John 5:1-16 (Betraying Jesus)

The Shepherd's Church

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And I think it's safe to say that no one likes a traitor. It's not common for any culture, now or in all of history, to commend betrayal.

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And as such, you'll probably not find in the top 100 list of baby names for 2020, you probably won't find the name

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Satan. No one wants to name their child that after the

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Lord of Darkness. You probably won't find Jezebel. Apparently, we don't want to name our daughters after murderous lunatics who betray their country.

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As a former military man, I would never, ever name my child Benedict Arnold Lankford.

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I know the history is complicated on the subject, but it just wouldn't go there. As New Englanders, and I've had two children here,

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I'm not from here, but I'm claiming that now I'm here, so deal with it. As New Englanders, we probably wouldn't name our child

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Tom or Brady after what's happened. There's just certain things you don't do.

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But as Christians, there's one name that we never want to be identified with. There's one name that reaches down into the darkness so far that you just would never want to be called that, and that's

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Judas. Judas was the one who performed the ultimate betrayal on our

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Lord Jesus Christ. For 30 pieces of silver and a poisoned kiss, he betrayed the

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Lord of Glory. He was a pitiful worm of a human being. Jesus even said himself, but woe to that man by whom the

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Son of Man is betrayed. It would have been better for that man if he had not been born.

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Here you have the God of life saying that this man would have been better had he not even been born.

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Those are harsh words, but they're certainly true words. And by some measure,

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I believe that we should reflect upon those words today. What does it mean for us to betray

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Christ? What does it mean for us to sell him out? What does it mean for us to be a Judas?

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And maybe you're wondering, Kendall, we're just in John 5. We're not there yet. You're right, but the spirit of Judas is alive and well in this passage.

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You see, we've been in two sections of John so far. John 1, 1 through 18 is the prologue.

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It's a theological introduction of Jesus. John 2 through 4 is the announcement of Jesus's kingdom, the inauguration of his kingdom, the preaching of his kingdom, and it goes to Jerusalem, it goes to the

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Galileans, and it goes to the Samaritans. John 5 through 11 is the universal rejection of Jesus.

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That's our third section in the Gospel of John that we enter into today, and the man that we're gonna see today is much like Judas in the way that he betrays our

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Lord. So it's appropriate for us to ask, what does it mean to betray

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Christ? So if you will, turn with me to John 5, 1 through 16, as we unpack today's passage and we answer those questions together.

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The text says, after these things, there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

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Now there is in Jerusalem by the sheep gate a pool, which is called in Hebrew Bethesda, having five porticos, and these lay a multitude of those who were sick, blind, lame, and withered, waiting for the moving of the waters.

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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, which he was afflicted.

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A man was there who had been ill for 38 years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time in that condition, he said to him, do you wish to get well?

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The sick man answered him, sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up.

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But while I am coming, another steps down before me. Jesus said to him, get up.

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Pick up your mat and walk. Immediately the man became well and he picked up his pallet and began to walk.

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Now it was the Sabbath on that day. So the Jews were saying to the man who was cured, it is the

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Sabbath and it's 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.

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And they asked him, who is the man who said this 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.

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

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

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For this reason, the Jews were persecuting him because he was doing these things on the

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Sabbath. But Jesus answered, my father is working until now and I myself am working.

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Now again, this is a new section and we're talking about the betrayal of Christ. The cross of Jesus hangs over John 5 through 11.

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In every scene, we're gonna be looking at men and women trying to come to grips with who

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Jesus is and then rejecting him. And that sort of spirit is gonna lead us to the moment of Jesus's arrest.

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The cross hangs over John 5 through 11 heavily. And today, we're gonna be looking at this particular scene and we're gonna be looking at a twofold healing that Jesus does, or at least a twofold offering.

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First, he heals him physically. Then he offers spiritual healing to him. It's a twofold type of offer.

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And then we're gonna look at how this man rejects Christ. And then we're gonna ask ourselves some questions that I hope will bring both humility, but also in the end,

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I believe it will bring joy. Let's pray. Lord, I thank you so much for passages like this.

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Lord, every passage in the Bible is inspired by your

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Holy Spirit and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, admonishing, encouraging and building us up in righteousness.

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Lord, there are certain passages that are sometimes neglected.

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There are certain passages that are not preached. There are certain passages that seem to be heavy.

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But Lord, even in the darkness, your light shines so beautifully and so brightly. And Lord, I pray that today, as we look at such a heavy topic of someone betraying

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Christ that we would also see the light of your grace and the light of your glory.

