Immerse: Messiah - Flipbook - Page 418
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IMMERSE
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MESSIAH
4:43–5:14
At the end of the two days, Jesus went on to Galilee. He himself had said
that a prophet is not honored in his own hometown. Yet the Galileans
welcomed him, for they had been in Jerusalem at the Passover celebration
and had seen everything he did there.
As he traveled through Galilee, he came to Cana, where he had turned
the water into wine. There was a government official in nearby Capernaum whose son was very sick. When he heard that Jesus had come from
Judea to Galilee, he went and begged Jesus to come to Capernaum to heal
his son, who was about to die.
Jesus asked, “Will you never believe in me unless you see miraculous
signs and wonders?”
The official pleaded, “Lord, please come now before my little boy dies.”
Then Jesus told him, “Go back home. Your son will live!” And the man
believed what Jesus said and started home.
While the man was on his way, some of his servants met him with the
news that his son was alive and well. He asked them when the boy had
begun to get better, and they replied, “Yesterday afternoon at one o’clock
his fever suddenly disappeared!” Then the father realized that that was the
very time Jesus had told him, “Your son will live.” And he and his entire
household believed in Jesus. This was the second miraculous sign Jesus
did in Galilee after coming from Judea.
Afterward Jesus returned to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish holy days.
Inside the city, near the Sheep Gate, was the pool of Bethesda, with five
covered porches. Crowds of sick people—blind, lame, or paralyzed—lay
on the porches. One of the men lying there had been sick for thirty-eight
years. When Jesus saw him and knew he had been ill for a long time, he
asked him, “Would you like to get well?”
“I can’t, sir,” the sick man said, “for I have no one to put me into the pool
when the water bubbles up. Someone else always gets there ahead of me.”
Jesus told him, “Stand up, pick up your mat, and walk!”
Instantly, the man was healed! He rolled up his sleeping mat and began
walking! But this miracle happened on the Sabbath, so the Jewish leaders
objected. They said to the man who was cured, “You can’t work on the
Sabbath! The law doesn’t allow you to carry that sleeping mat!”
But he replied, “The man who healed me told me, ‘Pick up your mat
and walk.’”
“Who said such a thing as that?” they demanded.
The man didn’t know, for Jesus had disappeared into the crowd. But
afterward Jesus found him in the Temple and told him, “Now you are well;
