Becoming Whole Sermon Notes Week 11

Becoming Whole: A Transformed Life  •  Sermon  •  Submitted
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Scriptures:-

John 5:9-18
Eph 1:14-18
Eph 3:14-21
2 Peter 1:3-4
Heb 4:16 (Resting w/ God)
2 Cor 12:9, Romans 5:1-2
Gal 5:19-21
Col 3:4
1 John 3 2
rom 12:2
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Intro:

Paradox — you cannot transform yourself, but you have to move
Have you ever been just so busy that you completely forgot about a meeting scheduled with someone?
This is how many of us live our lives with God

Ideas:

Pick it up in John 5:10-18
talk about the ways of the world vs. Jesus way
the need to go and ‘sin no more’
A spirit filled life, grace and mercy and rest.
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John 5:10–18 CSB
10 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.” 11 He replied, “The man who made me well told me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’ 12 “Who is this man who told you, ‘Pick up your mat and walk’?” they asked. 13 But the man who was healed did not know who it was, because Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there. 14 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.” 15 The man went and reported to the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. 16 Therefore, the Jews began persecuting Jesus because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. 17 Jesus responded to them, “My Father is still working, and I am working also.” 18 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.
immediate resistance to the work of Jesus in your life
Not by the ‘methods of the world’
Jesus will find you
“Go and sin no more”
How?
follow Jesus (John 5 - )
Jesus’s dependance on the father.
Resting in the finished work of the Cross
Walking by the power of the Spirit

Thoughts

Sabbath — Rest

A very interesting connection to the sabbath
Of course, else where Jesus talks about the sabbath as being made for man, and challenges the jews that it was fine to good to others on the sabbath.
Matthew 12:8 CSB
8 For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”

How do I sin no more?

look to Jesus, live like Jesus
John 5:19ff — Jesus connected with the Father
We are connected with Jesus
Remember:
Who Jesus is — God (John 5:18)
What he has done for us (John 5:14, been made whole)
Paul’s starting point in living as a believer is not a call to action, but a call to start by contemplating what God has done in Christ for us. (KTDC)
That he is working in us (John 5:17)
What he will do for us (Phil 1:6, Romans 8:32, Rev 22)
1 Cor 15:1-4
Results: Rest
Against the ways of the world
the busyness of life
Silence, Solitude, Simplicity, Sabbath and Slowing down.
Rest: a hospital bed

Not Works, but Grace

Transformation is not following the obedience model, it is a personal walk with the author of life
You cannot heal yourself, you cannot restore yourself
receive mercy
You and I need mercy everyday due to our historical—and current—appalling choice to listen to the lies of the enemy. In His presence, we receive it.
obtain grace
Regardless of which it is, God doesn’t need you to clean up or to take charge. But He does need you to understand His purpose. God wants you to be in his presence so that you can receive two things that you desperately must have from Him. Two things which you cannot get anywhere else. These are the mercy and grace about which the writer is speaking, both of which are totally undeserved, but you get them from God anyway.
You have to understand that grace is a power word. God is not only in the business of withholding judgment from us (mercy). God actually is enabling us to do what He wants us to do. Grace is God’s empowering presence in us in the person of the Holy Spirit to transform us from what we were, changing us step by step into the image of Jesus.
This is grace sufficiecney, power in weakness — 2 Cor 12:9
Grace is more than God helping us to avoid damaging decisions that lead us to destructive places. Grace overcomes the power of destructive addiction. What we cannot possibly stop doing, grace stops in its tracks. But grace is more than just a counteractive force to addiction. It refines and sculpts our living souls so that wholeness radiates out of us. It changes our inner desires from wanting but resisting sin in me choices to not wanting to comfort oneself with sin in me choices at all.
These are what the great exchange is all about. As the empowering presence of the Spirit produces transformation in our lives, the sin in me is replaced with the fruit of the Spirit.
It is the work of grace that empowers him to shed his murderous heart, to lose the desire for revenge, and to become a peace-filled person. Only by God actively working by His grace inside this man’s heart does real transformation, into becoming the son he was adopted to be, take place.
1 John 1:9 As we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive our sins (mercy) and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness (grace).
We do not get grace because we are obedient; we get it because we could not be obedient without it. Grace enables our obedience as we trust Him. All you have to do is take hold of what God has already given you. I will explain this further when we reach the subject of appropriation.
You cannot trust your own voice
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Key to Deep Change

