Pastor Bob Erbig: All right, well, good morning, church.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Welcome back to week five of our series.
Pastor Bob Erbig: We're calling Upside Down Glory, as you just saw.
Pastor Bob Erbig: We've been unpacking what Scripture says about disability and the kingdom of God.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now, during our time, we've looked at themes of dignity and advocacy and hospitality.
Pastor Bob Erbig: We've explored difficult questions about God's involvement in disability.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And this morning, what I'd like to do is return to that latter topic, studying a key passage in the discussion, John chapter 9, verses 1 to 7.
Pastor Bob Erbig: John 9, 1 to 7, we're also going to look at a scene in John chapter 5 this morning.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now I'm titling this message, The Canvas of Glory.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now, the John 9 passage was and is very meaningful to my wife and I in our journey with our son Josiah, whom I've spoken about earlier in this series.
Pastor Bob Erbig: But today I would like to share a little bit more about that story.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Amanda and I had always spoken about having two to three uh kids, and we became pregnant with our oldest, uh Jenna, almost immediately after we started trying.
Pastor Bob Erbig: But the pregnancy wasn't the easiest, and yet we felt especially blessed when she was born, and so we gave her joy as her middle name.
Pastor Bob Erbig: But after Jenna, we felt the Lord leading us to try for a second, and we did not get pregnant immediately.
Pastor Bob Erbig: In fact, it took a while.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Almost two years of trying with multiple miscarriages, a very painful season, especially for my wife, who experienced that loss very acutely.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Then in the fall of 2019, a woman in our church, who many of you probably remember, Barbara Zellman, began praying for us.
Pastor Bob Erbig: You probably remember Barbara as the matriarch of NBC, teaching Sunday school for almost 70 years.
Pastor Bob Erbig: In fact, one Sunday she came up to Amanda and announced, as was her custom, I've been praying for you, and the Lord told me, not only will you get pregnant, but you're gonna have a boy.
Pastor Bob Erbig: True story.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now, at that time, we didn't think much of it until a month later when I came home, and Amanda surprised me with this positive pregnancy test, and that was rather shocking because in that month we wouldn't have expected to get pregnant.
Pastor Bob Erbig: But God had different plans.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And so we were excited to go tell Barbara the following Sunday.
Pastor Bob Erbig: But as many of you know, I got a call a few days later that Barbara was found in her home, unconscious, and it was discovered that she had a brain bleed and would die a few days later.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now, Amanda and I did have the chance to go visit her in the emergency room, and even though she was unconscious, we had the chance to thank her for her prayers and tell her that we were pregnant.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And I like to believe that she heard us before she went to be with Jesus.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And four weeks later we found out we were having a boy.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now we were very excited that day.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Friends came over for an announcement, we had cake, um, and then we began the ultrasound process, and that was a long, hard journey.
Pastor Bob Erbig: At 12 weeks, the doctors identified some questions with his development, so they wanted us to come back at 16 weeks, uh, and they started to notice these skeletal malformations and began suggesting additional testing, and at that point we were rather shocked and uncertain about the future.
Pastor Bob Erbig: After that particular ultrasound appointment, I remember Amanda and I going back to our car where we spent some time crying and praying, and then Amanda asked a very honest question, and the question was this after all we've been through, after all the waiting and the praying and the joy, why would God allow this?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Why would God do this to us?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Did we do something wrong?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now I know we're not the only people to ask that question, and it was in that moment that the Spirit brought John 9 3 to my mind.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And in it is the story, of course, this morning of Jesus' encounter with the man born blind.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And I shared it.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Jesus answered, It was not that this man sinned or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.
Pastor Bob Erbig: This happened so that the works of God could be displayed in his life, so that this man could be a canvas for God's glory.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now, Josiah's life, like this man, has been exactly that.
Pastor Bob Erbig: At the beginning, there was a time we didn't think he would survive, but he did.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And I think he did because the church prayed.
Pastor Bob Erbig: He required a bone marrow transplant at 11 months old, which was a long, difficult experience, but he survived because the church prayed, and God received the glory.
Pastor Bob Erbig: But there's a tension in these moments.
Pastor Bob Erbig: For many of us, there's there's a dissonance in our minds because simultaneously we can know in our mind that it's for God's glory, and yet also be angry and sad and crushed and despondent.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And so we ask the same question my wife did.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Why did God do this?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Did we, I, do we do we do something wrong?
Pastor Bob Erbig: It reveals something in our hearts.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now I want to add a caveat here because there's many people I know who get this news and their child does not survive.
Pastor Bob Erbig: They go through the entire pregnancy hoping upon hope that their child will survive, only to experience devastating pain and loss.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And that scenario is tragic and heartbreaking.
Pastor Bob Erbig: But I do believe that child will be waiting for you in glory when all things are restored.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now, our story in John 5 captures the issue well.
Pastor Bob Erbig: In this story, we mean a man sick, lying in the hospital of his day, and we're told that he's been sick for 38 years.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And Jesus sees him and asks a question.
Pastor Bob Erbig: It says, 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?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Do you want to be healed?
Pastor Bob Erbig: So here we have another disabled person, disabled for a long time.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And Jesus' question is designed to reveal what lies in this person's heart.
Pastor Bob Erbig: He wanted to know if he saw Jesus for who he truly is.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Because you see, friends, when we encounter disability, whether it's in our lives or in the lives of others, our response opens a window to our soul.
Pastor Bob Erbig: It reveals our desires and exposes our relationship to God.
Pastor Bob Erbig: It's done that in my own life.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And I invite you this morning to ask God to speak to your heart today.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And that's what we're gonna talk about as we ask the question: why does God allow disability?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Why does God allow disability?
