Ecclesia Princeton
Ecclesia Princeton
7 Signs: Lent 2025- Ian Graham: Jesus Heals A Man Who Can’t Walk
Pastor Ian Graham continues our Lenten series looking at the seven signs that Jesus performs in John’s gospel. This week we are in John 5 and we see the encounter between Jesus and the man beside the pool at Beth-Zatha.
Good morning friends. My name is Ian. I have the joy of being a part of the team here that helps pastor and lead here. It's an honor to have you here, whether you're here with us for the first time or you're here every week. It's a joy to worship God with you, and we believe that God has something for us, collectively and individually, as we open His story and His Word.
Speaker 1:So we've been in a series throughout the course of Lent, and Lent is a season that marks the life in the Christian calendar, a season of simplification and purification. We are moving towards Easter, which is a time of feasting, a whole season, declaring that the world has been remade, that all things are being made new, that Jesus' promises are coming true. It's a great, great time, but in order to prepare to be people of the feast, the church in all of its wisdom has discerned that we have to also be people of the fast that moving towards that new creation reality. There are things within us that still don't resemble the goodness of God's posture and his character, us that still don't resemble the goodness of God's posture and his character, and Jesus then invites us to go through a 40-day process of laying some of those things down, those extraneous things, those things that compete for our attention. And so Lent is not a time where we get to the end of it. We get to Easter. God gives us a report card. How'd you do at giving up chocolate? Or not getting on Instagram? How'd you do? God's not interested in that. The invitation is to be with God, the invitation to simplify, to purify, to allow him to move in our hearts. And so we are in the middle of the season of Lent Again. Hopefully that gives you enough context if it's a new or foreign concept to you, or if you grew up with it and you're like why would anybody willingly do that? We're here saying that, yes, god has an invitation for us.
Speaker 1:As we move into our text for today, I want to invite you to ponder a very simple question when is your life at with God right now? Just again, it could be answered in the most trite, cliche way possible, but it also invites you to depth. Where's your life at with God right now? Do you wake up every day knowing that God loves you, that God's posture towards you is infinite, unending love, and do you even know that's a possibility? That is an actual way that you could live your life. I know we have to do all the self-interrogation, but you don't have to be tenuous in your life with God. He loves you Again. His posture does not change towards you dependent upon your good works or your behavior. His posture towards you unended upon your good works or your behavior. His posture towards you unending infinite, faithful love.
Speaker 1:For many of us, our experience, our life with God is marked by disappointment, which is understandable, a sense of long-suffering. The words of Psalm 13,. How long, oh Lord, how long. For some of us it's just that kind of lukewarm or that arm's length or just kind of aloof. We're far off from God. We feel that way. For others of us it's not something we ever think about. It's just not a part of our daily reality. Perhaps you got dragged here to church this morning. You're like what is going on here. Dragged here to church this morning, you're like what is going on here.
Speaker 1:But just as a way into our text today as we explore the signs of Jesus and John's gospel where is your life at with God? And the beautiful thing about that question is implicit within it where is your life at with God? You're talking about your own perception, your own location. The beautiful thing is that God's perception, his posture towards you does not change. He is always near, he is always available, he was always moving towards us in love. But as we begin today, we're going to see a brief episode in the life of Jesus, and we're going to see how this brief episode gives us dynamics and layers to our own life as we either come to know him for the first time or we seek to follow after him through the course of many years.
Speaker 1:In John's Gospel, jesus is depicted doing seven specific signs. Now, whatever your perception of Jesus is depicted doing seven specific signs. Now, whatever your perception of Jesus is, you probably know that he was regarded as some sort of miracle worker. And again, even our understanding and perception of what miracles are can vary depending on the culture that we're from. You know, modern Western culture tends to consign miracles to things that science has not yet explained. But not all of us are modern Western people. You may live in a modern Western society now, but you come from a culture that is much more conversant and fluent in the realities of spiritual things and much more ready to assign the causes for things to things that we can't see.
Speaker 1:David Hume talked about miracles as merely a disruption of nature, that Jesus was simply bending the laws of nature to his own will and purposes. But in John's gospel, when Jesus does a miracle, john will very carefully label the thing that Jesus has done not as a miracle but as a sign a semia in Greek. And what John is trying to do is just very carefully and subtly show us that, as Jesus works, these things that we would reduce to the idea of a miracle, that Jesus is actually putting forth a sign. And it's not a sign merely of Jesus's presence, of his power. It is a sign of the world that is to come, that there is a new creation breaking forth right in the midst of this one. The signs that Jesus performs are glimpses into the life that is to come when Jesus is present in fullness of his kingdom. And today we're going to look at the third in the sequence of signs throughout John's gospel, found in John, chapter 5. And you can turn over there in your Bible. We'll also have the words on the screen as we get into the text.
