More Than A Miracle

August 23, 2026 | More Than A Miracle | John 5:1-18

JD Cutler

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Good morning church family. This morning we are picking back up in our journey through the gospel of John titled ‘That you may believe’. In the first four chapters we saw that John’s gospel has a distinct purpose different from the synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. John organizes his material theologically and purposefully rather than simply giving us another chronological biography of Jesus.

We might say that he is not concerned with the order of events as much as he is with the purpose of the events. John wrote later than the synoptic gospels, and his gospel clearly overlaps with them while also giving us substantial material they don’t include.

His narrative, therefore, is quite different. He doesn’t begin with Jesus’ birth, or John’s ministry, he begins by unapologetically stating that Jesus is the Word of God. That God came in the flesh, walked among them, and revealed himself to them as the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Then he begins unfolding the evidence. John the Baptist’s testimony, the first disciples’ experience, his first miracle of turning water into wine, the cleansing of the temple, his conversation with Nicodemus, his conversation with the Samaritan woman, his withdrawal, his second miracle when he traveled from Judea to Galilee. All helping us move along in understanding who Jesus is and why he came.

Now in what we call chapter 5, John starts a new chapter in the story: Jesus goes back to Jerusalem.

In the interim, the synoptic gospels tell us more about what is happening in this time. Jesus is angering the religious leaders… …because his disciples are picking grain on the sabbath, ….because he eats with tax collectors and sinners, ….because he claimed the authority to forgive sins.

All of this John summarizes in this was why the Jews were persecuting Jesus. He didn’t follow their rules, particularly concerning the Sabbath. And it frustrated them and enraged them.

John’s purpose seems to be to show us how and why the increasing hostility of the religious leaders was growing during Jesus’ earthly ministry.

His concern is not recording everything that happened, but supplementing the other gospel accounts and sharing his own testimony that Jesus is the Word of God, the Messiah, the anointed one, the only Son of God.

In John 5:1-18 John zooms in on one particular encounter that would bring Jesus even more in conflict with the religious leaders in Jerusalem. It’s a record of a miraculous healing, but it is also much more than that, which is why we’re going to look at it under the heading, More Than A Miracle.

This morning I want us to look at this story from four perspectives. Kind of like holding a cut diamond in the light and examining its different facets.

If you haven’t already, turn with me to John chapter 5.

John 5:1–18 ESV

1 After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 2 Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades. 3 In these lay a multitude of invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. 5 One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be healed?” 7 The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me.” 8 Jesus said to him, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.” 9 And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked. Now that day was the Sabbath. 10 So the Jews said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to take up your bed.” 11 But he answered them, “The man who healed me, that man said to me, ‘Take up your bed, and walk.’ ” 12 They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take up your bed and walk’?” 13 Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, as there was a crowd in the place. 14 Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you.” 15 The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him. 16 And this was why the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. 17 But Jesus answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.” 18 This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.

We begin by examining the first perspective, or the first facet…

I. THE MAN (A Helpless Man in Need)

Let’s start by zooming in on this man John calls our attention to. 5 One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years.

The word invalid simply tells us that this man had suffered from some kind of feebleness of health or sickness. John doesn’t tell us exactly what his problem is, only its symptoms.

It is severe enough that the man cannot live a normal life. It seems to prevent him from moving quickly. From the evidence it seems to be something to do with his body. One or both of his legs, perhaps his feet. We don’t know but we do know that it has been life-defining for him.

He had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. Here is the interesting part, he doesn’t say from birth, he doesn’t say he was born crippled. We do hear stories like that in the gospels, but in this particular case, we are just given the time frame. 38 years.

No matter when or how this happened, 38 years in the first century is a lifetime. A lifetime of limitations. A lifetime of dependence on others. A lifetime of hoping that somehow, some way, his circumstances might change. Knowing this culture, maybe even a lifetime reduced to begging for alms, and hoping for a miracle.

Let’s zoom out a little more. Where do we find this man?

2 Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades. 3 In these lay a multitude of invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed.

John tells us that in Aramaic it is called Bethseda. Our best understanding of that word is something like "house of mercy" or "flowing water". This body of water or waters, is surrounded by five roofed colonnades, or covered open porches. Perhaps someone had mercifully erected these covered places where these invalids laid to protect them from the sun, and perhaps these once served a different purpose, but either way, this is a place where desperate people gather.

Let’s zoom out a little more. Why is the man here?

If you have the KJV or the NKJV you see that there is a verse not included in the ESV we read a minute ago.

