THE GOSPEL OF JOHN
HEALING
DR. JIM DIXON
AUGUST 9, 1987
JOHN 5:1-18
The Song of Bernadette. That was the name of a book (and later it was the title of a movie) written to celebrate the life of a woman named Bernadette Soubirous. She was born in 1844 in southwest France in the town of Lourdes. From the world’s perspective, there was nothing great about Bernadette. She had no title, she had no wealth, and she had no exceptional talent. But when she was 14 years old in the year 1858, it was at that time in the town of Lourdes when allegedly the Virgin Mary, the mother of our Lord Jesus Christ, appeared to her. The Virgin had a message for Bernadette, and the message concerned the waters of the grotto spring in Lourdes. The Virgin Mary told Bernadette that those waters would from that day forth be sacred and that they would have healing powers.
The Virgin told Bernadette that she was to announce this message to the world. In a five-month period, the blessed Virgin allegedly appeared to Bernadette 18 times, but always with the same message concerning the healing properties of the sacred waters of the grotto spring of Lourdes. Bernadette only lived 35 years on this Earth. She died in 1879. In 1876, they built a basilica (a church) on the rock where Bernadette allegedly encountered and communicated with the Virgin Mary. In 1925, Bernadette was beatified by the Roman Catholic Church. In 1933, she was canonized. Today she’s called St. Bernadette, and today the second largest Roman Catholic church in the world stands in the town of Lourdes to commemorate the life of St. Bernadette and the Virgin Mary. More than 2 million pilgrims a year make their way to the town of Lourdes to see the sacred waters. Some of them bathe in those waters, hoping that somehow they might be healed of their various and sundry diseases.
What the sacred waters of the grotto spring of Lourdes represent to Roman Catholics today the pool of Bethesda (sometimes called the pool of Bethzatha and sometimes called the pool of Bethsaida) represented to the Jews of Christ’s day. You see, the Jews of Christ’s day believed that somehow there were healing properties in the waters of the pool of Bethesda. The fourth verse of the fifth chapter of the Gospel of John tells us that the angel of the Lord came down in certain seasons into the pool and troubled the waters, and the first person into the pool when the waters were troubled was immediately healed of whatever diseases they had.
Now, this fourth verse was not in the earliest and best manuscripts and probably should not be in your Bible. In fact, most of your Bibles probably do not include this fourth verse. In all likelihood, the angel of the Lord didn’t come down into the pool of Bethesda and the pool of Bethesda didn’t have healing properties. Yet it is obvious that the Jews who lived in Christ’s day believed that the pool of Bethesda had healing properties, and that’s why all sorts of invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed—were gathered around the pool of Bethesda. They hoped that somehow those waters might heal them.
There was a man there who had been paralyzed, the Bible says, for 38 years. And we don’t know how long he had been lying beside the pool of Bethesda, but we have to think that this man was extremely needy. It was to this man that our Lord Jesus Christ came one day. The true healer, the true source of all true healing, the Son of God, Jesus Christ, came to this man. And Jesus Christ healed this man who had been paralyzed for 38 years. But He wasn’t only concerned with this man’s physical healing. He made two statements to this man that reflect the concerns that Christ had for him and has for you and for me. And these comprise our two teachings this morning.
First of all, our Lord was concerned with this man’s attitude. Our Lord came up to this paralytic and said to him, “Do you want to be healed?” That might seem like a strange question to put to a paralyzed man who had been ill for 38 years. But you see, not everybody who is sick is looking for a physician. Not everybody who is sick is looking for a doctor. Some people are sick physically, some people are sick emotionally, and some are sick spiritually. Some are crippled emotionally and some are crippled spiritually. And to each of us and to all the sick, Jesus Christ would say, “Do you want to be healed?”
