 yes father in heaven we thank you for this wonderful day Lord as we start this class we are not here because of our power we are here because of your grace and love and will so Lord we do pray that we come not with only physical ears we come with our spiritual ears so that we can hear to understand and to act on whatever we do here in this lesson so Lord as we come into this lesson Lord bless our teacher bless all the students and Lord that we also pray for those who have not yet joined also join so that they don't miss this opportune moment I do pray in the name of the Father the Son the Holy Spirit and everybody says amen amen thank you so much all right we will begin so last class we covered John chapter 3 we had two passages in John chapter 3 one was Jesus interactions with Nicodemus and the other was the conversation which revolved around people leaving John the Baptist and beginning to follow Jesus and the response of John the Baptist disciples regarding that matter and so those were all the points that we looked at so John the writer when he was writing John 3 he wanted to focus on people who are seeking Jesus and the responses of the different people to what he is saying and the main points that he wished to convey to them regarding belief in him so those were the main points that were covered in John chapter 3 so today we are moving into John chapter 4 again here we have three main passages so we begin with the passage regarding the Samaritan woman then we would move into the healing that takes place in the pool of that cider and then after that John the writer places certain teachings over there which are which he believes are kind of related connected to these things that he has been covering you know these episodes that he's talking about so there's some theology mentioned in the last passage of John chapter 4 so we will also that would be chapter 5 I guess yeah so we will be looking at chapter 4 and chapter 5 yes so these are the three things that we will be covering today we will begin with chapter 4 verses maybe we can read all the way from verse 1 up to verse 6 you know and then look at the different points which are there in that portion so if we can have one person please read out for us from John chapter 4 verses 1 to 6 yes John chapter 4 verses 1 to 6 therefore when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John though Jesus himself did not baptize but his disciples he left Judea and departed again to Galilee but he needed to go through Samaria so he came to a city of Samaria which is called Cycle near the plot of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph now Jacob's well now Jacob's well was there Jesus therefore being buried from his journey sat thus by the well it was about the sixth hour yeah thank you so much so here we see it's like a continuation of what was being said in the previous chapter there you have the disciples of John the Baptist protesting because people have more people have begun to follow Jesus and get upset that their own followership is reducing so here we see the Pharisees response being mentioned so it says now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John and so the Pharisees are also now slightly upset that the numbers following Jesus are increasing and what is Jesus response he does not confront them at this point it says that when he heard about this he chooses to retreat and so there's a lesson that can be learned from this there are times when the Holy Spirit will urge us to confront to take a stand to speak what needs to be said and there are times when the Holy Spirit asks us to withdraw to retreat because it is not yet the hour for confrontation and we see Jesus being very sensitive regarding these matters like he says later on in the chapter or was it the next chapter it's either four or five he says you know I do only what the father asks me to do so he is very careful to always follow the leading of the Lord and I think this would be very useful to us in our own you know ministries even if we are not you know in full-time ministry you know even though we may be holding secular jobs wherever we try to minister it really helps if we can have this sensitivity to the Holy Spirit even as he needs and guides there are times when it is good to you know go forward and share boldly there are times when it is better to wait and not you know speak much with the person regarding the scriptures because their hearts may not yet be ready so then the Lord may you know indicate to us that now is not the time to you know say everything that we that is there in our heart but maybe just to say a few very apt sentences and just wait to see what that person's response would be allow the Lord to continue working in his heart and then maybe the Lord would you know urges in the next few weeks to go forward and you know share further so it really makes a big difference if we are sensitive to the leading of the Holy Spirit and here we see Jesus doing that in verse 3 rather than confronting the Pharisees rather than explaining himself rather than doing any of those things he chooses to go back to Galilee so that there would be no opposition at this point of time because it is not yet the right time to take that step so we see Jesus retreating back to Galilee but he gets to decide which route he chooses so you know you can either go directly through Samaria if you go through that province you would reach Galilee on the other hand you have a lot of people who choose to take the you know the the route which is just adjacent to your Jordan River so it's a little roundabout but if you take that route that also leads you back to Galilee from the Judean region so most Jews who consider themselves