Pastor Bob Erbig: And we'll explore that answer in three scenes in our text.
Pastor Bob Erbig: First, we're gonna look at the pool of Bethesda.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Second, we're gonna look at the pool of Siloam.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And then finally, we'll see the light of the world.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Two pools, but one Savior.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And so I hope that you'll see God's canvas of glory in a fresh way today.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So let's pray, and then we will look at the text.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for your grace and for your mercy.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Lord, I thank you for everybody who's here today.
Pastor Bob Erbig: It's not a mistake, Lord.
Pastor Bob Erbig: The people that are here, that are listening, that are maybe listening to this later on, I pray that you would, that you, Holy Spirit, would come and speak to their hearts, speak to my heart, even as I as I proclaim your word, Lord, that you would help us to see your purposes even in the tension, Lord, that you would help us to surrender even when things are difficult, and in the midst of that to point people to you.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Lord Jesus, may you get the glory.
Pastor Bob Erbig: We ask that in your name.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Amen.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So if this was a Charles Dickens novel, this message could be entitled A Tale of Two Pools.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Because the contrast between the responses in John 5 and John 9 are rather fascinating.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So let's dive into the John 5 scene, verse 1.
Pastor Bob Erbig: After this, there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now there is in Jerusalem by the sheepgate a pool in Aramaic called Bethesda, which was which has five rooved colonnades.
Pastor Bob Erbig: In these lay a multitude of invalids, blind, lame, and paralyzed.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And one man was there who had been an invalid for thirty eight years.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Okay, so let's let's set the backdrop here.
Pastor Bob Erbig: In verse 1, we read there was this feast of the Jews, and Jesus went to Jerusalem.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now you'll also notice the feast is not named, which has caused a great debate amongst scholars who proposed everything from Passover to the Day of Atonement to everything in between.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Scholar D.A.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Carson offers a better explanation.
Pastor Bob Erbig: He says the unnamed feast's lack of identification suggests it functions merely as a historical marker for Jesus' Jerusalem presence rather than any kind of thematic significance.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So the important piece here is that Jesus is in Jerusalem and he goes to the sheep gate, which is where the animals were brought in for sacrifice in the temple.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And the pool of Bethesda is near that sheep gate, but they're not the same place.
Pastor Bob Erbig: It's a significant location, though.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Bethesda in Aramaic means house of mercy, house of mercy, and it was a pool of mineral water.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now, in the ancient world, people with disabilities gathered around this pool to seek healing and relief because the water was believed to have curative properties for various diseases.
Pastor Bob Erbig: In fact, the popular belief was that the first person into the pool, after the water stirred up, would be healed of whatever disease they had.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now it's the current location of the Church of St.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Anne, where an archaeological discovery in 1888 confirmed that five-colonnade structure that John describes.
Pastor Bob Erbig: The discovery also revealed there were two pools, which you can see in modern day, courtesy of Jeff Callender on the screen there.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And they served complementary purposes.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Scholar John Edy notes the pool of Bethesda had remarkable medicinal properties, it was believed, and it made a common resort for invalids, for those for whose accommodation porches or small apartments were provided.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So there was this kind of community of disabled people around these two pools.
Pastor Bob Erbig: But I want you to see the sad irony in these verses, that despite Bethesda being the house of mercy, it was filled with people in need of healing.
Pastor Bob Erbig: The blind, the lame, the paralyzed, the invalids.
Pastor Bob Erbig: The place of healing was actually a location where for many mercy had run dry.
Pastor Bob Erbig: It was a location, it felt more like a location of outcasts.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now, if you think about that word, and if you split it apart, you can see that these people, these invalids, are invalid.
Pastor Bob Erbig: They have no worth in the world's eyes.
Pastor Bob Erbig: People would avoid them, they would overlook them.
Pastor Bob Erbig: This word right here comes from the Latin invalidus, which literally means not strong.
Pastor Bob Erbig: The word does mean not valid.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Invalid or invalid was originally used in military context for soldiers who were unfit for service, and then it was later replied to people with disabilities.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And so it's worth us asking: who do we treat as invalid in our lives and world?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Are these people waiting at the pool to meet Jesus?
Pastor Bob Erbig: And we read that one person is sitting here for 38 years.
Pastor Bob Erbig: In fact, if you if you underline that and highlight that, it's super important because 38 years has a spiritual significance.
Pastor Bob Erbig: It's the same time frame that's mentioned in Deuteronomy chapter 2, verse 4, where we are told that Israel wandered in the wilderness for 38 years after they were at Kadesh Barnea until the generations of warriors died.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So there's this theological parallel.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Israel is wandering in the desert for 38 years with an inability to enter the promised blessings.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And now this man, who's been waiting in what I'm sure feels like wilderness, for 38 years, ends his wandering as he meets someone who can change his life.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Look at verse 6.
Pastor Bob Erbig: 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?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now, what do you notice about this verse?
Pastor Bob Erbig: First, Jesus sees this man, even though the world overlooks him.
Pastor Bob Erbig: This is so often what Jesus does.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Second, he knew he had been there a long time.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now, people with disabilities, I imagine, resonate with this language, especially the length.
Pastor Bob Erbig: They have to wait for people to notice them.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Others have to learn to be patient and wait for them.
Pastor Bob Erbig: You can sit in the doctor's office for hours in hospitals waiting for care.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Even though you might get that care, you have to wait for test results and diagnoses and follow-ups.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Keeping up with the insurance requirements is a full-time job for caregivers.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Jesus knows about our long time, and he asks a question.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Do you want to be healed?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now, what is he asking here?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Well, we might automatically assume physical healing, but is that what Jesus is getting at?
