The Essential Authority
Notes
Transcript
Someone tried to sell me a coffin, I said thats the last thing I will need.
Last night I had a dream I was swimming in orange soda, but it was just a fanta sea.
We are afraid to show who we really are because we are afraid people will sell us out and Jesus is about to commit a crime and put him on they will put him on trial, and here is what happens...
1 After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
And now we are going to hit a bunch of feasts and celebration points. And all the major feasts of Judaism are now in play and Jesus is about to throw grenades at the culture and he is going to take all of these symbolic meals and blow them up
Symbolic things we do at christmas… and he is going to walk into these things and say look all of these feasts are about ME… the blood of that lamb at passover… that little thing cant really take care of the sin of the world… it was all about me… my blood will be shed as the blood of the lamb that will be shed for all of you...
and Jesus went up to Jerusalem
So this is like times square at NYE… and he walks in and says alright I have something to say.
and he is about to commit an act and heal someone on a Sabbath and he is going to do this act of mercy even though it causes him pain. Super conservative culture and you can’t break the rules… and he punches through the culture… and this is what we are supposed to do… we are supposed to do the right thing even if it causes us pain. Jesus is willing to do the hard thing even though it is the hard thing and even though it is bad for him.
The question that arises from this bit of scripture is Can we lean into one another in love even though it gets hard.... and this is a beautiful moment… and he goes up to Jerusalem because every male within 15 miles of Jerusalem would go for these feast… passover, tabernacle, and pentecost Jews had to go that way...
2 Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades.
Let’s start with here… those who are skeptics this is a great verse for you… for 200 years post enlightenment there were these people that would say the Bible can’t be true and they would use this verse and they would say John has no bearing in historicity that he he is just making up places that don’t exist… and they would say this verse is enough to walk away from the faith... there was no place like John described.. but here is the problem with that.... in the mid 1900’s archaeologist continue to dig… and just north of the temple mount they found stuff exactly like this… and the scary thing is the people that used this verse To walk away and all they had to do was wait longer for proof. And John is the one most steeped in history… He is why we know that Jesus ministry was three years… because of him telling us about the feasts and how many times Jesus went...
Biblical archeologists and scholars are in awe of how accurate the Bible is… and Luke is trying to root his story in history… The Gospel of Luke and Book of Acts he identifies 32 countries 54 cities, and 9 islands without error. Everything he sites as a historian is accurate…
You can trust the Bible and John is a great historian that is validating the Bible… and if you are a skeptic you need to lean in.
3 In these lay a multitude of invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed.
5 One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years.
This guy sat there for 38 years thats almost my entire life… It would bubble up and the first one would get in would be healed
We can see ourselves in this story even if our health is fine… we are teh invalid in this story… we are the blind spiritually.... see yourself in this story as the one who needs Jesus, not the one who is going to BE Jesus… we are paralyzed by fear or our past...
Now there are people in the world that are saying people are going to quit their jobs more in the next few years than ever before…am I Living how I am supposed to… amd I doing what I need to do… and we are going to be making these serious decisions… and the answer to those moments arent just reading a book or listening to a podcast… the answer is Jesus.. Paul tells us we have a blindess to the spiritual things..
Now tons of scholars have pointed out he was in the best scenario you can be… because Jesus leans into him…
LOok
6 When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be healed?”
Jesus moves toward him not away from him… and thats what Christ followers do… they lean into the outcast… the dirty ones… we lean into them, we don’t run away… and in Jennifers case they all find her at walmart… do you lean in or away becasue they arent part of the cool crew… and its hard to hang out with people that are struggling becasue they drag you down with their emotional baggage.... and he leaves the good ones and goes toward the one that has been dealing for 38 years....
Isaiah 1 tells us if we don’t take care of the marginalized and broken ones then Jesus doesnt even hear our prayers.... and we say why doesnt he just get a job… and JEsus says no… lean in.... love on them...