very pious and righteous feel it somehow it somehow adds to their holiness and their purity if they take the longer route and avoid going directly through the Samaritan province simply because they felt that the Samaritans had corrupted themselves spiritually and so if they go through those regions it somehow defiles them that was the belief system that they had and so most of the Jewish people if they are traveling from the Judean region to Galilee they would prefer to take the longer route which goes adjacent to the Jordan River and we see that Jesus over here Jesus disciples over here have been baptizing most probably in the Jordan River and so he could very easily have taken this route but it says over there in verse 4 now he had to go through Samaria so again over here this is a leading of the Holy Spirit rather than taking the route you know which would have been more convenient in this on this particular occasion because it's anyway already at the river and his disciples have been doing the baptism over there for the new followers even though this would have been a more convenient route for him you know at this particular point of time he feels that he must go through Samaria and so the Lord leads him to go through that Samarian province and you know we see this again how we can apply this to our own ministry so there are times when the Lord will say go now and speak to the person in full you know from the scriptures tell them about me and then we hear that we immediately go and we do that on the other hand if we hear the Lord saying wait wait this is not the correct time I'm still preparing that person's heart then it would be more appropriate for us to wait there times in you know in my younger days when I have made that mistake and I have deeply regretted it and I said Lord I'm so sorry I did not know that I was supposed to wait for your timing that I was supposed to wait on your leading I mean I was not even aware of those things and so I was rather hasty in the way that I shared the gospel with certain people and I think what I did offended them in a negative manner there is there are occasions when it is good to offend it will make them rethink you know their their values and what they have taken a stand for but then there are times when you may end up offending in a wrong manner where actually you have ended up presenting the gospel in a in a way which makes them dislike Christ rather than being drawn to him so it is always better to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit allow him to tell us when to take a step forward allow him to tell us when we should retreat and also allow us a him to guide to whom we should go here Jesus is very clearly being told to go through the Samaritan region because there's some ministry that he would need to perform over there and so we see that he goes through Samaria and it this leads him to a place called Saikkar somewhere near Shechem and over here he is resting near the well because he is tired so Jesus was not among the rich you know who could afford a lot of animals to travel on so mostly it was on foot that Jesus and his disciples traveled so they did not always have these you know donkeys and other means of transportation because that would have cost more so here we see that Jesus is resting at the well and this is where the opportunity for ministry comes and we see the lady coming over here to the well to collect her water and we have a long passage ahead you know which deals with that entire issue maybe we can have some person read right from verses 7 up to verse 15 yeah if someone could read out for us all the way from verse 7 up to verse 15 a woman of Samaria came to draw water Jesus said to her give me a drink for his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food then the woman of Samaria said to him how is it that you being a Jew ask a drink from me a Samaritan woman for Jews have no dealings with Samaritans Jesus answered and said to her if you knew the gift of God and who it is who says to you give me a drink you would have asked him and he would have given you living water the woman said to him sir you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep where into you get that living water are you greater than our father Jacob who gave us the well and drank from it himself as well as his sons and his livestock Jesus answered and said to her whoever drinks of this water will thirst again but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst but the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life the woman said to him so give me this water that I'm in our thirst nor come here to draw yeah so a lot of things are mentioned over here in this passage at the end of verse 6 we saw that the timing given is noon which is when the heat you know of the day would be greatest you know in that desert region so it would be rather hot and at that point of time we have this lady coming over here to draw water and as you know most teachers and preachers what I've already you know shared with us she chooses to come at this odd timing just so that she will not have to interact with the other ladies who come over there to the well because she probably by now is so used to people pointing to her at her and gossiping about her because of the lifestyle that she has had to lead so she just wants to avoid all of that so while all the women would obviously go and in the early morning when the Sun has not yet reached its peak you know to collect their water supply she on the other hand chooses to come at the hottest time of the day so that she can avoid having to interact with them and when she comes over here she sees that already there are some there is one person