Get Up!

Let's begin by reading the Scripture. I know it's in your bulletin.

The NIV does not have what we call verse 4 in it.

And I'm going to go ahead and read verse 4, even though I am reading from the NIV.

We're going to read verse 4. So, it's found in John chapter 5,

John 5:1–15

verses 1 through 15, and it's the healing at the pool.

Sometime later, 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, which is surrounded by five covered colonnades.

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

the lame, the paralyzed.

And then verse 4 is, 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 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 this 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'm trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.

Then Jesus said to him, Get up, pick up your mat, and walk.

And at once the man was cured, and he picked up his mat, and he walked.

The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, so that the Jewish leader 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 he said to him, See your well again.

Stop sinning, or something worse may happen to you.

A man went away and told the Jewish leaders that it was Jesus who made him well.

Lord God, we just ask that you be with us through this time looking into your

word, and that your Holy Spirit would move upon our hearts and minds as we think

about this. In Christ's name, amen.

Well, I want to tell you real quickly, as we look at this guy,

Jesus comes up and says, do you want to get well?

I want to tell you what I think is just about the worst moments of my life.

Way back in ancient history, in April of 2000, the year 2000,

I fell from this ladder onto the cement floor.

It was 18 feet. I fell and I broke a whole lot of stuff, my head and my jaw

and my both arms and wrists. and I had several surgeries.

And when I had the surgery on my face, there's a plate up here instead of bone.

And while I was there, it was so painful. It was after the surgery, I was in ICU.

My wife, Sherry, was there with me and it was just so terrible.

It was just, I was, I was hot.

I didn't know, I couldn't move because both arms were in, were in casts and

slings and I couldn't do anything. And it was just horrible.

It was just horrible. And so I said, when's the doctor going to come?

And my wife said, he's coming at 10 o'clock.

He's coming at 10 o'clock. Well,

I could see in ICU, the clock way over on the other side of the room.

And it was about, you know, 10 to nine or something like that.

And I said, I don't know if I can last an hour, but I'm going to try.

And so even though it's the most suffering, it was the most pain,

it was way worse than the fall.

And so I'm there and I'm making it. And then pretty soon I see that it's almost

10 and then it's five to 10 and two to 10.

And then finally it's 10 o'clock. And I was so glad I made it.

I know doctors aren't always on time, but I, but I knew this one would be because

I finally made it to 10 o'clock. And so, uh, right.

I was probably at 10 o'clock and two seconds, I said to my wife, where's the doctor?

And she said, oh honey, this is 10 o'clock at night. He's not coming till 10 in the morning.

So when I read, do you want to get well? I know what it's like to really want to be well.

Not 38 years worth like this guy. Wasn't that terrible?

38 years he laid there. Here we are in Jerusalem for this celebration of the

Passover or Pentecost or whatever celebration, it doesn't tell us which one.

And there's these large number of pilgrims there.

Everything's crowded and a lot of people there and doing all kinds of different

things. The things are happening.

And here in this place where there's some relief from the heat,

lie these people with great need.

It says they're lame and they're blind and they're paralyzed.

I just, well, we'll get to that in a minute. It was surrounded by these porches

that gave a little shade, and so the people would go in there.

And then there was this story that an angel would come and stir up the water,

and if you got in there first, you got to be healed.

Now, I know this isn't in the Scripture.

It's just me thinking about the Scripture. But.

That's not my kind of God who says, you know, I think I'll put a bunch of people

who can't see and who can't walk and whoever can race first gets healed.

That doesn't seem like something God would do, does it? It's like,

that's what I'm going to do.

I'm going to make it so that once in a while something happens so that you can

get fixed, but I'm going to do it in a way, in a place that those who need it

most can't take advantage of it.

That just doesn't seem like it's something that my God would do.

That's why I think this is mostly, I think that's why the NIV leaves verse 4 out.

It's really just a rumor that happened. It never really happened.

Maybe somebody got better one time.

But as a regular thing, I don't think this would be. So what you have,

God would really do that.

So what you have is a bunch of people lying around trying to get some relief,

desperately hoping to get better by this one chance in a million that's probably

not going to come, and to the most desperate people you could meet in the city.

Everyone else there is rejoicing and partying and they're pilgrims and they're

seeing their friends and their family and everything's so wonderful.

And you have these people lying around there, suffering, hurting,

and there's not going to be any relief.

