Today’s Devotion
Topic: The Man Who Made Me Well! (Self Assessment)
Background: What will you do with a person who steps in your very hopeless situation and turns all things around for your good? Especially if He asks nothing in return except that you take good care of yourself so that something worse does not happen to you.
A certain man in the bible found himself in a similar situation. Let us find out exactly what happened to him, who he encountered and the reaction he gave when others tried to find faults with him for the very miracle he had received.
Text: John 5: 2- 11
2 Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. 3 Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed.
5 One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”
7 “Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me. 8 Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” 9 At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked. The day on which this took place was a Sabbath,
10 and so the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.” 11 But he replied, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk’.” Amen
Questions:
i. Read verses 2- 3 again. Kindly describe, in your opinion, how:
a) it will look like around the pool of Bethesda for a total stranger who was observing for the first time.
b) it will be like for any sick person to live besides this pool with others who are equally sick for years.
ii. What took Jesus to this particular sick man? What was peculiar about him? (read verses 5-6). Does it mean that God is able to come to our aid in times when we have no hope of deliverance?
iii. Examine the answer the man gave when Jesus asked whether he wanted to get well (verse 7). Do you think he was beating about the bush? Did it look like he wasn’t expecting to be healed at all?
iv. When he obeyed Jesus’ command, he became healed instantly. What was his response to those who questioned why he continued to uphold the command of Jesus even after his healing; especially when he knew it was unlawful to do so on a Sabbath and what can we learn from it? (read verses 8- 11)
v. Was the law more important to the jewish leaders then, than the miraculous healing he had just recieved to ease his 38 years of suffering? How does this explain the benefits of the work of grace over the that of the law? (read Mark 2: 23- 28).
vi. What have you learnt from today’s devotion?
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