BREAD For Life!

·      Signs are EVERYWHERE! They Direct, Tell Us Where to Go and What to Do

Johns Gospel is FULL of Signs in the form of Jesus’ Actions and Words

o   The signs and wonders actually point BEYOND themselves!

·      John 6 – The Crowds are following Jesus everywhere because of the miracles

o   Chapter 4 Jesus heals the Officials Son

o   In Chapter 5, Jesus Heals the man at the Pool who was invalid for 38 yrs

·      Jesus was doing miracles everywhere and all the time… it drew BIG Crowds

·      In ALL the Gospels, they all report of Jesus’ COMPASSION on these people. John’s account shows us his compassion on their PHYSICAL needs…. He turns to Philip and asks: “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?”

·      Jesus KNEW already what needed to happen and how He was going to take care of it… yet He asks His disciples what should be done. HE IS TESTING THEM. Why? He wants them to learn and to grow in both their understanding but more importantly… in their faith!

·      Philip looks at the situation and all he can see is what is front of his face… and its impossible!

o   Another disciple, ANDREW has another idea… he brings a little kid and his lunch to Jesus… still searching for an answer to this impossible dilemma   

    Jesus gives THANKS (Eucherist) Greek for “THANKSGIVING” He most likely is giving thanks as a traditional Jewish Blessing… as any good Jew would do.

·      The bread and the fish just keep reproducing and 5000 people are fed to the MAX!

·      Why are there so MANY people out there in the wilderness though? Sure they were wanting to follow the miracle man… but lets not forget that it is the season of the UPCOMING Passover Festival! People are everywhere and they are hearing more and more about these miracles.

·      There is more than meets the eye in this story too….

o   These Jews knew their old testament prophecies. They knew that there would come the One who would deliver them from oppression.

·       The Passover was the big Jewish festival. It was a celebration, a memorial of God’s amazing deliverance of his people. It was a time when the Jewish people looked back and remembered how God had delivered them from slavery in Egypt. When they told all the old stories of how Moses had led them out of Egypt, through the Red Sea, into the wilderness. When they remembered God’s provision for them as they wandered in the wilderness, how he gave them manna, bread from heaven!

But the Passover wasn’t just a time for looking back and remembering, but also of looking forward. They would’ve remembered the promise God delivered through Moses in the wilderness, which we read in Deuteronomy 18:15-19

§  The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people; you shall heed such a prophet.

o   You can imagine them chewing over this in their minds as they chewed on their bread by the Sea of Galilee. You can imagine them making all these connections, starting to interpret this sign. They begin saying;

§  This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world!’

§  Their expectations, their hopes were high. Here was the one Moses had promised.

·       Their expectations, their hopes were high. Here was the one Moses had promised.

o   One who would follow in Moses footsteps, who’d deliver God’s people once again. These expectations were conflated with the hope for the Messiah, a King of David’s line. All of these hopes were turbo-charged around the time of the Passover.

·       At that time the Jewish national pride was at an all time high. The air is charged with expectation, with energy. This recent sign is just the spark needed to set the crowd on fire!

·       The five thousand men John mentions would make a sizable guerilla army. They’re ready to snatch Jesus, literally to violently seize him and make him king. They’re ready for him to ride point as they march into Jerusalem, throw out the Herodian pretenders to the throne and drive out the Roman infidels.

Of course we’d never seek to manipulate Jesus like this. We’d never squeeze him into our own little box. We’d never try to make him a king in our own image. Would we?

·      In their zeal… the multitude of people might have thought that ACTION was the best course of action….

·      Jesus had a DIFFERENT PLAN… a plan of SUBMISSION and OBEDIENCE instead of CONTROL and INDEPENDENCE.

Jesus unpacks and interprets these events. He helps the disciples and us…. understand the real significance of the bread. He offers them the bread of heaven, the bread of eternal life, which as it turns out is his flesh.

But this morning we’ve seen Jesus’ great compassion for the needs of the people. Jesus is the King who provides bread for his people, who knows the needs of the world, and calls us to join him in meeting them.

If they’d had their way the disciples would have turned the crowds away to fend for themselves. But Jesus calls us to not shy away from the needs of those around us. He didn’t expect the disciples to solve the problem. He doesn’t expect us to single-handedly solve world hunger. Instead, he invites us to offer what we have, he promises to take what we offer in faith, and to trust him to use it to achieve great things.

