The Canvas of Glory | John 5:1-13; 9:1-7 | Pastor Bob Erbig

All right, well, good morning, church.

Welcome back to week five of our series.

We're calling Upside Down Glory, as you just saw.

We've been unpacking what Scripture says about disability and the kingdom of God.

Now, during our time, we've looked at themes of dignity and advocacy and hospitality.

We've explored difficult questions about God's involvement in disability.

And this morning, what I'd like to do is return to that latter topic, studying a key passage in the discussion, John chapter 9, verses 1 to 7.

John 9:1–7

John 9, 1 to 7, we're also going to look at a scene in John chapter 5 this morning.

John 5 · chapter mention

Now I'm titling this message, The Canvas of Glory.

Now, the John 9 passage was and is very meaningful to my wife and I in our journey with our son Josiah, whom I've spoken about earlier in this series.

But today I would like to share a little bit more about that story.

Amanda and I had always spoken about having two to three uh kids, and we became pregnant with our oldest, uh Jenna, almost immediately after we started trying.

But the pregnancy wasn't the easiest, and yet we felt especially blessed when she was born, and so we gave her joy as her middle name.

But after Jenna, we felt the Lord leading us to try for a second, and we did not get pregnant immediately.

In fact, it took a while.

Almost two years of trying with multiple miscarriages, a very painful season, especially for my wife, who experienced that loss very acutely.

Then in the fall of 2019, a woman in our church, who many of you probably remember, Barbara Zellman, began praying for us.

You probably remember Barbara as the matriarch of NBC, teaching Sunday school for almost 70 years.

In fact, one Sunday she came up to Amanda and announced, as was her custom, I've been praying for you, and the Lord told me, not only will you get pregnant, but you're gonna have a boy.

True story.

Now, at that time, we didn't think much of it until a month later when I came home, and Amanda surprised me with this positive pregnancy test, and that was rather shocking because in that month we wouldn't have expected to get pregnant.

But God had different plans.

And so we were excited to go tell Barbara the following Sunday.

But as many of you know, I got a call a few days later that Barbara was found in her home, unconscious, and it was discovered that she had a brain bleed and would die a few days later.

Now, Amanda and I did have the chance to go visit her in the emergency room, and even though she was unconscious, we had the chance to thank her for her prayers and tell her that we were pregnant.

And I like to believe that she heard us before she went to be with Jesus.

And four weeks later we found out we were having a boy.

Now we were very excited that day.

Friends came over for an announcement, we had cake, um, and then we began the ultrasound process, and that was a long, hard journey.

At 12 weeks, the doctors identified some questions with his development, so they wanted us to come back at 16 weeks, uh, and they started to notice these skeletal malformations and began suggesting additional testing, and at that point we were rather shocked and uncertain about the future.

After that particular ultrasound appointment, I remember Amanda and I going back to our car where we spent some time crying and praying, and then Amanda asked a very honest question, and the question was this after all we've been through, after all the waiting and the praying and the joy, why would God allow this?

Why would God do this to us?

Did we do something wrong?

Now I know we're not the only people to ask that question, and it was in that moment that the Spirit brought John 9 3 to my mind.

And in it is the story, of course, this morning of Jesus' encounter with the man born blind.

And I shared it.

Jesus answered, It was not that this man sinned or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.

This happened so that the works of God could be displayed in his life, so that this man could be a canvas for God's glory.

Now, Josiah's life, like this man, has been exactly that.

At the beginning, there was a time we didn't think he would survive, but he did.

And I think he did because the church prayed.

He required a bone marrow transplant at 11 months old, which was a long, difficult experience, but he survived because the church prayed, and God received the glory.

But there's a tension in these moments.

For many of us, there's there's a dissonance in our minds because simultaneously we can know in our mind that it's for God's glory, and yet also be angry and sad and crushed and despondent.

And so we ask the same question my wife did.

Why did God do this?

Did we, I, do we do we do something wrong?

It reveals something in our hearts.

Now I want to add a caveat here because there's many people I know who get this news and their child does not survive.

They go through the entire pregnancy hoping upon hope that their child will survive, only to experience devastating pain and loss.

And that scenario is tragic and heartbreaking.

But I do believe that child will be waiting for you in glory when all things are restored.

Now, our story in John 5 captures the issue well.

In this story, we mean a man sick, lying in the hospital of his day, and we're told that he's been sick for 38 years.

And Jesus sees him and asks a question.

It says, When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, Do you want to be healed?

Do you want to be healed?

So here we have another disabled person, disabled for a long time.

