AdAgrA 2014 Conference

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AdAgrA: Adventist Agriculture Association

Plenary

Bob Jorgensen

History of Agriculture in Adventism- Part 3

Byron Smith

Why Are We Doing This?

History of Agriculture in Adventism- Part 1

David Obermiller

Youth Panel

History of Agriculture in Adventism- Part 2

Daniel LaFlair

Agriculture As Evangelism

Following Your Roots

Our Father in heaven, we ask you this morning for 1 thing.

To echo the words of Jesus that if I be lifted up I will draw all men unto me.

You do not need them drawn to me and I will make no effort to do such this morning.

And I will submit myself to you and ask that you would be lifted up and draw unto yourself.

I ask it in the name of Jesus as the scriptures have indicated so this morning.

I would like you to turn with me this morning to John chapter 5, the gospel of John.

What I've been studying is not primarily agricultural.

What I will present to you this morning is not primarily agricultural.

As you will quickly recognize that there's not much about agriculture in John chapter 5.

There will be, however, certain lessons that we may gather or glean from the chapter.

And I will make 3 points this morning relevant to us as a group.

But it is not, again, primarily agricultural.

John chapter 5, let's read together the first 5 verses.

Do not read out loud with me, but read with me, please.

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

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

In these, that is in those porches, lay a great multitude of impotent folk of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water for an angel went down supposedly at a certain season into the pool and troubled the water whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatever disease he had and a certain man was there which had an infirmity 30 and 8 years.

We'll summarize some of the things going on here.

After the events of chapter 4, the scripture tells us that there was a feast of the Jews.

Most scholars, most commentators are in agreement that this was likely the Passover feast of A.D.

Now you will, most of you will recognize that this would be about 2 years prior to the death of Christ, he being crucified on a Passover weekend.

2 years prior to that weekend is the event we're reading about.

And it says that Jesus went to Jerusalem.

There just outside on the north side of the temple complex, inside the city walls, was a pool near the sheep market, which in Hebrew is called Bethesda.

Anybody understanding Hebrew here and know what the word Bethesda means?

At this pool nicknamed Bethesda there were actually 2 pools, history tells us, and archeology as well, and these were no small pools.

So it was not a little circle in your backyard.

Even if you have a little more money and you have a below ground pool of larger size, it was not that either.

There were 2 very large pools, larger than the Olympic sized pool, which measures 165 feet in length.

And they were nearly as wide as they were long and there were 2 of them.

We're not talking a puddle around which a couple people were gathered.

There at these large pools the scripture says were laying a great multitude of invalids.

The blind, the crippled, the paralytic, and lots of them.

The story continues, they were waiting for a superstitious belief that an angel would come down and trouble the water.

And whichever of the invalids was fortunate enough to get into the pool immediately after it was troubled, he would have the blessed experience of being healed.

Now a little bit of research on the history of these pools or in the construction of Jerusalem itself would tell us or inform us that that is likely not what happened.

Now King David had heavily fortified the city of Jerusalem and that included an underground and nearly impervious to attack system of underground aquifers and waterways which would feed the city and nourish the city well nearly forever if they were attacked.

Those of you that have read anything about the destruction of Jerusalem will know that it was a very very fortified city and the Romans in attacking the city understood clearly well that they would never take that city from the outside alone.

And it was, if you read the story, it was the internal dissension in Jerusalem that literally made the city unravel from the inside out It was worse to be in Jerusalem that day when the Romans were there than it was to be outside in the Roman hands That's not the point for the morning but the point is that David had established a large network of underground waterways, this likely being a pool fed by rainwater and spring water.

And what was likely to have happened is not an angel jumping down in the pool because he needed a bath or because God was so stingy that he would only trouble it for 1 person.

But rather than on certain occasions, spring water would bubble to the surface and superstition had turned natural causes into a divine, supposedly, resource.

That is called a religious sham, by the way.

What's interesting about the story, though, is that so many people had no other source of hope than this little troubling of the pool.

And these were no merely sick-voiced people.

If you can imagine on a Passover weekend and a superstition like this combined, you would have had the very worst of the physical class in Jerusalem at that pool.

