John chapter five. Have you ever thought of what
it would have been like to have been alive and in the presence
of the Lord Jesus Christ when he was here in the flesh, when
he walked upon the earth? Have you ever thought about maybe
being in that crowd of 5,000 people that he fed and eating
bread and fish from his table? Maybe thinking about witnessing
that day that he was in Peter's boat a little ways from the shore,
speaking to the people, preaching and teaching the word of God.
or maybe in one of the synagogues when he was there teaching. Have
you ever thought about that, what it would have been like
to have sat under his ministry? Well, today I want us to accompany
him on a hospital visit. If you can think about that in
your mind, we're going to go with the Lord Jesus Christ to
a hospital. It's a Sabbath day, the Jewish
Sabbath day, as the law commanded that they rest on the seventh
day. The hospital he visits is in
Jerusalem, and it's named Bethesda. And that's a wonderful name for
a hospital because the Hebrew word Beth means house. We're
familiar with Bethel. House of God, but here it is
House of Mercy, House of Grace, Bethesda. It's a large hospital. It's a very large hospital. And
it's situated around a pool. And there are five porches that
go off from the pool, or five verandas. It was not a hospital
that was specialized to treat one particular illness or sickness. They treated all kinds of diseases,
or rather all kinds of people. All kinds of people with various
diseases were in this hospital. And I imagine you admitted yourself
to this hospital. You didn't have to show an insurance
card or anything like that. You just needed to find an empty
space to put your mat down on one of those porches and sit
down or lay down and wait. You never saw a doctor or nurse
in a white coat running from patient to patient or anything
like that. You just saw people, needy people,
waiting, waiting, waiting for the moving of the water in that
pool. Because it was believed that
when the water moved, it was an angel that moved that water
and the first person who got into the pool was healed of whatever
particular disease that person may have had. The Lord Jesus came this day
and he came on purpose. There was a certain man here
he came to visit. No doubt our Lord passed by many
coming to the place where this man lay. And he knew all about
this man. He knew how long he had been
there. The man didn't know Christ at all. Even after the Lord healed
him, he didn't know who he was. But Jesus knew him. And Jesus
healed him with his word, his word of power, his word of command. Rise, take up thy bed, and walk. And his healing was immediate. He immediately took up his bed
and walked. Let's read about it here in John
5, beginning with verse 1. After this, there was a feast
of the Jews, and 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. In these lay a
great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting
for the moving of the water. For an angel went down at a certain
season unto the pool, troubled the water, whosoever 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 and 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, took up his bed, and walked, and on the same day was the Sabbath. The Jews therefore said unto
him that was cured, it is the Sabbath day, it's not lawful
for thee to carry thy bed. He answered them, he that made
me whole, the same said unto me, take up thy bed, and walk. Then asked they him, what man
is that which said unto thee, take up thy bed and walk? And
he that was healed was not, wist not who it was. For Jesus had
conveyed himself away, a multitude being in that place. Afterward,
Jesus findeth him in the temple and said unto him, behold, thou
art made whole. Sin no more, lest a worse thing
come unto thee. I want to mention to us this
morning four things that stand out to me in reading through
this passage of scripture once again. First of all, if you notice
in verse one, the first thing that stands out to me is that
Jesus fulfilled God's holy law. After this, there was a feast
of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now this feast
that Jesus went up to Jerusalem to attend was the Passover feast. It was one of three feasts. There
were several feasts. There was at least five feasts
given in the law, but there were three feasts that God commanded
in the law. that every male had to come and
observe this feast, whichever feast it was of those three.
Our Lord was born under the law. He was born under that old covenant
of Moses. And remember, he said this, he
had not come to destroy the law or the prophets. I'm not come
to destroy, but to fulfill. And he said that the word would
not pass away until every jot and every tittle had been fulfilled. And that's the first thing I
see here is the Lord Jesus Christ. He spent most of his time during
his ministry, his three years of ministry in Galilee, living
in a town called Capernaum. But he kept the law of God. He kept that law of God perfectly. The law required that every male
attend these three feasts each year. And we see the Lord Jesus
Christ going up to Jerusalem for this feast. Now what was
the Lord doing? What was he doing? Think about
it. What was he doing? He was obeying
his father. He was obeying God's law. Your father, my father, disobeyed
God's law. Our father Adam disobeyed God's
law when God said, thou shalt not eat of the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil. And what did Adam do? He disobeyed
God. But here's the Lord Jesus Christ
who came into this world not to destroy the law, but to fulfill
the law. And when he died upon the cross,
he said, it is finished. What was finished? What had he
finished? He had finished working out,
now listen, working out a perfect righteousness, a perfect righteousness. He did that by, as a man, obeying
God's law perfectly. We're just looking at one point
here, that is him keeping the feasts, but we know that he kept
all the law of God. He didn't break it in one point. And James tells us if a man breaks
the law in one point, he's guilty of the whole law. It was a whole
law. The Lord Jesus Christ kept the
whole law of God perfectly, and he kept it for his people. If you're one of his children
today, he kept it for you. He kept God's law perfectly,
establishing a righteousness that allows God to justify the
guilty. All of us by nature are guilty
before God, disobeying God's law. But the Lord Jesus Christ,
he kept God's law perfectly and Perfect righteousness that he
established by his obedience becomes yours, becomes mine when
we believe in him as our Lord and as our Savior. God justifies
the ungodly. That's what the scripture says.