And Jesus' question is designed to reveal what lies in this person's heart.

He wanted to know if he saw Jesus for who he truly is.

Because you see, friends, when we encounter disability, whether it's in our lives or in the lives of others, our response opens a window to our soul.

It reveals our desires and exposes our relationship to God.

It's done that in my own life.

And I invite you this morning to ask God to speak to your heart today.

And that's what we're gonna talk about as we ask the question: why does God allow disability?

Why does God allow disability?

And we'll explore that answer in three scenes in our text.

First, we're gonna look at the pool of Bethesda.

Second, we're gonna look at the pool of Siloam.

And then finally, we'll see the light of the world.

Two pools, but one Savior.

And so I hope that you'll see God's canvas of glory in a fresh way today.

So let's pray, and then we will look at the text.

Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for your grace and for your mercy.

Lord, I thank you for everybody who's here today.

It's not a mistake, Lord.

The people that are here, that are listening, that are maybe listening to this later on, I pray that you would, that you, Holy Spirit, would come and speak to their hearts, speak to my heart, even as I as I proclaim your word, Lord, that you would help us to see your purposes even in the tension, Lord, that you would help us to surrender even when things are difficult, and in the midst of that to point people to you.

Lord Jesus, may you get the glory.

We ask that in your name.

Amen.

Amen.

So if this was a Charles Dickens novel, this message could be entitled A Tale of Two Pools.

Because the contrast between the responses in John 5 and John 9 are rather fascinating.

So let's dive into the John 5 scene, verse 1.

After this, there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

Now there is in Jerusalem by the sheepgate a pool in Aramaic called Bethesda, which was which has five rooved colonnades.

In these lay a multitude of invalids, blind, lame, and paralyzed.

And one man was there who had been an invalid for thirty eight years.

Okay, so let's let's set the backdrop here.

In verse 1, we read there was this feast of the Jews, and Jesus went to Jerusalem.

Now you'll also notice the feast is not named, which has caused a great debate amongst scholars who proposed everything from Passover to the Day of Atonement to everything in between.

Scholar D.A.

Carson offers a better explanation.

He says the unnamed feast's lack of identification suggests it functions merely as a historical marker for Jesus' Jerusalem presence rather than any kind of thematic significance.

So the important piece here is that Jesus is in Jerusalem and he goes to the sheep gate, which is where the animals were brought in for sacrifice in the temple.

And the pool of Bethesda is near that sheep gate, but they're not the same place.

It's a significant location, though.

Bethesda in Aramaic means house of mercy, house of mercy, and it was a pool of mineral water.

Now, in the ancient world, people with disabilities gathered around this pool to seek healing and relief because the water was believed to have curative properties for various diseases.

In fact, the popular belief was that the first person into the pool, after the water stirred up, would be healed of whatever disease they had.

Now it's the current location of the Church of St.

Anne, where an archaeological discovery in 1888 confirmed that five-colonnade structure that John describes.

The discovery also revealed there were two pools, which you can see in modern day, courtesy of Jeff Callender on the screen there.

And they served complementary purposes.

Scholar John Edy notes the pool of Bethesda had remarkable medicinal properties, it was believed, and it made a common resort for invalids, for those for whose accommodation porches or small apartments were provided.

So there was this kind of community of disabled people around these two pools.

But I want you to see the sad irony in these verses, that despite Bethesda being the house of mercy, it was filled with people in need of healing.

The blind, the lame, the paralyzed, the invalids.

The place of healing was actually a location where for many mercy had run dry.

It was a location, it felt more like a location of outcasts.

Now, if you think about that word, and if you split it apart, you can see that these people, these invalids, are invalid.

They have no worth in the world's eyes.

People would avoid them, they would overlook them.

This word right here comes from the Latin invalidus, which literally means not strong.

The word does mean not valid.

Invalid or invalid was originally used in military context for soldiers who were unfit for service, and then it was later replied to people with disabilities.

And so it's worth us asking: who do we treat as invalid in our lives and world?

Are these people waiting at the pool to meet Jesus?

And we read that one person is sitting here for 38 years.

In fact, if you if you underline that and highlight that, it's super important because 38 years has a spiritual significance.

It's the same time frame that's mentioned in Deuteronomy chapter 2, verse 4, where we are told that Israel wandered in the wilderness for 38 years after they were at Kadesh Barnea until the generations of warriors died.

Deuteronomy 2:4

So there's this theological parallel.

Israel is wandering in the desert for 38 years with an inability to enter the promised blessings.

And now this man, who's been waiting in what I'm sure feels like wilderness, for 38 years, ends his wandering as he meets someone who can change his life.