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And we would see that in the gospel. It's in your name we pray, amen. All right, let's begin with the scene.

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This is verses one through five or so. And it begins with after these things. Now that's

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John's cue to let us know after these things, he's talking about chapter four, where Jesus healed a man, son, but the man didn't believe in him until after the signs.

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And we talked about that last week, that he did not wanna follow Jesus. He didn't wanna know Jesus for who

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Jesus was. He just wanted Jesus to perform signs and wonders so that that was the root of his faith.

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And what we learned last week, that is if the root of your faith is in signs and in wonders, then it's gonna take signs and wonders in order to keep you seeking

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Jesus. But if the foundation of your faith is in Christ, then Christ is all that's necessary.

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Christ is all that matters to you. And Christ is what holds you. When John says after these things, he's intentionally alluding to those events.

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But we also, interestingly enough, do not know how much time elapsed between John four and John five.

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John two through four is one event after the next. And it's almost in perfect chronological sequence so that it could be just a few weeks.

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It could be maybe a month that John two through four encompasses, but John five has a gap.

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It could be as large as 11 months of gap. Jesus is in Galilee.

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He's doing ministry, but the Holy Spirit by his providence and by his wisdom did not intend to include those things in this gospel.

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It wasn't John's purpose. Now we know from other gospels that Jesus was doing ministry in Galilee.

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He was doing healings. We know that he probably preached his most famous sermon, the Sermon on the

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Mount, during this gap between John four and John five. We know that he also probably added additional disciples in this time, because if you remember,

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John two through four tells us about six. We know Jesus had 12. So it was during this

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Galilean phase of his ministry that he likely added disciples like Matthew and others.

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But however long this gap may be, it cannot be longer than about 10 or 11 months.

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And the reason is because of what verse one says. Verse one says, after these things, there was a feast of the

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Jews, and Jesus went to Jerusalem. Now we know there's three feasts in the

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Old Testament that would cause a Jewish male to have to go to Jerusalem. That's the Feast of Passover, the

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Feast of Tabernacles, and the Day of Atonement. Jesus just left Jerusalem for the

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Passover. So if it's the Passover that John has in mind, which many people believe that it is, it's about 11 months of a gap.

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If it's another feast, it could be shorter. That's not John's point, but I bring it to your attention to let you know that there is a substantive gap of six to 11 months in this text.

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But John's purpose in mentioning this is to locate Jesus back in Jerusalem.

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He doesn't want us to know why Jesus is in Jerusalem, but that he is in Jerusalem, and how appropriate that the section of this gospel would change to the universal rejection of Christ in Jerusalem.

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John says in chapter one, he came to his own and his own received him not. How much more of his own could he be in the city of Zion where the temple was?

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And this is the city where this section kicks off. Jerusalem is the one who will crucify our

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Savior. It's appropriate that this section would begin with Jesus in Jerusalem. And it begins in a small gate in the northwest corner of the city called the

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Sheep Gate. This is what John says. Now there is in Jerusalem by the

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Sheep Gate a pool which is called in Hebrew Bethesda, having five porticos. Now the

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Sheep Gate was in the northwest corner because that's where the shepherds lived.

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They lived in the suburbs of Jerusalem in the pasture lands in the northwest part of the city. That's why the shepherds were nearby

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Bethlehem when Jesus was born. So it would make sense that the Sheep Gate would be where the shepherds are and where they're raising their sheep.

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It's also the most obvious and logical entrance that a person from Galilee would enter.

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If they're coming from the north traveling south, they would have entered in the north most gate to the city.

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So during a festival, I want you to notice this, that you have travelers that are coming from Galilee entering into the city to go to the temple in the

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Sheep Gate, and you have shepherds bringing in 100 ,000, 200 ,000 sheep and animals in through the

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Sheep Gate. So this is the kind of commotion that you have that's coming through this particular gate.

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Now this is not the point of the passage, but I want you to notice the subtlety of John's theological nuance here.

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The true lamb of God is entering through the Sheep Gate and no one recognizes him. That's fascinating.

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And it's more than that that's bubbling under the surface here. You've got a pool. It's called the

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Pool of Bethesda. And according to scholars, this was fascinating to me.

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It's a massive pool of water that was roughly the size of an American football field right in the city.

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I had no idea that a pool could even fit in Jerusalem that was that big, but it was.

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It was roughly 20 feet deep at its deepest point. You may be wondering why would such a large pool be in the city of Jerusalem at that time, a pool that's bigger than a football field?