Pastor Bob Erbig: See, we know this man had been ill for 38 years, unable to move on his own.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And I want to pause for a moment and just consider the length of 38 years.
Pastor Bob Erbig: It's a long time.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Okay, so so we are in the year 2026.
Pastor Bob Erbig: If you were to back up 38 years, you'd be in 1988.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Ronald Reagan was still president.
Pastor Bob Erbig: I remember 1988.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Do I have anybody else out there, any of my 80s kids?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Okay.
Pastor Bob Erbig: More hands in the first service.
Pastor Bob Erbig: All right.
Pastor Bob Erbig: I see that hand.
Pastor Bob Erbig: I uh you know, we were the people that were binging Super Mario Brothers on the original Nintendo.
Pastor Bob Erbig: All right.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Oregon Trail was still in green.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And you you you you you moved with the space bar.
Pastor Bob Erbig: In fact, I remember I died of dysentery a lot of times playing that game.
Pastor Bob Erbig: This was the era of the Wonder Years and Scrunchies and Skid Pants.
Pastor Bob Erbig: This front row is like, what are you talking about?
Pastor Bob Erbig: But the jets were still terrible.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Thirty-eight years is a long time, is my point.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And notice that no one has helped him.
Pastor Bob Erbig: He's not made it to the pool, to the healing water.
Pastor Bob Erbig: What does he say in verse 7?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Look at this.
Pastor Bob Erbig: He says, 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.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So he's saying, My situation seems hopeless.
Pastor Bob Erbig: I can't reach the water.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now it was believed that an angel would stir the waters, even though there's no textual evidence for that.
Pastor Bob Erbig: But that was the common belief.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Other possibilities are that the stirring of the water resulted from bubbling up from beneath the surface.
Pastor Bob Erbig: It was a little a little a little well spring.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Or it would collect rainwater from the northern pool, and it would go to the southern pool.
Pastor Bob Erbig: In other words, it's likely that the water was being stirred by natural hydraulic systems.
Pastor Bob Erbig: But it was believed again, if you were the first in the water when it was stirred, you might be healed.
Pastor Bob Erbig: But the sick man never made it.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Then Jesus arrives, who would later make the statement in John 7, verse 37, that if anyone thirst, let him come to me and drink, whoever believes in me, as the scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And so I think the question under Jesus' question to this man is do you see me?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Do you see who I truly am?
Pastor Bob Erbig: It's a diagnostic question.
Pastor Bob Erbig: What's going on with the sick man?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Well, two observations I think can be made.
Pastor Bob Erbig: First, some point out that he appears to have a victim mentality.
Pastor Bob Erbig: He makes an excuse because he doesn't really want to be healed.
Pastor Bob Erbig: That this condition has now become this man's identity, crushed by a system that doesn't work.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And it reveals that he stopped hoping.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Second, his statement also reveals that this man needed both spiritual and physical healing.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And so often we pray for physical healing, but it's when the soul is healed spiritually, when we see Jesus and trust in Jesus, that that we then have we can tap into the power that can allow us to face anything in life.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And I think that's what Jesus is getting at.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And in his grace, Jesus offers him something better.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Look at verse 8.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Jesus said to him, Get up, take up your bed and walk.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So Bethesda, the house of mercy, was not merciful to this man until Jesus showed up in his life.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Jesus stirred the spiritual waters to awaken this man's heart.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now, if you read the rest of the chapter, the story gets a little more interesting and complex, but I'm going to summarize for time.
Pastor Bob Erbig: First, this healing takes place on the Sabbath, and the Jewish leaders notice this healing and they confront the man.
Pastor Bob Erbig: But they don't want to celebrate this man's healing.
Pastor Bob Erbig: They're outraged that he was healed in the incorrect way on the incorrect day.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Second, they ask him, Who healed you?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Who healed you?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Surprisingly, he can't answer.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And it reveals that he didn't fully see or embrace Jesus.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now, if you skip down to verse 14 of chapter 5, we see that later on Jesus finds this man and he confronts him.
Pastor Bob Erbig: It says this in verse 14.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Afterward, Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, See, you are well.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you.
Pastor Bob Erbig: The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who healed him.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now that's a rather intriguing statement by Jesus, but it gets at the heart of our question today.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Why does God allow disability?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Because we might assume from this text and what Jesus said that sometimes disability is the result of somebody's personal sin.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And while our personal choices can have negative effects, I don't know that that's exactly what Jesus is getting at here.
Pastor Bob Erbig: After all, Jesus healed him without requiring repentance in verse 8.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Perhaps it's something else.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Notice that the Jewish leaders confront him, and the man could not name Jesus as the healer.
Pastor Bob Erbig: But then in verse 15, he goes back and acknowledges the name of Jesus to the Jews.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So I think it's Jesus' second confrontation that addresses the man's spiritual condition rather than his specific sin.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Commentator Marianne Thompson writes, in John's gospel, sin is nearly always defined as unbelief.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Jesus may be warning the man regarding the judgment that follows sin while inviting him to confess faith in Jesus publicly.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Commentator Edwin Blum concurs.
Pastor Bob Erbig: The warning suggests that his tragic life of 38 years as an invalid was no comparison to the doom of hell.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Jesus redirects the man's attention from bodily restoration to spiritual salvation.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So the question that Jesus asks every person, disabled or not, is this do you want to be spiritually healed?
Pastor Bob Erbig: You must see me as I truly am.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Because Jesus sees the overlooked.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Jesus sees the overlooked.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now before we move on, let's consider this pool of Bethesda.