This man had been sick for 38 years. That’s obviously a long time. We don’t know what this man’s attitude was. Jesus undoubtedly knew his attitude. This man might have found some satisfaction in his position or in his status. Things weren’t too bad for him. He could sit beside the pool of Bethesda and he could see all the tourists that came to Jerusalem. Everything was always provided for him by somebody else. He didn’t have to do a thing for himself. His food, clothing, and shelter were all provided for him by others. And he might have been content with that.
Or perhaps he wasn’t content, but he was disillusioned. Maybe he just had no more hope. It had been 38 years. He’d given up and the desire wasn’t really there anymore. And so Jesus said to him, “Do you really want to be healed?” The Greek word for “want” is the word thélo, and that word means “to earnestly desire.” It means “to purpose in your heart.” It means “to establish as your goal.” “Do you really want to be healed?”
Jesus cares about our attitude. You know, it’s amazing even from a secular point of view how much healing can take place when a person really wants to be healed. I read recently the story of Joni Dunn. Joni Dunn in 1972 was skiing on a Vermont mountain. She was an intermediate skier. She was heading down one of the ski slopes and she lost control. I think for any of us who ski that’s perhaps a fear we have. I know it is for me. She lost control and she went way off the ski slope and she flew right over a cliff. Joni Dunn flew a hundred feet through the air and she crashed. When she crashed, she broke her neck, fractured her skull, and fractured her vertebra in seven places.
They didn’t think she would live. In fact, she could remember that first night being in the hospital hearing the doctors say that she wasn’t going to make it through the night. I’m sure the doctors didn’t think she could hear, but she could. She could remember struggling for life. She remembers thinking, “If I don’t struggle to stay alive, I’m going to die.” But she didn’t die, although she was paralyzed. She couldn’t move. She could only move her head. Her little three-year-old boy named Brian was brought to her after the accident, and he reached out his arms to hold his mom and she couldn’t reach back. She couldn’t hold her son. Well, they did an amazing surgery on Joni Dunn. The surgery took two inches off of her height, but miraculously it restored to her some capacity for movement.
Doctors didn’t know how much or how little she would be able to move, but they knew that the surgery would help. In the months that followed, they put her through physical therapy. One-and-a-half years later, she was able for the first time to hold her little boy, who was then four-and-a-half years old. And three years after the tragic accident, she enrolled in the YMCA at Greenwich, Connecticut. By that time, she was able to swim one lap of the pool three times a week. The doctor said it was a miracle, but they didn’t know how miraculous it was going to become because, you see, they couldn’t possibly understand her will to be whole.
Well, the weeks and the months and the years passed. It was 1975 when she swam three laps a week in the YMCA pool in Greenwich, Connecticut. Incredibly, in 1985 Joni Dunn won Hawaii’s Ironman triathlon for her age group. She swam 2.4 miles, biked 112 miles, and ran a 26.2 mile marathon and won. Unbelievable. Do you want to be whole? She wanted to be whole.
You know, I think most of you have heard of Glenn Cunningham, or at least some of you. Glenn Cunningham was reared in a small farm in Kansas. He was raised in poverty. He was educated in a one-room schoolhouse. As a child, he had one responsibility in that schoolhouse, along with two other children: he was supposed to light the stove that kept the schoolhouse warm. One day he did a very stupid thing. As he was lighting the stove (he was in a hurry) he poured kerosene over live coals and the stove exploded and the schoolhouse caught on fire. Well, Glenn made it out of the schoolhouse, but his friends told him that his little brother was still inside. So Glenn Cunningham went back into the schoolhouse to save his little brother. He was horribly burned. He dragged his little brother out of the house and they both were very near death. In truth, Glenn’s little brother died. Glenn barely survived, and his legs were so badly burned they told him he would never ever walk. But you see, they didn’t understand his will to be whole. Glenn Cunningham did walk and Glenn Cunningham did run. And as many of you know, Glenn Cunningham began to run so well that in 1934 he set the world record for the one mile run.
