Jesus Heals The Sick Man At The Pool Of Bethesda

Turn with me, please, to the 5th chapter of the Gospel of John. The Gospel of John, Chapter 5.

And once again, let us ask the Lord's blessing upon our time together. Our gracious Heavenly Father, as we open your

Word, as we consider the words of our Lord and Saviour, we ask that once again you would meet with us by your

Spirit. You would help us to hear, help us to understand, increase our faith and our understanding, we pray in Christ's name.

Amen. This 5th chapter of the Gospel of John is a chapter

I find myself turning to fairly regularly due to the work that I do in seeking to present and explain frequently to those who have reason to not believe, frequently explain the deity of Christ and the relationship of the

Father and the Son. And certainly, as we have worked through Hebrews, been working through Hebrews, we have seen that book's testimony to the intimate relationship that exists between the

Father and the Son. But we live in a day, of course, where the vast majority of our fellow citizens, though they may be familiar with some exalted language of Jesus, take as a default view that Jesus was merely a religious teacher, that he may have had some excellent things to say about moral or ethical issues, but that the idea that he was truly

God in human flesh is, well, just going a little bit too far. And, of course, there are many who call themselves

Christians today as well who, when oppressed, would admit that, well,

I know that our creeds say that and there are certain denominations that, to this day, will continue to repeat the creeds.

They will say the words. But the reality of belief in what those words represent is far from them.

In fact, there are some, and I still don't know why we use this term, but mainline denominations, almost every mainline denomination

I know of has been shrinking so quickly over the past few decades that pretty soon they will be the minuscule line of denominations.

But there are certain graduate schools representing mainline denominations where if you dare to actually state in the interview process of seeking to become a professor at one of those places that you actually believe in the deity of Christ, you can know for certainty that your application is going to be rejected because, well, those are just not things that we believe anymore.

Well, clearly, we do believe in these things. And to believe that Jesus Christ is the

Son of God, not in some mere representational way in the sense that, well, He was a specifically holy man, but to believe that in eternity past God existed in a triune fashion, the

Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, that as Jesus says in John 17, before the world was created

He shared the very glory of the Father in His presence. To believe that has ramifications.

One of the reasons that we cannot, we just simply cannot even begin to consider the idea of abandoning some of Jesus' teachings, of changing them, of editing them in light of cultural advance or cultural decline.

It all goes back to what we believe about Jesus. If He was who we claim that He was, if He was who the

Bible reveals Him to be, how could we do that? And how could anyone ask us to do that?

Over the past couple of weeks I have been dealing once again more so than for many years with certain subjects that have been raised in the cultural context.

And I was reading a book that has come out since. I wrote a book on the subject of homosexuality.

It's come out since then. And I was looking at this New Testament scholar and it was a woman who very honestly and straightforward in a very straightforward manner said it seems to me very clearly that the

Apostle Paul condemns all same -sex relationships. It's very plain.

And what was her conclusion as a result of that? Well, we need to stop believing what Paul said.

Because, you see, Paul derives his condemnation from the culture in which he lived.

And we live in a different culture now. And so if we're going to remain relevant, if we're going to remain meaningful, then we have to abandon what the

Apostle said. There are people who are saying that you don't want to be on the wrong side of history.

You heard that one? I've heard it a lot recently. You're on the wrong side of history. I'm not sure how you can get on the wrong side of history, first of all.

History is not a person. History, we believe, is directed by God.

And there have been many, many times when God's people have stood against the flow of their culture as that culture accelerated toward the abyss of self -destruction.

And I guess there might have been some people back then saying, well, you don't want to be on the wrong side of history. Well, I'd rather not be on the front side of the car as it goes over the cliff either.

But I think as Christians, the question should not be what side of history we're on.

The question should be are we pleasing the Creator of heaven and earth?

Do we stand with Him? Are we on His side? Or are we on the side of those who oppose Him? In John 5,

Jesus encounters some opposition. And that opposition arises in such a fashion that it tasks light, a very unique light, upon the relationship of the

Father and the Son. And so we first need to look at what that opposition was and what brought it to bear.

And so I want to read the first portion of this chapter. And it will be the basis of our

Scriptural study for both this morning and this evening as well. John 5,

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

Now there is, notice that word, in Jerusalem by the sheep gate a pool which is called in Hebrew or Aramaic, Bethesda or Bethsatha.

There are different ways of spelling it. Having five porticos, in these lay a multitude of those who were sick, blind, lame, and withered.

