Turn with me now to John chapter five. John chapter five, and we'll be looking at verses one through 15 today. And there is a lot to be unpacked here in this narrative. And some of it, we're just gonna have to wait until next Lord's day to get to. And we're not even really reading the entire account here, but I think this is a fitting section to begin John five with is verses one through 15. So let's just dive right in. This is the word of the Lord. After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is in Jerusalem by the sheep gate a pool, in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five-roofed colonnades. In these lay a multitude of invalids, blind, lame, and paralyzed, waiting for the moving of the water. For an angel of the Lord went down at certain seasons into the pool and stirred the water. Whoever stepped in first after the stirring of the water was healed of whatever disease he had. One man was there who had been an invalid for 38 years. 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? 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'm going, another steps down before me. Jesus said to him, Get up, take your bed, and walk. And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked. Now that day was the Sabbath. 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. But he answered them, the man who healed me, that man said to me, take up your bed and walk. They asked him, who is the man who said to you, take up your bed and walk? Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn as there was a crowd in the place. 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. The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him. Let's pray. God, we thank you for this word. God, we thank you for this wonderful miracle that you have worked, that a man who lay sick for 38 years was healed at your word. God, we thank you that your word is a gracious word. And we thank you that you have met us here today by your spirit. Lord, we know that when your church is gathered on earth, that we are picturing, Lord, the great gathering that we will have one day with you in heaven, that when we hear your word and when we dine at your table, we are anticipating that great wedding feast, Lord, in the life to come. God, we ask now that you would bless this sermon, that you would bless me, that I would speak what is true and what you want me to say, not what vain imaginations I might create in my head. Lord, and I pray that you would bless all those who hear me, Lord, that they would hear directly from you, that you would speak right to their consciences, that you would pierce to their innermost being, that you would draw them and me, Lord, to repentance and faith. God, bless us now in Christ's name. Amen. You may be seated. Like I said, there's a lot in this narrative today that we won't be able to cover right now in this sermon. There's just too much to be unpacked here. But what a good problem to have, that we could never ever plumb all the depths of God's word. But our text today opens by telling us that at some point after the healing of the royal official's son, Jesus went back to Jerusalem. So far in the gospel according to John, we've seen Jesus being baptized by John. Presumably that was in the countryside of Judea where he called his first disciples. Then we see him travel to Galilee, both in Cana where he performed his first miracle and in Capernaum. Then we see him back in Jerusalem again for Passover. It's where he cleanses the temple. Then out into the Judean countryside again where he began to baptize through the ministry of his disciples. Then back to Galilee again by way of Samaria where he met the woman at the well. And now here in John chapter 5 we see Jesus headed back to Jerusalem once more. Jesus clearly is not a pastor who stays in one town serving one people, one congregation. He is a traveling minister and evangelist. He is all over the place, going between Jerusalem and Galilee and places in between. And why, we might say, why is he doing this? Why is he going back to Jerusalem again? Well, Christ is a devout and obedient worshiper of God. He always worships the Lord in the ways that God has prescribed. God gets to decide how he gets to be worshipped. It's not up to us to just make up whatever we think in our heads would be nice and decide that that's what God would be pleased by. And one of the requirements in God's law was that all the men of Israel had to present themselves in Jerusalem three times per year at certain appointed feasts. There was Passover, there was Pentecost, and then there was the Feast of Booths. Now, we don't actually know which of these feasts was happening here in John 5, it's even possible it was another more minor feast, like Hanukkah or Purim or something like that. We don't know what it was and ultimately it doesn't matter for our understanding of this text. The important thing to note is simply that Jesus is always obedient to God's law. And we see that and he even takes these long journeys, these long trips from where he's having fruitful ministry to obey God and go