In this episode, we look at the man who was healed at the Pool of Bethesda from a different angle. We ask the question, ‘How would you have ministered to this invalid man who was sick for thirty-eight years if you were walking in Jesus sandals?

Listen to the Audio

Click Play to Listen | Right Click to Download | Subscribe in Stitcher Radio

[Tweet “It’s impossible to separate being led by the Spirit from operating by faith and still be successful.”]

Read the Notes

You can view a basic transcript of this podcast at the bottom of this section.

Accept the Challenge

Each weeks podcast contains a call to action. The Word of God will not produce in your life unless you put into operation.
This weeks call is:

Make an agreement with yourself concerning the leading of the Spirit of God in your everyday life. The training you get from experiencing His leading in the normal affairs of life will reap rewards as you minister to others in Jesus name.

Join the Conversation

Each week’s podcast also contains a question designed to encourage testimony. Testimony is vital to a believers life. We overcome by it (Rev. 12:11).
This week’s question is:

How have you learned to follow the Spirit in your endeavors for Christ? Share your experience. Please leave your comments in the comments section below.

Episode Resources

You can find more information on the subject of Divine Healing and Miracles by clicking on the links above.

♦ Page: – Healing and Miracles

♦ Podcast: – How to Minister Healing Like Jesus Did

♦ Video: R.W. Schambach Ministering Healing

About Emery

Emery committed his life to the Lord Jesus Christ over 40 years ago and has served as both a full-time pastor and an itinerant minister. Both he and his wife Sharon of 35 years emphasize personal growth and development through the Word of God. The ministry of the Holy Spirit is both the focus and the hallmark of their mission. Read more about them here.

Subscribe to the Podcast

If you have enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe.

 Stitcher Radio                      Google Play                     

 iTunes                                        PlayerFM

 

Share the Love

If you enjoyed the podcast, please rate it on Stitcher Radio and leave a review. If you have a suggestion for a Bible topic you would like to see taught, or if you have a question, please e-mail me at emery@emeryhorvath.com

---

Why Jesus Only Ministered to One Man at Bethesda

• There are some facts concerning the goings on at this pool which are apparent.
• It’s obvious an angel came to trouble the water.
• It’s obvious something was working because the porches were packed with people.
• If there wasn’t something happening, if some weren’t receiving, all those people wouldn’t be there.
• But, their presence also highlights how desperate people are to be well.
• Think about these people.
• Think about how long they would wait there and wait there and wait there, days and months, and even years just to have a single chance, a one-in however many people were there, chance to have a normal life.
• Jesus walked through five porches full of sick people.
• That’s a lot of sick people.
• Bandages were everywhere.
• Crutches littered the ground.
• The very smell of sickness wafted through the air.
• Sickness has a scent about it, an odor about it.
• Think about the scene there.
• Get a picture of it in the mind of your imagination.
• In the midst of all that human infirmary, stood the Healer the Lord Jesus Christ.
• What does He do with all those people?
• Does He start lining them up?
• Does He form a healing line and go down the line one by one laying on hands?
• No, He may have walked past several of these porches.
• Imagine it for a moment.
• He walks past the first porch, then the second, His piercing eyes scanning the crowd.
• He passes the third porch and then maybe, just for the sake of example, He stops at the fourth porch.
• There, there in that fourth porch, he makes eye contact with one man and when He does the Spirit manifests to Jesus concerning him.
• He then goes in and ministers to that ONE man who had been in his paralyzed state 38 years unable to walk.
• A man who was sick longer than the average lifespan of people in that day.
• Then after He ministers to that one man, He walks off and leaves the other five porches full of sick people exactly the way He found them.
• Would you have done that?
• With that question, I am putting my finger on one of the reasons why people run into some difficulty in the area of ministering healing.
• You can never forget about getting direction from the Spirit of God.
• It is impossible to separate being led by the Spirit and operating by faith.
• People are trying all the time to wing it without the Holy Ghost.
• What would you have done if you were in Jesus sandals?
• How would you have ministered at Bethesda.
• Put yourself and your inclinations there.
• Would you have left those people the way you found them, like Jesus did?
• Or, would you have just gone right down the line laying hands on every person and praying, Father in the Name of Jesus…. Father in the Name of Jesus heal this person?
• To the unlearned in the things of God, Jesus actions would seem to be a lack of compassion, to walk off and leave all those people there.
• But, Jesus was full of compassion.
• Compassion and depth of feeling poured out of His pores.
• And yet, Jesus leaves all those people, bandages and all right where He found them.
• Now, here’s the million-dollar question.
• Why?
• Why did Jesus just minister to that one man?