It reads like- For an angel went down at a certain time into the pool and stirred up the water; then whoever stepped in first, after the stirring of the water, was made well of whatever disease he had.

I mentioned a similar occurrence a few weeks ago. This simply means that the oldest manuscripts that have been found do not all contain this verse, indicating that it was probably a scribal note in the margin that eventually got absorbed into the text. And once again, it doesn’t really affect the reading all that much. From the man’ own words in verse 7 we see that the man believed something like what verse 4 communicates.

Whatever exactly was happening at this pool, this man believed that healing could be found there. And that is why he was there. Just like the rest. The helpless, the invalids, the blind, lame, and paralyzed all gathered, hoping to experience healing.

Here we find this man. 38 years suffering, hopeless because he had no one to help him, and completely immersed in his illness. He is simply the man who had already been there a long time.

He is in a place where suffering people have gathered, hoping for mercy, but he is completely unable to secure it for himself.

Friends, perhaps that describes some of you here this morning better than you’d like to admit. You have gathered this morning because you know that the church is a house of mercy, but you are stuck trying to figure out how to secure healing for yourself. You are thinking about what you need to do, what you need to experience, what needs to change, what obstacle needs to be overcome in order for you to finally be whole.

But what we are going to see is that what you need is the same thing this man received, not an experience but an encounter. He doesn’t ultimately need an experience at the pool, he needs an encounter with the person of Jesus.

Let’s turn our attention to the second facet as we examine…

II. THE MESSIAH (A Merciful Savior Who Seeks)

John has set the scene.

Jesus is returning to Jerusalem. He approached from the North on his way through the sheep gate, which led into the outer area around the temple. He comes to what archeologists tell us was actually a set of two pools, one higher and one lower. Porches on all four sides and one separating the upper and lower pools.

Two pools, both roughly the size of an olympic pool in length and almost twice as wide. All around there lay a multitude of invalids.

Think about that for a moment. Just the sheer size and amount of people probably there...

Out of the multitude of suffering people lying around that pool, John says, 6 When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time,

Jesus sees him… Not only that, John says Jesus knows him. He knows that he has been there a long time. Jesus in his divine knowledge knows both the depth and duration of his suffering.

Here’s what I want you to see. Unlike many of the other recorded miraculous healings, this man doesn’t hear a crowd saying Jesus is coming, we don’t even know if he had ever heard the name Jesus. He isn’t looking for Jesus at all, but Jesus was clearly looking for him.

Having sought him out in this particular place at this particular time, Jesus asks him what seems to be a strange question. ‘Do you want to be healed?’

Now, for a moment, suspend what you know about these encounters. From our vantage point we have seen conversations like this, we know that Jesus’ questions aren’t usually to gain knowledge but to expose something in the one who answers. Perhaps even the disciples weren’t surprised at this point with the question.

But can you imagine the man?

Do I want to be healed?

Why else would I be laying beside this pool, watching the water, and repeatedly trying to drag myself in, day after day?

Of course he wants to be healed. But notice how he answers. “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me.”

Jesus asks, “Do you want to be healed?” And the man essentially says, “I can’t.” I don’t have any help. I’m not fast enough. Someone else gets there before me.

Again, I wonder if this encounter doesn’t hit closer to home than we’d like to admit. You have come to the house of mercy, you have heard that Jesus saves, and yet all you can see are the obstacles in your way.

I’ve done too many bad things.

I come from too broken of a family.

I’ve lived this way for too long.

I can’t beat this addiction.

I’ve tried religion before.

Jesus is asking, Do you want to be made whole? And you are too busy looking at the obstacles.

Listen, this man had real obstacles in his way. Jesus doesn't deny any of those things. He simply calls him to stop looking at them long enough to look at Him.

The same is true for you… Your sin is real, your brokenness is real, your inability is real, but none of it is greater than Jesus. Jesus never asked you to save yourself.

But just like the man, by focusing on the obstacles, we miss seeing the one standing right in front of us.

Right in front of this man was someone who could overcome every obstacle in his world.

Have your obstacles become so prominent in your thinking that you’re failing to see the sufficiency of Christ? The gospel doesn't ask you to overcome your obstacles before coming to Jesus. It calls you to come to Jesus because you cannot overcome them yourself.

What does Jesus tell him?

He doesn’t give him ideas for getting in the pool harder.

He doesn’t tell him if he just tried harder.

He doesn’t give him ideas on how to recruit help.

He simply says, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.”

Three commands in rapid succession, rise, roll up your bed, and go about your life.

Jesus doesn’t tell him to try. He commands him to do what, moments before, he was incapable of doing.