sitting over there the disciples of course have gone to buy food but Jesus is sitting over there resting and so he starts of a conversation with her and asks her for a drink of water and immediately she says how is it that you a Jewish person is asking a Samaritan for water because she and the other Samaritans were very aware and very sensitive regarding this issue where they were always looked down upon they are coexisting in the same territory with the Jewish people and yet the Jewish people looked down upon them as something inferior and this is something that they would have been very aware of and felt strongly about and so when she is openly asked by a Jewish person for water and she is surprised because they would have generally considered her to unclean I know to take water from and so she is surprised by the request we also see that they have this short conversation regarding living water Jesus says to her if you knew you know who you're speaking to you would ask me for living water and I would give it to you and then she says what kind of living water are you talking about are you greater than our father Jacob who gave us this well this well was gifted to us by our ancestor Jacob so the well the water in this well is really good so what better water are you offering you see she every almost every sentence that she utters she's thinking about me the Samaritan versus you the Jew you know so she says our ancestor Jacob he gave us this water and you are saying that you can give some other water is your water better than our water you know it's almost the implication over here so she does not ask the question what do you mean by living water is there such a thing as a dead water and there is there such a thing as living water that question is not to an asked because in the Greek when you have that word mentioned over there it's just referring to water which is on the move like a spring of water where you have the waters you know coming out of the ground in the form of a spring so when it gently talks about living waters it doesn't mean anything technical it's just talking about waters which are not stagnantly standing in one place but rather flowing waters so living water would be like a spring or anything which is you know moving along maybe just under underground and at certain points it comes out for sibling so because it's kind of gushing out of the ground it's called living water so that she so she immediately would have understood that he's referring to some kind of a spring and so she says to him the well and this water is good but you're saying that you have some other source of water so she's asking are you pointing out you know some other spring and even if there is another spring somewhere if if it is a kind of a well you don't have any rope to you know draw the water from so what is it that you are offering is what she asks and then Jesus says that he is not referring to physical water because he says over here over drinks though in verse 14 over drinks the water I will give them will never thirst and he goes on to say that he's again not referring to physical thirst because he says if this water will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life and so he is referring to metaphorically to spiritual matters rather than than the physical water but she still has not caught the idea because in 15 she is still speaks of physical water because she says give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water so he their conversation begins with with physical water he asks her for a drink and then she then he says to her I have some other living water to give you and then she says from where are you going to bring it this well is quite good this belongs to our ancestor and then in the next sentence he you know takes the level the conversation to a new level and he says I can give you waters which can lead you to eternal life and she has not quite understood so she says you know it would be good not to be thirsty so can you give me that kind of water and then Jesus you know starts the next portion of the conversation maybe we can just look at verses 16 to 18 yeah if someone could read out for us just those three verses 16 17 and 18 please Jesus said to her go call your husband and come here the woman and said and say I have no husband Jesus said to her you have you have well said I have no husband for you have had five husbands and the one whom you now have is not your husband in that you spoke truly yeah so now we see Jesus here giving out a word of knowledge is giving out a piece of information which he could not have known about naturally this is something that has been revealed to him through the Holy Spirit and now he's speaking out this word of knowledge to her regarding her life and so here in this verse is when we get to know a little bit about her background so we learn that she has had five husbands in the past which means that each husband found her unsatisfactory for some reason you know just did not approve of her and basically abandoned her so each time she is abandoned by a husband because women in those days could not be self-employed you would need somebody to look after you to provide you with food and shelter she is forced to go looking for another person who will be willing to marry her and she has gone through this five times I mean anyone who's been through one painful divorce knows the emotional trauma that you know that that involves and here is a woman who has gone through something like this five times and especially in a culture of those ancient times where people would have looked down upon her so badly because they would think is she so useless that she has been rejected five times so this is the