John 5: Waiting for an Angel or Seeing Jesus at Bethesda

Introduction

Olivier Favre opens his message at the Centre de Vie with a scene from the World Cup. A German player, known for his faith, celebrated a goal by miming the gesture of laying down his crown. At the end of the match, two German players and four players from the opposing team stood hand in hand to pray together. This witness, beyond the rivalry, moved the journalists, and it moved the pastor.

Then he opens the Gospel of John at chapter 5: the healing at the pool of Bethesda. Sick people had been waiting there for years for an angel to stir the water. Jesus walks right through the middle of them. The question of the message is in its title: wait for an angel, or see Jesus?

At the heart of the sermon is a word of Jesus: "the Son can do nothing of himself, but what he sees the Father doing" (John 5:19). For Olivier Favre, this is an invitation to ask the Lord every day: "What are you doing today?"

Outline of the Message

1. Bethesda, a Place of Waiting

Olivier Favre has been to Bethesda, in Jerusalem, several times. A church has stood there for centuries. During a family visit, his niece began to sing, and the priest encouraged them to keep going: "this is a place to worship God."
The text places the pool near the sheep gate, with five porches. The pastor points out that these were five colonnades, not five gates.
These pools were not a leisure pool. They were more likely used for temple rituals.
Under the porches lay a great multitude of sick, blind, lame, and paralyzed people, "waiting for the moving of the water; for an angel went down at certain times into the pool, and stirred up the water" (John 5:3-4).

2. An Angel "at Certain Times," and Only One Healed

"At certain times": how often is that? About once a year, perhaps a little more, the preacher suggests. That raises questions: why did this angel come only at certain times? It is a mystery, and above all it is unfair.
The man in the story has been sick for thirty-eight years. Jesus asks him: "Do you want to be made well?" He answers: "Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I'm coming, another steps down before me" (John 5:6-7).
Olivier Favre compares it to a meeting where an anointed speaker prays for the sick: ten people are already waiting, the speaker leaves at 10:30, and you, the eleventh, do not receive your healing. At Bethesda it was even more extreme: only one healing was possible.
He sees an analogy with today. Many people wait for healing through esoteric practices, secrets, techniques, and healers. Here it is an angel, but deep down it is not very different: people wait for years because a few testimonies are circulating.

3. Eyes Fixed on the Water, While Jesus Was There

There was another way. At that time, Jesus was healing the sick in the temple and in Galilee. Anyone who had not been obsessed with this pool and this "never punctual" angel could have been healed by coming to him.
The preacher quotes Spurgeon, the famous London preacher: a blindness had taken hold of these people. Jesus was there, he could have healed them, but none of them was looking for him. Their eyes were fixed on the water.
God had granted a grace to this place, and there had been healings. But God was preparing something else, and these sick people remained attached to the old way, however beautiful it was.
Hence the question the pastor asks himself: "Where am I? Am I doing what I see the Father doing, or am I stuck in the old way of doing things?" The old anointing, the old habits, what I read, heard, or lived five, ten, or fifteen years ago.

4. The Son Does What He Sees the Father Doing

The center of the message is John 5:19-20: "the Son can do nothing of himself, but what he sees the Father doing. For whatever things he does, these the Son also does likewise. For the Father has affection for the Son, and shows him all things that he himself does."
Olivier Favre says he reads the Bible much more slowly than before and sometimes stays on a single verse for several days. Jesus does not simply tell the sick man to stand up: "Arise, take up your mat, and walk" (John 5:8). The paralyzed man does it. There is an act of faith.
The healing takes place on a Sabbath, which upsets the Pharisees. They had defined some thirty kinds of forbidden work in order to please God. But from a good principle, one slides into legalism.
The pastor's example: he is asked whether it is permitted to drink tea during a fast. His answer: the Lord looks at the heart, everyone has their own convictions, and what matters is not the formula but closeness to God.
When Jesus says he does only what the Father wants, it is not that he cannot do anything else: it is a choice. He decided to act with that perspective.
For two or three years, a small group has prayed for revival every Wednesday at noon. The pastor prays for more miracles and healings. But he discovers that the key lies elsewhere: the closer you are to the person of Jesus, in intimacy and communion, the more you enter into what God is doing. His prayer: "What are you doing today, Father, at the Centre de Vie, that I have not yet seen?"

