition that the waters would
be stirred and the first one in would be healed. Well, the text, and you wonder
why did I give you a lesson in mythology? Here's why. In this
text, If you take out that one section there, there are six
references to being well or being healed. And five of those references
use the word Hygeia, the name of that pagan goddess, daughter
of Asclepius. Now that would not be notable
were it not for the fact that you only find six or seven more
instances of that word throughout the New Testament that refer
to anything to do with health. So roughly almost half of the uses
of this word referring to the health occurs right in this story. Now, that means that the only account
of this story found in the Bible, because the other gospel writers
don't tell this story, only John does. The only gospel that relates
this story, in it there is a consistent use of this particular word,
Hygeia, for matters pertaining to health. and it's hardly ever
used anywhere else. So by using this particular rarely
used word, it certainly seems that the health associated with
the Pool of Bethesda has purposely been connected to this daughter
of Asclepius called Hygeia. The only other time there is
a reference to this man being healed. There's one reference,
and it's in verse 10. And it says, and so the Jews
said to the man who had been healed. There, it's a different
word. It's a Greek word. We get our
word therapy from it. Why is that? Well, at that point,
the man is in the temple of God. And in the temple of God, no
reference is made to Hygieia. And there's another reason to
believe that the pool of Bethesda was a pagan shrine. In verse
14, Jesus said to the man that he must stop sinning or something
worse would happen to him. That just doesn't make sense. Really,
not in the scope of grace. And it doesn't fit with our experience,
does it? Does anybody here ever stop sinning? No. So if the Lord actually did
come up to this man and say, okay, I've healed you, now don't
you ever sin again, or you might get lame and blind, you know,
something worse. What did he mean? I believe that
what he was saying to him is this, the particular sin I found
you in, and what sin was that? Appealing to a false god. And he said, now you quit coming
and seeking help from that false god, Hygieia, or something worse
will happen. Of course, that man was all too
happy to stop that, because he's in the temple. He's no longer
at the Pool of Bethesda. He's in the temple, worshiping
the true God and has no use for Hygieia anymore. Peter says the
same thing in 2 Peter 2, it says, if they have escaped the corruption
of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are
again entangled in it and overcome, that is they go back to the thing
God saved them from. They are worse off at the end
than they were at the beginning. It would have been better for
them not to have known the way of righteousness than to have
known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that
was passed on to them. Of them the proverbs are true,
a dog returns to its vomit and a sow that is washed goes back
to her wallowing in the mud. And these things all refer to
the way one worships. And here is a truth about believers. I mean, honest to God, believers. They do not worship false gods
at all. They have no respect for them.
They have no interest in them. And therefore, the Lord comes
to this man who had been seeking help from a false god And Christ
heals him, and then he finds him in the temple later on, and
he says, now, don't do that anymore. Don't go back there. Or it'll be worse for you than
it was. It'd have been better if I'd
have never showed up. Now, taking this view that the
pool of Bethesda was a pagan shrine, What does our Lord going
there to heal this man show us? And everything I've been telling
you for the last 10 or 15 minutes was just so we can see this picture
that our Lord drew for us. You know, He did a lot of things
that it was not immediately evident what the significance of them
was. And here's one of them. What did He do? Well, He left
the temple, or at least bypassed it, I assume the scriptures doesn't
say that he was in the temple. It said
he went up to Jerusalem, but I assume that's where he would
have gone. But now he's at the Pool of Bethesda. And just so
you'll know, the temple is much higher than the Pool of Bethesda.
He went down from the temple to the Pool of Bethesda. And
our Lord left, left his glorious throne. came down here." Charles Wesley wrote, he left
his father's throne above, so rich his grace, emptied himself
of all but love and bled for Adam's sinful race. Do you not
see our Lord picturing this very thing? He leaves the temple,
the place that symbolizes the presence and throne of God, and
He goes down to this pagan shrine. And what's that pagan shrine
represent, this world? Because it is a big pagan shrine.
