Afterward Jesus returned to
Jerusalem for one of the Jewish holy days. Inside the city, near the Sheep
Gate, was the pool of Bethesda, with five covered porches. Crowds
of sick people—blind, lame, or paralyzed—lay on the porches. One
of the men lying there had been sick for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him
and knew he had been ill for a long time, he asked him, “Would you like to get
well?”
“I can’t, sir,” the sick man said,
“for I have no one to put me into the pool when the water bubbles up. Someone
else always gets there ahead of me.”
Jesus told him, “Stand up, pick up
your mat, and walk!”
Instantly, the man was healed! He
rolled up his sleeping mat and began walking! But this miracle happened on the
Sabbath, so the Jewish leaders objected. They said to the man who was cured,
“You can’t work on the Sabbath! The law doesn’t allow you to carry that
sleeping mat!”
But he replied, “The man who healed
me told me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’”
“Who said such a thing as that?”
they demanded.
The man didn’t know, for Jesus had
disappeared into the crowd. But afterward Jesus found him in the Temple and
told him, “Now you are well; so stop sinning, or something even worse may
happen to you.” Then the man went and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus
who had healed him.
No comments:
Post a Comment