The Healing at Bethesda | John 5:1-17

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Pray with me.

Father, it's because of your powerful name that we're here.

God, it's because your powerful name that we that we sing worship songs.

God, it's because your powerful name that we gather together this morning as a community.

And we proclaim these things that are true.

We proclaim that our sin is great, yet your name is greater.

We proclaim that the fear and the anxiety that might be weighing on us this week, especially this week, after the events of this week on Wednesday, God, we say that your name is greater.

We don't make light of anything.

We're not flippant about a horrible tragedy, but we do proclaim your mighty name and say it's greater.

And when we sing things like our sin is great, but your name is greater, there's there's not an exception clause that means except for us.

And the enemy would say that that your forgiveness and your name is great for everybody but us.

And we say that's a lie, and we say that your name is great, and we say that your healing is available, and your mercy and your grace because of your powerful name.

And it's because of your powerful name that we all say together.

Amen.

And Amen.

Well, good morning.

You might be thinking, man, I hoped and thought it was the other Wade that was preaching this morning.

The one who shaves and tucks his shirt in occasionally.

I'm honored to be here.

Um I'm honored to be before you and opening God's word together with you this morning.

My name is Wade Collier.

Um my family and I have uh been a part of Grand Parkway for well over ten years now, and um I'm honored to um be a part of us continuing on in the book of John.

Um our pastor Neil is actually up in Dallas and is probably wrapped up and thinking about heading home.

He's been doing a D now for a church in Richardson, actually just north of Dallas.

Um my folks live about a block away from the church where he was preaching, and so they were gonna go here in this morning.

So if you want to know how Neil preaches um when he's out of town, uh come find me next Sunday.

I'll give you my mom's evaluation of uh of how he did.

Um this morning we are going to continue on in the book of John.

We're gonna be in John chapter five, uh, beginning in verse one.

If you don't have a Bible, if you look around you, there is probably a hardcover uh pew Bible around there.

Um there's also a majority of what I'll be reading will be on the screens behind me.

Uh chapter five, verse one, excuse me, says this.

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

Now there is in Jerusalem by the sheep gate a pool, an Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades.

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

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

And 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?

And 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.

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

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

Now that day was the Sabbath.

So the Jews said to the man who had been healed, It is the Sabbath, it is not lawful for you to take up your bed.

But he answered them, The man who healed me, that man, said to me, Take up your bed and walk.

They asked him, Who is the man that said this to you?

Take up your bed and walk.

Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, as there was a crowd in this place.

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

Sin no more, that nothing worse may be happened to you.

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

And this is why the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath.

But Jesus answered them, My Father is working until now, and I am working.

This is the word of the Lord.

Um as we dig in this morning before we begin to look at this uh verse by verse, there's a few things that I want to point out uh in our scripture, just by way of introduction.

Um the first that we need to understand, if you've been here uh for any amount of time as we're going through the book of John, uh this might be clear to you, but everything that Jesus says and does reeks, and I'm talking reeks of intentionality.

And here's what I mean by that is there is an intention about Jesus to reveal himself, to reveal his character, to reveal his salvation to humanity, the salvation that he provides for humanity.

And John, in the way that he lays out this inspired gospel, he highlights how Jesus is intentionally in everything that he does, he's laying out his lordship.

He's laying out his lordship.

And here's what I mean by he's laying out his lordship.

You know when you're driving through, you don't see him much, but you're driving through a small town, maybe you've got lost and ended up in pleak out here, or um you're out in East Texas somewhere, I'm sorry, but you're out there in East Texas somewhere, and you see those old marquee signs and they had the flashing arrow signs pointing you to something.

What Jesus is doing by laying down and revealing his lordship in everything that he does is he is saying, Hey, look at these blinking arrows that are pointing at me, and I am telling you that I am God.

I am the Son of God, I am the Messiah, I am God with skin on.

And so with that in mind, I was um reading, and there's there's several great books on John.

If it was up to me and there was only one that I could read, there's one that's written by a man named Meryl C.

Tinney.

Meryl C.

Tinney racked up a gazillion degrees from Gordon College and um the oh on the on one end, on the other end, Harvard.

And he's got this great book on the Gospel of John.

And the reason I bring it up, and it's gonna come up on the screens behind me, um, he's got this great way of lying, rather, laying out the way that God reveals himself, his character, his lordship in the Gospel of John.

