60+ Luncheon - Pastor to 60+ Dave Skorupa - October 8, 2026

Let's go to the Lord in prayer.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day, for this time that you've given us together.

We thank you for this food and the work of those who have helped to prepare it.

We thank you for those who contribute to this, your church, so that we can have events like this.

But Lord, we really thank you because we know that every good thing that happens in church is because of Jesus.

Lord, as we go to your word now, we are reminded of your great healing power in this story.

And Lord, we are so thankful that you are a God who cares for people in their times of suffering, and that you care for us, Lord.

We ask you now to bless the reading of your word, the study of your word.

Lord, may the Holy Spirit that inhabits your saved people be interacting with these Holy Spirit-inspired words in such a way that it brings you honor, credit, and glory.

And we pray this in the mighty name of our Savior, Jesus Christ the Lord.

And God's people said, Amen.

Alright, so we are in John chapter 5, Jesus and the lame man at the pool at Beth Seda.

John 5 · chapter mention

John chapter 5, verses 1 through 16.

John 5:1–16

It's interesting when we read this passage because it seems at first glance to be nothing more than yet another one of the historical stories of Jesus healing a man who needed to be healed.

But there's a little bit more going on in this particular healing story than what we see in a lot of the other stories.

We're going to bring some of that out.

And we're also going to show how this story, in many ways, is a great picture of salvation in Jesus Christ.

So, recapping, beginning in verse 1, there is a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

Now we don't know exactly which feast it was.

John normally will say Passover if it is Passover.

So we might suspect that it's one of the other Jewish feasts that is happening.

But nonetheless, Jesus being obedient to the Old Testament law, when it came time to go to Jerusalem for particular feasts, he would go.

And he would be in Jerusalem.

Verse 2 tells us there in Jerusalem, by the sheep gate, there's a pool, which is called in Hebrew Bethseda, and that it has five porches.

Pause here for a moment.

That sheep gate is one of the things that's mentioned in your Old Testament book of Nehemiah that you just read a few weeks ago.

When they were rebuilding all of the walls and the gates and all of that thing, one of the first things they rebuilt was that gate that's called the sheep gate.

Now, the sheep gate was kind of important because by that gate, they would keep the sacrificial sheep that were going to be offered up during Passover and other festivals that the Jews had.

And as Christians, we know that Jesus is the Lamb of God.

And anytime sheep comes up, we sort of pay a little bit of extra attention to see if there's something significant about that.

So this is happening near the area where the sacrificial lambs are kept throughout the year.

And this pool is called Bet Seda, translating that out, betsaida means house of grace or house of mercy.

And so we have the sacrificial lambs, we got the house of grace or the house of mercy.

Already John is setting things up to show us that something special is happening here.

It has five porches.

Porches basically mean they had five covered areas where the people that were suffering different infirmities could be relieved from the baking sun of Jerusalem there.

And we see that in verse 3 a great multitude of sick people, blind, lame, paralyzed, waiting for the moving of the water.

For verse 4 tells us an angel went down at a certain time into the pool and stirred up the water, and whoever stepped in first after the stirring of the water was made well of whatever disease he had.

Now I will tell you personally, that is a very confusing verse to me.

When you break it down, you realize that it's not saying that this happened daily.

It's not saying that this happened weekly.

It's just saying that during a particular season this happened.

Now, how many of us, having lived the Christian life for a few years now, can honestly say that we know of someone that was healed even after the doctor said there is no hope?

How many of us have that testimony?

That we know of someone that was healed after the doctor said there is no hope.

So we believe that miracles of healing happen, right?

And we believe that they happen sometimes in ways that don't involve the person of Jesus being made manifest so that we can see him and hear him and touch him, healing someone.

God heals people in a variety of ways, doesn't he?

Sometimes God heals through the hands of doctors.

Sometimes God heals through a piece of medicine or a new piece of technology that is invented.

But sometimes God heals in ways that are a little harder to understand.

Well, one of the things that this verse here in John tells us is that at least one person was healed at some point because an angel had stirred some waters and the person was the first person to go into the waters.

Now, interestingly enough, this verse does not appear in some of the earliest copies of Scripture that are available, and so it's a matter of debate.