I know that all of you have heard of Wilma Rudolph. You may know something of her story. When she was a little child, she had double pneumonia and she had scarlet fever and she was stricken with polio and couldn’t walk. In fact, the first 12 years of her life she wore leg braces and the doctor said she’d never be able to walk without leg braces. But she longed to run, not just to walk, and she did run. And as most all of you know, she became the fastest woman in the world. In 1960 at the Olympics in Rome she won the gold medal for the 100 meter dash and the 200 meter dash and she anchored the winning woman’s 400 meter relay team. That was three gold medals for Wilma Rudolph.
You know, there’s many, many additional stories just like that that we could cite from history. All of them are amazing. All of them show how attitude plays a role in healing. All of them show that if you’ve got a will to be whole it’s amazing what can take place. And yet, I’m not trying to say this morning that that crippled by the pool of Bethesda could have been whole if only he’d had the right attitude. I’m not saying he could have walked or he could have run if only he had wanted badly enough to be well. Sometimes healing is beyond the power of man. Sometimes situations are so desperate that only God can heal. And surely that was the situation with this man who had been paralyzed for 38 years. Only God could possibly heal him. But you see, God wants us to understand that sometimes, oftentimes, His healing power is denied us because our attitudes aren’t right. Sometimes His healing power is denied because we don’t want badly enough to be whole.
We’re all cripples. Every one of us is damaged. Some of us are crippled physically, although not many of us. That’s hard. Most of us are crippled emotionally and spiritually. And Jesus Christ can heal. But He says to us what He said to the man by the pool of Bethesda: “Do you really want to be whole? Do you really want to be well?” You know, maybe you’re not a Christian and you’re separated from God and from time to time there’s a sense of emptiness. Jesus Christ can make you whole. But do you really want to be healed?
Maybe you’re having trouble with temper and you really cannot control your temper. At times it’s embarrassing to you, it’s damaging to others and to you, and it’s a problem for you almost daily. Jesus Christ wants to help. But He would ask you, “Do you really want to be whole?”
Maybe you’re having a problem with alcoholism and you’ve had a problem for a long time. Maybe you’re having a hard time facing the fact that you are struggling with alcoholism. Jesus Christ wants to help you and He can. But He asks you, “Do you really want to be whole?”
Maybe you’re struggling with lust or pornography. Jesus Christ wants to help you, but He asks you, “Do you really want to be whole?” See, maybe you’re morally crippled. Maybe there’s some habit in your life that you know is displeasing to God. Jesus Christ can heal you. But He asked you, “Do you really want to be whole?”
When I was in college I majored in psychology, and part of my education required that I take practicum at the state mental hospital in Camarillo, California. So I worked in the schizophrenic ward of the state mental hospital in Camarillo, California for almost a year. It was kind of an amazing thing. You know, I would go throughout the schizophrenic ward and see various people and it was tragic. You’d see people who would just sit in a chair and hallucinate. They had bailed out of life—they had abandoned the real world—and they would just sit in a chair and hallucinate. They would enter an imaginary dream world. And it wasn’t that they couldn’t come out of it. In fact, if I would go up to them and just kind of touch them and begin to talk to them, they would come out of it. They would talk normally for a while, but when I would leave they’d just go right back into their dream world.
Now, the facility at the state mental hospital at Camarillo is unbelievable. I mean, they had big color television sets on all the walls. Nobody was looking at them. They had an incredible gymnasium. I mean, if you were normal you could have a great time there. They had a great gymnasium, a weight room, and an Olympic swimming pool, and it was all empty. Nobody was in the gym and nobody was in the pool. They asked us to organize baseball teams, but we couldn’t get the people to leave their chairs and their imaginary worlds. You know, there were a lot of psychologists, psychiatrists, and counselors there—the best healers this secular world offers. There were a lot of healers but very little healing. And the counselors would say to me, “You know, the truth of the matter is that most of these people just don’t really want to be whole.” That’s what distinguishes a relatively normal person from a relatively abnormal one. These people didn’t want to be whole.
