1 Afterward Jesus returned to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish holy days.
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Inside the city, near the Sheep Gate, was the pool of Bethesda, 1 with five covered porches.
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Crowds of sick people - blind, lame, or paralyzed - lay on the porches. 2
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One of the men lying there had been sick for thirty-eight years.
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When Jesus saw him and knew he had been ill for a long time, he asked him, “Would you like to get well?”
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“I can’t, sir,” the sick man said, “for I have no one to put me into the pool when the water bubbles up. Someone else always gets there ahead of me.”
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Jesus told him, “Stand up, pick up your mat, and walk!”
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Instantly, the man was healed! He rolled up his sleeping mat and began walking! But this miracle happened on the Sabbath,
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so the Jewish leaders objected. They said to the man who was cured, “You can’t work on the Sabbath! The law doesn’t allow you to carry that sleeping mat!”
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But he replied, “The man who healed me told me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’”
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“Who said such a thing as that?” they demanded.
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The man didn’t know, for Jesus had disappeared into the crowd.
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But afterward Jesus found him in the Temple and told him, “Now you are well; so stop sinning, or something even worse may happen to you.”
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Then the man went and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who had healed him.
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So the Jewish leaders began harassing 3 Jesus for breaking the Sabbath rules.
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But Jesus replied, “My Father is always working, and so am I.”