kind of person that she is and now out of sheer desperation she has gone to a man who is not even willing to give her that basic status of wife she's just living with him she's not willing to marry her he's only living to be willing to have her live with him so the sheer humiliation of that so now in the sixth relationship that she is in this is not even a marriage relationship she's being forced to live in a kind of live in relationship so so Jesus brings up this issue he has talked about how he can give her living waters which will lead to eternal life and she says oh if you could if I could have water like that I would never be thirsty again is what she says and so he does not pursue that topic anymore he changes the topic and you know release of this word of knowledge about saying that I know who you are I know what you have been through and so so when she hears that she immediately recognizes that this is a prophet someone who can prophesy and tell about things which cannot be naturally known and so she too does not go back to that earlier conversation about water but now she raises another topic and so to us who are reading it the whole thing may look a bit disjointed may sound a bit disjointed but then here we see that John is you know just bringing out the highlights of this conversation so first there was talk about living waters which can quench your spiritual thirst and from there you have the next point being highlighted about who she is the person to whom this conversation is you know these things are being told by Jesus so that is highlighted and then we come to the third point which John chooses to highlight over here where this lady is bringing up another question and then you have Jesus responds to that so you know we look at all of these things and then kind of wrap it up so maybe we can have someone read out for us verses 19 all the way to verse 26 yeah verse 19 up to verse 26 the woman said to him sir I perceive that you are a prophet our fathers worshipped on this mountain and you Jews said say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship Jesus said to her women believe me the hour is come when you will neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem worship the father you worship what you do not know we know what we worship for salvation is of the Jews but the hour is coming and now is when the true worshippers will worship the father in spirit and truth for the father is seeking such to worship him God is spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth the woman said to him I know that Messiah is coming who is called Christ when he comes he will tell us all things Jesus said to her I will speak to you and he yeah it's very interesting here we have a Samaritan woman and not just a Samaritan woman a Samaritan woman who has been through a very painful past and been completely humiliated and rejected by the people among whom she lives to a point where she would rather come in the middle of the day to fill her water rather than doing it along with the other ladies in the morning because they all have their husbands they all have their homes and here she is who has been rejected again and again and so she'd rather not interact with them so we see her coming in the middle of the day and so now this such a person is having a theological discussion with you know with Jesus so it shows that she is now comfortable enough with Jesus to be having a conversation like this she's raising questions which she probably would never have raised with those other ladies so Jesus has treated her with dignity he has spoken to her in a polite manner which has made her feel accepted and so now she's beginning to open up and she's beginning to say things which she would probably not have said to anyone else so once she realizes that he actually is aware of who she is what she has become and yet he is choosing to talk to her and in spite of knowing who she is he asked her for water having understood all this and feeling that he is treating her with dignity she feels confident enough to raise issues you know because it looks like as if it I think she it has always been important to her to understand this difference between the Samaritans and the Jews about how they look at how the Jewish people look at you know the Samaritans and these things are matters which she has thought about reflected upon and so the minute she hears that he is a prophet her question isn't okay what's gonna happen to me ten years from now with this man that I'm living with will he continue to you know keep me in his home or will I again have to go hunting for shelter she doesn't ask about any of this personal issues she brings up her spiritual matter I think these things really mattered to this lady so in spite of who she is on the outside if you look at her on the inside which Jesus was looking at he was not looking at the outside is looking at the inside she had a interest in godly things she had a hunger for spiritual truths and in fact she says later on in a where is it in verse 25 she says you know we are waiting for the Messiah when he comes he's gonna explain all these things to us so here is a person who is probably people would not even regard as a spiritual person but if you look at her heart she is hungry she's starving for spiritual food and so you know earlier when it said Jesus had to go through Samaria the Holy Spirit has led him here because here is a person who's ready to receive the gospel ready to grasp those fruits and you know be so excited by them that she will now go and start sharing it with everyone that she knows so God has brought Jesus you know the Holy Spirit brings Jesus to the right person and this can happen for us in