And there's two reasons that I want to put up before you this morning.

First reason I want to do it is it holds me accountable and keeps me from being a lazy hack and trying to act like I came up with all this on my own and like all this is original information.

Um this is something written by somebody way smarter than me.

And the other reason I want us to see it is it sets the stage for what we're gonna see from Christ in this passage of scripture.

And so what Merrill Tinney lays out that you'll see on the screens is these different things that Jesus does, beginning in chapter two of John and leading all the way up to where we are, and these different things he's revealing about himself.

Remember when he's at the at the wedding feast in Canaan, and they're one out of wine, and he takes the water and he changes it into wine?

What Jesus is doing is he is testifying to his creative power.

Hear this, to change the quality of things.

To take this water that was drinkable, but then to change the quality of it.

And then you move on to what is some of our favorite story.

This guy right here is when Jesus goes into the temple and he's tired of the money changers, and he's tired of uh tired of them turning his father's house into a den of thieves, and he literally makes his own bull whip, right?

And he drives everybody out.

And what he what we're doing is we're seeing that Jesus has authority over all the institutions of Judaism.

And then you keep moving on to his time with Nicodemus, and Nicodemus begins to testify some things about Jesus.

He's saying that Jesus has come from God, and he begins to recognize that Jesus has an authority, he has authority as a teacher.

And then we build on that.

John the Baptist says, hey, he doesn't just have authority as a teacher, he's the Messiah.

My entire life has been driven towards this point to tell you about the Messiah that is coming, and this guy, Jesus, he is the Messiah.

And then just a few weeks ago, when Jesus takes that intentional turn and he goes into Samaria and he spends time with the woman at the well, she begins to imply that Jesus knows everything.

And then based on her testimony, she goes and she sees her friends and she sees her families in Samaria, and we read in the scripture that many become believers because of that.

And what happens is now he's no longer just an authoritative teacher, he is the savior of the world.

And then last week, the official whose son was sick and he's a long way off, we see Jesus heal him from afar, and we begin to recognize something that Jesus is a healer whose word can overcome the problem of distance as well as any disease.

And I see many of you doing this, feel free to do this.

I want you everything, this is this we're wound this tight.

If you want to take a picture of those, I know it's a lot to try to write down.

Take your phone out, take a picture, but next week we'll steal your phones from you.

Um And so, if we were to continue on in this list from Tinny, he would say that this morning, as we as we turn into chapter five, that this is an example of Jesus displaying his authority over time.

And we'll talk about that here in just a minute.

Here's my last point by way of introduction as we continue to jump into this.

As I was reading through the text just a minute ago, some of you, if you had your Bibles open, um, you may have noticed one of two things.

Either one, as you're looking, and maybe even you're looking now, you see on verse five that you have a little footnote next to the number five in your Bible, or maybe you have some square brackets around there.

Um, or and you're beginning to notice that it goes from verse three to verse five, and we're missing a verse in there.

Or maybe even in your Bible, it does have that second half of verse three, and it has verse four, and you're already um crafting your email to Neil about how I leave out verses of the Bible when I preach.

Um uh and maybe for the very first time you're reading this and you're noticing that in your Bible it skips from verse three to verse five, and so now you're gonna march over to Lifeway and get a refund on your Bible for the misprint.

Um, but you can't do that because um they're all at the lake with the Chick-fil-A employees.

Um there's another wave of people who will get that joke in a minute.

Um they don't work on Sundays.

Um and and two, you you don't need a refund because uh it's it's intentionally left out.

And it's intentionally left out because of something that's called doubtful authenticity.

Doubtful authenticity.

And what that means is if you look at the original manuscripts and you get to John 5, anything that's older than 400 AD, that verse doesn't exist, or that verse and a half of 3B and 4 don't exist.

And so it's believed and it's agreed upon that some scribes at some point added that verse and a half in there to describe what happens in the waters that we're gonna read about in verse 7.

So they read they think, well, maybe Jesus needs some help or we need to provide some extra authenticity to it, which isn't needed.

Um, but if you're like me and you're dying of curiosity and you don't have that verse in your Bible and you want to know what's it about and why was it in there and why is it not in there anymore, um, I'm willing to risk uh excommunication for heresy and put it up on the screens, but I'm gonna drag all the folks in the media booth back there with me because they agreed to do it.