Speaker 1:But what I want to do is kind of walk through the story and then zoom out and pull some of the layers that I think, meet us here as a people today. So John in John 5, has Jesus in Jerusalem at a festival. This will kick off kind of a smaller section in the Gospel of John where Jesus is redefining some of the major festivals and institutions around his own life and work. This festival is unnamed but, as we'll soon find out as we read the story, all of this takes place over the course of a Sabbath day.
Speaker 1:Now, if you know anything about history, specifically the history of the Jewish people, it's amazing, it's a miracle of history that that people, as a culture and as a group, continues to exist. Their history has been defined by being under the thumb and regime of a litany of oppressive imperial powers, and usually what happens is, as a people and a culture are placed under the weight of that kind of imperial pressure, are placed under the weight of that kind of imperial pressure, eventually their culture fades out and is consumed by the larger forces of which they are subject to. But somehow, throughout the cascade and the laundry list of empires, the Jewish people continued to exist in Jesus' day, they continued to exist in ours. And the question you could ask, historically and sociologically, is how? How is this possible when every factor in the equation would suggest the opposite. One of the answers that is given is the practice of Sabbath. It's these distinguishing marks as a people that aren't just we believe these things, but that are embodied in practices that put up fences around the creeping of imperial ideology and of being consumed by the wider forces that the people would faithfully stop, stop from their work to worship, to hear the story, specifically the story of the Passover, where God liberated and founded his people as a people, liberated them from Egypt, drew them as a people unto himself, as a nation of holy priests, and throughout the Gospels you'll see that the Sabbath is a constant point of contention between Jesus and the Jewish leaders, particularly the Pharisees.
Speaker 1:I often want to point out a couple things. First of all, when we talk and John will use the language of the Jews and it's important for us to remember a few things here Jesus was a Jewish man, jewish man. We cannot understand the story of Jesus without understanding his location within the context of first century Jewish thought and practice. But John will use this language of the Jews and throughout history we've seen dark turns of people sort of using that label and taking it as permission structure to then label a whole group of people as those who either killed Jesus or were responsible for his death, and that's not the story that the Gospels are telling. The Gospels are saying that we are all implicated in the death of Jesus, and so when John uses this shorthand the Jews he's talking about, the religious leaders, and religion itself is a power that is arrayed against the goodness of who God is, paul will talk about in Ephesians, chapter 6,. There are powers and principalities at work in the world. Religion becomes that in and of itself, and so that's a little bit of the shorthand that John is using. But also we'll see these little skirmishes between Jesus and groups called the Pharisees about the Sabbath day.
Speaker 1:Now, the Pharisees didn't wake up one day and decide that they wanted to be really passionate about the rules. Like you know, what would make people really like us? If our platform is just religious bureaucracy and we'll just get so passionate about every little detail, people will love us for it. They will really be happy about that. That's not what happened. The Pharisees had an unwavering commitment to pleasing God, and it wasn't about them simply keeping the rules. It was because of the story that they lived in Again, the story that began when God, through his mighty liberating power, brought the slaves out of Egypt. This is their origin story. And so throughout the course of history, as they are under empires like the Assyrians and the Persians and the Babylonians, the Greeks and now the Romans, they're saying God, we want you to do that again. But they read in places like Deuteronomy where God is saying if you keep this covenant, I will be faithful to you. And so their passion, their zeal for every little iota and detail of the rules is about them trying to keep covenant with God, not them trying to establish a righteousness of their own. They want God to move on their behalf and they're trying to say we're going to do everything we can to purify the life of our nation so that that will happen. And so Jesus, when he confronts the Sabbath, is not saying the Sabbath is a bad idea, it's an empty religious practice. No, he's confronting the heart of it much in the way that James Baldwin expresses his critique of America. When Baldwin says I love America more than any other country in the world and exactly for this reason I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually Jesus is embodying that saying the Sabbath was made for man. And so I want to instruct you in proper observance of the Sabbath, and we'll see today in John 5 that Jesus confronts the practice and the institution of Sabbath, bringing it to its full expression as a way to meet with God.
