Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] You're listening to a live recording from Westside Church in Bend, Oregon. Thanks for joining us.
[00:00:06] Hi, everybody. I'm Evan. I'm the other senior pastor. I wanted to go. We're going to be in the Gospel of John today, Chapter five. And I've really been looking forward to the story that we're going to talk through today.
[00:00:15] This is such a beautiful day as we're celebrating baptisms with those who have chosen to be baptized today. And it represents transformation in our lives. And I think if you could boil down what it is to be a. A person who follows after Jesus, a person of faith in Christianity, and what it is to love God, it really boils down to a willingness to change.
[00:00:38] After the first service, a gentleman in his probably, I didn't ask him, but probably late 60s came up to me, he's probably 46, and I'm really offending him right now, but late 60s, and he came up and he said, listen, I grew up Catholic. And so all this singing, really, it freaks me out a little bit in church, he said. But then as I've been thinking about that, I realized that oftentimes it's in the singing that it gives words to prayers that I can pray. And so he's taken what is a little uncomfortable to him in our worship times and the music from his background, and now he's reading the words and he's turning those into his prayers during our times of worship. And then he said, and last week, the pastor, Mike, who was preaching, talked about getting upset at people in roundabouts. He's like, I get upset at people in roundabouts, too.
[00:01:27] He's like, but after that message, I realized that some people, you know, they're rushing to the hospital or they're going places and there's an emergency, and I don't know that. And so I'm having a lot more grace for them.
[00:01:41] And I looked at him, I said, you're doing it. You're doing exactly what we're talking about. The willingness to be changed at any season of our lives, I think, is at the core of following Jesus.
[00:01:53] And for those of us who like a good routine and we like predictability in our lives and our habits can be an especial challenge for us to say yes to the way of Jesus. Cause oftentimes following after Jesus looks unpredictable, and it will take us out of our rhythms and routines. And I know we talk about how we need to have good habits and good routines in the way of Jesus. But also the flip side of that is when we Follow Jesus. He asked us to leave some stuff behind that gives us a lot of comfort.
[00:02:26] And in the wide open places of faith, in the unknown, uncertain spaces where we're following Jesus and trusting Him. The Bible would tell us that we walk by faith and not by sight. And so the invitation of John to us today is going to be to say yes to the unknown that Jesus offers.
[00:02:45] And so with that, I want to jump past the book of John to First John, a letter that John wrote to the churches in Ephesus. And I'm going to have you stand for this. It's a short passage this morning, before we get to our main text, I want to read this over us as a church from First John 1:1.
[00:03:02] And this is the heart of John for everything. He's going to tell us about the story of Jesus today.
[00:03:08] This is at the heart of it. I thought it was so beautiful. I wanted to read it first John 1:1.
[00:03:13] John writes this.
[00:03:15] We want to tell you about the One who was. From the beginning, we have seen him with our own eyes, we have heard him with our own ears and touched him with our own hands.
[00:03:25] This one is the manifestation of the life giving voice. And he showed us real life, eternal life. We have seen it all and we can't keep what we witness quiet. We have to share it with you. We are inviting you to to experience eternal life through the One who was with the Father and came down to us.
[00:03:45] Lord, we receive your word through the words and the voice of John to our ears today in 2026.
[00:03:53] We want to be changed and we want to say yes to the transformation you bring. We pray this in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Amen. You can have your seats. Thank you.
[00:04:06] I often think when I'm in the New Testament and reading the stories of the Gospel writers and the book of Acts and Paul's writings, the experience that these men and women had in the early church with Jesus, the encounters they had with who they believed to be the Son of God, had to be something else, had to be something pretty powerful because these people, these normal people, were willing to give everything they had, their lives to the cause of spreading this news and this word about Jesus, who they believed had died and come back to life.
[00:04:52] And what would motivate this kind of all out devotion?