Thankfully, that's not the focus of today's reading.

The focus of today's reading is beginning in verse 5, what Jesus is going to do with this certain man who was there, who had an infirmity, and he had the infirmity for 38 years.

Whatever this man's infirmity was, it was such that he could not walk, and he could not even really drag himself along the surface of the ground very well.

That's how infirm this man was.

And he was infirm for 38 years.

Verse 6.

Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he'd been in that condition for a long time.

And Jesus said to him, Do you want to be made well?

That seems at first glance to be almost a cruel question when we first encounter it.

But you know, there are people in this world who don't know how to live outside of the way that they've been living for a long time.

This man's been infirm for 38 years.

If he is made well, his whole world is going to be turned upside down, and he's going to have to learn a whole new way to live life.

There are people, we the stories are multitudinous all over the country.

We know that there are some people that beg for a living.

And if you say to them, Would you like to have a nice house?

Would you like to have a job?

Would you like to make your own way in the world?

That they will say, No, I don't know how to live that way.

I'll just stay here.

I've had them in them in Memphis all the time when I was in the nonprofit world.

I've heard stories about that here in Fort Smith since I arrived three years ago.

And so Jesus' question, it's a legitimate question.

Do you want to be made well?

We're going to talk more about that in a few minutes.

Notice that in verse 7, the sick man doesn't answer him with yes or no.

Instead, what the sick man says to him in verse 7, Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up.

But while I am coming, another steps down before me.

This man is basically saying, I'm here because I want to be healed by the waters, but because of my infirmity, there's no way I'm going to be the first one in the pool.

Someone is always going to be there ahead of me.

Someone is always going to be able to take advantage of the healing of the pool.

I am helpless in the situation.

Verse 8, Jesus said to him, Rise, take up your bed and walk.

And immediately the man was made well, took up his bed and walked.

And that day was the Sabbath.

The Jews therefore said to him who was cured, It is the Sabbath, it's not lawful for you to carry your bed.

Now, pause here for a minute.

Many times as we see paintings or drawings of this story, we see the artist's imagination of what the bed must have looked like that this man was using.

And most of the time you see it's kind of almost like what they what the those yoga mats that people roll up and that sort of thing.

But in other translations of the Bible, older translations, the word pallet bed is used rather than just bed.

And that implies that he was on a mat that was made up of straight sticks that had to be carried.

It would have been lightweight, but it had to be carried from place to place.

And so as this man is walking around, this newly healed man, he's walking around with his bed, it may be that he was carrying a rather large structure over his head.

And the Jews saw that and they said, Hey, that guy's doing work on the Sabbath.

He's moving a bed from one place to another.

In our tradition, not in the Old Testament law itself, but in our tradition, as Jews, that's violating the Sabbath.

And boy, if there was one thing that the Pharisees and all of them liked to do was to catch somebody violating the Sabbath.

You know why they liked catching people that violated the Sabbath?

Because the penalties in Israelite life for violating the Sabbath were very severe.

As a matter of fact, according to the Old Testament law of Moses, if someone violated the Sabbath by going and picking up sticks for firewood on the Sabbath, or if someone was trying to make a living selling something on the Sabbath, and they interviewed that man with the elders and the leaders of Jerusalem, and if that man said, Yeah, I know that the Sabbath says I'm not supposed to work, but I wanted to work anyway, I don't care about the Sabbath, that man was eligible at that point for the death penalty.

And so to catch somebody violating the Sabbath was a matter of great importance among the culture of the Israelites.

Now what happened over time?

What happened over time is that someone said, well, if picking up firewood on the Sabbath is wrong, and if working on the Sabbath is wrong, we need to put some extra rules in place to keep people from doing that in the first place.

So if picking up firewood's a problem, we're gonna say that lighting a fire on the Sabbath is a violation, even though that's not what Moses said, even though that's not what God said.

We're gonna create a rule that if you light a fire on the Sabbath, that that's a violation.

And if selling things on the Sabbath is a violation, then we're gonna make sure that you can't buy things on the Sabbath either, because that'll kill all the commerce and no one will break the Sabbath law.