worship him as he commands. So he leaves Galilee and he heads back to Jerusalem yet again. But even though he's going to Jerusalem for worship, the temple is not the first place that John mentions Jesus going once he gets into town. John chapter five and verse two says that there is in Jerusalem by the sheep gate, a pool in Aramaic called Bethesda. This is the only place in all of Scripture that this pool is mentioned. And you may notice that in some of your Bibles, perhaps when I was reading, there's even less detail given about Bethesda than what I read when I read this sermon Scripture reading just a few moments ago. In the ESV, and in the NIV, and in the NASB, and really almost all of our modern versions, the text of Scripture here goes straight from mentioning that a multitude of invalids lay there, blind, lame, and paralyzed. It jumps straight from that point to discussing this one particular man who had been an invalid for 38 years. So what happened here? You might think, what's going on? Did the modern versions just all forget to include that part of Scripture? Or did the translation committees all take part of verse 3 and all of verse 7 out of John chapter 5 for some nefarious purpose, that they're really trying to rob the Bible of the real gospel message? Well, to both of those questions, we have to say, no, that's not at all what happened here. The reason that part of John 5 is missing from some of our English versions of the scripture is because of the influence of what's called textual criticism. Textual criticism is a movement in modern scholarship that operates on the idea that since the original scrolls and pieces of papyrus that the Bible was first recorded on are gone, since those are gone and we don't have them anymore, it's the scholar's job now to sift through all the available handwritten Hebrew and Greek copies of the scripture that we have, and there are thousands, and to be sure they're not all exact carbon copies of one another, but to sift through all of those and determine through the use of certain academic methods what the original text really said. They're mining for that original text. However, what text criticism leaves out, it's an academic study, what it leaves out is the role of the Holy Spirit and the role of the church. I studied text criticism in seminary and I was taught text criticism and you never heard about the superintending power of the Holy Spirit and preserving His word when you're looking at text criticism. Now we have to ask ourselves, do we believe that it is the job of university scholars to tell us what the original biblical text is? Or do we believe that God has entrusted his word to his church? Do we believe that God has preserved his word through the superintending power of the Holy Spirit working in and through his church or not? It's not that the church as an institution cannot make mistakes. It's not that the church cannot err. We know that she can and sometimes she does in abundant ways. But just like we've been discussing on our Wednesday nights, our order of authority after God's word, which is number one source of authority, the only infallible and inerrant rule of faith and practice, it's in a category by itself. But after the Bible, our level of trust in other authorities should first and foremost go to the tradition of the church and only secondarily to that flawed and marred human reason. So why does all that matter here for John chapter 5? Why are we going on this side note about text criticism? Well, for a long time, our Bibles had the longer reading of John 5 in them that I read to you this morning. But through archaeological efforts and the work of text critics and scholars, many of whom, it should be noted, most of whom are theological liberals or unbelievers, Because of this work, scholars have determined that part of verse three and all of verse four are not present in what are normally regarded as some of the oldest Greek manuscripts that we have available today that have been discovered. So nearly all of our modern Bible versions, starting really all the way back in the 19th century and continuing to the present, have removed. these verses or part of these verses. Or to put it more generously to these translators, some of whom are operating in sincere good faith, they would say they have not removed these verses, they've just chosen not to include them in their translations. Now, I'm not a very great scholar. I'm not skilled in Hebrew and Greek, but I can tell you that I'm extremely hesitant to throw out a verse that Christians have regarded as scripture for perhaps up to 2,000 years. I'm just very hesitant to do that. And further, I have complete, absolute confidence that God has the ability to preserve his word through all generations through the ministry of his church. Does sometimes the true message of his word get obscured? Yes, we saw that greatly in medieval Romanism. but I believe that God still preserves his word in his church. John chapter five and verse four was in the Bible that our fathers used. It was in the Bible that the Puritans used who wrote our confession