How God Changes Me

Well, I'd invite you to grab the message notes that are in your bulletins as we continue our series, Jesus Journey. That's our fall series here at Twin Lakes Church. And if you're just visiting today, let me explain that this ties into a book that we wrote with maps and charts and photographs. It's a daily devotional book, 40 Days in the Footsteps of Christ, Jesus Journey. You can get that book out in the lobby today. And the book and the weekend messages tie into videos that we filmed on site in Israel. And you can see those videos on our website or by signing up for a small group. It's meant to be an immersive experience. And the whole goal is to discover the mysteries of the first century world of Jesus Christ.

And this week we're going to zoom in on the hidden meanings behind the miracles, the miracles of Jesus Christ's ministry. Now let me just say something up front here. From our 21st century perspective, all the miracles of the Bible can often seem downright difficult to understand and maybe even difficult to believe. If we're honest, we'll admit this, you might have heard about a nine-year-old boy who's asked by his mom what he learned in Sunday school. And he said, "Well, mom, our Sunday school teacher taught us how God sent Moses to liberate the children of Israel. And he snuck in behind enemy lines on a secret mission. And when he got to the Red Sea, he had his engineers secretly build a pontoon bridge. And all the people walked across safely. And then he used his walkie-talkie to radio headquarters and call in a drone airstrike. And they sent in these drone bombers to blow up the pontoon bridge so the Egyptians could not cross. And all the people were saved." And his mom says, "Now, is that really what your teacher taught you?" And he says, "Well, no, mom, but if I told it the way the teacher did, you'd never believe it."

From our modern perspective, we can often look at the miracles that way. Like, I don't understand it. Maybe they make you a little bit uncomfortable, and so you're not going to pay any attention to them, right? We think at best the miracles are about, well, they had terrible doctors in those days, right? So maybe Jesus, with his compassion, healed a few people with some kind of a magic touch. But they're not really important to studying Jesus Christ. But the miracles are actually much more than that. Even if you have a hard time believing in miracles, to understand Jesus, you simply have to look at the miracles. Large crowds followed Jesus precisely because he did miracles. Friend and foe alike admitted, "This guy does do miracles." His enemies accused him of doing miracles because he was in league with the devil, but they never denied the miracles.

In fact, our earliest historical source outside the Bible about Jesus is the first century historian Josephus, and he calls Jesus a doer of startling deeds. The Jewish Talmud calls him a miracle worker. The Quran calls him a miracle worker. Even in modern American universities, there's been a shift in scholarship in the last couple of decades, away from whether he did miracles to what they meant. And that's a great shift because the miracles are never what gets the crowd excited or turns his opponents against him. It's not the raw miracles, it's what these people realize the miracles mean. The miracles had a provocative message, a meaning that is often hidden to us because we are not living in their world.

So how do we sitting here 2,000 years later on the other side of the world possibly understand what they meant back in those days in that place? Well, one key is to go back to the Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in these caves near Qumran in Israel. They're the oldest Jewish writings in existence. We've talked about this before in this series. Discovered in 1947, they date back to during and just before the life of Jesus. Now as a result, the scrolls found in these caves serve as kind of a time capsule through which we can glimpse the fears and the hopes of the people of the day. And here is what we know. The people felt oppressed by the Romans and they believed that one day God would set his anointed Messiah to set up a perfect kingdom.

And here is how they said that people would recognize the Messiah when he showed up. For example, one scroll discovered in cave number four says, "The heavens and the earth will obey God's Messiah. He will heal the sick, resurrect the dead, and to the poor announce glad tidings." This is before Christ came and this is how they were taught we would recognize who the Messiah was. And of course, they're just reflecting teachings in the Hebrew scriptures. The Dead Sea Caves also have a large scroll of the book of Isaiah which says that when the Messiah comes, "then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped, then will the lame leap like a deer and the mute tongue shout for joy." So doing miracles is part of the job description of the Messiah.