So what's gonna come up on the screen is you're gonna see 3A, and then we've put 3B and 4 in there because I want you to see it and see it for a reason.

So it says this in these pools lay a multitude of invalids, blind, lame, and paralyzed.

Now we get to the part of scripture that was pulled out.

For the moving of the water, for an angel of the Lord went down at a certain season into the pool and stirred the water.

Whoever stepped in first after the stirring of the water was healed of whatever disease he had.

All right, now look at me and hang with me.

This isn't scripture, but there's a reason, this is this isn't authentic, but there's a reason that I want you to see it.

There's a reason I put it in front of you.

Um it's it's not part of the inspired message of John.

There's nowhere in the Bible that affirms or confirms that from time to time angels would come down and dip their wing in the pool of Bethesda and create it as healing water.

But here's the reason I share it with you, and here's why it's important is people here believed that.

People are gathering because they believe that.

Look at verse 3.

When Jesus rolls onto the scene, he comes through the goat gate at the Bethesda pool.

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

They're blind, they're lame, they're paralyzed, they're looking for a miracle, and they are convinced that this water is going to deliver the healing.

Which is crazy, right?

Because not like a person in the 21st century would load up in their RV or SUV and drive up to Hot Springs, Arkansas and go take a mineral bath, right?

Because they believe, or maybe they fill their house with essential oils and they got nebulizers in every room, and their house smells like a potpourri factory.

Men, am I the only one?

No?

See what happened is all the women they're gonna find me afterwards, and I'm gonna be in a lot of trouble.

But my wife's not in here, so I'm alright.

Um, so so we pick up here in chapter five, and Jesus is gonna make bold statements.

He's gonna make bold statements about his relationship to the Father.

He's gonna heal someone on the Sabbath, and he is going to infuriate the religious leaders of the day.

Jesus is kicking it off.

He's starting a party, right?

We're gonna make proclamations about being the son of God, we're gonna heal someone on the Sabbath, and we're gonna infuriate all the religious leaders.

Look again at verse 5.

It says, One man was there who had been an invalid for 38 years.

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, I'm gonna do this a few times throughout the scripture.

I want to take a minute and make sure we don't miss a few things because this is one of those passages I was talking with someone after the last service, and they said, Man, I've read that passage a ton of times, and this guy's been to Bible college, went to seminary, and he said, I think I just missed all that.

I said, You're not alone.

I said, I was bugging Neil for months, trying to figure out where he was gonna be in the book of John when it came time, my time to preach, and I got my passage, and I was like, Really?

What am I supposed to do with this?

And I just kept continuing to read it and study and saw so much, and so I don't want us to miss it.

So look at this.

One thing I want to point out is this man has been an invalid for 38 years.

38 years.

I just turned 39 a couple months ago.

So that's my entire lifetime.

This man has been an invalid.

From what we see in just a couple verses, his affliction, him being an invalid, means that he can't walk.

38 years, no walking.

Probably the way this laid out, I'm just drawing some conclusions from here.

Probably the way this worked out is some of his family members picked him up, brought him to the pool of Bethesda.

They went off, went to work, did what they needed to do.

He sat there waiting for the waters to stir because that's what they believed would happen.

Then they would come at the end of the day, pick him up, take him back home.

38 years, right?

Here's the second thing we need to see is that Jesus asks him a question.

Look at the question Jesus asks Do you want to be healed?

Now maybe I'm the only one, maybe I'm the only one who sees that and and thinks, Jesus, that this man has been crippled for 38 years.

John says that Jesus knew that he had been there a long time.

And Jesus' question is, do you want to be healed?

So I read this and I'm like, of course he does, Jesus.

Of course he wants to be healed.

38 years not walking, lying by the pool out of superstition, of course he wants to be healed.

Jesus asks, Jesus is the king of question asking.

All throughout the Gospels, Jesus asks questions, these mic dropping questions.

You guys know what I mean by mic dropping?

Anybody over the age of 35 know what I mean by mic dropping?

That has so much authority that you spike the mic?

Jesus is the king of those, right?

Here's the old youth pastor and me.

We'll do some group participation to make sure you're still awake and with me.

Anyone want to take a guess out loud how many questions?

If you were in the last service, I see a few of you.

I don't know why you're a glutton for punishment.