Now at this point, most of your translations will have a bracket, maybe a double bracket, some type of a note.

But the rest of verse 3 and all of verse 4 comes from a, seems to me, a description, an explanation of why there was a multitude of those who were sick, blind, lame, and withered sitting next to this pool.

Waiting for the moving of the waters, for an angel the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool and stirred up the water.

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

And then the text picks up. A man was there who had been ill for 38 years.

When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been a long time in that condition, he said to him,

Do you wish to be made whole? The sick man answered him, Sir, or Lord, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up but while I am coming another steps down before me.

Jesus said to him, Get up, pick up your pallet, and walk. Immediately the man became well and picked up his pallet and began to walk.

Now it was the Sabbath on that day. So the Jews were saying,

The man who was cured is the Sabbath and it is not permissible for you to carry your pallet. But he answered them,

He who made me well was the one who said to me, Pick up your pallet and walk. They asked him,

Who is the man who said to you, Pick up your pallet and walk? But the man who was healed did not know who it was for Jesus had slipped away while there was a crowd in that place.

Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, Behold, you have become well. Do not sin anymore so that nothing worse happens to you.

The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. For this reason the

Jews were persecuting Jesus because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. But he answered them,

My father is working until now and I myself am working. For this reason, therefore, the

Jews were seeking all the more to kill him because he not only was breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God his own father, making himself equal with God.

Therefore Jesus answered and was saying to them, Truly truly I say to you, the son can do nothing of or from himself unless it is something he sees the father doing.

For whatever the father does, these things the son also does in like manner.

For the father loves the son and shows him all things that he himself is doing. And the father will show him greater works than these so that you will marvel.

For just as the father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the son also gives life to whomever he wishes.

For not even the father judges anyone, but he has given all judgment to the son so that the result that all should honor the son, even as they honor the father.

The one not honoring the son is not honoring the father who sent him.

Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and does not come into judgment but has passed out of death into life.

Now once again these are very familiar words but I think it's important to recognize the context and what brings about this conflict that allows us to see some of these great divine truths about the relationship of the father and the son.

There is a feast of the Jews. John does not tell us what that feast was. And in fact, if you're familiar with the background studies of the

New Testament, whether you identify this feast in one way or another will really determine whether you believe that Jesus' ministry was two or three years in length.

It has a lot of impact upon that but we're not told. It's just simply there was a feast of the

Jews and Jesus has gone up to Jerusalem. And then verse 2 says, now there is in Jerusalem by the sheep gate a pool.

Now I can't prove this but it is interesting.

The writer uses the present tense. There is and there can be all sorts of times when a writer will use a present tense to describe a historical event.

In fact, that happens a number of times just in this text itself and sometimes the

New American Standard Bible will put a little asterisk, for example in verse 8,

Jesus said to him well actually it's Jesus is saying to him it's called a historical present and it's just a vivid way of describing the present or the past but using a present tense.

Okay. That might be what this is but it is interesting that if John's gospel was written as late as many even conservative scholars would put it

Jerusalem was destroyed in AD 70 and no one could really go look anymore at that point in time.

It had been turned into a wasteland for quite some period of time. And it would be unusual to say there is.

It would have been much wiser to say there was but it says there is and I only point that out to you as a possible indication.

Even though it's a minority view that John was written much earlier than a lot of people would like to give it credit as to its time of writing.

It also seems in saying it this way that the writer is saying you could go check this out yourself.

Now we can today. Of course you had to dig down to find it but you can go to Jerusalem to this day they have found this pool and guess how many porticos it has?

Five. It had disappeared for a long long time but it has been discovered over the past number of decades and it has five porticos and the sheep gate was a very small gate in the wall of Jerusalem and again everything has been found archaeologically matches up to this but it sounds like the author when he's writing is saying you can see these things.

And there are many today that would say all these books were written by people long afterwards, didn't really know the area and things like that.

Doesn't strike us when we really seriously look at it that that's the case but that is an aside. I hope you don't mind some of these asides.

They're meant to help you as individuals to grow in your faith in the word of God to recognize that sometimes there are things we read that if we know something about the history, know something about the background it's yet another indication that the word of God is as we believe it to be.

The very revelation of his divine truth. And so we're given a particular place where this takes place and we're told a story of what happens to a particular man and as I mentioned the end of verse 3 and the rest of verse 4 seems to probably have been a marginal note where a somewhat later scribe is explaining why it was that there's a bunch of people in this a bunch of sick, blind, lame and withered people in this one place.

