Think of a time when you earnestly cried out to God for healing. In John 4, a certain Royal Official from Cana is distraught about his son’s illness, and fears for his son’s life. John 4:47 says, “When this man heard that Jesus had come from Judea into Galilee, he went to him and pleaded with him to come down and heal his son, since he was about to die.”
Few scenes are more gut-wrenching than a parent’s cry for their child. In John 3:16 we just read how God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him would have eternal life. John wants us to understand that the only drama that eclipses the drama of John 4:47 is drama of John 3:16! Like this earthly father, oh how our Heavenly Father must have agonized over the thought of losing His One and Only Son.
The shocking reality of the Gospel is that God so loves the world, he spares not even his own Son Jesus, but gladly gives him up in death, that we may live! To anyone whose experienced an agonizing loss, especially the loss of a child, we shouldn’t suppose that God is indifferent. He is first and foremost a Father himself.
In John 4:49 the father urgently exclaims, “come down before my boy dies!” And in John 4:50-53 Jesus says, “‘Go, your son will live.’ The man believed what Jesus said to him and departed. While he was still going down, his servants met him saying that the boy was alive. He them at what time he got better. ‘Yesterday at one in the afternoon the fever left him,’ they answered. The father realized this was the very hour at which Jesus told has told him, ‘Your son will live.’ So he himself believed, along with his whole household.”
There are times when I’ve prayed for healing with great earnestness. As a child, I sat in a hospital waiting room late into the night praying that my grandpa would be okay. I didn’t understand what was happening. I didn’t know what a heart attack was. But I knew God loved my grandpa, and so I prayed.
Also, as a child, one sunny afternoon, on the way back from the grocery store, our family’s station wagon was violently struck by a train. Mom and Dad and my sister Deanna took the brunt of the trauma. They were hospitalized for months. But it was my sister we were most concerned about. She’d fallen into a coma and wasn’t waking up. We prayed quite earnestly for her to wake up and be okay. Grandpa didn’t make it. . . my sister did make it through. And really, our family deemed it a miracle, and glorified God that all of us survived. This father pleaded for his son and believed Jesus’ words. And when he realized his son did indeed live, he believed even more fervently along with his whole household.
There is something Jesus says though, that is very sobering. Before he tells the father his son will live, in John 4:48 he says, “Unless you people see signs and wonders you will not believe.” This is a major issue in the Gospel of John. Nathaniel believed because Jesus said, “I saw you under the tree.” Some believed because Jesus changed water into wine. The Woman of Samaria believed because Jesus knew about her past. The Israelite nation believed because they saw Moses strike the rock with staff and living water flow out. Because Moses struck the sea, and a way of salvation opened. Jacob believed because he saw heaven open and angels ascending and descending. At the end of the gospel of John, Thomas believes in Jesus, but only after he sees the resurrected Jesus and is able to put his fingers in Jesus’ wounds.
But do you remember what Jesus tells Thomas at the end of the Gospel of John? John 20:29 he says, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.” And for that matter consider John 20:30-31, “Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may believe Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”
What is the character of your faith? Is it John 4:48? “Unless you people see signs and wonders you won’t believe?” Or it is John 20:29? “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe!” Or is it even John 20:31? Here in the Bible, we have these testimonies of signs and wonders Jesus performed. We weren’t eyewitnesses. Few of us have seen anything like the “signs” recorded in Scripture. Yet how many of us accept this testimony as true, and by believing, have life in Jesus’ name?
Here is my personal conviction on the matter of healing. Jesus told Nicodemus that the Spirit blows wherever is blows. God is unbound, unrestricted, all-loving, all-powerful. In all the sincerity and faith my feeble spirit can muster, I always ask God to heal. But my faith isn’t contingent upon what I see “first.” My faith is contingent on what I hear first. I hear the testimony of John, of Jesus, of the Father, of Spirit, of the Gospel writers. Faith comes by hearing. But my faith doesn’t necessarily come by seeing.
This is the lesson Jesus drove home to Martha in John 11, at the death of her brother Lazarus. In John 11:25-26, Jesus tells her point blank, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me, even if he dies, will live. Everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” Martha, what you wanted for your brother, didn’t happen. Though he’s died, though you may die, yet do you believe you will live?