Look at verse 6.

When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, Do you want to be healed?

Now, what do you notice about this verse?

First, Jesus sees this man, even though the world overlooks him.

This is so often what Jesus does.

Second, he knew he had been there a long time.

Now, people with disabilities, I imagine, resonate with this language, especially the length.

They have to wait for people to notice them.

Others have to learn to be patient and wait for them.

You can sit in the doctor's office for hours in hospitals waiting for care.

Even though you might get that care, you have to wait for test results and diagnoses and follow-ups.

Keeping up with the insurance requirements is a full-time job for caregivers.

Jesus knows about our long time, and he asks a question.

Do you want to be healed?

Now, what is he asking here?

Well, we might automatically assume physical healing, but is that what Jesus is getting at?

See, we know this man had been ill for 38 years, unable to move on his own.

And I want to pause for a moment and just consider the length of 38 years.

It's a long time.

Okay, so so we are in the year 2026.

If you were to back up 38 years, you'd be in 1988.

Ronald Reagan was still president.

I remember 1988.

Do I have anybody else out there, any of my 80s kids?

Okay.

More hands in the first service.

All right.

I see that hand.

I uh you know, we were the people that were binging Super Mario Brothers on the original Nintendo.

All right.

Oregon Trail was still in green.

And you you you you you moved with the space bar.

In fact, I remember I died of dysentery a lot of times playing that game.

This was the era of the Wonder Years and Scrunchies and Skid Pants.

This front row is like, what are you talking about?

But the jets were still terrible.

Thirty-eight years is a long time, is my point.

And notice that no one has helped him.

He's not made it to the pool, to the healing water.

What does he say in verse 7?

Look at this.

He says, The sick man answered him, Sir, I have no one to put me in the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I'm going, another steps down before me.

So he's saying, My situation seems hopeless.

I can't reach the water.

Now it was believed that an angel would stir the waters, even though there's no textual evidence for that.

But that was the common belief.

Other possibilities are that the stirring of the water resulted from bubbling up from beneath the surface.

It was a little a little a little well spring.

Or it would collect rainwater from the northern pool, and it would go to the southern pool.

In other words, it's likely that the water was being stirred by natural hydraulic systems.

But it was believed again, if you were the first in the water when it was stirred, you might be healed.

But the sick man never made it.

Then Jesus arrives, who would later make the statement in John 7, verse 37, that if anyone thirst, let him come to me and drink, whoever believes in me, as the scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.

John 7:37

And so I think the question under Jesus' question to this man is do you see me?

Do you see who I truly am?

It's a diagnostic question.

What's going on with the sick man?

Well, two observations I think can be made.

First, some point out that he appears to have a victim mentality.

He makes an excuse because he doesn't really want to be healed.

That this condition has now become this man's identity, crushed by a system that doesn't work.

And it reveals that he stopped hoping.

Second, his statement also reveals that this man needed both spiritual and physical healing.

And so often we pray for physical healing, but it's when the soul is healed spiritually, when we see Jesus and trust in Jesus, that that we then have we can tap into the power that can allow us to face anything in life.

And I think that's what Jesus is getting at.

And in his grace, Jesus offers him something better.

Look at verse 8.

Jesus said to him, Get up, take up your bed and walk.

And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked.

So Bethesda, the house of mercy, was not merciful to this man until Jesus showed up in his life.

Jesus stirred the spiritual waters to awaken this man's heart.

Now, if you read the rest of the chapter, the story gets a little more interesting and complex, but I'm going to summarize for time.

First, this healing takes place on the Sabbath, and the Jewish leaders notice this healing and they confront the man.

But they don't want to celebrate this man's healing.

They're outraged that he was healed in the incorrect way on the incorrect day.

Second, they ask him, Who healed you?

Who healed you?

Surprisingly, he can't answer.

And it reveals that he didn't fully see or embrace Jesus.

Now, if you skip down to verse 14 of chapter 5, we see that later on Jesus finds this man and he confronts him.

It says this in verse 14.

Afterward, Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, See, you are well.

Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you.

The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who healed him.

Now that's a rather intriguing statement by Jesus, but it gets at the heart of our question today.

Why does God allow disability?

Because we might assume from this text and what Jesus said that sometimes disability is the result of somebody's personal sin.

And while our personal choices can have negative effects, I don't know that that's exactly what Jesus is getting at here.

After all, Jesus healed him without requiring repentance in verse 8.

Perhaps it's something else.

Notice that the Jewish leaders confront him, and the man could not name Jesus as the healer.

