If you'll take your Bibles now
and turn with me to John the fifth chapter. Let's read these
first nine verses here in John chapter 5. After this, and notice there
is an order. If you go through the Scriptures
with this in mind, that there is an order. to everything that
God does and to everything that God says. There is an order. There is nothing done by accident.
There is nothing done by chance. He says nothing as a reaction
to something, but everything God does and says has an order. After this, there was a feast of the
Jews. And most of the old writers believed
that this was the Passover feast. Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now
there is at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, which is
called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches. The name
Bethesda means house of mercy, house of kindness, house of grace. And in these, that is, these
porches, lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, half-withered,
waiting for the moving of the water. For an angel went down
at a certain season into the pool and troubled the water.
Whatsoever then first, after the troubling of the water, stepped
in was made whole of whatever disease he had. And a certain
man was there which had an infirmity thirty-eight years. When Jesus
saw him lie and knew that he had been now a long time in that
case, he saith unto him, Wilt thou be made whole? The impotent
man answered him, Sir, I have no man. when the water is troubled,
to put me into the pool. But while I am coming, another
steppeth down before me. Jesus saith unto him, Rise, take
up thy bed, and walk. And immediately the man was made
whole, and took up his bed, and walked. And on the same day was
the Sabbath." Now I have three things this morning that I hope
to bring to your attention out of this story out of this passage
of Scripture. And the first of those things
is this, the significance of the pool. There was a significance.
There was a certain pool, a certain place. So I want us to look at
that, the significance of the pool. And then I want us to see
the helpless sinner who lay there by the providence of God. He
lay at this place, at this This specific place, this certain
place, this certain pool was a certain man. And then I want
us to see the great physician who came where he lay and made
him whole. So let's look first at the significance
of the pool. The pool had a history. like to read and have read in
the Old Testament the things of God, these glorious pictures
of Christ and these things as they were designed around the
temple, you will have run across a time when they built the temple
and they saw to all of its needs and its provisions, and there
was a conduit that ran from a spring outside. that ran through conduits
and furnished these pools. And these pools, according to
the writers that I read, were used for washing of the sacrifices,
preparing the sacrifices. You take this old sheep or goat
or calf and he comes in out of the field and he's dirty and
he stinks and they bring him down to that pool and they wash
him before they take him to the priest. And so this was the common
use of the pool. And some believe it was what
was called in the Old Testament the great pool fed by these conduits. Some believe it was the pool
that the King Solomon was anointed in before they took him up and
he ascended and took the throne. Some of the writers mentioned
that these five porches, and I think this is worthy of note,
that they stood for the five books of the Law. The whole Law
of God is contained in the first five books of Genesis. These books represent the Law
of God. Often the Law of God is referred
to as the Law of Moses. Or sometimes it just says Moses. And so these five books of the
law are in some way pictured in these five porches. And if
you look at it that way, it's a beautiful picture because the
law in itself being holy and just and good was made a curse
unto us because of sin. Cursed is everyone who continueth
not in all things written in the book of the law to do them.
And so here's these people down here who are impotent folk and
halt and blind and lame and they're laying here on these porches.
Just as the law has us in its grip and we can do nothing about
it, we just sat here and sat here and sat here under that
law and squirm as you might, you can't get out from under
it. Believe what you want. You can't get out from under
that law. You can't, of your own accord,
you're stuck. Here you are. You were brought
in the providence of God and laid on these porches. Just try
to picture that in your mind, the whole world. The whole world
guilty before God, lying on these, waiting, waiting for the grace
of God, for the mercy of God to come, waiting. Actually, if
you want to get down to it, this angel, you know what angels are,
they are ministering spirits. They waited on the minister of
God to come down and stir the waters. And there they lay in bondage
to the law. But within the law, Within the
law there is glorious pictures of our Redeemer and of the redemption
that He will come and accomplish. When God gave that law to Moses,
He brought it and read it, but in that law was provision made
for redemption. And so if you look at that law
as a whole, here they are under its curse, under its burden,
yet expecting, expecting redemption, expecting a promise. And so I
find, as it says in Romans 3.21, the righteousness of God without
the law manifested in Christ, but it was witnessed by the law
and the prophets. And I find this law and its shadows
and patterns and figures to be what Paul calls in Galatians
3, a schoolmaster that brings us to Christ. Now I said all
of that to say this. The one and only reason or significance
of the Pool of Bethesda is the one who graced it with his presence. You know, I've heard this pool
represented as a type of false religion, and it fits that type
to a T. Here they are. They're waiting
on angels. They're waiting on the troubling of the waters.