of faith. And I'm going to preach it today as if it's part of the biblical text. Now, whether or not John five, three and four are original or not, it's not a hill I'm willing to die on. It's not something that we should break fellowship over. It's not something that we need to make a big deal about. Really, it's not. But I've decided to preach it as it appears in the received text of the church, which we see both in the King James Version, the New King James Version, and several other worthy translations. That's just a side note about text criticism, but I want to get back to looking at the Bible, the text itself at hand. Jesus arrives at a pool called Bethesda. Bethesda means house of mercy, or maybe house of flowing water. And there are five roofed colonnades here. So it's this natural pool of water that's here near Jerusalem. probably like a hot spring or a small pond. And because of the wonderful healings that occur here, at some point people had taken it upon themselves to build these colonnades. Now, colonnade is not a word we use very often today when we're describing building things, but it's just a colonnade is kind of like it sounds. It's just a series of columns upright columns that hold up a roof. And it's a type of structure that was pretty common in the Middle East. And these were erected so that the sick people could lay under them more easily, lay under them and more easily access that healing water without having to be directly exposed to the elements like the harsh sunlight or the rain. So it provided some protection, still allowed a lot of airflow, and they could easily, as it were, get to the water under these colonnades. And our text tells us that in these colonnades lay a multitude of invalids, people who are sick and unable to care for themselves. They're disabled, they're handicapped, they're weak. John says that some of these people are blind. Some are lame. meaning they can't walk. Some are paralyzed. They can't even move part or all of their body. So you can just imagine the sadness of the situation. It's right here in Jerusalem, which is the heart of old covenant worship, the heart of where God cleanses and meets and renews his people. And there's just this vast amount of people in the worst possible physical condition, just laying on the ground. They're waiting. They're laying there waiting. They're literally waiting on a miracle from heaven. That's why they have come to this place. Some are probably crying out in pain and frustration. I doubt it's totally silent there any part of the day or night. They're probably people in such immense physical and emotional and spiritual and mental pain that they're crying out. Some of the people there are probably cursing God or cursing themselves, bemoaning their existence, wishing they had never been born or cursing others. Maybe they were there because of some injury that someone has committed against them. And then the pious and devout ones there, the true believers, they're probably there and they're praying. They're praying nonstop that God would heal them, that God would make them whole. They're begging for God to show them mercy. And they're not just waiting on any random miracle. Remember, they didn't all just decide one morning, let's all congregate at this one random spot and just trust that the Lord is going to work. They're at the pool of mercy because our text clearly tells us at certain seasons, an angel of the Lord went down into the pool and stirred the water. or troubled the water as some translations read. And whoever stepped in first after the stirring of the water was healed of whatever disease he had. This is such an interesting bit of information here. An angel literally comes down from heaven and makes the water bubble and churn. And when that happens, that's the signal that healing is being provided for whoever goes in the water first. Just one person gets healed. Now, why God had ordained this type of standing miracle to occur, we don't know. We don't have Old Testament information here. This jumps on the scene right in the New Testament. Some theologians think that this was one of the ways that God was reminding His people that He was still present with them, even though they were in the midst of centuries of silence from the prophets, from Malachi all the way till John the Baptist. There was no new word from the Lord, but there were new miracles. So maybe this is a way that God is still testifying that he is with his people. Other commentators and theologians think that this miracle was occurring to highlight the unique and special time it was in redemptive history. This was like a sign marking the coming of the Messiah and the great age of miracles of his ministry and the ministry of his apostles. But the truth that we don't know why this miracle was happening, we don't know why this miracle was happening aside from the fact that it was used by Jesus and written here by John to highlight Christ's mercy and divinity. We know We know for certain that this was a show of Christ's mercy and divinity. And other reasons, I guess it wasn't important for us to know. And our narrative moves quickly here from a picture of this great and vast multitude at Bethesda to a focus on one particular man. Beginning in verse five, we read this. One man was there who had been an invalid for 38 years. When Jesus saw him lying there, he knew that he had already been there a long time. He said to him, do you want to be healed? 