The man who couldn't walk now walks.

But the next part of the story will show us that Jesus intends more than simply changing his physical circumstances.

If the story ended there, what a powerful display of Christ’s compassion, authority, and power it would be. A man lame for 38 years, instantaneously made whole. But the story doesn’t end there. Let’s look at our next facet…

III. THE MIRACLE (A Powerful Savior Who Commands)

John doesn’t let us simply celebrate the miracle and move on. He wants us to notice something about the command Jesus gave this man. He says, Now that day was the Sabbath.

Jesus didn’t just heal him, he didn’t just tell him to get up and walk, he told him specifically, get up, take up your bed and walk, and he told him to do that on the Sabbath.

As we mentioned in the beginning, we see this pattern in other gospels. Jesus’ disciples picked grain on the Sabbath. Jesus healed on the Sabbath. Now Jesus commands a man who has just been healed to carry his bed on the Sabbath. Jesus isn’t unaware of the controversy he’s creating. He’s confronting their understanding of the Sabbath, and ultimately their understanding of himself.

Jesus is not simply demonstrating that he has power over sickness. He is demonstrating that he has authority over the Sabbath itself. And that’s why this miracle becomes a controversy.

As he says when the Pharisees confront him about his disciples. The Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.

Jesus reminds them that the Sabbath was designed for human benefit. It was and is a gift. A time of bodily rest and spiritual nurture through undistracted worship. They had distilled it down to a list of strict regulations. Through centuries of scribal additions and layers of extra rules, the Sabbath became a weariness rather than a blessing.

So once again, Jesus heals on the Sabbath, he restores a child of Israel to health and then sets him on a direct path with the religious leaders. Later in the story we know that Jesus slips away probably during the commotion and excitement when the man stands up. But he obey Jesus. He rolls up his mat, puts it under his arm, and heads seemingly through the sheep gate to the temple complex. How do we know?

Because the next time we see him is in verse 10 and the Jews said to him, It is the Sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to take up your bed.

The man is caught between two opposing authorities. the man who healed him and the religious authorities who are telling him that what that man commanded him to do is unlawful.

His answer?

The man who healed me said take up my bed and walk. Someone far more powerful than me commanded me, so that’s what I did.

They wanted to know who the man was, but the man did not know. They may suspect Jesus, especially since the man was obviously healed and Jesus had been restoring people like this both in Jerusalem and in the surrounding areas, but he doesn’t know the name of the man who healed him and told him to carry his bed.

Here’s something worth noting. The Hebrew word used for bed throughout this passage is a little pallet, most likely made of straw. The man had lain on one, or one like it for 38 years. Bound to it by his condition. Now he’s carrying it. The very evidence of Jesus’ mercy becomes the evidence the leaders use against Jesus. What was an act of obedience to the man who healed him, became the very thing the religious leaders used against Jesus.

Once they find out for sure it was Jesus, they persecute him. Even more so when they hear his answer. But before we get there, there is one last facet for us to examine from this story.

Let’s turn our attention to…

IV. THE MESSAGE (A Sovereign Savior Who Calls Us to Change)

Now if we were recording this story, especially in light of what we have noted about John’s purpose, where would you end it?

Thirty-eight years unable to walk. Jesus shows up. Tells the man to get up, take up his bed, and walk. The man does. Amazing.

Maybe you would end it with the controversy that moves the narrative forward towards the coming confrontation between Jesus and the religious leaders with the note ‘this was on a sabbath’.

But John continues the story. 14 Afterward Jesus found him in the temple…

Why did Jesus seek him out again? The man had been healed, he had obeyed Jesus, what’s left to say?

Jesus has a very specific message for him. “See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you.”

Look at you! You’ve been made whole!

Then Jesus says something surprising. Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you.”

There are two aspects I want to look at with you.

Number one, Jesus expects that the man’s life will be changed by their encounter.

Number two, Jesus wants him to understand there is something more important than physical health.

Let’s dig in a little bit. We know that Jesus rejects the common understanding of the day that someone who experiences something like this is always a direct result of sin. We will see that in chapter 9 of John when the disciples ask him that exact question about another man, one who had been born blind. His answer directly challenges the assumption that suffering resulted from personal or familial sin.

Can sin bring suffering in our life? Absolutely.

Does the Bible say that illness and death is sometimes the result of sin? Yes. See 1 Corinthians 11:30

Can we reduce it down to a simplistic formula that suffering is always a result of sin? Of course not.

Job suffered, the prophets suffered, Jesus suffered, not as a result of sin but for other reasons.

