Zion Lutheran Church

They Have No One
John 5:7

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I tell you what, this wheelchair sure brings back memories. I wish we’d had these in my day. Today, a person whose legs don’t work can get in a wheelchair and go just about anywhere. If he’s got good arms, he can wheel himself up and down the sidewalks and into buses and through the grocery store. If his arms aren’t so good, he can use on of those wheelchairs with a joystick and a motor, and he can still get around about all he needs to. I’ve even seen these cool tricycles that a person cranks by hand, and they’ve got a basket on the back, so a person who is lame can still get around and carry groceries. It sure makes life easier than it was in my day. We didn’t have these wheelchairs in my day. If a person was lame, he had to drag himself along the ground with his hands while his feet just tagged along behind. It was tough. I know that from personal experience. I spent thirty-eight years as an invalid. Thirty-eight years with legs that did me no good. Thirty-eight years dragging my whole body around with my hands, hoping the people who visited the temple would give me enough food to keep me alive for the next day, because there was no way I could work.

Now think about that. Isn’t your pastor here thirty-nine years old? I was lame for about as long as your pastor’s been alive. And for those of you who are seventy-five, seventy-seven, even eighty years old, imagine spending half of your life unable to walk. That’s what I did. And without work, and without a wheelchair, and without family, all I could do was sit in the temple and hope people would feed me. Well, that and hope I could get down into the pool called Bethesda when the waters got stirred. You see, people got healed in that pool. If the waters got stirred up, the first person in got healed. How? I don’t know. All I know is that I sat there on my mat night and day, hoping to be the first one in when the waters got stirred. I would watch, and when the waters started moving, I would roll over and drag myself over the dusty stones toward that pool, bound and determined to get there before anyone else. And it never worked. Someone always heard me scooting along the stones, turned around, and got in before I did. At first it was discouraging, but eventually I got used to it. I was still alive, by God’s grace and the generosity of his people. I wanted to be better, but it was clearly not going to happen. I didn’t have anyone to help me into that pool, and so I could never get there first.

Then one day this rabbi came along with his disciples following him. At first I was hoping for some handouts, some food to get me through the day, maybe some encouragement from this wise man. Well, I got more than I bargained for. “Do you want to be healed?” the rabbi asked me (John 5:6 ESV). Well, what do you think? Of course I wanted to be healed, but it just wasn’t going to happen. That’s what I told him. “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me” (John 5:7 ESV). Now, I hoped for a moment that maybe he would lift me up and put me in the pool, or that his disciples would stick around and carry me down there—assuming, of course, that the waters would get stirred right then. What happened next was totally unexpected. That rabbi—his name is Jesus, I found out later—he said to me, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk” (John 5:8 ESV). And you know what happened? I got up. I took my bed. And I walked. For the first time in thirty-eight years. He didn’t have to put me into the pool. He didn’t have to bring some of that water over to me. His word alone was powerful enough to heal me. I thought I didn’t have anyone, but how wrong I was. I had this Jesus, and it turns out, he loves to help people who can’t help themselves.

I learned more about him later. Somehow I lost track of him after I got healed, and then the Pharisees came and asked why I was carrying my bed on the Sabbath—that counted as work, you see, and then that rabbi came and found me later that day and told me, “See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you” (John 5:14 ESV). I wasn’t sure what to make of that, but now I know what he was talking about. You see, this Jesus was no mere rabbi. He got in trouble with the leaders for healing on the Sabbath, and he promised his followers eternal life, and then the leaders put him to death. But he rose from the dead. Now I know and understand that he has even more to give than the physical healing he gave me. What could be worse than being invalid for thirty-eight years? I’ll tell you what. Hanging on a cross. Standing under God’s judgment for an eternity. Having to pay the price for your own sins. Thirty-eight years of being lame is nothing compared to hanging on the cross or paying for your own sins. But this Jesus rescued me from having to pay for my own sins. When he hung on the cross, it was to pay for my sins. It was to give me spiritual healing as well as physical healing. It was to rescue me from an eternity in hell, just as he had rescued me from thirty-eight years of being lame. It was to win eternal life for me. As he told the leaders that day after he healed me, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life” (John 5:24 ESV). I had no one to carry me to the pool to get better, but worse yet, I had no one to carry my sins for me and bear God’s judgment against me. No one, that is, until Jesus came and carried my sins and lifted God’s judgment against me and gave me eternal life. It’s the same for you, you know. You can’t pay for your sins. You don’t have enough years in your life to pay for rejecting God. You don’t have enough years in your life to pay God back for all the ingratitude you show when he showers you with good gifts like health and home and family and friends. You don’t have enough years in your life to pay God back for grumbling about all those things in your life that you think are so terrible—like being sick and lame and having rough times in marriage. You have no one to help you. No one, that is, except Jesus, who gladly paid the price for your rejection and ingratitude and grumbling. After all, Jesus loves to help those who can’t help themselves.

That is why Jesus would later call the apostle Paul. I heard about him too. He was a zealous opponent of Christ and Christians. He went around persecuting Christians, even helping to have them killed. Then Jesus helped him, just as Jesus helped me. Paul was so caught up in his zeal for the traditions of the fathers that he couldn’t help himself to see that he had no way of paying for his sins. He really thought he could earn God’s love by living according to the laws of the Old Testament and the traditions of the fathers. So Jesus showed up to help him too. Paul changed. He went from foe to follower, from persecutor to preacher. He came to understand that Jesus helps those who can’t help themselves, and one day the Lord called him to go out and preach across the whole Roman Empire. On one of those trips, he visited Philippi. Turns out, there weren’t many Jews in Philippi. It took ten men from different households to form a synagogue, and Philippi didn’t even have a synagogue. So “on the Sabbath day [he] went outside the gate [of the city] to the riverside, where [he] supposed there was a place of prayer” (Acts 16:13 ESV). He found a small group of women and preached to them. He told them about Jesus. One of those women believed—Lydia, who had become quite wealthy selling purple cloth. She would never have been able to come to Jesus on her own. She had no one to tell her about him, no one to tell her about his death and resurrection, no one to tell her how he had healed people like me and paid the price for our sins in order to give all who believe in him eternal life. No one, that is except Paul. Well, if Paul had not gone, Jesus would surely have sent someone else, because he “desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4 ESV). But you get the point. Jesus sent Paul to Lydia so she could hear the good news of our risen Savior. Jesus sent Paul to Lydia because she could not know about Jesus on her own. Jesus sent Paul to Lydia because he loves to help people who cannot help themselves. And that is why Jesus sent you parents and neighbors and friends and pastors to tell you about Jesus, because you could not know about Jesus on your own. And that, my dear friends, is why Jesus also gives you permission—even the privilege—of sharing the good news of our risen Savior with the people around you. Because unbelievers cannot come to Jesus on their own. They have no one to help them to salvation, unless Jesus sends someone to them, but Jesus loves them, so he sends you to them, because he loves to help people who cannot help themselves.

I know that from first-hand experience. I was stuck. I couldn’t heal myself, and I had no one to help me down into those healing waters. So Jesus came, and he helped me. He didn’t just help me into the water; he healed me himself, with his word. More than that, though, he died to forgive my sins and he rose from the dead to give me eternal life, because I had no one to do that for me either. Neither did you, and neither do the people around us. No one, that is, except Jesus.