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'm going another steps down before me. I think we just need to pause here for a minute. As I was preparing this and I was just trying to think of what it would be like. And I could not imagine, I could not imagine what it would be like to be lame, unable to walk, lying on a mat for 38 years. Try to imagine that, 38 years of being in chronic sickness and unable to even get up and go where you want to go. 38 years of being unable to care for yourself. This man had been in this condition since before Jesus was born. And Jesus is in his 30s at this point. And this man knows, this is interesting, this man knows that there is a cure for his sickness and that it is right in front of him. He knows that he can be made well by the mighty working of God, but he can't even take advantage of it. He can see the cure. but he's sick and he can't even get to the cure. He can't even avail himself of this miracle. Remember, he has no friend, he has no family member, he has no servant, he has no one. Possibly for the entire 38 years, there is no one who is willing to take him down to the water so that he can be made well. Not only does he have no one to help him, but it's clear that none of the other sick people are willing to give him a turn either. You'd hope that if this man had been here for years in this condition without a helper, that someone at some point might've said, friend, you're in a worse situation than a lot of us. You've been waiting longer than we've been waiting. You go this time and we'll get our turn next. You would hope that someone would do that, that they would make that sacrifice and let him go first one time. Never happened. You can see the hardness of the human heart here. We are so desperate sometimes when we're in our flesh to get what we want and what we need that sometimes we forget about our neighbor entirely, or we don't forget, but we just don't even care at all about the needs of our neighbor. And we might even get angry if our neighbor tries to avail himself of a need that he has if we think it gets in the way of our needs. We think like that sometimes. Our hearts apart from Christ's sanctifying work are hardened toward our neighbor. And I don't think any of us in this room can quite imagine how lonely and difficult this man's existence must have been. 38 years of waiting and waiting and waiting. And then a miracle from heaven comes. And it's not any mere angel just stirring up the water like normal. It's the son of God walking up to this man. And whereas the sick people could see the water when it was troubled and they knew that the healing was near and everyone knew, oh, it's time to get up and go down to the water, probably none of them had any idea what was happening when Jesus first walks up to the pool at Bethesda. It reminds me of the opening line of Gandalf's poem about Aragorn in the Fellowship of the Ring. Gandalf tells Frodo, as he's sending Frodo out on his mission with the ring, he tells Frodo that all that is gold does not glitter. all that is gold is not glitter. And by that, he means that the most valuable things in the world don't always appear that way at first glance. There was nothing in Jesus's appearance that would make him desirable, God's word said. And when he came, the water did not start churning up and looking like a healing was about to happen. But the real miracle was there in the person of Jesus Christ. And I think that's probably what Tolkien was thinking about, not this instance necessarily, but I think Tolkien was thinking about Jesus when he wrote those lines about Aragorn anyway. And it applies here so clearly. The sick man is waiting for the healing. Jesus comes up to him and he asks him a question with such an obvious answer. Jesus says, do you want to be healed? Obviously I want to be healed. I'm not lacking in the desire to be healed, but I have no man to help me. Clearly the sick man has no clue, A, who he's talking to, or he wouldn't have answered that way, or B, that this man who he's talking to isn't just asking abstractly if he wants to be healed, he's actually offering him healing right now. Do you want to be healed? I have healing here for you. Do you want to be healed? The man basically says, I'd like to, but I don't have the ability. Seems like he's still there at the pool of Bethesda. He hasn't totally given up hope, but he's hoping against hope. He's hoping for an infinitesimal chance that he'll be healed. And then Jesus, surprisingly, to him and to everyone says, get up, take up your bed and walk. And at once the man was healed and he took up his bed and he walked. This man knew to be watchful for the troubling of the water. But when he first saw Jesus, he did not realize that something greater than the healing water was here with him. The man was ignorant. He did not have eyes to see the spiritual reality before him, at least not yet. But look at the first half of verse six with me. John chapter five and verse six tells us this. