After healing the nobleman's son, there was a Jewish feast day,
so Jesus traveled to Jerusalem to celebrate. In Jerusalem, as you enter by the
Sheep Gate, there is a pool with five porches called
"Bethesda" in Hebrew. Large crowds of people who are sick,
blind, crippled and paralyzed lie under these porches waiting for the water to
be disturbed. They thought that an angel from God came down and stirred up the water
occasionally. Whoever stepped in
the water first when it was disturbed was immediately healed.
There was a man lying there, who had been
sick for thirty-eight years. Jesus saw him lying there and
knew that he had been sick for a long time. He asked him, "Do you want to
healed?"
The sick man answered, "Sir, there's no one who's going
to carry me into the water, so when it's stirred some one will beat me to it."
Jesus told him, "Get up! Pick up your mat and walk."
Instantly, the man was healed. He grabbed his mat and
walked.
It happened to be the Sabbath, so the Jews said to
man, "Today's the Sabbath. You're breaking the law by carrying your mat."
But the man answered, "The man who healed me told me 'Pick
up your mat and
walk.'"
So the Jews said, "Then tell us who this guy is who told
you, 'Pick up your mat and
walk.'"
But the man didn't know the identity of the man who healed him
because, as soon as the crowd had arrived, Jesus had slipped off.
Later, Jesus found the man in the
temple, and said to him, "Look, you're healthy now. Live according to
God's design, or else something even worse than sickness might happen to you."
The man left and told the Jews
that it was Jesus who healed him. When the Jews found out, they harassed Jesus
and plotted to kill him, all because he did these things
on the Sabbath day.
But Jesus answered, "My Father doesn't stop working on
the Sabbath, so I am working,
too."
Because he said this, the Jews
were even more eager to kill him, not just because he broke the Sabbath law,
but also because he called God his own Father, making himself equal to God.