What was it about the pool of Bethesda? Well, there was this understanding that it had healing properties.

But the earliest manuscripts of John do not contain this section. They come at a later point in time and there's all sorts of variations in that particular point.

It's meant to be descriptive. Certainly John probably and again this would indicate an early provenance for John.

John doesn't feel the necessity of necessarily explaining that given the audience that he was initially writing to in that context.

But there was a man who had been ill and it's very interesting for 38 years.

Now, I'm sure, I didn't take the time to look it up, but I'm sure that some of the interpreters in the early church after origin who were into allegorical interpretation probably came up with about 38 sermons as to what 38 actually means.

That was their thing. I mean, and it still remains the thing today.

He's not on the radio anymore, but he used to be able to turn on a certain FM radio station here in Phoenix and you would have heard someone who

I can guarantee you had some extremely unique interpretation of the number 38.

But it is interesting. It's pretty unusual that this specific information is provided.

38 years this man had been sick. This man's an interesting individual.

I don't know about you, but as you were reading it, what kind of a sense did you get about this guy?

Is he a good guy or a bad guy? There have been people who've tried to defend him.

To say, well, you know, we need to be nice. I mean, here's a guy who's been trying to get healing for 38 years.

He couldn't have had a very good life. And I'm sure he didn't. But when we look at what this man does and how he reacts to Jesus, it's very difficult to avoid the implication that Jesus healed this man.

But there's no indication of any faith on his part. Why this man?

Now we know in John chapter 9, the man born blind, Jesus specifically says, so that the power of God, God's glory, might be manifested in him.

But it almost seems, and I'll tell you, it's my reading of the text anyway, that Jesus heals this man for the specific purpose of bringing about the conversation that follows thereafter.

And the revelation of the relationship of the Father and the Son, which is so important to the development of what

John's trying to communicate to us here in this Gospel. Now what does that tell you about divine healing?

It's not under man's control. It's not based upon the worthiness of any individual, because let's face it, there is no person worthy of such an act of grace from God.

So different from the kind of attitude you see in so much of our

Christian culture, quote -unquote, on various television stations and radio stations and the like.

This man's not following after Jesus. We have no indication that he does so later. I'd like to think that he did, maybe, but Jesus, knowing that he has already been there 38 years.

How does Jesus know that? It seems that John's indicating there's a supernatural aspect to this knowledge.

Jesus asks him a question that a lot of people would find to be almost cruel. A lot of people would find to be almost cruel.

And that is he said, do you wish to get well? Now, the response of the sick man, he uses the term kuri, which is the evocative of Lord, but it's probably best just translated as Sir.

He doesn't know who he is. He's being respectful, but can we really read into his response a tone to his voice?

I mean, the temptation for most of us would be, are you kidding me? I've been sitting here for 38 years and you ask me if I want to get well?

Of course I want to get well. What kind of a question is that? But he says, Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I am coming, another steps down before me.

There doesn't seem to be any recognition in light of what Jesus is going to say later on this man's part that he has been part and parcel of his problem.

Please, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying, I'm not contradicting John chapter 9, which is going to tell us that the man had nothing to do with his being born blind.

But just because we can't always identify something, it does not mean that there are not certain sinful behaviors that lead inevitably to judgment from God.

I mean, we all know. I mean, I've told the story before, but we have a lot of new folks, so my old stories get to be reused once in a while.

But I was department fellow in anatomy and physiology at Grand Canyon. Back then it was

Grand Canyon College before they had all those big buildings they have now. And as part of my work as department fellow,

I got to demonstrate our cadavers. We had cadavers. And we knew their names,

Willie and Clara. Amazing how I can remember that after all these years. And I would do the

Quincy thing. Remember Quincy? You know, he'd pull the sheet back and the cops would fall over and stuff like that. And I'd pull the sheet back and I would demonstrate the cadavers to the high school students who would come through that were looking at possibly going to Grand Canyon.

I'm not sure how many came because of that or how many didn't come because of that. We never really kept track.

But the reality is I could do anything to Willie and Clara at all.

And Willie, we knew exactly, we knew exactly why he died. We didn't have an autopsy.

But when we did the initial cutting into the body, anywhere

I would cut in the lungs was black. Either this guy had been a coal miner with a malfunctioning face piece or something for a long time, or much more likely, he smoked like a chimney.