Speaker 1:Verse 2 in John, chapter 5, let's begin reading here Now. In Jerusalem, by the sheep gate, there is a pool called, in Hebrew, beth Zatha, which has five porticos. In these lay many ill, blind, lame and paralyzed people. One man was there who had been ill for 38 years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him Do you want to be made well? The ill man answered him Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up. And while I'm making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me. Jesus said to him stand up, take your mat and walk. At once the man was made well and he took up his mat and began to walk.
Speaker 1:Jesus encounters this man in Jerusalem. We're told that there are others alongside him who were ill, blind, lame and paralyzed, but this one man in particular had been ill, unable to walk, for 38 years. Jesus sees him and John tells us that Jesus knows that he's been there for a long time. Later additions to this text would add a little note to try to make sense of the story. Why does the man, why does he, have this impulse to try to get into the pool? And later additions to this text would say that there was a legend that at times, an angel would descend and stir the waters of the pool and that the first person lying near the edge of the pool who would put themselves in the pool when the angel stirred it to immerse themselves in the water would find healing. And so this legend is informing this guy's hope and he's staring on the edge of this pool, waiting for this mysterious stirring of an angel to take place. And Jesus approaches this man, amidst a lot of other people who are blind and lame and otherwise enduring maladies, and he asks him the question do you want to be made? Well, now his response, which is obvious to us who are reading this story he doesn't know who Jesus is. He tells Jesus that he can never be the first person in the pool because he has no one to help him.
Speaker 1:There are more threads that we're going to be drawing from in this story, but I want to take a moment just to kind of sidebar here. First of all, that experience of despair, of loneliness, of hopelessness that often comes with chronic illness, that comes with that which is disabled within us. We can easily skate by the details in this story, but how much agony, how many chapters have been written of pain and of disappointment in the 38 years that this man has been unable to walk. We should not so easily skate through that. His is the experience of many of us who suffer with disability or chronic illness, be it bodily or mental, the feeling of isolation, the everyday experience of pain. I also want to acknowledge too we're going to take this story at face value but there is a whole field of disability theologians who write of our kind of normalizing what a healthy body looks like, especially often starting from a Greco-Roman perspective and then transpiring into our modern Western perspective. But these disability theologians have helped to show us the immense contribution of people who live with chronic pain, who live with that which our society labels disabilities.
Speaker 1:I commend to you Brian Blount's Wonderously Wounded if you're interested in reading this topic. He writes an academic treatise on what is a biblical theology of disability, but it's not like if any of us have ever read academic works. Sometimes that's like, oh boy, right, that's a lot of words and not a lot of meaning. Brian writes from his perspective as an academic theologian, but also as the dad to a son with severe autism and Down syndrome, and writing and seeing his son, as he calls his son, the healthiest person that he knows, and there's so much beauty in that. So, if the healthiest person that he knows, there's so much beauty in that. So if you're interested in that, brian Blount, wondrously wounded beautiful stuff.
Speaker 1:But we're going to kind of take this story at face value that there's a man who cannot walk, he is lame, he is disabled and he's going to encounter the presence of Jesus, the Savior. Today, going back to our text, we hear the man's reasons for why he can't enter the pool, but the word of Jesus subverts all of this. Jesus said to him stand up, take your mat and walk. Verse 9 tells us at once, the man was made well and he took up his mat and began to walk. John goes on now, that day, as we discussed above. Now, the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had disappeared in the crowd that was there.
Speaker 1:As we discussed above, the day that all of this occurred was a Sabbath day, and the religious leaders of the Jewish people vigorously defended the purity and practice of Sabbath. Later, rabbinic oral law would outline 39 things that people were prohibited from doing on the Sabbath, and one of them being carrying a mat. At this point, though, the man does not know who Jesus is and is not able to identify him. So they ask him who told you to pick up your mat and carry it? And he says I don't know, truthfully, but the subtle, implicit assumption of the religious leaders of the people that are part of this culture is that only God works on the Sabbath, and so the rabbinic law, then, is tracing out all of these things that could be conceived as work. Even in modern day Jerusalem, in highly orthodox settings, you have elevators that, on the Sabbath, stop at every floor, because pushing a button on the Sabbath would be conceived of as work. And again, this could become pedantic, like wow, like really, really passionate about, but if you look at it through the lens of faithfulness, it takes on quite a different slant.