It doesn't say God justifies the godly. The godly are already
justified. God justifies the ungodly, and
all of us by nature are ungodly. We've disobeyed God's law, but
he fulfilled that law perfectly. And in doing so, this is what
the prophecy that's given in Daniel chapter nine about the
Messiah, what he would do. There's six things there listed. I believe it's verse 24. Daniel
9, 24, but one of the things he would do, he would bring in
an everlasting righteousness. That's your righteousness. That's
my righteousness. That's the righteousness of every
child of God, everyone who trusts in him. That perfect righteousness
is imputed, charged to your account. The second thing that stands
out to me is, you notice in verse two, I hope you still have your
Bibles open here, in John chapter five and verse two, now there
is at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool. Do you have a
marginal reading? You see a little number before
that word market, and you look in your margin, and you see that
the word is gate. It was not a sheep market. Actually,
they sold sheep in the temple in Jerusalem. You remember the
Lord cleansed the temple. He drove out those who were selling
animals for sacrifice in the temple. It was a sheep gate. Jerusalem had a wall built around
it. When Nehemiah came back, when
the Jews came back out of captivity, 70 years captivity in Babylon,
remember they rebuilt the walls. And one of the gates there is
called the Sheep Gate. And it was through this gate
that men would bring their sheep. They would bring the sheep or
herd the sheep through this gate that would be offered in sacrifices. be sacrificed upon the altar. That was the only place, listen,
God told in his law, he told the Israelites, remember they
were in the wilderness when he gave his law, but he told them
that he was going to name a place. where he had put his name. I
believe that's the way it says. There's a place he's going to
put his name. And that's the place where they
had to come each year, three times a year, the males. And
that's the only place where blood sacrifices were to be offered. And that place was established
as Jerusalem, Jerusalem. And the Lord comes up to Jerusalem
and we read about the sheep gate. And I thought about this, how
many sheep, how many sheep had come through that gate? This
had been going on for centuries. How many sheep had come through
that gate and been sacrificed? Their blood had been shed on
the altar. Why is it that the Jewish people
today do not sacrifice? They have the law, they try to
keep the law, they try to obey the law. Why is it that they
do not sacrifice blood offerings? Well, you know why. Because in
that place where the temple was, where the altar was, there is
now a Muslim mosque built there. And the Jews know they cannot
sacrifice, they cannot offer a blood sacrifice anywhere else
except at that place as God designated it. Think of all the sheep that
had been driven through that gate to the temple to be sacrificed
there. Now here was God's lamb, the
Lord Jesus Christ. God's lamb, remember John the
Baptist pointed him out, behold, the lamb of God which taketh
away the sins of the world. Those lambs before had been types
and pictures of him, but he came this day, and this is two years
before he will come to the Passover and actually be crucified at
the Passover. in two years from this particular
date. Isaac Watts, the hymn writer,
wrote, not all the blood of beast on Jewish altar slain could give
the guilty conscience peace or wash away its stain. But Christ, the heavenly lamb,
takes all our sins away a sacrifice of nobler name and richer blood
than they. My soul looks back to see the
burdens thou didst bear when hanging on the cursed tree and
knows her guilt was there. Can you look back to that cross
of the Lord Jesus Christ, the dying form of Jesus our Lord? and see that he had taken your
sins in his own body, the scripture says, and bore them on the tree.
And your guilt is taken away by his sacrifice. Your guilt
was buried. My guilt was buried in that tomb
where his body was laid. And three days later when he
came out, he came out. Our guilt, our sins, they didn't
come out. They're gone. You know, there's
a verse in the Old Testament book of Micah, which tells us
that God has cast our sins into the into the deep of the sea,
never to be remembered again. Sometimes maybe some particular
sin, some transgression that you know you're guilty of comes
back in your mind and causes you to doubt and causes you to
fear. Listen, your sins, if you're
one of his children, are gone. They have been put into the sea
of God's forgetfulness and he will never remember them again. How is that possible? It's possible
and only possible because the Lord Jesus Christ bore the sins
of his people. As Peter said, in his own body
on the tree, to do what? What does Peter tell us? To do
what? Bring us to God. That's not talking about sometime
in the future when we die. Oh no, today. To bring us to
God, to know God as our Father. We sang that hymn just a minute
ago. I found a friend, oh what a friend. And that friend is Christ. He's a friend that sticketh closer
than a brother. I wonder sometimes how lost men
and women live in this world without this friend, don't you?