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Why would that be? Well, if you'll remember that during the festival, hundreds of thousands of sheep were coming into the city.

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And because of the immaculate condition that those sheep needed to be in in order to be sacrificed, because they had to go through an inspection process and the temple priest had to make sure that they were clean and that they were worthy to be sacrificed, they had to be washed.

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So here you have thousands of sheep being washed in this pool. Whatever got stuck in their coat, whether that was dirt or feces or urine was being washed off in these waters.

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I believe it's safe to say this was not a swimming pool that you would wanna swim in. It's not somewhere that you would wanna wash your body.

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And I believe that the Pharisees, the well -to -do and anyone who knew anything about this pool would have totally avoided this because it would not just have offended your sensibilities, it would have made you unclean.

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Remember, we're in the festival season. And if you were unclean, you couldn't participate. So what the

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Jews did, and this is often the case with the Jewish season of time that we're looking at, they would allow the shepherds to bring the sheep into the city.

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They would allow the shepherds to wash the sheep in this pool called Bethesda, which would render them unclean, but the

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Jewish leaders would perfectly happily sacrifice the animals that the shepherds raised, but they wouldn't allow the shepherds to participate.

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There's a hypocrisy that's going on in the city. Now, around the same time, this is a lot of background on this text, but you have to know it in order to understand what's going on.

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Around this time, there was a myth that began being propagated by the people. The sick and the infirm started believing that an angel of the

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Lord would come down upon these filthy, septic waters and would rumble the waters and shake the water so that whoever was the first one to get into the water would be healed.

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Imagine the irony being healed in waters like that. And because of this legend and because of this myth that was going on at the time of Jesus, droves and droves of sick people were lying there waiting for those waters to be shaken.

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The text says that there were five porticos. If you think about it like a modern day swimming pool that has four sides with concrete there that you can sit on the edge of the pool, you can lay on the edge of the pool, that would be kind of what a portico is.

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A modern pool has four. This one had five because it had one going through the center of the pool.

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And a lot of scholars believe that that was to separate the men from the women because it was unclean for men and women to be in the same pool together.

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But we can swim in this water. See, again, hypocrisy. Now, what you have here is a pool, a filthy pool, and thousands of people sitting here waiting on a myth to happen, for the waters to be rumbling and so that they could jump into these waters and so that they could be healed.

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And I can honestly think of no better metaphor for modern day idolatry than that.

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Here we are, where we have Jesus Christ the fount of living waters, but yet in idolatry, we are hoping to bathe in the bubbling, stinking, festering, polluted waters of religion.

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Do you see that? How often do we have misplaced hopes, like these men and women who were sitting there on the porch, waiting for these waters to be stirred, when

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God himself is the healer, not these waters. Their hopes were totally out of place, but we can see that today too, where our hope is misplaced off of Jesus and onto something else, which is just as dirty and just as corrupt as these polluted waters.

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This is the last place anyone should have ever wanted to go to be healed, just like idolatry. It's the last place you would ever wanna go in order to find true worship.

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But in their desperation, many sat there and many waited for those waters to stir.

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Now let's look at how John describes this in verses three through four. In these porticos lay a multitude of those who were sick, blind, lame, and withering, waiting for the moving of the waters.

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For an angel of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool and stirred up the water.

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

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Now, I never do this, so forgive me, I'm gonna do this right now. How many people here are using a

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Bible other than the NASB? Where's verse four? It's gone.

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It's not there. You're wondering, Kendall, what are you talking about? It's also a good way to earn a free lunch.

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When you're standing in the line of Chipotle and you look at your neighbor and you say, hey, I bet you can't find John 5 .4.

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And they're like, of course I can. No, you can't. It's not in your ESV, it's not in your NIV, it's not in your

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NLT. Now, this is not a part of the story, but I feel obliged that we have to talk about this for a second because I want you to understand what's going on.

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We'll come back to the story, but this is gonna be a parenthesis for a moment where we're gonna talk about why John 5 .4

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is not in your Bible. If you have the NASB, it's in brackets, and there's a reason for that, too.

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Now, when the New Testament was written, let's say John wrote his gospel in around 50, 60

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AD. I don't believe that he wrote in the 90s. I think a lot of people believe that, even if you do believe that. John wrote his original gospel writing while he gave it to his churches, the churches that he was overseeing.

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And Paul was in Rome. Someone had a copy of the epistle to the Romans, but the churches had not, they didn't have copies of the other people's books.

