An odd story

Flipping over to John chapter five, there was a feast of the Jews.

God quietly puts little bookmarks in John’s Gospel, keeping track of the “feasts” Jesus attended, and it is through these clues that we conclude that Jesus ministered for about three years.

Odd story here in John 5, the first person to jump into the Bethesda pool when the waters stirred, got an automatic healing.

Some versions tell us that an angel would zip down and move the waters, which makes the story that much weirder. Although, it seems like the earliest manuscripts don’t support the angel idea.

Anyways, the co-star of today’s story had been paralyzed for 38 years. A long time.

Jesus seems to have identified a sin problem in Mr Thirty-Eight. Yet Jesus does not hammer him over the head with it, just like He did not do with Lady-at-the-well, or with the adulterous woman in the stone-throwing story.

Jesus dealt with the man at the fellow’s felt need.

“Hey buddy, do you want to be healed?”

“As a matter of fact, I do.”

“OK, you got it. Now, pick up your bed and go home.”

Today, we seem so given to formulas, when sharing the Gospel. And we tend to preach against what we see, with this log in our eye, as the other person’s sin.

Jesus doesn’t go there.

Later on, the two meet up again. Jesus quietly Jesus tells the man, “Go and sin no more, so things don’t get bad for you again.”

He frist dealt with the Mr Thirty-Eight’s felt need.

And later, with his real need.