All men are religious, everybody's got a religion, even atheists
have a religion. It's the religion of self, but
it's a religion nonetheless. Everyone comes into this world
born a pagan. Doesn't matter who your mom and
dad are, natural parents cannot give birth to spiritual children. And as much as we love our children
and as wonderful as we may think they are, at least until they're
12 or 13, as wonderful as we may think they are, They are dead in trespasses and
sins. In their hearts, they are rebels
against God. And if God doesn't come to them,
they are as lost as the worst person you can think of. And
it was true of us, and it's true of everyone who's been born into
this world, except our Lord Jesus. He enters this world which is
a shrine to the false god. In fact, the devil is called
the god of this age or the god of this world. Just like the
city of Athens, this world is very religious and full of idols. So he went down there to the
pool of Bethesda, the pagan shrine. The kind of place no Orthodox
Jew would ever go. They wouldn't defile themselves
by entering a pagan shrine. It was just the compromising
Jews or outright unbelieving Jews that would have entered
that place. But that's where the Lord went. And when He went there, He went
there for only one person. We have no record that He spoke
to anyone else. that He healed anyone else. He
went there with one man in mind. He did not enter the pool of
Bethesda and say, anyone who wants to be healed, come over
here. If He had said that, no doubt, many people would have
flocked to Him. They wouldn't have known who
He was, even if He healed them. They would not have had any understanding
of the spiritual significance of who He was. They'd have gone
to him as sick sinners and they'd have left him as healed sinners,
but the sinner part would have remained the same. But interestingly
enough, and you think of this, if he had done that, if he had
just walked in there and said, anybody wants to heal, you come
here and I'll heal you, that would have disqualified the very
man he came to heal. Because what was this man? He
was a cripple. He couldn't even get the little
distance to the pool of water, much less where our Lord may
be standing at an entryway. No, our Lord came specifically
for one man, and He walked up right to that man. He didn't
holler at him across the pool. He didn't send one of the disciples.
He personally Walked in that place, bypassed many, and came
to that one man who'd been lame for 38 years. Don't know how
long he'd been at the pool at Bethesda, but he'd been lame
for 38 years. And he asked the man, and he said, this is the end
of verse six, he said, do you want to get well? And the word
that is translated get well is that word, Hygeia. So imagine,
shrine to Asclepius and his daughters Hygeia and Panacea. And he walks up to this man and
he says, do you want what Hygeia has to offer you? Do you want the kind of healing
this God gives? Well, the man gave the only kind
of answer you could give. And that's what I love about
our Lord's questions. They go much deeper than the
shallow questions that people ask when they're talking religion. I remember when I first came
here, you know, and I was still kind of a novelty. And I would
be introduced to someone and, you know, somebody in the church
had told others, their friends or family or something, so they'd
meet me. And instantly, they had questions about stuff that
doesn't matter, or certainly doesn't matter much. Our Lord
asked questions, and He asked them in a way that there was
something much deeper than what was obvious. When He said to
this man, do you want to be made well? And by the Holy Spirit,
it was inspired here, you know, that in the sense of this Hygeia,
He is going right to the heart of this man's problem. He's an
idolater. His crippled feet were not his
big issue. His real problem was he's a worshiper of a false god. But the man is still only in
the flesh, so he answers according to the flesh. just like everybody
does when they are first confronted with the gospel. He says, I have no one to do
for me what is required in order to get the blessings found in
this pool. Someone always gets in the water
ahead of me. Now, our Lord has subtly confronted
his idolatry, and in that subtlety, The man doesn't get it. He answers the Lord in the way
the Lord asked him. Well, what can be gotten from
that pool? I can't get to it. Nobody will
take me there. And if I try to pull myself along
on my arms, somebody is always getting in ahead of me. This man shows the uselessness
of all false gods and all false gospels, and what is the essence
of the futility of all of them, and that's that every one of
them requires something from the sinner. Really. Even the law of God, and we have
no complaint against the law of God. I'm sure some people
think that when we talk about our liberty and our freedom from
the law of God, they think that we have an issue with it. No,
we don't. But not even the law which came from God Himself is
able to save. Why? Because it requires something
from those who can do nothing. Isn't that true? And isn't that
what Paul meant when he said, what the law could not do in
that it was weak in the flesh, God has done by sending His Son. And if the law which was sent
by God, which was given by God, if it cannot make a man righteous
in the sight of God, if it cannot heal his sinfulness, then what
of all the other works religions that men invent? Be sure of this, anything that
requires you to do something from your natural self, any system
