The man sat at the pool waiting for someone to help him get into the water. There was a barricade to his healing–he couldn’t get into the water fast enough by himself. When the angel stirred the water, someone else got there first. They got their healing because they were faster. He didn’t get his healing–until Jesus showed up personally.

Preachers like to beat up this man for “not having enough faith”. I don’t see that as his issue. He needed help. There was an obstacle, a barricade, a wall that he could not get through by himself. No human would help him, so Jesus Himself showed up personally and healed him.

Jesus didn’t pick him up and race into the water with him; Jesus healed him with His Word.

How many people do we pass by, and think why doesn’t he just go faster? Why doesn’t someone else help him?

There is another thing that jumps out at me. Someone had to be bringing this man to the pool at the Sheep Gate for 38 years. Why didn’t that person stick around an extra hour and carry him into the water?

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HD0FFWHf41E

John 5 New International Version (NIV)

The Healing at the Pool

5 Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. ² Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda^[a] and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. ³ Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. ^{[4] [b] 5} One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. ⁶ When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”

⁷ “Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”

⁸ Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” ⁹ At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.