Surviving Is Not Enough (Time To Live!!)—John 5:1-9; 10:10
Introduction:
In the text Jesus does some unusual things that I think merits our attention. It’s the time of the feast and Jesus has come to celebrate the feast. In this scene we are introduced to a pool called Bethesda; surrounded by five porches. This pool is by the sheep gate, which is the gate where the lambs and sheep were brought for the sacrifice that gave you access to the temple during the feast.
This place was full of contradictions. The pool of Bethesda existed in the midst of a city full of health, wealth, and prosperity. Yet this pool had five porches thatwere full of the halt, lame, and blind. They congregated there each on their own porches, surviving in the midst of a completely paradoxical situation. One side is moving and commerce is going on in the sheep market. People are enjoying life on one side and on the other side these people are stuck in a state of survival.
- Understand Your Environment:
The people on the porches don’t share the same reason but they are left with the same result. One is blind, one halt, and the only thing they have in common is some malady, physical infirmity that keeps them in this place (common bond). There were no hospitals so this was a holding place for people who were not dead but not alive. Not quite well enough to enter into commerce and life but not dead enough to be in the cemetery. And everyday that they lived they enjoyed the fact that they had survived. Because in an environment that lends itself to people who have been through catastrophic situations it isn’t uncommon to lose somebody everyday, in so much until they had become accustomed to it. So to some degree the very fact that you are alive is celebration within itself. Their pathology has become how to make the best of a bad situation.
- Change Your Environment:
It doesn’t matter how anointed you are you can’t escape the subculture that you develop around the dysfunction that holds you a prisoner.Even anointed people have problems and short comings. If you want to know where you are take an investigative look at what you’re surrounded with. You can’t surround yourself with blindness and expect to see. You can’t run with angry, bitter women and expect to be fulfilled. You can’t hang out with mamas boys wanna be men and expect to get a fresh vision from God (you will get council from who you run with). The people on these porches defined themselves by their dysfunctions. They lost their desire to do better and be better. Your environment can be so mesmerizing until you think that where you are is the world and there is nothing better than what you have experienced. One of the great tricks of the enemy is to have you believing that you are what you’ve been through and you will always be a product of the environment you were sired in.
- Exceptional Desires Get Exceptional Results:
I don’t mind being around people who don’t have anything but God deliver me from people who don’t want anything, I’m afraid that it’s contagious. If you hang around dead people you will be adversely affected by the decay they’ve gotten used to.Ask yourself how bad you want to be free. You have to determine how bad do you want it? Exceptional desire gets exceptional results. Some of the worse people become so successful. Because the same thing that made them very bad made them very good.Because when they want something they go all out to the extent of their being to get what they want and need. Jacob, David, Moses, Rahab, Noah, Saul,Now that you are in the church, the enemy will always remind you that you are not supposed to be blessed. But he tactfully neglects the fact that God favors you and Grace and Mercy gives you what you don’t deserve.Some of you need to fire the devil as your council; he charges too much and doesn’t know the law well enough to represent you.
- Do Something Different:
So it’s into this textual, cultural environment that Jesus comes.He walked through all of the business, past the mall, all of the commerce and came down to the pool of Bethesda. The bible says He saw him lying down. He saw how long he had been lying there. He asked the question, do you want to be healed. When he saw the mans behavior He saw nothing in his actions let Him know that he wanted to get up.He survived the storm but Jesus was saying if survival is all you want don’t waste my time. Some people don’t like better or want to be made whole. You can develop an addiction to your afflictionin so much that you become accustomed and acquainted with it. Be careful not to let what God calls abnormal to become normal (my brothers testimony). Jesus stepped on the scene to show the man and everyone around him that He came that he might have life and life more abundantly.
- Make No More Excuses:
He explains the systemand tells Jesus I’m like this because of what I didn’t get(daddy, economy, and love). He says I have no man to take me into the pool when the water is troubled. He said I had the opportunity but I didn’t have the support when I had the opportunity and somebody got in front of me. He said I’m like this because I have nobody to carry me. Any time you justify your condition you have given it license to stay.It’s too easy to find an excuse to stay down but we’ve got to find a way to get up.Somebody has been waiting for their miracle all of their life but the wait is over. Jesus is here to take you out of the waiting room to the delivery room. The strength of the pregnancy is in the struggle of the delivery.
- Challenge Your Limitations:
Jesus challenged the mans limitations and challenged him to get up. He said take up your bed and walk. He was showing the man his strength was in his struggle.He challenged a lame man who was lying on his bed with a word.He told him to get up, take the thing that was carrying him, and told him to carry it. You know you’re delivered when you start carrying the thing that used to carry you. You turn from lender not the borrower, from patient to nurse, defendant to plaintiff, etc. (Get Up)The enemy is terrified of a person who gets up because you give him a flashback. Because the last time somebody got up on him he suffered the worst defeat of his career.