John 5:19 (KJV)
19 Then answered Jesus and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise.

• Jesus only saw the Father doing one thing at the Pool and that’s ministering to that one man.
• Jesus did not have a leading to minister the way He did for anyone other than that one man.
• In the absence of direction, there is only one other way to divinely help people who are sick.
• Teach them the Word so that faith will come.
• Faith must reach out to receive the blessing of God in the absence of manifestation.
• This process takes time.
• It is why some get into difficulty because they haven’t developed any in the faith walk.
• The just shall live by faith.
• What you live by, you exist by.
• There is no existence without faith.
• There is no healing without faith.
• The time area must be respected.
• Smith Wigglesworth said these words.

“If you wait to get faith, when you need faith, you’re too late.

• It is possible to be too late in the area of faith.
• God is never late but sometimes we are.
• Jesus had a manifestation for one man.
• In the absence of gifts of the Spirit, Jesus could have gathered the sick around Him and taught them the Word and worked with faith.
• This is the normal way He ministered.
• Now, we know at least one reason why He didn’t do this at the Pool of Bethesda.

John 5:14 (NKJV)
14 Afterward Jesus found him in the temple, and said to him, “See, you have been made well. Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you.”

• He hadn’t finished ministering to this one man who He had healed.
• He had more to say to Him.
• He had something to teach him.

An Invalid Man Jesus Did Not Minister To

• And now there’s another not so obvious fact about Jesus finding this man in the Temple.

Acts 3:1–2 (NKJV)
1 Now Peter and John went up together to the temple at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour. 2 And a certain man lame from his mother’s womb was carried, whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple which is called Beautiful, to ask alms from those who entered the temple;

Acts 4:22 (NKJV)
22 For the man was over forty years old on whom this miracle of healing had been performed.

• Jesus ministered to this one man on the other side of the north wall of the Temple, at the pool of Bethesda who hadn’t walked in thirty-eight years.
• And in trying to find this man in the Temple so He could finish ministering the Word to him, He walked right past another invalid man almost the same age and almost the same condition.
• Why didn’t Jesus heal that man?
• He just experienced success in this area.
• What would you have done here flushed with the success you just experienced?
• This man at the Beautiful Gate did get healed but it was a little while later.
• The Spirit went another direction to get healing to this man.
• A man anointed by Jesus, a man very familiar with Jesus, a man endued with the Spirit of Jesus, He used a Jesus man.
• His name was Peter.

Acts 3:4–7 (NKJV)
4 And fixing his eyes on him, with John, Peter said, “Look at us.” 5 So he gave them his attention, expecting to receive something from them. 6 Then Peter said, “Silver and gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.” 7 And he took him by the right hand and lifted him up, and immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength.

• Do you see the phrase, ‘fixing his eyes on him’?
• You remember how it was with the man at the pool, ‘when Jesus saw Him and knew’.
• There is something about looking and fixing your eyes and hearing the Spirit of God give you direction.
• Jesus depended on God in His everyday walk.
• When He said, I only do what I see my Father do,’ that’s exactly what He meant.

Dependance on God is the Trail You Should Blaze

• What does all this mean for you as a believer in Jesus?
• You must assume a posture of dependance on the Spirit of God if you want to help people.
• Before you attempt to minister to someone, check your heart.
• Check your spirit.
• Look to Him first.