And then Jesus shows up and fulfills this description. And up in Galilee he does all sorts of miracles to show that he's a prophet like Elijah, he's a liberator like Moses. He has divine powers even over nature and dark spiritual forces. Now most of those first miracles he does up in Galilee, which we've talked about earlier in this series. That was his headquarters up by the Sea of Galilee. But in the Gospels we see that a few times a year Jesus pops down to Jerusalem. And in Jerusalem he, every time he pops down there, he does one or two carefully selected miracles that basically are designed to provoke the leadership of the religion down there in Jerusalem.

Remember we'd seen how even contemporary sources complained about how the leadership down there had become corrupt and it was hypocritical. Jesus skates down to Jerusalem, basically pokes the religious hypocrites in the eyes, and then kind of skates back up to Galilee again. And he does this two or three times a year for three years until they kill him. But that's another story. Today what I want to focus on is one of the first times that he slides down there to Jerusalem and he does one of these spectacular signs that means something very provocative for the people and for the leadership down there. If you have your Bibles you might want to turn to John 5 starting in verse 1. John 5 starting in verse 1 and a lot of the verses are there in your notes as well. This tells the story. It has been talking about Jesus being up there in Galilee then it says sometime later Jesus went up to Jerusalem for a feast of the Jews.

Now by the way when you read the Gospels you'll see that it says they went up to Jerusalem and you might be asking why did they say he went up to Jerusalem when Jerusalem is south of Galilee, right? Why do you think? That's right, it's higher. Galilee is at or below sea level. It's kind of like Santa Cruz level or even below whereas Jerusalem is about as tall as the Santa Cruz mountain peaks. And so when it says they went up to Jerusalem it means because they made the climb to Jerusalem even though by the compass it was south. Now listen to this description. Now there is in Jerusalem near the sheep gate a pool which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades.

Press pause. Little history channel moment here. For a long time critics of the Bible would look at this verse and said this is exhibit A about how the Gospels are not historical because John or whoever wrote the Gospel of John claims that there's this five-sided pool. Now he doesn't say it's five-sided does he? But he says it's surrounded by five covered colonnades but this is the way that critics of the Bible looked at it until just a few decades ago. John's saying there's a five-sided pool. There were no pentagon shaped pools in the entire Roman province of Judea. So John is either making this story up wholesale or this is just a symbolic story and he's talking about maybe symbolically the five books of the Torah or something, right? It's an example of how it's not historical.

Well then in 1956 archaeologists digging at St. Anne's Church just north of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem unexpectedly dug up the ruins of this pool in this story and they found the remnants of the five covered colonnades from the time of Christ. In fact, our group was there in April and here's what it looked like in Christ's day. You see the Temple Mount looming in the background. You see the four towers up there in the upper right. Those are the towers of the fortress Antonia. That's where the Roman legionnaires were stationed and in the foreground there's the pool. We now know that this was about a football field-sized pool. It was about it was a rectangular pool about the same size and shape as a football field with a colonnade on each side and then a fifth colonnade dividing the pool into two separate sections. One on each side, the one in the middle, that adds up to five just as John says. And you can go there today and see the very 2,000-year-old steps into the pool that the people in this story in the Bible walked on to get down into the pool. It is amazing to think it happened right here.

Now in Jesus' day there was a legend about this pool. The water in the pool would bubble up every once in a while. It was thought for a long time since it was discovered in the 50s that this was maybe because of a natural spring. There's a lot of geothermal springs back there in Israel. Now there's a little bit of evidence that the water was manipulated by humans because they found a complicated system of valves at the bottom of this pool where water from a reservoir was let in at the very bottom of the pool so they think actually the stirring of the waters may have been deliberately, secretly manipulated. And I want you to watch the rest of the story here. The legend was though that when the waters moved it was an angel invisibly stirring the pool. And then the first lucky person to reach the water in those random moments might be healed of whatever was afflicting them so it was thought.