They're carried down and laid on porches and all these things.
It's a beautiful type of false religion if you look at it in
that respect, but only a type. It was a real place, and these
miracles were really done, and so it's recorded in the Scripture.
But either case, whether you view it as an actual place where
actual miracles were done, where an actual angel came down and
stirred the waters, whether you view it like that or you view
it The other direction, it makes no difference, the significance. It makes no difference to the
significance because the significance was in Christ who graced it with
His presence. And so if you look at it before
He appeared, who sent the angel? He that sits on the throne. Angels
don't go of their own accord. Satan himself, I mean, if you
consider good angels or bad angels, angels can't do what they want
to do with God's elect. They can't do that. They have
to ask permission. When Satan wanted to tempt Job,
he had to ask for permission to do it. And so these angels
who stirred the water, they were sin of Christ. He sits on the
throne. He orders providence. He orders
all these things. Nothing going on by accident.
He orders these things. And so either way, the significance
of the place was He who graced it with His presence. And what I'm saying now about the
pool, I might say, for everything that we're about to do today.
I want you to think about that. I stand before you with this
confession, apart from Christ, There is no honor, no authority,
nothing but a superstitious office with a form but no power as pastor. Take away Christ. Take away my
hope of Christ, my ministry of Christ. Take that away. Take away the Spirit of Christ. It's all of Christ. Take those
things away. What's left? What's left? Nothing. Just another hollow
form or shell of religion. Worship? All of these things,
this building, this building has no spiritual significance
whatsoever apart from Him. But if He's honored in this place
as He was honored in that place, then a great significance was
put on that place. Here it is, what, over 2,000
years since that man at the pool was raised? And yet we're still
talking about the pool of Bethesda. Go back 2,000 more on a mountain. Nothing significant about that
mountain. But what took place on that mountain causes us to
remember it over and over and over. When Abraham took Isaac
up on that mountain. And the Lord declared his name.
Where he is honored, the place is honored. We want to talk about buildings.
We want to talk about the pastor. David said, I was glad when they
said unto me, let's go to the house of the Lord. It's His house. And this assembly, of what value
is an assembly if Christ is not in the midst? Now, I want you
to think about this. The very first thing that came
to my mind when I jotted that down was the congregation of
Israel standing on the brink of Canaan. Nearly two million
people, some say more than that, standing outside of Canaan. Standing
outside the promise, ready to go in and partake of this rest
that God had promised them, this great congregation. But who wasn't
in the midst? Joshua. Joshua was the Old Testament
name for Jesus. So in picture, Christ was not
in the congregation. He wasn't in the congregation.
So what happened? They all got together, they all
voted, they all did what they wanted to do, and all they accomplished
was to bring the wrath of God down around their ears. Of what
value is an assembly if Christ is not in the midst? Oh, listen to this. There was
another multitude that gathered around the cross. And over in
the Psalms, he said this in Psalm 22, 16, dogs have compassed me. The assembly of the wicked have
enclosed me. They pierced my hands and my
feet. And I'll tell you this, when
the Lord comes down, I don't care what kind of religion you're
in, when the Lord comes down and opens that heart and troubles
those waters, all of a sudden, The multitudes around you are
altogether, as Paul said, unprofitable. They're unprofitable. None. Where is the joy of the multitude
if Christ is not in the midst? Worship? How will you worship
if Christ is not here? Who's going to give us an entrance
into the Father? How are we going to offer our
thanks and praise without our priest? Who is going to take
our pitiful gifts and words and make them acceptable to God?
And then reading the Scriptures, take Christ out of the book.
Where is the understanding? Take Christ out of the book.
How will you understand? How will you read? How will you
perceive? To Him give all the prophets witness. And preaching,
what good is preaching without Christ? It's a joke. It's just
an empty ceremony. It's a duty performed in fear.
It's words without hope to sinners without ears. It was never preaching that Paul
rejoiced in. It was the preaching of Christ.
It was the preaching of Christ. And the significance of the pool,
of the law, of worship, of Egeus, of ordinances, of creation, of
providence is Christ. It's Christ. His gracious visit,
Spurgeon said, is Bethesda's glory. And it's ours if we ever
experience it. It's ours. The only thing, I
was sitting in my study, just going back over my own past,
and the only things worth remembering are those things that involve
Christ. There's nothing else there. Nothing else there. Paul said, now forgetting those
things which are behind. Just forget them. Just forget
them. And pressed toward this mark. And then secondly, see how this
helpless sinner, he's lying there at the pool. He's carried there
by someone in the providence of God, brought there by someone
who heard that others were healed. Somebody heard about it. There
was a reputation about that place that went out. There were things
that were actually accomplished in this place, divine things.