It got so crazy that by the Middle Ages, if a man would, if a Jewish man was caught with a needle in his pocket on the Sabbath, that was considered to be breaking the Sabbath law because if you had a sewing needle in your pocket, certainly you were going to do something with it, like perhaps repair clothes or something like that.

It became ridiculous.

Recently, in recent history, over in Jerusalem, it might not be Jerusalem, but it's somewhere in modern day Israel.

Somewhere in modern day Israel, in modern times, some Orthodox Jewish people that lived in an apartment building had a fire inside of their apartment.

And they were debating with each other whether it was lawful to call the fire department on the Sabbath.

And two other apartments then caught fire, and three people lost their apartments because they were arguing over whether it was legal to use your fingers to call the fire department on the Sabbath.

And so this idea of Sabbath adherence and Sabbath importance has been a real identifying trademark of the Old Testament Jews and even the very Orthodox Jews of today over there in Israel.

So here's this man on the Sabbath, possibly carrying this mat made of sticks over his head.

It's almost like he's got a banner that he's holding up saying, hey, look at me, look at me.

And so the Jews, the Jews that were focused on this thing, they go to him and say, It's the Sabbath.

It's not lawful for you to carry your bed.

Verse 11.

He answered them, he who made me well said to me, Take up your bed and walk.

They asked him, Who is the man who said to you, Take up your bed and walk?

But the one who was healed did not know who it was.

For Jesus had withdrawn, since there was a multitude in that place.

Pause here for a moment.

You see, once Jesus healed that man by the pool, that pool is surrounded by a multitude of people that have a variety of illnesses.

We were told some of them were blind, some of them were lame, some of them were paralyzed.

And when Jesus healed that man, if he had stuck around, what would have happened?

That entire crowd would have said, Me too, heal me.

Make me whole.

I've been waiting for however long to be made whole.

Heal me.

And so when Jesus healed this man, he basically healed him and walked away.

And so this man says he doesn't even know Jesus' name.

Doesn't know who it was that healed him.

Verse 14, afterward, afterward, Jesus found this man in the temple.

And Jesus said to him, See, you have been made well.

Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you.

The man departed and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well.

For this reason, the Jews persecuted Jesus and sought to kill him because he had done these things on the Sabbath.

Pause here for a minute.

You know, when this man told the, he goes back to the Jewish authorities that had questioned him about holding the mat, and he says, Now I know who it is that healed me and who it was that told me to pick up my mat and walk, it was this man Jesus.

Now you would think that the Jewish authorities would have said, You were healed, you were lame, paralyzed, and now you can walk.

Not only can you walk, you can lift a mat over your head and you can walk through town, you were healed.

Tell us more about the man who did this work of healing.

Tell us more about the man that God has blessed so that he can heal people who have been lame and paralyzed.

He says, Oh, not only that, I've been paralyzed for 38 years.

There's a whole bunch of people in this town that can testify to the fact that I've been sick and lame and unable to take care of myself for 38 years.

But they're not interested in hearing about Jesus as the one who provides healing.

They only want to know more about this man who said it was okay to carry your mat on the Sabbath day.

As a matter of fact, verse 16 tells us that when they heard that Jesus had told this man to carry his mat on the Sabbath, that their reaction was, we've got to find that man and put him to death.

We have to find that man and hold him accountable for someone breaking the Sabbath traditions.

We need to make sure that he is executed as a traitor.

And so, you know, those in those 16 verses there, there's quite a bit to unpack.

So let's start expanding and taking away some things from this story.

First off, let's all focus on the lame man and his situation lying by that pool.

His situation is totally hopeless.

He has no hope of getting into that pool before anybody else.

He has just been left there on that mat by that pool.

It's almost cruel to think of the thoughts that must have gone through his mind as he lay there knowing that that pool might be able to help him, but that he was never going to be strong enough to be the first person to take advantage of it.

He couldn't reach the pool.

He said, No one is there to help him.

He is by himself left there to suffer in infirmity and in mental anguish and misery.

And so when Jesus comes and Jesus sees this man, Jesus asks the question, do you want to be made well?

Again, it almost seems like a cruel question at first, but it does something in the mind of that man.

You notice that the man did not respond with yes or no, but what that man had to face is he had to face the reality that his situation was helpless and hopeless.

