A L M A C I A S

JESUS IS THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN HELP US

Due to medical technology, we are living in a time in which people as a whole are living more years than ever before. Though people are living longer, there is one problem that just does not seem to go away, and that is sickness. Almost everywhere you look you will find people who are suffering from one ailment or another. Even though we no longer live in the age of miracles, we can still go the Lord and ask for help with our infirmities. In John 5, we find the case of one man who had been sick for thirty-eight years and was hopeful that some day he would get better. Now in Jerusalem was a pool called "Bethesda" in the Hebrew language. This place was famous among the people of the area because there was the belief that an angel would go at a certain season and would trouble the water, and whosoever stepped in first after the troubling of the waters would be healed from whatever disease they were suffering. The man mentioned here, along with many others, continued to go to this pool, thinking that perhaps some day he would be the first one to get in and thereby be healed. It was here that the Lord met the man and asked him, "Wilt thou be made whole?" The man did not understand the question posed to him by the Lord. Of course, he wanted to get well; why would such a question be asked of him? But that was not what this man answered. Rather he told the Lord that there was no one to help him get into the water after the angel had troubled it and that while he was going, someone else would step in before he could.

What are some of the lessons that the Lord wanted us to learn from this account given by the apostle John? I believe one of the lessons to be learned is that we all need to have hope and never give up. Although this man had gone to the pool many times and had never had an opportunity to enter the pool before anyone else, he never gave up. He continued to try, hoping that some day he would be the first to get in and thereby be healed. He did not want to be sick. Who does? And it was his hope which eventually led to his meeting the Lord.

Another lesson that we can all learn from this incident is that when all other hope is lost, the Lord is there to help us if we believe and trust in Him. In the New Testament, we find many commandments that have been given to us by the Lord. The Lord gives instructions for what we are to believe and what we are not to believe. He has told us how we are to worship and the things that we need to do when we come to worship. And he has admonished us to not deviate from it. We, as His disciples, will either trust Him and do just as He has commanded us to do, or we won't. In the account under discussion, the Lord asked this man whom he had never met before, "Wilt thou be made whole?" Do you really want to get better? If you do, you need to trust in what I am about to tell you. That is when the Lord told him, "³Rise, take up thy bed and walk." This man could have responded in a very different way, but he did just as the Lord told him and thereby was healed from his disease. Why is it so hard for us to trust in the Lord the same way this man did? Why can¹t we all do just as the Lord has commanded us to do? If all Christians everywhere did just as the Lord has commanded, many of us would not be having the problems that we sometimes experience.