Pastor Bob Erbig: I wonder if you've been there.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Maybe you're there right now.
Pastor Bob Erbig: What are the modern pools of Bethesda that we encounter?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Certainly, I think modern emergency rooms, long-term care facilities, other healthcare infrastructures might fit this model.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Sick people can easily be overlooked.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Perhaps that's been you.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Educational systems might have wait lists for kids with special needs.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And even the church, a place of spiritual healing, can leave people feeling lonely and isolated as they wait for the water to stir up, waiting for help and assistance.
Pastor Bob Erbig: It can take a long time if we're not attentive.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Last week I was in Colorado at a winter meeting for the World Venture Board of Directors.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now, World Venture is our primary uh mission sending agency, and it was a wonderful time with just some memorable moments.
Pastor Bob Erbig: In fact, the chair of our board is Dr.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Mark Hankey, and you can see a picture of us here.
Pastor Bob Erbig: When I came on the board, Mark and I made a quick connection because he has an adult daughter with special needs with Down syndrome.
Pastor Bob Erbig: This past fall, we were praying for Mark and his family because his daughter, Annie, required heart surgery to save her life.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now, the procedure she had is pretty common for people impacted by Down syndrome, but she didn't require it until adulthood, and when she did, she needed it or she was gonna die.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So Mark opened up the meeting and gave us a report.
Pastor Bob Erbig: He said the surgery required 21 hours of operating room time.
Pastor Bob Erbig: I said, 21 hours?
Pastor Bob Erbig: He said, Yes.
Pastor Bob Erbig: He said we waited and waited and waited through the night.
Pastor Bob Erbig: We waited.
Pastor Bob Erbig: We kept getting updates, wondering what was happening.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Was she gonna be okay?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Mark said at one point I threw my hands up against the wall, one of the hospital walls.
Pastor Bob Erbig: It was my personal wailing wall in the hospital, crying out for my daughter's life.
Pastor Bob Erbig: He told me he's never pleaded with God so much.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And so they waited through the night, and then the nurse comes out and told he and his wife, the surgeon wants to come out and talk to you.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And so, with a pit in their stomach, they waited again.
Pastor Bob Erbig: For the news.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Have you ever been there?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Waiting and waiting.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Not sure what the news is gonna bring.
Pastor Bob Erbig: That's what Mark and his family experienced, and that is what the man at Bethesda experienced.
Pastor Bob Erbig: But Jesus sees the overlooked.
Pastor Bob Erbig: The pool of Bethesda shows us that some places of healing don't bring the restoration we hoped for.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So now let's go to the second pool.
Pastor Bob Erbig: The pool of Siloam.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now we're gonna drop down to a different but complimentary scene in John chapter 9.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now, this is a seminal text of disability in theology.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Jesus is in this scene departing the temple precincts.
Pastor Bob Erbig: He's walking along a very public street.
Pastor Bob Erbig: This scene also happens on a Sabbath in between the fall feast of booths in September timeframe and the feast of dedication around December.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So let's pick up the story in verses 1 and 2.
Pastor Bob Erbig: As he passed by, this is Jesus, he saw a man blind from birth.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And his disciples asked him, Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?
Pastor Bob Erbig: So the disciples right here are asking this why question.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Why does God allow disability?
Pastor Bob Erbig: And here again we meet this disabled man, this man born blind.
Pastor Bob Erbig: He's never seen a thing.
Pastor Bob Erbig: But just try to wrap your mind around that for a second.
Pastor Bob Erbig: What would it be like to never experience this world with sight?
Pastor Bob Erbig: We are now told, we're not told how old the man is, but later in the narrative, in verse 23, his parents confirm that he is of age, which means he's at least 13 years old, so he could possibly be a teenager.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Then in verse 2, his disciples ask a presumptive question.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Who sinned?
Pastor Bob Erbig: This man or his parents?
Pastor Bob Erbig: And that question reveals a cultural assumption at the time.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Disability acted as divine punishment.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now we covered this topic in our sermon on Mark 2, but it bears repeating here.
Pastor Bob Erbig: In first century Israel, it was a common assumption that if you were disabled, it was your fault.
Pastor Bob Erbig: It was your fault.
Pastor Bob Erbig: You committed some horrible sin.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Or you inherited some generational sin from your parents.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now, to be honest, this assumption might still be true today.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Of course, as I previously mentioned, foolish decisions can lead to physical consequences, but that shouldn't be assumed at first blush.
Pastor Bob Erbig: The theological framework here had deep roots in the Jewish tradition at the time.
Pastor Bob Erbig: The disciples assumed physical infirmity resulted from divine punishment.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And that perspective appears in Deuteronomy 28.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Rabbis argued from the Talmudic tradition, their ancient text, that an individual's burden of sin is what caused physical infirmity.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And so the disciples reasoned that behind every physical ailment, every disability, a sin was present.
Pastor Bob Erbig: But since this man was blind at birth, it's puzzling to Jesus' disciples.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Yes, some rabbis argued from Genesis 25 that Esau sinned in the womb, or that this was the sin of the parents that caused this.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Some families of kids with disabilities, if you hold to that teaching, it can be very destructive.
Pastor Bob Erbig: But now Jesus steps in, and what he does is he turns the disciples' thinking upside down.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now we come to verse 3 again.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Jesus answered, It was not that this man sinned or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So now you see the context.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And do you see how countercultural, how earth shattering and mind-blowing this assertion was?
Pastor Bob Erbig: In fact, I picture the disciples standing there for minutes with their jaws on the ground saying, What did he just say?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Did God allow this for his glory?
Pastor Bob Erbig: How do you make sense of that?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Jesus is addressing the question on two levels.