Now that whole story was another Bible mystery that people didn't know what to do with. What was that all about? Well we now know that this pool was an Asclepion. Some of you are going thank you for that insight. An Asclepion was a shrine to the Roman god of healing. His name was Asclepius and his shrines were called Asclepia or Asclepion singular. They were all over the ancient world and the way it worked was when you went to an Asclepion you would buy a clay model of the body part you wanted healed, which vendors helpfully sold right next to the Asclepia. And then having paid your money you would toss in your clay limb or whatever as an offering and at this pool then you'd sit beside it and hope to get healed when the pool bubbled if you were the first person to the water.

And the way they know that this wasn't Asclepion is archaeologists find piles of these old clay limbs in the bottom of the pools all over the Roman world wherever there's one of these shrines. I mean what a pathetic scene. But it explains this next verse here a great number of disabled people used to lie. The blind, the lame, the paralyzed. One who was there had been an invalid for 38 years. Now why would they lie there? It's not just that it was an Asclepion because these people had their own religious system. Why did they turn to this Roman superstition? Well because in those days if you were disabled you could not go up to the temple mount to worship or pray. You couldn't do it. It was against the rules. In fact let me read you the rule. Quote, "No man who has a physical flaw may approach the altar. A blind man, one who was lame, one who was a broken leg or arm and it goes on." Now that's from Leviticus and if you look it up in Leviticus you'll notice that this restriction applies only to the inner circle of priests.

So why was this being applied to everybody? Well in Jesus' day the religious leaders, the Pharisees, got this idea that God would bless the nation if everybody kept the most stringent requirements of the law, even the ones that applied to the priests, and then they made up extra rules to make it even harder and they applied it to everyone. So they said it's not only about the high priest anymore and his assistants. This is about everybody in the whole country, in the whole religion. If you are disabled, if you are lame, if you're blind, have any other disfigurement, you can't go to the temple to worship. The thinking was if you are disabled well then you must have sinned against God because he's obviously punishing you because God wants blessing not disability. So if you have a disability it's a curse. It's kind of was like our modern idea of karma, right? At least modern around here in Santa Cruz. Oh, something goes wrong. You did something to deserve it. And that kind of thinking caused no disabled people to be allowed to go up to the temple to worship. And so they had no other options. They lingered here outside the temple mount, sitting on those stairs hoping for some help from this pagan superstition.

And you know what? I think this is so relevant to where we live here in Santa Cruz County. Because how often are people driven out of you know churches by legalism which excludes them and then they turn especially in places like where we live they turn instead to paganism, to magic. And they think well I'm not accepted to the church so I'm going to do my magical thing and maybe the pagan gods will hear me and help me. This is not a new phenomenon folks. This was this exact thing was going on in the first century. But these steps are all covered with moss now. I want you to imagine the scene 2,000 years ago. What a cruel pool. The religious system was stiff arming them. This alleged healing pool is taunting them. It's still performance-oriented. Legalism is legalism whether it's in a traditional religion or a pagan religion. It's all just performance-oriented. Try harder and maybe God will bless you. You know be the first, pay your money and then be the first in the pool. Maybe you'll be blessed.

And by the way who do you think were the first people to win the race to the pool every single time? Do you think it was the lame people? Think it was the people who couldn't walk? No it was the guy with an ingrown toenail, right? It was the guy with a headache. The lame people could never catch a break. And the really hurting people are doomed in any performance-oriented religious system. Well look what happens. When Jesus saw this guy stretched out by the pool and knew how long he had been there, this man had been there for 38 years, he said do you want to get well? Sir the invalid replied I have no one to help me into the pool when the water stirred while I'm trying to get in. Somebody else goes on ahead of me. And then Jesus said to him get up, pick up your mat and walk. And at once the man was cured he picks up his mat and walks. What an awesome story. All about how God changes me and you.

