JESUS AT BETHESDA—OR, WAITING CHANGED FOR BELIEVING – Charles Spurgeon

JESUS AT BETHESDA—OR, WAITING CHANGED FOR BELIEVING

“After this there was a feast of the Jews; and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep market, a pool which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches. In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water. For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool and troubled the water: whoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatever disease he had. And a certain man was there, which had an infirmity thirty-and-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he had been now a long time in that case, He said unto him, Will you be made whole? The impotent man answered him, Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steps down before me. Jesus said unto him, Rise, take up your bed, and walk. And immediately the man was made whole, and took up his bed, and walked: and on the same day was the Sabbath.” John 5:1-9.

I. THE PATIENT

The scene of this miracle was Bethesda, a pool, according to the evangelist, adjoining the sheep market, or near the sheep gate—the place through which, I suppose, the cattle consumed by the inhabitants of Jerusalem would be driven; and the pool where, perhaps, the sheep intended for sale to the people in the temple were washed. So common was sickness in the days of the Savior, that the infirmities of men intruded upon the place which had been allotted to cattle; and the place where sheep had been washed became the spot where sick folk congregated in great multitudes, longing for a cure. We do not hear that anyone protested at the intrusion, or that public opinion was shocked. The needs of mankind must override all considerations of taste. A hospital must have preference over a sheep market. This day you have another case in point. If the physical infirmities of Jerusalem intruded into the sheep market, I shall ask no excuse if, on these Sundays, the spiritual sickness of London should demand that this spacious place, which has up to now been given up to the lowing of cattle and to the bleating of sheep, should be consecrated to the preaching of the gospel, to the manifestation of the healing virtue of Christ Jesus among the spiritually sick.

This day there is by the sheep market a pool, and impotent folk are here in exceeding great multitudes. We might never have heard of Bethesda if an august Visitor had not condescended to honor it with His presence—Jesus, the Son of God, walked in the five porches by the pool. It was the place where we might expect to meet Him, for where should the Great Physician be found if not in the place where the sick are gathered? Here was work for Jesus’ healing hand and restoring word. It was but natural that the Son of Man, who “came to seek and to save that which was lost,” should make His way to the sick by the side of the pool. That gracious visit is Bethesda’s glory. This has lifted up the name of this pool out of the common rank of the springs and waters of the earth.

O that King Jesus might come into this place this morning! This would be the glory of this hall for which it should be famous in eternity. If Jesus would be here to heal; the remarkable size of this congregation would cease to be a wonder, and the renown of Jesus, and His saving love would eclipse all else, as the sun puts out the stars. My brothers and sisters, Jesus will be here, for there are those of you who know Him, and have power with Him, who have been asking for His presence. The Lord’s favored people, by prevailing cries and tears, have won from Him His consent to be in our midst this day, and He is walking amid this throng as ready to heal and as mighty to save as in the days of His flesh. “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world,” is an assurance which comforts the preacher’s heart this morning. A present Savior—present in the power of the Holy Spirit—shall make this day to be remembered by many who shall be made whole.

I ask the earnest attention of all, and I entreat of believers their fervent assisting prayers while I first bid you observe the sick man; secondly, direct your attentive eye to the Great Physician; and, thirdly, make an application of the whole narrative to the present case.

II. THE PHYSICIAN

As we have already seen, our Lord on this occasion walked, forgotten and neglected, through that throng of impotent folk, no one crying, “Son of David, have mercy upon me!” No struggling woman seeking to touch the hem of His garment that she might be made whole! All were desirous of being healed, but, either no one knew or no one trusted Him. What a strange, soul-sickening sight it was, for Jesus was quite able and willing to heal, and to do it all without fee or reward, and yet none sought Him. Is this scene to be repeated this morning?