our ministries if we are you know very sensitive to the leading of the Lord he will lead us to the right people where the harvest is so ripe and all they need is to be to hear the details if they can just hear the details they will immediately accept him so here the Holy Spirit has brought Jesus to the right person who is ready to receive and so this lady she is now asking you know we are worshiping here but then on Mount Gerizim because this is where Moses has you know he built an altar there on Mount Gerizim so they consider that the main place of worship and so she asks and says but you people they you say that we should go and worship in Jerusalem now obviously the Samaritans would not be comfortable going to the Jerusalem temple because they know how the Jews look at them how they treat them so they feel more comfortable worshiping here in Mount Gerizim so she's asking she's asking this prophet who seems to be concerned about her you know so she's asking him is it okay if we continue worshiping here do we also really have to go to the Jerusalem temple only then will our prayers be answered so this is basically what she wants to know and then Jesus assures her and tells her that the true worshipers will not be the people who worship in one particular at one particular venue it's not the place which matters rather the heart which matters so you know most of us probably are familiar with the background of the Samaritans but you know just for those who may not be that familiar with these details during the time of the Babylonian exile and God punishes the Israelites and allows most of the population to be taken away as slaves to Babylon at that point of time the Babylonians according to their policy they bring people from other regions and put them over here in this empty land because they wanted to mix up all the races the idea was that people will stop thinking of themselves as belonging to certain regions and will only start thinking of themselves as Babylonians so to kind of bring about this this mingling of populations the Israelites were removed from the land taken away and moved to Babylon people from other places other regions conquered places were brought from there and placed over here so some of the people who remained in the land the leftover Israelites you can say who were not taken away of a small population they were now placed along with all these outsiders and that population grew into what we call the Samaritans because the the Israelite people who still remained in the land were familiar with the loss of Moses did have copies of the Torah with them you know of the scriptures with them so that was anyway there but now you have these outsiders bringing in their own traditions and their own superstitions and their own religions and somewhere along the way these two got mixed up it led to a kind of what we call syncretism you know where the people hold on to some truths which the living God has revealed but they mix up those truths with their own pagan customs so the Samaritans had this corrupted version of the pure faith which the living God had taught and when Nehemiah Ezra and all of these people brought back you know came back over here and with the exiles and began to minister they said we cannot put up with this kind of syncretism we got to go back to the pure faith which was given in the Torah and so at that time they take a very strong stand against the Samaritans and they say people have to follow what the Torah teaches you can't just have this kind of syncretistic religion and you know commingle with the Samaritans so that time onwards the separation began the Samaritans were dismissed as not having the true faith and so anyone who considers himself a true follower of Yahweh was asked to keep himself away from the Samaritan community and follow the right faith and that turned into hatred and God never asked us to hate the other communities he asked us to hate the pagan customs and rituals that they are following and to keep to the true faith which he has taught but he never asked us to hate the people themselves and so this was not a right attitude they were supposed to love the Samaritans and teach them the truth and bring them into the true faith rather than just simply hating them and dismissing them as something inferior so the lesson maybe the ministry lesson that we could learn from you know this this passage is that we choose to hate the paganism that is there in the other religions the wrong teachings that have come in the rituals the empty rituals which are there which will actually not lead to eternal life we are meant to hate those things because those things are deceiving people they're holding people in bondage but we must love the people themselves because you see they have been blinded they're not supposed to hate blind people you know when you see a blind person on the side of the road nobody hates that person what they do is they lovingly go up to that person they hold their hand and they help them cross the road so we should be like that we have to understand that these people have been blinded so rather than being foolish and hating them we should choose to help them you know in the case of helping a blind person cross the road all you can do is you know just maybe offer your hand and help them cross but when it comes to these spiritual matters you can actually open the eyes of a blind person to the spiritual truths which are there because when you share the gospel with the right leading of the Holy Spirit using the right words which he is giving you the Holy Spirit can open their blind eyes and help them to see the truth and then they are brought from the kingdom of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of