You came to this twice.

But anybody want to take a guess how many questions Jesus asks?

One?

Sounds deep, but no.

Wrong.

A thousand, no, less than that.

A lot, thank you.

Cheater.

Anybody else?

Three hundred and seven questions Jesus asks.

That Jesus asks.

Somebody win?

We got a ticket back there?

Yes?

Oh, yeah, you win.

Nothing.

All right.

But Jesus asks incredible questions.

Just a few that just stuck at my mind when I when I found out I was three.

And that's not rattling around in my head, by the way.

I Googled it.

I'm not gonna lie to you.

But just a few that just rise to the top with me.

Matthew 16, 26, Jesus says, For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?

Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?

Yeah, that's good.

Matthew 7 says, Why, this is the one, man, why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?

If that wasn't good enough, he adds another incredible question.

How can you say to your brother, Let me take the speck out of your eye when there is a log in your own eye?

Jesus asks incredible questions, but here he's asking this man who has been crippled for 38 years if he wants to be healed.

I'm not too proud to tell you the first few times I read through this, I'm thinking, Jesus, I don't know if this is in the top ten.

I don't know if this question is cracking the top ten.

But then I remembered C.S.

Lewis, this incredible quote.

He says this a familiar captivity is frequently more desirable than an unfamiliar freedom.

I'll let that sink in for a minute.

I'm gonna read it again.

A familiar captivity is frequently more desirable than an unfamiliar freedom.

See, Jesus knows that it's not easy to go from sickness to recovery.

Jesus knows it's not easy to go from letting a part of your life cripple you to now walking without fear.

Jesus knew that a change in our lives challenges us to shoulder new responsibilities.

Jesus knows that that means new emotions, it means death to bad habits, it means new opportunities are to be grasped.

So look at me.

So when Jesus says, Do you want to be healed?

This is what he's saying.

Do you really want to be healed?

Jesus is saying, are you ready for the challenges that healing brings?

Jesus is saying, are you ready for what comes next?

Jesus asked the crippled man if he wants to be healed because Jesus knows that sometimes, look at me, sometimes we prefer to stay broken.

Here's the bigger, here's here's here's the biggest bigger trait that some of us can carry.

We prefer to remain a victim.

If we're a victim, then we don't have to change our behavior.

If we're a victim, we don't have to get healthy.

If we're a victim, then we can continue to act out like a child.

Hear me on this church, that the victim mentality will blind you to what Christ wants to do in your life.

It will blind you to what Jesus wants to do in your life.

It's not just my opinion.

I'm not just passionate about it because I'm passionate about it.

Look at verse 7.

Jesus asks, Do you want to be healed?

The sick man answers him, Sir, I have no one to put me in the pool when the water is stirred up.

And while I'm going, others step down in front of me.

I had a conversation after the first service.

Those of you who know when I preach, it's never good when I leave my notes.

So I'm going to keep my hand on here and I'll go right back.

I won't leave too much.

But I had a question, I had a conversation with a guy, dear friend of mine.

He said, Hey, I just feel like you were on that guy's case a lot for missing the fact that it was Jesus.

And I don't know if that's really his fault.

I want to take a moment and just point out to you, I said, Well, that's not really what I was communicating.

If that's what I was communicating, it wasn't really what I was trying to say.

What I'm saying is, look at the question that Jesus asks him.

Do you want to be healed?

What does he say?

I have no one to put me in the pool.

Jesus didn't ask him, hey, do you have someone to put you in the pool?

Jesus said, You want to be healed.

What he's saying, you want to know what this guy is really saying?

Hey, Jesus, you're pretty big.

You were a carpenter for 30 years.

Can you lift me and put me in the pool?

I bet no one would cut in front of you, Jesus.

Can you hang around till it starts stirring again and then maybe you can drop me in the pool?

Jesus is standing in front of him, asking if he wants to be healed.

Remember the list from before, all those traits that Christ had revealed about himself starting in chapter 2?

Jesus, the one who can change the quality of things, Jesus who had authority over all institutions, Jesus, the one with ultimate authority, Jesus who is the Messiah, Jesus who is all-knowing, Jesus who is the savior of the world, Jesus who is the ultimate healer despite distance or disease.

This Jesus is asking him if he wants to be healed, and he says, Sir, I have no one to put me in the pool.

