Do You Want to Be Changed?

Sir Isaac Newton's first law of motion states that everything continues in a state of rest,

unless it is compelled to change by forces impressed upon it.

I know that for a fact. When I am at rest, there are forces that compel me to change, to move.

And so that's just kind of a fact of motion, a law of motion that Isaac Newton came up with.

I think we all recognize within ourselves the need for change.

Yet we also have recognized that the change we need is often hard to achieve.

There's a very important story about change recorded in the fifth chapter of the Gospel of John.

Jesus has gone up from Cana of Galilee to Jerusalem to celebrate one of the

great religious feasts.

It's worth noting that he, as the Lamb of God.

Who would take away the sins of the world, would enter the city through the

sheep gate, the entrance to the city through which the sheep for temple sacrifices were brought.

And it was that that the Lamb of God entered into the city.

Once inside the city, he comes to the Pool of Bethesda, or some translation

called it Pool of Bethsaida.

Lying all around the pool are sick and paralyzed people.

It's interesting that we sang the last song we sang in the opening was Reckless

Love, talking about God just has this reckless love for us, changing us and

doing all kinds of things.

We don't deserve it, but God does it. And this is another story, one of those.

It was at this place that those people were there because there was a legend

that an angel would on occasion come and stir up the waters of the pool.

And the first one to enter the pool after the angel stirred the water would

be healed. Now, it may or may not have been a superstition, but I can't imagine

if it wasn't real, you'd have all those people still staying around that pool.

It is not unlike what is still found in many parts of the world today.

Lourdes in southern France has a spa which many believe has healing capacities.

There is a spa, a natural spring spa in Indiana,

by French Lick Indiana of all the names, that.

Is a sulfur-smelling hot spa where waters come out of the ground in a stinky

mess, and people climb into that to be healed.

Well, part of that is if you climb into that stinky mess when you get out,

you won't have anybody come near you to spread their disease to you.

But anyway, the Shrine of Guadalupe in Mexico City is another such place where

thousands of people have gone hoping for a healing.

Whether anyone is healed or not, the people just keep coming,

believing that this is hope.

There is a hope of healing here.

In our passage this morning, Jesus has moved into the midst of this group of

hopers, but he doesn't just indiscriminately wave his hand and heal everyone at the pool on that day.

As he's moved among the blind and lame, he's drawn to one particular man who

has been ill for 38 years.

The Bible does not say the nature of man's disease other than that it rendered him unable to walk.

It's interesting that we've been looking at the book of John,

and if you have looked at it very long, which we've been starting in,

you'll see that Jesus has had encounters, face-to-face encounters with people all along.

And this is another one of those. We talked about the one last week with the woman at the well.

There was the face-to-face encounter with Nicodemus. There was a face-to-face

encounter with the people at Cana of Galilee when he turned the water into wine.

There's this face-to-face coming to Jesus, and this is just another one of those situations.

So let's look at John 5, verses 1 through 14. Sometime later,

John 5:1–14

Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals.

Now there is in Jerusalem, near the Sheep Gate, a pool which in Aramaic is called

Bethesda, and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades.

Here, a great number of disabled people used to lie, the blind,

the lame, and the paralyzed, and they waited for the moving of the waters.

From time to time, an angel of the Lord would come down and stir up the waters.

The first one into the pool after each such disturbance would be cured of whatever disease they had.

One who was there had been an invalid for 38 years. When Jesus saw him lying

there and learned that he had been in that condition for a long time,

he asked him, do you want to get well?

Sir, the invalid replied, I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred.

While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.

Then Jesus said to him, Get up, pick up your mat, and walk. At once the man

was cured. He picked up his mat and walked.

The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, and so the Jewish leaders said

to the man who had been healed, It's the Sabbath.

The law forbids you to carry your mat.

But he replied, The man who made me well said to me, Pick up your mat and walk.

So they asked him, Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?

The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into

the crowd that was there. Later, Jesus found him at the temple and said, See, you are well again.

Stop sinning, or something worse may happen to you.

The story recorded in the book of John is another one of those encounters,

as I said, those face-to-face encounters with Jesus.

In each of the cases that we look, Jesus reveals things about those people that

they may not have been aware of themselves.

Or in a couple cases, he performed miracles. In another couple,

he gave chastisements. And in this passage, he both healed and gave chastisement

to this man to not sin anymore.

So into this sea of desperate people at the Pool of Bethesda, Jesus came.

It's interesting to consider that out of all these people, probably hundreds,

laying around there, Jesus chose to heal one man. We don't really have a clue

as to why he chose that one man.

It could have been because Jesus knew that man had been lying there hopeless,

seemingly, but yet hopeful that he could get into the pool for 38 years.

