The Morning Watch: Guarding Your Day with Prayer

FRIDAY, 15 AUGUST 2025

TEXT: JOHN 5:1-15

1: Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals.

2: Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades.

3: Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed.

4: KJV:For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.

5: One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years.

6: When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”

7: “Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”

8: Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.”

9: At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked. The day on which this took place was a Sabbath,

10: and so the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.”

11: But he replied, “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’”

12: So they asked him, “Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?”

13: The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.

14: Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.”

15: The man went away and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had made him well.

(New International Version Holy Bible)

TOPIC: SACRIFICING LOVE ON THE ALTER OF LAW

Jesus had gone to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals (5:1). While there, He headed to the pool of Bethesda where He met diseased people poised to enter the pool when the water is stirred.

But Jesus developed interest in just one of such people who had been bed ridden for 38 years, meaning he had been in that condition ever before the birth of Jesus.

He approached the crippled man and asked: "Do you want to get well?" The man's response revealed that he wanted healing but could not access the means of healing available to him. Jesus healed him without recourse to the familiar pool's potency.

The Jewish religious leaders, who were accustomed to seeing the diseased who desperately need help, did not share the joy of this man who had been healed. Instead, they accused him of breaking the religious constitution by carrying a mat on a Sabbath day.

They equally accused Jesus of breaking the law and constitution by healing a man on a Sabbath day.

QUESTION: Do we sometimes use ecclesiastical laws, constitution and bye-laws to trample on the greatest law which says we should love one another?

PRAYER: Dear Lord, may I not be like the Jewish religious leaders who are more concerned about laws than love, in Jesus' name. Amen.