light where they can enjoy the same privileges which we have so something amazing can happen and so what these Jewish people were doing was so wrong they had this community living right next to them Samaritans to whom they could have shared the truths which are contained in the Torah and in the Old Testament scriptures and and help them to see the truth instead all that it was hate them regard them as inferior use all kinds of derogatory terms to you know talk about them which only increase the rift which did not help those people to come to the living faith but here we see Jesus in the way Jesus approaches this lady he reveals to us what should be our attitude in ministering to the communities you know to the other communities which are following the other faiths so he speaks to her in such a respectful manner that she actually starts asking questions and then he's able to tell her the truth he's able to tell her that you need to become a worshipper of the living God because then it says so you know he says he says to her in verses 23 and 24 a time is coming and has now come when the true worshippers will worship the father in the spirit and in truth so at that so this time which has now come now it's not going to matter anymore whether you're going to be doing your worship on Gerizim or whether you're going to be doing it or in Jerusalem what is going to matter now is whether you're going to be worshipping the father in spirit and in truth or not so when Jesus refers to this and says God is spirit and his worshippers must worship in spirit and in truth the lady says you know I'm not quite understanding what you're saying but I know when the Messiah comes he'll explain these things to us so that is her response and Jesus says you know what I am that Messiah that you're waiting for and I'm telling you I'll explain to you now you know and then you will know how you are meant to worship me in spirit and in truth like I said you know all these conversations the entire transcript of every spoken word is not given here we only have the summarizations because if you cannot have the actual conversations recorded it would take up too much space so Jesus would have gone on to tell her in detail what exactly he means by worshipping in the spirit and in truth you know so so she is able to go back to her people and share these you know truths with her later so he must have revealed to her what it means to worship in spirit and in truth so once she learns that he is the expected Messiah that he's going to reveal to them their community how they can now be with the father how they no longer need to be separated from the father she carries this good news you know to them later so we see that in the in the verses that come later maybe we can just touch upon a few of the other things that I mentioned over here verse 22 where Jesus says you Samaritans worship what you do not know we worship what we do know for salvation is from the Jews okay so when she raises this question of which is the correct religion the people who are going to Jerusalem and doing their worship there are they the true worshipers or us you know we have we have we have been worshipping on the altar which was built at Mount Gerizim by Moses well actually Moses instructs Joshua to build it on Mount Gerizim so it was actually physically built by Joshua and not by Moses but anyway that it was commissioned by Moses so so she says you know we are doing it this year because Moses told us that we should worship here but then your people they are worshipping at Jerusalem which is the right religion and Jesus says you are worshipping a religion which you are not have not even fully understood it's you know he says you Samaritans worship what you do not know because the Torah was passed down to the Samaritan community as well but what happened was that they began to add many of their own writings to the Torah they brought in all kinds of extra things which they attached to their version of the Torah so finally along the way they lost the true religion altogether so the worship which they had even though they called Jacob their father they had lost the true faith and so Jesus says you are not even very sure about what you are worshipping but we Jewish people we know because we still have holding on to the true scriptures we are aware of what from where salvation comes and he tells salvation is from the Jews because salvation is going to be only through the Messiah you know so he he clarifies all these details for her so we see that one of the main persons to whom the gospel I mean one of the main people from the Samaritan community to whom the full gospel is kind of very clearly presented it's it's this lady the one person whom nobody would ever have selected to be the pioneer who's going to now carry this into her entire community and God chooses somebody like that because a person like that with that kind of a background now goes forth and starts sharing and says this was what was revealed to me and he actually spoke and told me who I am even though he could not have physically known that so when she would go forth and you know start saying these things people would sit up and listen because someone like her is now sharing these truths so the Lord knows what actually is going on in each in person's hearts we should never just judge you know and say oh this person is behaves like this dresses up like this so they must be like this we do not know the hunger that is there in that heart we do not know how much they have been seeking for the truth so the Lord is the one who can lead us you know to those right people where we can share these truths so these are some learnings that come out you