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So what they would do is a representative from Rome would go to Israel and they would swap.

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John's gospel would be copied by the person who's representative of the Roman church, and then John would copy the gospel of the

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Romans. Now, this was an expensive labor, and it took a long time to be able to do, but eventually, all of the little churches that were spread out throughout the

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Roman Empire eventually got copies of every single book of the New Testament through this sort of, hey,

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I'll copy yours, you copy mine, sort of thing. And what eventually happened is that over time, and over a lot of effort, we had copies that were strewn all throughout the

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Roman Empire. Now, I'm sure you can imagine how long this would have taken.

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There's some that say that completed Bibles were not even canonized until the 300s. I think that's wrong.

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I think there's evidence that churches had completed Bibles much earlier than that. But as you get further and further away from the events of Jerusalem, especially considering that in AD 70, the city was burned to the ground by the

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Romans, you're gonna have Gentiles who don't know what a sheep gate is. You're gonna have Gentiles who don't know what the

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Pool of Bethesda was, and they're not gonna know the Jewish myth that was surrounding the details of that. So what you ended up happening is though these scribes, people who were copying the data, were meticulous, scholars believe that 95 % accuracy is what we have among 27 ,000 manuscripts that we have found in the ancient world, which is astonishing.

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And you're like, 5 % inaccuracy, that's really high. Most of that's commas. Most of that's punctuation marks or spelling errors.

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But a very small subset of that is editorial additions, and that's what this is, where you have a pastor who is pastoring a

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Gentile church, and his church has no idea about the sheep gate, has no idea about the Pool of Bethesda, has no idea about some of the events that were surrounding this.

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So what he does is he adds a footnote to the text. Now, in those days, they didn't have footnotes at the bottom of the page.

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It was expensive to make a copy. I've said this before, that if you were to copy the

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Epistle to the Romans, it would be $15 ,000 in modern -day currency. That's how much it would have cost them to make a copy of this book.

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So they jammed the letters together. There was no spaces. It would be very difficult to read, but they were saving every inch of page that they could possibly save.

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So when they read it, they understood, they said, ah, this is a footnote. But when we found the manuscripts, or not we, but when

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Count Zinzendorf and others found the manuscripts, they included it in the

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KJV as text, not as a footnote. As we gained more text, as more

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Bible translations were found, we realized that this was not original to the Bible. The only problem is the verses had already been labeled.

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So verse four is not an original part of John's gospel, so what do we do?

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The ESV's decided to take it out and hopefully put a footnote in the bottom of your Bible and tell you what happened. The NASB has decided to put brackets around it to let you know that it's not what

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John originally wrote, but it is there for clarity. It is there for information. Either way,

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I wanted you to know what was happening so that you can have confidence in the Bible so that you can have confidence in the translation process and so that you can understand what's going on because if you see there's no verse four, you might think you bought a defective

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Bible. You didn't. It's all good. If you're interested in this field, it's called textual criticism.

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Most people aren't interested in this field. Let's move on. John tells us, now there's in Jerusalem by the sheep gate a pool which is called, in Hebrew, Bethesda, having five porticos.

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And in these lay a multitude of those who were sick, blind, lame, and withered, waiting for the moving of the waters.

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For the angel of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool and stirred up the water. Whoever then was first, after stirring up the waters, stepped in and was made well from whatever disease which was afflicted.

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John's just saying, or not John, the editor who added this in, is saying this is what people thought.

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He's not saying that this actually was happening. He's saying that this is the myth that was happening. At this time, and people were lining up like crazy to get in line so that they could jump into these dirty waters.

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Now I want you to imagine a massive group of people who their only hope in the world is to leap into waters that are less clean than our modern day toilets.

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And I don't say that for shock factor, I say that actually. In their sickness, in their defilement, they were not allowed to go into the temple, but yet where they were sitting, the temple would have loomed large over the horizon of the city.

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It was at the highest point of the city. So permanently, as a feature of the landscape of Jerusalem, as they were sitting in front of these dirty waters, they would have seen the temple that they were never allowed to enter.

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And the only thing that they would have ever thought was, you are not welcome.

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So they would have rested in these waters, believing a popular legend, which you wonder how they could believe that, but they had no hope.

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When you have no hope, you believe almost anything. They wanted more than anything to join their countrymen in the temple.

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A part of the Jewish identity was participating in the festivals. And if you couldn't participate them in, you were almost not even a person.

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Their only hope was in waiting on these waters. And what an awful and demoralizing place to be.

