Theme: Life Transformation
Scripture: John 5:1-15
There is a lot of talk in this presidential election year about change. On one side the cry for change seems loud and overwhelming. What we are changing to is not altogether clear. We want change, but the question remains what kind of change are we talking about. It is like the woman who testified to the transformation in her life that had resulted through her experience in conversion. She declared, "I’m so glad I got religion. I have an uncle I used to hate so much I vowed I’d never go to his funeral. But now, why, I’d be happy to go to it any time." (Autoillustrator.com, A CURE FOR HATRED). What kind of change are we talking about?
On the other side are those who believe that their conservative values are being radically changed by “moderates.” These are upset about the change that appears on the horizon.
Yet we want change. We want lower gas prices. We want better economic indicators. We want more value in the world market for the American dollar. We want peace. We want policies that will save us from what some are certain is the coming doom of global warming. We want less crime. We want better jobs. For many the belief is that the government, the right president, the right program, the right agency could make the difference and bring the change that make our lives secure and happy.
Then there is the personal cry for change. We wish our marriage could be different. We wish our relationships with our children could be changed. We wished that our circumstances could become something other than what it is.
A few years ago, the “in-thing” for the 6 year-old set was a group of teenage super-heroes called the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. They were an unlikely hit- originally produced with a very low budget in Japan, then badly dubbed into English. But their appeal was that- while ordinary teenagers by day- when called upon, they could transform themselves into powerful martial arts experts for justice. They would cry, “It’s morphin time!” You might laugh- but a form of that word “morph” is the very Greek word that Paul used in Rom. to mean just this concept: transformation! (Metamorphoo) Its not just 6 year olds who want to ‘morph’ is it? We, too, are to be changed- to be transformed- to “morph”from our former way of life into something new . . . something different! (From: Ortberg, The Life You’ve Always Wanted)
What is it that you would like to change in your life? What is it that you would like to change about yourself? What do you think would change your life for good? What do you belief about your situation?
That is the very kind of questions that Jesus asked a man in a story found in John 5. In this story a lot of people were looking for change. They were looking for healing. They were looking for a miracle and they had come to believe that a certain pool of water called Bethesda or “house of mercy”, had special angel powers. They believed the angels would stir up the water every so often and then the lucky person who could fight his way to the pool of water and fall in would be instantly healed of all their diseases. In John 5 we read: “2Near the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem there was a pool, in Hebrew called Bethesda, with five alcoves. 3Hundreds of sick people--blind, crippled, paralyzed--were in these alcoves.” Now if you have one of the more modern translations you might notice that there is no verse four in this passage. That is because the story about an angel coming to stir up the waters so someone could be healed is not in the most ancient manuscripts. Some scribe later added the legend story of what many people believed. So no one cut anything out of the Bible, it is simply that someone later was trying to explain the legend that caused these people to flock to the pool of Bethesda.
Verse 5 tells us that “5One man had been an invalid there for thirty-eight years.” Now when we think “invalid” or “paralyzed,” we think of a man who physically is crippled and unable to move. And that is likely true for this man. But the word used here is pregnant with meaning. The word here: “Astheneia as-then'-i-ah” not only means the lack of physical strength, or weakness, infirmity of the body, it also describes the feebleness of health or sickness of the soul – the emotions, the mind and the will. It addresses one’s ability to understand a thing. This word also describes one’s inability to restrain corrupt desires. It even speaks to the issue of one’s ability to bear trials and troubles. It is no secret that illness of any kind can affect our emotions, mind and will. But it is also true that what we believe about our life and circumstances, what we think, what we feel can drive the brain to illness that eventually can make us physically sick. Our emotional and spiritual woundedness can bring on disease to our bodies. So we say: “He or she is a pain in the . . . . and that is where the cancer develops. She makes my stomach turn . . . and we develop gastrinal diseases. Our minds are powerful. Jesus said: “As a man thinks in his heart, in his subconscious mind, so is he.”
That this man’s illness was more than just physical is evident in Jesus question to him when he saw in verse 6: “6When Jesus saw him stretched out by the pool and knew how long he had been there, he said, "Do you want to get well?"What kind of question is that? Don’t most sick people want to get well? That question seems about as intelligent as the question my father used to ask me when I was a kid and misbehaving: “Do you want a spanking?” “Yeah, dad, I really would. I was hoping you would notice that I need one.” But Jesus wasn’t asking obvious or stupid questions.