Barley loaves and pickled fish is a meal hardly fit for a king. Yet, Jesus doesn’t shy away from it. Because he’s come to turn the world upside down. He’s not come to be King the way we might expect it. He’s the King who’s come to offer an eternal deliverance for his people.

And he challenges us to accept him as King. If we try to seek control, to shape Jesus to be the way we want him to be, to make him what we find comfortable, we’re likely to find he slips away. Instead we’re to allow him to be King, to allow him to rule over us, to direct and guide us.

In the next scene… Jesus has sent the disciples away because he doesn’t want them to get all caught up in the frenzy and emotions of the crowd. WE DO THAT TOO YOU KNOW! We listen to people and get all caught up in their opinions and thoughts about situations and about how we ought to handle it… while Jesus would have us RETREAT and ALLOW HIM to have control of the situation while we are still… waiting on Him!

The STORM is raging and Jesus steps onto the boat and SHAZAM! Storm is calmed.

The Miracles are a means to a GREATER MESSAGE. They point us to the God who can meet physelcal needs, emotional needs and who is THE ONE who will Heal the Broken Hearted… Who will BIND UP THE WOUNDS we get from Life and to SET US FREE from the things that hold us captive and prevent us from experiencing TRUE FREEDOM that ONLY comes from a RELATIONSHIP WITH JESUS that promises us… not only deiliverance from the STUFF we deal with in everyday life… but will deliver us from EVIL and GIVE US EVERLASTING LIFE!!!

Let’s pray that He reveals this to all of us this morning and personally remember… that HE WHO THE SON SETS FREE… IS REALLY FREE INDEED!

Do YOU want to be healed?!

Sermon Notes for 3-19-17

Jesus heals a paralyzed man at the pool of Bethesda. This man’s whole focus was on the pool and getting into it first after the angel stirred it. Even though Jesus was right there besides him, he is trying to solicit Jesus help to lower him into the pool. We are often like that: trying to get Jesus to help us fulfil our plans. As we look at this story of the pool of Bethesda there are some reflections that appear for our own lives.


I The Circumstance (vv. 1-3)

i) Jesus visiting Jerusalem: Jesus was totally committed to living under the Law. This required all Jews living in a 20 mile radius of Jerusalem to present themselves before the Lord in Jerusalem three times in a year: Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles. Today the Church is the House of God: Jesus has visited it in His Passover, the first Pentecost and the next is the fulfillment of Tabernacles when he will come again to dwell with His people – the Second Coming.


ii) The pool of Bethesda: Or Bethsaida or Bethzatha, which means the House of Mercy. Near the sheep gate so that sheep coming to be sacrificed in the temple could be washed in this pool. 5 colonnades to shelter the sick. Five is the number of grace. This Bethesda is anything but a place of mercy – a place of sickness and misery perhaps.


iii) Jesus is ready to visit your Bethesda: This place speaks to us of our condition of spiritual paralysis as we are stuck looking at an object (the Pool) of false hope. Jesus loves us enough to enter our situation of misery and to heal us.


II The Crisis (vv. 5-7)

i) The paralyzed man: He was invalid for 38 years. This is almost a full lifetime. He has spent most of his life on a bed paralyzed. One can imagine his plight.


ii) The significance of the number 38: It speaks of 3, the number of God and 8 the number of a new beginning. 38 = 5 x 7 + 3, 5 being the number of grace, 7 the number of perfection and 3 the number of God.


iii) His entire focus is on himself and the pool: He does not even recognize Jesus (c.f. vv. 14, 15). When Jesus asks him a question, he does not answer the question but complains about how no one will help him get into the pool.


iv) What is your pool? The place where you are stuck. The thing on which you are fixated. The false hope that takes your eyes off the Lord.