But there may have been other reasons for Jesus having compassion on him.

One thing we do know from this scripture is that it was not because the man sought out Jesus.

In fact, he didn't even know who Jesus was. A careful look at the other healings

in the Bible, you will find that most people came to Jesus or brought their

loved ones to Jesus to be healed.

It's interesting. This Friday, I was down in Rock Island, Illinois,

to do closing on buying a building for one of our churches.

And it's a two-story building with a flat roof, and they had a ladder leading up under the roof.

And I got a contractor who was getting a barricade put up on that ladder so

people can't climb up onto the roof.

And I said to the congregation, it's a Congolese congregation,

I said, we want to do that because we don't want four guys carrying an invalid

up onto the ceiling, cutting a hole in the roof to let them down through.

They can come through the door if they want healing.

But anyway, you know that from another story, right? Yeah. Okay.

It's interesting that Jesus chose to heal this one person.

A careful look at the other healings, you will find that most people came to

Jesus, as I said, but in this case,

and maybe only a few others, Jesus actually sought the person out personally,

to have a face-to-face confrontation or visit with them like the woman at the well.

Jesus encountered him and asked him a very strange question.

And if you've read the scripture, you'll find there's a lot of times there's

things in there that we wonder, why on earth was this done?

But Jesus said this, do you want to get well?

Well, why would Jesus ask that? I mean, this guy is there waiting for hope to get in there.

And it might seem strange that he'd ask that of a person who had been invalid

for 38 years if he wants to get well. But Jesus never asks a question without a good reason.

According to John, Jesus had traveled from Galilee to Jerusalem in order to

celebrate a feast or a festival.

We don't know which one for sure, but it may have been the Feast of Pentecost,

a feast commemorating the giving of the law on Mount Sinai.

When he was in Jerusalem, he went to this pool, also known as Bethesda or Bethsaida,

where a great multitude of sick people gathered, it says.

Fittingly, the name Bethesda or Bethsaida means house of mercy.

Now in verse 4, where we read about the story that the pool was stirred when

an angel came and touched it, was not in the earliest manuscripts of the Bible

that we read, or it was added into later translations.

It doesn't mean it's not true.

It just means that it's added background information that was in there to explain

why people were coming to this particular pool.

Whether or not this had ever happened, it was the fact that the people believed it would.

And into this multitude of people who had gathered, Jesus came for one specific

person. So there are three things that this story can teach us this morning. First one is this.

We must decide if we really want to be changed.

Now, that's a strange question. All of us will say we love change,

right? Every one of us loves change.

Oh, wait, do we really want to be changed? Do we want to give up what we've

known for so long and to go to something new?

When Jesus saw him lying there, he says, do you want to be made well?

This seems like a strange question, as I said, but Jesus, as I said,

never asks a foolish question.

Jesus asked this serious question because it's entirely possible that the man

does not really want to be changed.

Many people, okay, my name is Tim. I'm your friend. I'm going to step on toes, maybe.

Many people who are down and out,

or have addictions or any things like that don't really want to be changed because

they like the attention they get when they share their misery with others.

I mean, I've known it from dealing with addictive behaviors that if we can't

control our own behaviors, the best way to do that is to control others around us.

That's part of the culture. That's part of the mindset and what we do.

And it's not just addictive behaviors. If you look at that, we kind of all are that way, aren't we?

If we can't control ourselves and our own actions, it's best to keep others

down lower so we can feel better.

And so Jesus is asking this, do you want to be changed?

A lot of times people don't want to be changed because they'd rather receive pity and handouts.

You will find many people on Skid Row in Chicago or even on the corner intersections in Madison,

who will really do not want to be healed or fixed because their handouts depend

on their illnesses or their perceived illnesses.

Oftentimes, you will see people standing out at intersections with signs expressing

their state of poverty and need.

And while many of these cases may be really cases of real need.

Some investigation into these find out that many of these actually make a healthy

income from their handouts.

In fact, when we lived in Brighton, Michigan in 1995, yes, I know that's before

some of you kids were born, there was one such husband and wife couple,

who were at that time in 1995 were making over $50,000 a year in handouts.

That's the equivalent of $125,000 today, just in handouts.

Why should they work if people are willing to give them that kind of money?

But for this man in the story this

morning, he has lived off the pity of others as a beggar for 38 years.

If he were to be healed, he would lose all of this. In fact,

We don't know if this man had a family, but I'm guessing he probably didn't

have anybody because one of

his answers is, I have no one to put me into the pool when it's stirred.

In the Middle East, in Bible times, and some places even today,

a person who was healed would lose a good living.

I'm told that in some places in the third world countries.