But then in verse 15, he goes back and acknowledges the name of Jesus to the Jews.

So I think it's Jesus' second confrontation that addresses the man's spiritual condition rather than his specific sin.

Commentator Marianne Thompson writes, in John's gospel, sin is nearly always defined as unbelief.

Jesus may be warning the man regarding the judgment that follows sin while inviting him to confess faith in Jesus publicly.

Commentator Edwin Blum concurs.

The warning suggests that his tragic life of 38 years as an invalid was no comparison to the doom of hell.

Jesus redirects the man's attention from bodily restoration to spiritual salvation.

So the question that Jesus asks every person, disabled or not, is this do you want to be spiritually healed?

You must see me as I truly am.

Because Jesus sees the overlooked.

Jesus sees the overlooked.

Now before we move on, let's consider this pool of Bethesda.

I wonder if you've been there.

Maybe you're there right now.

What are the modern pools of Bethesda that we encounter?

Certainly, I think modern emergency rooms, long-term care facilities, other healthcare infrastructures might fit this model.

Sick people can easily be overlooked.

Perhaps that's been you.

Educational systems might have wait lists for kids with special needs.

And even the church, a place of spiritual healing, can leave people feeling lonely and isolated as they wait for the water to stir up, waiting for help and assistance.

It can take a long time if we're not attentive.

Last week I was in Colorado at a winter meeting for the World Venture Board of Directors.

Now, World Venture is our primary uh mission sending agency, and it was a wonderful time with just some memorable moments.

In fact, the chair of our board is Dr.

Mark Hankey, and you can see a picture of us here.

When I came on the board, Mark and I made a quick connection because he has an adult daughter with special needs with Down syndrome.

This past fall, we were praying for Mark and his family because his daughter, Annie, required heart surgery to save her life.

Now, the procedure she had is pretty common for people impacted by Down syndrome, but she didn't require it until adulthood, and when she did, she needed it or she was gonna die.

So Mark opened up the meeting and gave us a report.

He said the surgery required 21 hours of operating room time.

I said, 21 hours?

He said, Yes.

He said we waited and waited and waited through the night.

We waited.

We kept getting updates, wondering what was happening.

Was she gonna be okay?

Mark said at one point I threw my hands up against the wall, one of the hospital walls.

It was my personal wailing wall in the hospital, crying out for my daughter's life.

He told me he's never pleaded with God so much.

And so they waited through the night, and then the nurse comes out and told he and his wife, the surgeon wants to come out and talk to you.

And so, with a pit in their stomach, they waited again.

For the news.

Have you ever been there?

Waiting and waiting.

Not sure what the news is gonna bring.

That's what Mark and his family experienced, and that is what the man at Bethesda experienced.

But Jesus sees the overlooked.

The pool of Bethesda shows us that some places of healing don't bring the restoration we hoped for.

So now let's go to the second pool.

The pool of Siloam.

Now we're gonna drop down to a different but complimentary scene in John chapter 9.

John 9 · chapter mention

Now, this is a seminal text of disability in theology.

Jesus is in this scene departing the temple precincts.

He's walking along a very public street.

This scene also happens on a Sabbath in between the fall feast of booths in September timeframe and the feast of dedication around December.

So let's pick up the story in verses 1 and 2.

As he passed by, this is Jesus, he saw a man blind from birth.

And his disciples asked him, Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?

So the disciples right here are asking this why question.

Why does God allow disability?

And here again we meet this disabled man, this man born blind.

He's never seen a thing.

But just try to wrap your mind around that for a second.

What would it be like to never experience this world with sight?

We are now told, we're not told how old the man is, but later in the narrative, in verse 23, his parents confirm that he is of age, which means he's at least 13 years old, so he could possibly be a teenager.

Then in verse 2, his disciples ask a presumptive question.

Who sinned?

This man or his parents?

And that question reveals a cultural assumption at the time.

Disability acted as divine punishment.

Now we covered this topic in our sermon on Mark 2, but it bears repeating here.

In first century Israel, it was a common assumption that if you were disabled, it was your fault.

It was your fault.

You committed some horrible sin.

Or you inherited some generational sin from your parents.

Now, to be honest, this assumption might still be true today.

Of course, as I previously mentioned, foolish decisions can lead to physical consequences, but that shouldn't be assumed at first blush.

The theological framework here had deep roots in the Jewish tradition at the time.

The disciples assumed physical infirmity resulted from divine punishment.

And that perspective appears in Deuteronomy 28.

Rabbis argued from the Talmudic tradition, their ancient text, that an individual's burden of sin is what caused physical infirmity.