Look at the man’s answer: “7The sick man said, "Sir, when the water is stirred, I don't have anybody to put me in the pool. By the time I get there, somebody else is already in."
Notice the progression of his argument: “when the water is stirred” – faulty belief system; “I don’t have anybody” – powerlessness; “somebody else” – Blaming. Does that describe your thoughts? You are looking for some kind of quick magic for your problems. You think you are all alone and nobody cares and that you are helpless. You think that the reason you can’t get well is because it is somebody else’s fault.
“Do you want Jesus to heal the parts of your life where you’ve been damaged or is it easier to hold on to the hurt? Is it easier to let bitterness fester and to wallow in the hurt and betrayal, licking and liking our wounds.
Melvin Newland says: “It’s so easy to blame other people for our problems. That has been man’s scapegoat from the beginning. When God asked Adam why he disobeyed, Adam explained, "The woman you gave me persuaded me to eat."When Moses asked his brother Aaron why he permitted the Israelites to worship a golden calf, Aaron said, "The people pressured me to do something since you were gone so long, Moses. They wanted gods like the Canaanites. I just threw their jewelry into the fire & out came the calf." Blame the people, blame Moses for taking so long, blame the Canaanites, blame the fire even! But don’t blame me!When Pilate was forced to make a decision about Jesus, he said, "I wash my hands of this matter. Jesus is yours, do with Him as you please. But I’m innocent of this whole matter."
People do the same thing today. How often do we hear people say things like, "I’d stop drinking if my wife would quit nagging me!" "I’d work harder, but no one appreciates my effort." "I’d make better grades, but my teacher doesn’t like me."
King William of Pottsdam once visited a prison in England. Every prisoner brought before him claimed to be innocent, & pleaded for a pardon except for one man who admitted his guilt. King William said to the warden, "Get this guilty man out of the prison before he corrupts all these innocent men!" And the man was set free.” We have such a difficult time saying, "I’m responsible." We blame heredity, environment, circumstances - everything except ourselves. Yet what the Lord wants is for us to accept responsibility for our own behavior.
Romans 14:12 says, "Each of us will give an account of himself to God." Heredity & environment play a part in influencing us, but we can rise above that if we want to. Some of the world’s best people had terrible pasts. Some of the most privileged people wind up being complete failures.
All too often we hold on tightly to the things that paralyze us spiritually. Jesus can heal us of those things but when he does we will be left without excuse for our lives and the choices we make. We will no longer be able to cry "My life isn’t my fault, others are to blame"
So the question isn’t crazy at all and it echoes down the ages to each of us today, "Do you want to get well?" To the one crippled by past hurts, Jesus asks, "Do you want to be healed?" To the one chained by secret sin Jesus asks, "Do you want to be loosed?" To the one battling addiction Jesus asks, "Do you want to overcome?" To the one who has not yet asked Him in Jesus asks, "Do you want to be saved?"To all of us who need His healing touch in any part of our life He asks "Do you want to get well?"
THREE DOLLARS WORTH OF GOD I would like to buy $3.00 worth of God, please. Not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep, but just enough to equal a cup of warm milk or a snooze in the sunshine. I don’t want enough of Him to make me love a black man or pick beets with a migrant. I want ecstasy, not transformation; I want the warmth of the womb, not a new birth. I want a pound of the Eternal in a paper sack. I would like to buy $3.00 worth of God, please. SOURCE: Wilbur Rees, from "When I Relax I Feel Guilty" by Tim Hansel. To receive the healing He has for us we must desire to be changed. We must answer, "Yes, Lord, I am ready to put the past behind me."
We don’t’ have the rest of the conversation that the man had with Jesus. Maybe there was no more conversation. Perhaps the next words of Jesus were Jesus’ words of challenge that began a healing process in his life: “8Jesus said, "Get up, take your bedroll, start walking." 9The man was healed on the spot. He picked up his bedroll and walked off.” Can you imagine the man’s thoughts? After 38 years of never walking and of laying around begging – suddenly he is being challenged to drop his belief system about pools and angels and magic water, stop making excuses and to get up and start walking. You know if he does that he loses everything he has depended on all those years. He has to become responsible, get a job, start taking care of business in his life. He did it – He got up and began walking.
Notice what happened next verse 9: “That day happened to be the Sabbath. 10The Jews stopped the healed man and said, "It's the Sabbath. You can't carry your bedroll around. It's against the rules."11But he told them, "The man who made me well told me to. He said, "Take your bedroll and start walking.'"12They asked, "Who gave you the order to take it up and start walking?" When you make a decision to be well and to start walking in a new life not everyone will be happy about it. Some will fight you and try to drag you down again.