Jesus Christ is able to save you, my hearers. There is no heart so hard that He cannot soften it; there is no man among you who is so lost that Jesus cannot save him. Blessed be my dear Master, no case ever did defeat Him; His mighty power reaches beyond the uttermost of all the depths of human sin and folly. If there is a harlot here, Christ can cleanse her. If there is a drunkard or a thief here, the blood of Jesus can make him white as snow. If you have any desire towards Him, you have not gone beyond the reach of His pierced hands. If you are not saved, it is certainly not for lack of power in the Savior. Moreover, your poverty is no hindrance, for my Master asks nothing from you—the poorer the wretch, the more welcome to Christ. My Master is no covetous priest who demands pay for what He does—He forgives us freely; He wants none of your merits, nothing whatever from you; come as you are to Him, for He is willing to receive you as you are.

But here is my sorrow and complaint, this blessed Lord Jesus, though present to heal, receives no attention from the most of men. They are looking another way, and have no eyes for Him. Yet Jesus was not angry. I do not find that He upbraided one of those who lay in the porches, or that He even thought a hard thought of them; but I am sure that He pitied them, and said in His heart, “Alas, poor souls, that they should not know when mercy is so near!”

My Master is not wrathful with you who forget Him and neglect Him, but He pities you from His heart. I am but His poor servant, but I pity from my inmost heart those of you who live without Christ. I would gladly weep for you who are trying other ways of salvation, for they will all end in disappointment, and if continued in, will prove to be your eternal destruction.

Observe very carefully what the Savior did. Looking around among the whole company, He made an election. He had a right to make what choice He pleased, and He exercised that sovereign prerogative. The Lord is not bound to give His mercy to everyone, or to anyone. He has freely proclaimed it to you all; but as you reject it, He has now a double right to bless His chosen ones by making them willing in the day of His power. The Savior selected that man out of the great multitude, we know not why, but certainly for a reason founded in grace. If we might venture to give a reason for His choice, it may be that He selected him because his was the worst case, and he had waited the longest of all. This man’s case was in everybody’s mouth. They said, “This man has been there 38 years.” Our Lord acted according to His own eternal purpose, doing as He pleased with His own; He fixed the eyes of His electing love upon that one man, and, going up to him, He gazed upon him. He knew all his history; He knew that he had been a long time in that case, and therefore He pitied him much. He thought of those dreary months and years of painful disappointment which the impotent man had suffered, and the tears were in the Master’s eyes; He looked and looked again at that man, and His heart yearned towards him.

Now, I know not whom Christ intends to save this morning by His effectual grace. I am bound to give the general call, it is all that I can do, and I know not where the Lord will give the effectual Call which alone can make the Word saving. I should not wonder if He should call some of you who have been waiting long. I will bless His name if He does. I should not marvel if electing love should pitch upon the chief of sinners this day; if Jesus should look on some of you who never looked on Him, His look shall make you look, and His pity shall make you have pity upon yourselves, and His irresistible grace shall make you come to Him that you may be saved.

Jesus performed an act of sovereign distinguishing grace. I pray you do not kick at this doctrine! If you do, I cannot help it, for it is true. I have preached the gospel to every one of you as freely as man can do it, and surely you who reject it ought not to quarrel with God for bestowing on others that which you do not care to receive. If you desire His mercy, He will not deny it to you; if you seek Him He will be found of you; but if you will not seek mercy, rail not at the Lord if He bestows it upon others.

Jesus, having looked upon this man with a special eye of regard, said to Him, “Will you be made whole?” I have already hinted that this was not said because Christ wanted information, but because He wished to awaken the man’s attention. On account of its being the Sabbath, the man was not thinking of being cured, for to the Jew it seemed a most unlikely thing that cures should be worked on a Sabbath day. Jesus, therefore, brought his thoughts back to the matter in hand; for, mark you, the work of grace is a work upon a conscious mind, not upon senseless matter.

Though Puseyites and Romanists pretend to regenerate unconscious children by sprinkling their faces with water, Jesus never attempted such a thing—Jesus saves men who have the use of their senses—and His salvation is a work upon a quickened intellect and awakened affections. Jesus brought back the wandering mind with the question, “Will you be made whole?” “Indeed,” the man might have said, “indeed, I desire it above all things—I long for it—I pant for it.”