Speaker 1:The story goes on Later, verse 14,. Jesus found him in the temple and said to him See, you have made him well. He finds the man in the temple. The man is likely going to the temple, as was directed by the Mosaic Law, to present his healing evidence of his healing to the. Going to the temple, as was directed by the Mosaic law, to present his healing evidence of his healing, to the leaders of the temple there and to offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving. We see, in some ways, his devotion and Jesus comes to him and identifies himself as the one who healed them and says see, you have been made well. But then he says something that might strike us as a bit almost like a bit harsh, a bit severe Do not sin anymore so that nothing worse happens to you.
Speaker 1:In John, chapter 9, jesus will absolve us of any intrinsic connection, any sweeping generalizations about the presence of things like sickness or misfortune and our own sinful choices. We often so easily assign ourselves way too much blame for the pain that we endure. And what Jesus is saying to this man is specific to this man. It is important, right? Jesus is not making sweeping generalizations about everything that ever happens and saying if something bad happens to you, guess what? That's because you did something bad. That's called karma. That's not the Jesus story. The Jesus story is not that you get what you deserve, thanks be to God. The Jesus story is you don't get what you deserve. And what good news that is, because Jesus gives you abundantly more than you deserve. And what good news that is because Jesus gives you abundantly more than you deserve. And so, again, we see the collision of these varying stories. But in this particular instance, jesus seems to draw a connection between the behavior of this man and the state that he was in, again, specific to this one.
Speaker 1:We don't have to speculate because we are drawing this connection for us. There are instances and we can point to them in our own lives where we make choices that then dictate a course of suffering. Right, we can all point out places of regret in our own lives where we can draw a conclusive line between the choice that we made and the consequence that we experienced. There are things that happen in that way. You could think of someone who is an alcoholic and has cirrhosis of the liver. The connection between their choices, multi-layered and complex as they may be, and the results are pretty. There's a pretty straight line there. Right Now, you can think of somebody in that situation that then gives a liver transplant. You know the doctor is saying there's a pretty straight line there right Now you can think of somebody in that situation that then gives a liver transplant. You know the doctor is saying hey, you cannot go back to your old habits, otherwise something worse will happen to you. We see this connection being drawn by Jesus. They've been given a new start. Jesus tells the man yes, your experience of being lame for 38 years was awful, but there are worse things that you could experience. Turn from your ways Now.
Speaker 1:Usually, when Jesus heals, there is this response of gratitude, of joy, of awe, of wonder, of disbelief, almost. Let's see how this man responds. Remember, the religious leaders came to this man when he was first carrying his mat and they asked him who told you to carry your mat? He said I don't know. Now this man has encountered jesus. Jesus tells him to go no more or sin no more. And let's see what happens.
Speaker 1:Verse 15 the man went away and told the jews that it was jesus who made him well. Therefore, the Jews started persecuting Jesus. So if we draw out the thread in this story, jesus encounters the man in the temple, reveals himself as the one who healed him, tells him to go and sin no more or something worse will happen to you Immediately from that interaction. The man goes and narcs on Jesus and tells the authorities actually I have got new information about the man who told me to take up my mat and walk. He's right over there and John draws an immediate, conclusive clause ina in the Greek. Therefore, the Jews, the religious leaders, started to persecute Jesus because he was doing such things on the Sabbath. But Jesus answered them. My father is still working and I also am working. For this reason, the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him because he was not only breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God his own father, thereby making himself equal with God. So this man goes on and reports Jesus to the authorities. The authorities then turn on Jesus.
Speaker 1:One of the key questions that pervades John's gospel is will we respond to an encounter with Jesus with belief and with trust? In John chapter 3, nicodemus comes to Jesus at night and initially fails the test. He's confused by Jesus, he's perplexed by him, but he goes away not really understanding what to make of the interaction that he had with Jesus. In John chapter 4, this woman who's been ostracized from the culture of her town responds to Jesus with faith and becomes one of the greatest evangelists in the New Testament. She goes and tells the town about this Messiah who has come. But here in John, chapter 5, it would seem that this man does not respond with faith. John is telling us that receiving healing at the hands of Jesus is not sufficient to answer the question with our lives. Will we trust Jesus sufficient to answer the question with our lives? Will we trust Jesus? And then Jesus, because he's awesome and clever always takes these moments and uses them to further express what he's here to do. So Jesus is now.