[00:04:57] If Jesus was not who he said he was, certainly these people like the apostle John would have known it because they saw him up close as we just heard in First John, they heard him with their own ears. This was not second hand. They didn't hear stories about him. They actually saw him.
[00:05:15] They were close enough to know if this guy wasn't legit.
[00:05:19] And yet, after the experiences that they had with him in these three years of Jesus ministry, before his crucifixion and resurrection, it so impacted their lives that they were willing to give the rest of those lives in the service of his calling.
[00:05:36] And so John writes his Gospel. And we've been in this for several weeks now. We'll continue to be in this through Easter. And the framing device of the Gospel of John is these seven miracles, or these seven signs, as John calls them. And in John's mind and in his hope for this gospel that he's writing, is that we, as readers and hearers of the story of Jesus through these seven miracles, these seven signs that he lays out, would come to the conclusion, based on this eyewitness account, that Jesus was not merely a good teacher or a popular rabbi, but he was in fact, the very stuff, the essence of who God is, that he was the son of God, the Messiah, the one that was promised.
[00:06:21] And that in believing in Jesus, John would tell us in John chapter 20, that we would put our trust in him, that we would believe and hope and lean completely on this belief that Jesus was who he claimed to be.
[00:06:39] And so these seven signs come through the whole Gospel of John, starting with the turning of water into wine that we talked about a couple weeks ago. The second sign is where Jesus meets with a nobleman in John chapter three. And the nobleman, very powerful and well connected, comes to Jesus. He's been sent there because his son is very, very sick.
[00:07:02] And he comes to Jesus, says, jesus, I need you to come to my house and heal my son.
[00:07:06] My wife has sent me here to bring you back to our home. And Jesus says, I'm not coming with you. But right now your son is healed. And the noble woman's like, listen, send me back alone, there will be two dead people in my house, right?
[00:07:20] If you could send me back and you're not with me.
[00:07:24] He goes back to his home and he finds out that his son has not died and that he's recovering.
[00:07:32] And he asked the servants, at what time did this happen? And they said, about 1 in the afternoon. And it comes so clear to him that this nobleman was talking with Jesus at one o' clock in the afternoon, miles and miles away.
[00:07:45] And John is telling us this story to show how Jesus is not only some faith healer that relies on some psychological trick when he's near people to encourage them to feel healed. But in fact, he is the omnipresent presence of God among people that even at a distance, he can heal because he is who he claims to be. That's the second sign. And now we get to the third sign, which is today's passage out of John, chapter five.
[00:08:12] Starting in verse one. I'm gonna read this.
[00:08:14] Actually, let's skip to verse five. Afterwards, Jesus returned to Jerusalem. No, this is verse one for one of the Jewish holy days. Inside the city, near the sheep gate, was the pool of Bethesda with five covered porches. Crowds of sick people, blind, lame or paralyzed, lay on the porches. So there was this legend, this superstition really, in the community in Jerusalem that at this pool, which archaeologists have now discovered had a natural spring feeding it below.
[00:08:45] But the legend was that when the spring would bubble up, they didn't know it was a spring. They thought it was an angel. And whenever the waters would stir because of this spring, and it would bubble the belief, the legend, was that if you were the first one in those waters, that you would receive healing.
[00:09:01] And so this attracted hordes of people who were in need of healing. Blind, lame or paralyzed. So get this scene.
[00:09:09] There's dozens of people in all states of brokenness hoping for a miracle as they lock eyes on this pool, hoping to see the water stir and maybe, just maybe, they'll be the first in to receive healing.
[00:09:24] One of the men lying there, verse five, had been sick for 38 years. And when Jesus saw him and knew he had been ill for a long time, he asked him, would you like to get well?
[00:09:35] Doesn't that seem like a silly question?
[00:09:39] Like, Jesus, don't you see all these people? Like, what else are they doing except hoping to get well? But Jesus asked the question as if to say, I need to hear you tell me what the desire of your heart is.