And so the disciples reasoned that behind every physical ailment, every disability, a sin was present.

But since this man was blind at birth, it's puzzling to Jesus' disciples.

Yes, some rabbis argued from Genesis 25 that Esau sinned in the womb, or that this was the sin of the parents that caused this.

Some families of kids with disabilities, if you hold to that teaching, it can be very destructive.

But now Jesus steps in, and what he does is he turns the disciples' thinking upside down.

Now we come to verse 3 again.

Jesus answered, It was not that this man sinned or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.

So now you see the context.

And do you see how countercultural, how earth shattering and mind-blowing this assertion was?

In fact, I picture the disciples standing there for minutes with their jaws on the ground saying, What did he just say?

Did God allow this for his glory?

How do you make sense of that?

Jesus is addressing the question on two levels.

First, he's confronting a false premise that while sin entering the world caused suffering generally, specific afflictions do not automatically result from specific sins.

Now I'm sure this man and his parents sinned at some point, but the sin was not the cause of the blindness.

Second, Jesus redirects their attention to divine purpose.

Jesus is telling the disciples to look for answers not in past causes, but in future purposes.

I'm going to say that again.

Jesus is telling the disciples to look for answers not in past causes, but in future purposes.

And that is a fundamental reorientation.

The question is not why did this happen to him?

Rather, it is, what is God going to accomplish through him?

So let me take you back to that moment in the car after our ultrasound.

Because at that moment, my wife and I encountered a fork in the road.

We had two paths we could take.

We started by asking the first question, why did this happen?

And I suspect that many in this room have been there at some level in your life.

In your heart, you're sitting in a car, you're weeping.

And I want you to know, I understand, that it is natural and okay to start with this first question, but I also want to challenge you not to stay there.

I want to exhort you to open your heart to God's healing touch and his sovereignty.

And as painful as it may be, ask him to help you move to the second path, voiced by another question.

What will God accomplish through this?

Now I know this is a series intentionally on disability, but these two questions, particularly that second question, is something all of us at some level can pursue.

We all experience good times and bad times in our lives, disappointment.

No matter our circumstances, when we ask this second question, God is moving us down the path of surrender to his will.

And it's not easy, but he gets the glory.

For our family, I never would have imagined at the beginning what God would do in and through us as a result of Josiah being in our lives.

Transparently, as I've shared other times, it's not been easy.

And yet God has built a resilience I never thought possible.

He has drawn us close to him in prayer.

He has developed a tender heart in my girls.

He has given us opportunities to bless and minister to others.

Every time we were not sure we would make it through the next season, he's always provided and he's taught us what it looks like to surrender.

And I will tell you without reservations that my son is a platform for God's glory.

That six years ago, when we sat in the car, God brought that scripture to my mind because it is true.

And he will do things you can never imagine.

Jesus continues in verse four.

He says, We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day.

Night is coming, when no one can work.

As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.

Now what's Jesus saying?

He's moving from a theological explanation to an urgent action.

That the concept of working while day, because night is coming, is an allusion to his public ministry contrasted with his impending crucifixion.

The miracle he's about to perform will testify to his power.

And you know, light and darkness are a common theme in John's gospel.

And so Jesus makes one of his famous I am statements, I am the light of the world.

And the purpose of his action are to draw people to this light.

And now he takes an action that will allow this blind man to see the light.

Verse 6.

Having said these things, he spit on the ground and made mud with the saliva.

And then he anointed the man's eyes with the mud and said to him, Go wash in the pool of siloem, which means scent.

So he went and washed and came back seeing.

He came back seeing.

For the first time in his life, his eyes were opened.

And he saw Jesus, the one who healed him.

Friends, Jesus restores the forgotten.

He restores the forgotten.

Now there's two rich images in this passage I don't want you to miss.

First, notice the creation echo.

That when Jesus spits on the ground and he makes that mud with his saliva, the same Greek word is used here, pelos, as in the Greek translation of the Old Testament in Genesis 2, 7.

It's the same word that describes Adam's formation at the beginning of time.

This is new creation language.

Jesus doesn't just heal, he recreates.

As the light came into the world at the beginning, so he is bringing light into the darkness here.

Second, notice the name of the pool.

Now John gives you the translation.

Saloon means sent.

And that's no accident.

Jesus is the one sent from the Father to earth on a rescue mission.

In fact, John's gospel uses this language over 40 times.

That's a lot.

The man washes in the very pool that embodies Jesus' identity and mission from the Father, the sent one.

And so when the man comes back from the pool, he comes back what?

He comes back seeing.

