New Testament Stories

The Lame Man at the Pool

And when He had come out of the boat, immediately a man from the tombs with an unclean spirit met Him. Mark 5:2

                              Jesus went to Jerusalem for a feast. Now in Jerusalem near the sheep gate, there is a pool called Bethesda, with five porches around it. On these porches lay sick and blind people and people whose arms and legs could not move.

      The sick people were waiting there for the water to move. An angel from God went down every now and then and made the water bubble and move. Then anyone who stepped into the water right after that would be healed.

     One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. Jesus knew that he had been laying there for a very long time, and he went to talk to him.

     "Do you want to be healed?" Jesus asked him.

     "Sir," said the man, "The trouble is that I don't have anyone to put me into the pool. So when the water is stirred up, other people get there when I am trying to climb down the steps."

     Jesus said, "Get up! Pick up your mat and walk." And the man picked up the things that he had been lying on, and walked away, healed. 

     Now it was the Sabbath day, when the people of Israel are supposed to rest. So some say to the man who was healed, "Why are you carrying that mat on the Sabbath?"

     "The man that healed me said to pick up my mat and walk," he told them.

     "Who was he," they asked. But the man didn't know who Jesus was. And by know Jesus was out of sight. Later Jesus found him in the temple. "You are well now," said Jesus. "Do not sin, something worse could happen to you!"

      The man went away then and told the people that had talked to him that it was Jesus who had healed him.