[00:09:55] The response of the man is very telling in verse seven. I can't, sir, the sick man said, for I have no one to put me into the pool when the waters bubble up, someone else always gets there ahead of me.
[00:10:09] The response of this man is the response of someone who is an expert in his own brokenness.
[00:10:15] He's laying by this pool. He's been there for almost 40 years.
[00:10:20] Jesus rolls in in his relatively clean tunic and his combed, long blond hair. Just kidding.
[00:10:31] Jesus is clearly not the type of guy who's just been hanging around this pool, and this man knows it. This man is the expert on that square of patio in the middle of Jerusalem. This Guy knows his stuff.
[00:10:45] And so this rabbi comes in with his disciples, and he asks this audacious question. Do you want to be healed? And the guy is like, okay, you're new here. I can tell. That's cute.
[00:10:54] Let me tell you how this works.
[00:10:57] And here are the reasons why I'm not going to be healed today. Just like I wasn't healed yesterday. Just like I wasn't healed for the last 38 years, here's why it hasn't happened for me.
[00:11:08] And as an expert in his own brokenness, he explains to Jesus why his identity is hopelessly wrapped up in his brokenness.
[00:11:25] And Jesus told him, stand up, pick up your mat and walk.
[00:11:30] And instantly the man was healed. And he rolled up his sleeping mat and began walking.
[00:11:36] But this miracle happened on the Sabbath. So the Jewish leaders objected. They said to the man who was cured, you can't work on the Sabbath. Because here's the funny thing.
[00:11:45] The Sabbath had a lot of rules. So, Ten Commandments, right? Moses comes in off the mountain. Ten Commandments. One of those commandments is, remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.
[00:11:54] Centuries go by, and the religious leaders have created now all these extra rules that are not written down by Moses, but they've been added to the list. So they have this oral tradition of extra rules around the Sabbath. And there's these 39 categories, not rules, but categories of rules around what you cannot do on the Sabbath. And one of those things is you cannot pick up an item and move it from one place to another place.
[00:12:17] And so we have these religious leaders who are in the temple and around the temple and around the pool of Bethesda on the Sabbath. Why are they there? To help people? To show compassion? To show mercy and ministry to people? No, they are there to enforce the 39 categories of Sabbath law.
[00:12:34] And they see this man who they've known has been laying there for 38 years, longer than many of these religious leaders have been alive. They see this man stand up. They are unimpressed by the miracle, and instead hone in on the fact that. That he is now carrying a mat which is in flat violation of their Sabbath religious laws. And they come for him. And can I tell you that anytime we gather in spaces like this, there is always the danger that we will become the kind of people that value the religious structures and rules more than we value the work of God in our midst.
[00:13:09] And may it never be so that we hold up the rules or our impressive theology or our understanding of how things should be and how things shouldn't be. And we hold that above the compassion of God poured out through the presence of Jesus that's among us.
[00:13:28] The religious leaders miss it.
[00:13:31] They miss the whole point that this idea to remember the Sabbath was not to keep people from the mercy of God. It was to preserve us in rest so that we could receive.
[00:13:44] And here comes God in the flesh. Jesus himself walking up on the Sabbath, and he does something that nothing else could do. No superstition, no religious legend could get the job done. But Jesus walks up and heals this man.
[00:14:01] Instead of celebrating, the religious leaders are appalled.
[00:14:06] So they approach him, say, you can't work on the Sabbath. And then he replies, the man who healed me told me, pick up your mat and walk.
[00:14:14] Who said such a thing as that? They demanded the man didn't know, for Jesus had disappeared into the crowd. I love it. Anytime Jesus disappears, you know he's just messing with the religious leaders. I love it.
[00:14:26] But afterwards, Jesus found him in the temple and told him, now you are well, so stop sinning or something even worse may happen to you. Now this is a weird statement from Jesus.
[00:14:38] Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.
