The Greatest Gift Ever

Wednesday, December 24th, 2025

8:10 am

Good morning! Merry Christmas Eve! This morning I am in John 5:1-15. After Jesus answered the religious leaders question about fasting, He went to Jerusalem for one of the customary Jewish holidays. Inside the city, was the pool of Bethesda. Around the pool were 5 covered porches. Crowds of sick people would sit there waiting for the pool to bubble and they would go in hoping to be healed. There was a paralyzed man, lying on a mat there. He had been paralyzed for 38 years. Jesus looked at the man and knew he had been sick for a long time. He went to the man and asked him if he would like to get well. The man told Jesus that he couldn't because he had no one to put him in the water when it bubbled, and other people would get there before him. Jesus told the man to stand up, pick up his mat, and walk. The man was instantly healed, and he rolled his mat up, and began walking. This miracle happened on a Sabbath day, and when the Pharisees saw the man walking with his mat, they told the man that he couldn't work on the Sabbath. That the law doesn't allow him to carry his sleeping mat. The man told them that the one who healed him, told him to pick up his mat and walk. They asked him who told him that. The man did not know and could not show them because Jesus had disappeared in the crowd. Afterward, Jesus found the man in the Temple and told him that now that he is well, he needed to stop sinning, or something even worse would happen to him.

I find it crazy that even though the Pharisees and religious leaders seen all the amazing things Jesus was doing to help people, their hearts were too hard to believe. Staying stuck in their ridiculous laws they had created. Because I don't know about you, but I wouldn't consider carrying a mat as working.

The man at the pool had been ill for 38 years. He had no hope that he would ever be healed. But Jesus changed that. Jesus healed him of his illness, of his hopelessness. We can be so stuck in our heads, in our illnesses, in our sins, self pity, whatever it may be, that we lose hope. Feeling like life will never change, or get better. That we will be in that same hopelessness forever. But Jesus, the greatest gift of all time, came to earth to give us new hope. Hope in Him. Jesus then told the man to go and sin no more. Now that the man had been healed, Jesus wanted him to live in the new life that he had. Not going back to the old ways, the old sinful ways, but a new changed life. When Jesus heals us, saves us, He wants us to do the same. Go and sin no more. Live the new life that He has given you. Don't go back to the old life, with the old sins that trap us into the same place we were. Live changed.

Have you received the greatest gift of all time, Jesus? Jesus is our hope. Jesus is the one who came to save us and give us a new life. If you have, have you turned away from your old sin, or have you fallen back into the same routine as before? Jesus has so much better for you. He doesn't want you to stay stuck in the old routine, the old sins. He wants to give you a new life. A life that has hope. A life that has meaning. Ask Jesus to help renew your life. He came to earth for you. To help you. He loves you. Jesus is the reason we celebrate Christmas. Christmas is about celebrating Jesus, and why He came to earth to begin with, to give us hope and peace. Don't forget that as you celebrate tonight and tomorrow.