Invalid would have been a paraplegic back then
One scholar said the problem back then wasn’t just social… it would have physical as well been no bowel or bladder control… you cant clean it up… you stink. and Jesus starts to talk to the guy no one else is… he starts loving on the guy no one else is loving on anymore…
Start thinking about the people around you and make the conversation about them… Jesus said… do you want to be healed?
And what you will find is the most interesting people at the party are the ones that want to ask everyone else about their stories...
Do you want to be healed… can I serve you in some way… and we are talking about the identity of Jesus… who he revealed God to be… and he opened the veil for us to see God… He comes down into flesh and asks how can I serve you… and he asks… and obviously the answer is yes...
But hes asking if he is going to do anything with it… like if I heal you are you going to do somethign with it… and we have to make choices… and hes not going to overule our choices… and he needs us to make choices for ourselves… and
There are choices we make and Jesus says if I heal you are you just going to play the victim… look at his initial reaction…
7 The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me.”
Hes going to blame the world for his problem… and Jesus is about to say fair enough, but I dont want you to keep doing that going forward…
We could just blame the world or we can situp and make choices.. the first Jesus heal me touch me… and we can just move forward… and the challenge is for us to not blame all of our issues and problems and job issues on everything else…
and the question is if he asks you to go will you meet him halfway and move forward with him… are you seeing these moments when you are down as the moments where Jesus can change everythinn and this isnt what people would say is prosperity… what he has taken two fold...
The lowest can be an opportunity to turn it all around… Oswald Chambers....
Nathaniel Hawthorne came home heartbroken. He’d just been fired from his job in the customhouse. His wife, rather than responding with anxiety, surprised him with joy. “Now you can write your book!” she said. He wasn’t so positive. “And what shall we live on while I’m writing it?” he asked. To his amazement she opened a drawer and revealed a wad of money she’d saved out of her housekeeping budget. “I always knew you were a man of genius,” she told him, and “I always knew you’d write a masterpiece.”
And of course Nathaniel Hawthorne ended up writing the Scarlet Letter
And what we can see in all of these situations is that God can show up in the middle of a paralyzation of body… or fear… or whatever and do some amazingly great things.
And I want to be quick to stop and say that doesn’t mean he always will, but it definitely means he has that ability.
And we find it hard to believe that in the middle of such dire circumstances that God can show up, that he can use those situations to move the gospel forward, we just feel the hurt and the pain of it, but look at what Paul said in his letter ot the Philippians....
12 I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel,
Arrested and beaten that cant be an opportunity for the Gospel Paul… there is nothing that can come good from that… we want to say I will show the world God is good by how good my life is and how successful I am.... and they will say look at that perfect life… give me Jesus… but Paul says my suffering is what can move the gospel forward
Pastor Tim Keller in NYC, he has some theology that most of us wouldn’t agree with, but that doesn’t mean he is always wrong, but I love what he has said… he was recently diagnosed with cancer and given a relatively short time to live… WOuldnt to go back to lack of intimacy with Christ.. wouldnt trade it for anything in the world.... how is that possible… and those of us that havent been there we dont know the sweetness of Christ and being in his presence and dependign on him
Thomas Vincent… before he died… “Hasten, Hasten, oh hasten death! Where is your bow, where are your arrows? Come, come, come, I am yet in the body, I am yet on earth-but it is Heaven, heaven, heaven, I would gladly be at! I seek death - but cannot find it. How long, O Lord, holy and true? … Why do you come to keep me out of Heaven? …Dear Jesus, come and take me away! I have no business here; my work is done, my hour-glass has run out my strength is gone, why shall I stay behind? Oh, come, come, come! How long shall I wait and cry? How long shall I be absent from you? Oh, come and take me to Yourself, and give me possession of that happiness which is above-the vision of Yourself, full of fruition of Yourself, without any interruption or end! O come, dear Jesus, how long before You send Your chariots? O come down to me-and take me up to You.”
And the next day he was gone… the beauty of being in the middle of the squeeze where you can find the opportunity fir the advancement of the gospel… the moments where we are in suffering… and there are some of us in deeper levels… they make you pay attention to what is going on.