5. The Divine Appointments God Prepares

A brother who has attended the Centre de Vie, a farmer and very busy business owner, wanted to refocus on the Kingdom of God and make himself available to the Holy Spirit. A sales representative who came to see him had half of his face paralyzed. He took his courage in both hands and offered to pray for him.
The doctors spoke of months, even years, for any possible recovery. A few days later, this man sent a message: a warmth had come over his face and he was healed. The brother was then able to lead him to Jesus.
"It is never easy to offer," this brother admits. A sister on the team does the same in her workplace in La Chaux-de-Fonds: it is rare for people to refuse prayer.
Like Jesus' encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4), there are divine appointments. The pastor asks the question: what appointment is God preparing for you this summer, where you will be a channel of the Holy Spirit to touch someone, give a word, offer advice, or bring healing?
He wants to be so close to Jesus that he does not have to force things. The Son constantly looks toward the Father. Love makes him cooperate in the Father's work: he beholds God's will in heaven and carries it out on earth.
In an anxious world, full of unknowns, God is at work. Rather than trying to find out how much time is left before the end, he wants to ask: "Lord, what is your prayer for Israel, for Neuchâtel, for my workplace, my school, my university?" God placed you there, and it is never by chance.
Jesus feeds crowds of five thousand and more, and at the same time he stops for a man who has been sick for thirty-eight years, for a woman with a flow of blood for twelve years, for a Syrophoenician woman. The pastor wants this heart, both for the crowd and for each person.
He shares some news: a Ukrainian group supported by the Centre de Vie in La Chaux-de-Fonds has become a small church, with about twenty adults and a dozen children every Saturday. More than thirty baptisms are planned this summer, including a dozen the following Sunday, among them four Ukrainians.

6. Letting Yourself Be Worked On in Your Words and Attitudes

Unlike the Lord, we are not without sin. Doing what the Father does means letting yourself be worked on, challenged, and transformed on the inside.
Olivier Favre tells of a meeting with friends from French-speaking Switzerland. He found what a pastor present had answered him hard to hear. A member of the team pointed out that, given what he had just said to him, it was rather understandable.
In his political involvement, which he calls very modest, he gives his opinion on just about everything, then wonders whether that was reasonable. What is right to say or not to say, in politics, in your business, or in the Church?
He quotes Proverbs: "A fool shows his annoyance the same day, but one who overlooks an insult is prudent" (Proverbs 12:16); "He who spares his words has knowledge. He who is even tempered is a man of understanding" (Proverbs 17:27).
What he is learning: to encourage, again and again, sincerely. He congratulated a committee chair on a very well-written report and a department head on the way he leads, and he saw that it touched them.
If you are full of irritation, bitterness, stress, worry, and therefore selfishness, there is little chance that you will see God's anointing. But if you are at peace thanks to Jesus, you can even be tired.
Jesus was exhausted at Jacob's well, in Samaria, while the disciples went to buy food. In that weariness, the anointing was there. At the end, he will say that doing the will of his Father nourished him (John 4:34).

7. God Has Provided Many Paths of Healing

The elders can anoint a sick person with oil (James 5:14-15). For the pastor, the biblical notion of an elder is broad: pastors, group leaders, council members, all those who are responsible for the flock.
"They will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover" (Mark 16:18): without restriction, every disciple can learn.
The gift of healing is mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12: someone who, more than another, has this gift.
Jesus often healed in response to the person's faith, and sometimes in response to the faith of others, as with the paralytic.
God also heals through medical treatment, a balanced diet, and medication. We should not neglect them out of an obsession with the supernatural: this too is a divine blessing.
If we do not live this in the Church, among brothers and sisters, how can we live it outside? The pastor prays that the anointing of healing will flow this summer everywhere you meet sick people, and that you too will stop "at the edge of this pool."
The man of Bethesda was at once full of hope and full of despair: a miracle was possible, but "never for me." Today, you can come out of that state and come to Jesus, for your finances, your marriage, your family, your work, your addictions. The message ends with a time of worship and prayer for the sick.

Key Takeaways

At Bethesda, the sick had their eyes fixed on the water, while Jesus was passing through their midst.
A grace received yesterday can become a habit that keeps you from seeing what God is doing today.
Jesus chose to do only what he saw the Father doing. The key is not a formula, but intimacy with him.
God prepares divine appointments. It often takes courage to offer prayer.
God heals in many ways, supernatural or not, including through medicine.

Personal Application

What "pool" have you been waiting for so long that you no longer look toward Jesus himself?
Are you still living on what you read, heard, or experienced five, ten, or fifteen years ago, or are you asking the Lord what he is doing today?
In your workplace, your school, or your neighborhood, what is God's prayer, and what divine appointment might he be preparing for you?
What in your words or attitudes, irritation, bitterness, or worry, is holding back God's work through you?
Whom can you sincerely encourage this week?

Verses Cited

Frequently Asked Questions

Why were the sick at Bethesda waiting for the moving of the water?

According to John 5, an angel went down at certain times into the pool and stirred up the water, and the first person to step in was healed. Olivier Favre stresses that only one healing was possible each time and that no one knew when the angel would come. Meanwhile, Jesus was healing those who came to him.

What does "the Son does only what he sees the Father doing" mean?

For Olivier Favre, John 5:19 describes a choice of intimacy more than an impossibility: Jesus looks constantly toward the Father and joins in what he is doing. For the believer, the key is to draw closer to Jesus and ask him what he is doing today, instead of staying attached to yesterday's ways of doing things.

By what means does God heal according to this message?

The preacher mentions several: anointing with oil by the elders (James 5), the laying on of hands by any disciple (Mark 16), the gift of healing (1 Corinthians 12), the faith of the person or that of others, and also medical care, which he calls a divine blessing not to be neglected.