Sunday Messages

John 5

Jesus Heals a Lame Man

1Afterward Jesus returned to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish holy days. 2Inside the city, near the Sheep Gate, was the pool of Bethesda,*5:2 Other manuscripts read Beth-zatha; still others read Bethsaida. with five covered porches. 3Crowds of sick people—blind, lame, or paralyzed—lay on the porches.*5:3 Some manuscripts add an expanded conclusion to verse 3 and all of verse 4: waiting for a certain movement of the water, ⁴for an angel of the Lord came from time to time and stirred up the water. And the first person to step in after the water was stirred was healed of whatever disease he had. 5One of the men lying there had been sick for thirty-eight years. 6When Jesus saw him and knew he had been ill for a long time, he asked him, “Would you like to get well?”

7“I can’t, sir,” the sick man said, “for I have no one to put me into the pool when the water bubbles up. Someone else always gets there ahead of me.”

8Jesus told him, “Stand up, pick up your mat, and walk!”

9Instantly, the man was healed! He rolled up his sleeping mat and began walking! But this miracle happened on the Sabbath, 10so the Jewish leaders objected. They said to the man who was cured, “You can’t work on the Sabbath! The law doesn’t allow you to carry that sleeping mat!”

11But he replied, “The man who healed me told me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’”

12“Who said such a thing as that?” they demanded.

13The man didn’t know, for Jesus had disappeared into the crowd. 14But afterward Jesus found him in the Temple and told him, “Now you are well; so stop sinning, or something even worse may happen to you.” 15Then the man went and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had healed him.

Jesus Claims to Be the Son of God

16So the Jewish leaders began harassing*5:16 Or persecuting. Jesus for breaking the Sabbath rules. 17But Jesus replied, “My Father is always working, and so am I.” 18So the Jewish leaders tried all the harder to find a way to kill him. For he not only broke the Sabbath, he called God his Father, thereby making himself equal with God.