And you could just point to his heart. See that spot right there? That's what got him.

You could see the heart attack that got him. I mean, it was just woof. It was just I've often wished

I could have had pictures back then and when anyone lights up around me at a restaurant I can just show them the picture.

But the point is, here was a behavior that had an inevitable result.

And I could show it to you. I even dragged my poor wife who had only been married for like two years, in to see

Willie and Clara. And I'm not sure she's ever fully forgiven me for doing that. But I did. There are certain behaviors that have certain ramifications.

We don't know what this man did, but you'll notice later on when

Jesus finds him, verse 14, after Jesus found him in the temple and said to him,

Behold, you have become well. You have been made whole. Do not sin anymore so that nothing worse happens to you.

Now, we're not told what the sin was. We're not given that information, but it seems rather obvious that sin was an issue in this man's life and when

Jesus heals him, I see no evidence of repentance at all. God can even raise up evil men.

We've seen that happen. It always makes us wonder just a little bit. It makes us go back and read the 73rd

Psalm again, but how many times have we seen people who have just lived debauched lives, and yet God has mercy upon them and raises them up?

We like to say, well, opportunity for repentance, but sometimes it's just piling on of condemnation.

And so, Jesus says to him, Get up, pick up your pallet, and walk. He heals the man.

The man immediately became well and picked up his pallet and began to walk.

And then, John gives us the needed background. It's the Sabbath day. And, basically, walking through Jerusalem, carrying your pallet on the

Sabbath day, it would be hard to explain just how really obvious you would be.

Because no one else would be doing that. It's the Sabbath. And so, it doesn't take long.

So, the Jews were saying to the man who was cured, It is the Sabbath. It is not permissible for you to carry your pallet. You knew around here.

You forget which day it is, but notice the man's answer.

He who made me well was the one who said to me, Pick up your pallet and walk. Now, again, it could have just been the excuse of a giddy person who was just enjoying their first few moments of health.

Or, it could be a person saying, Well, I'm just doing what the guy who made me well said to do. And so, they want to know,

Well, who told you to do that? If someone told you to do that, now they're telling you to break the

Sabbath. So, who did that? But the man who was healed did not know who it was. Notice the difference between this and John 9 because in John 9, when

Jesus finds the man who has now been cast out, who had been healed and given his sight, the immediate response to the man is,

Who is he, Lord, that I may believe in him? And when Jesus identifies himself to him, he worships him.

But in this case, there was no faith on this man's part.

The man who was healed didn't know who it was. Jesus had slipped away while there was a crowd in that place. Do you think

Jesus did that without a purpose? Certainly he did. So afterward,

Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, Behold, you have become well. Do not sin anymore so that nothing worse happens to you.

And what's the man's response? Oh, thank you, Lord, for my healing. May I become your disciple?

May I follow you? Now, that would be a pretty major textual variance, and no manuscripts have been found to say that.

The man went away. I think there's something. The man went away. In the next chapter, at the end of John 6, when

Jesus is talking about, I am the bread of life and eat my flesh and drink my blood, what happens to his disciples?

They go away too. All but the twelve. They stop following after him.

So, the man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well.

In modern colloquial expression, he threw the one who had healed him under the bus.

All out of fear of what the Jews might do to him. And notice, for this reason the

Jews were persecuting Jesus because he was doing these things on the Sabbath.

So, there's your background. There's what gives rise to this. And nothing else is ever said about this man.

Would we all like to think that maybe after the coming of the Holy Spirit, we know there are many

Jews who had observed the ministry of Jesus and it wasn't until the coming of the Holy Spirit and the preaching of the apostles that they end up having faith in him as the

Messiah. Would this have been one of them? We would like to think so. But we're not told.

And if we go on only what the Scriptures tell us, I don't know about you, but I would not want to be this man.

To have received from the very Son of God a divine healing that ends 38 years of what seems to have been just punishment almost looks like the man who continued in whatever the sinful behavior was that caused this, and then to not be thankful.

It does cause me to think about our nation. The tremendous blessings that have been poured out by God upon this nation.

And yet, it seems that the very highest echelons of our government down to the very lowest level of the person on the street.

There is no thanksgiving. Oh, we may sing God Bless America, but the last thing we want is

God to bless America with repentance or holiness or anything else. Those to whom much has been given.

Much is required. And here is a man. His actions led to the persecuting of Jesus.

He showed no thanksgiving. He showed no recognition that he had been given something he didn't deserve.