When ask the question as to who had healed him, the man did not know. There is an important truth here. Here is a man who is not only healed physically but he is in the process of being healed in his thinking, his attitudes and his emotions. Everything is changing. Can you imagine the confusion he felt? Not sure what to believe anymore. This guy comes up and challenges his beliefs, heals him and suddenly things in his life begin to change. But he wasn’t sure how and he wasn’t sure even who the guy was that healed him. Look at verse 13: “13But the healed man didn't know, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd.
This happens in people’s lives often. In the Life Skills Classes that we teach people often begin to release old belief systems that have wrecked their lives and kept them paralyzed and dysfunctional. When they begin to accept the truth that begins to heal them and transform their behavior and thinking, it is often scary. They are not sure what to believe and they often don’t know Jesus. They know about Him, but they really don’t know Him. You can begin to use the principles of God’s Word in your life and yet never know Jesus.
Yesterday, we laid to rest Karen Miklus. Hundreds of people came to the visitation and to the funeral. She touched many lives and the reoccurring words about here described her as loving, giving and forgiving. And she had lived this kind of life in spite of some tremendous wounds in her life coming from the very people she had loved the most. And yet a few months ago when I first met her, I discovered that though she had been so loving and though she had attended a number of churches across the years – Karen had never really known Jesus. She came to know Christ at 65 years of age and her thinking and life was inwardly transformed. As I said at the funeral, Karen was like someone who obtains and uses the tasty recipes of a great chef, but who had never met the Chef.
I wonder who it is this morning in this crowd who has spent a life time enjoying the gifts of God, but who has never really met the Giver of the Gifts. You are running around with some religious knowledge and some good truth but confused. You have never met Jesus. You have heard about Him – you may even talk about Him, but He never has become your Leader, Master, Savior and Lord.
Well I have good news for you this morning – Jesus is looking for you! He wants to have a relationship with you and He wants you to really get to know Him. Verse 14 tells us: “14A little later Jesus found him in the Temple and said, "You look wonderful! You're well! Don't return to a sinning life or something worse might happen."15The man went back and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well.”
Notice those words: “Don’t return to a sinning life.” Why would Jesus say that to this man? Is it possible that the man’s paralysis had come about in the earlier years of his life in an act or lifestyle of sin as a young person? Of course not all illnesses and diseases mean that someone has sinned and so they are being punished for their sin. But our sinful behavior can have long lasting consequences in our lives and bodies. Can I speak to you teenagers this morning? You may think that your lifestyle of sin is no big deal and that you are getting away with it. But the consequences of your choices may last long after you are done playing around with the things that destroy your life. We may joke about it, but when you have to live with it – it ceases to be very humorous.
So Jesus says to this man and He says to you and me, if you want to be well and stay well don’t go back to the old life and the old habits.
Then He says something interesting. Jesus says: “Stop sinning so that no worse thing will happen to you.” What could be worse than 38 years of being sick?
Perhaps you remember the story written by the famous author of the past, Robert Louis Stevenson. He wrote, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: "Stevenson’s man found a trick by which he could change himself into the person of another man, make an actual transformation of himself. He could change, not only his internal thoughts and feelings, but also his external looks and actions. Whenever he wanted to turn himself into Mr. Hyde, he took a drug and the miracle was accomplished. He changed his handwriting. He had a separate bank account for Mr. Hyde--everything in life was separate. When Mr. Hyde, (who went down into sin and constantly wallowed in those depths of iniquity) wanted to get away from being Mr. Hyde, he took the drug and went back to being Dr. Jekyll. When the officers were after him, he had simply to go into the laboratory and swallow a pill, and when they arrived the man they were looking for was not there. That process went on through the years, but this was the peculiar fact about it: Not only by his will could he change himself into another man, and so on back and forth, but he discovered at last, when it was too late that, every time he transformed himself from the good Dr. Jekyll into the evil Mr. Hyde, then Mr. Hyde became increasingly the stronger, until at last the climax was reached. It became harder and harder to make the transfer, and then, it could not be made at all. Dr. Jekyll was dead, and Mr. Hyde still lived, but he was damned to eternal darkness and death, helpless and hopeless." (source:elbourne.org/sermons/index.mv?illustration+3614)