Jesus Heals on the Sabbath

Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, which is called in the
​Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches. 
In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered,
waiting for the moving of the water. 
For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then
first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had. 
And a certain man was there, which had an infirmity thirty and eight years. 
When Jesus saw him lie, and knew that he had been now a long time in that case, he saith unto him, Wilt thou be made whole? 
The impotent man answered him, Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me. 
Jesus saith unto him, Rise, take up thy bed, and walk. 
And immediately the man was made whole, and took up his bed, and walked: and on the
same day was the sabbath. 
The Jews therefore said unto him that was cured, It is the sabbath day: it is not lawful for
thee to carry thy bed. 
He answered them, He that made me whole, the same said unto me, Take up thy bed, and walk. 
Then asked they him, What man is that which said unto thee, Take up thy bed, and walk? 
And he that was healed wist not who it was: for Jesus had conveyed himself away,
a multitude being in that place. 
Afterward Jesus findeth him in the temple, and said unto him, Behold, thou art made whole:
sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee. 
The man departed, and told the Jews that it was Jesus, which had made him whole. 
And therefore did the Jews persecute Jesus, and sought to slay him, because he had done
these things on the sabbath day. 
But Jesus answered them, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. Joh 5:2-17
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Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the sabbath,
​but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God. Joh 5:18

​Bethesda means house of mercy. The pool was a crowded spot, and the poor crippled man had been thirty eight years without finding a place in it.

In the foregoing incident our Lord not only healed the sufferer after thirty-eight years of deferred hope, but did so on the Sabbath, and bade him carry his bed home. This clashed with Pharisaic prescriptions; but the man was of course right to infer that He who would work so great a miracle was greater than either the Pharisee or mere ritual. The religious leaders of that time, like those of all time, could not tolerate the setting up of an authority superior to their own, by one who was outside their ranks; and they accused Jesus of Sabbath-breaking. His judges, however, were little prepared for His line of defense, which revealed the depths of our Lord’s inner consciousness. First, He spoke of God as His own Father, making Himself God’s equal. 
Php 2:6  Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: 
​Second, He said that God was working through His life and had energized Him to perform that miracle of healing. It was not His own deed but the Father’s in Him and through Him. If, then, they condemned it, they were in direct collision with the Infinite One, from whom the Sabbath law had originally come. (F.B. Meyer)

Blind Accuser's
Evil designs against Jesus

​Here for the first time in this Gospel history “the shadow of the cross” falls athwart our path. Hitherto our Lord had appeared to the Jews more in the light of a prophet with revolutionary ideas. But as in His activity He came into clearer opposition to many of their traditional customs and ideas, and especially now when He made a claim which, were it admitted, would entitle Him to make such changes as He had given an indication of in His activity, in their blind hatred they resolved to kill Him. This was, as we may say, “the beginning of the end.” The evil seed, sown by the wicked one, and permitted to lodge in the hearts of those Jews, began then to germinate and grow up, until at last those miserable men were filled with its bitter fruit. (Preacher's Homiletical)

Jesus Is Equal with God

The more to kill him - The answer of Jesus was suited greatly to irritate them. He did not deny what he had done, but he “added” to that what he well knew would highly offend them. That he should claim the right of dispensing with the law, and affirm that, in regard to its observance, he was in the same condition with God, was eminently suited to enrage them, and he doubtless knew that it might endanger his life. We may learn from his answer:
1. That we are not to keep back truth because it may endanger us.
2. That we are not to keep back truth because it will irritate and enrage sinners. The fault is not in the “truth,” but in the “sinner.”
3. That when any one portion of truth enrages hypocrites, they will be enraged the more they hear.
Had broken the sabbath - They supposed he had broken it.

Making himself equal with God - This shows that, in the view of the Jews, the name Son of God, or that calling God his Father, implied equality with God. The Jews were the best interpreters of their own language, and as Jesus did not deny the correctness of their interpretations, it follows that he meant to be so understood. See Joh_10:29-38. The interpretation of the Jews was a very natural and just one. He not only said that God was his Father, but he said that he had the same right to work on the Sabbath that God had; that by the same authority, and in the same manner, he could dispense with the obligation of the day. They had now two pretenses for seeking to kill him - one for making himself equal with God, which they considered blasphemy, and the other for violating the Sabbath. For each of these the law denounced death, Num_15:35; Lev_24:11-14.  (Albert Barnes)