Evidently, he saw no recognition of what he really did deserve. And what a horrible position that is.

So for this reason, the Jews were persecuting Jesus because he was doing these things on the

Sabbath. So you can just see Jesus is somewhere in the temple precincts.

The Jews have now found out, oh, it's him. So they begin, they find him.

They probably send out some guys to see if they can find him. Okay, I found him over here. He comes and runs back. They begin gathering around once again.

And they begin questioning. We're not giving them the specific words. They're just persecuting Jesus. They're following after him.

And they're saying, hey, you claim to be a teacher, and yet you're telling people to break the Sabbath. This man claims to be a teacher, but he's breaking the

Sabbath. Verse 17, but he answered them, my father is working until now, and I myself am working.

We normally fly right over this text because of the conflict noted in verse 18.

But I think we need to make sure that we don't fly over it. You see, if you read the

Jewish sources from this time period, and we don't have a lot of specifically

Jewish writing from this particular decade or something like that, but about 250 years later, a codification of the

Jewish traditions came together, which is called the Mishnah. Some of the traditions in there didn't exist in the days of Jesus, but most did.

And it's a difficult field of study to know exactly how to use that material. But if you read that material, you get a sense of exactly what kind of people

Jesus was dealing with in this day. And there had been a lot of discussion about this subject of the

Sabbath day, and especially God's relationship to it. In other words, the

Jews had spent a lot of time asking the question, does God break the Sabbath? Or does

God keep the Sabbath? I mean, in six days he created the heavens and earth, and on the seventh day he rested.

But the Jews recognized that creating heavens and earth hadn't exhausted God. God was like, oh man, glad that's over with.

I need a break. Amazingly enough, there are actually people who raise that as an objection to the

Bible. And they're called Muslims. And the reason they do it is because the Quran raises it as an objection.

God doesn't need any rest. Well, the Bible says God has all power, and it wasn't that God was exhausted.

But God interacts with us. And he rests on the seventh day.

He sets it apart. And yet the Jews likewise thought, well, what's the nature of this rest?

I mean, the sun still comes up on the Sabbath morning right when it's supposed to. And it sets on the

Sabbath eve right when it's supposed to. And sometimes rain falls and the crops continue to grow.

And sometimes our herds even have some of their kids.

They reproduce even on the Sabbath day. Everything keeps working.

And if that's part of God's provident care for creation, then it doesn't seem that that feast is on the

Sabbath day. And so they come up with some interesting theories, some interesting responses.

One rabbi came up with the idea that, of course, God never breaks the Sabbath. Because, you see, you could carry things around inside your house.

You could move things from one place to another inside your house. It was going outside of your house that there was a violation.

And so one rabbi had come up with the idea, well, of course God can't break the Sabbath because the whole universe is

His house. So He can lift things up and He can do anything in His house because the whole universe is

His house. But another rabbi had come up with the idea that, well, it was how far you carried something or how far you lifted it up.

And God's so big that no matter what He did in the universe, it couldn't be nearly as high as to violate how high up you're supposed to be able to lift something on the

Sabbath day. Because He's huge. So they had put some thought into it. And the general conclusion was, well, obviously

God does work on the Sabbath because He's God. It doesn't violate the Sabbath regulations for various reasons, but the sun still rises and the rain still falls and the wind still blows and life goes on and that is evidence that God's creative and sustaining power continues to be exercised even on the

Sabbath day. Well, with that as a background, listen again to what

Jesus said in answering to them. My Father until now has been working.

And then He uses a very brief, short connective.

And I am working. In other words, I bear such a relationship to my

Father that just as you recognize that He continues

His divine activities, the fulfilling of His divine purposes even on the

Sabbath day, so do the very first words of His answer are,

My Father. He didn't say, Our. He uses a form that speaks of intimacy.

My Father until now is working and I also am working.

Now, knowing now the background of what they had taught and considered about the relationship of work and God, Sabbath.

Now you understand verse 18. So many people will jump to verse 18, but unless you recognize

Jesus initiated this. Jesus did not suffer from what we suffer from today, and that is so as to not necessarily get people angry with us, we become politically correct.

Jesus was never politically correct. There are so many times, especially in the Gospel of John, where Jesus specifically states something in a way that He had to have known.

You know that He knew exactly what He was doing, and that there was a purpose in His so doing.

He has used language that they would immediately recognize. Comes from their very own discussions.

But the way He does it opens the door for the rest of John chapter 5.