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It would be like desiring to hang out in an infectious disease ward. No one would want to be there. Now verse five tells us that there was a man singled out among those who were sick.

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Text says in verse five, a man was there who had been ill for 38 years. Just as a bit of context,

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Israel wandered in the desert for 38 years before they walked into the promised land.

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Some people believe that this man, God allowed him to be sick for 38 years as a metaphor for the nation.

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Whether that's true or not, I think it's an interesting feature that both he and Israel were sick for 38 years.

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Now can you imagine what this must have been like? 38 years, that's more than I've been alive. I think

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I'm 37. I say that because honestly, right now I don't even remember. I'm either 36 or 37.

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Which I'm probably like 45 because I can't remember that fact. All right. But imagine being there for 38 years, trusting on your friends, trusting on your colleagues, trusting on your neighbors, even possibly trusting on your worst enemy to drag you into the city and lay you there, to sit out in the hot and scorching and burning sun just so that you can watch some water and jump into it in order to be healed.

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Can you imagine how discouraging that would be? I mean, we're upset because we live in 2020.

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This man had nothing. He had abject poverty. His hopes and dreams had been thoroughly dashed.

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He was experiencing isolation, dejection, rejection, and nothing to hold onto in life but these polluted waters.

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I can't imagine how deeply rooted this man's depression must have went. I can't imagine how vexing his discouragement must have been.

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I can't imagine how cold and calloused his heart must have been after all of those years. You know, you think about when you're depressed, your head dips.

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And imagine this man didn't look up very often. This is where Jesus enters into the narrative.

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Verse six, he said, when Jesus saw him lying there and he knew that he'd already been there a long time in that condition, he said to him, do you want to get well?

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Now, at first, that sounds like a silly question. You can imagine the man with his face looking down at the dirt, not even looking up to see who it is who's speaking to him, wondering why would you ask me such a silly, ridiculous question as that?

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Of course I want to get well. But what we see with Jesus time and time again is he asks questions to peel back the layers.

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This is like when he asked the woman at the well, can I have a drink? She's like, why would you be talking to me?

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Jesus was asking a question to get the conversation started so that he could peel back the layers so that healing could come.

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And when we peel back the layers of this man's heart, we find exactly what we think we would find, discouragement, bitterness, frustration.

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It says the sick man answered him, sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up. But while I'm coming up, another steps down before me.

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Can you hear the hopelessness in this man's voice? He didn't even answer the question. Do you want to be made well?

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I think he doesn't even believe that that's possible anymore. He's like, I have absolutely no hope.

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There's no one who's gonna put me in the pool. There's no one who's gonna help me. I have no opportunity. I'm too slow.

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I'm too weak. I'm too broken. Have you ever felt like that?

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That you were so broken that maybe you were outside the reach of God. You were too far gone for God to heal you, too far gone for God to forgive you.

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That level of brokenness is where this man is at. You get the picture that he's so sullen in his misery that he doesn't look up to see who's talking to him, that he simply stares down at the stone portico below him, wondering why this man would ask this question.

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Now, we know that it's likely that he did not see Jesus face to face because later he says he doesn't know who Jesus is.

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He didn't see him. He was too depressed to look up. I don't know about you, but I've been in those places before where I was so depressed

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I didn't even want to see anyone. I wanted to hide away in my office. I was so depressed

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I didn't even want to read books. I just wanted to look at them. That's pretty depressed. This is where this man is.

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Now, verse eight, let's watch what happens here. Jesus said to him, get up, pick up your pallet and walk.

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And immediately the man became well and he picked up his pallet and began to walk. Notice what it doesn't say.

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It doesn't say that he worshiped. It doesn't say that he praised. It doesn't say that he said, thank you,

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Jesus. It just says that he got up and walked. That's important. Now, that's the background.

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As we transition to the first point, that's the introduction. Welcome to Shepherd's Church. The first point is

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Jesus is gonna heal him physically. Jesus said, get up, pick up your pallet and walk.

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Immediately the man became well and he picked up his pallet and began to walk. Jesus is offering this man something that he could not find on his own.

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38 years he'd been looking to be physically healed and yet in this moment, in an instant, it says immediately he was healed because Jesus spoke.

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Jesus is healing him physically. Why would he be doing that? Because this man is broken. And I think this points to the fact that all of us physically are broken.

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All of us are gonna die. All of us need some sort of physical healing at some point.

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Honestly, there's two ways in the Bible that you die. There's spiritual death that happens from the moment that you were conceived.

