Today we heard the story of Jesus healing an "invalid" at the pool of Bethesda (John 5:1-18). Jesus asks a probing question: "Do you want to get well?" The man does, and Jesus heals him.
One-fifth of all the material in the Gospels is concerned with Jesus' healing of some form of physical disease. This has dramatic implications for our life today as Jesus' followers. The Son of God came to save us and to heal us - in body and in soul, in this life or in the life to come.
Take a look at these extra resources, especially the Wilson article I referenced in my sermon.
- Blake
“We modern people think of miracles as the suspension of the natural order, but Jesus meant them to be the restoration of the natural order. The Bible tells us that God did not originally make the world to have disease, hunger, and death in it. Jesus has come to redeem where it is wrong and heal the world where it is broken. His miracles are not just proofs that He has power but also wonderful foretastes of what He is going to do with that power. Jesus’s miracles are not just a challenge to our minds, but a promise to our hearts, that the world we all want is coming.”
- God Always Heals by Andrew Wilson
- Why has God answered others' prayers for healing but not mine? by Nancy Ortberg
- Death, the Prosperity Gospel, and Me by Kate Bowler (see this and this, too)
- The Purpose of Biblical Miracles by Tim Keller (see this, too)
Image credit: Rembrandt, “Christ Healing”