He had to face the situation that there was nothing he could do in his own power to heal himself or to bring about healing.

If he was going to be healed, someone else was going to have to enter the situation and take care of him and get him into that pool.

But there was no one else coming.

He was by himself.

And he had already had 38 years of knowing that things weren't going to get any better.

And so what this picture of this story is, this picture is a picture of salvation as much as it is a picture of physical healing.

Because, like that lame man, every person who is a sinner, who's unsaved, who hasn't received Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, every unsaved person reaches that place where they realize they can do nothing about the situation that they're in.

They do not have the ability to have God forgive them in anything that they say, in anything that they do, in any place that they go, in any action that they take.

Nothing that they are going to do is going to take away that sin.

They are, for all intents and purposes, lame sitting by a pool hoping that somebody will do something about the situation that they're in.

And you know, people chase after things to relieve the guilt of sin in their lives.

If they don't chase Jesus, what are they going to chase?

Well, they'll chase self-help positivity books.

Or they might chase a false religion that tells them, well, if you pray the following prayer and if you go to the following place, and if you do the following things, then God will forgive you.

Alright?

And so people will chase all of this.

And we, you know, you see on the news every year you have those people who follow Islam and they're marching around that big block, and you know, they're they're saying prayers out loud and they're almost beating each other up trying to be able to touch that thing.

And they think that if they make enough visits to Mecca and they walk around that block enough times, then God will forgive them of their sins and they will be okay.

That, or you have people who uh years ago they would go to Rome and they would get on their knees, and if they could walk a Certain distance on their knees while saying certain prayers, then they would have confidence that their sins would be forgiven.

And so even some of this has crept into places where it doesn't belong, and this idea that you can somehow say or do or go someplace to get your sins forgiven, eventually, no matter how many times you do that, you're done with that and you realize that you still got a problem with sin.

You're still not forgiven.

And that's because Jesus alone has the healing or forgiveness that a sinner needs.

Jesus alone has it.

No church has it.

No self-help book has it.

No one has it.

Only Jesus has the healing and forgiveness.

So Jesus sees this man in our story today.

He sees this man.

He sees the man's situation.

He sees the man is totally helpless.

And when this man, when Jesus talks to this man, we we know that the man down there on the ground is probably thinking, maybe I can get this guy, Jesus, if that whoever he is, because at that point he doesn't know his name, maybe I can get this man to lift me up and put me in the pool.

Maybe this man can help me be healed.

Maybe this man can make me whole.

But what does Jesus do?

Instead of Jesus doing anything like that, Jesus simply speaks a command.

And using his power, his divine power as the Son of God, he says to the man, Rise, take up your mat, and walk.

I love the way John puts it, because John doesn't put a lot of extra words in there.

John simply says that the man rose, took up his mat, and walked immediately.

Immediately.

You see, when Jesus heals somebody, his healing, whether it's physical healing over an illness or whether it's forgiveness of sin, Jesus's forgiveness, Jesus' healing is done on his terms, not on anyone else's terms.

That man wanted Jesus to pick him up and put him in the pool.

That wasn't what Jesus wanted to do.

Jesus wanted to heal him by simply issuing the command: rise, take up your mat and walk.

You are healed.

And yet we see that since it all happens in Jesus' power, that Jesus doesn't just heal him, he actually gives him a command, doesn't he?

He gives him something to do.

He says, pick up your mat and walk.

Why does Jesus want him to pick up his mat?

Why is that so important?

Why is that so important?

Is Jesus against littering?

He didn't want the mat to be left there behind the pool at Beth Seda.

Is that what's going on here?

No.

No, some of you are already jumping ahead with me here.

Jesus has the man pick up the mat because the mat becomes a testimony to the healing that has taken place in his life.

As the man is walking through the street, he's the only one carrying anything because it's the Sabbath.

He stands out there in the crowd around the temple.

Plus, he's probably got the biggest grin on his face you'll ever see.

He's been lame for 38 years and he's just been healed.

He might even be kicking up his heels a little bit.

You know, we don't know, but he would have been overjoyed with the fact that he had been healed.

So Jesus has work for the man to do.

He says, rise, that's first, and he can do that now because he's been healed.