Speaker 1:The religious leaders and authorities have now turned their ire and their attention on Jesus. And Jesus is like, yeah, I healed him and guess what? My father is working and so I'm going to be working also. And those listening to him understand the explosive ramifications of what he just said. He's like, yeah, god in the flesh, right here. And if you read the rest of John 5, it is one of the most expansive what we would call in theological circles Christologies, where Jesus is saying this is who I am. You read Moses because you think in them you have life, but Moses testified about me. I mean, jesus just goes in and he's like, yeah, my father is working. Yes, god is the only one who works on the Sabbath. Guess who also is working? The incarnate son, the Word made flesh. Right here the authorities recognize this for what it is. Jesus is making himself equal to God, because only God works on the Sabbath.
Speaker 1:John 5 is one of the fullest expressions of Christology and the claims of Jesus that he makes for himself, and it presents us with CS Lewis's brilliant little trilemma that I'll read for you. You've probably heard this before if you've been in church. He says I'm trying to prevent you from saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Jesus. I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I just don't accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who is merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic on a level with a man who says he is a poached egg, or else he would be the devil of hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was and is the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool. You can spit at him and kill him as a demon, or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come up with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
Speaker 1:And I think this man's encounter with Jesus, as much as it confronts us with the divinity of Jesus, confronts us with dynamics of the life of following Jesus. And what I want to do, just as we kind of turn towards this next chapter, I want to just outline four footholds for us, four layers. And again, these are not checkpoints, these are not sequential, they're not linear. If anything, we'll find that we're constantly immersed in several of these different strands throughout the course of our life trying to follow God. I'm going to put those up for you. There's a little graphic behind me. We see kind of four layers within this story.
Speaker 1:So first we have dependence. The dependence that's evident in this story is obvious. Right, we have a man who has not been able to walk for 38 years. But dependence upon God is not just about our utter helplessness in the face of God, in the face of the circumstances of life. There are times in our lives where we are crying out to God, desperate for Him to move those visceral experiences of God. We need you here. But there's also those moments of just living by faith of God. We need you here, but there's also those moments of just living by faith. How do we walk this out? Dependence is not always in the macro and the big and the explosive. Dependence is about our daily bread. How do we follow Jesus? We all encounter God again and again in true helplessness. And the beautiful thing is this is our origin story as the people of God that we come to God and we realize our helplessness. We realize that we have nothing to offer.
Speaker 1:I remember when I came to know Jesus in high school, and it was so much that the scripts that the world had given me for fulfillment, for pleasure, were just empty. But there was on offer to me something so much better, something so much deeper, and I heard the word of Jesus like I had never heard it before. Again, I've been adjacent to Christian circles, but there are times where God just meets us in power and our hearts are ready to receive it, and that's where my life was at this point. You know, I'm kind of from the Bible belt world and the thing I struggled with in that setting was there was always this kind of dichotomy that was present, especially in people that I knew that were Christians, and they would. They'd do the youth group thing and they would go to parties and I was like, well, okay, I guess you can just kind of you just believe the right things and do whatever else you want, and that wasn't that appealing to me. But when I met Jesus, when I found him for my own, there was this inexpressible joy and when I think back to those first moments I'm a person that's maybe somewhat prone to melancholy If you know me, you're shaking your head but I found an exuberant and visceral joy that I've experienced since in the life of my family, in the life of this church. But to that point it just seemed a little bit foreign to me and it was something that made me want to move. It made me want to respond To the point where there's a house in Oklahoma, the house that I lived in at that time that after this night of just giving my life to Jesus and whatever else that meant, I slid down the banister, which was made of wood.
Speaker 1:Now I had some really sweet Old Navy jeans. At that point you guys don't even know what Old Navy is, but they were the carpenter jeans which I think are now making their way back into the culture. So now we're just coming full circle. But I had rivets on the back of them and a wood banister and had some healthy weight, some football playing weight at that point and slid down the banister and it engraved on that banister just a nice straight line down, the expression of God's salvation, the marks of my joy. My parents mostly received that testimony.