Parents are guilty of purposely crippling their children so they can put their

children out on the streets to gain donations or gifts, alms,

whatever it be, to help them have a living by begging.

This man, by being healed, would be venturing out into the unknown.

He would lose all of his income and security.

He would have to be responsible for himself. He would have to find work,

he would be entering into a completely new way of living.

And as I spoke about Skid Row in Chicago, we have Olive Branch Ministry and

Mission in Chicago, and we find that many of the people who are homeless in that area,

have been executives in corporations, but they choose to live a life of homelessness

where they don't have to worry about any kind of bills.

They can get donations or they can dig through garbage or whatever and free

health care and all that kind of stuff. So they live that way by choice.

It would be the equivalent today of asking a person who has lived on welfare

all of their life that they'd be willing to give up that welfare in order to

have a job that might even provide less income.

And to be healed meant to enter into a completely new way of life,

one with wonderful possibilities, but also with a certain amount of risk.

After 38 years, this man had accepted his condition.

He had been content to scratch out his pathetic existence by begging.

Being paralyzed was a help in that because people felt sorry for him.

But after being healed, he would have to work and take up his own responsibility for himself.

The fact is that some people will

go to extraordinary lengths to avoid unwelcome changes in their lives.

I read this from Dave Reaver, who was a disabled Vietnam vet.

He told the story of a young man in the 1960s who did not want to be drafted

into the military. So to keep from being drafted, he had all of his teeth pulled

out to make himself unfit for military duty.

But when he was summoned to go in and get his physical for military duty,

he was declared unfit for service because of his flat feet.

So now, he was a toothless, fat flatfoot.

I see in this man many people in our own day. Their lives are sick.

They are paralyzed in heart and mind. Their lives are dysfunctional,

but they have never considered that God might want something better for them.

They have accepted life in this way.

They don't even know there is something more to life. They have become satisfied

and complacent with just getting along.

Sometimes the devil we know is better than not knowing what we're going to get

to, and that's why some people avoid change.

They have become complacent and satisfied at just getting along.

They're not seeking out to God or calling upon him. They're looking for Jesus.

Or if they are aware, it seems normal to them that their life is to be this way.

We can see this in the lives of many Christians even today. They attend church every Sunday.

They're respectful and seemingly excited about what they're hearing,

but they're probably or maybe not even really born again.

They listen to the gospel and they attend for the sake of being a part of something,

but there comes a time when they subconsciously make a decision that what they

have is just fine and they don't really need to be changed.

For still others, even after they are saved, they continue to be confronted

by issues in their lives that need to be changed, like bitterness,

unresolved conflicts, or addictions, as I stated earlier, or things that have.

Lain hidden in their life for many years.

The question that we all need to answer is the same question that Jesus asked

of this man, do you want to be changed? Do you really want to change?

Do you want to be healed we not only must decide if we want to be changed but

we must decide to quit making excuses,

The devil made me do it. You ever heard that one? I think that's a great one.

Because if somebody else says the devil made them do it, I'm glad. You know why?

Because the devil can't be in two places at once. And if the devil made you

do something, it means he can't mess with me. Right?

So that's kind of a, you know, what do we say about the root of all sin?

The root of all sin is self. The sick man answered, Sir, I have no one to put

me into the well when the water is stirred, but while I'm coming,

another steps down before me.

Notice that he didn't answer Jesus' question of, Do you want to be healed?

He didn't say that he wanted to be well. He dismissed Jesus' question and merely

complained about his condition.

The lame man didn't answer Jesus' question directly, but rather said that he

had no one to place him there.

He related how unfortunate he was that he had no one.

He listed his troubles. To be sure, he probably had plenty to complain about.

But he whined about his life instead of answering Jesus's question.

Here's one that asked him, do you want to be well?

This is somebody that actually spoke to him. We don't know if anybody else did.

And in today's language, we would say that he sees himself as a victim.

That's a word that we have all become familiar with in this world, victimization.

It's what happens when a person always sees themselves as a victim,

a victim of society or a victim of their upbringing.

When a person commits a crime and goes to court, there's all kinds of excuses

about how they've been brought up.

They didn't know any better. I'm sorry.

Breaking the law is breaking the law. There are people who continue to see themselves

as having been dealt a lousy hand of cards in life.

So how can you tell if you or someone else know you know is a victim?

First, victims endlessly repeat how they've been mistreated.

Victims live by this childish notion that life is always unfair.

But it should be fair for them.

Victims find it difficult to forgive others because they see forgiveness as weakness.

Victims have difficulty maintaining close relationships because they have difficulty

trusting other people. Well, that goes back to what we talked about before.

They have difficulty trusting themselves. How can they trust others?

And then the cry of the perpetual victim is, it's not my fault.