The solution, church, to this man's problem is Jesus.

But he couldn't see it.

He couldn't see it.

He was focused on getting in the pool.

He wanted to use Jesus.

Hear this?

He wanted to use Jesus to help him get in the pool.

He wasn't looking to Jesus for healing.

Why am I on this?

Because sometimes, sometimes we turn to God, but with the Goal in mind.

Just like the man who wanted Jesus to get him in the pool, we look to God to give us what we think we need instead of what we need, instead of understanding what we need is God Himself.

What do I mean by that?

We're struggling financially.

It's weighing on us.

We're dying.

And so we we begin to say, God, I just need a better job.

We begin to pray, God, will you convict that Ebenezer Scrooge boss I have to give me more money?

Instead of just saying, God, I'm going to trust in you to work out these details.

You have given me the ability to be a steward.

You have everything I need.

I'm going to trust in that.

Or we have a relationship and a marriage struggle, and we begin to pray, God, would you convict that unrepentant wife of mine to change her behavior?

No, it's just me.

No, we we begin to ask God to change the behavior of other people, of the other person in that relationship.

But what we really need to do is ask God where we need to change.

We need to ask God, where do we need to grow?

Where do we need to serve?

Where do we need to depend on Him?

Or we're feeling empty.

We feel like our life is missing something.

And we just begin to pray that God would give us someone, or God would give us more stuff.

But what we really need to do is ask and trust, trust that He will fulfill us more than anything or anyone ever could.

And Jesus does heal the man.

Look at verse 8.

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

And at once the man was healed.

And he took up his bed and he walked.

Again, I told you we're gonna do this.

Don't miss what we just read.

There is, there was, and there is power in the words of Jesus.

Look at me.

There was and there is power in the words of Jesus.

Look at the words of Jesus.

Look what they did.

They healed him.

What did Jesus say?

Or what does it say?

It says he took his bed and he walked.

They healed him.

It also instructed him.

Jesus' words instructed.

It says, get up, take your bed and walk.

It wasn't a suggestion.

It wasn't a buzzfeed poll.

Get up and walk if you're this kind of cheese.

No?

Three people know what buzzfeed is.

His words were immediate at once.

At once the man was healed.

They healed him, they instructed him, they were immediate, and they also fulfilled prophecy.

This is important.

Don't turn there, it's gonna be on the screens behind me.

Isaiah 35, verses 3 through 6.

Isaiah 35:3–6

This is a prophecy of the Messiah to come.

This is a prophecy of what Jesus will do.

It says this in Isaiah 35.

They shall see the glory of the Lord, the majesty of our God, strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees.

Say to those who have an anxious heart, Be strong, fear not.

Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God.

He will come and save you.

Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped.

Verse six, then shall the lame man leap like a deer.

There was and is power in the words of Christ.

And when we begin to believe this church, when we trust in this, we begin to reflect what Christ is doing here in chapter 5.

Remember, I said in this chapter, we begin to see Jesus pointing all attention to himself.

Jesus came to Bethesda.

Hey, hear this.

He came to Bethesda to find this man.

He didn't stumble on him.

It wasn't an accident.

He didn't go through the goat gate and then go, oh, there's a man who's been afflicted for 38 years.

It says in Luke 19 that the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.

Jesus didn't come and just make healing possible for this man.

He healed him.

And this man, all he has to do now is live out his healed condition.

All he's got to do now is just live as a healed man.

This is us, church.

This is us and our salvation.

When Jesus saves us, we are called to live in that salvation.

If we're not careful, though, what we'll do is we take Jesus and his mercy and his grace and his salvation and we take it out of the spotlight and we try to make him a supporting character, a supporting act in our lives.

And Diedrich Bonhoeffer calls it cheap grace.

And here's what he means by cheap grace.

He says this cheap grace is the grace that we bestow on ourselves.

We try to create grace and put it on ourselves.

He goes on to say this.

Grace on our lips, grace on our lips, and we're trying to create our own is profanity.

It's a pretty bold statement.

God's grace for the lame man is based on God's mercy.

God's grace for you and for me is based on God's redeeming love.

So there's more.

There's more in this passage.

Jesus, remember, he's revealing more about himself.

And in doing that, he's going to force the Jewish people to ask the question, Who is he really?

Is he a miracle man?

Or is he the Messiah?

Look at verse 10.