I want you to flip your notes over and I want to examine this a little bit more closely because Jesus is deliberately contrasting the way God does religion with the way humans do religion. He's deliberately contrasting the gifts of grace versus performance-oriented striving. And this is important for all of us to hear because you may not be physically hurting like the man in this story. But chances are there are lots of people in a room this size that are crippled, hobbled in some other way. Maybe you're addicted to something. Alcohol, drugs, you know cheeseburgers, it could be anything, right? Or maybe it's something else that's crippling you. A broken spirit, a broken heart, broken dreams. And it's inside, it's killing you and it's just not healing. Or maybe you're going not me, I'm cool. Well you might be deceased with pride, right? It could sneak up on you. So how can you be changed?

Well in this story Jesus is setting up two options. The system or the savior. Three plot points, three crucial things that happen in this story. First, I need to admit my methods have been ineffective, right? This man had been at it for 38 years. 38 years of commitment to the same plan for healing that was not working, according to verse 5. It's kind of the 12-step definition of insanity, right? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Yet this is such a human thing to do. One day Mark Spurlock and I went from here down to Capitola for lunch in my old blue Hyundai and it was starting to fall apart in annoying ways. So we walk back from where we ate lunch in Capitola, we go to get inside the Hyundai. I get on the driver's side, get ready to go. Mark starts to go into the passenger door and he goes, "It's stuck!" And I think to myself, "Stupid car! This thing's falling apart!" So I gave the door a sharp shove to no avail, right? And Mark says through the open window, I may point out, "Shove harder!" And so I do, shove, shove, and he starts yelling at me, "Push! Push!" Passers by probably thought there was somebody giving birth in the car, right? "Push! Push!" And it doesn't work and then Mark goes, "Kick it open! Kick it open!" And so I literally lay on the driver's seat and I start kicking the passenger like this. It stays stuck. Mark is out on the street yelling now, this through the open window, "Kick it! Kick it again!" I do, "Kick it harder!" And we're both like in a frenzy now, "Kick it harder!" Determined to get this door open. This goes on for minutes and then Mark goes, "Oh, uh, hold it." And he reaches in, "Boop!" Unlocks the door. Minor detail! We'd forgotten to check! The door had been locked the entire time!

I blame Mark, of course, but actually I was telling Mark, I really hesitate to tell you that story because some of you are undoubtedly thinking, "Who do we have running this church?" "Well, we have Valerie running this church." That much should be clear by now, right? But my point is all of us have been in situations where we try and try to kick doors open and it's not working and it doesn't even occur to us there may be another solution, right? How often are we this man? But we got to admit, what I've been trying hasn't been working. Then the second plot point, this man has to honestly answer Christ's crucial question. In verse 6, "When Jesus saw him stretched out by the pool and knew how long he had been there," pause a second, that phrase, "Jesus saw him." I love that Jesus sees the guy everyone else had been walking right past.

It reminds me, uh, Kevin Deutsch showed me this week. It's a report card from 1949. It says, "It has been a disastrous first half. The student's work has been far from satisfactory. His prepared stuff has been badly learnt." And then later on it says, "Several times he's been in trouble because he will not listen but will insist on doing his work in his own way." And then toward the end it says, "I believe the student has ideas about becoming a scientist. On his present showing this is quite ridiculous. The student gets an F. 231 points out of a possible 550, right? Do you notice the name on this report card, Gurdon, G-U-R-D-O-N? This was John Gurdon's science report card when he was about 14. You might be recognizing that name, John Gurdon, because last week he won the Nobel Prize for biology. Obviously he has perfected the steely stare. I envy him for that. But also the point is that junior high biology teacher just couldn't see the potential right in front of him, right? Looked right past him.