Now, my dear hearer, I will ask the same question of you. “Will you be made whole? Do you desire to be saved? Do you know what being saved is?” “Oh,” you say, “it is escaping from hell.” No, no, no! That is the result of being saved, but being saved is a different thing. Do you want to be saved from the power of sin? Do you desire to be saved from being covetous, worldly-minded, bad-tempered, unjust, ungodly, domineering, drunken, or profane? Are you willing to give up the sin that is dearest to you? “No,” says one, “I cannot honestly say I desire all that.” Then you are not the man I am seeking this morning! But is there one here who says, “Yes, I long to be rid of sin, root and branch; I desire, by God’s grace, this very day to become a Christian, and to be saved from sin.”

Well, then, as you are already in a state of thoughtfulness, let us go a step further, and observe what the Savior did. He gave the word of command, saying, “Rise! Take up your bed and walk.” The power by which the man arose was not in him, but in Jesus; it was not the mere sound of the words which made him rise, but it was the divine power which went with it. I believe that Jesus still speaks through His ministers; I trust that He speaks through me at this moment, when in His name I say to you who have been waiting at the pool, wait no longer, but this moment believe in Jesus Christ! Trust Him now! I know that my words will not make you do it, but if the Holy Spirit works through the words, you will believe. Trust Christ now, poor sinner. Believe that He is able to save you; believe it now! Rely upon Him to save you this moment; repose upon Him now! If you are enabled to believe, the power will come from Him, not from you; and your salvation will be genuine, not by the sound of the word, but by the secret power of the Holy Spirit which goes with that word!

I pray you observe that although nothing is said about faith in the text, yet the man must have had faith. Suppose you had been unable to move hand or foot for 38 years, and someone said at your bedside, “Rise!” You would not think of trying to rise, you would know it to be impossible; you must have faith in the person who uttered the word, or else you would not make the attempt. I think I see the poor man—there he is, a heap, a writhing bundle of tortured nerves and powerless muscles; yet Jesus says, “Rise!” and up he rises in a moment. “Take up your bed,” says the Master, and the bed is carried. Here was the man’s faith. The man was a Jew, and he knew that, according to the Pharisees, it would be a very wicked thing for him to roll up his mattress and carry it on the Sabbath; but because Jesus told him, he asked no questions, but doubled up his pallet, and walked! He did what he was told to do because he believed in Him who spoke.

Have you such faith in Jesus, poor sinner? Do you believe that Christ can save you? If you do, then I say to you in His name, trust Him! Trust Him now! If you trust Jesus, you shall be saved this morning—saved on the spot, and saved forever! Observe, beloved friends, that the cure which Christ worked was perfect. The man could carry his bed; the restoration was proved to a demonstration, the cure was manifest; all could see it. Moreover, the cure was immediate. He was not told to take a lump of figs, and put it on the sore, and wait; he was not carried home by his friends, and laid up for a month or two, and gradually nursed into vital energy. Oh, no! He was cured then and there. Half our professing Christians imagine that divine regeneration cannot take place in a moment; and, therefore, they say to poor sinners, “Go and lie at Bethesda’s pool; wait in the use of ordinances; humble yourself; seek deeper repentance.”

Beloved, away with such teaching! The cross! The cross! The cross! THERE hangs a sinner’s hope! You must not rely on what you can do, or on what angels can do, or on visions and dreams, or on feelings and strange emotions, and horrible deliriums, but you must rest in the blood of my Master and my God, once slain for sinners. There is life in a look at the Crucified One, but there is life nowhere else. I come to the same point, then, upon the second head as the first. Thus says the Lord, “Look unto Me, and be you saved, all the ends of the earth.”