Pastor Bob Erbig: First, he's confronting a false premise that while sin entering the world caused suffering generally, specific afflictions do not automatically result from specific sins.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now I'm sure this man and his parents sinned at some point, but the sin was not the cause of the blindness.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Second, Jesus redirects their attention to divine purpose.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Jesus is telling the disciples to look for answers not in past causes, but in future purposes.
Pastor Bob Erbig: I'm going to say that again.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Jesus is telling the disciples to look for answers not in past causes, but in future purposes.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And that is a fundamental reorientation.
Pastor Bob Erbig: The question is not why did this happen to him?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Rather, it is, what is God going to accomplish through him?
Pastor Bob Erbig: So let me take you back to that moment in the car after our ultrasound.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Because at that moment, my wife and I encountered a fork in the road.
Pastor Bob Erbig: We had two paths we could take.
Pastor Bob Erbig: We started by asking the first question, why did this happen?
Pastor Bob Erbig: And I suspect that many in this room have been there at some level in your life.
Pastor Bob Erbig: In your heart, you're sitting in a car, you're weeping.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And I want you to know, I understand, that it is natural and okay to start with this first question, but I also want to challenge you not to stay there.
Pastor Bob Erbig: I want to exhort you to open your heart to God's healing touch and his sovereignty.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And as painful as it may be, ask him to help you move to the second path, voiced by another question.
Pastor Bob Erbig: What will God accomplish through this?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now I know this is a series intentionally on disability, but these two questions, particularly that second question, is something all of us at some level can pursue.
Pastor Bob Erbig: We all experience good times and bad times in our lives, disappointment.
Pastor Bob Erbig: No matter our circumstances, when we ask this second question, God is moving us down the path of surrender to his will.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And it's not easy, but he gets the glory.
Pastor Bob Erbig: For our family, I never would have imagined at the beginning what God would do in and through us as a result of Josiah being in our lives.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Transparently, as I've shared other times, it's not been easy.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And yet God has built a resilience I never thought possible.
Pastor Bob Erbig: He has drawn us close to him in prayer.
Pastor Bob Erbig: He has developed a tender heart in my girls.
Pastor Bob Erbig: He has given us opportunities to bless and minister to others.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Every time we were not sure we would make it through the next season, he's always provided and he's taught us what it looks like to surrender.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And I will tell you without reservations that my son is a platform for God's glory.
Pastor Bob Erbig: That six years ago, when we sat in the car, God brought that scripture to my mind because it is true.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And he will do things you can never imagine.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Jesus continues in verse four.
Pastor Bob Erbig: He says, We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Night is coming, when no one can work.
Pastor Bob Erbig: As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now what's Jesus saying?
Pastor Bob Erbig: He's moving from a theological explanation to an urgent action.
Pastor Bob Erbig: That the concept of working while day, because night is coming, is an allusion to his public ministry contrasted with his impending crucifixion.
Pastor Bob Erbig: The miracle he's about to perform will testify to his power.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And you know, light and darkness are a common theme in John's gospel.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And so Jesus makes one of his famous I am statements, I am the light of the world.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And the purpose of his action are to draw people to this light.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And now he takes an action that will allow this blind man to see the light.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Verse 6.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Having said these things, he spit on the ground and made mud with the saliva.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And then he anointed the man's eyes with the mud and said to him, Go wash in the pool of siloem, which means scent.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So he went and washed and came back seeing.
Pastor Bob Erbig: He came back seeing.
Pastor Bob Erbig: For the first time in his life, his eyes were opened.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And he saw Jesus, the one who healed him.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Friends, Jesus restores the forgotten.
Pastor Bob Erbig: He restores the forgotten.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now there's two rich images in this passage I don't want you to miss.
Pastor Bob Erbig: First, notice the creation echo.
Pastor Bob Erbig: That when Jesus spits on the ground and he makes that mud with his saliva, the same Greek word is used here, pelos, as in the Greek translation of the Old Testament in Genesis 2, 7.
Pastor Bob Erbig: It's the same word that describes Adam's formation at the beginning of time.
Pastor Bob Erbig: This is new creation language.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Jesus doesn't just heal, he recreates.
Pastor Bob Erbig: As the light came into the world at the beginning, so he is bringing light into the darkness here.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Second, notice the name of the pool.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now John gives you the translation.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Saloon means sent.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And that's no accident.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Jesus is the one sent from the Father to earth on a rescue mission.
Pastor Bob Erbig: In fact, John's gospel uses this language over 40 times.
Pastor Bob Erbig: That's a lot.
Pastor Bob Erbig: The man washes in the very pool that embodies Jesus' identity and mission from the Father, the sent one.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And so when the man comes back from the pool, he comes back what?
Pastor Bob Erbig: He comes back seeing.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now, if you read the rest of the chapter, this healing causes a commotion in the town.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Neighbors start asking, is this the same man?
Pastor Bob Erbig: This man who was born blind?
Pastor Bob Erbig: The Jewish leaders are angry again because it happened on the Sabbath, right?
Pastor Bob Erbig: The Jewish leaders call the blind man before them and demand that he tells them who healed him.
Pastor Bob Erbig: They accuse Jesus of being a sinner, and the blind man famously replies, whether he is a sinner, I do not know.
Pastor Bob Erbig: But one thing I do know, though I was blind, now I see.
Pastor Bob Erbig: There will always be people with hard hearts.
Pastor Bob Erbig: But we're called to tell everyone what Jesus has done in our lives.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Why?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Because Jesus restores the forgotten.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now, friends, we've been talking now for almost six weeks about disability ministry, and the reason we're talking about this is we want more people to encounter Jesus.
