# 83 Hot Tubs and Healing

Joh 5:1 After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

 2 Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, which is called in Hebrew, Bethesda, having five porches.  3 In these lay a great multitude of sick people, blind, lame, paralyzed, waiting for the moving of the water.  4 For an angel went down at a certain time into the pool and stirred up the water; then whoever stepped in first, after the stirring of the water, was made well of whatever disease he had.  5 Now a certain man was there who had an infirmity thirty-eight years.

 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?"

 7 The sick man answered Him, "Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; but while I am coming, another steps down before me."

The story now picks up in Jerusalem where Jesus is attending an unspecified feast of the Jews. While in Jerusalem, He has a divine appointment with a “certain man” in need of healing. The appointment takes place by the pool called “Bethesda” which was located just outside the city wall to the northeast, near the Sheep Gate.

This pool was probably much like natural warm springs that people flock to for healing even to this day. Some of these pools or springs bubble continually others sporadically, (think in terms of Old Faithful in Yellowstone national Park in Wyoming.) At any rate, many people associate healing qualities to these natural wonders. Now, we make our own hot springs and we call them “hot tubs” and we certainly cannot deny their power to soothe aching bones!

Just so you know, verse 4 is left out in the more reliable manuscripts, the feeling by the experts in this field of biblical translation is that the verse was added as an attempt to explain the phenomena of the bubbling water.

That the water stirred at different times is not in question and the belief that it had healing powers for the first one in after the bubbling is also not in question.

So Jesus shows up and zeroes in on this man whom He knew had been infirmed for 38 years, and He asks him a simple question, “Do you want to be made well?”

He doesn’t get a yes or no answer! But He does get an answer that sums up the man’s belief system. This man  believed his only hope for a cure would be to be the first one in the pool and that hasn’t worked for him all these years.

This man had never considered the possibility of God healing him, but that is about to change, and the major reason why this miracle is one of seven included in the Gospel of John!  

This man is about to be touched by the Son of God and be healed! Proving to all who this Jesus really is! As John wrote in  Joh 20:30,31, “And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book;  31 but these (including the healing of this man) are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.