Sermon Notes for 3-19-17
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 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.
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