Sermon: The Bethesda Experience

Scripture Reading: John 5:1-9 :

1 Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for a feast of the Jews.  2 Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda 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   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. The day on which this took place was a Sabbath,