Pastor Bob Erbig: We want to remove barriers so people who have not had a chance to hear about Jesus, the ones who've been waiting by our modern pools of water, can hear about the transformative gospel.
Pastor Bob Erbig: It is a mission.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Let me come back to my time at the World Venture headquarters last week.
Pastor Bob Erbig: One of the awesome experiences I had was to hear from about 15 new missionary appointees who were finishing their training and going out on the field.
Pastor Bob Erbig: There were many young people in their 20s, amazing stories going all over the world, giving it all to tell people about Jesus.
Pastor Bob Erbig: But then there was this middle-aged couple choosing to go to the field as a second career, going to Brazil to do ministry down there, and the wife was going to start a disability ministry in Brazil as part of their mission.
Pastor Bob Erbig: I said, Why?
Pastor Bob Erbig: She said, so many people down there are overlooked that they need to encounter Jesus.
Pastor Bob Erbig: We are also called to that mission.
Pastor Bob Erbig: We are called to give God glory in all circumstances.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now I want to finish that story I told about Mark Hankey, because I know some of you are wondering, did the daughter make it?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Was he going to come back?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Well, the rest of the story is just amazing.
Pastor Bob Erbig: After waiting through the night, the surgeon, yes, was going to come out and tell Mark and his wife that they had done all they could do and Annie wasn't going to make it, that she was going to die.
Pastor Bob Erbig: But the cardiac surgeon, who turned out to be a strong Christian, which is kind of like finding a unicorn in Oregon, told Mark and his wife later that as he was walking out to talk to them, something seemed to kind of direct his hand and pull him in a different direction, down a different hallway.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And as he took that walk, the surgeon fully intended to go talk to them.
Pastor Bob Erbig: But God brought some scripture to his mind and impressed on his heart that he wasn't done.
Pastor Bob Erbig: That's what he kept hearing.
Pastor Bob Erbig: You're not done.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And so the surgeon said, okay, I'm going to scrub back in and go back in the operating room.
Pastor Bob Erbig: I guess I'm not done.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And Mark and his wife were out in the waiting room, waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting for the surgeon to come, and finally they go ask the nurse, Is he coming?
Pastor Bob Erbig: And she said, Oh no, he's he scrubbed back into the operating room.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And while he was in there, things happened in the surgery that weren't supposed to happen.
Pastor Bob Erbig: As he recalled later, and I don't remember all the technical details, but he said things like the heart valves and the arteries went into places they weren't supposed to go into.
Pastor Bob Erbig: He said it was like something was guiding my hands to make all this happen.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And while this was happening, Mark would tell us that people in his church were waking up at weird hours, like 12.30 a.m., 1.30 a.m., impressed to pray for Annie and Mark.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So they called him the next day and said, Did something happen at 12.30 a.m.?
Pastor Bob Erbig: And Mark said, Yes, that's when the surgeon was supposed to come out and talk to us about Annie, and then he went back in the OR.
Pastor Bob Erbig: They said, Did something happen at 1.30 a.m.?
Pastor Bob Erbig: He said, Yeah, that's when he was in there working on her heart, and things were happening that weren't supposed to happen.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And today, Annie made it and is alive and is, they think, is going to make a full recovery.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So Mark told us, I'm telling the story because I want God to get the glory.
Pastor Bob Erbig: That I think God gets the glory when his people pray, and God gets the glory through the life of my daughter.
Pastor Bob Erbig: That is all God.
Pastor Bob Erbig: That when we pray, he gets the glory.
Pastor Bob Erbig: When we minister and include those with disabilities in our church, God gets the glory.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Why?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Because Jesus sees the overlooked, he restores the forgotten, and he sends his church to do the same.
Pastor Bob Erbig: That people with disabilities point us to the light of the world.
Pastor Bob Erbig: There may be two pools in our story, but there is one Savior, the light of the world.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now you see, friends, the reason we've been doing this series, and the reason my heart is so burdened for this, is because it impacts so many people.
Pastor Bob Erbig: It breaks my heart to think that those who can teach us so much are overlooked and forgotten.
Pastor Bob Erbig: It breaks my heart to think that we have created barriers to people coming to our church who need the living water of Jesus Christ.
Pastor Bob Erbig: We cannot be the full body of Christ without those with disabilities.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And if we believe that God wants us to be a church that is firmly planted, growing together, and made to multiply, we need those with disabilities.
Pastor Bob Erbig: They have so much to teach us.
Pastor Bob Erbig: We cannot leave them at the pool.
Pastor Bob Erbig: We need to bring them to Jesus, the light of the world.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now, if you read the rest of John 9 again, you'll see the contrast between those who uh remain blind.
Pastor Bob Erbig: The Pharisees are blind, but the blind man and Jesus and his friends, they see Jesus, their eyes are opened.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And church, we have to do the same.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So what do we do now?
Pastor Bob Erbig: You might be sitting there saying, Pastor Bob, those are some amazing stories.
Pastor Bob Erbig: They pull on my heartstrings.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Yeah, I want to be involved.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now it's great because one of our goals of the series is to raise awareness and to produce motivation, but we also want to provide some next steps and tools.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And so I've mentioned before that we're partnering with Johnny and Friends to learn about how to build our ministries.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And Sarah Bush is their regional representative.
Pastor Bob Erbig: I'd like to invite her on the stage to share her story and tell us about the Johnny and Friends ministry and how we can learn from them.
Pastor Bob Erbig: So, Sarah, I'll invite you to come back on stage.
Sarah Bush: Good morning, church.
Sarah Bush: I'm so blessed to be here.