And so Jesus comes here to the place in the midst of this, and it says he comes right up to this guy.

Here comes Jesus in the midst of it with a great opportunity to do good all

over the city, but he comes to this guy, and he finds what I think is probably the most pathetic,

awful-looking, most suffering person in the room in order to do something great.

He picked the neediest person in the crowd, and this guy had been waiting to

get better for 38 years and had no hope left.

He was lying around doing the best he could all by himself, but it was never good enough.

He wasn't quick and he didn't have pushy friends.

Remember the one guy that was the paralytic and his friends dug through the

roof to let him down in front of Jesus?

He didn't have any of those kind of friends with him. He didn't have any way

to get down to the pool himself.

He had all his hope in the pool and had no way to take advantage of it.

And I meet so many people in life now that they view their life in that way.

They don't have what it takes. They don't have the friends or the resources

to get where they need to go.

And they're desperate for health, for wellness, for wholeness, for healing.

And their life just revolves around that. He didn't have any way to get better.

So here comes Jesus. He comes right up to this sad lump, and he asks him, do you want to get well?

Now, for most of us here, that probably seems like a weird question to ask,

and that's why I started with the story.

We've all had serious situations in our life where maybe somebody wanted to

ask us, do we really want to get well? Well.

There are people who really don't want to get well. They define themselves by

their suffering. I hope I don't step on any toes here.

But they define themselves by their suffering, by who they are.

When you say, how are you? There was one guy in the church I went to when we left in 96 from here.

We went to a church in Monee, Illinois. And there was one guy,

after a few years, he was in his late 20s, and he stopped coming to church.

And so I asked his brother, because he wouldn't talk to me, and I asked his

brother why he stopped coming to church.

And he said, no one asked him anymore, how are you doing?

Because if you did, you were there half an hour.

And the next week, the same thing. And he sort of defined himself by what was wrong with him.

And maybe there are people like that, but his infirmity became his identity.

If you want to know where he was, you say, well, it's the guy who's an an invalid

who's been there for 38 years.

That's how they knew who he was.

And so I think Jesus picked the saddest, most desperate, most hurting,

neediest person in the group and went up to him and asked him,

so do you really want to get well?

And this guy said, well, I don't have any way to get into the pool.

Have you thought about that? Jesus said, do you want to get well?

He doesn't to say yes or no. He says, well, I don't have a way to get into the pool.

Everybody pushes in front of me and everybody goes there ahead of me.

You know, it almost makes me feel like he thinks that this is his lot in life,

to lay there and not be able to get ahead.

Some people just, they stay with the one who's hurting them.

They stay with the one who disparages them.

They stay with a situation that's unhealthy for them.

They just don't know what else to do. I don't think he He knew what else to

do. Jesus said, you want to get well? And he says, I don't have a way to get into the pool.

He defined his whole life on this one thing.

And sometimes we do that. I mean, we'd rather put up with the hurt than try

something different and take a chance and do it.

We don't want to do anything that might upset the way we're feeling right now, even though it's awful.

So Jesus comes right up to him and he says, do you want to get well?

And he goes into his, what I call the poor little me routine.

He doesn't hope for anything beyond getting into that stupid little pool.

That's all he can think about. He can't think about anything else or have any other direction.

He forgot that even if an angel did come and stir up the pool,

where'd the angel come from? Came from God.

Even if that was true, even if that is the way it worked out,

even if he did have somebody there that could get him down and rush him down

into the pool first, the angel came from God.

He was putting all his focus, all his attention, all his being into the pool and not to God.

And so here's Jesus, God himself, standing in front of him. Now,

we got to give him some credit.

He doesn't know who Jesus is. The scripture even, John even tells us,

he doesn't know who Jesus was.

But he says, no one's willing to help me. You know, people like that?

Poor me. Nobody wants to help me. Nobody wants to do for me.

I have such disadvantage.

He tells Jesus, do you want to get well?

I don't have anybody to help me. There's nothing wrong. I think Jesus probably,

at this moment in my imagination, the way this story goes, so here's a guy laying there, there.

And I think Jesus went between him and the pool.

And he says, do you want to get well? And the guy's trying to look at the pool around Jesus.

There he is, Jesus, right in front of him. And this guy still wants to look at the pool.

And Jesus says, you know, hey, do you want to get well?

And he's looking at the pool. I want to get to the pool. And Jesus is right

there. And I think we do that. I know I've done that.