of religion that requires you as just a natural born person
to do something in order to obtain the blessings of God, that is
an accursed gospel. And if you believe it, it will
leave you cursed. This man, he just told what's wrong with every
religion. He was in essence saying, and
it may not have occurred to him, because you know there's a lot
of people in these kind of religions and it hadn't occurred to them
yet, but after he said that, it probably didn't occur to him,
so this thing's no good for me at all. It's utterly useless. Even if people actually were
being healed in that pool, the most it could ever be to him
is a curiosity. He could never gain its benefits. I hear of people, they spend
their whole lives in a religion that never gave them forgiveness
of sins, never gave them peace of mind, and I want to say, why
are you staying there? If this religion doesn't give you what
you're looking for, providing you're looking for the right
thing, the tradition compels them to
go. Now note our Lord's sovereign
power here. He does not ask the man whether he would like Jesus
to heal him. He says, do you want to be made
well? Do you want what Hygieia's got? The man says, can't get
it. The Lord did not say, would you
like me to heal you? He just looked at the man and
said, stand up, roll up your mat, and get out of here. The Lord Jesus had already heard
from this man everything he needed to hear. For the man, in essence,
confessed, for Hygeia to heal me, I must do something better
than other people do it. But I can do nothing, and I have
no one to help me. And someone always gets in ahead
of me. He has confessed his utter inability
to help himself. I hear people say, God helps
them that help themselves. God walks right past people who
can help themselves. If you can help yourself, then
do it. That place was full of people
who could help themselves into the pool. And the Lord walked
past every one of them, went to the one who could not get
to the pool. while we were still powerless,"
says Paul. Christ died for us. We like to think we're strong,
but Paul said, when I am weak, then am I strong. God brings us to a realization
of our weakness. And we call upon His name and
we find His salvation, but this flesh still clings to us. And
we go out there and we think we're going to do a good job
of being a Christian. We're going to show people how
to live. I'm going to be on fire for the
Lord and all that. And as time goes by, we realize
we had no strength when we started and we still have all of that.
All of that nothing we had to begin with, we've still got it. No, our Lord did not ask the
helpless man permission to heal him. He is the Lord. He does whatever he wants. But rather with a power and authority
that only Jesus possessed, he commanded the man to get up,
pick up his mat, and walk. None but a sovereign God could
make such a command. and then it would actually come
to pass. Because you see, when God says something like that
to a sinner, the power to do what he has commended goes with
the command. Now I call on people to believe
the gospel, but there's no power in my word. Say, believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ and you'll be saved. I'm even quoting scripture.
Still doesn't have any power to make you believe. But if the
Lord Jesus Christ passes by you, if He comes to you laying there
by your spiritual pool of Bethesda, and He says, get up, roll up
your bed, and walk out of here, you'll do it. Some of you, I remember when
I first came here, oh, how you struggled with the idea of faith.
You didn't think you were ever going to be able to believe.
And you're right, as long as God didn't do anything for you,
you never would have been able to believe. But for most people, it's kind
of like an almost flash of light, as it were, as though you're
in a dark place and somebody just, oh, once the light comes
on. and you saw what you could not
see before, and you believed what you could not believe before,
and now you can't not believe it. Oh, the power of our Savior. He says, get up and the lame
walk. And upon our Lord speaking, it
says the man was made Hygieia. We'll see that effect. But it
was not written that when the Lord said these things that the
man exercised his free will and believed what the Lord said,
so he was made well. It says the Lord said, get up,
roll up your mat and leave. And before the man moved a muscle,
he was made well. And it was only because he had
been made well that he was able to get up, roll up his bed, and
walk out of there. So what had Christ done? He went
into the shrine of a pagan god and claimed the glory that men
gave to that god as being his own glory. Glory that is being
stolen from him. Christ in essence says to this
man, Asclepius and his daughters Hygeia and Panacea left you helpless
and lame. False gods cannot give you what
you need because they depend on you doing the very thing you
cannot do, walk. They make demands but provide
no ability to fulfill them. But I take from them the glory
that men have wrongly bestowed on them, and I claim it for myself. I am your Hygieia. I am your
health. I am your well-being." And in
a similar fashion, Christ comes to all of His people lost in
sin, under the wrath of God. And He rescues them out of the
pagan hopes that they have lived in. And He claims the glory,
for their salvation for Himself. And He says to them, I am your
God, I am your righteousness, I am your sanctification, I am
your redemption, I am your shield and your exceeding great reward.