Pick up your mat and walk.

At first, we think that the command to walk is simply to prove that he's been healed.

I think the command to walk was also move around a little bit and have people see you as you're carrying the proof of the healing that has taken place.

And so the man obeys the commands.

He gets up, he carries his bed, his mat, and he walks.

It was a Sabbath day, and so walking around with a mat would have brought you into conflict with the religious leaders.

I want to stop calling them religious leaders for the rest of this day, and instead I want to call them people who followed a works-based idea of salvation.

Because that's what the Pharisees and the Jewish religious leaders were.

They thought that if they could keep the law and not violate the law, both the law of Moses and the laws that they came up with that they tried to add to the law of Moses, they thought if they could keep all of those things, that God would be forced to accept them into heaven.

They thought that they could do good works enough that God would have no choice other to admit them into paradise.

They had a works-based idea of forgiveness.

And you know there's a lot of people still today who think that when you die, you go before God, and God takes your good works and he puts them on one side of the scale, and he takes your bad works and puts them on the other side of the scale.

And as long as your good works are heavier than your bad works, you get to go to heaven.

Know people like that?

Were you a person like that yourself?

I was.

I was way back in the day.

I thought that as long as my good works would outweigh my bad works, that I was pretty good.

Everything was going to be alright.

That Jesus made it possible for me to go to heaven.

But whether or not that actually happened was up to my good works versus bad works.

I didn't know much about theology back then.

I didn't know much about Jesus back then.

Because that's not the way Jesus works.

That's not the way Jesus works.

When we come to Jesus and we recognize that he alone is in charge of whether or not we're saved or lost, that he either saves us or we reject him and we are not saved.

Once you have that idea in your mind that salvation is in Jesus and not in your works, get ready to come into conflict with people that are still holding on to that works-based idea.

Get ready for them to disagree with what you have to say about salvation in Jesus Christ.

If a person is following a works-based path to what they think is heaven, for you to come and say, Well, I don't have to worry about my works because I'm relying upon Jesus' work, they are not going to want to listen to what you have to say many times.

Now, if they're curious and they do want to listen to what you have to say, you've got an open window to sharing the gospel with them.

But I will tell you that their first instinct is going to be, well, that doesn't make sense.

That doesn't work.

And it's also going to bring you into conflict with people who think that there's no way to heaven.

And in fact, there's really no reason to even think about those things because once you die, you die, and that's simply the end of things.

They also don't want to hear about salvation being accomplished through the person of Jesus Christ.

Now, as we go further in this story, as we get close to the end, we see that Jesus does come back to this man that he is healed, and we're told that he talks to the man in the temple.

And that's very important because the culture of that day would have looked at that man when he was spending 38 years paralyzed or lame, and they would have said, Well, you can come to the outside of the temple, but you can't come into the temple because you have a disability, you are lame, you are handicapped, you are sick.

You are not allowed in the temple.

Now, the interesting thing here is that wasn't in God's word either.

God's word said that you could not be a priest if you had a disability or a disfigurement.

But there was nothing in God's word that said you were restricted from being a part of what was going on in the temple if you had a disability.

But the culture of the Jews basically said, well, if the priests can't come in if they're disabled, then we better not let anyone who's disabled come in and be involved in what's happening here.

So where does Jesus find this man when he sees him later in the day?

He's in the temple.

He hasn't been able to go into the temple for 38 years.

We don't know how old this man was, but I get the impression that he had spent the majority of his life outside of the temple.

Now that he's cured and he's found a place to put the mat, we get the idea.

Now he's in the temple and Jesus goes to talk with him.

You know, there is something about being saved by Jesus Christ.

If you are genuinely saved, you want to be as close to God as you can be.

And the only reason that you can be closer to God as a saved person is because of what Jesus has done.

If you go back into your life, I know a lot of you were saved when you were young, but for those of us that were saved when we were a little bit older, before being saved, going to church was a chore.

Going to church was something that I felt like I had to do.

It wasn't something that I wanted to do.

Some of you are being honest enough to nod your heads with me here.

I know there's a person who says, Oh, you know, I was in the church drug program.

That is to say, I was drugged to church every day when I was a youngster.

Okay?

