Investigating the Bible: Do what we can

By DAVID CARLSON PASTOR

Lyndon Baines Johnson and Richard Nixon were longtime enemies. The late Senator Bob Dole wrote that before Watergate LBJ made an astonishing prediction. He compared his old foe to a Spanish horse “… who runs faster than anyone for his first nine lengths and then turns around and runs backward. ‘You’ll see,’ said Johnson, ‘he’ll do something wrong in the end. He always does.’” Changing habits is rare. Jesus encountered a man who lived miserably for many years and offered him three opportunities for change. That man failed to accept two of them.

Be honest. In Jerusalem, the Pool of Bethesda was where the blind, lame, and paralyzed would gather. They believed an angel would occasionally visit the pool, ripple the water, and the first to enter the pool would be healed. “One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, ‘Do you want to be healed?’” (John 5:5-6, English Standard Version used throughout). Jesus asked the obvious. However, after more than three decades by the pool, the man had become accustomed to his fate. Family or friends brought him to the pool; someone else provided for his home, food and personal needs. He made an excuse. “The sick man answered 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).

Accept God’s power. Jesus ignored his excuse. “Jesus said to him, ‘Get up, take up your bed, and walk.’” (John 5:8). The Bible is silent on the man’s reaction and says simply, “And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked.” (John 5:9) There are numerous stories in the Bible when God’s power impacts men and women: Childless Abraham and Sara, in old age, are given a child, the Virgin Mary is blessed with the Holy child and Jesus appears to Paul on the road to Damascus.

Chuck Colson, who died in 2012, was Richard Nixon’s “hatchet man.” Colson had boasted he would “run over his own grandmother to re-elect Nixon.” In 1973, he resigned from the White House and, while driving, had his own Damascus Road encounter with Jesus. He pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice and was incarcerated seven months. Later, he founded Prison Fellowship, which now helps men and women in prisons across America and in more than 100 other countries.

Do what we can. The healing occurred on the Sabbath, when work was prohibited, even carrying a bedroll after being healed. So the Jewish religious leaders objected when they saw the man walking with his bed. The healed man was good with excuses; he offered another. He said, “The man who healed me, that man said to me, ‘Take up your bed and walk.’” (John 5:11). The Jewish leaders asked him to identify the man, but he didn’t know. “Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, ‘See you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you.’” (John 5:14). “The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him.” (John 5:15). Jesus extended his power for change, then the man failed to offer a first obedient act.

Someone said, “If we do what we can, God will do what we can’t.” Pastor Joel Osteen wrote about a Cherokee Native American grandfather teaching his grandson. “Son, on the inside of every person a battle is raging between two wolves. One wolf is evil. It’s angry, jealous, unforgiving, proud, and lazy. The other wolf is good. It’s filled with love, kindness, humility, and self-control.” The little boy thought and asked, ‘Grandfather, which wolf is going to win?’ The elderly man smiled, ‘Whichever one you feed.’”

David Carlson Pastor (yes, that is his last name, not his profession) lives in Oregon and is a graduate of Bethel Theological Seminary in Minnesota (M.Div., M.Th.).