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, The man saw Jesus coming, but he didn't know anything about Jesus. He didn't see Jesus for who he truly was. But Jesus, Jesus saw the man. I think there's so much weight in that word saw. Jesus saw the man and he knew him. There were countless people here at Bethesda, but Jesus singles out this one man. We don't know why. And it's not our, It's not for us to know why. Why does Jesus choose one man and not another? There's no reason to believe this man had any inherent faith. In fact, based on what happens later in the text, there is some reason at least to believe that this man might have been suffering as he was because of certain sins in his own life. He certainly wasn't any more worthy than anyone else to be healed. But Jesus saw him and he knew him. It reminds me of the story of Abram and Hagar. God had promised that he would multiply Abram greatly and give him more offspring than the stars in the sky. But Abram was wavering a little bit in his trust in this promise. He was 86 years old and he did not yet have a single child. So Sarah, his wife, convinced him to try to fulfill this promise or maybe circumvent this promise by having children with her servant, Hagar. Maybe they think, maybe, maybe that's how God really wanted his promises to be fulfilled. Maybe he wanted us to take things in our own hands and figure out, maybe this is a riddle and we've got to figure it out. Maybe you go lay with Hagar and that's how we'll get children. Well, Abram agrees to do this. And after Abram and Hagar come together, Hagar gets pregnant. And then she looks at Sarai who'd been unable to conceive for years and years. And she just looks at her mistress with contempt. She no longer has respect for her. Well, Sarai gets very angry, even though the result happened that she wanted. A child is conceived. Sarai gets very angry with both Abram and Hagar, and she deals harshly with her servant. So Hagar, not wanting to be treated badly anymore, she runs away from her mistress. And then this is what God's Word says happened next, after Hagar has run away from her oppressive mistress, Sarai. The angel of the Lord Yahweh found Hagar by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur. And he said, Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going? She said, I am fleeing from my mistress, Sarai. The angel of the Lord Yahweh said to her, return to your mistress and submit to her. The angel of the Lord Yahweh also said to her, I will surely multiply your offspring so that they cannot be numbered for multitude. And then this angel gives a prophecy about Hagar's son Ishmael, about how he's gonna be multiplied. And Hagar then responds. God's word tells us that Hagar called the name of the Lord Yahweh who spoke to her. You are a God of seeing. For she said, truly here, I have seen him who looks after me. Therefore, the well was called Bir Lahairoi, which means the well of the living one who sees me. Clearly, you are a God of seeing and you are the one who looks after me. Hagar's clearly not a picture of righteousness here. She doesn't deserve any blessing. But regardless of her sins, she is one who has been poorly treated and is suffering, just like the man at the pool of Bethesda. And she seeks to leave her troubles behind, and she comes and lays down at the spring of water. Maybe she's also praying for God to do a miracle in her life, or maybe she just has nowhere to go and no clue what she's doing, and she just stops to rest and cry at her misery. But as she's laying there, the angel of the Lord, who seems by all appearances to be Jesus himself, because it's God speaking and she names him the God who sees, the angel of the Lord sees her before she sees him. the angel of the Lord comes and sees Hagar. He sees her and he knows her and he speaks good news to her. And then he also gives her a difficult task. Return to your mistress and be obedient. Doesn't matter if it's difficult, your job is to obey. And after this, Hagar calls the name of Yahweh who spoke to her, you're a God of seeing, or a better translation might be, you are a God who sees me. This name doesn't just mean therefore that God is a God who sees everything because he's all powerful and he's present everywhere and he's up in heaven and has a bird's eye view and he can see the whole earth. All those things are true, of course, but this is the God who personally and intentionally sees and seeks after me. That's what Hagar says. The God who looks out on a million different things, who looks out on the countless multitude of invalids lying there, He sees one particular person and he comes to him or her. That's the God we see walking up to this pool in Bethesda in John 5. He is the God who sees this man who's been suffering for nearly four decades and he has compassion on him. And he delivers