Sarah Bush: Thank you for inviting me to come.
Sarah Bush: Johnny and Friends is a ministry that is dedicated to living in a world where every person affected by disability finds hope, finds dignity, and their place in the body of Christ.
Sarah Bush: We're doing our part to mobilize the global church to glorify God by communicating the gospel to people living with disability.
Sarah Bush: We want to see individuals and families affected by disability evangelized, discipled, and serving well while creating a culture where they also can serve and disciple others.
Sarah Bush: My family is one affected by disability, and I want to introduce you to them.
Sarah Bush: My husband Dave, he's here with me, as is my 14-year-old son, Jacob.
Sarah Bush: And then we also have a 22-year-old son, Zach, and he is the one in the lighter colored brown shirt on the end.
Sarah Bush: Zach is affected by autism.
Sarah Bush: So to tell you a little bit about our story, when the boys were young, we were going to a church, and we were very involved with this church.
Sarah Bush: And it was a kind of church where when you walk in, the kids go this way and the adults go this way.
Sarah Bush: So Zach would go to Kill Children's Church every single Sunday.
Sarah Bush: With a smile, he'd go in.
Sarah Bush: With a smile, he would come out, all was well with the world.
Sarah Bush: Until one Sunday, we all got out to the car.
Sarah Bush: And when the last door shut, Zach had an epic meltdown.
Sarah Bush: We didn't know why.
Sarah Bush: We didn't know what had happened.
Sarah Bush: We figured, okay, it's just the day and we moved on.
Sarah Bush: But it happened again the following week.
Sarah Bush: And it happened again the following week and the following week.
Sarah Bush: So I decided to see if I could figure out what was going on.
Sarah Bush: Something must be happening in children's church that was causing this.
Sarah Bush: So I started to observe through this little tiny window so that he didn't see me watching.
Sarah Bush: And what I found was that Zach was having a hard time engaging with his peers within Children's Church.
Sarah Bush: He was having a hard time understanding how to transition and when to transition from one activity to another.
Sarah Bush: And he was having a hard time understanding how to participate, what was expected of him during the different activities of the morning.
Sarah Bush: Now this was causing him a sensory overload, and it was causing him to fear for his life.
Sarah Bush: I know that that's a drastic overreaction, but this is something that happens with people affected by disability.
Sarah Bush: They get this sensory overload, and their reaction is that there's something that is actually threatening their life.
Sarah Bush: And they have one of three reactions fight, flight, or freeze.
Sarah Bush: Fight, flight, or freeze.
Sarah Bush: I don't know if you've ever heard of those.
Sarah Bush: Zach's reaction, freeze.
Sarah Bush: So within children's church, he was a dream because he wasn't ever a behavior problem.
Sarah Bush: He was delightful.
Sarah Bush: He would sit quietly, he would watch.
Sarah Bush: He never participated.
Sarah Bush: So I took this information to our church leadership.
Sarah Bush: And I said, hey, Zach's having this problem.
Sarah Bush: This is what's going on.
Sarah Bush: And so we want to know: is it possible?
Sarah Bush: Could he have somebody to help him on a Sunday morning?
Sarah Bush: Could he have a buddy?
Sarah Bush: Could he have a one-on-one?
Sarah Bush: Somebody who would help him engage with his peers, someone who would support him through transitions, like, hey, Zach, in five minutes, we're gonna stop doing this and go over to this activity.
Sarah Bush: Could he have somebody who would help him to know how to participate and what was expected of him, how to play a game, what to do during worship, things like that.
Sarah Bush: He needed some support.
Sarah Bush: Unfortunately, the church said no.
Sarah Bush: Now, the reason the church said no, I believe, is because they were feeling very overwhelmed themselves.
Sarah Bush: They didn't feel like they had the resources, the people, the time, the whatever they felt like they needed in order to supply this support.
Sarah Bush: But really the problem was that the church didn't affect how disability affects the entire family.
Sarah Bush: How can Dave and I sit in service or serve on a Sunday morning during service when our son is having what to him is the worst day of his life?
Sarah Bush: And the answer is we couldn't.
Sarah Bush: And we didn't, and we had to leave eventually.
Sarah Bush: Now, as sad as that story is, the problem was that the church was creating barriers to the gospel, right?
Sarah Bush: Which is exactly the opposite of what the church wants to do.
Sarah Bush: The church seeks to remove barriers so that everybody has an opportunity to see the gospel.
Sarah Bush: But for Zach, that didn't happen.
Sarah Bush: And so he didn't have the opportunity to hear and respond to the gospel in a church setting.
Sarah Bush: Of course, he had that at home, but not at church.
Sarah Bush: Today, as a young adult, Zach says to me, Because that church didn't care about me, I think all churches won't care about me.
Sarah Bush: So I'm not gonna go to any church.
Sarah Bush: It won't be any different from one church to the next.
Sarah Bush: But he also said to me, because that church didn't care about me, then Jesus must not care about me.
Sarah Bush: Oh, I heard all those sighs in the room.
Sarah Bush: Thank you for feeling that, right?
Sarah Bush: The mama heart just really breaks to hear that.
Sarah Bush: But we know that Matthew 28, 19 was the great commissioning when Jesus said to us, Go and make disciples of all nations, make disciples of all people.
Sarah Bush: There were no exceptions to that command.
Sarah Bush: That meant everybody, not just the green-eyed people, not just the people with brown hair.
Sarah Bush: That meant everybody, every single person on the face of this planet were to go and share the gospel with.
Sarah Bush: And that's where the church missed the mark.
Sarah Bush: The problem is, Zach's not wrong.