And so the Word went out, and he was carried down there in
the providence of God and laid there with some hope that the
sovereign Lord of glory might send down an angel and stir the
waters. Now, this was interesting to
me. In verse 3, it's called the moving
of the waters. In verse 4, it's called the troubling
of the waters. the troubling of the waters.
And it would appear to me that everything that was done was intended, that God intended
to do, would not be done until these waters were troubled. You
know, I don't understand, I guess I just didn't wrestle with those
things, but I don't understand where men come from When they
talk about election, and they talk about predestination, and
they talk about these sovereign things of God, and somehow omit
all the things that happen between. I don't understand that. They
go from eternity past to eternity future, but all of time between
they discount. They just push it aside as though
it wasn't there. You know, they talk about a hope,
but there's no faith involved. They talk about understanding
and knowing God, but there's no repentance involved. They
completely discount all the means in between. Well, there were
means involved. This man was brought. This man
was laid. There were providential things
that happened to him. He laid there for years and years
and years. Things took place. This was a
real man with real pains and real needs. And he was brought
to this place and there he stayed. And he stayed there all that
time in hope. God determined to do this miracle
by an angel sent down from heaven. In Hebrews chapter 1 verse 7
it says, God says, I make them ministering spirits and my ministers
a flame of fire. He is still talking about the
same thing. He is not talking about angels and preachers. He
is talking about angels being ministers and ministers of fire. Ministering spirits sent forth
to minister to those who shall be heirs of salvation. What a
picture though of gospel preaching. How shall you hear without a
preacher? How shall he preach except he be sent? He has to
be sent. He can't just simply decide one
day, I'm going to seminary and go down there and get a degree
and call that being sent. He has to be sent of God. If he's not sent of God, he don't
go to those who need God. There are no accidents with God.
God has a man for a person. I don't understand that. I just
know it to be so. What a picture! The Lord God,
in His providence, gathers together a people, sinners full of the
leprosy of sin, blind to the things of God, halt, lame in
their abilities, and brings them to a place where they can be
healed. Our Lord said, The Spirit of
the Lord is upon me. He was talking about this scripture
that involved Himself as a preacher. He said, The Spirit of the Lord
is upon me, because He has anointed me to preach the gospel to the
poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, preach deliverance
to the captives, the recovering of sight to the blind, and to
set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable
year of the Lord. That's Christ, and that's the
true preacher of whom all others only point. Now here's my hope
this morning, that the Holy Spirit of God will cause us to put ourselves
in the place of this sinner, to see ourselves helpless. He
was so close, John, he was so close to those divine waters
that he could smell them, but he couldn't get in. He was so
close, if he could have moved, he could have reached his hand
out and touched the water. He was on the porch over the
pool. But he couldn't do it. He just
lay there. And the Lord said, Would you
be made whole? He said, I have no man. I have no man to put
me in. Is that not where the sinner
is at? He needs a man. He needs a man who can be touched
with the feeling of his infirmities. He needs a man to suffer in his
stead. He needs a man. God cannot suffer,
and man cannot satisfy, but the God-man. You see where I'm coming
from? I had no man to put me in. I had no man. That's why we preach Christ.
He is the man. Behold the man. Now what does
the scripture say? The man. The man. I looked at this, and looked
at it, and looked at it, and the impotent man seems totally
passive in this picture to me. He's where God led him. Where
would he be if God had not put him there? Where would we be? We've been studying on Tuesday
nights in the book of Genesis. And we've gone through creation
and now we're looking at the things of the garden. And I told
them Tuesday evening, God took man and put him in the garden. Where would we be if He didn't
put him in the garden? Suppose man had fallen outside
that garden. Suppose man had fallen out there
who had no bride, who had no promise, who had no redemption,
who had none of those things that God spoke to him and gave
him in that garden. Suppose he had fallen out here
in the world. It would be over, wouldn't it? But God put him in a garden.
And He put us in Christ. We have no man. So God supplies
that man. And here lays this sinner, and
he's totally passive in this thing. He was brought there.
