Jesus went to Jerusalem for the feast of the Jews. When He arrived he went to this pool that had a bunch of sick people laying near it. These sick people believed that if they would just go into the water when it was stirred up, they would be supernaturally healed. Amongst them was a man who had been there for 38 years! For 38 years he lay there waiting to be healed. Jesus saw him and asked if he wanted to be made well. The man replied that he had no one to help him into the water and any time he got close to it others would trample over him making it impossible for him to get into the water to receive healing. To imagine this man was there for 38 years trying to get into the water and not a single person tried to help him, they would instead trample over him. Not that the water would have healed him but the fact that they all believed the water would heal yet not a single person tried to help him get healed. The selfishness in that is sad. Had someone tried to help him sooner he would have seen that the water was merely water and he could have left and lived his life the best he could during those 38 years without lying there in hopes to get into the water for those years instead. There wasn’t any love being shown to this man until he saw Jesus. Jesus saw Him and showed Him love and healed him so he could move on and be freed.
Jesus healed him and told him to pick up his bed and walk. The interesting thing in this was this day was the Sabbath, one wasn’t supposed to pick up beds or anything like that and move it on the Sabbath, there also wasn’t supposed to be any healings done on this day either. They cared more about traditions then they did about God’s love for His people. Jesus knew they were holding onto traditions and that could have been why he told the man to pick up his bed and walk. It wasn’t the act of the man being healed that seemed to catch the Jews attention, it was him picking up his bed that made them react. One has to wander, if he didn’t pick up his bed what would they have done instead? The Jews told him he wasn’t to pick up his bed on the Sabbath, not even caring that he was just supernaturally healed. They asked why he picked up his bed on the Sabbath and when he told them that the man who healed him told him to, which mad them want to know who this man was. However, the man didn’t know, Jesus had left by this point and didn’t tell him His name.
After, Jesus found the man in the temple and told him to sin no more, to prevent a worse thing coming upon him. Sin causes us to sew bad seeds, when bad seed are sewn that is what will be reaped. Jesus didn’t want this man to endure anymore bad so He told him to sin no more so that the man wouldn’t be in the position to sew any bad seeds into his new life. The man departed and told the Jews that is was Jesus who had made him well and for this reason the Jews persecuted Jesus, they sought to kill Him because He had healed on the Sabbath. They cared more about traditions, law and religion then they did seeing the move of God amongst them. We need to be careful of this.
We need to make sure we don’t grow into law or religion with our comfort zones. Jesus pushed the boundaries to them which made them uncomfortable. Comfort zones were made to be broken. If we want to allow God to move through us freely, the comfort zones have to go. God wants to see all of His children come together to worship Him, and all of His children are so different. We have to embrace the uncomfortable to see His kingdom grow, to reach those who aren’t like us but need Him and who He wants to come home. The comfort zones need to be broken to see Gods body come together. The church, the body of Christ is going to be changing to see all of Gods lost come home, we have to not only be ok with that but we need to welcome it. To welcome it we have to say goodbye to religion and dive deep into relationship with Jesus.