[00:14:41] Now at first reading you say, oh, cause he's saying that if you don't stop sinning, then God's gonna get mad and do something even worse to you than your physical ailment before. But that doesn't make any sense because in just a couple chapters, Jesus is going to encounter a blind man and the disciples are gonna be like, somebody sinned here. Cause look, he's blind.
[00:15:02] Either he sinned or his parents sinned. But obviously God was mad and gave him this.
[00:15:07] And Jesus response to his disciples is, no, it's not because of his sin or his parents sin. Something else is going on here. This is not how God works.
[00:15:16] So why would Jesus say it this way?
[00:15:19] Scholars have all these theories about what Jesus is trying to say, and maybe he's pointing to the fact that really the greatest healing is to be freed from sin, which I believe with all my heart. But if you read this not like a religious person reading a religious text, but if you read this as a normal person watching what's going on with Jesus and the religious leaders, it actually takes on a comedic tone. Follow me here.
[00:15:43] This man has been laying for 38 years in the same spot. He can't move. He doesn't move. He lives there. That's his corner of the concrete where his home is. Okay?
[00:15:55] He's not doing a lot of sinning because he's just laying there after 38 years, he stands up. Five minutes later, Jesus sees him again as he's walking around holding his mat. What time has he had to start sinning?
[00:16:09] Not much.
[00:16:12] So what is the sin that he is doing? He's breaking the Sabbath rules because he's holding a mat.
[00:16:18] And so I think, and I could be wrong in this interpretation, but I think Jesus has watched what's happened with these religious leaders who are coming down on him, saying, you can't carry your mat, healed man.
[00:16:30] And Jesus comes back and says, I see you're sinning. Look at you carrying your mat. You better stop or they're going to do something worse to you.
[00:16:37] And this, as I read it, tongue in cheek statement speaks to the power of God over religious guilt.
[00:16:46] Because the religious leader would say, well, we're going to kick him out of the temple.
[00:16:50] And he's like, bro, I have lived my whole life outside the temple. What's that going to do to me?
[00:16:55] Nothing their religious leaders can do in enforcing their religious laws can touch the healing that Jesus has provided. And so it is with us that when we encounter Jesus, the transformation that happens, I believe has the power to undo religious guilt and undo those ways that religious structures and systems come to crush and undignify humanity, that because Jesus has healed, we don't have to fear religious guilt any longer.
[00:17:24] So that's my take on that. You can disagree and you can think that Jesus is saying that God's going to smite him, but I don't see it. I don't see it.
[00:17:32] So the story goes on.
[00:17:35] Then the man in verse 15 went and told the Jewish leaders that it was in fact Jesus who had healed him. So the Jewish leaders began harassing Jesus for breaking the Sabbath rules. But Jesus replied, my father is always working and so am I. So the Jewish leaders tried all the harder to find a way to kill him.
[00:17:52] Wow, what a way to miss what God is doing.
[00:17:59] What a way to focus on exactly the wrong things. When Jesus walks in the room, it's the compassion of Jesus, I think, that drives him to enter into this space in the first place. You know, whole healthy people probably didn't hang out at the pool of Bethesda a lot.
[00:18:17] The smell would have been overwhelming.
[00:18:19] The risk of contracting disease would have been ever present.
[00:18:24] This was not a place that you'd want to hang out.
[00:18:27] And yet Jesus takes his disciples there to show his disciples something about the character of God.
[00:18:34] That the whole point of Jesus arrival, as John is telling us, is not so that God can stay distant from our sin and hope that we get better. It's to enter into the darkest, deepest places and of our brokenness and to transform it from the inside out.
[00:18:51] And so as Jesus enters into this place and he asks this seemingly silly question of this man, do you want to be well? It's a question that I think all of us have to answer. When we face the possibility that Jesus is real and that his presence is close and that he offers transformation, we have to answer the question for ourselves. Do we actually want to be made well?
[00:19:12] It's not an automatic yes, because to say yes to transformation, that looks like healing is to say yes to stepping out of what has become our normal, familiar, and comfortable space.
[00:19:26] That was a horrible place to live, but that was his home.
