Becoming Well
Grace and Truth • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
0 ratings
· 1 viewNotes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
We are back in our series on the seven signs of Jesus in the gospel of John. We’re calling this series Grace and Truth, and here’s why.
What are signs?
What are signs?
Now in the Bible, there are miracles, and there are signs. A sign might be a miracle, but it might not. There’s a story in the book of Isaiah where the prophet walks around naked for three straight years as a sign pointing to impending captivity and exile, and warning the people about their pride (Isa. 20). Not a miracle, but definitely something to pay attention to. Also, gross.
So when the Bible speaks of signs, what we need to see is a prophetic act that shakes people out of their complacency, stirs up discomfort with the way things are, and points to a reality that was otherwise shielded from view. This is why the Bible often speaks of signs and wonders. It is awe and wonder that wakes you up to the truth of something bigger, greater, more real than you could know inside the constructs you build for yourself.
The wonderous signs that Jesus performs in John are not mere miracles. They point somewhere. They are guideposts, directing you to see something, leading you to a destination.
Signs tell you where you are going. If I see a sign that says GRAND CANYON, NEXT RIGHT, I’m looking past the sign, anticipating the destination I’m going to. I don’t stop and marvel at the sign. I set my sights on the marvel that the sign points to.
So what is the destination here? John speaks to it in chapter 1:
John 1:14, 16-18 (CSB)
The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We observed his glory, the glory as the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. Indeed, we have all received grace upon grace from his fullness, for the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. The one and only Son, who is himself God and is at the Father’s side—he has revealed him.
In the seven signs of Jesus, each miraculous moment shakes up our plans and shatters our dreams for the good life in the very best way. Jesus points us to grace and truth, but more than that, he points us to the Father, to the source of grace and truth. In Jesus, we see God for who he is. Not just his power and might, but his compassion, his forgiveness, his peace.
Jesus not only points us to this truth, he invites us to receive it, to let go of our perpetual pursuits for joy and contentment, and find our satisfaction in him.
This week we are on the third sign, and as usual, there’s a surprising twist that turns a mere miracle into a significant signpost. Let’s pray and jump in.
PRAY
Wanting to be Well (5:1-9a)
Wanting to be Well (5:1-9a)
John 5:1–9 (CSB)
After this, a Jewish festival took place, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. By the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem there is a pool, called Bethesda in Aramaic, which has five colonnades. Within these lay a large number of the disabled—blind, lame, and paralyzed.
One man was there who had been disabled for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and realized he had already been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to get well?”
“Sir,” the disabled man answered, “I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I’m coming, someone goes down ahead of me.”
“Get up,” Jesus told him, “pick up your mat and walk.” Instantly the man got well, picked up his mat, and started to walk.
Backstory here: the Temple in Jerusalem is located at the north end of the city, and in the wall is a small opening with a pool of water just beyond it. People would take their sheep to wash them there and then take them back into the sanctuary for sacrifices. And was this superstition going around that the pool had healing properties, and so hoards of sick and disabled and injured people would lay around it and wait for the water to get stirred up.
Now, these healing powers were not something God was doing. Some of your Bibles mention an Angel of the Lord, going down to stir up the waters and heal anyone who was suffering. But most scholars believe this is a later addition, which is why most Bibles do not have verse 4. Official Judaism would have not approved of this sort of superstitious activity, because a healing shrine like this was what pagan cults were all about. But because it was a popular religious expression and drew people to the temple, they look the other way. And it is here that Jesus meets with a disabled man who has been suffering for almost four decades. Jesus walks up and asks this really odd question:
Do you want to become well?
It’s a strange question, right? Because of course he wants to get well! Who wouldn’t? In fact, that’s why he’s there. This pool is his ticket to wellness, if he can just get to it at the right time.
But look at his response. The man doesn’t give a yes or no response. Instead, he points to his plight: “I’m trying, but no one helps me in; every time I get close, someone beats me to it.”
You might look at the man’s superstition and frustration and think it’s pointless and silly what he’s up to. But the truth is that most people have some sort of standard of wellness that they are not meeting. You are not well because you are overweight or you have back or knee problems. Maybe you are not well because you struggle with anxiety or depression. Maybe you are not well because your job sucks and makes no money. Maybe you are not well because your marriage is on the rocks or you and your kids are not on good terms.
Do you want to become well? Of course! Wellness is the goal. But how might you become well? Like the man at the pool, our superstitions become the vehicle. If I can fix up my house and become a DIY machine, I will be well. If I can figure out which fad diet I need to commit to, I will be well. If I get a job where I am respected and taken care of, I will be well. If my kids get good grades and go to good schools and get important jobs, I will be well. I know these superstitions work because I see them on commercials or on social media feeds, and the people there look really happy and satisfied with their lives, so I have to follow them so I can be well. And when I am well, then I can rest. Because I’ve earned it.