I get, I understand that.

I understand that.

God bless your parents for dragging you to church.

Amen.

So, but uh but when you are saved by Jesus Christ, you want to be as close to God as you can be because you are now closer to God than you have ever been.

If you're saved, you've been brought into the family of God.

If you're saved, you've been brought in as a citizen of the kingdom of God.

And you want to start living life that way.

So this Jesus finds this man, he's been healed, he is there in the temple, he is worshiping.

And Jesus says to him, Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you.

Now many people see this and they think that the man was perhaps guilty of some sin, and as a result of that sin, God visited the infirmity upon him.

Possibility.

Possibility.

But at the same time, now that this man has been healed by Jesus, Jesus is making it clear you don't need to be living a life filled with sin.

And Jesus says the same thing to all of us who are saved.

In 1 Corinthians chapter 15, verse 34, very short admonition from Paul.

1 Corinthians 15:34

Awake to righteousness and do not sin.

If we are Christians, we should be striving not to be sinners.

Doesn't mean we always succeed, but it should be the desire of our spirit, the desire of our heart not to sin, and to live lives that give honor and glory to God.

Paul explains this a little further in Romans chapter 12, verses 1 and 2.

Romans 12:1

He says, I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.

And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is good and acceptable and the perfect will of God.

Paul's writing that passage to believers there in the Church of Rome.

We are not saved and then free to do whatever we want to do.

Like this man in the story, we are saved and we are given commands.

We are told to do things.

Thankfully, we're not told to take a mat and walk around town.

But we are called to live lives that give credit to what God has done for his honor and glory, not ours.

So after Jesus speaks with the man, what does the man do?

Well, he actually goes and finds those Jewish leaders that wanted to talk to him about violating the Sabbath.

He finds them and he says, The man who healed me is named Jesus.

Some commentators get angry at this man for doing that.

I want to give him a little bit of credit because what would have been easy for him was to say, I better not run into those guys again who challenged me on carrying the mat.

They've kind of got my number and they can make life hard for me.

Instead, what he did is he went to them and said, I have found the name of the man who healed me.

His name is Jesus.

And so what we see here is that he wasn't ashamed to say that he had been healed by Jesus.

And likewise, we should never be ashamed to say that we've been saved by Jesus.

When we are confronted by people who have a works-based idea of salvation, when we are confronted by people who think that there is no way to heaven at all, we should be unafraid to tell them about Jesus.

We should never be ashamed of the one who died for us.

Jesus suffered more shame hanging naked and bloody and beaten upon a cruel cross than we will ever experience in our lives.

And he suffered that so that we could be saved.

We should never be ashamed of the name of Jesus.

Ultimately, when we talk to people about salvation and we share our story, we need to remember not to try to take the credit for ourselves, but instead to give all the credit to Jesus because salvation is not because of anything that we did, not because of anything that we thought, not because of anything that we acted on, not because of any place that we went, but instead, salvation is all because of Jesus.

Amen?

So in this passage, what we have is more than just another one of Jesus' healing stories.

Here in the Gospel of John, chapter 5, verses 1 through 16, we have a picture of salvation.

John 5:1–16

Let's never forget that before we were saved, as far as eternity goes, we were lame.

We were helpless.

We were without the ability to do anything about our own situation until Jesus arrived and forgave us and healed us and made us part of his family.

Amen?

Let's close in prayer.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for this story, this piece of history here from John chapter 5.

John 5 · chapter mention

Lord, we thank you for the humble reminder of what it is that you've done for us.

Lord, we thank you that in addition to giving you honor and glory for healing this man by this pool, we also give you honor and glory for what you've done for us, saving us, making us part of your family, making us citizens in your kingdom, making us a people who have great hope for now and in the future.

And Lord, we thank you that this story reminds us that you are a healing God, that you do care about our physical challenges, you do care about those times of suffering and longing and anticipation that we go through and anxiety.

We thank you, Lord, that we can trust that just as you healed this man, you can heal us.

Because with you everything is possible and nothing is impossible.

And so today, Lord, we give you the honor, the praise, and the glory in the mighty name, the only name that saves Jesus Christ the Lord.

And God's people said, Amen.

And we are dismissed.