In John 5, Jesus is at a sheep gate in Jerusalem at a pool called Bethsaida. John 5:3 tells us it was a gathering place “for a large number of the disabled--blind, lame, and paralyzed.” One of the men that lay there had laid there on a mat for 38 years. The reason people laid there was because of their belief that angels would occasionally stir the waters. And if you were the first to leap into the water, you could be healed! For 38 years this man hoped he would be one of the lucky one who could get healed. Imagine seeking healing for 38 years?
I find it interesting that Jesus is sitting there watching all these people. How many sad stories were laying around the pool that day? John says a large number. Wouldn’t you expect that on this day a large number of healings would occur? But instead, there is just one healing that we know of that day. Only one man in particular, who’d been disabled 38 years, catches Jesus’ eye and Jesus asks him in John 5:6, “Do you want to get well?”
It's often true that were only as healthy as we want to be. Sometimes our malady, becomes our security blanket. Our malady becomes our identity, our excuse, our crutch, our escape hatch from facing the truth about ourselves, about our condition, about our sin. To get well is to overcome our fear of being exposed, and walk into the light, that God’s work might be accomplished in us. Sometimes we’d rather lay on our mats under the cover of darkness than seek wellness in the truth and light of God’s Word.
After 38 years, you can imagine how this guy became a fixture at the pool of Bethesda. It’s like here in Springfield. When you drive downtown, you notice the same people laying on the same corners, year after year. People know their names and stories. Many of the have chosen not to get well. But suppose one chooses “to get well.” Or suppose one does get healed. Everyone would be instantly aware. And it’s like that in John 5. This man gets well. At Jesus’ command he picks up his mat and walks. Plus, it all happens on a Sabbath, when it was illegal for a guy to carry his mat, or carry anything. The Jewish leaders question him about who healed him, but he didn’t know Jesus’ name because Jesus had slipped away into the crowd.
In John 5:14 Jesus finds the man and makes an extraordinary statement: “See, you are well. Do not sin anymore, so that something worse doesn’t happen to you.” I take it as instructive to note that the worst part of this man’s condition wasn’t his disability (i.e., his paralysis, blindness, or lameness) It was that his sins need to be washed away. Not his disability, but his sins! And if this man didn’t tend to this urgent matter of sin something worse was looming over him. Our spiritual condition is infinitely more critical than that of our physical condition.
In John 3:36 Jesus said, “The One who believes in the Son has eternal life, but the one who rejects the Son will not see life, instead of the wrath of God remains on him.” Here in John 5:24-29 Jesus announces, “Truly I tell you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. For just as the Father has life in himself, so also he has granted to the Son to have life in himself. And he has granted him the right to pass judgment, because he is the Son of Man. Do not be amazed at this, because a time is coming when all who are in the graves will hear his voice and come out—those who have done good things, to the resurrection of life, but those who have done wicked things, to the resurrection of condemnation.”
In John 5:37-40, “The Father who sent me has himself testified about me. You have not heard his voice at any time, and you haven’t seen his form. You don’t have his word residing in you, because you don’t believe the one he sent. You pore over the Scriptures because you think you have eternal life in them, and yet they testify about me. But you are not willing to come to me so that you may have life.”
For those in these stories, their faith was primarily a matter of seeing. They saw a sign, or wonder, and believed. For us, faith is primarily a matter of hearing, not seeing. We hear these stories. We hear about these signs. The first sign was Jesus changing water into wine. The second sign was the healing of the official’s son. The third sign was healing of the lame man at pool of Bethsaida. The seventh sign is going to be the resurrection of Lazarus. Jesus demonstrates he is indeed the resurrection and the life. But the final and most ultimate sign is going to be Jesus own death, burial, resurrection, and bodily ascension to the right hand of the father.
When they would “see” Jesus ascending back to the Father who sent Him, they would believe. When Thomas could put his fingers in the wounds of the resurrected Christ of course he would believe. The Israelites. These people believed because of what they saw. But blessed are those who believe though not seeing. This is really the character of faith we’re called to. Maybe we get healed physically. Maybe we don’t. Though dying, yet shall we live. Jesus is the resurrection and life. Do you believe this?
The real tragedy isn’t those large numbers who never get physically healed. It’s those large numbers who don’t come to Jesus for spiritual washing and renewal, to have body of sin healed, to be born again of water and of Spirit.