Well, you know, Jesus Christ is the greatest Healer of all. He has all power in heaven and on Earth. He is King of Kings, Lord of Lords, and the Son of God and there is nothing He can’t do. There is no problem too great for Him. And whatever problem you have in your life, He can help you. You know, Jesus once stood in the synagogue at Nazareth and He spoke to the masses. He said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me and has anointed Me to preach good news to the poor and has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives and liberty to the oppressed and the restoration of sight to the blind. He has sent Me to heal and to mend the brokenhearted and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” You see, He came to heal physically, emotionally, and spiritually. He came to heal and He wants to heal you and He wants to heal me. But He would say to us, “Do you really want to be whole?”
Well, Jesus wasn’t only concerned with this man’s attitude. We have a second and final teaching this morning, and this is that Jesus was also concerned with this man’s behavior. He was concerned with his attitude, but He was also concerned with this man’s behavior. You see, after the man was healed, it’s kind of an interesting thing that this man didn’t even know who had healed him. Jesus didn’t identify Himself and this was early in Christ’s ministry. This man had been healed after 38 years of being paralyzed and he didn’t even know who had done it. But afterwards Jesus found this man in the area of the temple in the Jerusalem and said to him, “See, you are well.” And then Jesus said to him something that perhaps is disturbing to some of us. Jesus said, “Sin no more that nothing worse befall you.”
You see, Jesus was implying that there was some action— some misdeed—in this man’s past, some sin that was in some way associated with his illness. And this shouldn’t surprise us, because the Bible tells us that, in certain situations, sin is associated with illness. Many times when Jesus healed, instead of saying, “Rise, take up your bed and walk,” Jesus would simply say, “Your sins are forgiven you,” because personal sins can be related to personal illness. In the fifth chapter of the Book of James, we’re told to pray for one another when we are sick. It is clearly stated in the fifth chapter of the Book of James that sometimes in order to be healed there must be forgiveness of sin.
Now, by way of balance and clarification, God would have us to understand that not all illness is caused by our personal sin. If that were the case we would be embarrassed to ever let anybody know that we were sick and we would never want to admit that we had a cold or that we ever had anything wrong with us. The Bible makes it clear that not all of our illnesses and afflictions and sufferings are caused by our personal sins. The Bible says all illness in the world is caused by sin, but not necessarily our sin. You see, we live in a fallen world. The Bible says there would be no illness in this world if it wasn’t for sin. But the Bible says we sometimes become sick just because this tainted world touches us and not because of sin that is our own.
But you see, whenever you’re sick, whenever you are crippled in some way, God would always have you make an inner search and see if there isn’t some sin in you that is in some way related to this, because it is possible. And that’s hard for us to admit as Christians, because as Christians we like to think that all of our sins are taken care of, don’t we? We like to think that God in Christ has taken care of all of our sin. We like to think that all the consequences for sin are removed by the blood of Christ—that when He died on Calvary’s cross and when we took Him as Lord and Savior all of our sin was covered and that there’s no longer any consequence for sin in our life. And in some sense that’s true.
I read recently the story of a man named Dr. Émile Roux. He was a friend and colleague of Louis Pasteur, and he lived in the 19th century. In the year 1880 Dr. Émile Roux suffered tragedy when his granddaughter died of black diphtheria. At that time, in the latter portion of the 19th century, diphtheria was spreading over Europe and people were dying by the thousands, particularly children. Dr. Émile Roux was so enraged that he resolved that somehow he would find a cure for diphtheria. He would find out, first of all, what caused it, and then he would find a cure. He resolved that he would lock himself in his laboratory until he found the solution. Until he found that solution, he wouldn’t come out.