And because it was a Passover, you would have had a collection of people from all around the nation seeking to get into that pool because nationwide for these invalids it was their best chance.

And there apparently had been enough Benny Hinnish type stuff going on that people had believed in this superstition, and I'm saying to you that there was no small crowd.

John chapter 5 twice repeats the idea that it was a great multitude of people.

In fact, it was so dense that when Jesus did heal the man that he escaped like Houdini into the crowd because the crowd was so thick.

You know, and I want to make my first point to you this morning, the first of 3 points, that Jesus, this morning, that is the morning of this story, John chapter 5, likes to be where there are people in need.

He doesn't like to be merely where there are people with modest needs or politically correct needs or socially acceptable needs.

He likes to be in the place where there are the worst.

He likes to be among those who are the most desperate.

He likes to be among those who are the most hopeless, the most helpless, the most lost in society.

He likes to be among those who are desperately and chronically hurting the very type of people that you and I often like to shun.

Because anybody who's been around death has had the experience of being around a very uncomfortable emotional experience.

I remember being in Lithuania in a woman's home that had cancer.

And If you have ever, and it was the first and only time that I have ever experienced this, but if you have ever smelled death on a living person, the room reeked of it.

It was distinct, it was unmistakable, It was nothing I have ever smelled before, and it was frankly very uncomfortable for me to be there.

To be in front of the living, though she was dead.

I don't know if any of you are like that or would admit to being like that.

But when we are around those who are frail, we are reminded uncomfortably of our own frailty and frequently would prefer to be somewhere else.

There was a man there, verse 5 tells us, that was infirm, he was an invalid for 38 years.

And I will read you from the Desire of Ages, page 202 if you want to look it up later.

The Savior saw that morning 1 of a case of supreme wretchedness.

This guy among all the bad was the worst and Jesus inside his heart, you know what was wanting to go on here, Jesus looked on that multitude of invalids and he wanted to heal every single person in that congregation.

But he was restrained because there was a certain class of religious folk that were following him, And so he, in his unwillingness to unnecessarily provoke the Pharisees, chose 1.

A challenge to me and you is to become comfortable as farmers with those who are in need, not the ones that bring us money, not the ones that sympathize with us theologically or philosophically or economically or vocationally, not to sympathize merely with those people that we feel comfortable around, but to socialize and reach out the hand like Christ to those who are in need, even the very worst of those people.

This man described as alone and friendless, his disease in a great degree the result of his own sins.

And those people for me become frankly the most difficult to deal with because I want to look at you and say brother you did it you know you did it you knew what you were doing and you deserve full well what you got.

And I just want to say maybe getting what you deserve will lead you to repentance.

Alone and friendless For 38 years, that man that morning found a friend.

Suffering as it's written there in the Desire of Ages, long years of misery.

Verse 6 tells us that when Jesus saw him lying there, that Jesus, than you and I should know, leaned his precious face over that of the paralytic.

The only question that I have for myself, I've been asking it for 2 solid weeks, is do I know I'm that man?

You see, the Pharisees were equally as sick, perhaps actually more so.

But they thought they were whole and didn't need a physician.

And what separates them from him is the fact that they could walk.

And what separates them from him a little further is the fact that that guy knew he was bad and they thought they were whole.

And it's the temptation and Adventist now of 17 years looking back on what I was I conclude that I'm no longer that person.

The Pharisees and their religious purity were more in need than that man laying flat on his back.

This morning, there are people here at the Pool of Bethesda.

There are people around you sitting at the Pool of Bethesda.

You see, those of us who have got issues Look for solutions, we look for healing to our issues and what things.

Some people go for money, that'll fix my problems.

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Series

Plenary

Following Your Roots

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

GoTential

Who May Live on Your Holy Hill

29m

"Tell It Again"

God’s Love Language

56m

Words of Wisdom for Workhorses

46m

The Afterlife

The Afterlife- Part 2

28m

WYC 2012 Morning Devotional

Fruits and Gifts, Part 3

48m

Morning Devotional

Why Are We Here?

29m

Prayer by Gem Castor

For His Glory

54m

The Beast and the Little Horn

1h 7m

There is Hope

A Second Look at The First Day

47m

My Redeemer is Faithful and True

1h

Sound Doctrine