This lesson is about living like Jesus. He performed signs and wonders because He was being led by the voice of God. He said, “…but He is able to do only what He sees the Father doing, for whatever the Father does is what the Son does in the same way [in His turn].” (John 5:19 AMPC)
When He said those words, He was speaking to the Pharisees who were harassing him because He had just healed a man with a lingering illness for 38 years. They were mad because Jesus healed this man on the Sabbath.
He was telling them, that he did not do this by his own power. He only did it as God was teaching him, as the voice of God came to him, as he received God’s orders. This is the way WE need to be! (Read the story about the man who was healed at the pool of Bethesda in John 5:1-18)
It was God that caused Jesus to notice one specific man among a whole crowd of people. God took Him to the problem first. It was God that pointed out that this man had been there a long time, trying to make it down to the pool to get healed.
Jesus had to grow in spirit and in favor with man. He had to be taught. He had to learn. He was more human than we understand. We need to embrace His divinity, because that is how we receive everything He has, but we definitely need to embrace His humanity and understand how he operated as a man. As we study this, we learn to do the same things He did, in order to operate in the same ways that He did. He is the one who set the standard and perfected this for us!
Sometimes when we pray for someone we suddenly know things about them. It is as we are praying that this information comes to us, and enables us to pray more effectively. We are doing as Jesus did – being led and taught by God as we go along. In this story, the Bible says that Jesus knew everything about this man. God gave Jesus a download about the man, right at that moment.
Jesus asked the man if he really wants to be well because God showed Jesus that there was more wrong with him than just being physically sick. That is why the man answers the question Jesus asks with a long, detailed reply, “Sir, I have nobody when the water is moving to put me in the pool, but while I’m trying to come into it myself, somebody else steps down ahead of me.” Instead of just saying, “Yes! I want to be healed!”
This man was operating in a spirit that was exactly opposite of how Jesus was operating. Jesus was operating as the voice came to him. This man had it all preplanned and reasoned out how his healing was to take place, without ever consulting God. He just knew that he needed somebody there to help him down into the pool. The Bible says that “reasoning” is a “stronghold” that sets itself up against the knowledge of God. In 2 Corinthians 10:4-5 (AMPC), it says, “For the weapons of our warfare are not physical [weapons of flesh and blood], but they are mighty before God for the overthrow and destruction of strongholds, [Inasmuch as we] refute arguments and theories and reasonings and every proud and lofty thing that sets itself up against the [true] knowledge of God;” It does not work when we try to reason out our own problems and issues, we have to be like Jesus and do it as we are being taught by God.
Here is what the conversation could have sounded like between Jesus and the man that day:
“Hey, do you really want to get well?” Jesus asks. Then the man answered with that long, detailed answer about why he wasn’t getting healed.
Jesus could have said, “Yes, I know you have it all reasoned out, but today we are going to do it God’s way, and you are not even going to have to get wet. Now, pick up your mat and walk.”
We have to listen to God.