Well, it was kind of a boast that he couldn’t back up. Eventually he came out of his laboratory, although he didn’t have a cure for diphtheria. But he still desperately wanted a cure. Somehow he knew that it was related to what was called germ theory. He believed that illnesses and diseases were somehow caused by germs and bacteria. That was not a popular view in the latter portion of the 19th century. In fact, Louis Pasteur had been kicked out of Paris because of his advocation of germ theory. Louis Pasteur had set up a laboratory in the forest outside of Paris, and to that laboratory outside of Paris in the forest Émile Roux went and joined his friend and colleague, Louis Pasteur. Together they resolved that they would find a cure for diphtheria, and they labored there in the woods for weeks and months.
Finally, they were ready to make a demonstration to the world, and they invited newspaper reporters and famous medical authorities to come outside of Paris to the laboratory there. They brought in 20 healthy horses, and then Dr. Émile Roux went out and he opened the vault and he took out a pail. And in that pail were diphtheria germs that he had cultured over a period of months. It was said there was enough diphtheria in that pale to infect the whole of France. They took these 20 healthy horses and they swabbed them with the diphtheria germs—swabbed their noses, their tongues, and their eyes in the presence of many witnesses. To the amazement of all, in a short period of time—a matter of hours and days—all 20 of those horses became horribly sick. 19 of them died and one teetered on the brink of death.
Louis Pasteur and Émile Roux waited to see what would happen. They spent the night on cots in the stable where that one horse was. They instructed their assistants that if there was any change in the horse’s condition they were to be notified. At 2:00 AM one morning—in the middle of the night— Louis Pasteur and Émile Roux woke up when the assistants told them that the horse’s fever had broken. They marveled when they saw the horse begin to return to health. And within four days, the horse was perfectly healthy; the horse had overcome diphtheria. And then an incredible thing happened: Émile Roux went and got a sledge hammer and hit the horse squarely on the head and killed him and took the horse’s blood. Louie Pasteur and Émile Roux took the blood from that horse and they went to the municipal hospital in Paris where 300 babies were dying of diphtheria and had been segregated from the rest. They forcefully inoculated all 300 of them and saved 297 babies from death.
It was said that they had been saved by the blood of the overcomer. They were saved by the blood of the one who had overcome. And as Christians, don’t we believe that that’s what Christ has done for us? He died on Calvary’s cross for us. His blood was poured out for us. And when you embrace Christ as Lord and Savior and you ask Him to come into your heart, you are covered by the precious blood of Jesus Christ. You are inoculated by Christ and you are given victory over sin, saved by the blood of the one who overcame sin. And yet God wants us to understand that while, in one sense, sin is conquered in our life, in another sense it isn’t. You see, sin is conquered in your life in the sense that sin can no longer keep you out of heaven. If you’re a Christian and you’ve received Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, you’re bound for heaven. None of your sins—past, present, future—are going to keep you out of heaven. If you’re truly a Christian—if you’ve truly given your life and your heart to Jesus Christ—you’re bound for heaven. Nothing will keep you out. Your sins are covered.
Yet God wants you to understand that, even as a Christian, there are consequences for sin. Even as Christians, one day we’re going to stand before the judgment seat of Christ. The Bible says that there will be varying rewards. The Bible says some will be saved but only as through fire, and they will suffer loss of reward. And the Bible tells us that also in this life there are indeed consequences for unrepentant sin. You know, perhaps you feel like you can sin and it doesn’t really hurt you. I think some people feel like that. They think they can just go on sinning and presume upon God’s grace and presume upon God’s mercy. It doesn’t seem to them to be hurting them. And maybe you feel like everything’s fine and you don’t take sin seriously.
I know all of you have heard of Cassius Marcellus Clay, born in 1942 in Louisville, Kentucky. Today, of course, he is called Muhammed Ali, a name he chose for himself. For a long time, Muhammed Ali was called the Louisville Lip. He was called that because he was prone to brag on his own greatness. He once wrote a book called The Greatest: My Own Story. That was his typical level of humility. And yet, many people believe that Muhammad Ali really was the greatest boxer of all time. He’s the only man ever to have won the heavyweight championship of the world three times. And I’m sure that many Americans felt very proud in 1960 when Muhammad Ali, who was then called Cassius Clay, won the gold medal in the Olympic Games.