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You were born into sin. You were born dead, spiritually stillborn. And then every moment of your life, you were dying every single day physically.

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Our bodies were experiencing decay, but this man's body had experienced more decay than 10 lifetimes at this point.

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And Jesus in his mercy and his grace was gonna heal him. I think the two things that Jesus is trying to get this man to understand is these waters are not gonna heal you.

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And then the second thing, which is a little bit more subtle, is Jesus is trying to saying, I am God. Let's look at both of those points together.

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This water is not gonna heal you. John has these themes that run through it. Last week, we traced the theme about how do you receive

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Christ. That was going through John two through four. Water is an important theme in the gospel of John and the insufficiency of water at that.

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In John chapter one, John the Baptist says, my baptism is not good enough. You need Jesus who's gonna come and baptize you in the water and the spirit.

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Why? Because the water is insufficient. In John two, you have empty water pots for Jewish purifications, which are not enough.

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So what does Jesus do? He speeds up reality. Instead of having it rain, instead of grapes growing, instead of people crushing them, instead of them putting put into bottles and then taking time to ferment,

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Jesus instantly speaks wine into existence because the water of the Jewish religion was not enough.

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Jesus is bringing the wine of a brand new covenant. John chapter three, he says, you've been born of water that's insufficient.

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You must be born of the spirit. Do you see the water theme that's playing out here? John four, this woman comes to draw water.

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Jesus says, your water is not sufficient. I'm gonna offer you living water that will bubble up inside of you into eternity because your water is not enough.

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So when we get to John five and we see that this man is sitting in front of the most polluted, disgusting waters imaginable, there's a point here.

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These waters are not gonna heal you. It's insufficient for you. Only I can heal you.

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That's what Jesus is trying to get this man to see. And there's a second point in this.

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Jesus is claiming through this miracle to be God. You listen to many people say,

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Jesus never claimed to be God. That's untrue. That's untrue for a variety of different reasons, but it exposes a total lack of biblical literacy.

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Jesus did explicitly say that he is God, but implicitly he claims to be God all over the place.

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Here, Jesus speaks with his mouth and healing happens. Who's the one who speaks and reality comes into existence?

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God. In the beginning was God, and he said, let there be light, and it was so.

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And Jesus said, let you be healed, and it was so. Jesus is claiming through his actions, I am

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God. Who's the one who exhale, exhales, he exhales too, exhales and human statue,

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Adam, becomes a living man? It's God. Who's the one who breathes and the water parts?

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It's God. By the vocal cords of Jesus, healing comes to this man.

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He is God. He's saying that the water cannot heal you. Only I can heal you because I am the very

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God who made you. Now, the way this man responds seems unbelievable to us.

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You would have thought that he would have bowed down and worshiped Jesus. You would have thought that he would have taken his face that was sullen and misery, and he would have planted it firmly on the earth, and he would have said, dear

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God, thank you for what you've done. Forgive me of my sins, but he doesn't do any of that. He didn't cry out for mercy.

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He didn't worship God, even though he had just been made well. He gets up and he walks away.

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Now, the reason for this response is not because he's a bad person.

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The reason for this response is because he had two diseases. He had a physical disease and he had a spiritual disease, and the spiritual disease was far worse, and it is for all of us.

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You see, here he is sitting in front of these murky waters, but his soul, in comparison, looked far worse.

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These waters looked like the French Riviera in comparison to his soul, and it is for the same for us as well.

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This man did not look at Jesus. He didn't ask Jesus his name. He didn't bow down and worship. He didn't do any of that. Why? Because he was spiritually dead, and he needed

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God to not only heal his body. He needed God to heal his soul because unless God heals your soul, you cannot worship

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Christ. You will not turn to Christ. You will not love Christ. This man at this point has only received a partial healing.

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That's why he doesn't worship. That's why he turns away. Now let's continue with what's going on in this passage.

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Verse nine says, immediately the man became well, and he picked up his pallet and began to walk.

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Now it was the Sabbath. That is a loaded statement that informs the rest of the narrative, so tuck that one away.

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So the Jews were saying to the man who was cured, it's the Sabbath, and it's not permissible for you to carry your pallet.

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But he answered them, and he said, he, the one who made me well, is the one who said to me, pick up your pallet and walk.

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And they asked him, who was the man who said to you, pick up your pallet and walk?

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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. This man had been healed physically, but not spiritually.

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And because of that, let's ask the question, where did he go? He looked up, Jesus isn't there.

