Grace and peace to you. Well we have finished up the forth chapter, only 17 more to go. Yes this may seem like deja vue but it is never bad to look a little closer at His word. I pray God stirs us to search His word and take out the nuggets of truth it pleases Him to reveal to us.
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.
- Is there any other record or bases for this myth in the scriptures?
- Is there any significance in the number 5 in the scriptures?
In reading Nehemiah 3 we learn of the rebuilding of the gates and the walls of Jerusalem. First was the sheep gate and the last the gate of Miphkind. The first was the gate used to bring lambs into the temple for sacrifice, hence the name sheep gate which here demonstrates and guides us to Christ and the sacrifice of the Cross. The circle or wall was complete with the last gate, the gate of miphkind or ‘judgment’. How significant it may have or is that that the path to mercy lays directly beside the gate of judgment. Returning back to our current text, through the sheep gate we now set at the edge of the pools of Bethesda, in Hebrew meaning ‘mercy’. Now the light of what these verses have to say come exceedingly significant and clear. A helpless sinner came through the gate of sacrifice to the pools of mercy where he will be found and made whole. What an instance this is to carefully study every word in the scriptures. There is nothing trivial in the word of God, nothing left to chance. We can find meaning and value in the smallest of details if it pleases God to reveal them.