this man from his suffering and he gives him two impossible seeming tasks. Two impossible tasks. First, Jesus tells the man to get up, take up his bed and walk. He hasn't done that possibly ever if the 38 years covers his entire life or the vast majority of his life. Maybe this man has never once in his life stood on his own two feet and been able to carry anything. He might never have done this. That's impossible task number one. And then the even harder task, which comes later when they're in the temple, Jesus says, see you are well, sin no more. even harder than a paralyzed man getting up and carrying his bed. God's word tells us. At once, after being told to get up, take his bed and walk, at once the man was healed and he took up his bed and he walked. Those of us who have been raised in church might be numb to the sheer wonder that these passages, passages like this and others ought to evoke in our hearts. But think about what's happening here. This man is waiting for an almost unbelievable miracle as it is. that simply by getting into a pool that he will be healed. That's what he's waiting on. He's waiting for the waters to be troubled. That by touching those churning waters of Bethesda, his dried up and shrunken muscles and ligaments and sinews will be immediately renewed and reinvigorated and made strong, that cells within his body will just regrow instantly, that the joints that have been frozen and locked and unused to being moved will loosen and begin to work again, that the bones which were weak and brittle and not used to bearing any weight, that they would be strong and sound and able to carry him and something that he had in his hands wherever he needed to go. all in a moment, just if he can touch the water. That's amazing. That's just, that is difficult, I think, and almost unbelievable for our post-enlightenment materialistic minds to comprehend that God could work in these ways, but he does. And then just as this poor layman is waiting for that unbelievable miracle, an even greater miracle occurs. You see, in order for the man to be healed from the waters at Bethesda, he had to make it into the water first. He had to get down to the pool and immerse himself in the water first. He had to perform something. He had to work if he wanted the mercy and the miracle. But with Christ, you see, he received the mercy first. And then only after he had been made well was he called on to work. in response to the mercy, not to get the mercy. That's the way the gospel works, church. That is the way the gospel works. The good news of Jesus Christ isn't work, work, work, and maybe, maybe you'll make it into the pool of mercy. That's what other religions tell us. That's Islam. Work, work, work, work, work. You can't be certain, but maybe you'll make it into God's merciful graces. But instead, the gospel is that we were lame and weak and totally unable to help ourselves. And we had no one else who would help us either. We had no friend or family member who could carry us to the pool. And God sees us in our weaknesses amidst the whole multitude, and he singles out us, sees us in our despair and our suffering, and he does absolutely everything for us. He raises us up to new life when we're dead. Can a dead man get up himself? No, of course not. He mends that which is broken beyond repair. But we don't get saved and then just remain in that useless, powerless condition lying there on the ground. We receive the empowering mercy of God and then we go work, work, work, work, work. The law could tell us all day long, rise, take up your bed and walk. But if it were not for the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, then we would remain laying at the side of the pool, lame and helpless. We can't do enough good works to receive God's mercy. In fact, without the mercy of the God who sees us and seeks us out and saves us, we can't do anything good. The Bible says that all of our best efforts to get into that pool will utterly fail. We won't make it an inch past our original place. All of our righteousness, God's word says, is like filthy rags. But once we have been raised to this new life, then the apostle Paul tells us we have this whole treasure trove of good works that God has already prepared for us, and he is ready and willing to empower us that we just have to walk in them. He's already planned all the good works out. He has laid them out in order for us, and we just have to trust and obediently walk in that path that he has for us. God has made us, we are his workmanship, and he has made us not merely for privilege, he has made us for responsibility and for righteousness. However, these good works don't always come so easily to us, do they? When we receive the grace of God poured into our hearts, our affections start to change. Our souls begin to desire holiness. We begin to hate evil and love good. But even though we are justified, even though we're declared righteous by God, even though we're regenerated, we're born again by the Spirit of God, in a single moment, one particular point in time, we aren't totally transformed and sanctified