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He didn't go running after Jesus. He went running to the temple. For 38 years, this man had sat there wishing, dreaming, hoping that he could just go to a

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Passover, that he could just go to a festival. Now that he can walk, he grabs his bed, and the first thing that he does is he bolts to the temple, and where would you expect to find a

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Pharisee on a religious festival? You wouldn't find him on a religious festival day, other than in the temple. Jesus later says that he found him in the temple.

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This is where this man fleed to, because this is what he wanted more than anything.

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He wanted to be a part of his nation. Who could blame him? He was a nobody.

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And at that point, he was looking to become a somebody, finally, for the first time in his life. I wonder if you can imagine how this man felt as he walked through the court of the

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Gentiles, and no one stopped him. This is the first time that this man's walking in years.

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No one's telling him, get out, unclean, sick, diseased.

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No one's noticing him. It's the first time in a long time that this is true for this man.

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And as he walks through the court of the Gentiles, as he walks through the court of the women, and as he gets to the court of the

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Jews, this is where I think he probably was, the court of the men, the Pharisees notice him. He sticks out like a sore thumb.

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This man's carrying his mat. And that's a great problem in Israel during the

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Sabbath. You see, this whole thing came just about crashing down.

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For 38 years, he had dreamed about this moment where he could stand before the temple, where he could worship God the way that he wanted to, the way that his people did.

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And in a moment, the Pharisees find him and accuse him of one of the great sins in Israel at that time, carrying your mattress.

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Believe it or not, this was a sin that was punishable by death. They could have picked up stones and killed him on the spot.

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This is how serious this is. Now we know from the

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Sabbath laws that there's a few places in the Bible that talks about the Sabbath and tells you specific things that you ought to do.

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In all of the Torah, first five books of the Bible, one passage explicitly claims what you ought not to do on the

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Sabbath, and that's Exodus 35, one through three. It says you should not gather sticks and kindle a fire.

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You should trust the Lord is going to provide for you. Most times you would do that when you're cooking. Throughout the rest of the

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Old Testament, very little is added to the list of what true work is. Jeremiah says you should not carry any burdens.

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This is what morphed into the law that would kill you in first century Israel, that you're carrying a burden, which means you're carrying your bed.

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I don't know about you, but when I lay down on my bed, there's no burdens. I don't know how they figured out this was a burden.

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Nehemiah 10, 31 says you can't buy or sell on the Sabbath. You can't use the Sabbath for your own pleasure. That's Isaiah 58, 13.

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There's basically five teachings on the Sabbath in the Old Testament that says what you can't do. The Jews turned this into 35 categories of what you can't do, and subcategories.

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It looks a lot like my outlines. Subcategories of subcategories on what you can't do, and they morphed it into this massive list that you could not do, and at the pinnacle of what you could not do is carry your bed.

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Now, this man's in really hot waters. If he admits that he's in violation of the

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Sabbath law, he could be killed. He'll never get to participate in the festival. So what does he do?

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He does exactly what his father Adam does. He points the blame, but instead of pointing the blame at a co -conspirator like Eve, he pointed the blame at God himself.

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He said, he's the one who told me to do it. I find that interesting because these are man -made laws that are being executed by a

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Pharisaic system that God never intended, and now Jesus is the one getting the blame for their legalism.

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This drips with ingratitude of Christ. This drips of dishonor towards the one who had just healed him.

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It's also drenched with desperation. You can tell that this man wants nothing more than to be there in that temple courtyard, participating with his people, and he's willing to throw

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Jesus under the bus if that's what it takes to get him there. Now, look how the Pharisees respond to him.

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

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Now, let's make a very generic point here. This man was healed physically, but not spiritually, and because he was still dead in his soul, he didn't thank

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Christ, he didn't worship Christ, he didn't love Christ, he didn't go looking for Christ. He headed for the temple, and he was willing to sell out

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Christ if that's what it took. That's the first point. He was healed physically, but not spiritually.

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Now, let's look at what happens. Jesus is gonna come back. Jesus is gonna pursue him a second time.

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And you think to yourself, is this man gonna find the Lord? Is he gonna be healed spiritually? Is he gonna repent?

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Is he gonna worship? Well, let's look and see what happens. It says in verse 14, after Jesus found him, and what that means is that Jesus is the one who sought him.

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This is now the second time. This man didn't go looking for Jesus. Jesus twice now has gone looking for him, and twice now

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Jesus has found him, and he's here now to diagnose the state of his soul. Afterward, Jesus found him in the temple, and he said, behold, you have become well.