Jesus is right there. And I'm looking for something else to bail me out,

something else to give me health, something else to make me whole.

I look other places instead of Jesus is right in front of me.

I mean, it's not his fault that he had this problem for 38 years.

And in his mind, it wasn't his fault. And it's his friend's fault why he couldn't get well.

They wouldn't let him into the pool. It's those other people around who dashed

in front of him, even though they couldn't see and they couldn't walk either.

It's their fault. The reason that he's not well is their fault.

It's pushy people who cut in front of him. It's God's fault for only healing

for the first one in the pool.

It should be whoever is the most sincere person. They should be the one that's

healed. Or who's ever been there the longest. Wouldn't that be fair?

The angel came and said, okay, who's ever been here the longest?

38 years. Okay, come on down.

That would be much more fair, wouldn't it? But he said, you know,

it's not my fault. It's everybody else's fault.

It's God's fault for the way he set it up.

It's possible he sounded like that, an unhappy person that we've all met before

that blames everything else and everyone else.

I've waited patiently for 38 years, he would have said, but nobody understands.

No one's willing to help me.

I guess they're just too busy, hurt and abandoned and alone and a suffering

martyr, willing to be healed, but not knowing how it could ever happen.

And he just needs to get into that pool to get his legs back.

So Jesus says, and here we go, because it's something we have to preach sometimes,

even though it's a little uncomfortable.

Even we'd have to find it and we have to deal with it. That's why I tiled it the way I did.

Sometimes we need to hear what we need to hear straight from God,

even though it's uncomfortable and even though it hurts a little bit.

Jesus has a solution for him, and it doesn't include getting into the pool.

It doesn't include him doing anything else except what he needed to really do all along.

Jesus says to him what seems to be impossible, get up. Can you imagine that?

Really, I know, maybe it's just my personality, but I mean, I would have wanted

to say, you know, if I could have done that, I would have done it 37 and a half

years ago. You know, what do you mean, get up?

Jesus says, get up. Take off your mat and walk. Get up.

Well, I can't. That's the whole point, Jesus. I can't get up.

That's why I'm waiting to get into the pool, is because I can't get up.

And Jesus says to him, get up.

You've been laying around. Oh, let me get this closer to me.

You've been laying around long enough. Stop it.

Stop the way you're thinking. Stop your thought process the way it is. Stop the self-pity.

Stop the poor little me routine. Stop the complaining and the empty hope,

because God can do so much more.

Or God can bring healing to you and rightness and wholeness,

and you just have to do it. What you had to do is get up.

Some Christians lay around for years and years, whining and complaining,

but staying helpless and satisfied with just crumbs.

Oh, if I only had a better job, I could get ahead. I could be whole. I could do better.

If only my husband or my wife understood stood me better or treated me better.

If only my job didn't make me so tired and make me so irritable and make me so crabby.

If only that were true, then I could be the whole person I want to be. And on and on it goes.

Instead of getting up and taking up our mat and walk, we'll talk about taking

up the mat in just one second.

He says, if you want to get better, if you want to really, really get better, you got to stop that.

Oh, this is who I am. This is what defines me. And you have to get up and be who you could be.

It seemed like an impossible thing, but it was with Jesus.

You know, churches need to hear get up sometimes, too.

You know, if we only had a better pastor, that's what Richland Center said in 96 when I left.

If we only had a better pastor, we could be a great church, you know.

If we only had more money. Actually, you know, when I came to Richland Center.

That was my third church, I think, to pastor.

And it was the first church that I came to that their major problem wasn't having enough money.

I mean, it wasn't a rich church by far, but it wasn't like every board meeting,

they're trying to figure out how they're going to pay the water bill.

It was the first church that I went to that that wasn't the situation.

It was just amazing. You know, the other thing I really like,

this has nothing to do with the sermon, but I really liked about Richland Center.

I grew up in Aurora, Illinois, and I pastored for a while Rockford.

And when you meet somebody new there, you say to them, where are you from?

And they say, oh, I'm from Minnesota, or I'm from Alabama, or I'm from Washington,

or from Florida, wherever they're from, they tell you where they're from.

Oh, I'm from this other, I'm from St. Louis area.

That's what they... When I moved to Richardson Center in 89,

and I would say to people, where are you from?

They'd say, well, I grew up in the valley, but I live up on the ridge now.