and glorified in that moment. It doesn't happen like that. That process of growth and holiness will take our entire lives and then on into eternity. Sadly for us, even though our hearts therefore are made whole and clean and new, just as fast as that sick man's legs were made ready to walk again, oftentimes it takes us longer to spiritually get up and walk and obey Christ than it did for this man to physically get up, carry his mattress and go on his way. Sometimes it's difficult for us. The Bible says that we will still have to strive for holiness. We have to work hard to seek to live out the truth of our inner identity. Our spiritual leg muscles, if you wanna think about it that way, our spiritual leg muscles often take warming up and training and discipline before they can run the marathon that is the Christian life. But that is God's will for us as we grow up into the maturity of Jesus. We have to run the race well, and we have to run the race according to the rules Paul tells us in order to win the prize. We have to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. We trusted in Christ's salvation, yes, but we have to then continually trust in him daily. We repented initially, yes, but as Martin Luther said in the first of his 95 theses, when our Lord and master Jesus Christ said, repent, he intended that the entire life of believers would be repentance. The good works are there laid out for us, but we still have to walk in them. We will win the battle. Our victory in Christ is more certain and sure than the sun will rise tomorrow morning. It is more certain and sure than that, but we still have to fight for it. The kingdom of heaven is ours, but we still have to take it by force. But what if we don't get up? We might think. What if Christ says those words to us? Arise, take up your bed and walk. and we don't get up and we don't respond to the mercy of God offered us in Christ. Or maybe we get up and we begin to walk, but after a while we start to long for our previous life before Christ, just like those Israelites longed for slavery in Egypt. They had been redeemed. They had been delivered. They had come through the Red Sea. They had received their baptism, but they began to long for slavery. We go and we submit ourselves to that tyrannical master sin once more. What happens then? Can we lose our salvation? Can we unmend our legs that have been mended by Christ? Can he send us back to the pool and tell us that we have to lie down and wallow in misery for the rest of our lives and indeed forever? Jesus warned the man right at the end of our text today, John 5 and verse 14, see you are well, sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you. While there is some mystery, I'll admit, on this side of heaven as to who exactly God's true elect people are and who are living a lie. But we can know with reasonable certainty. Jesus says we can know who his people are by their fruits. And the Bible is clear that all that the father has given to Jesus in salvation will in fact be saved on the last day. Not a single one of his elect people will be lost. There will not be one single wayward sheep that Jesus fails to save. If God has put his spirit within you, he will never ever abandon you. even when you are faithless to the nth degree, he will remain faithful. If he has begun a good work in your heart, he will carry it to completion in the day of Christ Jesus. Jesus is not only the author of your faith who told you to get up, he is the perfecter and finisher of your faith who will transform you on that glorious day of judgment. So it doesn't depend on you to maintain your salvation. In fact, if it depended on you to maintain your salvation, you would be damned. If any part of your salvation depended on you, you would lose it. Nevertheless, what do we do with statements like this? Send no more that nothing worse may happen to you. There are some very serious warnings in God's Word to God's people that we would be incredibly foolish to ignore. What is worse, for instance, than being physically paralyzed for four decades? I can't think of a ton of things that are physically worse. Maybe blindness. Maybe not only paralysis, but pain added to that paralysis. And of course, physically, death. Death is worse. Death is not natural. It's not part of God's good created design. And spiritually then, what is worse than having a deadened heart of stone, which doesn't know the love and forgiveness of Christ in this life? The only thing spiritually worse than that is hell, is that reality from your life extended into eternity. So what are we to learn from this lesson of sin no more that nothing worse may happen to you? I think there are a number of things that can be gleaned here. First, even though once you're born again, you can't be unborn again. Once you're born again, you are born again forever. You can't be unsaved. Even though that's the case, it is true that you can experience something of the life of Christ through the ministry of his church, through the preaching of the word, through baptism, through the Lord's supper. You can experience all