Now, if you read the rest of the chapter, this healing causes a commotion in the town.

Neighbors start asking, is this the same man?

This man who was born blind?

The Jewish leaders are angry again because it happened on the Sabbath, right?

The Jewish leaders call the blind man before them and demand that he tells them who healed him.

They accuse Jesus of being a sinner, and the blind man famously replies, whether he is a sinner, I do not know.

But one thing I do know, though I was blind, now I see.

There will always be people with hard hearts.

But we're called to tell everyone what Jesus has done in our lives.

Why?

Because Jesus restores the forgotten.

Now, friends, we've been talking now for almost six weeks about disability ministry, and the reason we're talking about this is we want more people to encounter Jesus.

We want to remove barriers so people who have not had a chance to hear about Jesus, the ones who've been waiting by our modern pools of water, can hear about the transformative gospel.

It is a mission.

Let me come back to my time at the World Venture headquarters last week.

One of the awesome experiences I had was to hear from about 15 new missionary appointees who were finishing their training and going out on the field.

There were many young people in their 20s, amazing stories going all over the world, giving it all to tell people about Jesus.

But then there was this middle-aged couple choosing to go to the field as a second career, going to Brazil to do ministry down there, and the wife was going to start a disability ministry in Brazil as part of their mission.

I said, Why?

She said, so many people down there are overlooked that they need to encounter Jesus.

We are also called to that mission.

We are called to give God glory in all circumstances.

Now I want to finish that story I told about Mark Hankey, because I know some of you are wondering, did the daughter make it?

Was he going to come back?

Well, the rest of the story is just amazing.

After waiting through the night, the surgeon, yes, was going to come out and tell Mark and his wife that they had done all they could do and Annie wasn't going to make it, that she was going to die.

But the cardiac surgeon, who turned out to be a strong Christian, which is kind of like finding a unicorn in Oregon, told Mark and his wife later that as he was walking out to talk to them, something seemed to kind of direct his hand and pull him in a different direction, down a different hallway.

And as he took that walk, the surgeon fully intended to go talk to them.

But God brought some scripture to his mind and impressed on his heart that he wasn't done.

That's what he kept hearing.

You're not done.

And so the surgeon said, okay, I'm going to scrub back in and go back in the operating room.

I guess I'm not done.

And Mark and his wife were out in the waiting room, waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting for the surgeon to come, and finally they go ask the nurse, Is he coming?

And she said, Oh no, he's he scrubbed back into the operating room.

And while he was in there, things happened in the surgery that weren't supposed to happen.

As he recalled later, and I don't remember all the technical details, but he said things like the heart valves and the arteries went into places they weren't supposed to go into.

He said it was like something was guiding my hands to make all this happen.

And while this was happening, Mark would tell us that people in his church were waking up at weird hours, like 12.30 a.m., 1.30 a.m., impressed to pray for Annie and Mark.

So they called him the next day and said, Did something happen at 12.30 a.m.?

And Mark said, Yes, that's when the surgeon was supposed to come out and talk to us about Annie, and then he went back in the OR.

They said, Did something happen at 1.30 a.m.?

He said, Yeah, that's when he was in there working on her heart, and things were happening that weren't supposed to happen.

And today, Annie made it and is alive and is, they think, is going to make a full recovery.

So Mark told us, I'm telling the story because I want God to get the glory.

That I think God gets the glory when his people pray, and God gets the glory through the life of my daughter.

That is all God.

That when we pray, he gets the glory.

When we minister and include those with disabilities in our church, God gets the glory.

Why?

Because Jesus sees the overlooked, he restores the forgotten, and he sends his church to do the same.

That people with disabilities point us to the light of the world.

There may be two pools in our story, but there is one Savior, the light of the world.

Now you see, friends, the reason we've been doing this series, and the reason my heart is so burdened for this, is because it impacts so many people.

It breaks my heart to think that those who can teach us so much are overlooked and forgotten.

It breaks my heart to think that we have created barriers to people coming to our church who need the living water of Jesus Christ.

We cannot be the full body of Christ without those with disabilities.

And if we believe that God wants us to be a church that is firmly planted, growing together, and made to multiply, we need those with disabilities.

They have so much to teach us.

We cannot leave them at the pool.

We need to bring them to Jesus, the light of the world.

Now, if you read the rest of John 9 again, you'll see the contrast between those who uh remain blind.

The Pharisees are blind, but the blind man and Jesus and his friends, they see Jesus, their eyes are opened.

And church, we have to do the same.

So what do we do now?

You might be sitting there saying, Pastor Bob, those are some amazing stories.