Now this day was the Sabbath.

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

It is not lawful for you to take up your bed.

But he answered them.

They asked him, Who is the man that said this to you?

Take up your bed and walk.

Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn as there was a crowd in this place.

And so we just understand what's going on here.

The Old Testament has six hundred and thirteen commands in it.

Okay?

Six hundred and thirteen, that's a bunch.

What the Jewish authorities did is they took those six hundred and thirteen commands, and in each one they piled on more rules to it.

They made prohibitions, they made what they called hedge rules, and they piled them on, and they said they were to help, but what they really did is they just hindered and they made it impossible.

And so for this one that they're all in a fury about, about this man taking up his mat on the Sabbath, there are 39 rules about the Sabbath.

39 rules that they've instituted and put on them.

And I kid you not, the 39th rule is that you can't carry your bed on the Sabbath.

That you can't carry your bed on the Sabbath.

They consider this a capital offense, and a capital offense, the penalty could be stoning.

Right?

So don't think for a minute that intentional Jesus wasn't making a statement about the ridiculousness of this by going publicly right after Rule 39.

Because in reality, what their Sabbath prohibitions that they kept loading on people, it's actually keeping them from resting.

The Sabbath was meant for rest.

The fourth commandment from God was a reprieve that for one day out of seven we don't have to work.

And what they're doing is saying, don't rest.

Actually, take this rule and then 39 more.

And they're keeping them from resting.

But Jesus, however, had brought rest to this man who'd been sick for 38 years.

Also, don't miss this.

As they confront this man, they didn't say one word about the fact that he was healed.

This guy who's been laying around and can't walk for 38 years, and they didn't say one word.

Are you kidding me?

It is a miracle if I make it up highway 90 to work without physically harming someone.

If I make it there without giving in to that temptation, I'm like, Jesus is on the throne, right?

They have a literal walking miracle in front of them, and all they can do is ask for his hall pass.

It's ridiculous.

But but but don't miss this.

Don't miss this because we can miss easily what Jesus is doing because he's not doing it in the way we want him to do it.

We can miss what Jesus is doing because he's not doing it the way we want him to.

Last week, Neil was up here and he was preaching the fourth chapter of John, and he said, among other things, that Jesus isn't always going to answer your prayers the way you want him to.

I want to add to that this morning and say, Jesus, most of the time, will not respond the way you think he should.

And can we all be honest and vulnerable enough this morning to say, thank you, God?

Because we we want to picture ourselves like Jesus.

We're noble, we're breaking all the rules in the pursuit of kingdom holiness.

But in reality, a lot of the time, if not most of the time, we're like the Pharisees and the Sadducees that are getting all bent out of shape because Jesus won't cooperate.

So, my man, he encounters Jesus, and Jesus heals him.

And then what does he do?

He promptly throws Jesus under the bus, right?

He says, It was this guy, it's his fault I was breaking the Sabbath.

But Jesus, in his intentional way, seeks him out.

Look at verse 14.

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

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

These words of Jesus are interpreted by most theologians to believe that this affliction that this man has, his 38 years of not being able to walk, were a result of his sin.

And so Jesus, in his healing him, has not only healed his physical affliction, but has now pursued him again, and he's telling this man, hey, your physical struggle is gone.

I've healed your physical struggle.

Now I need you to lay down this sin that is crippling you.

And as we read this, as I read this, if we're honest this morning, we have to be faced with the question.

We have to ask ourselves, is there a sin in our life?

Is there a habitual choice that it's crippling us?

I couldn't help but think I know this man who struggled with alcoholism and he drank to such an extent that he had cirrhosis of the liver.

And through an act of a lot of different circumstances, he got on the donor list and he worked his way up the donor list and got a new liver.

And then as soon as he was healthy, he went back to pounding drinks again.

Right?

And so maybe, maybe it's not that dramatic.

Maybe it's more pervasive.

Maybe it's the sin that's become our secret indulgence, and its consequences have begun to be almost like a spiritual stroke.

And here's what I mean by a spiritual stroke is we find ourselves unable to live holy because there's this paralysis in part of our body.

And there's this spiritual stroke, it's the consequences of that sin.

And I believe this, I believe this is the reason that Jesus not only says get up and walk, that Jesus says, get up and take your mat.