know for us from from this portion so moving very quickly into the next passage which is the healing that takes place at the pool of Bethesda so here we see in verses 1 to 7 that at this particular pool there was a kind of myth or legend that was attached to this pool people believed that whenever the waters in this pool got shaken and stirred they said that it's because some angel has come down and he is stirring up the waters and so the legend began that if anybody can get into the pool at that particular point of time when this waters are getting stirred up it will lead to healing now there's nothing in the scriptures in our Bible mentioned you know no details regarding this so most probably this was just simply a legend it was just probably just a myth why did the waters get stirred like that once in a while due to some kind of underwater activity I mean I don't know you know I mean the pressure builds up in one portion of the underwater underground springs and then that may lead to you know certain movement of the water in another place so it may have they may have been natural scientific geographical reasons why the waters got stirred at certain points of time most probably there was no angel involved because it would be rather mean for God to do that you know so only those who can be on their feet and come running at that point of time would receive healing healing was never meant to be a competition it is something that is given as a free gift free 100 percent free I mean you don't earn healing it's just something that is given to you so here a person who's you know paralyzed or lame or something would never be able to compete in this competition so no I am pretty sure there was no angel coming down to stir up the waters this was just a legend which had come up among the people and so because of that legend you would have a lot of people who are disabled and sick coming over there with the hope that maybe something will happen and so into this kind of a setting you have the physician walking in the healer you know Jesus Christ he walks into this place filled with sick people and he has many things to do there are other places that he will have to go and minister he cannot you know establish camp over here and keep attending to the sick over here he just does one thing he chooses one person in the same way the Samaritan community he chose one lady shared the you know the details to her gave the response which to her and then moved on the same way over here he chooses one person in this particular setting he chooses again a person who has not had a good background we see this later on in the passage we don't get to know about this detail right now but later on we get to know that this was a man who had been living in sin and I don't know what kind of a sin he had been living in something that was so terrible that it opened up the door to Satan to come and control his life to such an extent that this man became paralyzed for 38 years I mean that is quite terrible so whatever this man had done in his past was so terribly sinful that he was reduced to this state because of the work of the evil one in his life and Jesus chooses such a person to do this miracle so everyone else over there would have been watching when this you know takes place of course initially when Jesus comes over there maybe they might not have paid much attention but when a man who has been lying over there for 38 years just gets up picks up his mattress and starts walking they all would have observed noted and Jesus is clearly sending across a message he's saying look I have now showed you who I am now how many of you are willing to come to me you know for not only physical healing but also for no spiritual healing so in each place that Jesus goes to he's led by the Holy Spirit to approach certain people say certain things to them do certain miracles and then he moves on to the next place you know because now we can have you know we can have access to thousands of people through the internet and all of that in those days Jesus had to literally physically go from place to place so he would just pick a few people convey the message move on to the next place and then those people would go out and start spreading it you know to the others so that's how the ministry was done at that point of time so here we see Jesus speaking to this man who has been paralyzed for 38 years and he says in verse 6 Jesus says do you want to get well and we have all kinds of you know interpretations for this verse some people say that he was so happy and comfortable over there that he did not even want to be healed that does sound a bit you know vague why on earth would someone want to be lying over there next to a pool helpless for 38 years I think you know Jesus was just trying to make a point he says you know do you want to get well and that man says I have no one to help me into the pool you see if someone could help me get into the pool then yes I would be well and so here you know Jesus saying you don't need someone to come and help you into the well I am here I will take care no just one small lesson that can come out of this even as we know go in for our break you may not have anyone to help you in that situation that you are in that situation that you are in is so terrible and so hopeless that maybe you have no one to help you but in such a situation you still have Jesus so whether you you may not have people who can help you to go and get your help but when Jesus himself is there you don't need the people you know so Jesus you know he reaches out to him and he helps him we look at the details when we get back from our break so at 10 o'clock if we can log back in that would be good thank you