III The Cure (vv. 8-9)

i) Jesus asked him a question: Do you want to get well? Of all the people there, Jesus singled him out. Even though he did not recognize Jesus, he was the subject of God’s sovereign choice.


ii) Jesus mistaken for a helper to get him into the pool: His answer is to get Jesus to volunteer to help him into the pool. Jesus is not going to follow our plans – we must follow His.


iii) The command and the obedience: Jesus gave a threefold command: get up, pick up your mat, walk. Jesus may have discerned that he had the faith to be healed. He obeyed and was healed. Jesus wants to meet us at our Pools of Bethesda!


iv) From the Pool to Jesus: Jesus extends his mercy by meeting this man a second time. Perhaps this was because the man was at the right place after being healed: the temple. He came with his back on a bed, he leaves with the bed on his back! His vision has moved from the Pool to Jesus. 
What is your vision on?


v) Stop sinning! V 14. Sin is a doorway to the enemy. It’s not enough to have this life changing experience; we must maintain the blessing!


IV The Criticism (vv. 10 ff.)

i) Jesus healed on the Sabbath: Mercy was shown in the House of Mercy but the Jews had become so legalistic that they could not see this as a work of God but only see the violation of the law.


ii) Their Pool: These Jews were so fixed on the Law that they could not accept the miracle of Jesus because He had healed on the Sabbath. The letter had killed their view of Jesus, the very embodiment of the Law.


Conclusion:

Are we stuck at our own pools of Bethesda? Jesus was there but the sick man did not recognize him. He is right next to us in our lives. But we are often fixed onto our own Pools of Bethesda trying to use Him to fulfill our own visions. Jesus wants us to heal us and to take our eyes off our own Pools of Bethesda. He wants to move us on in the plans He has for us.

Pool of Bethesda

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Pool of Bethesda is a pool of water in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem, on the path of the Beth Zeta Valley. The fifth chapter of the Gospel of John describes such a pool in Jerusalem, near the Sheep Gate, which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. It is associated with healing. Until the 19th century, there was no evidence outside of John’s Gospel for the existence of this pool; therefore, scholars argued that the gospel was written later, probably by someone without first-hand knowledge of the city of Jerusalem, and that the "pool" had only a metaphorical, rather than historical, significance.^[1]

In the 19th century, archaeologists discovered the remains of a pool fitting the description in John’s Gospel.^[2]

Name

The name of the pool is said to be derived from the Hebrew language and/or Aramaic language. Beth hesda (בית חסד/חסדא), meaning either house of mercy^[3] or house of grace. In both Hebrew and Aramaic the word could also mean "shame, disgrace". This dual meaning may have been thought appropriate, since the location was seen as a place of disgrace due to the presence of invalids, and as a place of grace due to the granting of healing.

Alternative renderings to the name Βηθεσδά (Bethesda),^[8] appearing in manuscripts of the Gospel of John, include Βηθζαθά^[9] (Beth-zatha = בית חדתא^[10]), a derivative of Bezetha, and Bethsaida (not to be confused with Bethsaida, a town in Galilee), although the latter is considered to be a metathetical corruption by Biblical scholars.^[11]

Delitzsch (“Talmudische Studien, X. Bethesda”, Zeitschrift für die gesamte lutherische Theologie und Kirche, 1856) suggested that the name comes from a mishnaic Hebrew loanword from Greek, estiv/estava, that appropriately referred to στοά.

Relationship to the biblical Jesus

See also: Canonical gospels

The Pool of Bethesda has been an area of controversy for Christian historians and archaeologists alike. According to the Gospel of John, Bethesda was a swimming bath (Greek: κολυμβήθρα, kolumbethra) with five porticos (translated as porches by older English Bible translations).^[12][13]

Gospel of John

 The Johannine narrative (chapter 5) describes the porticos as being a place in which large numbers of infirm people were waiting, which corresponds well with the site's 1st century AD use as an asclepieion. Some ancient biblical manuscripts argue that these people were waiting for the troubling of the water;^[14] a few such manuscripts also move the setting away from Roman rituals into something more appropriate to Judaism, by adding that an angel would occasionally stir the waters, which would then cure the first person to enter.^[15] Although the Vulgate does not include the troubling of the water or the "angel tradition", these were present in many of the manuscripts used by early English translations of the Bible, who therefore included it in their translations. Modern textual scholarship views these extra details as unreliable and unlikely to have been part of the original text; many modern translations do not include the troubling of the water or the "angel tradition", but leave the earlier numbering system, so that they skip from verse 3a straight to verse 5.^[16][17]