Speaker 1:I was like, okay, could you find other ways to testify about the goodness of God? But I think back to that. I think back to that change from helplessness God, I've got nothing and if I keep going down these paths I'm going to have even less than that and the exchange for God's goodness. But helplessness is not something that just defines the beginning of our life with Jesus and the seasoned saints in here. If you could walk around the room and talk to people who have been following Jesus for a while, you would see that helplessness, dependence upon God, is the thing that begins to mark the story much more than we're comfortable with. It begins to become the defining feature of the story, that everything that we have is from God and we begin to rely on him more and more. But dependence that we see viscerally evident in the life of this man who cannot walk we see this throughout the life that we need God for daily bread. We need him to be the kind of people that he is trying to form us into. I love what PT Forsy by the love we exercise, but by the love that we trust. But in all of this, as we express our dependence upon God, we still have a will, and the beautiful thing about what God is doing is he's not overwhelming our will. He doesn't do this in the macro. He doesn't overwhelm our will of receiving him. He doesn't appear in the clouds yearly and remind the whole world that he's God all eight billion people and say, by the way, I'm God, you should probably worship me, because if he did that, what choice would we have? Yeah, probably should worship him. Yeah, no, he doesn't overwhelm our wills in that sense and he doesn't overwhelm it at a personal level, because he's God, he's love, he's drawing us into a real relationship and we still have a will, and that's where Jesus' question is so interesting to the man I see.
Speaker 1:You've been laying here for 38 years. Do you want to be made well? And that is the question that's put forth to us daily, momentarily, hourly. Do you want to be made well? There is healing available. Do you want it? I went to the dentist this week. Thanks for your applause. I appreciate that.
Speaker 1:I'm an adult and I went to the dentist. In all sincerity, I had not been in a long time and there's a dynamic at play that I began not been in a long time and there's a dynamic at play that I began to observe in my life. I began to experience some discomfort around Thanksgiving in my mouth and sage that I am. I knew that the only place to get healing from dental discomfort is, in fact, the dentist, and I was like I'll go eventually. But then I'm like what are they going to think? And they ask questions they know the answer to. They're like so when was your last dental appointment? I was like 2017. They're like what was that? I was like you have it right in front of you. They're like oh, did you go anywhere else? I'm like they're dental records. They like use them to identify bodies. Like no, I didn't go anywhere else, you also have that in front of you.
Speaker 1:And so, knowing the shame that was accumulating. But this is, we do this with God, right, where's the only place where we can find healing? God's presence? But how many of us experience that accumulating sense of like oh yeah, I know I gotta go back to church or I gotta get right with God. We say all these things, we express the truth, but at the same time we're sort of saying like, eventually, eventually. And Jesus is asking us the question do you want to get well? And that question is not asked laden with shame, it's an invitation, because healing is in the hands of the healer, because the surgeon is here with the scalpel ready. Yes, yes, it may hurt, but he won't overwhelm our wills. He will constantly present himself to as beautiful, good and true as he is and say do you want to get well?
Speaker 1:And the other dynamic we see is, as we follow Jesus, there are those surface level behaviors that all Christians know are not great. And you start to get in Christian community like, oh, I shouldn't say that, I shouldn't do that, which is good. But then you sort of absolve yourselves of all those external behaviors. But then you start to actually dig a little deeper, a little excavation, and Jesus says oh, you know, actually it's humans that look at the outward appearance. God looks at the heart. Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount You've heard it said that you should not be angry. But I say, if you're angry with a brother in your heart, that you've murdered them. There's all these dynamics that are happening there. You're like, oh man, that's a lot.
Speaker 1:And what God is trying to do is not drive this endless introspection where we're always feeling this tenuous sense with God. What he's trying to say is there's more healing, there's more to be done, and this is the work of sanctification. We see this in the intersection of our will and God's pruning, and Jesus begins to say hey, that which I am bringing forth in you is not just about a one-time healing. It is about the journey of healing where all things will be made new, where all things will be made well. And as we answer the question, do we want to be made well? We say yes to what the church has historically called sanctification, that of turning us into saints, of making us holy as God is holy, perfect as he is perfect.
Speaker 1:Simon Chan says this. He says modern Christians are not lacking in relevance. What they do lack is a disciplined life and a critical mind to resist the temptation to conform to what everybody thinks or does. What they sorely need is an in-depth spiritual renewal of the whole person in order to decide for God or for the world. Decisiveness is the mark of true discipleship. Do you want to be made? Well, I love when Jesus talks about healing moving towards us. The healing is not dependent upon our actions. The healing is the revelation of the will of the healer and it is offered as pure grace. But, as we talked about, there is further healing that must take place.