And did you notice all of his reasons amounted to John Gurdon can't do science the way the textbook says? And so the reject became eventually prized. And that's exactly what Jesus does to this guy. The reject becomes prized. And so one of the questions this story raises is, "Who do you allow to assign you your value?" Because other people are going to walk right past you. But Jesus stops and looks at you and loves you. This is so important. I gotta tell you, I did a funeral over here in Munskey Hall yesterday afternoon. And a woman comes up to me afterwards and she says, "I just gotta tell you, I don't come to this church. I respect the things you guys do in the community, but I don't come and honestly I don't think I ever will." And I said, "I'd love to hear the story behind that." She goes, "I'll tell you." She said, "I grew up in a church like this." She said, "We sang that song, 'Jesus Loves Me, This I Know,' for the Bible Tells Me." So how many of you remember that song, Jesus Loves Me, right? Most of us. Red and yellow, black, and white, they are precious in his sight. Jesus Loves Little Children, another song that we used to sing in Sunday School. She said, "I loved that song." She said, "I used to long," this is exactly what she said, "I used to long to just climb up into Jesus's lap and have him love me because I came from a very difficult background." And then she looked at me right in the eye and she said, "But except for that song, we never talked about the love of Jesus in Sunday School." She said, "I could summarize every other part of Sunday School in this sentence, 'Little girls should try harder to do better.'" And she said, "Eventually, when I was about 13, I left and found love in another place."

And we had a great conversation about this, but I thought, "May that story never be told of this place." I pray that we not only sing songs about the love of Christ, but that people sense the love of Christ from here, that our message is not primarily, "Little girls and little boys should try harder to do better," that our message is Jesus loves you and lavishes his grace on you. And it's after you understand that, that he empowers you to live a more positive and productive life. But if you switch that message around, you just become a moralizing, loveless congregation that's driving people away. And that's what this man experienced in this story. But Jesus finds him and loves him. And that's how followers of Jesus should see people all around us too, you know? Everybody else rush by on their way to the temple. Don't rush by the hurting people on your way to do your religious duty, right? Or anything else on your agenda. Stop and notice them.

Notice those one in four kids that are hungry in our county and help them out. And then the whole hinge of the plot to the story is the next line. Jesus says, "Do you want to get well?" Now I love that the word translated well there is related to our English word for hygiene, but in the Greek it literally means wholeness or well-being. And I love this because remember what I showed you, that picture of all those clay body parts people were focused on, "I want my arm healed" or whatever. I love that Jesus is not asking him, "Do you want that body part healed?" He's saying literally, "Do you want to be made whole?" He's contrasting that idea of healing with what God offers. "Do you want to be made complete?" You know? It's as if he's saying, "Oh, you're in a temple to a God of healing. I'll show you a God of healing. He'll make you whole." And this is God's offer to all of us all the time. "Do you want to be made whole?"

Now why would Jesus even ask this? Why would I not want to be healed of my affliction? Why would you or I not want to be made whole? Very quickly jot these down. A few reasons. Number one, I'm familiar with it. I'm familiar with my affliction. Like the man of the story, maybe you've had your affliction for a long time. It's like an old pair of shoes. Maybe they're not the best for running, but they're comfy, right? You're familiar with it. Second reason, a lot of your defects you say, "That's just the way I am." I'm identified with it. We confuse our identity with our defects. And I'm talking here about a broad range of character defects. I mean, complete this sentence just in your mind for me. It's just like me to be. It's just like me to be a workaholic. It's just like me to eat too much all the time. It's just like me to be worried. I'm just an anxious person. It's just like me to lose my temper. That's me, old Donald Duck. You know? You say, "Well, you know, I always drink too much on planes. What are you gonna do?" Well, then what's gonna happen the next time you get on a plane? You're gonna drink too much.

And subconsciously, you know why it's so hard to be made well? You're afraid if I really let go of this anger or drinking or whatever, will I still be me? Because you're so, it's been a part of you for so long. The third reason, I'm discouraged by it. I'm giving up. I feel helpless. It's been 5, 10, 38 years like the guy in the story. And then fourth, I'm rewarded by it. A lot of character defects especially, there's a payoff. You know, addiction or rage or something. Sometimes it feels good. Or it gives me an excuse to fail. Or it gets me attention. Or it allows me to control people. There's some kind of payoff.