The biblical narrative continues by describing a Shabbat visit to the site by Jesus, during which he heals a man who has been bedridden for many years, and could not make his own way into the pool.^[18] Some scholars have suggested that the narrative is actually part of a deliberate polemic against the Asclepius cult, an antagonism possibly partly brought on by the fact that Asclepius was worshipped as Saviour (Greek: Soter), in reference to his healing attributes.^[19] The narrative uses the Greek phrase "ὑγιὴς γενέσθαι", hygies genesthai,^[20] which is not used anywhere in the Synoptic Gospels, but appears frequently in ancient testimonies to the healing powers of Asclepius;^[19] the later narrative in the Gospel of John about Jesus washing Simon Peter's feet at the Last Supper,^[21] similarly uses the Greek term "λούειν", louein,^[22] which is a special term for washing in an Asclepieion,^[19] rather than the Greek word used elsewhere in the Johannine text to describe washing – "νίπτειν", niptein.^[16]

Archaeology

Prior to archaeological digs, the Pool of Bethesda was identified with the modern so-called Fountain of the Virgin, in the Kidron Valley, not far from the Pool of Siloam, and alternately with the Birket Israel, a pool near the mouth of the valley, which runs into the Kidron south of St. Stephen's Gate. Others identified it with the twin pools then called the Souterrains (French for "Subterranean"), under the Convent of the Sisters of Zion;^[3] subsequent archaeological investigation of the area has determined these to actually be the Strouthion Pool.^[23]

In digs conducted in the 19th century, Conrad Schick discovered a large tank situated about 100 feet (30 m) north-west of St. Anne's Church, which he contended was the Pool of Bethesda. Further archaeological excavation in the area, in 1964, discovered the remains of the Byzantine and Crusader churches, Hadrian's Temple of Asclepius and Serapis, the small healing pools of the Asclepieion, the other of the two large pools, and the dam between them.^[24] It was discovered that the Byzantine construction was built in the very heart of Hadrian's construction and contained the healing pools.^[16][24]

History

The history of the pool began in the 8th century BC, when a dam was built across the short Beth Zeta valley, turning it into a reservoir for rain water;^[25][26][27] a sluice-gate in the dam allowed the height to be controlled, and a rock-cut channel brought a steady stream of water from the reservoir into the city.^[25] The reservoir became known as the Upper Pool (בריכה העליונה). Around 200 BC, during the period in which Simon II was the Jewish High Priest, the channel was enclosed, and a second pool was added on the south side of the dam;^[25][26][27] although popular legend argues that this pool was used for washing sheep, this is very unlikely due to the pool's use as a water supply, and its extreme depth (13m).

In the 1st century BC, natural caves to the east of the two pools were turned into small baths, as part of an asclepieion;^[25][28] however, the Mishnah implies that at least one of these new pools was sacred to Fortuna,^[29] the goddess of fortune, rather than Asclepius, the god of healing.^[30] Scholars think it likely that this development was founded by the Roman garrison of the nearby Antonia Fortress,^[25] who would also have been able to protect it from attack^[28] the location of the asclepieion, outside the then city walls, would have made its presence tolerable to the Jews, who might otherwise have objected to a non-Jewish religious presence in their holy city.^[28]

In the mid 1st century AD, Herod Agrippa expanded the city walls, bringing the asclepieion into the city. When Hadrian rebuilt Jerusalem as Aelia Capitolina, he placed a roadway along the dam, and expanded the asclepieion into a large temple to Asclepius and Serapis.^[25] In the Byzantine era, the asclepieion was converted to a church.

After the Crusader conquest of Jerusalem, the church buildings were rebuilt on a smaller scale with a new church erected nearby. This new church, named for Saint Anne and completed in 1138 AD., was built over the site of a grotto believed by the Crusaders to be the birthplace of Anne, grandmother of Jesus. After the conquest of Jerusalem by Saladin it was transformed into a Shafi`i fiqh (Islamic law school). Gradually the buildings fell into ruin, becoming a midden (waste dump). In the early 19th century, the Ottoman Empire, as an act of gratitude, offered Queen Victoria the choice of possessing the Bethesda site or Cyprus;^{[citation needed]} the Anglican church lobbied for the Bethesda site, but Victoria chose Cyprus, so in 1856, the Ottomans gave the site to France instead. The French constructed the Church of Saint Anne, at the south east corner of the site, leaving the ancient ruins untouched.