The Crucifixion shows us that Jesus can empathize with us in our suffering, he can show us how to live in it, and he has won victory over it.

Jesus our eternal God possesses the eternal treasures of heaven. Jesus has eternal victory, eternal authority, eternal glory, and eternal life, and he shares these treasures with us.

We need not be anxious because we are going to the father, following of the son, filled with the Spirit. 

Jesus loves you enough to tell you no 

Jesus loves you enough to let you doubt 

Jesus loves you enough to be with you in your suffering  

Jesus loves you enough to show you his glory 

Jesus loves you enough to lay down his life for you

The Good Shepherd sacrifices to save, shelter, and secure His sheep.

God sees us, he loves us, and then he does the unimaginable in our lives that we might believe in him, worship him, and tell others about him.

Pastor Tom Hooe brilliantly discusses this difficult conversation between Jesus and the Jews of his day, and challenges us to consider how the same questions of their day are questions for us as well.

Jesus is inviting us to follow him on the greatest adventure of all time. It won’t be easy, but it will be glorious. Hardship will come, but you’ll never face it alone. To paraphrase Giuseppi Garibaldi, Jesus is calling “Let him who loves me with his heart and not with his lips only, follow me!” You will find in following Jesus not only a great savior, but a great adventure, a great life. An eternal, abundant, life of adventure is found in following Jesus, nowhere else, no one else can offer such a life.

The purpose of the signs of Jesus in the book of John is that we might believe, that we might have life. Not that we might raise from the dead, but that we might have life in the name of Jesus. 

There are two reasons this is important to remember. 1) If resurrection is our hope then we have to wait until after we die to experience it, but the hope of life in Jesus begins now. 2) Resurrection isn’t always even good news. According to this passage some will be resurrected not to life, but to judgment. For those, the prospect of resurrection is not a hopeful or comforting thought. Those who die without following Jesus will resurrect to an eternity of separation from Jesus an eternity utterly separated from love and goodness. All that to say, resurrection isn’t our hope, life is.

As we examine the story of Jesus' healing at the Pool of Bethesda, we consider the parallel in our own life. while Jesus surely offers physical healing, there is a far better thing that he offers as well, forgiveness of sins.