Now, how does this man respond? I want you to notice he does not answer Christ's question actually, does he? "Do you want to be made whole?" "Well, sir," the invalid replied, "I got nobody to help me into the pool when the water's stirred. While I'm trying to get in, somebody else goes down ahead of me. I'm a lame man trying to win a foot race. It's impossible." In other words, his answer to Jesus is, "I can't." And you know what? Jesus basically goes, "Right answer, exactly." It was impossible for him to be made whole the way he kept trying for 38 years. And the point of the story is, that man's story is your story and my story. We're all sinners. And we try to overcome our sins and our character flaws in our own human strength. We try to win the foot race into the pool, but it's never going to work. You can't change just by trying harder to win that way. You need to receive God's grace.

And that's the third plot point, act in faith on the offer that Christ makes. Jesus says, "Listen, get up, pick up your mat, and walk." And I love that the word "walk" there in the original verb tense means, "Keep on walking." "Get up and walk on." "Get out of here. Don't look back." Right? And it says that once the man was cured, he picked up his mat and walked. That's all he had to do. He didn't have to prove himself. He was incapable of doing anything to earn this. He just had to trust Christ at his offer, and he's instantly healed. Now, what does this story mean? That if only you have enough faith, if you're sick of any kind of an illness, Jesus is going to heal you instantly of that disease. And if you aren't healed, it shows that you don't have enough faith. It doesn't show that because, first of all, Jesus didn't even heal everybody in his own lifetime. Right? There were a lot of other people there. This is an object lesson about something. It means something, but it doesn't mean that.

So please don't misinterpret Christ's question. Do you want to be made whole, and go around and point at people and say, "Well, if you're not made whole, you must not want to be." That's not what this means, but it means something. And I believe it's clear that it means this, because this dovetails with all the rest of Christ's preaching. This miracle is showing that this is how God always works, by his sovereign grace, not your effort. Not because you won the race or did anything else to prove yourself. In fact, there's another little thing I love about this story, and I think this is why Jesus chose this spot to do it. It's called the Pool of Bethesda, right? You know what Beth-es-da means? House of Grace. Now the people had turned it into a house of superstition, a house of legalism, another house of human effort, but Jesus comes along and turns it back into a house of grace. There's no formula, just his sovereign grace.

For 38 years, this guy had been trying to perform his way to wholeness, but Jesus says, "Receive it. It's a gift." In fact, I want you to look at the three points in your message. You could summarize this whole story very simply like this. In fact, jot down this summary next to these three points in your notes. "I can't, he can, I'll let him." That's an old saying from recovery that a friend of mine reminded me of this week. "I can't, he can, I'll let him." And those are the exact three plot points of this story. Great story, but there's a postscript, and it's this. Don't expect everyone to be happy you're healed, right? Verse 10, "The religious leader stopped the healed man." Now it says that, excuse me, he'd gone up to the temple, you know, he'd never been there before, right? Not for 38 years.

So a man, he carries his bedroll before he even goes home. He shoots up to the temple. He's like looking around. Remember Herod the Great had built this beautiful new temple. He's probably gawking. This is amazing. His heart is filled with praise. "I can't believe I'm up here because I made whole." And instead of rejoicing with him, the religious leader stopped the healed man and said, "Hey, it's the Sabbath. You can't carry your bedroll around. It's against the rules." Can you believe, hear this guy had been waiting for 38 years to get healed, and then it happens on the wrong day of the week, right? See, they had rules. You can't work on the Sabbath. And by carrying his bed, he's working. And so they just skipped entirely over this awesome miracle.