I think a lot of people watched with mysterious awe as Muhammad Ali decked Sonny Liston with a short right hand in 1964 and captured the heavyweight championship of the world. Muhammad Ali demonstrated his courage and his endurance in both of his fights with Joe Frazier. He demonstrated brilliant strategy in his victory over George Foreman in 1974 when he recaptured the heavyweight championship of the world. Time and again, fight after fight, Muhammad Ali would stand in front of the camera and he would hold his face up to the camera. He’d talk about how pretty he was. Do you remember that? He’d hold his face up to the camera and he’d say, “Look how beautiful I am.” And he’d rub his hand on his chin after the fight and he’d say, “Look at me. There are no marks. I didn’t get cut. I didn’t get hurt.” And he would’ve led us to believe that he never took a single blow (or if he did that it didn’t hurt him). There was no effect on him and no damage to him. It didn’t hurt him. But today we know differently.
We know differently because Muhammad Ali today is something of a tragic figure. He suffers from what doctors call Pugilistic Brain Syndrome, a relative of Parkinson’s disease. His speech is sluggish, slow, and slurred. His dancing feet no longer dance and his stomach rolls out over his belt. Just this past week, Muhammad Ali said he knows that he’s going to have to have brain surgery someday and he’s just trying to put it off. He said, “You know, I don’t have much feeling around my mouth anymore. It’s numb. I can’t tell when food is dripping off the corners of my mouth. Sometimes food is stuck on my chin and I don’t even know it and I go through the whole meal like that.” Doctors tell us that it’s all happened because of those blows, blows that he took in the ring over a period of years.
That is the cumulative effect of the blows that he said he never took, blows that he said never hurt him. He said the blows never damaged him, but they did. They impacted him. See, God wants you to know that sin in your life is just like that. Every sin is a blow. Every unconfessed sin is a blow. It’s a blow to your soul. It’s a blow to your spirit. It’s a blow to your body, and you can wake up in the morning and you can look in the mirror and you haven’t changed at all. And you think, “There’s no difference. It hasn’t hurt me.” But the effects are cumulative. God wants you to know that damage is taking place.
So you see, God has a solution for us, and He tells us what He told the man by the pool of Bethesda: sin no more. He tells us that He is faithful to forgive our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness if we truly confess and repent. So you see, for us as Christians, we desperately need to lessen this blow of sin. And we can do that when we truly repent each day and come to Christ in prayer and say, “Lord, forgive me,” and we truly want to change.
God also would exhort us to take sin seriously and to turn from sin. That’s why the Bible says, “As obedient children do not be conformed to your former passions, but as He who has called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct. For is written, ‘You shall be holy for I am holy.’” You see, God cares about our attitudes. He cares about the way we think. He wants us to long to be whole, and He cares about our behavior as Christians. He doesn’t want us to presume upon His grace and mercy. He doesn’t want us to cheapen His grace and pervert it to licentiousness. He counsels us to repent every day of every known sin and He warns us to take sin seriously. Let’s close with a word of prayer.
Lord Jesus, You are so great and we are so weak. Lord, we look at Your life and we marvel at Your sinlessness and Your perfection. We wonder how You could have walked this Earth and experienced all the temptations that we experience and never sin. Lord, we love You and we look to You. We thank You so much for Your grace and we thank You for Your mercy. We thank You for the gift of eternal life given to all who truly believe in You, those who have committed their lives to You as Lord. And yet, Lord, help us not to take Your grace cheaply. Help us not to presume upon Your grace. Help us to repent truly each day for every known sin. Lord, help us to take sin seriously. Lord, we long to be whole and to see You heal us—not just physically, Lord, but emotionally and spiritually. We want to be like You. We would be clay in the hands of the Potter. We love You, Lord. We pray these things in Your great and matchless name. Amen.