Why pursuing deep relationship with God is so important is because Satan’s final line of attack to keep us from getting well is to focus our attention on fighting to get well instead of on knowing God.
Essentially, when we focus on the problem, we find we have no attention left for the One who delivers and heals.
Healing is found in intimacy with God. And when God heals the hurt of the heart in us, the sin in me has nothing it can hook into.
Because it is about doing more stuff for God and you are already tired out from trying. What I am counseling is spiritual rest in its place. It is about being with God in the way Adam and Eve strolled with Him every evening in the Garden. It is about receiving love and power from Him instead of begging for Him to give you stuff you have already been granted just because you belong to Him.
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In 1:17, Paul prays an intimacy prayer—that his readers would be given the Spirit of wisdom and revelation so that they would know God better. This is a significant prayer because Paul knows they will not move forward in becoming spiritually whole without a growing relationship with God that is brought about by the Spirit instead of more Bible study and prayer.
This is the point of Paul’s prayer—that you come to really know God intimately—not through education—but by being drawn to experience Him. This prayer is for you as well. Only when you know God better will you get well. Meaning you will healed and delivered.
Done disciplines are those practices which open us up to receive from God all He has done through the death and resurrection of Jesus. They are about being filled by God Himself. Do disciplines are what we do (such as fasting and prayer) to supplement our faith, growing in the character of Jesus so we will be useful for his Kingdom instead of fruitless and frustrated (2 Peter 1:5-9).
Rest
This is what we hear when we start resting. We hear the Father telling us what worth He has placed on us and where He has placed us—not just our cleaned up, righteous self, but the still messed up, untransformed self we are when He redeemed us.
Rest is being with God without an agenda. It means being ready to listen and hear what God has for you—mercy, grace, love, restoration. You may pray or read Scripture while you are with Him, but that rest is unstructured time with Him, allowing Him to guide you and reveal to you His desires for you.
Appropriation
But these resources are already in our souls, placed there by an intimate, loving God who knows our need better than we do ourselves. Gaining understanding about these assets is not merely to set our minds at ease; they are there as the resources for our transformational journey.
This is appropriation—freely taking what is there for you without hesitation.
Meditating on God’s Love
This is the “know” of Paul’s third prayer: “and to know this love that surpasses knowledge” (3:19). He prays that we get to the place of encountering this incredible love of God so that we will know and not doubt it as we do so many other loves we have felt or seen.
However, if you choose to invest in the relationship God offers, you will find your unanswered questions are not as important as the way God uses all the events of your life, including the bad and ugly ones you struggle with, to bring about wholeness in you.
Hope is restorative. And hope is the pathway out of self-deception, which is a psychological mechanism to protect ourselves from the pain of our stuck self.
What we discover in intimacy is that we no longer have need for internal defenses to protect ourselves from the truth. This also takes some healing by God, because our internal self-deception is on autopilot. As soon as an inconvenient truth pops up into our life, our defenses go to work to screen it from view. Self-deception may make it possible for us to live with ourselves, but it never heals us.
Transformation is a personal walk, and it requires a Person to make the path straight for us in order to keep on.
Preaching the gospel to yourself:
Instead of listening to yourself, you need to preach the good news of Jesus to yourself. The lies of the enemy are often only recognized as such when the truth of gospel appears. This may seem self-evident, but emotional lies are very powerful. They can take control of your decision-making will. Therefore you cannot let a day go by when you do not rehearse the truth of the gospel to yourself. This truth is what opens us to God, keeping us from the slippery slope of
What is this gospel—in practical terms—that we need to hear every day? It starts with the truth that God is in the process of conforming you into the image of His Son, Jesus (Romans 8:29).
It continues with the truth that God is using all that has happened to you as a part of this process, even the bad stuff (Romans 8:28). Not just the tragedies and triumphs in your current life, but all that has happened to you since the day you were born, even the parts you do not want to remember. These truths are accomplished in our lives through the cross and the resurrection (Colossians 2:9-15).
Add to this that God has already given you everything you need for life and godliness through your knowledge of Him who called you by His own glory and goodness (2 Peter 1:3). And that God’s grace (His empowering presence) has appeared to you, teaching you to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions and to live a self-controlled, upright, and godly life in the time you have to live (Titus 2:11-12).
Transformation is about your progress toward your true identity. As you transform, who you really are emerges.
This created self has been covered in layers of damaging choices as well as the good deeds done in the mistaken belief that you could reform yourself. The good news is that Jesus on the cross became sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21). He took it upon Himself to restore what was broken in us yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Wherever your identity is stuck, he has already erased its power over you. You may not know this, but it is still true.
Steps:
Call the lie a lie (from satan)
replace the lie with God’s true
take faith steps empowered by grace and live in the truth
Example: The process of counseling or maturation is becoming more aware of lies and false patterns, and choosing otherwise
Your rational thoughts, now renewed by God, will begin to balance out your emotions in the life-decision function of the heart.
But for you to come to trust God’s strength in this process, you are going to have to move towards Him in intimacy.
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Paradoxically, God reveals Himself in our suffering. There is no resurrection without crucifixion; no glory without suffering. Healing, therefore, isn't quite what we thought it would be. Our dark emotions reveal God; they open the road to true joy. This is the central message of the book of Psalms: we encounter divine goodness in the midst of pain. (Cry of the Soul)
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Verses