I’m not saying there aren’t real solutions to real problems out there. I’m saying that sometimes, solutions become saviors, and that’s when they turn into superstitions.
Story: Search for hair treatment—laser hats, needle rollers, shampoos, etc.
What you will find is that every superstition out there will fail you, because even if you experience moments of wellness, where the pain goes away or the account fills up or the breathing gets better, are you truly, finally, well? Can you actually rest? Or are these perpetual battles? The truth is that no human solution will save you from becoming well, no superstition will give you the rest you long for.
Jesus then turns to the man after hearing his lament and says, simply, “Get up, pick up your mat, and walk.” And instantly the man is healed. After 38 years of disability, 38 years of striving and seeking, 38 years of superstitious solutions, this man—he doesn’t even know his name!—heals him with just a word.
That’s an amazing miracle, right? But is it a sign? Let’s read on and find out.
Sabbath is Scandalous (5:9b-16)
Sabbath is Scandalous (5:9b-16)
John 5:9–16 (CSB)
Now that day was the Sabbath, and so the Jews said to the man who had been healed, “This is the Sabbath. The law prohibits you from picking up your mat.”
He replied, “The man who made me well told me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’ ”
“Who is this man who told you, ‘Pick up your mat and walk’?” they asked. But the man who was healed did not know who it was, because Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.
After this, Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you are well. Do not sin anymore, so that something worse doesn’t happen to you.” The man went and reported to the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. Therefore, the Jews began persecuting Jesus because he was doing these things on the Sabbath.
John’s been saving the twist for us, and he drops it in almost casually here. Jesus heals the man and gives him his life back… on the Sabbath. And so naturally this man is walking around carrying a straw bed that marked him as poor, sick and helpless—the mark of his prior identity. And then he gets busted by the Sabbath police. Notice the infraction here. The Jewish authorities are not upset because the man was healed on the Sabbath. It’s because he’s carrying his mat. What a deviant!
Now, this doesn’t make sense at all, unless you understand what the Sabbath is. Why does this matter so much?
Back in Genesis 1, the first thing that God creates is time—the light he called day, and the dark he called night, and there was evening and morning, one day. Before God ever constructs the spacial realm, he creates the movement of days and nights, a rhythmic structure for working and resting. And then God goes about forming land and seas and space, and he fills it with plants and trees and animals and stars, and then he creates humans to work this world bring it under his rule, and multiplying goodness and beauty. This all takes him six days. And then God comes back around to time. On Day 7, God creates a blank space in the structure entirely for rest. To cease from working and striving and enjoy the work that God does in and through the humans. God stops the work of creating the universe on Day 7 and says it is done. No more tinkering, no more striving. He creation project is finished, and he enjoys the fruit of his labor. From this point on, that pattern is to be our pattern. We are implored by the God of all creation to end our work and enjoy what God has done. Sabbath—the Hebrew word Shabbat means to stop, or to rest—is a command by God to enjoy and to worship, knowing that you are not the solution to your happiness, that there is no human plan or act that bring about perfect rest. When you stop working, amazingly, the world keeps spinning, you keep breathing, time moves forward, and it turns out you are not the sustainer of the universe. Instead of lamenting that, you get to celebrate it. That’s what Sabbath is all about. It’s a sacred day to rest and remember the source are sustenance of our life.
But over time, as we humans tend to do, Sabbath went from sacred to superstition. Because keeping the Sabbath was a law, and keeping the law apparently made God happy (by our logic), this meant we needed to enact rules and regulations that would help enforce that law and help people work better to… not… work. And eventually, the Sabbath stopped being all about celebration, and it became a vehicle through which a person could earn God’s favor and satisfaction.
Okay, back to the man with the mat. Now it’s important to note here that carrying your mat on the Sabbath, the Jewish day of rest and ceasing, is not prohibited by the Torah, but by something called the Mishnah, sort of a policy manual based on the Torah. This law handbook has sections on Agriculture, Appointed times (like Sabbath), Women, Holy Things, and Ritual Purity. Under Sabbath, here was a list of things you were absolutely not to do:
Sowing, ploughing, reaping, binding sheaves, threshing, winnowing, cleansing crops, grinding, sifting, kneading, baking,
shearing wool, washing or beating or dyeing it, spinning, weaving, making two loops, weaving two threads, separating two threads, tying [a knot], loosening [a knot], sewing two stitches, tearing in order to sew two stitches,
hunting a gazelle, slaughtering or flaying or salting it or curing its skin, scraping it or cutting it up,
writing two letters, erasing in order to write two letters,
building, pulling down, putting out a fire, lighting a fire, striking with a hammer
and taking out aught from one domain to another. (Šabbat 7:2)
That last one, taking something from one place to another, was the infraction. And to the rabbis, this guys was a sinner. He had desecrated a holy day.