III. APPLYING THE INSTANCE IN THE TEXT TO THE PRESENT OCCASION

I hope, believers, your hearts are going up in prayer this morning. What a scene is before us! If someone had told us that this mass of people [Approximately 20,000 souls] would have gathered to listen to the gospel, are there not hundreds who would have doubted it? Mark this, we have had nothing novel to attract this multitude—nothing by way of gorgeous ceremony; there is not even the swell of the organ—I declined its pealing notes lest we should seem to depend in the slightest degree from a thread even to a shoe lace, upon anything but the preaching of the gospel! The preaching of the cross is enough to draw the people, and enough to save the people, and if we take to anything else, we lose our power and shear away the locks which make us strong.

The application of the text, this morning, is just this—Why should we not, on this very spot, have instantaneous cures of sick souls? Why should there not be scores, hundreds, thousands, who shall this morning, hear the gracious words, “Arise, take up your bed and walk”? I believe it is possible. I hope it will be done. Let me talk with you who doubt this matter. You still think that you must wait—you have had a sufficient spell of waiting, and you are getting tolerably weary, but still you stick to the old plan; hopeless as it is, you still catch at it as drowning men do at straws. But I want to show you that this is all wrong. Regeneration is an instantaneous work, and justification an instantaneous gift. Man fell in a moment. When Eve plucked the fruit, and Adam ate it, it did not require six months to bring them into a state of condemnation. It did not require several years of continued sin to cast them out of paradise. Their eyes were opened by the forbidden fruit; they saw that they were naked, and they hid themselves from God. Surely, surely, Christ is not to be longer about His work than the devil was about his. Shall the devil destroy us in a moment, and Jesus be unable to save us in a moment! Ah, glory be to God, He has power to deliver far more to save than any which Satan uses for man’s destruction.

Look at the biblical illustrations of what salvation is. I will only mention three. Noah built the ark; that was a type of salvation; now, when was Noah saved? Christ has built the ark for us. We have nothing to do with building it; but when was Noah saved? Does anyone say, “He was safe after he had been in the ark a month and had arranged all the things and looked out on the deluge and felt his danger.” No! The moment Noah went through the door and the Lord shut him in, Noah was safe. When he had been in the ark a second he was as secure as when he had been there a month. Take the case of the Passover. When were the Jews safe from the destroying angel who went through the land of Egypt? Were they safe after the blood which was sprinkled on the door had been looked upon and considered for a week or two? Oh, no! Beloved, the moment the blood was sprinkled, the house was secured; and the moment a sinner believes and trusts in the crucified Son of God he is pardoned at once, he receives salvation in full through Christ’s blood.

One more instance, the bronze serpent. When the bronze serpent was lifted up, what were the wounded to do? Were they told to wait till the bronze serpent was pushed into their faces, or until the venom of the serpent showed certain symptoms in their flesh? No, they were commanded to look. They did look. Were they healed in six months’ time? I read not so, but as soon as their eyes met the serpent of brass, the cure was worked—and as soon as your eyes meet Christ, poor trembler, you are saved! Though yesterday you were deep in your cups, and up to your neck in sin, yet if this morning you look to my once slain but now exalted Master, you shall find eternal life!

Again take biblical instances. Did the dying thief wait at the pool of the ordinances? You know how soon his believing prayer was heard, and Jesus said, “Today you shall be with Me in paradise.” The 3,000 at Pentecost, did they wait for some great thing? No, they believed, and were baptized. Look at the jailer of Philippi. It was the dead of the night, the prison was shaken, and the jailer was alarmed, and said, “Sir, what must I do to be saved?” Did Paul say, “Well, you must use the means and look for a blessing upon the ordinances”? No! He said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved, and your house,” and that very night he baptized him. Paul did not take the time about it that some think so exceedingly necessary. He believed as I do, that there is life in a look at Jesus; he bade men look, and looking they lived.