Or they'd say, I grew up near English Ridge, but I live in town now.

And it was just so great. I just wanted that stability in my own life.

And anyway, that's not going to do with this. It was why I liked Richland Center.

Anyway, churches need to get up too. If they had a better pastor,

or more people, or more money, or better music, or more classrooms,

more teachers, better parking, or locations, or all the other things, this would really help.

And they really just need to get up and start walking and start doing it.

Start doing what they can do with what they have.

Only more Jesus will help, not those other things.

That's what will really help. Some of us need to get up.

We've been lying around long enough. It takes faith and obedience to get up.

It needs being right next to Jesus.

That's what it takes to get up. It needs hearing him tell us to get up and take our mat and walk.

It takes nothing to continue on like we always have and always have been.

But Jesus doesn't leave it there with this guy. He says, get up.

He's telling the guy what to do.

And then he says to him something interesting, take your mat.

And what he's saying there to him is, leave your old way behind.

You won't be coming back here again. Well, if you get up now,

you won't be coming back here looking for an angel storing up some water.

I mean, it gets them in trouble later, as we read, because it's a Sabbath day

and you're not supposed to carry things on the Sabbath day.

But it really—and you know that really wasn't God's law.

That was a way people made it so that they could remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.

But the rabbis had interpreted it down to the—my favorite story about that is

it was against the rabbis' law to pick up a stone on the Sabbath day because

that was work. work, but you could pick up a child.

So some people would pick up a child and have a child pick up the stone.

It became impossible to obey all those rules and that kind of thing.

And so that's why sometimes you see Jesus just doing what needs to be done.

Here's a guy, he needs healing.

He needs to know that he's not

coming back here again. He's going to be different from now on forever.

And so pick up your map, pick up the thing that defines you as this invalid,

pick up the thing that defines you as the one that your whole life is just waiting

in to get to the pool and then walk.

Go on. Healing and caring things were not things you could do on their list

of things on the Sabbath, but Jesus did in any way, because it became impossible

to do all those things that they wanted to,

and their whole job was to make sure no one was violating their rules.

So, they began to get very irate about this healing. As I read it, did you note that?

Here's this guy, couldn't walk for 38 years.

Jesus heals him, and they're concerned because he's carrying his mat.

I've met people like that. I've been that person.

How irate they were. The end of the section tells us they began to look,

quote, all the harder for a way to kill him.

He heals people. Look, 38 years this guy suffers.

Jesus heals him. And what do these watchers of the Sabbath day laws do?

They look all the harder for a way to kill him.

You know, not everyone will be overjoyed when you finally listen to God and

get up and take up your mat and begin to walk away from your old pathetic life.

So he's not only to get up for himself, he's not only to take up his mat to

get rid of that old life that defined him so pathetically. But then Jesus says, walk.

You don't just get up and stand around saying, ooh, I can stand.

Ooh, I'm healed. Ooh, I'm different. Yay.

I don't have to get in the pool. You're supposed to go do something.

You don't just stand around. He says, get busy.

Get working. Get going. It had to be hard for him. What kind of work could he do? I.

Get up, take your mat, and walk. When I read scriptures like this,

I try to put myself in that place.

And can you imagine this guy, every day they saw this man there at the pool

waiting to try to get in and couldn't get in because he couldn't walk.

And Jesus, this guy comes by in front of him and says a few things to him,

just a couple sentences, and the guy stands up.

Can you imagine what's going on around him at that moment?

Do you think any of those people are still looking at the pool at that moment.

I think all of a sudden the priorities became real, and Jesus was the focus of attention there.

And so Jesus says to him, now I want you to walk.

Don't just get up. Don't just pick up your mat to get rid of your old life.

But I want you to get busy. I want you to walk.

I think Jesus probably had a big crowd around him at that moment,

do you think maybe some of those eyes that are not on the pool now are on Jesus

wondering, what could Jesus do for me?

And you would note that, you know, maybe it'd be better to follow this guy than

to wait around at this pool for it to get stirred up.

Here he is, calm, sure, get up, take up your mat, and walk.

If he can fix this guy, I'm sure that he could fix me. And maybe that's just what he wanted.

Later, it tells us at the end of the scripture that Jesus finds him in the temple.

Well, that's good for him. He learned a good lesson.

I mean, his first steps were probably pretty hard and difficult and challenging,

but now he's all over the place.