[00:19:31] That place of brokenness by the pool of Bethesda was not any place that anyone would choose. And yet for 38 years, he had staked out his corner of that patio that was his home address.
[00:19:43] And Jesus comes and he says, do you want a new address?
[00:19:47] The healing is going to come with letting go of what has become familiar. And here is what is, I think, true for us is that oftentimes our identity is as wrapped up in our wounds and our brokenness and our weaknesses as much as it is our strengths, our successes and our wins.
[00:20:05] Our identity is tied to. To both things.
[00:20:09] And when we come and face Jesus and he offers transformation, that looks like freedom from sin or addiction. It looks like healing in our mind or our body. It looks like stepping out of that identity that has become our home. It can challenge us in a way that's uncomfortable.
[00:20:29] And the invitation of Jesus is, come, follow me. But you gotta leave some things behind. You have to leave this square of the patio that has become your home.
[00:20:38] Do you want to be made well?
[00:20:41] Do you want to experience healing? It's not a silly question. It's one that we all have to face when the only thing that we know is threatened, even when it is brokenness that has kept us there.
[00:20:57] We have to make the choice for ourselves. Do we choose to say yes to the work of Jesus?
[00:21:05] If Jesus makes this man well, he was going to have to be let into the man's life.
[00:21:13] To say yes to Jesus is to say, lord, you can do what you've offered to do. Not automatically, not against my will.
[00:21:22] We don't do forced baptisms. I mean, we could, I suppose, surprise. Ah, you know, we don't do that, and for good reason.
[00:21:32] It's a felony. But also, Jesus always invites and leaves the door open. For us to ask him in to do the work of our lives.
[00:21:48] And so as we hear the voice of Jesus in our own brokenness, right, we've all got it. We've all got sin and brokenness and a history that looks like good stuff and bad stuff.
[00:22:02] And oftentimes our identity is tied to those things. Our comfort is tied to the familiarity of kind of how we do it.
[00:22:11] And Jesus stands and he says, do you want to be made well, but you have to let me in.
[00:22:17] You have to say yes to this work.
[00:22:22] What I don't want to happen is for us to be the man by the side of the pool, but assume that we are those self righteous religious leaders that have it all figured out instead.
[00:22:36] And this is a big problem, I think in church circles really is that we can come to this conclusion that, that although we are broken, we're better than the other broken people, right?
[00:22:51] And in doing that, we assume like, I actually don't need Jesus help anymore because I have figured out how to manage my sin. I figured out how to manage my brokenness. Maybe we're not like the guy, you know, laying on the patio, just frustrated cause we haven't been healed. But we're those who have become functional broken people.
[00:23:10] And we figured it out.
[00:23:12] And in our self righteousness and in our being so proud of the way that we figured out how to manage our stuff, we then take it upon ourselves to explain to other people how broken they are.
[00:23:28] And this is something that I point the finger to myself even as a kid. I remember this. This is embarrassing.
[00:23:35] In the fifth grade, I was in the gym at recess and a bunch of my friends in the fifth grade, we were playing basketball and my friend Kevin stole the ball from me.
[00:23:45] And I was really frustrated with the way he did it. I thought it was a foul. But you know, oddly enough, there wasn't any refs at the game.
[00:23:54] And so because I was such a chill and cool and fun guy in the fifth grade, I responded to him by quoting the book of numbers as one does.
[00:24:07] And I said, kevin, I'm shouting this over the court as he's, you know, making a basket. I said, kevin, be sure your sins will find you out.
[00:24:17] I was such a cool kid, you guys, you would have been lucky to be my friend.
[00:24:24] It's a true story.
[00:24:26] I shudder even thinking about it now. Give me a minute. Mm.
[00:24:31] Like in the fifth grade was I reading numbers, being like, that'll work, that'll work on the playground.
[00:24:37] Write that down.
[00:24:39] Terrible.
[00:24:44] I will tell you what though.