Because what Jesus is saying, I truly believe this, is he's saying, hey, take up your mat because I don't want you to be able to go back to this life again.

Because I don't want you to say, well, I'll try this Jesus thing out for a while, but I'm gonna leave my mat there, just gonna reserve my spot in case I need to go back and see the waters all troubled again, and maybe I'll climb in there.

I want you to walk away from it.

So Jesus heals this man, he walks away, and then he stops sinning, and everyone lives happily ever after, right?

Not so much.

He dimes out Jesus again.

It says the man went away and he told the Jews that it was Jesus who healed him.

Last week, another thing that Neil had said was that you can hear the word of God.

There are people that can agree with the word of God and not know him, not have a relationship with him.

I would add to that that I think from reading this that it's also possible to experience a sign of Jesus and not experience salvation.

But the good news is none of this catches Jesus off guard.

Jesus isn't like the villain at the end of a Scooby-Doo cartoon where they rip his mask off and he's like, I would have gotten away with it too, if it hadn't been for you meddling kids, right?

Jesus isn't trying to pull a fast one on anybody.

Jesus knows what he's doing because he's wanting to draw all this attention to himself.

And so, like he's done in multiple times and are represented in the gospels, he is going to continue to act and perform miracles on the Sabbath because it drives the rulers of the day crazy.

They miss the fact that he heals someone's withered hand.

They miss the fact that he walks into a synagogue and there's a woman with an evil spirit, scripture says, that's causing her to walk bent over for 18 years.

Jesus walks in and with the word, remember, because there's power in the words of Christ with a word, frees her.

They don't even miss it, they miss it.

They don't even say a word about it.

They're mad and in a tear, and it says they want to destroy him because he worked on the Sabbath.

And so now, instead of just being countercultural to their calendar, now what Jesus is saying is, I'm not only performing miracles on the Sabbath, I have every right to, because I am the Son of God.

I am God incarnate.

And for the first time in the gospel, he brings this on and he makes it clear that he is the Son of God.

He's claiming that his relationship to the law is the exact same as as God's, right?

Jesus is saying that he and the Father are doing the same work.

And what is that work as we close?

That work is as he is healing us.

Look at me.

It's not a question of whether or not Jesus will heal you.

The question that we're faced with this morning is how will we respond to his healing?

How will we respond to his offer for us to heal?

Clyde's gonna come, and this is um how we're gonna close this morning is um there's this great uh uh uh section written by a pastor named Russell Smith where he took this section of scripture and he put some questions before on how you respond to the healing invitation of Christ.

And so these are gonna be up on the screen, and this is what um our reflection, our invitation looks like.

And you can snap a picture again.

Maybe there's just one question that sticks out to you.

But let's take a moment and um and and and reflect on our response to Christ's invitation of healing.

Let's pray.

Father, we confess that um sometimes we miss you uh for our own preconceived notion of what salvation should look like, of what our lives should look like, of what healing and mercy and fulfillment should look like.

God, we wanna we wanna lay that down.

And we want to be a people that say, God, we want your healing and your fulfillment and your restoration.

God, that's our prayer.

We praise things in your name.

Amen.

Hey, uh I uh I appreciate uh being in front of you guys.

I enjoy uh being with you and appreciate your attention this morning.

Um let me make a few uh announcements.

If you are a guest with us and you've been here um two, three times, and you are ready to maybe have some questions answered, uh maybe out yourself uh as coming to the church and uh maybe connect with one of the pastors here and uh, like I said, have some questions answered.

There's a couple ways you can do that.

Right in front of you, there's some white cards.

Um, if you want to fill one of those out, and there's some tall brown offering boxes on the way out the door, you can drop it off in there.

After the service, uh, myself, some pastors, some elders are gonna be available.

We'd love to know you, love to be able to pray with you.

Um, and in those tall brown boxes, if uh for the rest of us, if today is your day to worship through giving, that's where you do that as well.

All right.

Do me a favor, stand to your feet.

I'm gonna speak a blessing over you.

There's a lot of you who watch in this room and there's a great weight on you.

And by great, I mean it is overwhelming at times.

And it feels unbearable.

And it's because it is.

It's because you're trying to do it on your own.

But there's a God whose name is greater.

He's greater than your suffering, he's greater than your anxiety, he's greater than your hurt, he's greater than your fear.

Trust in that and live in that in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

You're dismissed.