They pull on my heartstrings.

Yeah, I want to be involved.

Now it's great because one of our goals of the series is to raise awareness and to produce motivation, but we also want to provide some next steps and tools.

And so I've mentioned before that we're partnering with Johnny and Friends to learn about how to build our ministries.

And Sarah Bush is their regional representative.

I'd like to invite her on the stage to share her story and tell us about the Johnny and Friends ministry and how we can learn from them.

So, Sarah, I'll invite you to come back on stage.

Good morning, church.

I'm so blessed to be here.

Thank you for inviting me to come.

Johnny and Friends is a ministry that is dedicated to living in a world where every person affected by disability finds hope, finds dignity, and their place in the body of Christ.

We're doing our part to mobilize the global church to glorify God by communicating the gospel to people living with disability.

We want to see individuals and families affected by disability evangelized, discipled, and serving well while creating a culture where they also can serve and disciple others.

My family is one affected by disability, and I want to introduce you to them.

My husband Dave, he's here with me, as is my 14-year-old son, Jacob.

And then we also have a 22-year-old son, Zach, and he is the one in the lighter colored brown shirt on the end.

Zach is affected by autism.

So to tell you a little bit about our story, when the boys were young, we were going to a church, and we were very involved with this church.

And it was a kind of church where when you walk in, the kids go this way and the adults go this way.

So Zach would go to Kill Children's Church every single Sunday.

With a smile, he'd go in.

With a smile, he would come out, all was well with the world.

Until one Sunday, we all got out to the car.

And when the last door shut, Zach had an epic meltdown.

We didn't know why.

We didn't know what had happened.

We figured, okay, it's just the day and we moved on.

But it happened again the following week.

And it happened again the following week and the following week.

So I decided to see if I could figure out what was going on.

Something must be happening in children's church that was causing this.

So I started to observe through this little tiny window so that he didn't see me watching.

And what I found was that Zach was having a hard time engaging with his peers within Children's Church.

He was having a hard time understanding how to transition and when to transition from one activity to another.

And he was having a hard time understanding how to participate, what was expected of him during the different activities of the morning.

Now this was causing him a sensory overload, and it was causing him to fear for his life.

I know that that's a drastic overreaction, but this is something that happens with people affected by disability.

They get this sensory overload, and their reaction is that there's something that is actually threatening their life.

And they have one of three reactions fight, flight, or freeze.

Fight, flight, or freeze.

I don't know if you've ever heard of those.

Zach's reaction, freeze.

So within children's church, he was a dream because he wasn't ever a behavior problem.

He was delightful.

He would sit quietly, he would watch.

He never participated.

So I took this information to our church leadership.

And I said, hey, Zach's having this problem.

This is what's going on.

And so we want to know: is it possible?

Could he have somebody to help him on a Sunday morning?

Could he have a buddy?

Could he have a one-on-one?

Somebody who would help him engage with his peers, someone who would support him through transitions, like, hey, Zach, in five minutes, we're gonna stop doing this and go over to this activity.

Could he have somebody who would help him to know how to participate and what was expected of him, how to play a game, what to do during worship, things like that.

He needed some support.

Unfortunately, the church said no.

Now, the reason the church said no, I believe, is because they were feeling very overwhelmed themselves.

They didn't feel like they had the resources, the people, the time, the whatever they felt like they needed in order to supply this support.

But really the problem was that the church didn't affect how disability affects the entire family.

How can Dave and I sit in service or serve on a Sunday morning during service when our son is having what to him is the worst day of his life?

And the answer is we couldn't.

And we didn't, and we had to leave eventually.

Now, as sad as that story is, the problem was that the church was creating barriers to the gospel, right?

Which is exactly the opposite of what the church wants to do.

The church seeks to remove barriers so that everybody has an opportunity to see the gospel.

But for Zach, that didn't happen.

And so he didn't have the opportunity to hear and respond to the gospel in a church setting.

Of course, he had that at home, but not at church.

Today, as a young adult, Zach says to me, Because that church didn't care about me, I think all churches won't care about me.

So I'm not gonna go to any church.

It won't be any different from one church to the next.

But he also said to me, because that church didn't care about me, then Jesus must not care about me.

Oh, I heard all those sighs in the room.

Thank you for feeling that, right?

The mama heart just really breaks to hear that.

But we know that Matthew 28, 19 was the great commissioning when Jesus said to us, Go and make disciples of all nations, make disciples of all people.

There were no exceptions to that command.

That meant everybody, not just the green-eyed people, not just the people with brown hair.