Speaker 1:Jesus says this in John 15, every branch that bears fruit, he prunes to make it bear more fruit. You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in you, just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine. In the context of John, chapter 5, the persecution, the conflict that is brought to the feet of Jesus because of what he's done. Healing on the Sabbath is an invitation that Jesus always takes to reveal himself. And they say you shouldn't be doing this on the Sabbath.
Speaker 1:Jesus says guess what? My father is working and I am still working, and I love there's a revelatory element to that statement Jesus equal to God. But there's also a promise. There isn't there. My father is still working, so I'm still working too. And what this means for us, ecclesia. He's not done, and so you may be assessing this and saying, okay, my dependence upon God, my will, are just all over the place. My Father is still working, I'm still working too. Do you want to be made?
Speaker 1:Well, in all of this, jesus is pruning out that which leads us not to life, but to things less than life, and drawing us to himself. We see this as we see Jesus, as we need him, as we desire him. I want to invite the worship team forward and I invite you where you are, just to close your eyes. We started with that question when is your life with God? I want to invite you just to a little imaginatory exercise. Just picture a house. It's a house that's not finished. It's a house that you've just bought and you're planning some renovations. You can see that wall. It's going to need to be knocked down. You can see the things that are going to need to be fixed.
Speaker 1:Cs Lewis has this beautiful invitation for us as we respond to the presence of the Holy Spirit here. He says imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps you can understand what he's doing. He's getting the drains right, stopping the leaks in the roof, and so on. You knew that those jobs needed doing, and so you're not surprised. But presently he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is he up to? The explanation is that he's building quite a different house from the one that you thought of Throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage, but he is building a palace and he intends to come and live in it himself.
Speaker 1:And just where you are, just with that image in mind, you see God kind of working, as he brings things to mind that you are perhaps holding on to or trying to sort of stash away in the corner. I wonder if you could just see God's demolition, his renovation, his pruning, for what it is that he's putting forth. The question to us do you want to be made well and, at the same time, offering us to the invitation. Come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest as we submit our lives to God, as we depend upon him, as we seek that our wills would become like his, as we allow him to forgive us of our sins, to extract them and often the way that we clutch onto them in our lives. We see Jesus, and the beautiful thing about those of us who have been following Jesus for a while is that seeing him ever anew, in ever surprising ways, is something that marks the story of our lives.
Speaker 1:Anew, in ever surprising ways is something that marks the story of our lives, sarah Clarkson says, for God works and weaves a beauty that we can't imagine. He comes to heal and it may look different than we imagine, but his goodness is always on its way. Good is always being crafted for us and we are being led step by step into its light. Lord, we receive the goodness that is expressed ultimately in the cross of Jesus. God, the ultimate healing, god, the ultimate invitation, arms stretched wide embracing the entire world, and we receive the healing that you have for us by the power of your Holy Spirit. So we pray come Holy Spirit.
Speaker 1:God, I want to pray for those who are in need of healing here this morning, be it relational, be it bodily, be it spiritual, be it intellectual. God, lord, the presence of the Holy Spirit would be here to heal and power. God, that we would hear your question. Do you want to be made well and we would say yes to you, god, god, I also want us to see the testimony that is put forth in John, that this man, who had suffered many, many years, was seen and known by Jesus. God, we don't always have the ways to account for why healing comes or why it doesn't, but what we can know for sure is that you have seen us and known us, god, and worn our sin, our pain, god, our suffering on your shoulders.
Speaker 1:Jesus, god, I wanna pray for us as your children, god, to receive your call to discipleship, lord, to receive your instructions, your exhortations to stop sinning. God, not in our own strength, by our own discipline, but by the power of your spirit, that we would put to death the flesh, god, and then we would find the life that is full in your spirit. God, we pray. Come Holy Spirit. Would you minister, beyond the words that I can say here in this place, we ask these things in your name, in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. We pray Amen, ecclesia.
Speaker 1:I'm going to invite you to stand and just to continue to allow God to minister to you as we respond in worship. I'm'm going to invite you to stand and just to continue to allow God to minister to you as we respond in worship. I'm also going to invite you if you'd like to receive prayer. We don't have the best geography up here, but we'd be honored to pray with you If you would be so bold as to make your way to the front. If you've never trusted Jesus with your life, never answered that question, do you want to be made well for the first time? I'd be honored to pray with you. If you're seeking healing, I'd be honored to pray with you. Let's respond in worship together.