Study Guide
Do you want to get better?
Newbreak’s Sermon Study Guide is an in-house resource that serves sermon-based Life Groups and/or individuals who want to reflect further on how the message contributes to their spiritual formation.
About This Sermon Series
Year after year one of the most searched-for questions on Google is “Who is Jesus?” Whether we know it or not all of our deepest longings point us to the person who lived 2,000 years ago in Israel. The Gospel of John invites us to “come and see” who this Jesus is and how he is the one in whom we find life.
About this week's sermon:
The Bible says: “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” Those times in your life that you feel stuck are the ones where you lack vision. Everytime Jesus encounters someone in the Gospels he provides them with vision, somehow and in some way. Join us this Vision Sunday as we see how Jesus speaks a better word over our lives and our communities!
Icebreakers for Life Groups
- What is your go-to Super Bowl snack?
- What is an extreme measure you have taken to get well, or something you had tried for the first time that you thought was a bizarre remedy? Did it work?
Let’s read John 5:1-7
After this, a Jewish festival took place, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 2 By the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem there is a pool, called Bethesda in Aramaic, which has five colonnades. 3 Within these lay a large number of the disabled—blind, lame, and paralyzed.
5 One man was there who had been disabled for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him lying there and realized he had already been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to get well?”
7 “Sir,” the disabled man answered, “I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I’m coming, someone goes down ahead of me.”
Point 1 – Jesus offers hope when we feel stuck.
In verse 6, Jesus asked the man who was disabled a very powerful and pointed question, “Do you want to get well?” The question was weighty and filled with depth. This man was trapped in his condition for thirty-eight years. Imagine the impact that would have on your disposition about life, in your relationships with others, and on your walk with God. This man was at a loss for what to do to change his life. He had tried and tried but couldn’t change his condition (vs.7).
This man’s life was going nowhere but that all changed when He met Jesus. To get well we must turn our eyes from the water in the pool and turn our eyes to Jesus who offers us living water. Our pain and our struggles are too much for us to bear. We look for relief and hope, and we only find it in the heart of God. God heals through people, physicians, medicine, and miracles. The hands of God are reaching toward you, receive His outstretched arm and experience healing today.
The people in the world around us are all searching for that perfect thing that will make them better versions of themselves, will make them more successful, more powerful, feel better, feel in control, be more loved, or more popular. As Christ followers, we already have the hope in us with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” Romans 15:13, NIV
Questions for Group Discussion or Personal Reflection
- Has God ever asked you a question before? What was it and when did it come in your life?
- Where do we go and what do we do with our hurt? With our struggles? With our feelings of being stuck? How do you find healing and wholeness in Jesus?
- What are some areas of your life that you need healing from God? How can we pray about those as a group today?
Continue reading John 5:8-23
8 “Get up,” Jesus told him, “pick up your mat and walk.” 9 Instantly the man got well, picked up his mat, and started to walk.
Now that day was the Sabbath, 10 and so the Jews said to the man who had been healed, “This is the Sabbath. The law prohibits you from picking up your mat.”
11 He replied, “The man who made me well told me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’”
12 “Who is this man who told you, ‘Pick up your mat and walk’?” they asked. 13 But the man who was healed did not know who it was, because Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.
14 After this, Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you are well. Do not sin anymore, so that something worse doesn’t happen to you.”15 The man went and reported to the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. 16 Therefore, the Jews began persecuting Jesus because he was doing these things on the Sabbath.
17 Jesus responded to them, “My Father is still working, and I am working also.” 18 This is why the Jews began trying all the more to kill him: Not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal to God.
19 Jesus replied, “Truly I tell you, the Son is not able to do anything on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, the Son likewise does these things. 20 For the Father loves the Son and shows him everything he is doing, and he will show him greater works than these so that you will be amazed. 21 And just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so the Son also gives life to whom he wants. 22 The Father, in fact, judges no one but has given all judgment to the Son, 23 so that all people may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Anyone who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.
Point 2 - Jesus speaks a better word.
Jesus spoke into being all of creation. If He could do that, He could certainly speak healing into this man’s broken body. Jesus said to the man, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk” (vs.8-9). The man was healed at once. His healing didn’t come from being pulled into a pool, or by touching a sacred relic, or through some religious huckster with a magic ring. Jesus was the source of his transformation and his new found hope.
Did you notice that the man was told to “pick up his mat” and walk (vs.8)? This man’s mat would have been dirty, smelly, and a painful reminder of his life prior to Jesus. But when Jesus entered that man’s life, the mat became something so much more. Pastor Brayden put it this way, “The mat that once carried this man is now carried triumphantly by him as a relic of his restoration; a souvenir of his salvation; a token of his testimony.”
Like this man, it is on us to share this hope with the people around us. Companies all over the world use word of mouth recommendations to promote their products or services because they know that someone is far more likely to try something if someone they know and trust has used it and liked it. When Christ does something amazing in our lives, salvation, healing from physical ailments, mental breakthroughs, emotional healing, He wants us to share that with others so they to can come and get healing from the one true source. Our testimony about Him and what He offers is eternal.
As soon as he was healed he did what Jesus told him to do. Jesus knew it was the Sabbath and the man knew it was the Sabbath, yet He still told him to do what was considered by the Jews unlawful to do on the Sabbath. Why would Jesus do this?
Jesus chose to heal this man at this time and in this way to show that He was Lord of the Sabbath, that He is the one who decides what is right to do and what is not. We know this because He tells the Jewish leaders that because His Father is always at work, and He follows the example of His Father, He too will always be at work. The words of Jesus are healing and life.
The Son’s Equality with the Father
Jesus explains that his Father “is still working” (5:17a) with no indication that the time has come or soon will for the Father’s work to stop. The idea that God “rested” after creating the world in six days (Genesis 2:2–3) should not be interpreted to mean that God is now inactive. God not only created the whole world; he also sustains it.
The plot thickens when Jesus claims in verse 17b: “and I am working also.” The Jews understood the implications of this: Christ was “making himself equal to God” (5:18). Jesus is claiming a prerogative that is exclusive to God alone. Only God can be “working” on the Sabbath without “breaking” the Sabbath. Christ’s point is that both the Father and the Son are at work. Jesus shares in the divine prerogatives that belong to the Father alone. The Jews want to kill Jesus over this. By their actions, the Jews show that they fully understand what Jesus is communicating about himself and at the same time have revealed an entirely inadequate understanding of God. By misunderstanding Jesus, the Jews are–by definition–misunderstanding God. Even further, by rejecting Jesus they are rejecting God
Questions for Group Discussion or Personal Reflection
- What words from Jesus have been healing to your mind, heart, or body? Have you shared this with anyone?
- What is one thing Christ has done in your life lately that you have really valued? How could you share this with someone you know this week? How can we pray about this opportunity for you?
- How are you choosing to honor the Son (vs. 23) this week?