Sarah Bush: 11% of churches in America acknowledge and accommodate for disabilities.
Sarah Bush: That's it.
Sarah Bush: That means that 89% of churches in America do not.
Sarah Bush: And that means that 90% of families affected by disability are unchurched.
Sarah Bush: And they don't go to church not because they don't want to, but because they don't know that they're safe.
Sarah Bush: Are they physically safe?
Sarah Bush: Can I access everything?
Sarah Bush: Can I get around the way that I need to?
Sarah Bush: But also, am I socially safe?
Sarah Bush: Am I gonna be looked at?
Sarah Bush: Am I gonna be judged?
Sarah Bush: Is my parenting gonna be criticized?
Sarah Bush: Are they gonna understand my son's vocalizations or stimming?
Sarah Bush: Are they gonna understand him and accept him and welcome him in?
Sarah Bush: And sometimes it's just too hard to go to church when you don't know if that'll happen.
Sarah Bush: I praise God for Millington Baptist Church.
Sarah Bush: You guys are doing a great job.
Sarah Bush: And I'm so grateful for your heart for people affected by disability that you're willing to welcome them in and help them to find a place of belonging amongst the body of Christ.
Sarah Bush: Because if they're not here, if the body is missing those parts, then the body is incomplete.
Sarah Bush: Johnny and Friends is a ministry based on Luke 14.
Sarah Bush: And I'm gonna go let you read that parable, but it's based on the great banquet, which teaches us to compel them to come in, that it is safe here, that you can come into this house so that it is full.
Sarah Bush: There is room at the table for everyone, and this is what this church is preparing to do.
Sarah Bush: So Johnny and Friends serves families in a variety of ways.
Sarah Bush: One of those ways is through family retreats where the entire family is welcome to come and is served and gets an entire week of respite and ministry and refreshment.
Sarah Bush: It was life-changing and life-giving for my family when we first went 13 years ago, and we haven't missed a year since.
Sarah Bush: Another way that we uh serve families is by wheels of the world.
Sarah Bush: We collect wheelchairs, we have them restored, and then we send them to developing countries to people who don't have access to that mobility equipment so that they can sit up straight in wheelchairs and move around with dignity rather than crawling on the ground or on the backs of their loved ones or in wheelchairs.
Sarah Bush: All throughout that process, the gospel is shared in the language of the person who's receiving it.
Sarah Bush: And then the last way is through church relations.
Sarah Bush: That's what I do.
Sarah Bush: I walk alongside churches to support and encourage and equip and teach how to do disability ministry, how to welcome and encourage those who are coming into the churches and looking for their place of belonging.
Sarah Bush: So we have a table in the back in the lobby.
Sarah Bush: If you'd like to afterwards come and say hello, introduce yourselves, uh, find out maybe how you can get involved with Johnny and friends, or come and find out how you can get involved right here at Millington Baptist Church.
Sarah Bush: How can you serve folks affected by disabilities so that they can have their own place of belonging with all of us?
Sarah Bush: Thank you so much.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Well, thank you so much, Sarah.
Pastor Bob Erbig: I appreciate your friendship and your heart for this ministry.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Um, as she mentioned, she'll be in the back after the service.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Please stop by the table to hear more about the Johnny and Friends uh ministry.
Pastor Bob Erbig: I'm gonna invite the worship team to come back on stage for our final song.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And I want to conclude by challenging us with those two questions I mentioned earlier in the message.
Pastor Bob Erbig: That when we encounter disability, it is natural to ask, why would God do this?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Now, I understand, and some of you are in that place today, and if you are, I would invite you to talk with someone, talk with myself or Pastor Dave.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Tell us how we can help.
Pastor Bob Erbig: We have so many good people here at NBC who want to come alongside and help you.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And so I want to also challenge us with that second question.
Pastor Bob Erbig: What is God doing through this?
Pastor Bob Erbig: God is doing something, he has not forgotten you.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And he wants you to get to that place of surrender, and then he will use you for his glory.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And even though it's difficult to see now, as you walk with him like the blind man, he will open your eyes.
Pastor Bob Erbig: After Josiah was born, that first year was difficult for us.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Sleepless nights, exhaustion, more hospital visits than I can remember.
Pastor Bob Erbig: We had so many seasons where we asked God, why would you do this?
Pastor Bob Erbig: I didn't sign up for this.
Pastor Bob Erbig: But today he looks like this, and he smiles and he runs and he's beyond excited when I come home, and he wants to give us hugs, he's got joy, and by God's grace, and for many more years, he will be a canvas for God's glory.
Pastor Bob Erbig: He has taught me about the heart of God the Father and the love of Jesus.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Because Jesus sees the overlooked, he restores the forgotten, and he sends his church to do the same.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Can we say that together?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Jesus sees the overlooked, restores the forgotten, and sends his church to do the same.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Praise God for his upside-down glory.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Amen?
Pastor Bob Erbig: Let's pray.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Heavenly Father, we thank you so much this morning for your unmerited favor that you give to us, Lord, simply because of the work of Jesus Christ on the cross.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Lord, we thank you that you stepped into our lives when we were running away from you.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And Lord, I pray today that you would give us your eyes, that we would not overlook the forgotten, Lord, that you would you would help us be part of the restoration process of bringing people to see you, the light of the world.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Help us to step into that mission, Lord.
Pastor Bob Erbig: And if we're impacted by disability today, Lord, may you meet us where we are.
Pastor Bob Erbig: May you, Holy Spirit, bring comfort, and may you lift our eyes up to see our Savior.
Pastor Bob Erbig: We ask all that in Jesus' name.
Pastor Bob Erbig: Amen.