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Do You Want to Get Well?
Those who need to get up and pick up our mat…
Those who need to walk and keep walking.
Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. 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. Here a great number of disabled people used to lie — the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. 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?”
“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.”
Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.
—John 5:1-9 (NIV)
When Jesus heard this, He told them, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor–sick people do. I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners.” —Mark 2:17 (NLT)
What would saying yes cost him?
His Community
A New Way of Living
No More Excuses
Three Observations from This Story
- The compassion of Jesus is mindblowing.
- We can not hear this question “Do you want to get well” if we are not willing to be associated with those at the pool.
- Jesus offers life and life to the fullest.