these things. You can taste of the heavenly gift and still not be truly regenerated. The seed of the word can be sown in you, the true word, but if there's no root of faith in your heart, then the superficial fruit that appears will wither and be trampled on and choked out, and in the end, it will be worse for you than if you had never received the word to begin with. So this warning to sin no more can apply to those who have been offered the good news of Christ, and even those who have been brought into the ark of salvation, the church, in an external sense, but have not drunk freely of the waters of mercy themselves. And then secondly, this warning of sin no more that nothing worse may happen to you also applies to those who are truly saved, but are in danger of falling into serious sin. It's not that something worse than being apart from Christ can happen to you, but your experience of the discipline of the Lord may be a far worse experience for you than any other part of your life, even before knowing Christ. Your experience of God's discipline as his child may be worse than that man who laid for 38 years as an invalid by the pull of Bethesda. The discipline of the Lord can be incredibly painful. And even though we're talking about spiritual realities here, God doesn't only discipline you spiritually. Sometimes the discipline comes in a very material and physical way. Maybe your discipline as a child of God is that God brings financial ruin on you to jolt you back into a living faith and a life of repentance before him. Maybe he sends you a terrible sickness to teach you to rely on him again and trust in him alone and not in your flesh. Maybe he turns even your friends away from you to remind you that he is the friend that sticks closer than a brother. God can use many different means to discipline his people, but all of them, all of them are for our good. And any discipline we experience in this life, though it does not feel like it now, is just a light momentary pain compared to the pleasures of eternity with Jesus. All of these experiences are for our good to turn us back to our loving Lord again, to lead us to forsake our sin and renew our trust in the God who sees us and seeks us out. Jesus is even willing that you would go through immense pain sometimes in this life if that's what it takes for you to have pleasure in the life to come. But we must admit it would be far better for us if we would just obey in the first place. it would be far better if we didn't require such discipline, if we weren't so stiff-necked, if we heeded Christ's advice to go and sin no more. So we still have to strive in this life for holiness. Not working it out in the flesh, But in the power of the Spirit of God, we have to strive for holiness. We have to lean on Christ, trust in Christ, and continue to avail ourselves of the means of grace that He has given us. Prayer, reading the Word, hearing the preaching of the Word, the Lord's Supper, the communion of the saints. We must seek to line up our lives with the declaration of righteousness that God has made over us in Jesus Christ. We must present our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God, which is our spiritual worship. We must not be conformed to the wicked patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewal of our minds. For all of us today who are in Christ by faith, be encouraged by these words. I don't want this to only be a beat you down message. Be encouraged by these words. See you are well. Those are good words. See you are well. Christ has healed you. He has raised you up from that pit of despair that you were laying in. Now, sin no more. That's not only a warning, it's also an encouragement too. You have been empowered to be righteous before Christ. Live out the reality that he is speaking over you and sin no more, lest we fall under his discipline, for it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Let's pray. God, we thank you that you are a loving Lord who sees us. God, there is nothing in us that would make us worthy of your love. But you look down from heaven and you see us. Maybe we're the worst sinner out of a great multitude. And Lord, you see us and you seek us out and you save us and you give us new life. And you say, rise and walk in the power of this new life that I have given you. God, thank you for that. God, let all of us here avail ourselves of this forgiveness that is being reached out right now to them. Lord, let no one here harden their hearts against this wonderful gospel message. God, let each and every one of us trust that all who call upon the name of the Lord will be saved. That is not him who wills nor him who runs that will win the prize that will be saved, God, but it is on you who has mercy. We thank you for reaching down to the gutter and saving us, Lord. We know that apart from your work, that we would lay there weak, helpless for all of eternity. We thank you, God, for picking us up, for binding us up in your love and for carrying us home. We ask your continued blessing now as we sing and pray and come to your table. In Christ's name.