[00:24:47] There is a ability.
[00:24:50] The deeper we get into Scripture and the more we know, the more we can use that for our own purposes, right? And as someone who, like, I know a lot about the Bible, right? And I'm not bragging, I'm saying I know a lot about the Bible, enough to get you whatever answer you're looking for, whatever argument you need to win, you set up an appointment with me and I will find it in Scripture and I will help you win. Okay? No matter what your position is, no matter what your viewpoints are, you want to prove something to your husband or your wife or your friend, I will give you the scripture that will do it, because that's how it works. There's enough in here that we can twist the Bible to say whatever we want it to say. And so this is the danger that I think the religious leaders who were coming after Jesus had fallen into the trap of which was whatever we want to happen, we can have the scriptural backup to get it done.
[00:25:45] This is why Jesus, at the end of this chapter, in verse 37, he's speaking to these religious leaders who have missed the point and who are coming after the man who has been healed.
[00:25:56] And he is so frustrated with these religious leaders. And he says, the Father who sent me has himself, in verse 37, testified concerning me. You have never heard his voice nor seen his form, nor does his word dwell in you, for you do not believe the one he sent. You study the scriptures diligently because you think that in them you will have eternal life. These are the very scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.
[00:26:20] Jesus is saying, hey, scripture experts, Bible scholars, you're missing the point because you're missing me.
[00:26:28] And for all of us numbers quoting kids, we have to lay aside the temptation to use scripture as a bludgeon tool and instead receive it as the thing that reveals the heart of God through the expression of who Jesus was. This is the whole point that every time we open the Bible, it is not to reinforce our arguments, our points, or our biases. It's not to hold up our predetermined ideology, political lens or theology. But instead we open it up with hearts that say, I want to be transformed by Jesus, Lord, let these scriptures reveal him to me.
[00:27:13] And every time we get to portions of the story or the scripture would say, that would be good to fix so and so's life, Jesus has this way of turning the mirror back on us that we might pray what David prayed, which was created in me, a clean Heart, oh, God, don't take your holy spirit from me, because I've been by the pool and I've had the brokenness in my life and I've had some wounds that I've actually become quite comfortable with.
[00:27:48] And so when you show up in the room, I'm not there to say, jesus, finally you're here. Have you seen what's going on with her?
[00:27:55] Have you seen what's going on with him? No, I'm there to say, yeah, I want to be healed. I want a new address.
[00:28:03] I want to be transformed.
[00:28:06] What change are you asking Jesus? I'll follow you to the ends of the earth.
[00:28:15] In those places where we've become the most hopeless, where we are the most expert at our own brokenness. That's where Jesus shows up to today.
[00:28:26] I've been fighting the same addiction for 20 years, and I've got three really, really strong, compelling reasons why that's probably not going to change today.
[00:28:39] But Jesus is here.
[00:28:42] But Jesus is here.
[00:28:44] And if John was right, when Jesus is present, anything's possible.
[00:28:56] We don't need more religious structures. We don't need more enforcement of religious worldviews.
[00:29:03] We need an encounter with Jesus and willing hearts when he shows up to say, yeah, I want to be healed. I want to be made well, I want to be transformed.
[00:29:20] So we're here together on this day. I'm going to pray for you in just a moment.
[00:29:25] If Jesus walked in to your space right now with that question, do you want to be healed? What's your answer?
[00:29:36] He's like, oh, it's an automatic yes. Of course. We're in church. Yes, it's a yes, whatever, sure.
[00:29:41] Hold on.
[00:29:44] Are you willing to be re identified as belonging to Jesus more than you belong to the brokenness that has identified you and labeled you?
[00:29:56] Are you willing to say yes to the.
[00:29:59] To the unknown of following after Jesus and the uncertainty of him being in charge in the unfamiliar places of freedom, restoration and redemption?
[00:30:13] He's not going to insist.
[00:30:17] He's not going to be forceful. He's going to invite you to say yes.