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Physical healing. Now, do not sin any more.

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That's the picture of total spiritual healing. Jesus says so that nothing worse happens to you.

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There may be no more ironic words that have ever been uttered than that. So that nothing worse happens to you, because what we see this man doing is not responding in repentance.

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It's not responding in worship. Look at what he does, just like Judas will do later on.

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It says the man went away. That verb underneath that, you might not see that in English, that verb is the exact same verb that is used of Judas.

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When this man went away and Judas went away, it's the exact same verb, the exact same tense, the exact same structure of the verb, and it only happens a few times.

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It is pointing to the fact this man is gonna betray Christ. This man went away, and he told the

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Jews that it was Jesus who made him well, and for this reason, the Jews were persecuting

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Jesus because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. And you think to yourself, why?

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Why would this man do this? After all that Jesus had done for him, after healing him of 38 years of pain and misery and suffering, why would he turn him in?

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And I'm gonna read you a quote from an author, his name is Michael Card. I couldn't have said it any better than he said it to explain what is going on in this passage.

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He said, we hiss and groan as we watch this villain. If we could only get our hands on that sniveling little insect of a man, we would.

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Well, we can. We can. We must take our hands and put them around our own necks because the man in this story is us.

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You see, it's easy for us to stand in judgment of this man and say, what was he thinking?

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If we were there, we would have done better. If we were there, we wouldn't have rejected our Lord. If we were there, we would have thanked him and worshiped him, but here is the dramatic point of this passage.

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If you are dead spiritually, you cannot worship Christ. You will not worship Christ, and you and I would have done the exact same thing that this man did.

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We would have turned over our Lord to get what he wanted. He wanted identity.

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He wanted inclusion. He wanted to be with the people of his nation. He wanted something other than Jesus because he was not in Jesus, and because of that, he sold out

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Christ, and so would we. If we believe that we would not have joined the Jerusalem crowds in singing, crucify him, crucify him, then we misunderstand how deadly sin is, and we misunderstand our own power.

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Without Jesus Christ, you and I would have been right there cheering along with them. You and I would have been right there betraying him along with them, and that is the point of the passage that I want us to end with.

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It should produce humility. If we read this and we say, what a wretch, what a fool, we're missing the point.

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The man in this story, if we're not in Christ, is us. If we don't know

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Jesus, we won't worship him. We have no hope, and the only hope that we could possibly have is by turning to the

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Lord and repenting, by trusting in the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross, by having his blood painted on our heart, by having his spirit come into our life so that we will worship

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God without him. It's hopeless. We're just like this man sitting in front of the same waters.

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We have absolutely no hope, but here's the good news, and this is where I want us to end with joy.

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Because of what Christ has done, there is now nothing that can separate us from the love of God. Christ died for us while we were yet sinners.

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Christ died for us while we were betrayers. Christ died for us while we were slanderers.

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Christ died for us while we were murderers in our heart. Maybe some have murdered, actually. Christ died for us while we were lost, and because of what

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Jesus Christ has done, we can be found. And because of that, I think we can, and we should, stand, and with great joy, seeing of the

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God who did everything to buy us. Let's pray. Let's pray. Lord, I thank you so much for this passage, because it invites us to see just how deep the condition of sin goes down into our hearts.

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It causes us to see a man who was literally given everything by Christ, and yet even then, he rejected him.

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Lord, for us who are here, especially for us who are believers, how many times have we rejected you?

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How many times have we refused to obey you? How many times have we refused to worship you?

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How many times have we lived intentionally sitting in front of waters that will not heal us when we could be at the fountain of living water?

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Lord, I pray right now that if there's someone here who needs to repent of discouragement, needs to repent of bitterness, needs to repent of depression, needs to repent of anxiety, needs to repent of any kind of poisoned waters that they've been sitting in front of, waiting to jump into, and there is no hope in that,

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I pray that repentance would come and we'd turn to Jesus, the fount of living waters. Lord, if there's relationship issues, if there's brokenness, if there's anger and frustration, whatever it is,

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Lord, those things cannot heal us. We cannot rest in those things. And Lord, I pray that we would rest alone in you.

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And Lord, as we sing these final songs, I pray that, Lord, we would sing like people who've been freed.

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We were on death row with no hope, and you came and set us free.

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And Lord, if that doesn't get us excited, I pray that your spirit would light a fire inside of our soul so that that would be a glorious message to us here this morning.