You don't need what this false God has to offer. I've got everything
you need, everything that could ever be useful to you. The pool, where did the man go? Next you find him in the temple,
the shrine of the true God. It is there in the sight of all
the sacrifice, priests, altars, the Ark of the Covenant and all
that, all the symbols of Christ and his gospel. That's where
you found him. When God, when Christ gave him
the ability to walk, he walked right to the temple. You didn't hear him say, you
know, I appreciate that. That was the big one. I couldn't
handle that. But I got a few other problems here, you know.
And now that I can get myself to this pool, I think I'll stick
around and see if, you know, I can't, well, you know, I get
indigestion. Maybe I can get cured of that,
you know. No. Before Christ came, that pool
of water had nothing that that man needed. And after Christ
came, that pool had nothing that the man wanted. When I see people, you know,
they'll listen to preachers that just, oh, they embarrass God
with the way they talk about Him. And then they'll listen
to Him. And you say, why do you listen
to God? Well, He's got some good things to say. Why would you listen to someone?
Why would you think you could get anything from someone who
is preaching a message that leaves God in disgrace? I'll tell you the truth. I left the religion I was raised
in. I will not judge them. It's not
my place. But I have no desire to go back
to it. Nothing there. He says to this man, stop sinning. I've rescued you from your false
God. Do not return to Him. The day may come when you twist
your ankle or stumble and fall. Do not go to the pool of Asclepius. I'm the one that healed you.
And I'm the one who'll make you stand when you fall. There are
people who say, oh yeah, I go to Christ for salvation, for
redemption, but I'm going to go to the law for sanctification.
If you're going to the law for sanctification, understand this,
you'll never get justification out of the gospel. There's no more pool of Bethesda
for the people of God. I was actually drawn to this
message for this passage of scripture by the man's statement, I have
no one. Give me a couple of minutes to
comment on that. The man was right in what he
said. He had no one. I do not know how this man got
to the pool of Bethesda. Maybe a loved one brought him.
But whoever brought him there left him there. His only hope
for healing rested on him doing something he simply could not
do. There were probably many who
had been there, but they were not there. There were many who
could have been there, but were not there, because they did not
even know the man. Many who could have been there
were not there, for they had no confidence in the power of
the pool. And many who could have been there did not go there
because they did not care. The Pharisees didn't care. You
wouldn't find one of them entering that pagan place. They wouldn't
even go in there to tell them, you've got to stop coming here.
This is not our God. They didn't even do any evangelistic
work. They didn't even bother to tell
them about one who could heal them. They didn't care. There were those who could have
been there but weren't because they were too busy helping themselves. So he had no one. And false religion
leaves you with no one while teaching you that they're all
right there for you. They can't do anything. The man was right. He had no
one. But he was also very wrong, for
he did have someone. He just didn't know it yet. He did not know that standing
before him was the someone he needed. Why? Because he was looking
for someone to put him in that pool of water. And our Lord came
to save him from that pool of water. He was looking for someone
to help him do it himself. And the Lord Jesus Christ came
to do everything for him. He was not looking for someone who did not need the water to
work miracles. He had someone. But it wasn't
until that someone had fixed everything that he came to realize,
I do have someone. I do. He said, I got no one. The Lord said, get up and walk.
And he did. Isn't that amazing? Can you believe it? One time
you were sitting there and you were looking for someone. You
tried to drag yourself to the pool. It's too far away. Somebody
out there, people doing a lot better than you, and they got
in first. And all those people struggling to get in there first,
they weren't going to stop and give you a hand. But one day, someone came by. And he didn't say, let me help
you in the pool. He said, get up. Roll up your
bed and get out of here. You're mine and you don't belong
in this place. Was there ever a Savior like
Him? The world has its heroes and
I'll let them have them. And I respect what some men do,
men and women, They act what we would call heroically. I won't
take that away from them. But not any one of them or all
of them put together can hold a candle to what our Lord, the
Son of Righteousness, does. Oh, what love. There was his house up on the
top of the hill. He left it, went down to this pagan temple,
passed by, I don't know how many people, found this one person,
said, get up. And the man got up. Has the Lord ever said, get up,
to you? Have you ever seen yourself as
unable to do what you think you must do in order to be spiritually
healed? If you really believe that you're
helpless, there's a helper for you. If you truly believe you
have no one, there's someone for you. But as long as you got
something of your own or figure there's somebody out in this
world can do something for you to help you out on this, well,
you'll just be sitting there at the pool of Bethesda watching
somebody get in ahead of you. But when you lose all hope in
yourself, in anything you can see, then He will appear. And He will say, get up. And you will. Blessed be His
name.