John 5:10 CSB
10 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.”

they were jealous for the honour of the sabbath, and could not unconcernedly see it profaned; like Nehemiah. Neh. 13:17.

John 5:11 CSB
11 He replied, “The man who made me well told me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’

(2.) The man justified himself in what he did by a warrant that would bear him out, v. 11. “I do not do it in contempt of the law and the sabbath, but in obedience to one who, by making me whole, has given me an undeniable proof that he is greater than either. He that could work such a miracle as to make me whole no doubt might give me such a command as to carry my bed; he that could overrule the powers of nature no doubt might overrule a positive law, especially in an instance not of the essence of the law. He that was so kind as to make me whole would not be so unkind as to bid me do what is sinful.” Christ, by curing another paralytic, proved his power to forgive sin, here to give law; if his pardons are valid, his edicts are so, and his miracles prove both.

John 5:12 CSB
12 “Who is this man who told you, ‘Pick up your mat and walk’?” they asked.

They resolve to look upon Christ as a mere man: What man is that?

They resolve to look upon him as a bad man, and take it for granted that he who bade this man carry his bed

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John 5:13 CSB
13 But the man who was healed did not know who it was, because Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.

[1.] Christ was unknown to him when he healed him. Probably he had heard of the name of Jesus, but had never seen him, and therefore could not tell that this was he. Note, Christ does many a good turn for those that know him not, Isa. 45:4, 5. He enlightens, strengthens, quickens, comforts us, and we wist not who he is; nor are aware how much we receive daily by his mediation. This man, being unacquainted with Christ, could not actually believe in him for a cure; but Christ knew the dispositions of his soul, and suited his favours to them, as to the blind man in a like case, ch. 9:36. Our covenant and communion with God take rise, not so much from our knowledge of him, as from his knowledge of us. We know God, or, rather, are known of him, Gal. 4:9.

John 5:14 CSB
14 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.”

In our attendance on public worship we may expect to meet with Christ, and improve our acquaintance with him.

What he said to him. When Christ has cured us, he has not done with us; he now applies himself to the healing of his soul, and this by the word too.

Behold thou art made whole. He found himself made whole, yet Christ calls his attention to it

Behold, consider it seriously, how sudden, how strange, how cheap, how easy, the cure was: admire it; behold, and wonder: Remember it; let the impressions of it abide, and never be lost, Isa. 38:9.

While those chronical diseases lasted, they prevented the outward acts of many sins, and therefore watchfulness was the more necessary when the disability was removed.

This is an incredible observation. Having been given a new kind of freedom, now he is open to new kids of sin.
Galatians 5:13 CSB
13 For you were called to be free, brothers and sisters; only don’t use this freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but serve one another through love.
Romans 13:11–14 CSB
11 Besides this, since you know the time, it is already the hour for you to wake up from sleep, because now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed. 12 The night is nearly over, and the day is near; so let us discard the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. 13 Let us walk with decency, as in the daytime: not in carousing and drunkenness; not in sexual impurity and promiscuity; not in quarreling and jealousy. 14 But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires.

The misery we were made whole from warns us to sin no more, having felt the smart of sin; the mercy we were made whole by is an engagement upon us not to offend him who healed us. This is the voice of every providence, Go and sin no more

This man began his new life very hopefully in the temple, yet Christ saw it necessary to give him this caution; for it is common for people, when they are sick, to promise much, when newly recovered to perform something, but after awhile to forget all. [3.] He gives him warning of his danger, in case he should return to his former sinful course

The hospital where he lay was a melancholy place, but hell is much more so: the doom of apostates is a worse thing than thirty-eight years’ lameness.

John 5:15 CSB
15 The man went and reported to the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well.

. He told them it was Jesus that had made him whole. We have reason to think that he intended this for the honour of Christ and the benefit of the Jews, little thinking that he who had so much power and goodness could have any enemies; but those who wish well to Christ’s kingdom must have the wisdom of the serpent, lest they do more hurt than good with their zeal, and must not cast pearls before swine.

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