Drawing on God!
John 5:2 Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches.
John 5:3 In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water.
Lets look at this passage and discover what it wants to teach us. We will look at it verse by verse to get to the nuggets that are hidden within this passage. We will look at kingdom principals and learn from that. I heard someone say that the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over and expect different results. That is so true because to see different results you must do different things, right? In this story we see a group of people that have congregated around a pool waiting everyday for the same thing to happen. An Angel would come and stir the water and whoever got in first was healed. Amazing. So what are some of the things we need to see and learn from this?
Bethesda means “House of kindness.”
This is not what you would expect in a place of kindness. Sick, lame and afflicted people. People desperate for a touch and a healing. People that have given up hope to try anything else but to gather here at the house of kindness and wait. I can hear the questions in their minds as they wait and wonder. If this is a place called kindness, why are there so many sick and hurting people here? If the church should be a place of kindness why are there so many sick and hurting people there? This pool was close to the sheep market where they would bring hundreds of sheep to be sold for sacrifices at the temple. These sheep would remind them constantly that atonement was made but yet their sickness prevailed.
Day after day they would have to wait for the Angel to stir the water. I don’t know if it happened at the same time everyday. What caused the Angel to come everyday? Was it the need of the people that stirred God to stir the water? I don’t think it was their need to be healed but I believe it was their hope in His kindness that caused Him to not stay away. If it was their need He could have healed them all. Their hunger for His kindness placed a demand on Him to act in His character. When we preach God out of character, people will expect Him to act out of His character. Luckily, this will never quiet the voice of the Holy Spirit that reveals His true character to hearts of people.
Their hope was for the stirring of the water. Lets be honest with ourselves. This was pretty awesome. This was a visible manifestation everyday that showed them the move of God. This is more than what many churches see in a lifetime. A visible move of God that called for a response. No good preaching or a great worship session first. Everything was God initiated. All they had to do was wait. No fasting and no praying to beg and plead with God to show up. No banners to invite the sick and the lame and the crippled. No television slots to make sure people knew about it. No Facebook postings and calendar invitations to reach all the friends. Just a place called the house of kindness. The kindness of God would draw them to come and see and to be healed.
They waited everyday for the same thing. That looks like madness to us. We want different results but what grabs me about this story is that they didn’t get bored with the current move of God. Today we have people that get bored with listening to the preaching of salvation and the blood and preaching atonement. They want the next revelation and the next conference. They get tired with foundational teaching and feel they have grown beyond that. They miss the current move of God and never place a demand on God to reveal Himself because they ignore His manifestation today.
My prayer is that we will again be a demonstration of God’s kindness. This will draw people with an expectancy to see God move. People will see and their hope in His kindness will again draw a response from God. Most of all I pray that we will see a visible manifestation of God everyday. How can you stay away from a church where God shows up and does something? We won’t have to advertise or pay excessive amounts on advertising. When God shows up, so do the people. You cannot keep people away from God.
Jesus said that we would have a river of living water flowing in us. What is the difference between a pool and a river? A pool tends to stagnate after you stir the water. A river never stagnates. We are a move of God. Wherever we go we should be stirring the waters that have become stagnant. When a river runs through a pool the pool becomes a river. We are to be contagious!
2 Tim. 1:6 Wherefore I put thee in remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God, which is in thee by the putting on of my hands.