So what do we do with Jesus’ statement here?

Perhaps in this case, the man’s condition had been caused by sin and Jesus is simply warning him not to continue sinning and forfeit his healing.

But perhaps, this is Jesus not warning the man about the possibility of experiencing something worse from sin, but is a warning about what the man chooses to do with his now restored life.

We need to press deeper, not in the statement sin no more, but the statement that nothing worse may happen to you.

I personally think Jesus is talking about the coming judgment against sin. The “something worse” Jesus warns about appears to point beyond physical suffering to the ultimate consequences of sin, the coming judgment.

What’s worse than 38 years of being an invalid?

What’s worse than lying next to a pool you believe can heal you but unable to get into it when you need to?

Judgment.

Eternal Condemnation.

Physical restoration is wonderful, but it did not secure this man’s future salvation. Only faith in the person and work of Jesus can do that.

Why do I think Jesus is talking about the coming judgement?

Because of the very next recorded conversation.

After this second encounter with Jesus, the man tells the religious leaders it was Jesus who healed him, they confront him, and part of what he says is that there is coming a day when he will judge the world and those who have done good will be raised to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.

When Jesus makes someone whole, they are radically changed.

Grace should produce gratitude. Mercy should produce repentance.

When we encounter Jesus, it should change the way we live.

That’s where this man’s part in the story ends. He fades into the background even as we see that the story continues in the religious leaders confronting Jesus.

In his initial response Jesus says “My Father is working until now, and I am working.” John tells us exactly how the jews received his words. 18 This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.

We’ll save the rest of that conversation for next week. The religious leaders are essentially asking, Who does this man think He is? Next week, we’re going to hear Jesus answer that question clearly.

This morning we have looked at this story from four different perspectives, like turning a diamond in the light and examining its different facets. But the thing about that is that ultimately, the beauty is not in the parts, its when you step back and take in the beauty of the object itself.

We have seen a helpless man in need. We have seen a merciful savior who sought him out. We have seen a powerful savior who commands. We have seen a sovereign savior who calls the man to life change.

All of those facets are pointing us toward the same truth.

Jesus is not merely a man who can perform miracles. He is the Son of God who possesses the authority of God.

The apostle John is continuing to present the evidence that this Jesus is the Word of God, the Messiah, the anointed one, the only Son of God.

His inability to walk was a real problem. But it wasn't his greatest problem. His greatest need was Jesus. And that is also our greatest problem. We don't simply need Jesus to make our circumstances better. We need Jesus Himself.

John’s story doesn’t end with the man walking away healed, because the miracle has raised a much bigger question.

Who is this Jesus?

That’s the question John wants us to answer. The religious leaders think they are confronting a man who was violating their Sabbath rules, Jesus is about to show them that they are standing before the Son of God.

This week we have seen Jesus demonstrate His authority. Next week, we're going to hear Jesus explain that authority Himself.

This morning, here’s where I want to land.

Not to press the metaphor further than it needs to be, but sometimes when you are looking at a diamond, you catch a reflection of yourself and the world around you. Perhaps there are some here today that are like this man. You know your need. You know your helplessness. You’ve tried to find your way to the solution, but you can’t get yourself there. The good news of this passage is that Jesus sees helpless people, he seeks helpless people, and he has both the power and authority to save helpless people.

Do you believe that Jesus is who he said he was… …the Son of God, the word who became flesh, who came into his creation, the Messiah, who lived a perfect life, died a sinner’s death, was buried and rose again on the third day, ascended into heaven where he remains until he returns to judge both the living and the dead? The one who has authority to heal, to forgive in, and over life itself.

That’s the question, isn’t it?

When Jesus makes himself equal with God, do we believe him?

Which is after all John’s purpose in writing. That we may believe.

For those of us who do.

What difference is that making in your life?

Jesus calls this restored man to a life of holiness, don’t think he desires anything less from you.

Wherever you are this morning, in a few moments, I am going to pray and we are going to stand to sing a song in response to God’s word. That time is for you.

Maybe you just need to praise God for saving you, a helpless man or woman who was crippled by sin.

Maybe you need to confess that you have received Jesus’ healing and salvation but you haven’t been pursuing him the way you should. You can do that right where you are or you come and kneel at these steps.

Maybe you finally see that it isn’t something you need to do to be saved, but something Christ does to you. If that’s you, I would encourage you to come during this time. Listen, not because you have to come down here to be saved. You don’t. But because we want to come alongside you and encourage you, pray for you, and help you in your first steps of following Jesus in obedience.

Let’s pray.