That meant everybody, every single person on the face of this planet were to go and share the gospel with.

And that's where the church missed the mark.

The problem is, Zach's not wrong.

11% of churches in America acknowledge and accommodate for disabilities.

That's it.

That means that 89% of churches in America do not.

And that means that 90% of families affected by disability are unchurched.

And they don't go to church not because they don't want to, but because they don't know that they're safe.

Are they physically safe?

Can I access everything?

Can I get around the way that I need to?

But also, am I socially safe?

Am I gonna be looked at?

Am I gonna be judged?

Is my parenting gonna be criticized?

Are they gonna understand my son's vocalizations or stimming?

Are they gonna understand him and accept him and welcome him in?

And sometimes it's just too hard to go to church when you don't know if that'll happen.

I praise God for Millington Baptist Church.

You guys are doing a great job.

And I'm so grateful for your heart for people affected by disability that you're willing to welcome them in and help them to find a place of belonging amongst the body of Christ.

Because if they're not here, if the body is missing those parts, then the body is incomplete.

Johnny and Friends is a ministry based on Luke 14.

And I'm gonna go let you read that parable, but it's based on the great banquet, which teaches us to compel them to come in, that it is safe here, that you can come into this house so that it is full.

There is room at the table for everyone, and this is what this church is preparing to do.

So Johnny and Friends serves families in a variety of ways.

One of those ways is through family retreats where the entire family is welcome to come and is served and gets an entire week of respite and ministry and refreshment.

It was life-changing and life-giving for my family when we first went 13 years ago, and we haven't missed a year since.

Another way that we uh serve families is by wheels of the world.

We collect wheelchairs, we have them restored, and then we send them to developing countries to people who don't have access to that mobility equipment so that they can sit up straight in wheelchairs and move around with dignity rather than crawling on the ground or on the backs of their loved ones or in wheelchairs.

All throughout that process, the gospel is shared in the language of the person who's receiving it.

And then the last way is through church relations.

That's what I do.

I walk alongside churches to support and encourage and equip and teach how to do disability ministry, how to welcome and encourage those who are coming into the churches and looking for their place of belonging.

So we have a table in the back in the lobby.

If you'd like to afterwards come and say hello, introduce yourselves, uh, find out maybe how you can get involved with Johnny and friends, or come and find out how you can get involved right here at Millington Baptist Church.

How can you serve folks affected by disabilities so that they can have their own place of belonging with all of us?

Thank you so much.

Well, thank you so much, Sarah.

I appreciate your friendship and your heart for this ministry.

Um, as she mentioned, she'll be in the back after the service.

Please stop by the table to hear more about the Johnny and Friends uh ministry.

I'm gonna invite the worship team to come back on stage for our final song.

And I want to conclude by challenging us with those two questions I mentioned earlier in the message.

That when we encounter disability, it is natural to ask, why would God do this?

Now, I understand, and some of you are in that place today, and if you are, I would invite you to talk with someone, talk with myself or Pastor Dave.

Tell us how we can help.

We have so many good people here at NBC who want to come alongside and help you.

And so I want to also challenge us with that second question.

What is God doing through this?

God is doing something, he has not forgotten you.

And he wants you to get to that place of surrender, and then he will use you for his glory.

And even though it's difficult to see now, as you walk with him like the blind man, he will open your eyes.

After Josiah was born, that first year was difficult for us.

Sleepless nights, exhaustion, more hospital visits than I can remember.

We had so many seasons where we asked God, why would you do this?

I didn't sign up for this.

But today he looks like this, and he smiles and he runs and he's beyond excited when I come home, and he wants to give us hugs, he's got joy, and by God's grace, and for many more years, he will be a canvas for God's glory.

He has taught me about the heart of God the Father and the love of Jesus.

Because Jesus sees the overlooked, he restores the forgotten, and he sends his church to do the same.

Can we say that together?

Jesus sees the overlooked, restores the forgotten, and sends his church to do the same.

Praise God for his upside-down glory.

Amen?

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank you so much this morning for your unmerited favor that you give to us, Lord, simply because of the work of Jesus Christ on the cross.

Lord, we thank you that you stepped into our lives when we were running away from you.

And Lord, I pray today that you would give us your eyes, that we would not overlook the forgotten, Lord, that you would you would help us be part of the restoration process of bringing people to see you, the light of the world.

Help us to step into that mission, Lord.

And if we're impacted by disability today, Lord, may you meet us where we are.

May you, Holy Spirit, bring comfort, and may you lift our eyes up to see our Savior.

We ask all that in Jesus' name.

Amen.