Oh, what a friend the Lord Jesus Christ is to his people. What
a savior he is, having taken our sins away. Here's a third
thing that stands out. Jesus came to seek and to save
the lost. You notice in verse three, we
have a description of the people that were sick, waiting there
for the moving of the water. And what we have here is a description
of the loss that the Lord Jesus Christ came to save. The first
thing we read is impotent. What does that mean? Lacking
in power. Lost men. Now, man by nature
thinks he's free. He thinks he's free. He's a ruler
of his life. He's free to do what free as
the breeze, do as I will. That's the thought of lost men.
But they do not realize that they are in captivity. You say,
who are they in captivity to? Who were we in captivity to? If the Lord has liberated us,
we were impotent. We were captives of Satan, of
sin. And we could not free ourselves. We could not deliver ourselves. I've read about some of these
prisons that the United States has for criminals where they
put people that have just done some of the worst of the worst
crimes, no way they're gonna get out of that prison. No way. And I tell you, there's no way
that man by himself, he doesn't have the power to free himself
from Satan's captivity. Look with me, keep your place
here, but look back into Luke's gospel just a moment, Luke chapter
four. In Luke chapter 4, the Lord Jesus
Christ has returned to Nazareth, where he had been raised as a
young lad, and he's gone and been baptized, and now he's come
back. And I want you to notice, he
takes the book of Isaiah in verse 17. There was delivered unto
him the book of the prophet Esaias. And when he had opened the book,
he found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord
is upon me. Me. Who is that? The Spirit of the Lord is upon
Jesus Christ. Because he hath anointed me to
preach the gospel to the poor. You know, it was said many times
before, if the only voice you hear is my voice, you're going
to go out of this building just like you came in. But if somehow,
under the power of Almighty God, and hearing my voice, you hear
His voice, you're going to go out of this place a new person.
He hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. You say
poor in what? Poor in spirit. Poor in spirit. He has sent me to heal the broken
hearted. Broken hearted over what? My
sin. I've sinned against God. To preach, here it is, to preach
deliverance to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind. to set at liberty them that are
bruised. Bruised by God the Holy Spirit,
using the word, set at liberty. Remember he told a group of Jews
one day, Scripture said they believed
in him. He said, if you continue in my word, then are you my disciples. And then he said, if the Son
shall make you free, you shall be free indeed. He's the only
one who can make a sinner free from the captivity of sin, Satan,
the law, give you freedom. That's salvation. That's deliverance.
That's what salvation means. It means deliverance. Now, the
second way these people are described in this passage here in John
chapter five, not only impotent, but blind. Remember, our Lord told Nicodemus,
here he is, a religious man, a ruler of the Jews, Nicodemus. And he comes to the Lord by night,
maybe not wanting anyone to know that he came. And the Lord said
unto him, Nicodemus would speak to Christ as an equal. Good master,
we know that thou art a teacher come from God. That's what I
am. I'm a teacher. I'm a Jewish teacher. He was a member of the Pharisees. We know that thou art a teacher
come from God. No man can do these miracles
which thou doest except God be with him. Nicodemus. Verily,
verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot
see the kingdom of God. Blind. Blind. That's the way we all come into
this world. Blind. We don't even see our
need. We don't see our need. Look with me in 2 Corinthians
just a moment, 2 Corinthians chapter 4. 2 Corinthians 4. Seeing we have this ministry,
as we have received mercy, we faint not, but have renounced
the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness nor
handling the word of God deceitfully, but by manifestation of the truth,
commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight
of God. But if our gospel be hid, it
is hid to them that are lost. in whom the God of this world
hath blinded the minds of them that believe not, lest the light
of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should
shine unto them. For we preach not ourselves,
but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your servants for Jesus'
sake. Now watch this, for God, who
commanded the light to shine out of darkness. When did he
do that? Genesis chapter one, verse two. He commanded, when God created
the heavens and the earth, there was no light. He commanded the
light to shine out of darkness. That same God, God Almighty,
has shined in our hearts To give the light of the knowledge of
the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Give the knowledge
of the glory of God in the face, the gospel, in the person of
Jesus Christ. How it is that God may be just
and justify the ungodly. God gives the light. Man, if
God doesn't give the light, he won't see. We're by nature blind. The third thing, they're haught.