So you notice, verse 18. For this reason, therefore, the Jews were seeking all the more to kill

Him, because He not only was breaking the Sabbath, but was also calling

God His own Father, making Himself isan, equal to God.

We all know an isosceles triangle, right? Equal sides. That's where the word comes from.

Making Himself equal with God. Now, we will unpack this as it leads us into the rest of the material this evening, but notice what is said here.

The Jews are seeking all the more. This wasn't where it started.

The opposition had already begun before this. But now they're seeking all the more to kill

Him, because now they have a two -pronged basis for accusation. They claim

He's breaking the Sabbath. Now, there are people who deny the deity of Christ, very, very intelligent people, who seemingly sit around all day long, thinking up ways of getting around texts like this that reveal to us the deity of Christ.

And here's the argument they'll give. The Jews are wrong on both counts. The Jews are wrong on both counts.

He wasn't breaking the Sabbath, and He wasn't calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God. That's just what the

Jews thought He was doing. And the rest of John chapter 5 is going to be an explanation of that.

Of Jesus denying His deity. Alright? That's what people are going to say. Now, whether that fits or not, we'll see when we start with verse 19 and continue on from there, because Jesus does say, and this is why y 'all better come back this evening, because Jesus does say in verse 19,

Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself. Is that God? Can God ever say,

I can do nothing of Myself? Can God ever say, I'm dependent? It's an important question.

But it comes from verse 18 and the fact that Jews understand

Jesus to be breaking the Sabbath, and they also understand that by using that phrase,

My Father is working until now, and I am working, He was making a special claim of relationship to God that could not with equal ease be applied to any other human being.

They understood that that kind of language was blasphemous. Making oneself equal to God.

Now let me just summarize for those of you who say, wait a minute, I can't come back tonight,

I'm going to be in Idaho or something. What is going to follow?

This is what you need to be able to explain to anyone who has issues with this text and first it has to be clear in your own mind.

What is going to follow is Jesus' explanation of how you can believe there's only one true

God, and yet believe in the doctrine of the Trinity. What He's going to explain is that we do not have two different gods or three different gods.

Jesus is not claiming in His saying that I am working until now even as a father to be some separate renegade

God who's out doing His own thing. He has His own will. He just does whatever pleases Him.

The whole point of John chapter 5 is the unity that exists between the

Father and the Son. And it's that perfect harmony and unity that is always the central focus.

So Jesus will say, I do nothing from myself that is independently of the Father, but He'll also say, and because of the clarity of God's revelation about me, everyone is to honor me in the same way they honor the

Father. Because I even have the right to give life to whom I please.

And so you're going to have truly one of the most beautifully balanced sections of the

Scripture that address the relationship of the Father and the Son. And once again, let me close with an exhortation.

You might sit here and go, well, there he goes again. The funny, bald guy is talking about the

Trinity and talking about deep things of theology.

Well, it's a good thing to do that on Sunday. But it's like, what about more practical things?

I honestly suggest to you, there can be almost nothing more practical. We're talking about the very foundation upon which we build the entirety of our worldview.

Who we believe Jesus is will determine everything else. The relevance of God's law. The very essence of the

Gospel itself. It all is based upon who we believe Christ is. Why is it there are so many people who call themselves

Christians in our society today who absolutely collapse like a house of cards when the world comes along and just pushes on them about God's law.

Why is that? Because they don't believe Jesus was God in human flesh. They don't believe in the

Incarnation. They don't believe in the consistency of God's work. They have no foundation. And why is it that we cannot even give consideration to compromise?

Because we believe that the one who said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father, but by me was actually not only speaking the truth, but he was the

God -man. And to therefore say, well, that was then, this is now, is to have a view of Jesus that is completely different than the view of Jesus we have.

And only one of those views comports with the Scriptures. Only one of them is consistent with the

Scriptures. Do not allow the world to push you into the idea, well, it's just your opinion versus somebody else's.

No. There is a truth. Jesus has revealed that to us.

And in understanding the relationship of this divine revelation to all the other parts of Christian truth, we have confidence that we're doing the right thing to his honor and his glory when we stand for his truth, even in this day.

Let's pray together. Indeed, our Heavenly Father, we thank you once again for your word and for its message.

We thank you that our Lord and Savior was unafraid of conflict when that conflict was born out of a witness of the truth.

May we take to heart his example. May we with graciousness be witnesses of your truth, even this coming week.