I hope all is going well for everyone. We have finished up the forth Chapter, only 17 more to go. I pray God keeps us focused on His word and strips away our ignorance and sacrifices we make and presses in our hearts His truth and the sacrifice He made.
Jhn 5:1 After this there was a feast of the Jews; and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
Jhn 5:2 Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep gate a pool, which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches.
Jhn 5:3 In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water.
Jhn 5:4 For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.
- What feast of the Jews were they there for?
- Where else and in what context does John use ‘after this’?
We begin the next chapter with a fairly desolate picture. Here we have a great multitude of people literally on their deathbeds. This was a daily gathering of blind, crippled, and diseased, people in conditions that if we found ourselves would abandon all hope. But among these men, that we turn our heads from is a great message. For I am humbled and joyed that I too found myself among these blind and crippled. Once blind to my sin and crippled to do anything about it. It was here at the pool of mercy when I thought I could do nothing more about my condition that Christ searched me out and I was touched by the Spirit and made whole. I pray you don’t find yourself outside this gate on your way to making your own sacrifice looking in at these impotent folk. I pray you abandon all of your own sacrifices and simply look at and believe the only one who can make you whole. I pray you find yourself striped of all ability to walk to the water on your own for it is then that you may understand mercy and grace and it is then that God may be truly glorified in His gift. (Jhn 3:30) "He must increase, but I must decrease."