He was brought there. He was given his need. He didn't
get sick on purpose. He didn't lay there in paralysis
on purpose. It was given to him. It was given
to him. He was carried down there and
laid on that porch. He wasn't jumping around with
his hand up, call me, call me, come see me. He wasn't doing
any of that. He just laid there in misery,
waiting for the sovereign mercy of God. That's where the Lord
finds us. Oh, God help us to see how pitiful
we are in this scheme of His. overall glory and how He's chosen
us in that fashion that no flesh, He said, should glory in His
presence. He goes there in 1 Corinthians 1 and He talks about not many
mighty, not many noble, all this, and He comes down to the end
of it and He said, here's why, that no flesh should glory in
His presence. This man had nothing to glory
in except that man who came to Him. He came to him there in
that garden. And then notice this, when the
waters were troubled, the first to go in was healed. I believe
this has to do with faith. I believe, you know, when faith
comes, it's urgent, isn't it? It's not something passive. It's
not something you stand there and scratch your head and say,
well, I don't know if I want to believe or not. I can't find any faith
like that in this book. I can't find it. Because faith
understands. It understands where it is. It
understands who he is. It understands what required
of him. And it understands his end if God leaves him to himself. And it's urgent. It's urgent. Just like blind Bartimaeus, he
was not going to let Christ leave him, regardless of what men said,
regardless of their efforts to stop him and quiet him. He just
cried out the more, didn't he? Why? Because it's urgent. It's
urgent. And this man's needs were urgent.
He just laid there and laid there and laid there. And all of this
contained in this picture. And then thirdly, the great physician,
he comes to the pool, this mediator of God into whose
hands have been committed all things, who has run the show
from the get-go. He is the sender of angels, good
or bad. He sits on the throne of omnipotence
and rules. rules over all. He rules, O Nebuchadnezzar
said, in the armies of heaven and among the inhabitants of
the earth. And none can stay His hand or even question His
purposes. He does what He wills. And He will save this sinner.
Why? Because He determined to do it.
That's why. And He came to that pool. He
came to it. And when He comes, when He comes,
Now, I want you to listen to me. Old Jacob, here's his kids,
and he loved Joseph. And the others were jealous.
And they took Joseph and they sold him into bondage down in
Egypt. And Joseph was kind of like a
cork. The providence of God, they kept
shoving him under and he kept bobbing up. And they shoved him
down and he'd bob up. It didn't matter where he went.
He was in the hole. He got sold into slavery instead
of dying. He went down there, they lied
on him, he was locked up in prison. He come out of prison. He just
kept, God just kept lifting him up, lifting him up because His
purpose and grace was in him. And He lifted him up until he
become second in command in all of Egypt. Actually, the potentate
of Egypt, his wisdom was in Joseph. It wasn't in him, it was in Joseph. And now His brothers come, and
all these things are made known to them. The revelation, the
mystery is solved, and they find out who Joseph is. They put everything
they had, all the hopes of their future, their family, their children,
everything that they had, all rested in Joseph's hands, didn't
it? That's where faith brings us. It brings us to Christ. And
when it brings us there, it causes us to cast everything on Him
because we see in His hands is where everything is. We see in
Him, He's the only one who has the ability to help. He's the
only one that has the ability to meet our needs. The glory of this pool was He
who graced this place with His presence. We're gathered here
this morning in a place that maybe some folks think just another
place, just another place, just another building, just another
spot, just like this pool. But what if he should visit?
What if he should come? Then I'd rather be here than
in the greatest, most beautiful, most elaborate cathedral in the
world. We look for Him. And I believe
that here is the difference between true faith and religious superstition. This is what it sees. Now, I
want you to think about this. Religion craves signs and evidences. It's always looking for them. One of the religious phrases
I can remember from my experience in the past was this, we're not
judges, we're just fruit inspectors. That's what they call these evidences. They never look at themselves.
They never look at their fruit. They always try to look at yours.
But they crave signs and wonders. They long for evidences. They
hunger for dreams and visions of the night, long for experience
and feelings passed down by tradition. desires a time and a place, a
line to cross, an event to look to, some isolated act. And here
it says in the beginning of the narrative here that here under
these porches, on these porches was a great multitude. There
was a lot of folks there. There wasn't just a few. There
was a lot of folks there. And what were they looking? They
were looking at the water. They were waiting for the water
to be troubled. They were waiting for this evidence, waiting for
this evidence of God to come down and stir the water, waiting
on an angel to come down and stir the water. And the Lord
of glory stepped right onto the porch and manifested His glory. And they missed it because they
were more interested in the water than they were in Him who sent
the angel. They are more interested in that water and signs and evidences
than they were in He who can save. And I tell you this, faith
is in Christ. It's not in these things. It's
in Him. We lay hold of Him, you have
everything God has for sinners. You have it in Christ. Lay hold
of Him. If you get an evidence, great.
If you have an experience, great. I've had them. It's great. But those experiences and those
things are not the hope of my salvation. My hope rests in Him. I dare not trust the sweetest
frame, but wholly lean on Jesus' name.