And he leaves his pathetic place of need and sickness and went to the temple

so he could be surrounded by prayer and praise and power.

And you might have heard something like this. This is from Psalm 66, verses 13 to 20.

Psalms 66:13–20

I will come to your temple with burnt offerings and fulfill my vows to you.

Vows my lips promised and my mouth spoke when I was in trouble.

I will sacrifice fat animals to you and the offering of rams.

I will offer bulls and goats.

He probably would have offered anything to God at that moment,

anything that he could get his hands on as an offering.

Verse 16, come and hear all you who fear God. Let me tell you what he's done for me.

I cried out to him with my mouth. His praise was on my tongue.

If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened.

But God has surely listened and has heard my prayer.

Praise be to God who has not rejected my prayer or withheld his love from me.

He went from from being this helpless, whiny, pathetic man who limited God and lived a hopeless life,

to going right to church to worship that God that brought him healing,

to thank him, to love him.

And he even gets to meet Jesus again and find out finally who he really is.

And isn't it interesting, Jesus says to him, hey, good, I'm glad you're still

walking. No, hey, now you're healed. Look look what I did for you. No.

Jesus says, yeah, no, go stop sinning or something worse will happen to you.

Can you imagine the guy? Worse.

What could be worse?

Probably going back to the way he was would be worse, which is probably true for all of us.

Going back to the way that we were before we met Jesus, before he was in our

life, before he brought us wholeness, before he brought us healing,

something worse will happen to you, he says.

You won't have any hope anymore. You won't have anything to look forward to anymore.

You'll lose it due to your own foolishness of bathing yourself in sin.

And I told you about my fall from that ladder almost 25 years ago.

And anywhere I go, I usually tell this part.

I was in the emergency room, and the doctor, they were doing all these tests.

They were doing all these things. There were all these people around.

I don't know what they were doing. I was just laying there.

And I was actually at any moment ready for him to come and say,

you know, we can't do anything.

You know, your life is over. I was pretty sure that was it.

That's the way I felt back at the church on the floor. That's the way I felt

in the ambulance. That's when I first brought me to the emergency room.

And so they're doing all these tests. They're taking me here,

and they're doing this, and they're looking at this.

And at one point, he had a little light, and he wanted some people to come and

look with him, some students there.

And he was doing my eye, and he says, see how it's not attached?

And so I was pretty sure at any moment, he was going to say,

well, we've done all we can, you know, Mr.

Coakley, but, but, you know, you're not going to make it.

But instead he leaned over and got right in my face. I mean,

like this far away, got right in my face.

And he said, Mr. Coakley, you had a bad fall.

And I said, you think so, Jack? No, I didn't say that.

I just laid there, but I did think it. And I've rehearsed that for 25 years.

So you've had a bad fall, but you're going to be okay.

I thought, this is what this guy does. When they bring people into the emergency

room, he checks them out to see what he will predict will happen.

And he didn't say, I'm afraid you just got a few more minutes.

He said, you're going to be okay.

I've done all my tests. He had done all his tests. He was there the whole time.

And he said, you're going to be be okay.

And from that moment, I knew I was going to be okay, because he's the expert.

And I determined from then on that this is what we need to be as God's people.

We need to be Jesus to them. And we need to say, get up sometimes.

But very often, we need to say, you've had a bad fall, but you're going to be

okay, because Jesus is there with you.

Somebody said, boy, you were really lucky. You're glad the angels were there

to catch you. I said, well, he needed to send a few more.

But I'm whole today. You're going to be okay. You just need to let Jesus stand

between you and the pool.

Have you take up your mat and get rid of that old way of thinking,

that old way of being. You need to get up and then walk.

I challenge you today to get up and to walk. Let me pray for you.

Thank you, Lord God, for your loving kindness, for your care for us,

how you change us with your your power.

And Lord, if there's one here today that needs fresh start, new healing,

new path to wholeness, one can come to your temple here and give you praise and thanks and love.

Lord, we pray that that heart would be healed at this moment,

that inwardly they would be able to get up and to take up their mat,

leaving the old way behind, and walk forward with you, hand in hand with you from this day forward.

We thank you for your love and your care for us. And Lord, we pray for your

healing and your hope to be renewed in your people, whether it's an individual

or a family or a local church.

Lord, you would be there in the midst, and we would see you,

and not the other things we've been putting our trust and faith in, like that pool.

We give you praise and thanks. In the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.