Possibly you will see this still more clearly if I remind you that the work of salvation is all done. There is nothing for a sinner to do in order to be saved; it is all done for him. You need washing. The bath does not need filling. “There is a fountain filled with blood.” You need clothing. You have not to make the garment, the robe is ready. The garment of Christ’s righteousness is woven from the top throughout; all that is needed is to have it put on. If some work remained for you to do it might be a lengthened process, but all the doing is accomplished by Christ. Salvation is not of works, but of grace, and to accept what Christ presents you is not a work of time.

Once more, let me say to you that regeneration itself cannot be a work of a long time, because, even where it seems to be most gradual, when looked at closely, it turns out in its essence to be the work of a moment. There is a dead man: now, if that man is raised from the dead there must be an instant in which he was dead, and another instant in which he was alive. The actual quickening must be the work of a moment. I grant you that at the first the life may be very feeble, but there must be a time when it begins. There must be a line—we cannot always see it ourselves, but God sees it—there must be a line between life and death. A man cannot be somewhere between dead and alive; he either is alive or he is dead; and so you are either dead in sin or alive unto God, and quickening cannot involve a long period of time.

Finally, my hearers, for God to say, “I forgive you,” takes neither a century nor a year. The judge pronounces the sentence, and the criminal is acquitted. If God shall say to you this morning, “I absolve you,” you are absolved, and you may go in peace. I must bear faithful witness as to my own case. I never found mercy by waiting. I never obtained a gleam of hope by depending upon ordinances. I found salvation by believing. I heard a simple minister of the gospel say, “Look and live! Look to Jesus! He bleeds in the garden, He dies on the cross! Trust Him! Trust to what He suffered instead of you; and if you trust Him, you shall be saved.” The Lord knows I had heard that gospel many times before, but I had not obeyed it. It came this time, however, with divine power to my soul, and I did look, and the moment I looked to Christ, I lost my burden. “But,” says one, “how do you know?” Did you ever carry a burden yourself? “Oh, yes,” you say. Did you know when it was off? How did you know? “Oh,” you say, “I felt so different. I knew when my burden was on, and, consequently, I knew when it was off.”

It was so in my case, too. I only wish some of you felt the burden of sin as I felt it when I was waiting at the pool of Bethesda. I wonder that such waiting had not landed me in hell! But when I heard the word, “Look!” I looked, and my burden was gone. I wondered where it had gone; I have never seen it since, and I never shall see it again. It went into the Master’s tomb, and it lies forever buried there. God has said it, “I have blotted out like a cloud your iniquities, and like a thick cloud your sins.”

Oh, come, you needy, come to my Master! You who have been disappointed with rites and ceremonies, and feelings, and impressions, and all the hopes of the flesh—come at my Master’s command, and look up to Him! He is not here in the flesh, for He has risen; but He has risen to plead for sinners, and “He is able to save them to the uttermost who come unto God by Him, seeing He ever lives to make intercession for them.”

Oh, if I could know how to preach the gospel so that you would feel it, I would go to any school to learn! The Lord knows I would willingly consent to lose these eyes to get greater power in my ministry; yes, and to lose arms, legs, and all my members. I would be willing to die if I could but be honored by the Holy Spirit to win this mass of souls to God. I implore you, my brothers and sisters, you who have power in prayer, pray the Lord to bring sinners to Christ!

Let me say, solemnly, to you who have heard the word of God this day, I have told you the plan of salvation plainly; if you do not accept it, I am clear of your blood, I shake my garments of the blood of your souls. If you come not to my Lord and Master, I must bear swift witness against you at the Day of Judgment. I have told you the way—I cannot tell you it more simply—I beseech you to follow it! I entreat you to look to Jesus! But if you refuse it, at any rate, when you shall rise from the dead and stand before the great white throne, do me the justice to say that I did entreat and persuade you to escape, I did impress upon you to flee from the wrath to come. The Lord save each one of you, and His shall be the praise ever more. Amen.

PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON—JOHN 3:14-21; JOHN 5:1-9.

Charles Spurgeon