I remember one time my alarm went off Friday… took a shower got out… It still wasnt time for me to wake up… somehow my alarm went off an hour early and I couldnt go back to sleep I had already taken this shower… and I was like I gotta pay attention… and this is the same
For most of us we are just coasting through life, and sometimes we don’t know what is really going on around us we have just become accustomed to what we see and know and it is in the suffering that Jesus gets our attention and lets us see what reality is…
So lets look back at the paralytic
7 The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me.”
8 Jesus said to him, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.”
What amazing power
9 And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked. Now that day was the Sabbath.
How beautiful is this moment… Jesus was a healer… even to the people writing in that first century… and didn’t believe in him… they still defined him as healer… they knew it.... Josephus was one of these guys… he didnt just go through life doing his own thing
The gospels record 36 healings…there are moments where we are told he did a lot more… if he did 3 years of ministry he is recorded as 10 a year
“We shouldn’t miss the fat that there aren’t more miracles in Jesus’ ministry. After all, he could have done as many as he wanted. Why thirty six when he could have done so many more? Why so few? I think it’s because Jesus knows something we know but refuse to embrace: that in life, there are no easy, quick answers. When we face demons in our lives, the answer is not deliverance but discipleship. That porn addiction or shopping addiction doesn’t just disappear overnight; it takes time and hard work. ‘Narrow is the road that leads to life and only few find it’ The road to transformation is tough. It’s not felt in a power encounter or a flashy instant but hard fought in the dark, when no one is looking, on our knees amid sweat, tears, and confusion. But Don’t despair. God is there.” Mark Clark
Its the getting up and walking, the daily grind after the healing that we see in this guy.
This is not a faith healing… the reality is this, this guy didnt stir up and believe if he just had faith he could believe… he didnt even know who Jesus was… listen to what we will jump into next week....
9 And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked. Now that day was the Sabbath.
10 So the Jews said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to take up your bed.”
11 But he answered them, “The man who healed me, that man said to me, ‘Take up your bed, and walk.’ ”
12 They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take up your bed and walk’?”
13 Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, as there was a crowd in the place.
Oh my goodness… this goes against the oinly way you will be healed is if you have enough faith… This is against the idea that if you dont get healed its all on you
“This verse reads less an apt and subtle response to Jesus’ question than as the crotchety grumblings of an old and not very perceptive man who thinks he is answering a stupid question.” DA Carson
Its like, hes not full of perfected faith.... and he gets healed… he doesnt even know who he is talking to… Jesus moved first… it had nothing to do with him… and being in a charasmatic church I cannot tell you how many people I have seen be under the burden of people telling them their faith kept them from the power of God.... if youve got problems in your life its all because of you… thats called Karma… there are times in your life when your faith does matter… but this guy doesnt even have an idea who he is....
And look at this...
14 Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you.”
Some of you all you want is a physical temperal thing… solve my problems… and we ask why only 36.... he says.... sin no more that nothing worse may happen to you… you heal my disease that I think is my biggest problem… and you walk up to me twenty minutes later and tell me my biggest problem is sin.. .and we think we will solve all of our problems with temperal things and Jesus tells us there are worse things than a disease.... dying and going to a Christless eternity without him is far worse than any disease… because look thats why there are only 36… because they will all die anyway… and the thing we all need solved is sin… our emotional spiritual well being in Jesus… and often times we miss it becasue jesus is often working on a bigger picture...
Went home to visit and weren’t aware of how bad things had gotten with our parents health. Some of you may remember my dad fell and broke his hip about six days before we moved and he has went down hill ever since and my mom’s mind has slipped some. Jennifer’s dad’s cancer is continuing to worsen.
In all the times we have moved we have never had them ask us for help, but now they are all asking us to come and help them in their depleted states. So we are going to be going back to Kentucky to be able to help them as their ailments progress.
I want yo u to know that the elders have a plan to get a interim guy in to fill the gap and to begin to post the job to fill the position.
My family and I will be here at least through the end of september in an attempt to help the elders and the church in any way we can during the transition.
While it has been a short time that we have been here we are so grateful for the love we have felt from you all and hope you understand the need to take care of our family.