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Hendersonville Seventh-day Adventist Church, NC

David Wright

Do You Want to Be Made Whole?

And He looks into our lives and He sees things right off the bat and He says, you know what?

I could make these adjustments and changes quite easily, actually.

But if you'd only allow me to get started, if you'd only give me permission, if you'd only give me access.

Revelation 3.20 says, Behold, I stand at the door and knock.

He doesn't say, Hey, hey, hey, here I come.

He stands politely as a gentleman at the door, and he knocks.

And if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him and he with me." He says, I long to have relationship, but I'm not going to force myself on you.

I'm not going to demand it or require it.

And so that fundamental choice comes down to you and I, and it comes to us today and every day.

And the question is, what are we going to do with that choice?

I like the things that I'm used to and accustomed to.

But what is that essentially saying about our trust in God as He's knocking at our heart's door?

Well, He might do something I don't like.

He might take away those things that I very much enjoy.

We're basically saying I don't trust that he has my best interest at heart.

So the safest place to leave that person is outside.

But friends, Jesus is the great fixer-upper.

And the essential question is, do you want to be made whole?

It's not, is there somebody out there that's willing to take on the task?

It's a very simple, it's a very basic question.

This morning I want to look at the story in John chapter 5.

There's other aspects of this story that we probably will not take the time to get into, but I want to look at the first part of this story that takes place.

The title in your Bible might be similar to mine, a man healed at the pool of Bethesda.

It was a Sabbath day, just like in our story, it tells us in verse 9, and we as well came through the Sheep Gate.

It's on the north side of the Temple Mount of the city.

I mean, the lower end is taller and higher, and that's where more of the main entrances were.

And so this north end is kind of the backside, if you will, of the Temple Mount.

And so the Sheep Gate was called that because the sacrifices often would come in through that gate.

And there was a pool there, and it became so popular that they expanded this place.

And we read about it here in John 5, beginning in verse 1.

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, which is called in Hebrew Bethesda, having 5 porches.

And in these lay a great multitude of sick people, blind, lame, paralyzed, waiting for the moving of the water.

For an angel went down at certain time into the pool and stirred up the water.

And then whoever stepped in first after the stirring of the water was made well of whatever disease he had." Verse 5, now a certain man was there who had an infirmity 38 years.

If you're not familiar, Jerusalem has been built on top of many, many times.

And I believe it's when the Muslims kind of took things over.

They didn't want the Temple Mount to be so high and removed.

And so they built on top of a lot of the existing Jerusalem, which is still underneath all of that.

Sometimes you can even access and do a dig in Jerusalem underneath the city that everyone's using today.

But this story in John chapter 5 has been under some scrutiny for some time saying there's no place in Jerusalem that fits this story.

Until they unearthed and uncovered exactly what the Bible describes in the 20th century, they found 2 pools with 5 porches.

Was it just as accurate before the archaeologists found and made that discovery?

And this is maybe a depiction, if you will.

You have the Temple Mount here on our left, and then behind, we're actually looking at the north side here, even though it may appear to be the south side, you have these 2 pools, if you will.

And if we zoom in on those 2 pools, this is kind of a model, if you will, of what it may have looked like.

It was laid out in an uneven rectangle, 165 feet by 220 feet wide, that's the uneven part, by 315 feet long, hewn entirely out of rock, surrounded by colonnades on all 4 sides, and divided by a fifth colonnade in the center.

And this pool was fed by an underground intermittent stream.

And so anything, if you know anything about an intermittent stream, sometimes it bubbles and gurgles and does all of these things when the water begins to flow again.

Yet there is this idea that has developed, this tradition that when the water gurgles, it's an angel and the first 1 in the pool is healed.

Well, Beth, if you study words, means house of.

We have lots of Beths in Scripture or cities that start with Beth.

And we read about who is there, the blind, the lame, and the paralyzed.

Really, what this ended up being was a human garbage dump.

And it was avoided by most, and you can understand why.

Because of the sights and the smells, it was not pleasant, it was uncomfortable.

Here are people that nobody knows what to do with.

Maybe there is some chance, some stretch, if you will, that when there's a stirring of the water, they could be healed.

Another reason to avoid it is I don't want to become ceremonially unclean on my way to the temple, never mind the fact that it's a depressing place to be and they're asking for money and begging and all the rest.

Let me ask you, what would it be, Certainly in our time, but what would it mean back then?

Who's going to employ somebody that is lame, unable, And perhaps the paralyzed is the most worst off of all." To be paralyzed means some part of the body is not capable of movement.

You can tell it anything you want from up here, but there's no response down below.

It might be from the waist down, it could be from the neck down, but it is a total lack of control of a part of the body.

We could use words like powerless, helpless, incapable, unable.

Just gonna pause our story there for a minute.

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Do You Want to Be Made Whole?

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