And I was thinking about this, it kind of reminds me of when people come up to me, and this has happened to me a couple of times, and they go, "René, like on a Sunday morning, René, René, yeah, what is it?" They go, "Um, did you know that one of the people who is a greeter at the front door? Yeah, well, they're around on the side of the building right now, and they're smoking." Right around the corner. It's like, what are they expecting me to do? Go marching around? Where is it? Give me that cigarette, break it into, you're no longer a greeter, you know? And I haven't done this yet, but I always feel like saying, "Was he smoking tobacco?" Because I think I know the greeter you're talking about, and that's progress, you know? That's progress.

You know, it could be that God doesn't want to change everybody else's character defects in exactly the same order you want him to change them. You know what I mean? It's like, you got, you love everybody and have a wonderful plan for your life, but God's plan might be different for their lives, right? And Jesus may want to deal with the different struggles of people in a different order. Don't be sort of an accidental Pharisee for judging people, for not having their progress happen in the same order as your path to healing. We need to come and accept the grace of Christ first, and then learn what it means to live in as a liberated person, free from the constraints of sin.

And by the way, there's actually a post-post-script that's not in your notes here. The Bible says that later Jesus actually finds this guy up at the temple, and he says something intriguing to him, John 5, 14, "Now you are well, so stop sinning or something else even worse may happen to you." Now, what's all this about? Is he saying, "Don't ever sin again or God's gonna zap you?" Lightning bolt. No, he's saying, "Don't stay in a lifestyle of sin." Why is this a necessary message? Notice Jesus puts the horse before the cart here. It's God's sovereign grace first, and then he talks to him about his sin. It's not moralizing. It doesn't get the behavior issue first. Why? But why does Jesus even bring this up? Because some people, when they hear about being saved by grace not works, think, "Well, awesome! That means I can sin all I want!" And Jesus is just saying here, "Listen, you reap what you sow. Don't destroy your life now that you've been made whole by me. You're not saved to sin. You're saved to serve. So don't waste your saved life." Right?

But the big question this story poses to all of us is, am I focused on a performance-based system like this man was at the pool and like the religious leaders were up at the temple, or the gracious Savior? That's the question. That's the contrast Jesus is making. And it means something to you and me today. I'll close with this. One thing I love about this story that's often overlooked is that Jesus went to one person. That's how Jesus is. He goes one on one. He doesn't hear an ounce to the whole crowd, "Hey, let's have a mass healing!" because he's about the relationships all through the gospels. He always makes it personal. Says things like, "Are you willing? Who do you say I am? Do you believe this? Do you want to be made whole?" He says, "To you today, do you want to be made well? You've been hurting long enough. Take up your mat and walk." Some of you really need to hear him whispering this to you. He's saying, "Stop staring at the pool of misery. Stop making little icons of your problem in your memory and obsessing on them. Stop trying to get there on your own. Turn it all, all your hurts over to him. Nothing else has worked anyway for 38 long years maybe, so you got nothing to lose. The miracles mean the promised Messiah is here, and that means anything can happen. Let's pray together. Would you bow your heads with me?

Lord, we are here before you as weak and broken people, and we admit we are utterly unable to heal ourselves, and so we open ourselves to your sovereign grace, and we accept the changes you want to make in our lives, and we trust you. Maybe some of us are kind of those accidental Pharisees. We don't mean to be, but we got our rules, and they mean a lot to us, and they mean something about the way we have come to you, and so sometimes we try to import them lock stock on barrel on brand new healing believers who wander into the temple for the first time, and God, I'm guilty of that often, so I repent of that. But maybe some of us for the first time are saying, "Jesus, I turn it all over to you today. I've been sitting at the pool of misery focusing on my hurt for too long, and I hear you saying, 'You with the broken heart, you with the broken spirit, the broken dreams, do you want to be made whole, and I want to be made whole.' So today, God, I don't understand at all, but what I understand is that Jesus loves me this I know, and I long to be in your arms, loved and healed by you now. So God, I'm yours. Help me to walk on. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.