1 Timothy 5:22 (KJV)
22 Lay hands suddenly on no man, neither be partaker of other men’s sins: keep thyself pure.

• Jesus could do nothing by Himself.
• But, you are not by yourself.
• He, the Spirit of God is in you.
• Look to Him.
• What He did, you can do.

John 5:30 (KJV)
30 I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me.

• The Son can do nothing by Himself.
• What Jesus heard, He spoke.
• What He heard the Father say, in His spirit is how He answered.
• If Jesus can’t do anything by Himself, you’ll only frustrate yourself trying to do anything by yourself.
• These two verses foundational verses which describe how Jesus ministered can be summed up simply like this.
• Do what you see.
• Say what you hear.
• Check your heart.
• Look to God.
• Pray, ask the Lord what He wants you to do here.
• If you sense an unction, go.
• If you perceive an anointing run with it.
• If His Presence comes on you, yield to it.
• If if you have a witness in your heart, start praying.
• If compassion is stirred within you, move out in it.
• If you are under authority, that is you are with a pastor, an evangelist, or with a person anointed with the Spirit for example, and they say to you, pray for this person then obey that and pray.
• But, if you have none of those things, be as bold as Jesus was and walk off from the situation.
• If you want to minister like Jesus did, this is how He did it here at the Pool of Bethesda.
• He ministered to one person, that’s all He had at that exact moment from His Father, that’s all he saw His Father doing and He boldly stayed in His lane and walked away.
• Mark it down.
• You are not the Answer, Jesus is.
• You are not the Healer, Jesus is.
• You are not the Deliverer, Jesus is.
• Jesus said, “I do what I see my Father doing.
• I say what I hear my Father saying.
• Apart from Him, I can do nothing.”
• These weapons are mighty through God.
• You don’t live in the fast lane.
• You get to visit it occasionally.

The Question Jesus Asked The Impotent Man

John 5:6 (NKJV)
6 When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he already had been in that condition a long time, He said to him, “Do you want to be made well?”

• Notice the question Jesus asked this man.
• Do you want to be made well?
• Isn’t this an odd question to ask a man who had been sick for thirty-eight years?
• Isn’t this a strange inquiry for a man who was loaded up every morning and carted over to this Pool.
• Obviously, he had to have help getting to the Pool.
• He can’t walk.
• Here’s another side note, we should examine.
• Sickness doesn’t just affect the person who is sick.
• It affects the family of the sick ones.
• A friend of mine was giving me some history of the .223 round used by the military in combat.
• He said the reason for the round was not to kill but to wound.
• Because, if you wound someone on the battlefield, it takes not one person out of the fight but three.
• The person who was wounded and the two soldiers needed to immediately carry him off the field.
• Sickness works the same way.
• It takes the person who is sick off the field and the care givers also.
• Back to the main line.
• Why do you suppose Jesus asked the man this question, “Do you want to be well?”
• Would you have asked such an obvious question or would you have just assumed the answer?
• Jesus asked this man this question because the ‘want to’ is important.
• Jesus knew this man had a longstanding condition.
• His question strongly suggests something else is going on in the mind of this man.
• It suggests this man was discouraged.
• Yes, he was carted everyday to the Pool.
• But, this man is just going through the motions.
• You understand what going through the motions means?
• It means doing something without believing in its importance.
• He was on auto-pilot.
• People suffer from this disease all the time.
• They’re quick to stay home because they don’t see the importance of coming.
• Why was this man in this state?
• The length of his illness was the beat down force.
• The length of this illness had beaten him down to level of no feeling, no passion.
• Thirty-eight years is a long time to be ill.
• And on top of that, someone always beat him to the pool.
• And there was nothing he could do about it.
• He had no one to help him get in.
• What happens to people who are sick a long time?
• What happens to people’s whose hopes are continually hindered and hammered?
• They lose the will to fight.
• And in the case of sickness, it’s called the will to live.
• Have you heard of medical doctors referencing a persons will?
• Jesus put His finger right on the pulse of this man’s dilemma when He asked him the question, “Will you be made whole.”
• Before He could heal him, before He could raise him up, He had to, first, resurrect his will.

________
References: