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Village SDA Church

Ron Kelly

Resurrecting Hope and the Healing of the Sabbath

Thank you, Lord, for meeting our great needs, forgiving our sins, speaking peace to our hearts.

Thank you for the abundant provision around us, evidenced in fertile and fruitful lands that will be planted soon and meet more than our needs.

I pray, Lord, today that You would speak especially to the needs of our heart.

Now Lord, anoint us and teach us and transform us in Jesus' name.

If you have your Bibles, open them to our scripture reading.

If you read the Gospel of John, you will see many places where Jesus chooses his most controversial actions in the midst of very large crowds.

When he does this, it's not because he wants to grandstand or draw the wrong kind of attention to himself, it's because there's something that everybody needs to notice.

And this morning as we are barely into the book of John, John chapter 5, we find Jesus again in a situation where something needs fixed in the social society of the church.

Now, this is not a sermon primarily about the Sabbath, But it is a sermon that touches on the healing power of God, not only for the individual, but for the encounter that we can have with the Creator and the Redeemer.

In this situation, we find that while everybody was outwardly compliant in the age of Christ and while the restrictions and the power of the religious elite was almost complete the Sabbath instead of being a blessing had become a curse with all the added requirements of the Jews, and Jesus wished to rid it of these encumbrances and leave it standing upon its own holy dignity.

So before we look at the man that was sick for most of his adult life, we need to see the systemic and the institutional sickness that had played into the experience of a nation that was set aside to be a light, a city set on a hill, a trumpeting voice of hope.

They were self-conscious that they should sin.

And they were impotent in impacting the lives of the broken and proclaiming hope to the lost.

Before there's anything to be seen about an individual, there is a element of evil intrigue that has sought to make an encounter with God the worst thing that could ever happen to you.

Satan understands the transforming power of a living relationship with God so he turned the Sabbath into something that was unbearable.

Against the backdrop of this amazing deliverance for an individual and through the power of physical healing, Jesus is going to liberate the Sabbath to be a day that is anchored in the character, the beautiful relieving and delivering power of God.

John chapter 5 verse 1, After these things there was a feast of the Jews.

Now there is in Jerusalem by the sheep gate a pool, which in the Hebrew is called Bethesda, having 5 porches.

In these lay a multitude of those who were sick and blind, lame and withered, waiting for the moving of the waters, where an angel of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool and stirred up the water.

And whoever then first, after the stirring up of the water, stepped in was made well from whatever disease from which he was afflicted.

I want you to walk into that portico and sense the smell of soiled clothes and hear the sounds of human suffering.

And Jesus had the power to deliver them all, but this would get in the way of broader deliverance.

And so Jesus picks out the worst 1, verse 5, a man who had been ill for 38 years.

When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time in that condition, he said to him, Do you want to get well?

1 writer states that his persistent efforts towards his object, which had failed, by the way, and the doubt and the anxiety of his mind were fast wearing away the poor remnant of his strength.

What would you be worried about if you were laying there by the side of the pool for almost 4 decades?

Well we know from the latter part of the story, if you'll flip the page over perhaps, at least go to verse 14, we know from the latter part of the story that there's some A to B correlation about his current plight and his previous actions.

After the man is healed Jesus finds him in the temple and says to him behold you become well do not sin anymore so that nothing worse happens to you.

In John chapter 9, they ask Jesus about a man born blind, who sinned, him or his father, and Jesus says, that's not how it works.

But in this story, there is some relationship to the man's actions as a youth and his impotence as an adult.

It's likely that in the rebellious moments of his early years, as he was flaunting the laws that prohibit immorality, that he contracted some kind of disease which slowly took away his hope, his happiness, and then his mobility.

And he's laying there alongside of a porch with lots of other people who haven't been bathed and haven't been cared for very well.

He's been wasting his days away looking for that final moment when he might claw and scratch his way into the rippling waters, but he never quite makes it.

And the anxiety and the doubt that's in his mind is that in regard to the elements of where he stands with God.

In that society, it was common to directly consider God's stroke as the result or the cause I should say of your suffering.

It was a punitive God, a God who was looking to make you pay for what you did, what was wrong, and reward you for what you did was right.

Unfortunately, in the mix of all this, the image of God had been twisted and people no longer saw him as someone you could love.

Somewhat akin to the modern doctrine of a God that would burn you forever for not receiving his invitation of supposed grace.

Satan has plied the waters of theological understanding, tacking this way and that way depending on which way the winds change in society.

But Satan has never left off trying to smear the person in the image of God.

And in this situation there's a balance to be struck.

It's not God that's in heaven doling out disease as punishment, but there are things that we do in which there is somewhat of a relationship, a cause and effect factor.

In this situation, we find a Jesus approaching a man who has brought the disease on largely himself, knowing everything about him, and he's gonna pick him out as an expose of his goodness and grace.

In John chapter 4, Jesus talking with the woman at the well, asked her to go get her husband.

She says she doesn't have 1, and Jesus says, I know, you've had 5, and the 1 you're with now is not your husband.

Jesus knows the intimate details of all the people's lives he's dealing with, which is what makes this deliverance so important, because he dug his own hole.

He's laying there in doubt and anxiety because he's at least somewhat aware of this.

Jesus approaches him and is offering him out of the kindness of heaven's heart, the very nature of who God is.

He's asking him without a statement of faith or a confession of forgiveness if he would like to be different.

This is an amazing thing for it's a small word picture, it's a short story, it's a synopsis of who God is and how he works.

Salvation is not something you earn, it's a gift given to you.

And the result is to be an ensuing, ideally, desire to give oneself away to the 1 who gave himself for you.

Yes, Jesus understood why the man was there.

Jesus would even warn the man to not return to his previous ways.

But all of that is post-deliverance dialogue.

In the moment, all Jesus wants to know is if there could be some redemption for the rest of his adult life.

Now, there are people listening to me right now that aren't even 38 years old.

And there are people listening to me right now that 38 years old is half of the time they've been alive, and for others, some greater or lesser fraction thereof.

But if you could imagine for 4 decades living in 1 spot in the perpetual discouragement and the depression that would ensue, and finally the dawn of, I would hate to call it intelligence, but the final coming to grips with the fact that this probably is never going to work.

Until Jesus appears bending over you asking you if you'd like to get well.

He tries to get to the pool when the water is stirred, but he's never yet succeeded.

And Jesus, without skipping a beat, speaks to him and says, Get up, take up your bed, and go that way.

And while the man obeys, he stands up, new life coursing through his nerves, new power rushing through his muscles.

He turns to bend over to get his bed, and Jesus disappears into the crowd.

This creates a wonderful deliverance and a new set of problems for the man who has been directed by a deliverer who has a power over disease, has said, you need to take that bed and walk.

And as he makes his way out of the sounds and the olfactory trauma of the pool of Bethesda, he comes upon a Pharisee.

And he stops to communicate his deliverance.

Verse 10, the Jews were saying to the man who was cured, it's the Sabbath and it's not permissible for you to carry your pallet.

But he answered to him and he said, he who made me well was the 1 who said to me, pick up your pallet and walk.

And they asked him, who is the man who said to you, pick up your pallet and walk?

But the man who was healed by him did not know for it was Jesus.

He had slipped away while there was a crowd in that place.

The man probably wasn't sure he'd recognize him if he could see him It appears to be more voice recognition than anything else and yet Jesus in verse 14 interjects himself back into the man's life No introduction Just a warning Now I want you to understand something warnings are gospel messages at times in this case Jesus has just delivered most of an adult life from the misery of despair in his agedness.

And Jesus says very little to him except to affirm that he understands his journey to wellness.

Do not sin anymore that nothing worse happens to you.

It appears in 2 very short sentences that Jesus both resurrects him from perpetual despair and physical misery, and then warns him how to walk in a new life.

We're living in an age where we want the 1, but we scorn the other.

But I assure you today friends Jesus has the power to take you out of whatever dark place you've walked into, whatever hole you've dug, whatever trauma you've brought upon yourself, He has that power.

But in the backside of his deliverance he doesn't fail to be the heavenly parent who says, track this way, don't go back there.

Wherever you might be on this Easter weekend, I want you to know that God in full understanding of all the details of your motivations and your actions offers me and you the same offering of complete restoration that he offered the man at the pool of Bethesda.

We have created a number of our own challenges, but Jesus doesn't hold that in front of us, he offers instead something better.

He slips away from the man and the man quickly finds the religious elite and explains to them that it was Jesus.

They already knew, I'm sure, that it was Jesus.

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Resurrecting Hope and the Healing of the Sabbath

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