So, naturally, he passes the buck. “The guy who healed me made me do it!” The Sabbath Police turn him into a C.I. (that’s Confidential Informant for those of you who don’t watch Blue Bloods). Because the man who breaks the Sabbath is far less dangerous than the man going around telling people to break the Sabbath!
Jesus later catches up with the man and says, “see, you are well. Do not sin anymore.” Why does Jesus say that? It’s hard to speculate from the text, but all we can infer is that Jesus healing went much deeper than momentarily reducing pain. Something deeper is going on here.
Then the man outs Jesus as the perp, and the Sabbath police go after him. Because what Jesus did is scandalous.
Jesus takes the Sabbath—or what people had turned the Sabbath into—and refocuses it back to what God made it for. He makes it sacred again. But even more scandalous is that he takes the source of rest out from the hands of the religious, and in that moment, he points to something powerful. You are not the source of your rest.
I mentioned a bunch of superstitious activities that people go after in search of wellness. But there’s another, perhaps more sinister temptation at work. It’s one thing to take man made solutions and tout them as magical saviors. It’s another thing to take God’s work and repurpose and twist it into a man made solution and call it our savior. That’s what the Jews do here.
And it happens in the church all the time. The Sacred becomes the Superstition.
It’s at this point that all the long-time church people’s ears perk up and they grab their torches and pitchforks. Wait, I’m just doing what I’m supposed to be doing. We are called to a life of prayer and reading the Bible and serving the church and sharing the gospel. How could that possibly be bad?
By themselves, put in their proper place, they are not bad. But have you ever worried that you are not praying the right way? Some really spiritual people have awesome public prayers, they start with Heavenly Father (always a crowd pleaser) and they say super spiritual things, and it seems like they have it all figured out. And your prayers are clunky and basic and you just tag Amen at the end because every prayer ends with Amen, and you don’t have the foggiest idea why, but everyone else is doing it, so it must be like hitting send on an email. And you want God to hear you and give you what you want, so…
Prayer goes from a beautiful releasing of our fears and worries and hurts and needs to God to a magic mantra to get the God genie to grant you your wish.
It’s not just prayer. Are you not getting enough joy out of your quiet time? Read the Bible better! Are you not being recognized for your service to the church? I must doing the wrong thing.
The Sacred becomes the Superstition, because we take God’s gift of grace and turn it into a act of merit. We seek to earn what has been graciously given, because we must be the source of our salvation. That’s the human condition. It’s a story that began all the way back in the garden.
But… what if you don’t have to find your wellness and rest? What if Sabbath finds you? That kind of Sabbath is scandalous, because it circumvents my searching. Jesus reorients Sabbath rest, because it is no longer what you do, but what God does for you. The greatest rest you can receive is one that you don’t deserve. It is simultaneously the hardest to accept.
And so if the source of your wellness and rest is not you, then where? How does Jesus respond?
The Source of Rest (John 5:17-18)
The Source of Rest (John 5:17-18)
Jesus responded to them, “My Father is still working, and I am working also.” This is why the Jews began trying all the more to kill him: Not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal to God.
And now the sign is clear. This is no mere miracle. It’s a statement. It’s a sign that points forward to a deep truth, that the source of our rest does not come from man made solutions or spiritual superstitions. Our rest comes from God, the author of time, the maker of heaven and earth, the Creator and Sustainer of all things. And that Father does not stop working for his people.
The Jews know this, because it came from their prophet. Isaiah once declared,
Do you not know?
Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the whole earth.
He never becomes faint or weary;
there is no limit to his understanding.
Sabbath is not something where we work, and God watches and judges. It is where we rest and celebrate the God who never stops working for us.
Then Jesus drops the bomb. The Father is working. So is the Son. Jesus makes himself equal with YHWH.
That doesn’t happen. And yet here stands a man who makes others well, apart from their work. He gives life to those he wishes, even tattle-tales like the man with the mat.
In Jesus, you find a God revealed who does not stand over you, watching your work, daring you to reach him and find rest. You find a God who, in your endless searching and frustration and despair, comes to you with compassion and kindness, and restores you with a word. His word does not condemn. It does not bring about life apart from him. It welcomes you in to his arms. His word is an invitation to life. His word brings about life.
Later on in chapter 5, Jesus is teaching, and he has this powerful statement: “You pore over the Scriptures (the OT) because you think you have eternal life in them, and yet they testify about me.”
You pore over the Scriptures because you think you have eternal life in them, and yet they testify about me.
To see and hear and know Christ is to lay down the your works and the pursuit of personal glory and be satisfied in the work that has been done for you. To see God for who he is, not who man has twisted him into. God is not a taskmaster who withholds life, but a good dad who lavishes it. To put your hope in Jesus is to stop putting your hope in all the solutions of this world, to stop believing that you will be well if only ______, but Jesus has already made you well. He has done the work. He has spoken the words, “it is finished.” To know this Jesus means you may now, once and for all, enjoy his rest and celebrate his goodness.
PRAY