Back in our text, they're impotent, they're blind, and they're haught. Now this word, of course, means
lame. It's another picture of man's
inability, his inability to walk, to go of himself. Our Lord said,
no man can come to me except the Father which hath sent me
draw him. And the last thing, withered,
or the fourth thing, rather, withered. We use that word, don't
we? Sometimes we say a branch. That
branch is withered. For some reason, it's not getting
any sap. It has no life. It's withered.
All men by nature are without God, without Christ, without
his spirit. And because they're without God
and without Christ, they're without hope, without hope. And the last thing, the fifth
thing about these people, these patients in this hospital, they're
waiting, they're waiting. What a picture, what a picture
of lost men and women. impotent, blind, lame, withered, waiting. Waiting for what? Waiting for
death. For it is appointed unto men
once to die, and after this, the judgment. Well, here's the last thing.
Jesus illustrated God's saving grace in this man's healing.
Now we read that there was a great multitude of people there that
day. They all were sick. They all
were infirmed, but only one man was healed. Did the Lord do all the others
wrong? You know, sometimes when people
hear about God's sovereign election, they say, well, that's not right.
That's not right. Did the Lord Jesus Christ do
all these other sick people wrong because he didn't heal them?
He only healed this one man? I don't read that anyone there
asked for healing, not even this man. None of them called out for mercy.
And I would remind us of a parable the Lord Jesus Christ gave in
Matthew, when he said, the kingdom of heaven is like unto. And he gives a story of a man
who goes out in the morning, he hires some workers, and they
agree for a penny a day. That was standard wages, a penny
a day. A few hours later, he goes out
and he hires some more. He just hired them. A few hours
he goes out later and hires some more. And then one hour before
sun goes down, when they're going to quit, he goes back into the
marketplace and tells some more men, go work in my vineyard and
I'll give you what is right. And you know what he did? He
called those he hired first, or last rather, first. He gave
them a penny. And so these that were hired
first, they, boy, They're making a penny, what is he going to
give us? A penny. And they found fault
with the Lord. And the Lord, he said this unto
them, is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Isn't it? Is thine eye evil because
I'm good? Yes. We see the goodness of the Lord
Jesus Christ in healing this one man. Some people read this
and they say, why didn't he heal all of them? He is sovereign,
my friends. He's sovereign in exercising
his grace. And as I said, no one there called
out for mercy, not even this man. The Lord came on purpose. I don't know where he came from
that day. I guess he had spent the night in Jerusalem. I'm not
sure, but he came on purpose that day to the hospital Bethesda
because there was one man there that he would heal. The Lord
Jesus Christ came into this world on purpose. God's purpose. Because there are those in this
world that God chose and gave unto him in an eternal covenant
of grace. And he came on purpose to save
each and every one of them. Now that's the gospel. That's
the truth from the word of God. I understand today that Most
religious people, when they hear something like this, they get
all bent out of shape. Why? Because they do not bow
to God's sovereignty. I do want to point one thing
out that the Lord Jesus had this man to confess, this man to recognize. You notice in verse 7, the Lord
asked him this question. Wilt thou be made whole? Well, most people read that and
they think, well, sure, everybody there would have said yes. That's
not what this man said. That's not what he said. Wilt thou be made whole, sir?
I have no one. I have no man. I have no man. In other words, sir, if salvation,
if healing depends upon me, I will never be healed. No man to help
me. And God brings those that he
saves to that place, to this place, to where we have nothing. And we ask the Lord for mercy
and for grace. And as Brother Ralph Barnard
used to say, so far, so far, everyone who's come begging
for grace and mercy has found grace and mercy. But if a person
says, well, I can get in that pool. I can make my decision. I can be baptized. I can turn
over a new leaf. But when a person says, sir,
I have no hope, only hope I could have is in you, in your mercy,
in your grace. Charles Lambert was an English
martyr. He was martyred. He was roasted. He was roasted. You know, they
would tie a man to the stake and they'd put gunpowder around
his neck, some sacks of gunpowder, and they'd light the faggots. And that gunpowder was to speed
up their death. This man, he was brought to the
stake and they hated him so much. that the fire actually was burning
his legs. His lower part of his body was
tied, of course, to the stake. And they wouldn't do anything
to speed up his death. He was literally roasted to death. But in his last breath, he cried
out. None but Christ. None but Christ. And that's where God brings his
people, to where we cry out, none but Christ. Salvation is
in Christ and his blood and righteousness alone. Upon another's life, I
did not live. Upon another's death, I did not
die. upon another's life and upon
another's death, I stake my whole eternity. Amen. May God bless His word to all
of us here this morning. I'm going to sing The Great Physician,
number 59. Number 59, The Great Physician
is now near.