33. While I Am Coming

While I Am Coming

While I am coming another steppeth down before me. John 5. 7.

Many things can happen “while I am coming.” The man who spoke these words had been “coming” for thirty-eight years, and he was farther from being healed now than when he first tried. Many people are “coming” to Christ, but they never get there. They simply ease their conscience with the false hope that some day they will be “made whole.” How foolish to believe that if twenty, thirty, or forty years have not been time enough, another ten years will bring them there.

“While I am coming another steppeth down before me.” There were too many interferences for the man in our text. His associates were a hindrance to him. He no doubt enjoyed their fellowship, but they thought only of themselves at the times when the pool’s water was best for healing. They came between him and the blessing, causing him to lose out each time. How often it happens that the very ones with whom we associate can at the crucial moment step between us and our Saviour! Many are the people that are “coming” but “another steppeth down before.”
“While I am coming,” others are being blest. The man had seen one after another healed and restored to a normal life, while he still had to linger on. Others had received what he wanted. They had been made happy with a great joy “while he was still coming.” They were now useful while he was still useless. What a sobering lesson for us to consider! In our day also one individual after another is touched by the resurrection power of God and is “made whole” while others are still “coming.” Many are now serving the Lord in some field of Christian service “while I am coming.”

“While I am coming,” I am in a state of misery and unhappiness. Sin has dominion over me. I am a slave. Habits control me. All efforts to get free are useless. Fear has taken hold of me. I fear what people will say. I fear death. The future is dark. “0 wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?” (Romans 7. 24). What a terrible position to be in!
“While I am coming,” life is quickly going by. For thirty eight years this man had been coming, and still he had never come. The best part of his life was now gone, never to come back to him. “While I am coming,” youth takes wings and flies away. “While I am coming,” middle age passes by. “While I am coming,” old age creeps upon me. “While I am coming,” the death angel overtakes me. Listen carefully, Jesus is speaking. “Depart from me ye cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25. 41). All this can happen “while I am coming.”

“While I am coming,” Jesus appears on the scene. What a blessed day! Thirty-eight years of struggling are ended immediately. Now he needs no longer look to the pool for a blessing, nor to fellow men for help, but rather look up to Him who alone can “save to the uttermost them that draw near unto God through him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them” (Hebrews 7. 25). How foolish to look to some far distant pool that you can never reach! How useless to look to selfish friends for help! How hopeless to look at yourself and see how much worse you are becoming! Let us do as the man in our text. Look up to Jesus Christ, “for God commendeth his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then being now justified by his blood, shall we be saved from