Do you want to get well?

The Year of Transformation  •  Sermon  •  Submitted   •  Presented
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Introduction

John 5:1–9 NIV
1 Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. 2 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. 3 Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. 4 5 One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?” 7 “Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.” 8 Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” 9 At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked. The day on which this took place was a Sabbath,
Romans 12:2 “2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”
This is partnership between you and God. Its not something done immediately or that God just waves a magic wand and we are transformed. Its a partnership between you and God. It requires both sides in a mutual relationship with us go
We must embrace the need for change
Philippians 2:12–13 “12 Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, 13 for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.”
Why do we resist change?
There is a usually a benefit to us for not making the change.
There is usually a pay off to us for not making the change
Not only that, but change means uncertainty. It means loss. Even good changes involve some kind of loss. Getting a better job means leaving the friends at your old job. And so anticipating loss can make us slow to change
Another roadblock to change is fear of the unknown, or fear of the pain involved in the process of change.
And sometimes pride gets in the way. We don’t want to admit that we need to change.
Finally, there’s just plain old inertia. We get in a rut. Even though we know we need to change, we’re not quite uncomfortable enough yet to actually do it.
We must desire the change
Philippians 3:12–14 “12 Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13 Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”
John 5:6 “6 When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?””
This seems like a pretty ridiculous question. Of course he wanted to get well! He’d been crippled for thirty-eight long years! But as always, Jesus shows deep insight as he interacts with this man. Certainly, it was a great inconvenience to be crippled. Unable to walk, to care for oneself, to earn a living. And yet, it was the only life this man knew. As an invalid, and probably therefore a beggar, he at least knew what was expected of him. He had a place in society. He had friends there at the pool. But once he was healed, his world would be completely changed. All the things which others had done for him he would now have to do for himself. He would have to leave the pool and his disabled friends, find a job, make a living, build a new life. Many difficulties and uncertainties lay before him. Now, these are trade-offs that almost anyone would be happy to make, but tradeoffs nonetheless.
We must submit ourselves to God .
5:8–9a. These verses describe the miraculous cure. The original question in verse 6 focused on the man’s infatuation with magical powers and traditional superstition. If the pool had really been God’s healing agent, Jesus could have just helped the man in the water first after the angelic stirring. But the words Get up! Pick up your mat and walk emphasize that Jesus was the source of divine healing, not some kind of wave pool. When you are really sick, miracle is preferable to magic
2 Corinthians 3:18 “18 And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”
2 Corinthians 3:18 MSG  All of us! Nothing between us and God, our faces shining with the brightness of his face. And so we are transfigured much like the Messiah, our lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like him.
Important words: Unveiled face: alluding to the fact (ver. 13) that the face of Moses was vailed, so that the children of Israel could not steadfastly look on it. In contradistinction from that, Paul says that Christians are enabled to look upon the glory of the Lord in the gospel without a vail—without any obscure intervening medium.
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