Now, where did this start? Go back to Genesis.

When Adam and Eve were in the garden, and Eve was enticed by the serpent to

take the fruit of the forbidden tree, forbidden fruit, she did, and she gave it to Adam.

And Adam was asked, what did you do? Why did you eat that? What did Adam say?

It was this woman that you gave me that made me do it.

So not only did he blame Eve, but he blamed God for making Eve and giving her to Adam.

Dr. William Glasser is founder of Reality Therapy, and during one of his seminars,

his talk had been on one main theme, and that is healthy people do not make excuses.

He used as an example the tendency people have to make excuses when they're

late for an appointment. They will say traffic was heavy, or they got a last-minute

phone call, or the crisis came up at work, and so on. Dr.

Glasser argued that those kinds of excuses just really cover up the real issue.

If you're late, it's because you're incompetent to run your own life.

He suggested that instead of making an excuse that next time you're late,

just simply, I'm sorry, say, I'm sorry, I'm just incompetent to run my own life.

Maybe after we stated it like that, we might plan better and not be late.

It's Friday when I went down to Rock Island. I was past Muscaday on the way down.

I got past, I got passed out, that's

not good. I got past Muscaday and an alarm light came on on our car.

And I thought, it's probably okay, but do I want to drive three hours down there

and have something else happen? So I had to drive back to Richland Center and

get my truck and go on down there.

Luckily, I had planned an hour and a half extra for the trip.

But we need to plan ahead. Dr. Glasser said, it is only when we stop making

excuses that we discover that we have the power to be on time.

There are several things we should note.

A, we make more excuses than we would care to admit.

Think about that when you think about your life. As you go through the day,

when something goes wrong or something happens, we always are making excuses. I do it too.

It's impossible to break the pattern of making excuses and see changes never

possible until we admit we have a problem. What's the first thing in Alcoholics Anonymous?

Admitting you have a problem, right? And so not only must we decide not to continue

to make excuses, but third, we must decide that we are ready to act.

Jesus said to the man, rise, take up your bed and walk. And immediately the

man was made well, took up his bed and walked.

And that day was the Sabbath.

Jesus didn't discuss the pool or its alleged abilities to provide the here.

He didn't say, I'll stay here until the water's turn and then I'll put you in.

Jesus had the power of life and death.

He simply told the man, trust me, get up, pick up your bed and walk.

The man was healed, but he was not healed by the water.

Jesus said to him, get up, pick up your mat. Obviously, a man had a choice.

He could listen and ignore, listen and hope, or he could listen and obey.

Don't we all have that choice?

We can listen and we can hope and not act. We can listen and think,

well, yeah, it's okay. I'll wait on that one.

Or we can obey to what Jesus said. In his words, take up his bed.

The Lord is telling something very important to this man and to all of those

who truly want to be changed. It says, do not make any provision to go back.

Don't look at going back to your place. Many people fail right there.

It's time to burn our bridges. One of the things we say when we do baptisms is this is our marking.

We are putting a mark in the sand and saying, God, I have decided to follow

you, and this is my testimony to everybody around. I am not going back to that way of life anymore.

The addict has to decide, I am not going back to that, and he has to put actions.

In his life that will keep him from going to those places that are temptations.

The man wasn't healed by the stirring of the water. He was healed because by faith he was obedient.

To Jesus. According to the scripture, in verse 14, later Jesus found the man

in the temple and he said to him, see, you have been made well, sin no more,

or something worse will come upon you.

A literal translation of this is, don't keep sinning.

We heard that with the woman caught in adultery, right?

When Jesus didn't condemn her and actually forgave her, he said to her,

go and leave your life of sin.

Why was he told to stop sinning?

Was his disability really caused by sin? Well, in that day, they thought many

of those things were caused by sin.

Whether or not we know that it was caused by a sin, Jesus was speaking to his

physical needs first, and then his spiritual needs and said, go and sin no more.

So are you ready to be healed?

Are you ready to be changed? Do you really want to be changed?

We must decide if we really do want to be changed and we must decide to quit making excuses.

And we must decide that we're ready to act on what Jesus says in the scripture.

We've got a great future ahead of us as a church, but it really means that we

have to be willing to be changed by God into what he wants us to be.

One of the songs we talked about was Revival, sang about was Revival.

Can you imagine what it would look like?

Nathan said something about having a thousand people here today.

Well, I'd like to try that.

That'd be kind of a fun problem to have, don't you think?

Let's stand and pray. Heavenly Father, as we continue in this life,

we thank you for the message that you've given us through your scriptures,

through your Son, through his words, and through his life.

Father, we pray that we will want to be changed, and so much so that we will

give up our old life and follow you and be obedient to you.